Plate to Plate

Nothing more alluring than a scalloped dessert bowl totally scraped clean, right? You can just about see the few molecules of raspberry sauce that remain etched onto the side of the bowl.

I wanted to post this photograph first because it’s so emblematic of a good eating experience — the table sloppy with glasses pushed every which way, the dishes cleared of any remaining morsels, the utensils askew, the tealights low. Dinner at the Remington Lodge last Saturday night was great.

The Lodge is a long gray structure, surrounded by low stone walls, hovering over the edge of the road in West Cummington, MA. Inside, the strangely mismatched fixtures, gnarled beams, and comfortably broken-in furniture lend the place a charmingly timeless feeling: like a place you grew up in, and hadn’t seen in a while, or some kind of ski lodge crossed with a prep school dining room about which you had a lot of fond memories. As the sun went down over the hills around the Lodge, the room took on a honeyed tone, and the conversation, punctuated by clinking glasses and yips of laughter, settled in at a warm murmur.

Of course, no one knew about the frenetic goings-on in the kitchen just hours earlier. Dan and I came that afternoon at two, bearing a hand-crank pasta roller and good spirits. We said we’d help out, and soon we were put to work pressing out long sheets of semolina dough the texture of an earlobe, and dotting them with big spoonfuls of the three homemade fillings: one with leek, one with prosciutto, and one with sweet potato.

Nearby, in an enormous Le Creuset — I probably could have fit myself in it if I’d tried — a homemade red sauce bubbled away. Soon every surface of the kitchen was covered in a layer of lightly floured ravioli, each one bulging with filling. There must have been hundreds.

We washed up a bit, and then went to get a drink in Northampton, leaving the Lodge proprietresses to their last few tasks before opening. When we returned, the dining room had transformed — flowers on every table, Sinatra-like tunes humming from the stereo, and happy diners lustily forking big bites of pasta into their mouths.

A plate of bracingly vinegary-sweet house-made pickles swiftly made an appearance at the table (and just as swiftly began to vanish), followed by a basket filled with rustic bread from the Hungry Ghost, slathered with garlic and cheese. A lemony caesar salad with crunchy croutons came next, and we knew what would come after that — a sort of holy trinity of ravioli — it was just the beginning.

We dug right in.