Brookline’s Roadhouse: a nuisance?

The law of nuisance, governing a use of one’s land which causes harm to another’s land, was best described by the Supreme Court in the 1920s: “a nuisance may be merely a right thing in the wrong place, like a pig in the parlor instead of the barnyard.”  This expression – nuisance being “a pig in the parlor” – has somehow stuck and is in every property textbook, but so rarely is the pig in question literal, much less rubbed in spices and slow cooked, served with a side of cornbread and cole slaw.

But so it is in my former town of Brookline, where, as Beeriety reports today, Washington Square’s Roadhouse has been forced to close its meat smoker after neighbors complained that they did not want their home filled with the awful, awful smell of gourmet slow cooked food.  Losing the smoker has caused the Roadhouse to change its menu entirely.  From Wicked Local:

[Roadhouse owner David Ciccolo] said he’s cut all the smoked items from his menu, and planned to debut a new selection of Creole and Mexican-inspired dishes on Wednesday night. The new menu includes shrimp étouffée, jambalaya, gumbo, blackened salmon, gazpacho, and tacos with either catfish, steak or chicken.

“We were forced to make this come together pretty quickly,” Ciccolo said. “Needless to say, we’re all a little bushwhacked.”

I’m sad to see this happen to the Roadhouse.  The place opened right after I left the neighborhood and moved to DC, and I haven’t had a chance to return.  While the new menu sounds great, I can only imagine how good their cooking must have been with the smoker in use.  If they did to BBQ what (Ciccolo-owned) Publick House did to Belgian food and beer, I’m sure we’re all missing out.

I also would add that there’s not a place I’ve lived in the Boston area where my apartment’s odor wouldn’t have been improved by a perpetual, eminating smell of quality BBQ. This includes the two years I spent on Beacon Street near Washington Square.

This is not the first time Ciccolo has had to deal with the town of Brookline.  As Andy Crouch notes in his BeerScribe, the Publick House Provisions store took ages to secure a liquor license so it could sell bottles of the superb craft beers the Publick House has on tap.  He should consider moving to Cambridge: it only took United States Supreme Court intervention to get Grendel’s Den up and running.