Mezze Bistro at 30: From Youthful Hotspot to Berkshire Hospitality Icon

Mezze Chef Kevin Orcutt finishes a warm citrus salad with manchego.

Mezze Bistro + Bar didn’t set out to become an institution. When it opened in 1996 at it's first location, it was a small, energetic bistro with a bar built for conversation, a menu structured around sharing, and an atmosphere that felt more urban than anything else in town at the time. Thirty years later, those same fundamentals—attention to food, to people, to how a night unfolds—have evolved, and sharpened as it became the Mezze Hospitality Group.

Even as Mezze grew from one restaurant to one of the Berkshires’ leading names in hospitality—now running a large events and catering business, a more casual sister restaurant Bluebird and Co. at the base of Jiminy Peak, and the Cliff House restaurant at Prospect—it has retained its personal touch, and focus on flavor.

A Young Vision at the Table

When Nancy Thomas opened Mezze in 1996, she was a young restaurateur with an urban sensibility and a fresh idea. “I wanted to do something that had a younger spirit,” Thomas recalls of her bistro’s early days. “It was all small plates—truly mezze before people did tapas—and I wanted to have a bar that was really convivial. It was everything I love about dining, gathering, being at the table together… very social.”

In its first incarnation (a 50-seat bistro on Water Street) Mezze was filled with youthful energy. The local artists, faculty and students from nearby Williams College, and the employees from an exciting internet startup next door, flocked to the restaurant. “We represented a young, spirited restaurant, and it was a gathering social place,” Thomas says, “and the timing of it was just really special.”

That serendipitous timing also led to a partnership that would shape Mezze’s future. Just a few doors down from the original Mezze, Williams alum Bo Peabody was building his own company (one of the internet’s first social websites, Tripod) and became one of the bistro’s earliest fans. Peabody was impressed by Thomas’s vision and saw an opportunity to support it. 

“He and I became business partners right out of the gate,” Thomas remembers. “He wanted us to succeed and had something to offer me personally. I was deeply involved in the food and beverage side, but I needed to learn more about developing the business. I’m very grateful that he and I have had a long three decades together.”

The Creative Partnership

From the beginning, the Thomas–Peabody partnership has been a professional marriage of creativity and strategy. Thomas brought a passionate focus on cuisine and service, while Peabody contributed business acumen and an outside perspective. “My role has really been day-to-day operations and being hyper focused on food and beverage,” Thomas says, “and Bo has been able to bring multiple perspectives, be it business, the guest experience. He’s able to translate what it’s like to be the guest.”

In an industry where success can be fleeting, their partnership has created remarkable durability. Peabody mentored Thomas in running a tight, sustainable operation, and now says it’s impossible for Mezze to go out of business. “From the very beginning, I showed Nancy that I didn’t think it would be healthy for the restaurant to be like a charity case,” Peabody says—meaning the venture had to stand on its own merits, with no corners cut. He encouraged Thomas to aim high and innovate, while she in turn honed an organization that runs like clockwork while retaining warmth.

Thomas and Peabody both evangelize that for a hospitality business to succeed you have to focus on every detail. “I’m better at remembering what people eat and drink and where they sit than I am with names sometimes,” says Thomas, who grew up in Oklahoma City with a Moroccan mother and an Oklahoman father, working in restaurants from a young age. “Because I’m hyper focused on those things.” 

At the table itself, Mezze’s food philosophy has deepened and evolved over three decades, while staying true to Thomas’s original vision. The influence of Thomas’s heritage and upbringing can be felt in the menu’s Mediterranean accents and local New England sensibilities. “I grew up with a keen interest in food. It was always just a place of joy in my home life,” Thomas says, recalling how her mother cooked from scratch, often in a French or Moroccan style. “Food is a love language,” she adds.

In its first year, nothing on Mezze’s menu cost more than $10, and the cuisine drew on the talents of its opening chef, who also brought bold Latin flavors. “If you look at the original menu… it had a lot of Latin influence because the original chef was Latin,” Peabody notes. “It’s always had a lot of Middle Eastern influence because of Nancy’s heritage. It’s always had a sort of New American feel because of the farm-to-table nature of our community,” he adds. Over the years, different chefs have left their imprint on Mezze’s repertoire—one former chef, Joji Sumi, “brought a Japanese feel to it,” Peabody recalls, while current Executive Chef Kevin Orcutt “brings… an Italian and Mediterranean vibe to the food.” The through-line is an ingredient-driven, globally curious cuisine.

Beyond the Bistro

As Mezze Bistro flourished, Thomas and Peabody gradually expanded their hospitality vision beyond the four walls of the restaurant, cultivating a small constellation of ventures that share Mezze’s DNA. In 1999 they launched a catering arm, today known as Mezze Events, to bring the restaurant’s elegant, locally sourced fare to weddings, galas, and cultural events throughout the region. (Thomas still recalls the excitement when MASS MoCA, the contemporary art museum in nearby North Adams, opened in 1999—she moved to North Adams that year and soon had Mezze catering events in the museum’s massive industrial halls.) In the early 2000s, they ran a café on the MASS MoCA campus, and in 2007 they opened Allium, a sister restaurant on Great Barrington’s Railroad Street, bringing Mezze’s farm-to-table ethos to the southern Berkshires. Allium earned 12 years of acclaim before its bittersweet closing in 2018.

In 2022, they unveiled Bluebird and Co., a casual eatery and bar situated at the base of Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort in Hancock. Peabody acknowledges that Mezze, now a firmly established fine-dining destination, “is expensive and we know that a lot of people that might have gone to Mezze 20 years ago don’t go now.” One motivation for starting Bluebird, he says, “is that we wanted to bring a product back to the market that had half the check average that we have at Mezze. And we’ve accomplished that.” 

Meanwhile, Thomas’s deft hand found new expression in The Cliff House, a restaurant she helped launch in 2023 at the lakeside Prospect resort in Egremont. The Cliff House features Thomas’s guiding touch in everything from the locally sourced menu to the cozy-elegant decor.

A Basque Winter Feast

Fittingly, as Mezze celebrates its 30th anniversary, Thomas and her team are still finding fresh ways to engage guests. This winter, the restaurant has embarked on an ambitious culinary journey called “Mezze Makes the Med,” a four-month series of special menus highlighting the flavors of the Mediterranean. “We’re always trying to give our community a little bit extra in the winter months,” Thomas says, noting that Mezze itself opened in the dead of winter. 

“We call ourselves lifelong learners. It’s an important to the cultural value to our team. Each month, the restaurant “visits” a different country: January in Spain, February in France, March in Italy, and April in Greece. Rather than attempt strict authenticity, the Mezze chefs “take the principles of the classic cooking from the Mediterranean region and refine the dishes” in their own style. It’s a chance for the kitchen crew to flex their creativity and deepen their skills. Thomas has even invited guest chefs to host workshops for her staff—including the head chef from The Cliff House, who came to make tapas and pinchos (small Basque-style snacks) in preparation for Mezze’s upcoming “Basque Bash” dinner this weekend. 

“We learn, we celebrate, we eat,” Thomas says of these special dinners. “We talk about classic pairings and flavor profiles and the cuisines of a country and their culture.” It’s as much education as celebration, a way to transport Berkshire diners to distant lands for a night, while also enriching the team’s own culinary repertoire.

As the 30th anniversary of Mezze arrives, Thomas finds herself both astonished at how the years have passed and deeply gratified by what has remained constant. “We were talking the other day and I said ‘wow, this has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done,’” she reflects. “and, in hindsight, also quite the easiest thing I’ve ever done, because it feels so natural.”

Mezze Bistro+Bar

777 Cold Springs Road. Williamstown, MA. Open Wednesday through Sunday
5 pm - 8:30 pm