Kat Dunn’s Plan B was more successful than most restaurateurs’ wildest dreams. While she waited out pandemic stop-work restrictions, permitting delays, and material price hikes that held up the launch of her bar, Padrona, she launched an essence-of-summer pop-up called Buttercup. Operating out of the same space Padrona now occupies on 4th Street in Hudson, Dunn slung lobster rolls, Coney Island hot dogs, and playful cocktails to a COVID-fatigued crowd hungry for some semblance of frivolity.
The seasonal pop-up, which kicked off Memorial Day weekend, went well into December for two years running. It started out as a stop-gap measure, but eventually turned into a delay for Padrona itself. The customers were faithful—even in less-than-beachy weather—and Buttercup’s catering arm popped off. So it was understandably hard to suspend a good thing. “I had to think long and hard about Buttercup and really what its purpose was. For me, it was always about Padrona,” says Dunn, who decided to shut the pop-up down at the end of July. “It was really delaying construction, only to be able to get in there twice a week. We had to put the pressure on to get it finished.”
With attention solidly on Padrona, the final push took a month, and the bar Dunn had so long dreamed of opened September 2. Now, on a Friday night at 8pm, it’s hard to find a seat at the bar beneath the amber glow of the hanging glass orbs, but there are still two-tops available. By 9:30pm, there isn’t an open seat in the house as older couples on double dates crowd around pushed-together tables, groups of friends throng on the patio, and a party of 10 occupies the lounge corner in the back by the piano. The crowd is a multigenerational mix of locals and visitors of all ages, races, and fashion sensibilities.
“There will be changes rolling out over the next couple of months. I don’t even have signage up—just Sharpie on the side of the building,” says Dunn. “But it was really time. I just wanted to be open. And it really was worth the wait.”
Like Mary Poppins stepping into a chalk drawing, the interior of the newly debuted Padrona is a rendering come to life off the page. COVID concerns led Dunn to tweak some features, like trading a single, room-long banquette for individual seating. But the color schemes, the fabrics, the look and feel are all intact. “Things I had been thinking about for years seemed to really resonate with people,” Dunn says. “All sorts of people. People up from the city. Some locals. Younger couples. An older man who had worked at Miller for 40 years was so psyched to be drinking a Miller High Life pony at the bar. Everyone enjoyed the seating and overall decor, and I didn’t have to tell someone once to stop banging on the piano.”
Lobster Rolls, Potato Chips, Bottarga
Dunn’s approach to the food program at Padrona is an indulgent take on casual grazing with menu items like assorted giardiniera, devilled eggs ($7), and a local cheese and charcuterie board ($16). The trout rillettes ($16) is a fast favorite, offering a luxurious, housemade spread served in a small, swing-top Hermes jar with pickled red onion, thick slices of baguette, and endive, which does double duty as a colorful garnish and as a beautiful, bitter counterpoint to the rich umami of the smoked trout.
Dunn’s mastery of high-brow/low-brow shows with the bottarga onion dip ($14), which recalls Super Bowl Sunday, served with a massive plate of crispy Cape Cod potato chips. The sweetness of the caramelized onion is balanced by the tang of the creme fraiche that forms the dip’s base while the garnish of chives and green onions deliver a necessary allium bite.
Potato chips are the Padrona food program’s workhorse—they also come with the blue cheese fondue ($8) and the quarter-pound lobster roll ($32), a concession for the Buttercup faithful. It’s no wonder the pop-up was so successful, when the split-top roll arrives smelling of hot butter and overflowing with fresh Maine lobster that melts in your mouth. (Use the chips to pick up the stragglers.) It’s good enough to eat three, pricey enough to share. For a sweet, rich treat, try the whipped ricotta served with wildflower honey and fennel pollen and baguette ($12). “This is how I like to eat—a nosh of all sorts of different things,” Dunn says. “It’s luxurious, so you don’t do it every day, but when you want to, it’s available for you.”
Flip to the last page of the menu for Dunn’s coup de grace: a gourmet tinned fish program offering everything from pickled sardine tails and loins (both $26) to Pinhais mackerel in olive oil ($19) and Gueya Mar razor clams ($32). The bartender recommends the razor clams for only the most avid aficionados of tinned fish, while dilettantes and newbies might prefer the whole sardines ($19) or the wild-harvested Scout lobster—claw meat preserved in a lemon-infused, olive oil ($21).
“We’ll never be the Cheesecake Factory, but as we get more comfortable, we’ll add more and more food and drink options,” says Dunn. If you’re splurging on date night, it’s hard to go wrong with the Brown Trading Company caviar ($60). “We’re making everything in-house except the tinned fish. Now that my chef isn’t focused on Buttercup as much, we have an opportunity to play around a bit more,” Dunn says. “I never considered cooking my forte, but after having to be a cook for the last two years, it’s been a lot of fun to create recipes in the kitchen. The cook and I are working together, which is awesome to get that opportunity to collaborate.”
A Lighthearted Approach to Cocktails
As far as the drinks go, Dunn is flying solo, but that is no problem for the seasoned bartender, who has worked at former Greenwich Village haunt The Lion, and several Fatty Crew restaurants before moving upstate to design the cocktail program for Zak Pelaccio’s Fish & Game and Backbar, as well as Rivertown Lodge. At Padrona, Dunn has traded in the pressed canvas apron and pretension of the craft cocktail movement for a more playful approach. “Anyone who has worked for me knows that my number one peeve is when servers say, ‘Are you still working on that?’” Dunn says. “What people are doing in our place is not work. Drinking—and eating—should be fun.”
The drinks list doesn’t take itself too seriously with slushes, a bottled twist on the classic Long Island iced tea called Get LIT, beer-and-shot combos, and accessible natural wines. One of the slushes, made with butterfly pea flower for a brilliant indigo hue that recalls the OG Slush Puppie, is called I Just Blue Myself, a reference to the “Arrested Development” episode when Tobias Funke tries to join the Blue Man Group ($14). Despite the electric color, the drink isn’t overly sweet, tempered by notes of black licorice and bitterness from the curacao.
The cocktails themselves are broken down into high-, low-, and no-proof. “COVID either made people drink more or decide that they were drinking too much and cut back,” Dunn says. “The low- and no-ABV drinks went really well.” A highlight is the Cins of Passion, a tropical romp featuring cachaça, passionfruit, cinnamon, and coconut milk ($14) that is dangerously easy to drink. After Dark, Dunn’s spin on an amaretto sour, is a perfect cocktail ($15). Made with bourbon, lemon, whipped egg white, and housemade peach pit liqueur that lends a faint nuttiness, it is served in a coupe with a crown of froth and garnished with lemon peel-wrapped maraschino cherry ($15).
But the hands-down most popular cocktail of opening weekend was born of a stroke of sustainable genius that honors Dunn’s lighthearted approach while never sacrificing on taste. The Holy Mountain ($16), made with mezcal, yellow Chartreuse, Thai basil, and black pepper uses a corn stock made from the boiled cobs leftover from Dunn’s corn and tomato salad. “It’s served with a spear from Twin Lakes Ice Co.—a beautiful ice cube in a beautiful glass. It’s still exuberant and playful but delicious.”
Beyond the bespoke cocktails, you can also order any of the classics, from a Sazerac to a G&T or choose from the dozen wines by the glass (including one sake). The glasses range from a $10 prosecco to a $17 Ribolla Gialla. There is a Georgian skin-contact, an unpretentious South African Rhone-style red blend, and an Oregon wine.
Dunn promises that Buttercup will be resurrected in 2023, whether as a food truck, a separate location, or a pop-up is still TBD. In the meantime, catering is going strong, and Dunn is settling into her new space. “You know the funny thing about opening weekend is that it felt really natural,” she says. “I thought it would feel more awkward or more novel, but it felt so normal—in a good way. Like when you meet someone you feel like you’ve known forever. This all happened in the time it was supposed to. I wouldn’t have Buttercup if the pandemic had not happened, and I don’t think Padrona would’ve been as great if it had happened any differently.”
Padrona is open Friday through Tuesday, 3-11pm.
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This article appears in October 2022.
