Henry's at Buttermilk Falls Inn & Spa ~ Milton, NY

Henry's Farm to Table Restaurant
220 North Road, Milton, NY
Reservations: 845-795-4050
www.henrysatbuttermilk.com


Dinner Wednesday through Sunday
Lunch Friday & Saturday
Sunday Brunch

The new kitchen at Henry's Restaurant 

The Buttermilk Falls Inn & Spa sits on seventy carefully manicured acres of gardens and terraces, duck ponds and babbling brooks, all overlooking the Hudson in Milton.  Until most recently the inn did not have a restaurant, relying on Bruce Kazan of Main Course Catering for special events.  The resort's general manager Adam Glinert set about changing that this spring, bringing in Executive Chef Paul Kelly from Lazy Swan Golf and Country Club in Saugerties to run the new kitchen.  And quite the kitchen it is, with room for a a "Chef's Tasting" table available for private parties, and space left over for a film crew to record the kitchen crew in action.

Enoteca de Rham - Amarones, Ripassos, and more, oh my!

Enoteca de Rham Wine Pairing Dinner


Friends Lake Inn
963 Friends Lake Road

Chestertown, NY

Reservations: 518 494 4751

Website: www.friendslake.com

We were quite excited when a Facebook post from John & Trudy Phillips appeared last month announcing a wine "pairing" dinner at their restaurant - Friends Lake Inn in Chestertown.  We certainly do not require any special reason to drive over to one of our favorite restaurants, but this particular event really piqued our interest.  The food pairings were centered around the wines of Enoteca de Rham.  Baroness Barbara de Rham runs the company, and she hosted the dinner last Friday. She added a most insightful and entertaining commentary about each of the wineries as each course was served.  Her focus is on the wines of Piedmont and the Veneto in Northern Italy and has a special fondness for Amarone, and for wines made using a local production method called Ripasso.  The wines produced using these methods are big, voluptuous, with very high alcohol content (often 15%), with a luscious viscosity and a nose to match.  I just love them.

The Village Tea Room, New Paltz, NY

The Village Tea Room, Restaurant & Bake Shop
10 Plattekill Ave.
New Paltz, NY
Reservations: 845-255-3434
Closed Monday


www.thevillagetearoom.com


Now before you go rolling your eyes about a Tea Room and Bake Shop on Rambler, rest assured that the purpose of the post is not to tell you about their afternoon teas with finger sandwiches and cookies and scones. (which I'm sure are just great.)  The content of the post is true to the Rambler mission ~ to seek out quality, farm fresh, "bistro style" meals, to enjoy with a decent glass of wine, in comfortable surroundings, for a reasonable fare.   Read on...

Cibo Noche ~ Marlboro, NY - New Opening

1 King Street
Marlboro, NY 12542
Phone: 845-236-3333
www.cibonoche.co


If you Google Cibo Noche, the results suggest a location on Ridge Road in Milton, which is how a few of my Wednesday Night Boyz Dinner crew came to be sitting in front of someone's house, in a residential neighborhood up behind the Ship Lantern Inn.  It seems that Google also considers articles of incorporation in their search results, which is how the restaurant owner's home came to be our GPS's destination.  We were in all likelihood not as confused as the owner's family, who are probably tired of fielding requests for tables for two.  Luckily the listed phone number was correct, and our new favorite bartender, Tom, led us to the proper location, a few miles south in Marlboro.

James Beard, Food TV, and maybe Bourdain is right. So sad.

It's been a while since my last post. That's because it has been a while since we tried a new North Country restaurant that we enjoyed enough to write about. Over the last week I have had the good fortune to spend more time on the water than at the office, mostly in New Brunswick, Canada. This weekend I intend to do more of the same – fly fishing for trout in North Central Pennsylvania.

I did check in on Twitter today and saw that we are still celebrating the annual James Beard Festivities. Is it just me or is this whole thing getting way out of hand? We were talking James Beard Awards three weeks ago! I'm not going to pop off on a Tony Bourdain rant about the organization, but puh~lease. Isn't a day or maybe two enough? Isn't it time for everyone to just go and cook something?