After nearly three years of serving home-cooked meals and pints to neighbors, friends and wayfarers, Priscilla and Robert Wheeler are closing their Olde Village Haunt roadside tavern in Plainfield.
The Route 12A restaurant next door to the Blow-Me-Down-Range near the center of Plainfield will close on July 21; the business and building have been up for sale, Priscilla Wheeler said.
“It took me a long time to decide. It’s a bittersweet thing, but priorities change,” she said.
Those priorities include the recent birth of her and Robert’s granddaughter, McKenna, born to their daughter, Michelle Hammond, who also helped out at the family-run tavern in front of the house as a waitress and tending bar.
Wheeler said she and Robert want to spend time with and be available on weekends to babysit their granddaughter, who arrived in May. “I want to help her out so the baby doesn’t have to be in day care,” the proud grandmother said.
Olde Village Haunt was always a part-time operation to begin with. Both Wheelers have full-time jobs — Priscilla with the Defense Contract Management Agency and Robert at Geokon in Lebanon. The restaurant was open only Thursdays through Saturdays from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Priscilla’s brother, Fred Morey, was the chef, whose menu included the three-meat platter of pork cutlet, sausage and New York strip steak with a side of mashed potatoes and seasonal vegetables.
She said the opportunity now exists for the right person to own a New England tavern that is in pristine condition.
The Wheelers spent three years lovingly renovating the 1830 post-and-beam, 3,348-square foot building with a wood paneled interior that seats 26 and four at the bar and which includes second floor residential space. The commercial kitchen, with a designated baking area and separate dish-washing room includes, new equipment and a walk-in refrigerator and freezer.
Asking price: $450,000.
“I put my heart and soul into it, so I don’t feel comfortable renting it,” Wheeler explained about putting the property up for sale. “It can easily be a five-day-a-week or seven-day-a-week restaurant. The locals would support it. I’ve had three to five couples that haven’t missed a weekend, wonderful friends, mostly people from Plainfield and Cornish.”
Despite the neighborhood’s goodwill, managing Olde Haunt Village with a fulltime job now on top of part-time grandparenting has become to big a load to juggle, Wheeler said.
“If I was in my 20s or 30s, I could do it,” Wheeler laughed. “But not now, in my 50s.”
