Hutch's to become Alice's Restaurant

"You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant." Those are words from the famous Arlo Guthrie song of the 1960s, and it is the sentiment the new managers of the airport eatery hope their customers will feel when Nantucket Restaurant Group opens Alice's Restaurant there this spring.

The company is comprised of partners Linda Peterson-Muise, who will be the restaurant manager, Gary Simanson, business manager and Richard Bailey as chef. The group, who hope to open by June if not earlier, has done extensive renovations to the old Hutch's.

Changes include returning a bar, establishing an outdoor dining patio, repainting with a cream-colored theme for the walls, bringing in new tabletops and bench seating in a now more spacious dining area and creating a new menu still focused on family-style selections but adding more made-fromscratch dinners. They will also offer take-out all day until closing, picnic boxes, breakfast, lunch and dinner and free coffee, relying heavily on locally grown produce.

"It's totally changed," said Peterson- Muise, an island native well known as food services manager for many years at the school system's kitchens.

The group was awarded the restaurant bid last November when Bill "Hutch" Hutchinson decided after running the place for a couple of decades that he wanted more time for personal and family matters. The restaurant group has a hearing with the selectmen tonight to ask that the food and alcohol licenses be transferred from Hutchinson to the new business.

- Mary Lancaster