Joseph's Spaghetti Shed featured in Fortune magazine

Joseph's Spaghetti Shed in Glen is featured in the March 4 issue of Fortune magazine.David Shribman, whose political columns appear every Saturday in The Conway Daily Sun, spotlighted Joseph's in a column he writes regularly for Fortune, entitled "Eat at Shrib's."To make the Shrib cut, a restaurant has to be "a place I really like that has a real authentic feel to it, and a place of special character," Shribman said earlier this week.Joseph's met the criteria. Shribman, who is Washington bureau chief for the Boston Globe, said his family has had a vacation home in Mount Washington Valley for 33 years, and, when he's visiting, Joseph's is always a must-stop."There are loads of places in Mount Washington Valley that I really love," Shribman said, "but Joseph's is one that my kids and wife and I have always made a special point of visiting. It has a special place for us."Joseph's Spaghetti Shed is owned and operated by Beth Carta-Dolan. She started the restaurant with her father, David Carta, in 1984. The building was originally her grandfather's sugarhouse, where he made maple syrup and operated a gift shop called The Sugarmaker, and the restaurant was named for her grandfather."When my dad and I first opened, we sat 20 people and had 19 plates," Carta-Dolan says. "And we did the dishes by hand. When we started, we started bare bones."Joseph's initially served breakfast and lunch only but, "It wasn't too long before we wanted to expand into dinner as well," Carta-Dolan writes in a letter to patrons that appears in the menu. "We just needed the right idea something a little different. Thus, the Spaghetti Shed. Our first menu offered only spaghetti but we soon began serving pizza as well. I have since expanded the menu to include other Italian favorites and some non-Italian items as well."Joseph's is now a dinner restaurant only and seats between 45 and 50 people. The restaurant is open three days a week (Friday through Sunday) during the winter months, closes during the mud season starting in late March, and reopens in May. During the summer months through Columbus Day, the restaurant is open five days a week.Carta-Dolan says she would like to be open six or seven days during the summer, but she can't find enough help."I won't be open if I don't have enough staff to serve people," she says. "I'm so busy in the summer that I can't open with a short staff. The past couple of years I've only been open five nights, which is probably great for my sanity but you've got to make hay when the sun shines, and I would like to be open as much as possible."In addition to the restaurant, Carta-Dolan also operates the Sugarmaker Bakery, where she makes cakes and desserts to order, usually for special occasions such as weddings or birthdays or retirement parties."The main part of my business is the Spaghetti Shed," she says, "but the cake business is a great addition and it's also an artistic outlet for me. I can't paint and I can't draw, but I can frost a pretty cake."Carta-Dolan says people eating at Joseph's for the first time are probably impressed by the quantity of the food, and the fact that it's homemade."We bake all the bread here, and we make all the sauces and all the meatballs," she says. "We don't make the pasta. That's pretty much the only thing we don't make."Carta-Dolan says "atmosphere" is also one of the restaurant's features."We're very family-oriented, very kid-oriented," says Carta-Dolan, who herself has two young children. "We do so many families from Story Land during the summertime."And once they've eaten at Joseph's the first time, many of those families keep coming back. Like the Shribmans."Beth takes neither credit cards nor guff," Shribman writes in Fortune magazine. "But she serves a mighty minestrone, and these days the menu also includes pizza, shepherd's pie and lasagna. When she started, she had room for 20 diners but only 19 plates. Now she has enough plates, but the lines stretch out the door."