"When I say this is the best Barbera under $30, I truly believe that because I've had 600 of them and I can tell you this is the best one," Nick Lisotto told Brookline.News when Sorriso Market reopened in Brookline Village at the start of September. Since then, Lisotto has rebuilt the room around those bottles for gatherings.
Sorriso is one of two well-known evening businesses in Brookline Village to change hands this fall. The second is Garrison House at 6 Harvard Square, which is set to become a new bar called Clementine. Both incoming plans are built around scheduled nights, the same model the Village's library and puppet theater already run on.
The same room, set up for gatherings
Sorriso's comeback story is unusual. Lisotto closed the shop's Coolidge Corner arcade outlet and sold the Brookline Village store in 2023. The firm that bought it went bankrupt in 2025, and after months of legal proceedings he had the chance to take the business back. The shop soft-opened over the last weekend of August, kept Wednesday through Sunday hours in September, and planned a full relaunch of its events and offerings for October.
The space is the same one, but the floor plan has been rearranged to make room for the community gatherings Lisotto wants to prioritize. Brookline.News reported that the plans include:
- Wine tastings, ranging from casual Tuesday night pours to the opening of one-of-a-kind bottles
- Balsamic tastings, and eventually pasta-making workshops
- A larger art gallery element than the shop had the first time
- A private membership with access to the deep cellar, where the rarest and most expensive bottles are kept
"Now it's truly going to be an experience," Lisotto told the outlet. He said the old version of the store sold pasta, wine and some art. The shelves still cover the full range of prices. The shop says a shopper looking for a $20 bottle will have the same access as one looking for a $200 bottle. Lisotto also runs Sorriso Pasta, which makes pasta from freshly milled European grains. While he was away from the shop, he became one of the exclusive U.S. importers for Lini 910, a winery and balsamic producer in Canolo, Italy. The balsamic tastings have a direct line back to that producer.
The result is a wine shop that now keeps a calendar. On a Tuesday evening, a stop at Sorriso can be an event as much as an errand.
Upstairs, downstairs, and one more hour
Elsewhere in the Village, the same move is happening at a bigger scale. Garrison House opened at 6 Harvard Square in late 2021, near the end of pandemic restrictions. It has a pub-style restaurant upstairs and a lounge downstairs called Village Social Club, which hosted live music and other events. One of its original features was a takeout window on the side street. Before Garrison House, the space was Magnolia Smokehouse.
Clementine comes from restaurateur Mathew Freid. He owned Idle Hour in downtown Quincy from 2017 to 2024 and earlier worked at the Beehive, Capo and JM Curley in Boston. Town licensing documents put the price of Garrison House's liquor license, plus assets such as furniture, at $315,000.
The licensing filings show what Clementine is planning:
| Garrison House | Clementine, as proposed | |
|---|---|---|
| Opened | Late 2021 | Not yet announced |
| Format | Pub upstairs, Village Social Club lounge downstairs | Bar and restaurant with 128 indoor and 32 outdoor seats |
| Entertainment | Live music and events in the lounge | Application covers live music, taped music, TV and movie screenings, and floor shows |
| Weekend close | Midnight | 1 a.m. |
The hour matters most. As Brookline.News reported, Clementine would stay open until 1 a.m. on weekends, an hour later than Garrison House. Taken together with an entertainment application that reaches as far as movie screenings and floor shows, this is a plan for a destination night, with dinner as one part of it.
None of it is final. The liquor license transfer was scheduled for a town hearing on Wednesday, Oct. 21. Even after approval, the license has to be picked up in person before the restaurant can legally sell alcohol. As of Oct. 27, What Now Boston reported that neither a Garrison House closing date nor a Clementine opening date had been announced. Freid confirmed the transition but declined to comment further. For now, 6 Harvard Square is operating as it has been while the paperwork moves forward.
The Village already ran on a calendar
The model Sorriso and Clementine are moving toward already exists in Brookline Village at two institutions, the Brookline Village Library and Puppet Showplace Theater on Station Street. November's dates show how full those calendars are:
| Date | Time | Event | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday, Nov. 9 | 6 p.m. | "13 Moons & 12,000 Years: Wampanoag History Past & Present" | Hunneman Hall, Brookline Village Library |
| Saturday, Nov. 14 | 8 p.m. | Fall Puppet Slam | Puppet Showplace Theater, 32 Station St. |
| Wednesday, Nov. 18 | 7 p.m. | Millennial Book Group | Conference Room, Brookline Village Library |
The Fall Puppet Slam is the one most likely to surprise someone who knows Puppet Showplace only from weekend children's matinees. It starts at 8 p.m. on a Saturday. The Wampanoag history program on Nov. 9 and the book group on Nov. 18 are listed on the Brookline Public Library calendar.
Daytime has its own new regular. Junbi Matcha & Tea, owned by CT Nguyen, opened at 190 Washington St. with a soft opening on June 30 and a grand opening on July 11. Brookline Record reports it offers student discounts. A matcha café is mainly a morning and afternoon business, but it brings more foot traffic to the stretch of Washington Street that people walk on their way to evening plans.
The library, the puppet theater and now a wine shop all give people a set time and a reason to show up. If Clementine's license is approved as filed, it would add the latest weekend hour in the group.
Where the winter dates land
The calendar keeps going into December. The library is holding "Color and Unwind: Construction Paper Magnet Workshop" in Hunneman Hall at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 3. Puppet Showplace has "The Troll that Stole Hanukkah" at 4 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 11. That evening, ArtsBrookline opens the Brookline Village Holiday Market with a reception from 5 to 9 p.m. Market hours follow on Dec. 12 and 13 and again on Dec. 19 and 20.
A Friday in mid-December could cover the Hanukkah show in the afternoon, the holiday market reception after dark, and a stop at Sorriso. Sorriso's last reported schedule was Wednesday through Sunday, so check current hours before going. Depending on how quickly the license is picked up and the space turns over, the same evening could also include a first look at Clementine.
On Harvard Street, a nonprofit arts program filling a vacant storefront follows the same logic of planned gatherings, as we covered in our post on the former Citizens Bank building. For a broader look at how the Village fits with Brookline's other commercial districts, our Brookline neighborhood page shows them side by side.
Live near Harvard Square or Station Street and wondering how a later bar, a busier tasting calendar or a new holiday market might affect your block? I've followed Brookline Village's storefronts through more than two decades of turnover, and I'm happy to talk through what these changes mean for your street. Eric Glassoff offers a free neighborhood consultation.
