Judie’s Restaurant was the culmination of cooking since the age of ten with my first job baking for the Aspen Music Festival during rehearsal coffee breaks, and baking for the local drug store, “Pies Like Grandma Made” at age 11! My dad was the principal cellist there during the summers. I did that until I was 18 and left for college.

After school, I came to Amherst because my family moved here, and started my baking/waitressing career at the Lord Jeffry Inn which leap frogged me to opening Judie’s Restaurant in 1977. I wanted to get the “Wow” reaction to food that a great dessert gets, enter the Popover!

Food was my form of theater and art, expressing it through texture, color, flavor, and visual and fun/strange combinations. When we delivered our creations to the customer we’d get a “Wow!” 

“Expect the Unexpected” was my motto! Being a small restaurant to start, I tried many artsy unorthodox ideas through my early menus. Our interiors also elicited a “Wow” from on street greenhouse seating, hand painted tables and rotating 200 plus paintings on the walls. Being in a Five College area we had customers from all over the world visit Judie’s restaurant and request similar items in their home towns which started many wide spread food/drink innovations.