Flight to Paris

Brix Wine Bar

In the wine cellar at Brix Wine Bar in Pittsfield.

It’s 10 o’clock on a Saturday morning in early June and there’s barely a soul in Brix Wine Bar, yet all 40 seats appear to be taken and doing brisk business. This is courtesy of two giggling blond girls playing waitress, punching elaborate orders into the restaurant’s touch-screen computers. “Those are the contractors’ daughters,” explains Libby Spencer, lead sommelier and front-of-house manager of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts, restaurant. The contractor has promised that an expansion to the kitchen will be completed by the end of the month, but it can’t wrap soon enough for Spencer. “It just seems never-ending,” she sighs, looking like a teenager in cropped jeans and tennis shoes, the word “Discove(red)” scrawled across the front of her T-shirt.

“Discovered” is a term that might be applied to Brix as well, with its rising profile among the Berkshire restaurant community and growing hipster-hangout reputation. In 2005, then-Patrick McGinley relocated from Hartford, Connecticut, to the Berkshires to oversee the menu and launch the business, and Brix—the county’s original and, many would say, best wine bar—was born. Patrick, who is the restaurant’s co-owner and chef, had met Libby when she was working in the vineyards of Oregon, and brought her East to lead the wine program. When the couple married, he took her name.

Pittsfield, with the unsightly remnants of General Electric still clinging to the landscape, might seem an unlikely location for a contemporary take on the traditional French bistro, but the Spencers consider it a no-brainer. “Pittsfield is perhaps the last place in the county where you can still find affordable homes and get in on the ground floor,” Libby says. “There’s a real need for great restaurants.”

“There are some really good chefs here trying new concepts,” Patrick adds. “Great Barrington, Lee, Lenox, and Stockbridge have exploded with tourism and restaurants. Pittsfield hasn’t really exploded in that way yet.”

Like business partner and co-owner Adam Hersch, who has long been part of the effort to revitalize Pittsfield, the Spencers are not the type to pay lip service to the idea of community engagement. They bought a house in Pittsfield, and use as much local food as possible in their menu. They’ve recently partnered with the Berkshire Museum to offer Brix & Flix, which gives Wednesday-night diners passes to the indie and foreign films at the museum’s Little Cinema, and with the Colonial Theater in a discount ticket package with the purchase of a Monday night meal.