Archive: Around Town

Last week construction began at the John Joseph Inn on Auburn Road.  Many Lansing residents hoped something like this would happen, ever since the historic Rose Inn was destroyed by fire over two years ago.  Owners John and Elizabeth Hamilton plan to open the restaurant and six-guest room inn this Spring.  Now they are busy with repairs and renovations to the inn, the restaurant, and a small house on the property they recently moved in to.  "My whole career I've just been waiting to come home and play for myself," says John.


The Hamiltons were married at the Rose Inn, so the property has a special place in their hearts.  In fact, they plan to include their wedding cake on the menu when they reopen the old Carriage House as the Elizabeth Restaurant next Spring.  Elizabeth prepared the icing and cake the day before they were married, and at 8:00 am on their wedding day, John was in the Rose Inn kitchen assembling it.  The menu will call her recipe 'the Elizabeth and John Carrot Cake.'

The couple will weave their lives into the business in other ways as well.  The day after the October 6th closing John began working on a small house next to the restaurant.  The couple has already moved in with their young son Hunter, and plan to live there until they establish the business and build a bigger house elsewhere on the property.  "The part that was hard for us all this time was not being able to see each other or when we had Hunter, John not being able to share time with Hunter and watching him grow up," Elizabeth explains.  "This is why it's so ideal for us because our kids can be in this house and we'll be able to see them."

The Hamiltons are plenty busy as they prepare the restaurant and inn.  A contractor is filling in the foundation of the original inn, making repairs, and building a facade for what's left.  But John will do most of the renovation of their house and the restaurant.  He has already completed much of the work on the house, including ample kitchen counters made from the lanes at Ides Bowling Lanes, which were owned and run by his family, and where he worked growing up.  "I work with my hands, so we're going to do a lot of the renovations ourselves," John says.  "As far as the restaurant and this house it is on our shoulders.  The contractors are only doing the inn."

While the Rosemanns were primarily innkeepers who happened to have a restaurant, the Hamiltons are chefs who will also be running an inn.  "All of the breakfasts will be served in the restaurant, so as the business as general on the restaurant side of things we will be serving dinner six nights a week and Sunday brunch," John says.  "We will do breakfasts seven days a week for inn guests only and that will be served out of the restaurant.  So they will stay at the inn and come over in the morning to the restaurant and we will have a very high end, fine dining experience along with luxurious accommodations."

But the couple says they will apply the same high standards on the inn side.  They spent the summer looking for antiques to furnish the inn, and many are in storage waiting for their new home.  Some will need refinishing, and John says he will do that as well.  With a young son and another child due at the end of this month, the two have plenty to do.  But they both miss cooking, and look forward to opening the restaurant.  "The menu will highlight local ingredients and a lot of regional style cuisine," says John.  "It's a new American style restaurant that will have an American regional cuisine."

Elizabeth adds, "We want to have some game dishes as far as venison, pheasant, duck, and lamb.  John usually likes to cook things that are in rich flavor with glazes -- high-end comfort foods.  I think my desserts will probably be the same way.  I love apple pies, but I would add other components to make it more elegant or serve it with home-made ice cream.

Originally from Ithaca, the two chefs have lived and worked in restaurants all over the United States.  They met at Dewitt Middle School, dating in the eighth grade.  John attended a private high school, then played football at Union College before returning to the area.  Picking up where they had left off, they soon decided to move to Hilton Head, South Carolina where they began working in restaurants.

A few more moves landed the couple in Philadelphia.  "All of this time I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life," John says.  "One morning I woke up and said, 'I'm doing it!'  I loved cooking and working with my hands and creating, and it was a natural fit."  The chef and general manager of the restaurant where he worked recommended he apply to the Culinary Institute of America, considered to be the leading culinary school in the world.  Later Elizabeth enrolled as well, and they emerged with bachelors of restaurant management and hospitality management.  John's degree was in culinary arts, and Elizabeth's in baking and pastry arts.

They spent time in California helping others open new restaurants, cooking and managing until they ended up in Cape Elizabeth, and began looking for a restaurant of their own, mainly exploring properties around the coast of Maine.  But when Elizabeth found that the Rose Inn was for sale, their fate was set.  The fire damage had brought the price down to an affordable level, and they made an offer.  "We we showed up in Ithaca on a Friday, John recalls.  "We looked at it that afternoon, kind of assessed the damages, and then by Monday morning we put in an offer and it was accepted that Tuesday."

A Bit of Lansing History The Italianate style home was originally built for Abram Osmun in 1842.  It contained a circular staircase that was renowned in Tompkins County.  It was sold in 1942, 1946, and 1962 before Charles and Sherry Rosemann bought the five bedroom home in 1983, and expanded the inn in 1986 and 1988, when the number of guest rooms was 15.  A new wing built in 2000 added more guest rooms and a conservatory.   The Rosemanns reopened the inn after a fire damaged the first floor and basement in 2000, but on March 12, 2004 a devastating fire destroyed the original house.  A fire wall protected the new wing, though it did suffer smoke damage.  At first they said they would rebuild, but it wasn't long before a "For Sale" sign went up.  Water damage occurred as the remains sat waiting for a buyer. It was a long wait, about two and a half years.  But in mid-October a new sign appeared that announced, "John Joseph Inn, Elizabeth Restaurant, Coming 2007."  The current property is just over 13 acres, including the inn, the restaurant, a small house, a couple of barns, the formal garden, orchard, and grounds.  The Hamiltons vision is to eventually make the property self-sustaining, with much of the food for the restaurant grown in their fields, and chickens and other animals raised there as well.

The property certainly has the potential to expand, providing both practical solutions and emotional ties.  Being able to buy the property is the realization of a dream.  "Our hearts are in Ithaca and when we got married on this property, we both fell in love with it," John says.  "It just has all of the elements we were interested in for our own place.  It's a decent sized inn, but not too big.  A separate restaurant so that you can run a lot of private parties and functions and have a good operating business without disturbing the inn.  A big portion of it for me was to have a good amount of property, at least 10 acres and to have a place on the property that we both could live with our small family quite comfortably."

With the original house completely destroyed, you can see the conservatory through the open wall in the 2000 addition, with a wall of glass windows facing west.

Talking to the Hamilton's it is clear they are hard working, driven people.  They speak passionately about cooking and their careers, ambitiously about their plans for the future, and with great fondness for the property, respect for its history, and excitement about its future.  They have already planned their first menus, which will change with the seasons.

Listening to the them talk, you can almost see the restaurant and inn in full operation.  But they won't set a firm opening date, because they want to make sure they do everything right.  "If it takes a little bit longer with the inn, then we will be opening the restaurant prior to the inn's opening," says John.  "That is a potential backup plan."

"What I'm looking forward to is have our children see what we enjoy doing as a living and see how it makes us happy and seeing our passion and then just being able to have the best of both worlds and that's having the business and the family," Elizabeth says.

And John adds, "Just being able to take a break and go pick apples out in the orchards with the kids, and not always being in the grind with things."  And while the couple anticipates grueling hard work, they say that this property will give them a quality life with their children that allows them to pursue their passions and make a living.  "Here with what we have and what we do, I have endless options," John says.  "I can do paperwork lying in bed or go five steps and be in the kitchen and work on a roast or something.  I can take a couple hours during mid-day and work in the gardens.  I was never able to do that in my previous restaurants or jobs."

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