The Journal · The Brantford Club

Gran Sasso vs The Brantford Club: Two Doors Numbered 98

Gran Sasso Ristorante is an Italian restaurant at 98 Paris Road, Brantford, open Wednesday to Saturday from 4:00 in the afternoon and reserved by telephone. The Brantford Club is a club, private and members’ own, at 98 George Street, since 1898, where a family dinner takes a room of the house to itself with the courses settled beforehand.

If the Italian dining room was the one you were looking for, its own site gives them plainly. Gran Sasso Ristorante is at 98 Paris Road, Brantford, Ontario N3R 1H9; the telephone is 519-752-1500, and the site asks that you call, and not email, for a reservation. It serves dinner Wednesday to Saturday from 4:00 in the afternoon until close, last reservation 7:45, as its site puts it, and invites a call about hosting a celebration. The rest of this page is for the reader who typed the two names with a “vs” between them.

The Same Number on Two Streets

Brantford has two doors numbered 98 that set a table for a family, a short drive apart. The door at 98 Paris Road opens onto Gran Sasso Ristorante, an Italian restaurant whose site describes family photographs on the wall, wine glasses along the bar, ceramics from Castelli, and a menu of pizza, pasta, and grilled meat. The door at 98 George Street opens onto The Brantford Club, a private members’ club in the former residence of Dr. John Y. Bown, an Italianate house of about 1855 that the Club bought in 1898 for $4,500.00, per the Club’s centennial history. One door opens onto a restaurant floor with a Saturday of its own going on. The other opens onto a house with four rooms that dine, where a party is given one of them and nobody else is seated in it.

Can a family hold a private dinner at The Brantford Club?

Yes, and the Club’s own private-dining page says how it works: a room of the house, a table set for your party, and a menu planned with the kitchen, with no walk-through traffic past the door and no second seating waiting for the chairs. The four rooms that dine are the dining room, the principal table of the house since 1898; the Waterous Family Dining Room; the 98 George Room; and the Bateson Lounge, the soft-chair room for a drink before the table. A family sends the occasion, a preferred date, and roughly how many chairs to manager@thebrantfordclub.com, and a person replies as soon as they are able and settles the room, the menu, and the run of the evening. Each room is described in the Journal’s entry on the rooms at 98 George Street; the arrangement begins on the Club’s private-dining page. Who may host, and how, is answered by that person in the reply.

The Saturday That Belongs to Paris Road

Gran Sasso is the right table for most of the family dinners Brantford books, and it should be said early. A birthday of eight who want the pizza and the life of a full Italian room on a Saturday, booked with one telephone call, will not be better served by a private house. The restaurant’s own site says its dishes are named for people and places the family loves and that it will talk to you about hosting a celebration. A grandmother who wants a dining room that feels like somebody’s kitchen in Castelli is describing 98 Paris Road, and the Club would send her there. The house on George Street answers a narrower question: a family occasion that wants the whole room, a menu decided a week before, and a toast nobody at the next table talks through, because there is no next table.

Gran Sasso vs The Brantford Club, Set Out Plainly

The Courses Settled Beforehand

The two kitchens take a family’s order at different hours. At Gran Sasso the menu is printed on its site and the table orders from it on the night. At The Brantford Club the courses are chosen before anyone arrives: the menu is planned with you, and the kitchen is told of dietary needs before the day, by the private-dining page. Executive chef Eric Wasylenky’s kitchen follows the season, and the Churchill Pork Chops, named for the guest who signed the Register on January 3, 1901, are the one fixed point on it. The host has nothing to order on the night, and the only decision left is when to stand up. How the table itself is laid for such a dinner is in the Journal’s entry on setting a table.

What the House Was Bought For

The Club bought the Bown house at the corner of George and Nelson Streets in 1898 and opened its door on December 31 of that year. It was incorporated by Letters Patent on July 16, 1898, and the framed Charter that hung in the dining room states its purpose in six words: to establish and maintain a social club. That is what a family borrows when it takes a room here for an evening. A restaurant is built to fill its floor every night it opens, and Gran Sasso’s site says its door opens four nights a week for that. The house on George Street was bought so the same people could sit in the same rooms, and it lends one to a family for a night.

The questions the Journal gets

Sources: Gran Sasso Ristorante’s own home page and menu page; the Club’s private-dining, book-the-club, and dress-code pages; the Club’s centennial history for the purchase, the Charter, and the Register. Where a family dinner becomes a standing table, the Journal’s entry on what a supper club is takes it up; the evenings the house hosts are on the book-the-club page. The series continues, room by room, on the register that collects it.