Discover the delicious cuisine and atmospheric dining experience of Delaware County restaurants with Jeff Crane.
Geography and topography affect our experience of the world and the ways we interact with the environment and with each other. Urban terrain is smooth, fluid, dynamic, technologically and mechanically networked, and integrated at multiple levels. The city is a model of the synaptic connections of our minds projected onto the world, and, like it or not, we become enmeshed within its matrix. Capital is king; natural systems are confined, managed, and suppressed. Actual connections between people in real space and time are rare and fragile.
Communities nestled in the mountains emerge under very different conditions. Our mechanical and technological connectivity is blunted by the barriers of high peaks and climatic extremes; mountain communities retain some of the primal isolation imposed by the Earth’s contours. We spend more time outside, whether for work or play, and nature’s forces are experienced directly. We barter and trade.
Combine aspects of the two habitats, urban and mountain, and hybrid communities with distinct sensibilities emerge.
I’ve lived in Ulster County since I left New York City in 2004. My life in Delaware County began in 2009 when I first visited Plattekill Mountain, where I am now director of the Snowsports School. My first visit there was like stepping back into time; I grew up in Colorado, and Plattekill evoked childhood memories of places like Loveland Ski Area and Arapahoe Basin. Originally a logging operation, Plattekill’s hemlocks were clear-cut in the 19th century for the tanning industry (a familiar story throughout the region). Skiing began in 1958, and Plattekill became known for the longest and steepest terrain in the Catskills at a time when ski operations were popping up all over the region (the Catskills have been home to as many as 24 ski areas). The first floor of the now three-story lodge was built in 1961, after the first lodge burned down. Plattekill is not a resort—it’s a true ski area, nestled in bucolic Meeker Hollow, surrounded by farms. Telemark skiing is big here, and it’s one of the few places that offers rentals and lessons in freeheel skiing. Owners Laszlo and Danielle Vajtay have kept this mom-and-pop operation open against all odds since 1993. Alan Cumming is a regular, and can often be found après-ski in the third-floor bar heated by a large woodstove. A hidden gem, Plattekill is the ski area you remember from your childhood, even if you never went there as a child.
I gave my very first Telemark lesson to Rob Howard, a photographer who lives in nearby Hobart, where my partner Kate and I have a repurposed construction trailer with a woodstove and composting outhouse on five acres with a spring and spectacular views, all for less than the cost of a semester at the college I attended.
Fresh Air and Foraging
Rob introduced me to Table on Ten in Bloomville in the summer of 2012. The intimate restaurant in a restored 1860s Italianate house is known for artisanal, wood-fired pizzas topped with ingredients sourced locally and seasonally. Dutch-born owner Inez Valk, a former model, sums up the restaurant using pizza as a metaphor: “It serves as the perfect platform for whatever is at hand, foraged, found, brought to us. Drawing a circle, gathering, finding ways to make it all come together, serving it up (often to the people who provided it); a little sourdough circle, emblematic of the overall narrative.” Table has been featured in stories in Conde Nast Traveller, the New York Times, and Bon Appetit, but you still feel like you’ve stumbled onto a best-kept-secret each time you visit. Of particular note are the mushroom pizzas, with shiitakes, creminis, mozzarella, garlic, sage, and parmesan; and the marinated fennel, preserved meyer lemon, feta, and parsley pizza.
Understatement and simplicity, where farm-fresh ingredients are foregrounded and flavors are complex (often enhanced by processes of curing and fermentation), but preparation is uncomplicated, are characteristics also shared by Brushland in Bovina. When owners Sara Mae Elbert and Sohail Zandi met in the summer of 2012 in New York City, they were both questioning the sustainability of their lives there. As Elbert tells it, “it’s an oft-heard story that begins and ends with two kids caught up in the service industry, hoping for something more than late nights closing down other people’s restaurants, wondering if spending just as much on rent as you make every month is sustainable (it’s not) and assuming that making a big change—shaking up what you know as ‘the good life’—is impossible.” Shortly after meeting, Zandi left the city to work on a farm, milking a Dutch Belted herd and making washed-rind cheese. A few weeks in—lungs full of fresh air, the simple act of shopping farmers markets and making dinner at home every night—it was clear to both that there was no going back.
Before it was Bovina—aptly named for the many herds of meat and dairy cattle raised there—the town was called “Brushland.” “Finding Bovina was a happy accident,” says Elbert. “Our desire to be upstate was strong, but which little town we’d settle into wasn’t as important in the beginning. Self-preservation is what drove us out of the city, so calculating risk and punching numbers constantly to find the right place to land was not our style. Instead, we drove up and down rural highways with our eyes peeled. When we pulled into Bovina, discovering that this commercial space was for sale on Main Street, it just seemed like where we needed to be.”
“Being slapped in the face with the beauty of our surroundings keeps us humble. I wouldn’t say that our lives are any slower or less stressful than they were in the city, because, back then, we didn’t run our own restaurant and responsibilities were counted on one hand. These days it’s a bit ‘go-go-go’, so I’d be lying if I told you that we take a bunch of time for ourselves that we didn’t before. Even if you’re not going on a three-hour hike or lazily fishing the river, the wide views and clean air, the pace of your neighbors and even the traffic, the low light and noise pollution, the quality of friends and community, the quantity of fresh produce and protein—all of that lends itself, whether you’re paying full attention or not, to what we know as quality of life. That in itself is fodder for menu creation.”
On a recent visit, Kate and I shared the Cabbage Caesar Salad, a winter-appropriate version of the classic, and Hanger Steak with Endive, Blue Cheese, and Anchovies. The steak was tender and prepared to medium-rare perfection; the briny tang of the fermented and cured accompaniments formed a perfect chord of flavors held together by the bass line of locally raised beef. My seven-year-old son Henry had his favorite, the One-Flip Burger, served with some of the best fries I’ve ever eaten (and a bargain at $10). “We wanted it to be more like a fast-food burger; too often, burgers you get at ‘upscale’ restaurants are so oversized you can’t even pick them up,” says Elbert, who is always there to greet guests and offer insight to the menu. “What inspires us is thoughtful, lovingly made comfort food that tastes good, which also reflects the season we are in.”
Breakfast, Burgers, and Books
One of the many farms that supplies Table on Ten and Brushland is Star Route Farm, led by Tianna Kennedy, another transplant from Brooklyn whom I met briefly in the early 2000s when I was still a painter with a studio in Greenpoint and she was living in Bushwick and doing a bit of modeling to help make rent. Her story is woven together with those of the restaurants her farm supplies with spectacular produce; it is a complex tapestry woven of people who yearn for a life of unalienated labor. “We all grew up together,” says Kennedy. She leases 12 acres outside Bovina, and supplies 17 restaurants and a 200-person CSA from 12 locations in New York City.
Kennedy moved to the Catskills at the same time as Madalyn Warren. Working out of her kitchen in Roxbury on her farm, Straight from the Ground, Madalyn crafts “farmstead” kimchee, for which she grows all of the ingredients. She is a firm believer in the value of probiotics: “We have probably underestimated the degree to which poor digestion is a root cause of many common health problems,” says Warren. Her kimchee can be found at the farmers’ markets around the region in season.
Yet another mom-and-pop story begins with Oliver and Melissa Pycroft meeting in London in 2013. In 2014, they quit their jobs to move to a hunting cabin in Shandaken built by Melissa’s great-grandfather. After two decades between them of traveling, working, and living in New York, Paris, London, Costa Rica, Budapest, and Seville, they were ready to escape to the countryside and begin a new, more rural life together.
They settled on the idea of starting an English-style country pub and inn, and started searching for a suitable property. After looking at places around the Catskills for nearly a year, they chose the MacArthur house in Hobart, where they now operate Bull & Garland. “The rambling 1830s interior, with its quirky rooms and cozy nooks, felt like the country pubs we loved to frequent in England,” says Melissa, “and we imagined the grounds backing onto the West Branch of the Delaware River as the perfect space for a summer beer garden. A local historian told us that the property had been a coach house in its early days along the main road through town. We were also excited to discover that Hobart—a town of fewer than 500 people—has a book village community with five bookstores, modeled after Hay-on-Wye in the UK, and the proximity of the Catskills Scenic Trail just behind the property was also an added bonus for visitors and guests of the inn.”
True to form, the pub menu features such savory, comforting staples as Fish and Chips and Scotch Egg (a hardboiled egg enshrouded in sausage, breaded and fried). For dessert, the Maple Sticky Toffee Pudding is a must, but be warned: Share it with at least one person, or it will send you into a sugar coma. Henry and I always fight for the last bite.
Table on Ten, Brushland, Bull & Garland, and Straight from the Ground Farm all offer rooms for rent.
Another thread in this narrative was sewn by Rob Howard when he introduced me to Cay Sophie Rabinowitz at Plattekill Mountain several years ago. Now an instructor on my Snowsports School staff, Rabinowitz publishes Osmos, an art magazine specializing in photography, and runs an eponymous Lower East Side gallery that specializes in obscure, under-recognized artists. She and her husband, Christian Rattemeyer, a curator of drawings at MoMA, are opening Osmos Station in a renovated garage in the town of Stamford—known as “the Queen of the Catskills”—this spring. They envision a space for visiting artists, curated exhibitions, gatherings, and professional workshops. They will also soon have cross-country skis and bikes for visitors to use on the adjacent Catskills Scenic Trail.
Just down the road from Osmos Station, T.P.’s Cafe serves one of the best breakfasts I’ve ever had. Frequented primarily by locals, T.P.’s also draws transplants and visitors to the region. At a time when political division and online vitriol can be disheartening, to say the least, it’s the kind of place that folks with very different world views can at least agree on some of the more important aspects of life: The pancakes are thin and light; the potatoes are crispy and can be ordered with or without onions; the burgers, made from house-ground beef, are mouthwatering, and they are generous with the bacon.
It is a weird and scary time in these Divided States of America. But living, eating, skiing, and just being in the Catskill Mountains of Delaware County reminds me that we remain woven together. We’re connected to each other, to the earth, to water, to the sun, and to the stars. There is some solace there.
Learn more about things to do in Delaware County.
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This article appears in March 2018.
