nic l inn in poughkeepsie is again doing “customer appreciation week” (sic) for the 2 weeks of restaurant week. $29 for a 3 course meal. i was able to get in once last year, and was very good (as always).
i wonder if other places are doing something similar, since the RW list seems to be getting smaller.
I noticed that Dish in Mahopac was not participating. Hadn’t noticed others missing other than Crave, and obviously now we know why that was.
It does cost quite a bit to participate, over $700 last time I looked.
If it was I would warn you not to go!!!
Yeah, I remember you were not a fan, although we did have some good meals there.
A few months ago they had an insert in a Sunday newspaper with their menu on one side and photos, including one of the chef, on the reverse. They’re now doing pizzas and burgers, in addition to the fine dining type stuff they were doing before.
I think we’ll do North for lunch. The appetizers and desserts are mostly the same, and since the dinner entrees didn’t excite us, , no loss there. And I do want to try it again.
Has anyone been to Seasons at Piermont (the former Xaviars)? Their menu (posted on FB) looks interesting. Also, I found them at 30% off on Groupon+, which in theory stacks on top of anything you buy there (there is a similar offer for Freelance).
If you go please report back. I would like to try it if its good. Miss the old place!
Update: North just posted a photo of the chicken entree for lunch and it looks excellent. Changed my dinner reservation to lunch.
Kitchen Sink Food & Drink in Beacon just sent out a note about their HVRW menu which I thought was pretty clever. The link to the menu is on the top of the page.
FYI, we’re going to Seasons for dinner on Sunday.
I thought you can’t stack Groupons with Restaurant week, no?
Groupon+ works differently than normal Groupon. There is no certificate. Instead, it works like iDine does (Yelp also has something similar now as well but not as generous). You give them permission to look at your credit card charges, and when one comes in from a place you’ve signed up for the offer on, you get the credit.
So, in theory, unless something special is done when processing the charge to mark that it does not qualify for the discount (if that is even possible), you should get it. I don’t know whether it will work or not.
Here’s the fine print:
https://www.groupon.com/pages/special-programs#card-linked-deals
Ah, gotchya. Just looked into it. Interesting…
So, we ate at Seasons of Piermont tonight. It was excellent! My wife had the vanilla shrimp, (3 large shrimp!), NY strip steak and bread pudding. I had the mushroom risotto, black garlic cod and panna cotta. The panna cotta was good but the bread pudding was the better choice since it came with an excellent coconut gelato. Bread was also excellent, choice of a potato roll or a baguette, both served warm out of the oven. Entree portions weren’t huge but they were sufficient and they tasted excellent.
Our server Maurice was excellent. It probably helped that we were the only ones there for 20 minutes after we arrived at 6. I will admit to being a bit disappointed that we did not get an amuse and no petit fours after dessert as I think they did at Xaviars. Not a huge deal, since we were very full.
And as if the food wasn’t enough, when I got home I had email from Groupon+ saying that I had earned my 30% offer, and one from Yelp saying that I was getting 10% back from them (I didn’t even know they had an offer). I almost feel guilty taking it.
Highly recommended at the RW price, even without any money back (and probably at non-RW price with the money back). I do apologize for writing so little detail about this meal and then writing so much about our lesser meal at Monteverde in the next post. I guess I always find it easier to write about bad stuff than good.
We ate at Monteverde last night. We’d only been there once many years ago during one of the first restaurant weeks. All these years later I still remember it because we were rushed thru our meal and were out the door in 55 minutes for a 3 course meal. Good news is this time we had a much more leisurely dinner, in fact it was rather slow.
We were each given two biscuits after being seated with some tasty butter (the server said homemade) topped with a garlic clove. They were excellent (soft and chewy, not very biscuit-like) and we would have loved to have more. However, after we finished, someone came over and took away the plates and butter, even though our appetizers had not yet arrived, and even though we said how much we liked them (my friend said he would have liked to have a bowl of them for dinner). Yeah, we could have actually asked for more but it did not seem like an option. Strange.
My wife and I split the sweet potato blini with duck confit and the mushroom beignets appetizers. The blini were very good, could have used a little more duck. The beignets were disappointing, they tasted more like a fritter, very dense and really not any mushroom flavor.
For entrees, my wife had the short rib and I had the fried chicken (the chef used to own Wolfert’s Roost where the fried chicken was a specialty). The short rib portion was very small. I had noticed a strange looking plate delivered to a nearby table while we were waiting; the “well” in the middle of the plate was quite small and I wondered what it was (but hoped not to find out on our table). Well, I found out (see attached photo). The fried chicken was good but I thought it was a bit dry (friends we were with who also ordered it liked it so maybe it was just me). The best part about the entree was that they allowed you to select your own side dish. I had roasted multi-color carrots with maple syrup and pistachios and it was excellent. My wife had something listed as potato souffle and it too was very good.
For dessert, my wife had the cheesecake which she said was OK but “strange” in that there was no crust and it was just a pyramid of cheesecake. I had an apple cobbler which they had not removed the peel from, so it was strange. Also, they never brought us forks for dessert so we had to use spoons that were on the table. Coffee/tea were included, which was a nice touch, although the tea bag was already in the cup (which was only filled to an inch of the rim) when it was delivered rather than receiving a cup (or pot) of hot water with the tea bag separately as is done at most nice restaurants.
Service wasn’t very good. I’ve guessing this is their catering crew and they either don’t do enough restaurant business to get better qualified servers or just don’t care. One of them delivered my friend’s fried chicken on an angle, causing the whole thing to shift before it reached the table. Not a huge deal but not the sort of thing I’ve noticed at good quality restaurants.
One other thing that bothered me is that I’d exchanged messages with the chef on Instagram in the past couple of weeks when he was posting photos of food. He said to let him know when I was coming in and he’d send us something special. So this week I told him we were coming in and my last name and time of reservation and he said he marked our reservation as VIP. It will come as no surprise to hear that we got nothing special, no indication that it had even been flagged. Maybe he wasn’t there since there was no event that night. We got little cookies to take home at the end of the meal, but everyone got those.
Anyway, we won’t be going back.
Thanks! We will definitely give them a try.
That is disappointing. The place sounds rather hit or miss, but it is quite a trek for a miss!
Monteverde is actually quite convenient for us since we live right off Route 6 in Yorktown. That’s what made it even more disappointing, since the regular entree prices seemed pretty reasonable ($23 for duck breast) and I might have considered going back at regular price. But I definitely won’t after this. And the appetizer prices seemed pretty high for the portions that we received (3 fritters, 2 pancakes) and I think the portion sizes were the same because it’s what I’ve seen on Instagram.
Also, the room we were in was extremely loud and there weren’t more than 10 tables in the room.
I’m going to be posting photos today on Instagram for our visits and will post the link, rather than posting photos here.
In addition to Seasons and Monteverde, we also ate at American Bounty (lunch) and Madison Kitchen this week.
We really enjoy our meal at American Bounty. My wife had the cauliflower soup, steak ($4 surcharge this time, ugh) and chocolate mousse cake; I had the beet salad, duck breast and the same dessert. The Parker House rolls they give you to start there are excellent (in fact, they gave us the leftovers of our second batch to take home). All of the food was excellent, my only complaint was that the duck didn’t seem to be properly trimmed so there was a bit of it that I could not chew. I’ve never cooked duck breast myself but our server (a really nice student) said that there was a spot that is supposed to be trimmed that they obviously did not (obviously the students in the butcher shop need more training - last visit my rack of lamb was poorly trimmed as well).
Anyway, for $23 (plus the steak surcharge) it was a great deal and we really enjoyed it.
As for Madison Kitchen, it was our second visit and once again we really enjoyed the food. They offer their full menu for HVRW. You get to pick 3 small plates, which normally range in price from $7-19, plus a dish of their ice cream. If you pick carefully, you can get a great deal. If you pick poorly, not. I had the 3 most expensive dishes, the tuna, lamb chops and salmon. The tuna was excellent, not a huge portion (especially not for $19) but it came with a couple of sauces, rice, wasabi and ginger. The lamb chops were excellent, 3 chops nicely grilled with a bit of a smoky flavor. They came with a delicious mushroom puree. The salmon was OK, it wasn’t crisp so I’m not sure how it was prepared but the slightly spicy sauce was good. My wife and daughter had the steak which they both said was good. My wife 's 3rd dish was the eggplant meatballs which were excellent, and my daughter had the gnocchi which she also liked.
As for the ice cream, I had the mint chip, my wife had cannoli and my daughter the rainbow cookie. Now, this is their Bona Bona ice cream which is supposed to be excellent, sold at Smorgasburg and soon to be sold in a storefront they’re opening in Port Chester (across the street from the movie theater, where the Asian place used to be). None of us were particularly thrilled with it. First, the scoop was very small, what would probably be considered a child-size portion. The mint chip was good, but had tiny chocolate chips and was not as good as the Ben & Jerry’s flavor which has the huge pieces of chocolate. My wife said the cannoli ice cream was OK but was disappointed that it tasted more like cinnamon. The rainbow cookie had very few pieces of cookie in it, unlike last time when it had many more. All of them were a bit icy. I don’t know if they’re making special cheaper batches for HVRW, but none of us would go back for the ice cream. We’d definitely go back for the food, and in fact my daughter went back the following night with some friends. We’d also go back at regular price and focus on the less expensive vegetarian choices on the menu. Bottom line, for HVRW it’s a great deal but only if you order the more expensive stuff.
Sorry for once again spending more time on the bad than on the good 
.
Did you go to North?
I did get to North for lunch on Tuesday and it was excellent!
To start, we shared the chicken liver mousse and cauliflower soup. The mousse was amazing, incredibly smooth with a layer of blood orange puree (or maybe gel) on top. The cauliflower soup was thick and rich and had thin slivers of cauliflower mixed in. It also had a poached egg, which I am not a fan of and probably could have done without since it seemed to lower the temperature of the soup when I mixed it in. Anyway, it was great. My wife had the cauliflower soup at American Bounty (CIA) last week and said this one was better.
For entrees, we split the chicken schnitzel and linguine caccio e pepe . The chicken (which I think it was actually dark meat) was served with a mustard sauce and potato salad (basically smashed whole small potatoes) that tasted like it was mixed the same sauce. The whole dish was excellent, the chicken was moist and crisp and potato salad excellent. This is only on the lunch menu and seeing a picture of it on their Instagram feed caused me to switch my reservation from dinner to lunch (I wasn’t thrilled with their dinner menu, anyway). One of the benefits of retirement is being able to do lunch instead of dinner 
. The caccio e pepe was also great, very creamy.
For dessert, my wife had the chocolate cake with peanut butter sauce and I had the panna cotta. The chocolate cake was kind of strange, it was sort of smashed and had some pink crunchies and was very rich but she loved it. The panna cotta, which I see is listed on the online menu as being maple but seemed to be passion fruit was the best I’ve had in a long time. The consistency was perfect, not too soft like the one I had at Kittle House last week and softer than what I had at Seasons.
Anyway, after the meal my wife and I both agreed that this was the best meal we’ve had during HVRW. Service was excellent, but it wasn’t very busy and we knew the server from previous visits. I was a bit apprehensive about going back to North because of some recent online reviews I’d read, but we were completely satisfied.
Good to know, Bill! Now I think I’ll give it a try! Sounds good. Will you get to the Valley this time?
