Food brings Village to life
Businesses, people fill in empty spots
Even on a Thursday night with thunderclouds looming, Roslindale Village doesn't miss a beat.
At the trendy Birch Street Bistro, patrons face a 20-minute wait for a table, while passersby are treated to the ambient sound of a four-piece jazz band.
Behind the bistro is a brick patio shared with two other restaurants. The place is packed. On one side, customers of Sophia's Grotto dine from an eclectic Mediterranean menu. A few yards away, diners are savoring pan-Asian dishes at Village Sushi and Grill.
"If you had told me three years ago that people would be lining up in the streets just to get a table here, I would have said you're crazy," said Glenn Williams, a neighborhood resident of 51 years and member of the board of directors for Roslindale Village Main Street, a nonprofit group devoted to the area's revitalization.
Situated off Washington Street and Cummins Highway in the center of Roslindale, the Village (formerly known as Roslindale Square) is a small but busy business district that has its own commuter rail station and community park. Efforts to rebuild the Village have been going on since the mid-1980s, but it wasn't until the restaurant scene emerged in 2001 that the area became the people magnet it is today, attracting businesses as well as residents.
Williams remembers the bustling square of his childhood in the 1960s, when a family could go down to the Rialto Theatre on South Street or take a walk to the Parke Snow department store.
But like most urban centers in the early 1980s, Roslindale hit a wall. Drugs took hold. Fires destroyed landmark stores. Grates went up on business windows. Walls were covered in graffiti.
"Once the street lights went down, " Williams said of the Village, "nobody went around there."
In 1985, Roslindale Village Main Street was established as part of a program under the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It had one goal in mind: return the Village to its heyday.
In an area where three-fourths of the buildings were vacant, the group offered to help businesses financially and architecturally if they promised to keep grates off their windows. And over the next 15 years, the area underwent a gradual transformation. Businesses slowly filled the empty spaces, and business owners began putting their trust in an area that was once viewed as precarious and desolate.
The area's revitalization was kicked into overdrive when the restaurant scene began awakening in 2001. That was the year Stephen Judge decided Roslindale would be the ideal place for Delfino, an Italian dinner spot.
"We used to have the whole square to ourselves," Judge said. Since then, about 10 new restaurants have settled in around him.
"I'm happy about the diversity in the Village," he said. "It's not just the restaurants, but a slew of different businesses have also opened. The economic impact of the restaurants spreads throughout the area."
The restaurant trend starting picking up speed in 2002, when Village Sushi and Grill arrived on neighboring Corinth Street.
"It is a very popular place to be," said owner Joe Xuan. "It's good to be here on the weekends. People really enjoy the weather out back."
Unlike his neighbors , John Garufi brought Sophia's Grotto, which opened in March 2005, to the village for a more familial reason. "My brother, Joe, and his wife, Sonia, live up the street and thought it would be a good idea," Garufi said.
Next door at the Birch Street Bistro, a converted century-old blacksmith shop, another Garufi brother, Mark, established his own endeavor, which has been a destination for locals as well as suburbanites since opening in May 2003.
"We bring people in who wouldn't usually come to Roslindale," said Mark. "People are coming in from Walpole and Needham. Those people who typically wouldn't come to Roslindale for anything."
Mark Garufi has been showcasing live music on Thursday nights for the last three years. "We have Mo town covers, blues, jazz, three- or four-piece bands, everything," he said. "People will come in and play for nothing because they like it so much."
At the two-year-old Bangkok Cafe on Poplar Street, manager Danny Titisuttikul has incorporated a different branch of the local art scene into his business: The walls here are decorated with paintings.
"If people want to come in and purchase artwork, they can," said Titisuttikul. "We feature a new artist every month."
For Ciaran Rockett, who co-owns nearby NuVo with Pat McCormack, the best thing about the new-look neighborhood is the variety of cuisine offered.
"Having all of these restaurants keeps the community together," said Rockett, whose restaurant opened in 2004. "Nobody is competing with one another. It gives people more variety. You can walk restaurant to restaurant to decide where to go."
Now, aspiring restaurant owners are putting the Village atop their wish lists as they look for locations, as was the case with Geoffrey's Café owner Michael Aplin.
Since closing in downtown Boston a few years ago, Aplin said, he was searching for "something with a small town community feel."
Aplin found his dream location in Roslindale Village, and opened Geoffrey's in April.
"It has been unbelievable," Aplin said of his restaurant's early success. "It's a different market than the one we had in Boston. Here we are only open at night. It is amazing for the area, and business has grown every week."
The area's nighttime popularity also has been a boon to business owners like Jane Connelly of Village Books. "Because of the restaurants, people mingle and stay out at night," said Connelly. "It keeps the Village vibrant and it helps all of us business owners. People will come out and walk after they eat and people come over while waiting for dinner."
Housing has been developed within walking distance of the main square, and the Main Street program has no plans of slowing down.
A Staples office supply store has been proposed for the site of the abandoned Ashmont Discount Home Center building. Likewise, the community wants to take control of a deserted MBTA substation and make use of this unique building across from Adams Park. Some have suggested turning it into a theater.
"It was once a place where people were moving out of," Joe Garufi said. "Now everybody is moving back in." 
