Patrons entering The Grange Hall for a taste of the Midwest in New York.                           PHOTO: Andy Glockner

With the last of the Saturday brunch crowd finally out the door, The Grange Hall owner Jacqui Smith sighed and slid slowly across a mahogany bench at one of the tables near the restaurant's main entrance.  She turned sideways, leaned against the room's restored front wall, and stretched her legs out on the bench during a moment of downtime before the evening's dinner rush.

After involvement in several other restaurants and clubs in the area during the 1970's and 1980's, Smith has found contentment in her now 11-year-old venture that brings cuisine of the American farm to Commerce Street, a quiet Greenwich Village enclave tucked between Seventh Avenue South and Barrow Street.

"I wanted a grown-up restaurant," Smith said.  "My chef and I both have our roots in the Midwest.  My grandparents come from a farming background in Ohio and my chef is from Michigan.  The idea was to take comfort food or heartland cooking and update our grandparents' recipes for the way people eat today.  It's not necessarily health food, but it's a healthy approach to the food people really want to eat."

The restaurant emphasizes recipes from the Midwest accented with some New York flair, resulting in dishes such as grilled loin lamb chops with rosemary-pine nut pesto.  The basic comforts of the food and the restaurant's 1930's decorative motif fit the sleepy, pastoral atmosphere of Commerce Street, a fact not lost on Smith or the local residents.

The restaurateur and her partner, Jay Savulich, looked for a space for two years before settling on the current location, a former speakeasy with dark fixtures and cozy lighting accentuating original glasswork. The restaurant features photographs and paintings by local artists.

"The look of this place was something that we would have done had we not found this place," Smith said.  "The man that lived here who was retiring didn't want somebody to come in and turn it into the fabulous restaurant du jour and push out the neighborhood."

The elaborate mahogany bar at The Grange Hall.            PHOTO: Andy Glockner

The restaurant welcomes a cross-generational clientele that frequents both the restaurant and the bar.  Smith remains loyal to her local patrons, a policy that was established early in The Grange Hall's existence.

"The hardest thing was the first six months we were open," said Smith.  "It usually happened with the fashion industry, because you are the new restaurant and everybody wants to come in, and everybody wants to come in without a reservation.  I have been written up for making celebrities wait for tables because they didn't have one, because everyone is a star at The Grange Hall."

Famous patrons frequenting the restaurant's 50 Commerce Street location is hardly a new phenomenon.  According to Smith, noted photographers Walker Evans and Berenice Abbott were among the noted artists who frequented the establishment in its earlier days.  Abbott actually lived on the building's fifth floor for over 30 years.  Smith also claims that notorious spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed in the early 1950's for treason, handed over their atomic weapon secrets to a Soviet liaison at the former speakeasy.

Now Smith and her partners are creating their own history on the site.  Despite the restaurant's location in a now-trendy part of town, success for Smith comes down to providing the basics of good, wholesome food in a quaint, warm atmosphere.  She summed up her philosophy simply: "When you do things right, it attracts people."