With Hunter Mountain Resort back to 100 percent capacity and the town of Hunter sizzling hot these cold weekends and brisk during the week, locals and visitors alike are enjoying the fresh baked goods, elevated egg sandwiches, and luscious lunches at the newly opened Fellow Mountain Cafe, brought to Main Street by Escape Hospitality, the group operating Scribner’s Catskill Lodge, and served by the same chef, Alex Napolitano.
“We have the best egg sandwiches in the Catskills—I know that’s a high bar but I feel safe saying that,” says Napolitano. “The eggs are local and the choices let you build what you want without getting silly. Then there are the cinnamon rolls—fresh, warm, and available by the dozen. We sell hundreds a week, and people get upset when we run out.”
Besides breakfast, lunch, and bakery goodies, Fellow offers a curated selection of locally sourced grocery items and a regional selection of craft beers and ciders. “Lots of people stop in to stock their homes for their mountain idyll,” says Napolitano. “We stock light sundries and niche products that you may not find anywhere else up here on the mountain: artisanal cheeses and cured meats, honey, syrup, beer and cider you won’t find every place.”
Fellow also has a treat for your decor: fresh-cut flowers, a program begun almost on a whim that’s proven extremely popular. “Our gardener and groundskeeper, Andrew, is an accomplished and highly skilled florist, so we offer fresh-cut flowers on weekends, and people are really engaged with it—it’s become a thing to have breakfast and grab some flowers to go,” says Napolitano. “We have regulars who grab a bunch for the house every weekend.”
The feel at Fellow is meticulously modern meets Catskills classic, set in a renovated Queen Anne-style onetime Odd Fellows hall with large windows, marble countertops, original details like a vintage Acorn stove and tin ceilings, and a large deck wrapping around the west side of the building.
The business has grown steadily over the past 15 months, and firing the oven up to pizza temps for a recent pop-up warm up the heart of Chef Alex. For Napolitano, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute’s Italian program who has studied and cooked in Italy and most recently worked at Manhattan’s Rubirosa Ristoranti, the idea of being able to build a pizza program from scratch makes his mouth water.
“Wood-fired sourdough pizza calls for a more artisanal style and my personal experience speaks directly to exactly that, and I think guests will appreciate having this available on the mountaintop,” he says. “Plus, as the chef, it’s just so much fun. The response to the first one was great, and we’re looking at it as a sort of preview of our potential dinner service. The whole concept is to continually match our offerings to the guests’ demand, through an unchanging lens of who we are: contemporary Catskills, local ingredients deployed using modern technique, practiced at a high level for an ever-more-discerning clientele.”
One imagines the Odd Fellows nodding in sage agreement We’re all invited over to test that best egg sandwich claim, savor some honeynut squash soup with toasted pepitas and pumpkin seed oil, or grab up a gooey gluten- and dairy-free brownie and a golden milk latte with vanilla and honey. Fellow will host their second apres-ski gathering from 4-8pm on Saturday, February 19 with wood-fired pizza, vinyl, and West Kill Brewery pouring craft beers.
