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From Primedia Publications
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Randall's Ordinary
The folks responsible for this culinary time warp are Bill and Cindy Clark, who conceived of Randall's and were the hosts and chefs when the inn opened in 1987, more than 100 years after the Randall family sold the farm. The farmhouse looked completely authentic only because it had been expertly restored by a previous owner, Harvey Perry, who purchased it in 1926. To oversee the restoration, Perry hired Norman Isham, noted author and specialist in 18th-century houses. Isham was responsible for the restoration of early American artist Gilbert Stuart's Rhode Island birthplace and many other historic structures. In 1976, Perry put the house on the National Register of Historic Places.

A perfect setting, however, does not make a great inn. The Clarks brought with them a mastery of hearth cooking they had learned by necessity when, as newlyweds in 1967, they moved into a derelict 18th-century Connecticut farmhouse without a usable kitchen. Cindy took lessons at Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, and the couple started collecting antique cookbooks and kitchenware. Eventually, they moved on to other restoration projects, maintaining their interest in Colonial cooking. By the time they could prepare an entire meal, they were entertaining friends regularly around the hearth on Saturday nights. Soon they began booking small dinner parties and offering cooking lessons.



"We won't fix the squeaks in the 270-year-old floorboards. People love that. If we changed the squeaks, we'd be just another restaurant."
The Clarks' recipes are gleaned from a pile of cookbooks, some of them reproductions of 18th-century books such as American Cookery by Amelia Simmons, first published in 1796. It's one of the earliest American cookbooks and, like other collections of "receipts," has been reproduced and still is in print. Museums and historical societies are good sources for other reproductions. The Montclair (New Jersey) Historical Society, for example, has compiled and adapted Fanny Pierson Crane, Her Receipts, 1796: Confections, Savouries and Drams.

Well versed in 18th-century cuisine, the Clarks decided to quit their 9-to-5 jobs and pursue their avocation full time. In their search for a restorable old house suitable for a Colonial-style inn, they found the Randall place in an ideal location. After turning off Route 2 onto the homestead, you approach the inn by way of an unpaved lane flanked by stone walls; it's easy to forget you're a few moments from Interstate 95 and just eight miles from historic Mystic Seaport.

On the right is a barn built in 1819, which the Clarks moved from New York State, extensively restored and transformed into 12 guestrooms, supplementing the three bedrooms on the second floor of the inn. The rooms are furnished in spare period style with antique canopy beds, hand-woven bedspreads, old rockers, and dressers. In a concession to business reality, each room has cable TV, air conditioning, and a modern bath. Straight ahead is the inn and, behind it, a smaller garage/barn housing two champion Devon oxen and a donkey named Cricket. On the left is a contemporary log house built for the Clark family, but they are no longer there.

Early in 1995 the Clarks sold Randall's to the Mashantucket Pequots, a Connecticut Native American tribe who operate a lucrative nearby casino. Although the Pequots have been buying commercial property in the area at a breathtaking pace, they have no intention of ruining Randall's by overdeveloping it, says William Foakes, the new manager. Indeed, recent visitors detected no changes; the knowledgeable and friendly staff, trained by the Clarks, remains in place.

The Clarks even left behind Cecilia, a six-year-old tiger cat who has a habit of lounging in the barn hallways waiting for feline-savvy guests who know how to give a proper head rub. "We couldn't take Cecilia away," Cindy Clark says. "She belongs with the barn."

Foakes, a Harvard grad who learned the hotel trade at Hilton and Holiday Inn, among others, wouldn't have it any other way. "Some of our regular guests ask to have Cecilia spend the night in their rooms."

Still, the Pequots are planning to make improvements, including more flowers and landscaping and better room furnishings. "Better," by Foakes' definition, means tasteful as well as authentic. He is, for example, replacing wooden curtain rods with wrought-iron hardware handmade in period style by a blacksmith. The most ambitious plan is to add another restaurant by finding a historic building, moving it to Randall's and rebuilding it peg by peg.

"The tribe is going to do a better job of preserving our past than we do for ourselves," he promises. "We won't fix the squeaks in the 270-year-old floorboards. People love that. If we changed the squeaks, we'd be just another restaurant."
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