Restaurants have always been at the heart of the story of Rick and Sylvana Dodd, the owners of PS Restaurant.
There they met while working at the former McCoy’s Dockside in Binghamton and their relationship grew while working at the former Number 5.
Just a few years after their marriage in 1987, the Dodds realized a 32-year dream by establishing an upscale restaurant, first in Vestal, now in the heart of downtown Binghamton.
“We’re really proud of what we’ve done,” said Sylvana Dodd.
Between all the accolades, the accolades, and the community involvement, two moments are a turning point in life for the owners of the PS restaurant: the day they bought the restaurant and the day they moved.
Establishment of a catering business
Rick and Sylvana Dodd met when they both worked at McCoy’s Dockside in Binghamton. Sylvana had started working there as a waitress after college and Rick was a chef. Both had connections to the area: Rick attended Binghamton High School and Sylvana Maine-Endwell Senior High School.
They later bought a small Thai restaurant, won the first Wine Spectator Award of Excellence, tried their hand at catering, and helped establish the Southern Tier Independent Restaurants organization. They’ve thrown weddings for people whose parents they’ve thrown baby showers for, a testament to their longevity. They would build a beloved restaurant and move it to a new home after 30 years.
The history of PS Restaurant began before all of that. In 1990, Rick and Sylvana were excited about the idea of starting a family of their own and running their own restaurant – partly to cover the holidays.
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The couple received a tip from Sylvana’s brother-in-law that a small restaurant on Rano Boulevard in Vestal was for sale. After dining at the small Thai restaurant, then owned by PS namesake Preecha Songprastit, the couple fell in love and “had to buy it.”
Sylvana remembers Songprastit telling her how he and his wife went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology together, fell in love, and moved to Binghamton to pursue a career at IBM. Songprastit decided to open PS Restaurant after leaving IBM in 1986.
He was, Sylvana recalled, a great cook, and his dishes filled an eight-page menu.
On November 13, 1990, Rick and Sylvana bought the restaurant, with some reservations from Sylvana’s father, who acted as her attorney.
Songprastit was to stay a month and teach Rick all the secrets of his menu. Rick was already a chef and trained in classic French cuisine, but had never attended culinary school.
“It really was the school of hard punches,” said Sylvana. Songprastit rarely wrote down recipes, so Rick had to learn from word of mouth.
The result was years of experimentation with different concoctions and small tweaks to create the PS menu.
“The global fusion cuisine we have now is the result of 33 years of doing different things and just trying to expand our menu,” said Sylvana.
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They have acknowledged Songprastit’s influence by keeping the PS Restaurant name long after he went out of business, and part of the restaurant’s original sign hangs at its new Binghamton location.
“I found the original letters above our door in the back of our garage in 1990,” Sylvana said. “It’s just kind of a testament to our longevity.”
Along with PS Restaurant’s success, the Dodds have passed it on to new local restaurants coming to the area through their work with Southern Tier Independent Restaurants, a nonprofit organization focused on promoting locally owned restaurants.
“We just rode the McKinley Bridge every day and saw all these chain restaurants,” Sylvana said. “We were just thinking how these chains have all these big corporate funds for advertising and all these special offers. We just wanted to find a way to highlight local restaurants.”
COVID and a change
The PS Restaurant, like so many others, has struggled during the pandemic. Supporting three different suites as a result of multiple expansions of the business as well as their catering business took its toll.
“We said, ‘What are we going to do?'” Sylvana recalled. “The numbers just weren’t enough, so we knew our lease was up and made the difficult decision to make a change.”
It was hard for the couple to leave Vestal after all the time they spent there. Her children, now grown, had spent much of their childhood on Rano Boulevard. But the pandemic forced them to.
“Everyone has had to reinvent themselves in one way or another during the pandemic,” said Sylvana. “It kind of kicked us in the ass when we were like, ‘Okay, let’s get complacent.'”
They were faced with two options: postpone or close.
The Dodds rented the former loft at Building 99, 99 Court St., in downtown Binghamton. On March 6th 2021 they closed their Vestal location and two months later on May 14th the PS Restaurant in Binghamton reopened.
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The location has changed but the experience the Dodds have to offer at PS remains the same.
The restaurant’s website says you may have to wait for a meal, as the restaurant’s two chefs — Rick and Sylvana’s niece, Amarissa Scelsi — prepare each of them to order.
Several of Sylvana’s hand-drawn artworks hang on the walls. So are the original Vestal restaurant sign PS letters from 1990. And both Sylvana and Rick are handy owners, which means you’ll see them when you stop by for dinner.
“We like to boast that PS is like coming to a friend,” said Sylvana. “It’s just a warm and welcoming atmosphere and we pride ourselves on our first class service.”
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