Yankee Inn Keeper
Apparently having no desire to follow in the footsteps of a contractor father in Stamford, Conn., where he was raised and schooled, EUGENE P. TAMBURI '36 immediately associated himself with the business of gastronomics and inn-keeping upon graduation from Dartmouth. Starting as an apprentice kitchen steward with the Roger Smith Hotels Corporation, he progressed through various positions of increasing importance during the next six years.
After taking time out during World War II to run the personnel department of a Holyoke war plant, Gene opened the Yankee Pedlar in Holyoke, and this celebrated inn served as a prototype for the chain of Yankee operations which was to follow.
Within ten years he had formed the Early American Inns Company, operating a half-dozen hostelries, mostly in western Massachusetts and Connecticut. Their names are by now familiar to travelers through these parts - Yankee Coachman, Yankee Silversmith, Yankee Drover, Yankee Drummer, and Yankee Motor Inn. There have been two "non-Yankee" inns - the Yale Motor Inn, a name which the Yale University corporation tried, without success, to have changed - and the Storrowtown Tavern, located on the grounds of the Eastern States Exposition in West Springfield, Mass. This historic tavern was moved nail by nail and board by board to its present site by Mrs. James Storrow of Boston, and had been built originally in the late 18th century at Atkinson Hollow near Prescott, Mass.
Every Yankee Inn carries the flavor and atmosphere of "ye olde tyme" stagecoach stop.The "drinking rooms" and alcoved dining rooms have been meticulously furnished in authentic late-colonial decor with wood panelling - in some cases removed from old residences; heavy, hand-hewn beamed ceilings; wide-board, pegged flooring, and trestle tables with matching chairs. Waitresses are attractively attired in period garb, thus adding a bit of living color to the whole arrangement.
Tamburi prefers to consider his inns primarily as de luxe dining places with limited lodgings available. The emphasis is always on food. Although menus at the various locations are standardized to a degree, many items are "specialties of the house," using specially guarded recipes which cannot be successfully duplicated elsewhere. At Holyoke's Yankee Pedlar as many as five hundred to a thousand meals may be served in a single day. Where a demand for banquet facilities has arisen large rooms have been appended to the layout to care for parties of up to four hundred persons.
At various times Tamburi has been president of the Connecticut Hotel-Motel Association, the Massachusetts Hotel Association, and the New England Innkeepers Association. And for about fifteen years Tamburi, in the considered opinion of his colleagues, "has been one of the most respected and sought-after executives by the American Hotel-Motel Association."
Tamburi says, "My greatest thrill and satisfaction in recent years has been the rebuilding of the Hanover Inn, which I claim to be 'the finest Inn in the world'." He has been on the Board of Overseers of the Inn for a decade and a half, and has served as president of that board for several terms. He was personally responsible for the furnishings of the lounges and functional rooms, as well as the Byble and Drum Room which is a classic nonpareil.
Like many other successful entrepreneurs Tamburi says, "I like to start things. Then, when they begin to run smoothly, it is time to turn them over to someone else. At that point I start looking around for the next opportunity." That explains why his only operation at the moment is his first love, the Yankee Pedlar at Holyoke.
