Welcome Home.
Since 1976 the singular objective has been to maintain a welcoming environment. A place where you can walk in, take a deep breath, slow down just a little, relax and let us help you feel at home. Smell the homemade bread, the roast, the brisket on the smoker, the sap boiling, the warmth of the fire. Take in the music, the structure, the gardens, the bird feeders. Founder Don Staber stated it best when he carved into the mantle “A Friendly Place by the Side of the Road”.
That’s it. That’s our mission.
Staber had started out in 1974, with a plan to turn the Simboli farmhouse just outside the limits of the “Smallest Incorporated Village in New York State” into a restaurant. One day early in the construction process, he was taking a lunch break and realized that the decrepit 1850s post-and-beam dairy barn on the corner of Parkis Mills and Sacandaga roads would make a far more interesting gathering place.
He and the Wielt brothers packed up their tools and moved the job site from the house to the barn. From that moment of inspiration have come decades of dinners, pancake breakfasts, weddings, wakes, showers, parties, and of course, concerts.
Rick Sleeper was a neighborhood kid who watched the renovations, and got his first job at Cock ‘n Bull. He washed dishes, chopped firewood and mowed the lawn. He admired what Don Staber did and looked up to Chef Ellen Martin. He hung around the kitchen watching everything Ellen and Joey Bennison did, and later learned from Don’s nephew, Mike Staber.
After a career in television production, Rick came back to the Cock ‘n Bull in 1994 to work with Don Staber until they figured out Don’s retirement in the spring of 1996, 20 years to the day after the Cock ‘n Bull opened. Mike Staber stayed on as Head Chef.
Part of Don Staber’s genius was to leave as much of the original barn intact as possible. Two beautiful paintings in the dining room by local Galway artists show what the barn looked like in 1975. Today, the hay loft overlooks the main dining room and two of the stables are now used as dining porches. The weathered wood and hand-hewn beams that contribute to the great acoustics and the tools and fixtures hanging from the walls and rafters all came from the farm or nearby farms. Every object has its own history, so don’t be afraid to ask. If we don’t have the right answer, we’ll make up a good story!
The Cock ‘n Bull has also continued, and grown, our relationships with the local farming families, local breweries and local businesses surrounding us.
We were serving Anderson’s beef and Smith’s apples long before “farm to table” was an industry catchphrase.
It’s who we are. It’s what we’ve always done.
