At Mill & Main’s newly opened restaurant in Kerhonkson, “mother-son duo” is more than a cute gimmick, it’s a functional partnership in the kitchen and at the concept level between Claudia Sidoti and her son Christopher Weathered.
Sidoti, a nearly 50-year veteran of the hospitality industry, has a heavy-hitting resume that ranges from New York City restaurant owner to test kitchen director at the Food Network to culinary director at HelloFresh. Her son’s Christopher’s kitchen skills are self-taught and honed in the family home, though he has ample front-of-house experience, including at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. At Mill & Main, the two are sharing creative and cooking duties, collaborating to produce a seasonal, farm-to-table menu that showcases Hudson Valley producers.
In fact, it’s a whole family affair. Sidoti’s husband, Paul Weathered, a prop master currently out of work due to the WGA strike, helps out wherever he can, shucking oysters, pouring wine. Chris’s wife Lily, pops down from their upstairs apartment to lend a hand, bussing plates and waiting on tables. In a rare twist, they all seem to truly enjoy each other’s company, and the ambience has the cozy feel of a bustling and happy family home, where friends and kids and partners of kids come and go, and all are welcome and fed.
Not unlike their actual home, which has always had a revolving door of dinner guests and house guests. Both in the city and upstate at their erstwhile Margaretville weekend home and now in Kerhonkson, theirs is the perennial gathering place. Paul describes double-digit guests sleeping on couches and under tables, on the trampoline out back. It’s this no-frills, people-centric approach to hospitality, honed at home, that radiates through Mill & Main and that draws both blue-collar contractors and city transplants together under one roof.
A Drawn-Out Renovation
If the restaurant’s name is ringing bells, that’s because Mill & Main opened the first prong of their business—a cafe and market—back in 2021 in the storefront next door to the restaurant. “The cafe is going very well. It just continues to improve and get busier,” Sidoti says. “We have developed such a nice core group of customers.”
Sidoti and Paul bought a weekend house in Kerhonkson in 2015, often driving past the spot that would become Mill & Main. Though they’ve both had careers in the food and hospitality industries, they didn’t move upstate to start a business. “Food finds me,” Sidoti says. “It keeps drawing me in. I couldn’t help myself.” Urged by hungry neighbors and friends who were tired of driving 30+ minutes north, south, or east for a decent meal and a drink, they bought the building that now houses both the cafe and restaurant for a song at auction in 2017. The c.1971 building had been flood damaged and neglected for years when they purchased it, and restoring it has been a costly, drawn-out, multiphase process.
“Once the cafe was self-sufficient, then we put all our efforts into getting the restaurant open,” Sidoti says. “Oh my gosh, we hit one roadblock after another—every possible thing that could hold up a job. But here we are, finally.”
At a press dinner in early July, a small group huddles around Paul in the sun-dappled back patio as he holds forth about the renovation process. Market research? He scoffs. Due diligence? Ha. Emotion, Weathered says, is what has driven this every real estate purchase he and Sidoti have ever made. “This was not a logical decision,” he says. “If we had looked at it as investors, we would have run away. But I always say we have a real estate angel on our shoulder.”
Mill & Main’s restaurant opened for sit-down dinner service in May with a curated menu of early-harvest eats. “A lot of things weren’t ready. It was kind of chilly, so we had a heartier late spring menu to open, but it felt as we went into Memorial Day that it was time to switch,” Sidoti says of the menu, which changed over to more early-summer-themed offerings in early June.
Where the opening menu featured first-blush-of-spring offerings like burrata and beans with ramp pesto; charred asparagus; and a strawberry rhubarb pie, the latest iteration features fun, summer-forward flavors like the adorable wagyu beef hot dog sliders topped with coleslaw and a bright mango chutney (three for $16). Or the Caribbean codfish fritters, which pack a delicious, doughy punch of flavor—squishy, fishy, and reminiscent of crab cakes in the best, most summer-on-the-coast way—served with a pickapeppa lime mayonnaise ($16). Very shareable.
The menu, which is separated into snacks, small plates, and big plates, does a good job of touring the flavors of Italy, the Caribbean, and South America with dishes that are at once adventuresome but familiar. This approach is eloquently embodied in the Peruvian-inspired chicken thighs, which are rubbed in cumin and garlic, served with a perfectly crackly skin, drizzled with cilantro-lime sauce, and accompanied by a purple potato mash ($25).
“We try to lean into things that feel familiar, comfort food for us—things we might’ve grown up with, recipes passed down from my mom or mother-in-law, something Christopher likes that was inspired by something that I made when he was growing up,” says Sidoti, who is of Colombian and Italian descent. Her husband has Caribbean heritage, their son a blend of all of it. “We’re leaning into family tradition recipes that we put our twist on. Chris and I collaborate on what would be fun ways to spin something.”
The menu also includes more gluten-free and vegan options. “We are trying to have fun with the things that we know how to do well and also trying to meet what people are asking for,” Sidoti says. “We made accommodations that don’t feel like a compromise on the food, like the vegan Caesar panzanella. We felt really, really confident that it was a fantastic vegan Caesar dressing.”
Their community responsiveness is not limited to dietary restrictions. They also introduced a wings dish based on customer feedback, though still on their own terms. The spicy mango barbecue wings are wildly popular ($15). “If people say, ‘Listen we just want to go out for a couple beers and a great big ol’ plate of wings and a salad,’ that’s fine! We love making them.” People have already been requesting the sauce be bottled and sold in the market, so their first wings offering is off to a roaring start.
Looking forward, Sidoti expects the menu to shift every two months with the cycling of in-season produce from local farms and producers, like Flowering Sun, Catskill Wagyu, La Salumina, Willow Sheep Farm, and Veritas to name but a few.
Specials will be used to feature limited-availability dishes with transitioning ingredients. It’s also a place to test out new menu items and offer a rotating selection. “Every item on the menu needs to do something for us otherwise there is no point in taking up the space,” Sidoti says, reflecting with a touch of wistfulness on the lukewarm performance of the opening menu’s charcuterie platter. So as a solution, they’ve moved an ever-changing cheese and charcuterie board to the specials lists where they can continue to have fun with it.
That’s one of the synergies happening with the market and cafe next door. “We get to highlight products from the market,” Sidoti says. “We have a tinned fish platter now with sardines and mussels. Sometimes people don’t want to make the full purchase without tasting it first. So it’s nice to have a way to get familiar with a product. Then, if they like it, they can go into the retail shop and purchase it.”
The restaurant has come a long way from the waterlogged building it was not four years ago. The bright space has large streetside windows, a long bar, and royal blue leather banquettes. The lush, tree-draped backyard, with a gravel patio, overlooks the Rondout Creek, offering a place for cafe customers to take their lattes and breakfast sandwiches during the day, and sit-down dinner service at night. “The backyard is such a nice little nook, kind of like a hideaway,” Sidoti says. “I think that is a really nice added bonus for cafe users, and low maintenance for us since it’s self-serve.”
The cocktail list, developed in consultation with Brendan Casey of traveling pop-up Catskill Cocktail Club, features a half-dozen three-ingredient options, which will also shift seasonally. Current highlights include a delightfully tart tamarind margarita with a tajin rim ($15). The shaken colada keeps it simple and surprisingly light with white rum, pineapple juice, and cream of coconut ($15). There are also two mocktails including one with house-made sorrel ($12). Casey will be onsite bartending on Thursday evenings, with occasional Catskill Cocktail Club pop-ups on Friday nights throughout the year.
The wine list, curated by Chris, leans heavily natural with options by the glass and bottle. Bottle prices range from a $38 Tempranillo to a $98 Champagne, and glasses run $13 to $16. Chilled summer highlights in the middle range include Wild Arc’s pet nat, Aurora, ($68) and Si Rose, a skin-contact Gewurztraminer-Pinot Gris blend from importers Jenny & Francois ($78).
Dessert ranges from a simple Jane’s ice cream sorbet ($6) to a caramelized banana split, which with its warm banana and cold ice cream is as much a tactile experience as a flavor one ($9). The pannacotta comes in a ramekin with a split top of blueberry granite and crumble ($9).
In the future months, Sidoti lists off any number of other things they’d like to do with the space: visiting guest chefs, pop-ups, live music, cooking demonstrations, wine tastings, themed events, and trivia nights. “It’s hard to find variety in Kerhonkson,” Sidoti says. “So that is what we’d do when we activate the visiting chef pop-ups—look for some missing groups. Whether that is Thai food or Korean food or Indian food, those are just some of the things we hope to be able to bring here as pop-up events.”
In the meantime, they’ve started with open mic nights on the first Wednesday of the month and karaoke on the second Wednesday. “We’re really excited to be here. We have so many ideas. This summer is proving to be a really fun time for us.”
Bisected by Route 209, which is flanked by functional, small-town businesses—a diner, a pizza place, a liquor store, two gas stations—Kerhonkson’s original layout, along the Rondout Creek, has long since been disrupted. Mill and Main’s location—at the end of a comically short Main Street (different from the main drag, which is inexplicably called 42nd Street)—is an unlikely spot for a community gathering place. You probably won’t happen upon it by accident unless you’re cutting through town to or from Route 44/55. And yet, the cafe and now the restaurant, have drawn flocks of people. Mill & Main is, perhaps, the first sit-down dining restaurant Kerhonkson has had in decades, and the people are here for it.
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This article appears in August 2023.
