Bacco Restaurant - Poughkeepsie

Bacco Restaurant

718 Dutchess Turnpike (across from Adams in the Arlington Wine Plaza)

Poughkeepsie, NY 12603

845-454-1882

Update May 2012 Bacco Restaurant has closed

A Family Affair

Our plans called for an early dinner, at 5 PM on Sunday, timed to get us to the 7 PM Sharon Jones concert at the Bardavon.  We were surprised to find a very large family gathering already there, complete with balloons, and we were ushered to a quite spot in the rear of the dining area. Our waitress, Nancy, balanced our request for a speedy dinner with the demands of the twenty odd revelers in the next room. She did it without breaking stride.

Bacco has been open a few months.  We stopped in for dinner with the Wednesday Night Boyz last October when they had first opened.  They were still finding their footing but the menu looked promising. They are still keeping a very low profile for some reason that I don't quite understand.  I had trouble finding a phone number for them on the internet and they haven't done any advertising. I might suggest that they are hiding their proverbial light under a basket, as the place is most certainly worth talking about - and worth a visit.

Our waitress Nancy explained that her family - her father, grandfather, and uncle were all in the kitchen, preparing the southern Italian specialties that appear on the menu.  The highlights include many seafood dishes and pastas that Gaetano, Salvatore, and Carmelo D'Aprile grew up with along southern Italy's sea shore.  

A Winter Weekend In Montreal

I am constantly amazed by the number of New Yorkers that have not been to Canada. On more than one occasion I have spent a week driving around in Quebec salmon fishing without seeing a single New York license plate. People will spend hours driving to New York City (in horrendous traffic) for a weekend, but never think of driving a few hours north to Montreal. Trust me, you should do this. Montreal is a wonderful city full of exciting theater and jazz clubs, glorious hotels and intimate B&B's, art galleries, fabulous restaurants and bars, an entire underground city, connected by Metro (subway), chock full of every conceivable type of shopping. Montreal has its own versions of Little Italy, Chinatown, and a Latin Quarter, and as you might expect - some of the best French bistros this side of Paris. There is something about Montreal – perhaps it's the language – that makes a stay there feel like a real vacation. Don't let the language scare you. Most everyone here speaks English, especially in restaurants, hotels and shops. The standard greeting is Bonjour–Hello, until they hear your response and proceed accordingly in French or English.

We do know people who drive up for Montreal's Summer Jazz or Comedy Festivals. We go out of our way to make a trip in the dead of winter, usually for a long weekend. That leaves time for a few dinners out, a night at a jazz club, some daytime shopping with a leisurely bistro lunch, and hopefully finding one new favorite bartender. If I'm lucky I will also find a new favorite hat at Henri Henri in Ste. Catherine's shopping district. (Here's a guaranteed $5 trivia winner. In the 1950's and 60's Henri Henri sent a hat to any hockey player scoring three goals at the Montreal Forum. It became known as a “hat trick.”)

Bistro Dining Room in Vieux Montreal

The most beautiful part of the city is Vieux (Old) Montreal, with eighteenth century cobblestone streets and plazas and parks and buildings all named for what seems like every saint in Christendom. We make our home base there at the Hotel le St. James, which is housed in what was an old bank. It could be my favorite hotel. It is walking distance to the historic port with its many outdoor festivals, and Catherine Street shopping, but you can get just about anywhere in Montreal for a $10 cab ride. There are plenty of choices in lodging from Marriott's to small B&B's, depending on your taste and your budget. My only suggestion is that you make sure your hotel has secure off street parking if you bring a car that you expect to drive back home. Like many large cities, Montreal has a well deserved reputation for cars going missing.

A few of our favorite destinations follow. Keep in mind that we prefer bistros to “haute cuisine”.

Friends Lake Inn - Chestertown, NY

963 Friends Lake Road
Chestertown, NY

Reservations: 518 494 4751

Website: www.friendslake.com

“Do you know how to make a million dollars in the restaurant business?”, the bartender asked as we sipped on our glass of wine. “Start with $2 million” is the answer. The circumstances that occasioned this line of discussion was the restaurant's full dining room and the winter specials necessary to make that happen on a Thursday night in January. The bartender in question should know of these things, as it was the inn's proprietor, John Phillips, behind the stick that evening.

Restaurants have two seasons in the Adirondacks – summer which lasts from July 4^th through Labor Day and is their ten week opportunity to make a living - and the rest of the year when they try to keep the doors open and keep the help fed and clothed. If they are lucky enough to have a ski slope nearby, and the snow gods cooperate, you can hope for a few extra good weekends to stock the larder. Friends Lake Inn also offers their own system of cross country ski trails which draws many patrons on weekends. The establishment also hosts wine themed dinners during the winter (and also a winery's off season), often with the wine-makers in attendance, which always make for an educational and entertaining evening.

Friends Lake Inn's reputation was well established by the original owners, Greg and Sharon Taylor. They passed the torch to the current owners, John and Trudy Phillips, who continue to burnish the Inn's laurels as a culinary mecca. The inn is particularly popular with those of us who enjoy spending some time perusing the contents of the inn's spectacular wine cellar. The wine list at the Friend's Lake Inn is among the best in the North Country, if not the entire state.

Tuthill House at the Mill - Gardiner, NY

Tuthill House at the Mill

Restaurant and Tavern

20 Grist Mill Lane

Gardiner, NY 12525

Lunch & Dinner, Thursday through Tuesday

Closed Wenesdays

Reservations suggested - 845 255 4151

Website www.tuthillhouse.com

You would be hard pressed to find a prettier setting for a restaurant than the Tuthill House in Gardiner. It sits on the banks of the Shawangunk Kill, which in days of yore powered the mill machinery that still resides in the restaurant, just waiting for someone to throw the levers and turn the millstones that now decorate the dining room. The building and the décor remind me of the Gristmill Restaurant in Warrensburg near Lake George. The Tuthill House features an outdoor deck which looks out over the creek, which joins the Wallkill River just downstream before heading northeast to meet the Roundout in Rosendale.

The entrance leads to a very cozy bar area, which has served as our gathering spot on a few occasions this fall. We had stopped in twice when they first opened up, and we revisited this Monday night for dinner to see how the operation was progressing.

Bistro Tallulah - Glens Falls, NY

Bistro Tallulah

26 Ridge Street

Glens Falls, NY

Reservations 518 793 2004

Restaurant website: http://adirondackminute.com/bistro-tallulah

The following is an update on our last post about Bistro Tallulah from September 18, 2010.

It was one of those nights when you really should not be on the road unless you have a good reason. My phone was buzzing regularly with updates on the winter storm warning. We were already in Glens Falls after taking in an afternoon screening of True Grit, and we had made 7 PM reservations for dinner. I parked the car in front of City Hall and sloshed my way up Ridge Street, expecting to find an empty restaurant. Silly me. We took our favorite two seats at the bar, which were the last two seats, and settled in. The place was rocking, as it does on any normal Friday night. What's a little snow in the north country?

From our perches at the bar we had a nice view of Chef Proprietor Shawn Whalen's kitchen. Our waiter, Bill greeted us as soon as we had taken off our coats. There was no bartender on duty, possibly because of the weather, so Bill was covering the bar diners in addition to his station in the dining room. He never missed a beat. As he offered menus and a wine list, he rattled off the evening's specials, and made three suggestions for wines to complement them, all of which he had sampled and highly recommended. I noticed that the three wines he mentioned were among the lower priced wines on the list. The more often we eat here, the more we like it. The wait staff is one of the reasons. Friendly, professional, and helpful without being overbearing, they really do seem to enjoy working here.  (and they don't push you to "order up" on the wine list.)

We went with Bill's first wine suggestion from the La Stoppa winery in Emiglia Romagna - a peppery red barbera and bonarda (also called croatina) blend from Gutturnio in Italy's Colli Piacentini region. It's a very well made wine for the money at $36. It retails around $20.

Bistro Tallulah offers most of its menu as small or large plates, eliminating the need for a regular appetizer listing. They do offer appetizer specials, and one of last night's offerings was a “fried oyster” salad pairing the shellfish with a tossed arugula, dressed with a vinaigrette dressing, with just a hint of bacon fat in the dressing for flavor. This is my kind of salad, and not as heavy as it sounds. The oysters were lighter-than-air and arranged around the arugula like pinwheel. They could have flown off the plate. Mary opted for the beet salad, served with arugula, shaved fennel, sliced Bermuda onions, and tossed with a pomegranate molasses vinaigrette.

Paradox Lodge – Lake Placid, NY

Paradox Lodge Dining Room

Paradox Lodge Restaurant

2169 Saranac Avenue (Route 86)

Lake Placid, NY

Reservations: 518 523 9078
www.paradoxlodge.com

Last week we had friends staying at the house and I knew that they wanted to spend some time in Lake Placid. I used the opportunity to make a reservation at the Paradox Lodge restaurant, which is one of our favorite dining destinations. Reservations are strongly recommended, as the twenty two seats in the cozy dining room are in very high demand. The first floor of the lodge – more appropriately described as a B&B - is dedicated to the dining room, with a corner carved out for an open kitchen. The chef proprietor, one Moses “Red” LaFountaine, holds court in the kitchen. From this corner overlooking the room, Red also serves as the evening's entertainment, greeting customers as they arrive, and continuing the banter throughout the evening offering suggestions to regulars and newcomers alike. Sometimes the suggestion is for a wine pairing, sometimes to suggest that your shirt doesn't go with your jacket, sometimes that you consider a hair transplant. Think Jacques Pepin channeling Don Rickles. There is no cover for the floor show.

We arrived slightly early for our 6 PM reservation and stopped for a glass of wine before sitting down for dinner. You are never hurried at the Paradox, the tables are not turned each night; seats are your's for the evening. Paradox doesn't really have a bar, but two high top stools near the kitchen service counter serve as one in a pinch. Those two seats are also available for dining, and offer a bird's eye view of the kitchen. Keep in mind, though, that the front row of a comedy club is a dangerous place to sit. The seats are nestled up against a row of three gallon glass containers of flavored vodkas, another row of antique seltzer spritzers, and a shelf of after dinner liquors. A crate of fresh veggies sits in the corner waiting for Red's attention. Joining us at the bar, or rather on the bar, were two glorious looking slabs of porterhouse steak, three inches thick. The steaks were so handsome that I asked the chef to pose with them for a picture. I knew what I was having for an entree. I only had to decide on an appetizer.

Our Mission Statement

Happy New Year!

During the holidays we tend to stay close to home with family and friends, and with a few notable exceptions (a great meal at Paradox Lodge last week) we avoided going out to restaurants. I won't count office parties as “going out to dinner”. For that reason I haven't had a lot to blog about over the last few weeks, but that is about to change. As I get ready to add more of our favorite destinations to the blog in the coming year, I thought it would appropriate to revisit what I am trying to accomplish with North Country Rambler, and to also restate some of the things that we are most definitely not trying to do.