“We just want people to feel comfortable,” said Shane Spillenger, who owns the restaurant on Route 9.
The menu is a mix of southern dishes and Tex-Mex, as well as wings and burgers. The establishment regularly hosts cover bands, along with karaoke nights and trivia nights. It has also hosted touring bands and artists including Caroline Rose and White Denim.
The theme, along with the music, is inspired by Spillenger’s father, the late Ralph Spillenger, musician and restauranteur who owned Bayou Café in Glenville and Albany, and Jillian’s in Albany.
“My whole life is pretty much an emulation of my father’s, except I can’t play guitar,” Shane Spillenger said.
Nanola’s decor is also reflective of that family connection. The eclectic mix of light fixtures, tables and chairs came mainly from his father’s restaurants and the former Quintessence.
“So I always loved the fact that this place is a conglomerate of my father’s places and then a few other places,” Spillenger said.
Earlier this year, Spillenger also opened Ophelia’s in Albany, in the former The Parish Public House. It has a similar menu to Nanola’s and a busy schedule of live music and events. In recent years, he also helped open The Bijou Artist Space, a recording studio located next door to Nanola.
The Gazette caught up with Spillenger shortly before Nanola celebrated its 11th anniversary.
Q: Was your original concept pretty true to what it is today or has it changed quite a bit over the years?
A: When I opened, we had the [GlobalFoundries] chip factory that was being built. I was doing jazz on weekends and stuff like that. We had a smaller, more New Orleans-focused menu. Immediately people started asking me for Mexican food because that’s what my father did at the Bayou. I found this area was more blue-collar than I thought originally. So I pivoted a little bit.
Q: Why the New Orleans vibe?
A: So my father was always a musician. When he met my mother, he was in a band, and he was doing that professionally. Then when I started to come into the picture, he looked into buying The Bijou in Saratoga, which was a nightclub and he had a cool front room where they did live music and in back a nightclub and that’s what my father did for several years until he bought The Bayou in Glenville.
The New Orleans vibe allows us to have the stage in the dining room and promote the adult Disneyland is what I call it. Also, you’ve got Irish bars, you’ve got sports bars. Why not try to recreate that NOLA vibe?
Q: Music has been a big part of Nanola from the start. It started with jazz but how has it expanded?
A: We do a lot of cover bands on the weekends. We’re even doing karaoke. Over the years, we’ve had bands like White Denim or Mike Doughty. We’ve had some pretty stellar acts come through here for the size room that we are. If something makes sense, I’ll do it. I’m a fan of music, to my detriment probably.
Q: How would you describe the atmosphere on a typical night?
A: Fun. When I did the sign [for the restaurant], I was thinking about putting roadhouse in the name and everybody’s like, “Oh, they’re going to think there’s fights or whatever.” But if you look it up, it’s a place going into and out of town that has live music and that’s kind of what we are. We get people going into Saratoga. We get people on their way home. We’ve got our regulars that are here, but whether we’re doing karaoke or a live band or even drag brunch, everybody is very open and fun.
Even when I have [young] families here, if I see them making a mess, I go, “Don’t worry about it. We got it,” as opposed to some restaurants that might make you feel uncomfortable.
Between the way my staff dresses [and] our approach, we just want people to feel comfortable. It was something people always said about my dad’s places, too, was people felt comfortable going out in jeans and a hoodie.
Q: In recent years, how has the menu changed?
A: It started with this concise New Orleans menu. We added the Tex-Mex, then we consolidated things. I even had Ric Orlando here for a little bit of a consulting thing for a while, and then we just did something with a food truck where we were smoking meat.
We’re putting together our 11-year anniversary menu. We’re going back to the tried and true, the things that people really either miss from us taking off the menu or stuff that’s always done well.
Unfortunately, Cajun food scares a lot of people because of the spice.
Q: What are some of the tried and true dishes that you can’t take off the menu?
A: The New Orleans pasta alfredo. It’s a simple thing. We just tried dropping the jambalaya for the first time, just because we were doing this smoked meat thing, and people went crazy about it. So we’re bringing that back.
We sell more wings than anything, just like everybody. Wings and burgers are at the top of the list. When people ask “What kind of restaurant are you?” I say “Cajun theme, but I sell more wings and burgers.”
We used to do an oyster night and we used to have gator bites on the menu, but this year, specifically, because of the warming waters we have been having a hard time getting a lot of that stuff, or at least at a reasonable price. So we moved to doing that stuff as a special, but we still have catfish sandwiches, shrimp, po-boy, and lean on some of the seafood stuff more than a lot of restaurants.
Q: Is there anything that people either don’t understand or are confused about when it comes to Nanola?
A: We’re going into our 12th year and Ophelia’s coming in at [this] time was just a way for me to broaden my reach a little bit and it allows me to really capitalize on the music and event aspect.
[Nanola has] been here a while. We have some nice people who like to come in, but we’re still welcoming anybody else and still revamping the menu every year.
Nanola is located at 2639 US-9, Malta. For more information visit Nanolarestaurant.com.