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7 | W aterloo C hronicle | T hursday,O ctober 22,2020 w aterloochronicle.ca Provide comfort and care to in crisis. Support your community and others. Become a & Wellbeing olunteer. Join us disasters can haPPen anywhere. helP when it's needed most. redcross.ca/volunteer and care to those in crisis. Become a Safety & W volunt Join us. There's a new restaurant in St. Jacobs that is in fact a very old restaurant: the his- toric Stone Crock has just reopened with a new vision from the Fat Sparrow Group. Any restaurant that has successfully been operating for five years before it goes belly-up -- or the jaded and tired owners and operators have had enough and call it quits -- can be said to be a successful venture. Five years, did I say? Well, Stone Crock has been operating in the village for something approaching a half-century: yes, 45 years is a very good run indeed. But change is a good thing, too, and restaurants need to change -- the vener- able Stone Crock included. The Fat Sparrow vision, led by executive chef and co- owner Nick Benninger and wife and business partner Natalie Benninger, have sought to retain the spirit of the venue, while bolstering its menu. Inside, the Stone Crock bones remain but with a minimalist-décor approach that purges the bric-a-brac and tchotchke that cluttered the Waterloo County esthet- ic -- the idea of a "stone crock" -- and took it off course. Some artwork -- a series of "multimedia dioramas" made in the 1970s -- is indic- ative of the restaurant's his- tory and Amish heritage and was crafted by twin brothers Abner and Aaron Zook, one left-handed; the other right. Apparently, those specific dexterities and the angles they afforded came into play when carv- ing the pieces. The lore is that decades ago a St. Jacobs founding citizen accepted the carvings as collateral for a loan. As for the food, while it's a moot point given the pan- demic, among the biggest changes has been the eradi- cation of the buffet, a food bastion of the 1980s. To some this will be a heresy; to oth- ers, like me, not. With or without the lurking CO- VID-19, it's a smart update by Benninger and fellow Sparrows. What also makes the Sparrows more like owls is the wisdom to give a serious foregrounding to Germanic and Alsatian food: not only does that make sense for the village and the region, but it's in Benninger's very DNA. From the first days of Uptown 21 in Waterloo, he has been leaning into a por- cine menu and Edna Stae- bler schmeckishness. Doubling down on por- kosity now was an obvious step. There is a thing, a sort of food subtext, called "Wa- terloo County Fare" here, so why isn't there a restaurant to reflect that (other than our German clubs)? For Benninger the an- swer is a progression he sees in what he calls his "culi- nary journey." "One of the first menus I ever wrote on my own was a nine-course tasting menu called 'A Taste of Alsace.' I've never strayed from that style of cooking, so it's great to see it come home to roost now exactly where it be- longs, in the heart of St. Ja- cobs Village. This is a place surrounded by farms, mar- kets and droves of people looking for the Waterloo County experience," says Benninger. What that means on the menu is eight sections, in- cluding shareables, entrees, sides and dessert; about two dozen dishes are German or Alsatian. To sip, there's ci- der and warming gluhwein, a delicious mulled wine, as well as wines and beer. The pfluger platter is a ploughman-style plate of fresh and dried sausage and a warm apple sauerkraut; there's cider soup, wurstwa- ren and Bavarian cheese dip with pretzel bread as appe- tizers. There's spaetzle and schnippled beans. Need I say more? Main courses include choucroute garnie (a Ben- ninger favourite), a very ten- der smoked pork chop, cab- bage rolls, currywurst, rou- laden and a Swiss mountain tart, to name several. Of course, there is schnit- zel with a half-dozen sauces, from peppercorn to Alsa- tian. The Swiss alpermagro- nen is a carbolicious mac and cheese dish with pota- toes, caramelized onions and bacon. There are vegan and gluten-free selections too. Benninger has always liked beignet-type deep- fried pastries, so, according- ly, among dessert items there are the eponymous drop doughnuts, the fetsch- patzes or "fat sparrows" with a wine-caramel sauce. Tast- ing morsels, these birds. For the Benningers and the host of Sparrows, the change makes sense. It will reinvigorate the Stone Crock, thereby re-energiz- ing the entire village, while keeping the original identity of the food and its comfort- ing place in our regional and demographic history. Clearly, the new Stone Crock looks back to its ori- gin -- like the choucroute garnie, that marvellous Al- satian wonder of pork and sauerkraut, which captures the original Nick and Nat's Uptown 21 -- as well as looking forward as it re-pre- sents a sometimes-forgotten narrative of our Waterloo County Fare with a new vi- sion. It is likely Benninger's favourite food to cook, but it's also an early part of our history. "The new menu honours Waterloo Region's heritage, farmland and our local pro- ducers, but it connects to Oktoberfest too. There are imaginative twists on all our comfort favourites," he says. "In the words of Edna Staebler, it's food that really schmecks." Andrew Coppolino is a Kitchener-based food writer and broadcaster. Visit him at andrewcoppolino.com. OPINION HISTORIC RESTAURANT REOPENS WITH NEW VISION AND 'FOOD THAT REALLY SCHMECKS' ANDREW COPPOLINO Column (From top) Stone Crock dining room. Pfluger platter. Andrew Coppolino Photo STONE CROCK 1396 King St. North, St. Jacobs, Ont. stonecrock.ca 519-664-2286