Landmark Chadds Ford restaurant The Gables to start B&B

The Gables Restaurant in Chadds Ford has gotten permission to start a bed and breakfast operation in two buildings on its adjacent property.

The restaurant also will be changing its name to the Black Cow Bistro.

The moves were approved Wednesday night by the Pennsbury Township Board of Supervisors, and included a list of 29 conditions that Gables’ owners Ann Kolenik and Alfredo Giannaccari agreed to abide by.

They include having a full-time operator with an operator’s apartment, no more than three employees, no cooking in the guest rooms and a 14-day stay maximum guest stay.

Other conditions require food service to be limited to breakfast and afternoon tea for guests only, with no catering done from the stone building. No alcoholic beverages can be served in the B&B, but guests may bring their own.

Kolenik and Giannaccari had no issues with most of the conditions, but did grudgingly accept one, a limitation on the number of guest rooms in the stone building — the former location of Brandywine View Antiques — and the carriage house.

Restaurant history

The applicants wanted 16 rooms, eight in each building, but the board granted approval for a total of 12 rooms, eight in the stone building but only four in the carriage house.

Township solicitor Tom Oeste said the 12 rooms were the “maximum permitted but not guaranteed. It depends on whether the remaining conditions can be complied with.”

During the discussion before the vote, there was a brief exchange with the applicants asking the reason for limiting the number of rooms, and Oeste said that was based on the ordinance and that 12 was the maximum the board could allow.

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He added that if they rejected that condition, the board was prepared to vote against the application.

At one point, Kolenik and attorney Lee Stivale excused themselves for a private discussion on the matter. When they returned, the 12-room maximum was accepted.

Another condition is restoring and maintaining the exteriors of both buildings “in substantial historic accuracy.”

Part of that restoration with an eye on history is the future renaming of the restaurant. The Gables was once a creamery and had an exterior mural of a cow, giving a historical patina to the name Black Cow Bistro.