Get excited, cheese lovers. Putnam Market on Broadway will close on Monday and Tuesday to construct a specialized cheese room. Market co-owner Cathy Hamilton traveled to London where she was in La Fromagerie, a cheese shop that had a similar room, and decided to bring the idea back to Saratoga Springs.

The 100 square foot room will be located near where the cheese is currently located in the store, but the new room will be enclosed, insulated and kept at a temperature somewhere between 50 and 55 degrees. There will be a glass window customers can look through to see the cheese, and they can enter the room to sample. The cheese will be protected, wrapped and cut to order. Putnam Market sources its cheeses from regional cheese makers and some cheese importers.

“The goal is to roughly triple the amount of cheeses we carry and make it easier to see,” Hamilton said. “It’s new and exciting.”

Ali Khalil has reopened Manna’s restaurant in Ballston Spa with his brother, Moe. The name is the same as it was under the previous owners, but the menu is different. The restaurant, which has been open under the new owners for less than a month, offers a menu with mainly Italian-American cuisine with some breakfast menu options, and more of a focus on delivery and takeout food. The brothers also operate a pizza parlor, Rusty’s Pizzeria in Watervliet, which they took over three years ago. While the brothers do have experience in the restaurant business, this is the first restaurant they’ve operated that has a larger seating capacity.

They decided to keep the same name as the restaurant had before to make for an easier transition and because Manna’s was a big name in Ballston Spa.

“We decided to open this one because there was that motivation for more, the American dream,” Khalil said. “For us anyway, we give 200 percent.”

-- Jamie