restaurants

I am a Hudson Valley Restaurant Week Grazer.  In exchange for posts about my HVRW experience, part of this meal may have been compensated.  However, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

This past Saturday my husband and I dined at Hudson House River Inn, with two other couples, for Hudson Valley Restaurant Week (HVRW).  This historic inn is located at 2 Main Street on the waterfront in the picturesque town of Cold Spring.

The inn was built in 1832  and in 1982 was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.  It has 11 guest rooms and 2 suites for overnight stays.  There are two dining areas, the Tavern, for more casual dining, and the main dining room, the River Room, which is where we dined.  The River Room has a veranda that offers outdoor seating with amazing views of the Hudson River.  While a bit chilly for November, this would make for a great dining experience in warmer weather!

Executive chef John Guererro leads the culinary team at the Hudson House River Inn.  The restaurant normally specializes in steak and seafood, with poultry, pork and vegetarian options as well.

For HVRW Hudson House River Inn serves both lunch and dinner, with different menus for each.

The restaurant had an extensive cocktail menu, which our group sampled.  My husband had a Maker’s Old Fashioned while I had a Watermelon Margarita.  Before we even ordered, bread baskets were placed on the table with dishes of tomato and bean bruschetta.

For starters I had the Homemade Maryland Crab Cakes and my husband had the Lobster Bisque.  Three crab cake balls were served with a dijon mustard sauce for dipping.  The crab cakes were crispy on the outside and sweet and flavorful on the inside.  The bisque was smooth and creamy.  These starters turned out to be our favorite parts of the meal.

For our main dishes I ordered the Chianti Braised Short Ribs and my husband had the Coriander Seared Sashimi Tuna.   The short rib was tender and flavorful, topped with caramelized onions and Maytag bleu cheese.  I enjoyed the mushroom risotto that accompanied the short ribs as well.  However, I found the carrots and string beans to be unexciting.

My husband ordered his tuna rare and was surprised to get a piece of fish that was well done around the edges and pink in the middle. It’s possible that his dish had a stop at the heat lamp as the kitchen looked quite busy. His tuna was topped with crab meat accompanied by wasabi mashed potatoes.  His dish also came with the same uninspired vegetables.

There are only two dessert options, Bourbon Chocolate Pecan Pie and New York Style Pumpkin Cheesecake.  We of course had to try them both!  The cheesecake, topped with fresh whipped cream, was good but not memorable.  I preferred my husband’s chocolate pecan pie that was served with Maple Walnut Ice Cream. It was much more unique and flavorful.

The dining room was full throughout our entire dinner.  My husband and I were part of a group of six diners.  Unfortunately, the extra-long rectangular table set up, paired with the poor acoustics of the room, made for difficult conversation.  Our server Tara was friendly and attentive.  Dessert service was slow, which Tara apologized for, but fortunately, our group wasn’t in a rush.

Overall, we had a nice dining experience at the Hudson House River Inn for HVRW.  I’d love to come back in the spring or summer when it’s hopefully not as busy and I can eat out on the veranda.

We were fortunate to dine at this year’s winner of the James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurant. Hosted this past week in Chicago, the James Beard Awards are like the Academy Awards for the food world. Blue Hill at Stone Barns had been on our food bucket list for years. Price-wise, this is a special occasion meal to be sure.  We thought our eleventh wedding anniversary was worthy of such a trip!  Taking the economic hit to one’s pocket out of the equation, we would go monthly since the experience and menu changes almost non-stop. The restaurant is located on the farm at Pocantico Hills, NY.  As you drive to get to the restaurant you pass the fields and animals that your food is coming from.  Blue Hill is a farm-to-table restaurant and whenever an ingredient is at its peak, that’s when it’s put on the menu. There is no menu, so-to-speak, to order from.  Instead, diners are greeted with a field guide of sorts that outlines the monthly calendar of those ingredients, from summer tomatoes to winter preserves that are in season.  You are also provided with details of what is going on at the farm year-round: harvesting, pickling, canning, planting, etc. Chef Dan Barber and his staff then create a tasting menu incorporating those ingredients.   We were there just at the cusp of warm weather in the first week of April. The winter was exhausting this year and the menu reflected a larger percentage of winter versus springtime ingredients. Chef Barber and his team don’t fight the seasons, they embrace the availability as nature provides.

We lost count of how many courses our 3.5 hour meal consisted of.  The deconstructed salad course, consisted of three different plates.  We didn’t get utensils until at least the third or fourth plate in.  Since April’s theme was “grazing, pecking, rooting” we were encouraged to eat with our fingers.  One perfect mussel sitting on a bed of mussel shells, a piece of dried moss flaked with dried venison, smoked fish on a piece of wood….the dishes sound simple, but had layers of flavors and ingredients.  The simplicity was found in the presentation, where the food was plated on interesting dishes but without a lot of garnish.  Some of our favorite dishes were the kohlrabi tacos with all of the accoutrements as well as our special field trip to the kitchen where we sampled bread made from specially designed wheat with homemade ricotta cheese made from the milk of the cows on the farm.  By the dessert courses, the Mrs. was so stuffed that she had tastes of everything but couldn’t eat it all!

For wine lovers, the restaurant has an extensive wine list.  There was a nice selection of seasonal cocktails and the bartender even created non-alcoholic cocktails for the Mrs. based on her taste preferences.  Blue Hill offers a wine pairing to go with the menu as well as a non-alcoholic cocktail pairing if you so choose, for an additional fee.

Blue Hill at Stone Barns is not only within the confines of a functional farm, but there is also an educational center on the expansive property. Dan Barber has an ongoing quest to innovate and educate and that is evident during service. We were given lessons by our captain about the ingredients, cooking and preserving processes and historical context for several of our courses. Although we are both eager to learn, it was challenging sometimes to pay attention while anticipating the next course, knowing it will be more than fantastic.

And we can’t not mention the impeccable service.  While we were on our “field trip” to the kitchen our table was set with a new tablecloth and napkins.  Crumbs  were wiped away, dishes were taken away and water was refilled as unobtrusively as possible. On our way out, our car was waiting for us with the engine running and the lights on.

When you dine at Blue Hill you are not having dinner, you are having a dining experience.  And if you are like us, after you have dined once, you will be counting down the days until you are able to go back and experience it all again!

With the kids visiting their grandparents over their winter break, the Mr. and I were able to dine out for the first time ever during NYC restaurant week.  Running from February 16 through March 6, over 300 restaurants throughout the city are participating.  The list of participating restaurants can be found here.  Of course many of the restaurants that I’d like to eat at in the city are not participating (I’m talking about you Eleven Madison Park!).   And some restaurants were already booked up for Wednesday, the only night that we were available.  There were too many restaurants to look through all of their menus.  However, I spent some time perusing the menus and felt like a lot of the restaurants only offered about three or four similar choices for appetizers (soup, salad, roasted beets) and main courses (salmon, chicken, braised short rib).  I had seen David Burke on Top Chef Masters and was excited to see that reservations were available for Wednesday at his restaurant David Burke Kitchen.  The restaurant is located in SoHo at 23 Grand Street.  It was a bit of trek from Grand Central but we made it!  When you enter the building the restaurant is located on the lower level.  Our table was ready when we arrived and after checking our coats we were seated.  We were first offered a wine and cocktail menu.  I had a glass of winter sangria and the Mr. had a “Rabbit Hunter” cocktail consisting of bourbon, lime juice and mint.

The wait staff were dressed casually in jeans with blue button down collar shirts tucked into their jeans.  Our waitress was friendly and explained the menu to us.  The menu we received looked a little different than what is published on the website.  It was a specially printed Restaurant Week menu.  For $35 you choose an appetizer, main and dessert.  They also offered some other shareable dishes like mushrooms and homemade ricotta for an additional cost.  Each section of the menu had the list of choices and included the original menu prices.  The one negative that I noticed on this menu (and many of the other restaurant week menus I looked at) were that several options had a supplemental fee of anywhere from $5 (kale salad) to $39 dollars (ribeye steak).

For appetizers I chose the Crisp Chicken & Tallegio Grilled Cheese and the Mr. started with the Skuna Bay Salmon Tartare (pictured above).  I think I was expecting more of a sandwich type dish, but was surprised at what I received.  It looked like an egg roll filled with lots of veggies and tender chicken served over a sour cherry sauce and a tarragon jus served with a small frisee salad. The Salmon Tartare was served over carrot puree and topped with strips of radish and cucumber. The corners of the plate had little dollops of tangy pomegranate yogurt. For the entrée, I had a braised short rib over red wine cabbage with a crisp saffron and gruyere risotto cake.  The Mr. chose the Grilled Berkshire Pork Chop with crisp potato croutons and honeycrisp apple and mustard glazed carrots and turnips.  For dessert we had the Mocha Mousse Bar and the Toasted Coconut Custard Tart.  The chocolate dessert was rich and super chocolaty with layers of chocolate, chocolate mousse and chocolate praline crunch with a side of vanilla bean ice cream.  The custard tart on the other hand was light and tangy with a lime custard and roasted pineapple.  We shared everything but the appetizer.  I of course tasted the tartar, but am not a big fan of raw fish.  All of the dishes were well plated and delicious!  The portion sizes were decent.  By the end of the three courses I was on the brink of being uncomfortably full!  I apologize for the lack of pictures, but my iPhone does not take good pictures without a flash.  The Mr.’s phone usually takes decent pictures without a flash, but for some reason, it kept going off and we decided against attempting anymore photos.

The only criticism I have of the restaurant is that it is a bit noisy.  Background music was playing and with the tables so close together and lots of conversations going on, it got pretty loud.

We really enjoyed our meal and, for the price, we thought it was a great deal!  We highly recommend the restaurant, if you can still get reservations during Restaurant Week!