CULINARY ESTABLISHMENTS BREAK DOWN WALLS TO CREATE NEW SPACES
By Laura Mars Photos by Megan Haley
Food culture in the Berkshires is something to celebrate. From tasty pub food to renowned fine dining; from the best local ingredients to international delicacies, our choices are delicious and rich and getting richer.
Robbie Robles, who opened Roberto’s Pizza in Sheffield in 2021, broke through the wall of the restaurant last fall into the next-door space, launching Roberto’s Pub. This summer, Robbie is opening a third business at the former Gorham & Norton at 278 Main Street in Great Barrington and plans to offer sandwiches and local products. In Williamstown, Peter MacGillivray is equally busy expanding his business. In 2022, he opened Provisions Williamstown at 4 Water Street, a wine and specialty food shop. He is now breaking into the next-door space that was once Gramercy Bistro and plans to offer coffee, libations, and appetizers. Both entrepreneurs share a commitment to their community, a passion for delicious food and drink, and a drive to literally break down barriers.
For Robbie, a first-generation Mexican, food is love. From humble beginnings of cooking with his family at home in Santa Monica, California, to opening Roberto’s and his latest expansions, Robbie not only makes excellent pizza with local ingredients but also creates community—from loyal customers to committed employees. His new spaces represent his broadening vision of breakfast and lunch in Great Barrington and dinner and drinks in Sheffield.
Coming to the Berkshires with his mother when he was 10 years old, Robbie showed up at The New Boston Inn in Sandisfield at 15, ready to do anything. “They needed a waiter, so I became a waiter.
There was no training, so I copied what I saw on TV. I kept a deck of cards in my pocket and would do a card trick at the table for an element of entertainment.” (He keeps a deck at his restaurant and occasionally does a trick or two for customers while they wait for their orders.)
Robbie’s son was born when he was 21, a life-changing event that helped him focus on what he really wanted—to open his own Mexican restaurant. He honed his culinary and business skills in both the front and back of the house at popular southern Berkshire spots like The Marketplace, Xicohtencatl, Prairie Whale, and SoCo Creamery, helping to build teams and design systems to improve the process, and working with talented chefs to perfect his recipes.
“It hit me like a freight train,” he recalls of his pivot from Mexican food to pizza. “Pizza is for everybody—vegetarian, meat lovers, vegan, it’s all there. I wanted to bring a real pizza culture to the Berkshires, so I went to New York, Brooklyn, and Staten Island to learn how to make the perfect pizza.” Customer favorites include half Roberto (honey and sopressata) and half Hannah Bella (spinach, caramelized onions, truffle oil), as well as the Vodka Pie. As delicious as the toppings sound, the key to Roberto’s pizza is the base—three-day cold fermentation dough. And heat. His ovens are anywhere from 500 to 800 degrees.
He settled on Sheffield to open his restaurant, where he recently bought the house he lived in as a teenager with his mother. “As a child, I was so upset to move away from the bustle of California,” he recalls. “I didn’t realize how lucky I was to have landed in small-town Berkshires, full of beauty and talented chefs.”
When the space next door to his restaurant became available, he did not hesitate. He created a passage from Roberto’s into The Pub by breaking down the brick wall. The Pub is a casual bar with a jazzy, upscale vibe, perfect for a drink after work, overflow pizza patrons, and parties. Bold wallpaper with monkeys hanging from trees (and having a drink!) covers one wall, and a cozy couched nook with a TV fills an opposite corner. The room’s rustic, minimalistic style is inviting and comfortable, with tables and a large bar bearing signatures in magic marker by his many friends, family, and supporters.
A six-mile drive down Route 7 is Robbie’s new project at 278 Main Street in Great Barrington, which he began to renovate just after the first of the year. It’s where the Norton family, starting with Charles Norton in 1923, operated the iconic Gorham & Norton Package Store. I talked to Norton’s grandson, John Tracy, as he stood behind the same counter he’s stood behind since the ’70s. “We had the first liquor license in South Berkshire County,” he says, adding that making sandwiches was a big part of their business. We walk into a storage room out back—a large, high-ceilinged space with brick walls that was added to the building in the ’40s, and where Robbie will create seating.
“When my mom and I first moved to the Berkshires,” recalls Robbie, “we lived up the hill from Gorham & Norton. She would put money in my sock and send me there for milk and eggs. Their legacy runs deep, and I plan to honor that.”
The new place will be called “Robbie’s” and will serve breakfast and lunch sandwiches, pizza by the slice, and host a year-round farmer’s market. “We have so much local talent making amazing products that I want to showcase,” Robbie says. “It will be a place to let people do what they do, to support young entrepreneurs.”
Pastry chef Hanna Rybolt and flower farmer Oona Camille are among those who look forward to selling their wares at Robbie’s. He is also quick to acknowledge financial partner Marc Mallett, pizzaiolo Yale Silva, and pastry fairy and collaborator Samantha Marturana. It takes a village.
“It’s a big project,” says Robbie. “The key is to start simple; to focus your love and energy on a few products and make them the best you’ve ever had. Go deeper, not wider. I believe that Robbie’s can be the heart of the Berkshires, selling beautiful food and local products.”
Further north, Peter MacGillivray is on a similar path. He purchased the empty space on Water Street in 2020 without a plan or serious retail experience, just a good feeling about the corner storefront. In 2022, that feeling became Provisions Williamstown, a wine shop that also sells international delicacies, local pottery, and a few unique pieces of clothing. “We wanted the shop to be experiential,” he says, “where people would come in and lose track of time.”
Peter was born in North Adams and grew up in Williamstown. He recalls spending time in earlier renditions of the space he now owns, including The Dugout Luncheonette and TGL Photoworks. At Boston College, he met a young woman from California who would become his wife. They moved out West after graduation. There, Peter built a successful career writing, publishing, and producing global events in the automotive aftermarket industry, like SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association) and PRI (Performance Racing Industry) shows, and hobnobbing with racecar drivers. When his wife was offered a position at Northeastern University, they bought a house in Boston, and he commuted coast to coast for 15 years. Several years ago, they bought a second home in South Williamstown, and he now commutes from there to Boston to run Provisions.
Like Robbie, one business is not enough for Peter, who just signed a lease for the space next door to Provisions from Xtina and Jim Parks, who own the building where Xtina’s ROAM, an African contemporary art gallery, also is located. Peter’s new space was previously home to Gramercy Bistro.
“It will be a nice complement to Provisions with coffee and world-class pastries, and to ROAM, collaborating with fair trade, African-based coffee growers,” says Peter. He’s calling it “The Coffee Shop,” wanting people to know from the name what they could find inside, like Provisions. Peter will break through a brick wall for access from Provisions into The Coffee Shop, which will open in early 2025.
The similarities between the stories at either end of Berkshire County don’t end with a California connection, or a love of food, or two entrepreneurs opening businesses in the community they grew up in. The most striking thing they share is success built on passion, with good-natured entrepreneurs always