Dine Here, Play Here, Stay Here

One night, when I was in college, I was sitting in the dorm lounge with a bunch of friends and, as we tended to do, we were having a super deep, very philosophical conversation. One of my friends told everyone to close their eyes. “Now tell me what color the curtains are,” he said. Nobody could do it, even though we sat in the room for hours every day. The point was that sometimes you can walk by the same thing every single day and not truly see it for what it is. That phenomenon is something Randy Tomblin, General Manager of the Galley/Adelphia/Hackett complex, is trying to overcome.

The building that now houses The Galley has been sitting on Second Street since 1890, when Colonel John Riley built the three-story brick structure and named it, appropriately enough, The Riley Block. The complex was purchased by oil entrepreneur John M. Hackett in 1902, and he made some big changes. He converted the first floor into a bowling alley that offered free lunch and 5-cent beer. Hotel rooms were added, too. The Hacketts sold the building in 1965, and in 1981 a new restaurant opened called The Adventure Galley. If you were a Marietta College student in the 1980s, you probably remember having some great times and great food there. The name Adventure Galley comes from the name of the ship that brought the first settlers from Massachusetts to Marietta. The current iteration of The Galley has existed since 2000. The Adelphia Music Hall opened its stage to performers in 2010, and the Hackett Hotel, a five-room boutique hotel, opened in 2012.

All of this history can be beneficial to a local business, but it can also make it difficult to impress upon people that positive changes are happening. Just like you can sit in a room and not notice the colors of the curtains, you can get stuck in a lot of assumptions about a restaurant that has been around for decades. Tomblin, together with Executive Chef Erling Berner, are working to build on the history of The Galley while also refreshing the restaurant’s image.

“People don’t know that our burgers are made from our own blend of chuck, sirloin, and filet,” Tomblin told me. “They may not know that the pimientos in our pimiento cheese are grown in our garden. Now we also have a juicer and we’re using fresh juice in all of our cocktails. Our salad dressings are homemade. This is all impactful. You can taste when something is farm-to-table fresh.”

Chef Berner is no stranger to using locally sourced, high-quality ingredients. Berner brings decades of experience to The Galley, and his culinary career has been dedicated to finding the freshest ingredients possible. Especially during the summer in the MOV, there is no shortage of vegetables, fruits, and herbs available from local farms.

Changes are also happening upstairs. A second-story outdoor deck was added last year, and this area can be rented out for catered events. The second-story Adelphia banquet room has been renovated recently and is a perfect place for a reception, a banquet, or a business meeting.

“Many more updates are on the way,” Tomblin notes. “Keep your eyes on us. We’re going to be introducing a lot of exciting things throughout the year.”

At the Galley/Adelphia/Hackett complex, the motto is, “Dine Here, Play Here, Stay Here.” The venue is uniquely situated to accommodate out-of-town guests, as visitors can buy dinner at The Galley, see a show at The Adelphia, and then walk right upstairs to a room in The Hackett Hotel. Located as it is in the heart of downtown historic Marietta, it is the perfect place to stay when you want to explore everything the MOV has to offer.
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