ASta Banquettes

When I was 8 or 9 years old I remember my Pop coming home with his pickup buried under a pile of 20’ long boards. He stacked them in the backyard and for the next week or two the pile grew. A textile mill in New Bedford, one town over, was getting torn down and somehow Pop managed to salvage, what seemed to me, all the floorboards in that 50 story mill. One of my first jobs was pulling nails out of those boards. That salvage pile became our kitchen table, a floor in a bathroom addition, and most of the trim in my childhood home.

Fast forward a lifetime and I am talking to a chef about building some banquets for his new restaurant. We had met through his partner, who managed a bakery where I was hired as a cookie painter (another story). The clients asked me what kind of wood l liked to work with,  I responded, pine, and went on to defend my case. Old growth, heartwood, longleaf, people call it all kinds of things. It’s salvaged from a New Bedford textile mill. The stuff might be 200 years old. I like to think my enthusiasm was convincing. We arrived at two 11’ long banquets and a 6’ bench to match, built from the first real pile of salvage I ever knew. 

Visiting Alex and Shish at Asta is a transformative experience. They are inventive risk-takers who pay attention to all the details. I am super stoked that my work is a small part of that. You should definitely go eat there.