In 1936 Alwin and Olga Gebhardt, who’d been aiming to open a restaurant in Greenfield, Massachusetts, found a second-floor spot at 16 Federal Street that fit the bill just about perfectly. Before the year was out they had opened the eponymous Alwin and Olga, which quickly found a loyal clientele in town and among travelers heading north on U.S. Route 5 to New Hampshire and Vermont or south to Connecticut. Within just a few years the Gebhardts got lucky when the Duncan Hines, the peripatetic restaurant reviewer, stumbled on their place and gave it his unqualified endorsement.
“You’ll have to climb the stairs to find Alwin and Olga’s,” Hines wrote in the 1940 edition of Adventures in Good Eating, his widely trusted guidebook. “But they and their dinners are worth it. Olga makes a fine lobster Newburgh and a chocolate cake I know my grandmother never equaled.”
Unfortunately, at about the same time, a blaze that started in Greenfield’s old fire station swept through the block of Federal Street that contained No. 16, pretty much destroying the Gebhardts’ restaurant. Although Alwin somehow managed to save many of its most valuable items in the restaurant, he and Olga could only bide their time as a larger and more modern building went up in the same place.) When they finally reopened Alwin and Olga nearly a year later, business seemed better than ever.
Through the 1940s and early 1950s, the restaurant’s reputation spread throughout New England, and even across the nation, but by 1955 the Gephardts were ready to move on. That summer they put the restaurant up for auction with a minimum bid of $30,000, which, they estimated, was about a third of its actual value. “This restaurant is a going, prosperous, money-making concern,” large display ads that the auctioneer placed in the newspapers said. “In 1954 the business showed a net profit of $15,000. . . . The one and only reason for this sale is that the owners desire to retire.”
Richard and Winifred Whitney of Athol, Massachusetts, it was soon announced, were the new owners of Alvin and Olga. Richard Whitney had quite a bit of experience in the restaurant business, having operated a couple of diners with his brother before serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, and then reopening one of them as well as starting Whitney’s Restaurant in Athol after the war. In 1960, though, after operating Alvin and Olga for just under five years, the Whitneys sold the restaurant to Dennis E. Slattery.
In 1963, when the editors of the Mobil Travel Guides selected the 45 restaurants in the United States that offered the best value for the money, Alwin and Olga was on the list. (Patrons who were used to its 99-cent specials every evening certainly wouldn’t have been surprised.
Alwin Gebhardt died the following year at age 64. In his retirement he had become an accomplished painter, exhibiting his works in stores, banks, the local library, and other venues. Olga would die in 1991 at age 89.
By 1965 Dennis Slattery decided to call it quits as a restaurateur, too. That November he placed a “Closed ‘Til Further Notice” ad in the local newspaper and soon shuttered Alwin and Olga permanently, citing a decline in business and his desire to have more free time. Early the next year the restaurant’s equipment, fixtures, and furnishings were sold at auction.
Less than a week before the auction the Greenfield Recorder-Gazette ran an editorial that was both an obituary for the restaurant and an homage to the couple who created it. “Whereas the successors to these two hard-working and skillful restaurateurs went at their tasks with determination to succeed, things were never quite the same without Alwin and Olga,” the newspaper said. “Greenfield will never have another [restaurant] like it. In almost no place will there ever be food or surrounds to beat Alwin and Olga’s in its golden days.
Now, from Alwin and Olga’s “golden days,” here’s the recipe for the chocolate cake that Duncan Hines made famous.
Olga’s Famous Chocolate Cake
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Loading...Ingredients
- 2 cups sifted cake flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/3 cup butter
- 1 1/4 cups sugar
- 1 egg
- 3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup thick sour cream
- 3/4 cup whole milk
Instructions
Heat oven to 350 degrees.
In a small bowl, add baking soda and salt to the flour and sift together three times.
In a large bowl, cream butter thoroughly, add sugar gradually, and cream together well. Beat egg into mixture; then blend in chocolate and vanilla.
Add about a quarter of the flour and beat well, then add sour cream and beat thoroughly. Add remaining flour alternating with milk. Beat after each addition until smooth.
Bake in two 9-inch layer pans for about 30 minutes. When cake is cool, frost with chocolate butter cream icing.
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