By Greg
Nestled in the Hudson Valley, there’s a particular restaurant that people have been breathlessly recommending for years. Trusted friends say it’s by far their favorite dining experience, and that the food is exquisite. Claiming roots stretching back to the “dawn of the American Republic,” this fully restored inn boasts old-growth floorboards, a roaring hearth, nine-pane antique windows, and the promise of an unforgettable meal.
Something about it had always put me off, but for the sake of a birthday treat, Doug and I decided to make the hour-long pilgrimage and see what all the clamor was about. I should have trusted my gut because things got weird the moment I stepped through the hand-hewn timber doorway. Doug took a work call while we were parking, so I sallied forth to avoid being late.
My initial sight was the host and her first lieutenant stationed behind a timeworn wooden desk, standing eerily still, like Westworld automatons waiting to come online. The host bore a striking resemblance to Natasha Lyonne—if Natasha Lyonne were dressed to secure a role in The Crucible.
I approached and said hello. Instead of returning the greeting, she hit me with a cruel, piercing stare. Surely, an ex-lover who had scorned her had just entered behind me. I glanced around. Not a soul.
“Uh, I have a reservation?” I ventured. Her face twisted with visible displeasure, as if she had just learned that instead of sending me to hell, she would have to seat me at a table.
“Name?” she hissed.
“Greg, for t-t-wo,” I stammered.
Her underling, a young person with microbangs and 70s serial killer eyewear, shuffled forward.
“Bring him to…71,” she spat, without sparing me another glance.
Table 71 was a cramped nook in a drafty alcove right in front of one of those fabled nine-pane windows, accessible only by awkwardly shimmying between two tables. The earliest reservation available a month in advance was for 5:30 PM, leaving the dining room nearly empty, except for cashmere-clad couples and Ralph Lauren families on “casual” outings. When Doug came to join me, he reported that the host had also treated him like a wayward goat who had escaped the abattoir. Were we the hapless couple in the first act of an A24 horror movie?
Before getting into the menu, I admired the Dutch framing and plaster walls the color of clotted cream, all bathed in warm light from romantic wall sconces. In each dining room, long tables were dressed with enormous cloches housing hefty slabs of butter. The butter specimens, along with mangers of bread, were set out and styled in a gorgeous tableau dotted with floral arrangements. My only disappointment was that there wasn’t a woman in a bonnet laboring away at a butter churn in the corner.
Our server eventually emerged, popping his head around the corner like a modern-day homosexual Nosferatu. As a fellow gay, I hoped for some kindred humor, but after asking, “Tap, sparkling, still?” he let slip that it was his last night on the job. He was moving the next day to start work as a general manager at another restaurant—translation: he didn’t give two flying fucks, and it showed. When we placed our order (an appetizer, a small salad, and two entrees), he glared at us over his teeny-tiny pad and, in a drawn-out, accusatory whisper, said, “Seems…like you guys are really…hungry.”
The shock of being shamed aside, I can soundly report that the food didn’t live up to the hype. A limp artichoke served with mayonnaise was undercooked, its petals offering barely a scrape of flesh. The chicken was scorched, and the trout floundered in a bath of watery beans. Both entrees looked like a Picasso portrait of an expensive entree, hastily plated and slightly askew. I had had a better meal of Johnny cakes and a cup of god-knows-what stew on a fifth-grade field trip at a historic reenactment village.
The rest of the evening was peppered with Natasha Lyonne clomping past our table, glowering, and muttering hexes under her breath. Our server also vanished—not with the casual inattentiveness of a busy waiter, but like an apparition slipping back into the walls. Every so often, we’d catch a glimpse of him in the distance, half-lit and floating aimlessly, like a specter.
Doug and I clung to the hope of dessert. We ordered peanut butter and chocolate profiteroles, a promised salvation after our charred, dry-ass dinner. I lovingly call Doug a human garbage disposal for his knack for devouring any dish, no matter how questionable. One bite into his profiterole, and I knew our descent into culinary damnation was complete. He squinted, and his chewing slowed to a halt. I hesitantly took a nibble. Ghastly. “There’s something demonic about these,” Doug mumbled. In a truly historic moment, the offending puff ended up in Doug’s napkin instead of his stomach.
After paying the bill, we wandered through the rest of the dining rooms. All around, well-heeled patrons drenched in a hazy golden glow. Laughing. Imbibing. Having the best meal of their lives. The bar was also packed with revelers, a scene reminiscent of Fezziwig’s party from A Christmas Carol. How had we been cast in a Robert Eggers film?
I noticed a curtained-off room across the lobby near the exit, and Doug and I moved to investigate. A congregation of statue-like diners strewn about on various pieces of Shaker furniture, cocktails in hand, eyeing each other. The energy felt like the prelude to a tepid yet nightmarish sex party. Little Women meets Eyes Wide Shut. I shuddered and closed the curtain. What was going on in there? I saw a shadow loom and grow large behind Doug. Natasha was back, presiding behind her podium. We had trespassed into the liminal space where she decides who gets the Martha Stewart Treatment and who gets sent to table 71.
For a brief moment, I wondered if I had it all wrong. Maybe what we experienced wasn’t hostility, but genuine commitment. Maybe Natasha Lyonne wasn’t a witch, but a consummate performer, delivering exactly what people came here for: a brush with austerity, an immersion into softcore Puritanism. Perhaps she was giving a wicked little twist on Felicity, the American Girl Doll, and I was the one failing to play along. What if this wasn’t bad hospitality, but a perfectly rendered performance, and I was the patron who turned to his partner at curtain call and whispered, “I don’t get it.”
Feeling her leer sharpen, I zipped up my coat and spun around. “Thank you! The butter was so good!” I saw her lips start to form one last curse, but before she could finish, I was already out the door and into the safety of night.
In the rearview mirror, the restaurant glowed, candles flickering in the windows. I knew I’d never return, but this dinner would follow me. Some meals nourish you. Others haunt, like a ghost in your gut, taunting: Are you, like…really hungry?
A special thank you to this week’s illustrator, Laurie Perng1. See more of her work here.
Laurie Perng is an illustrator and designer based in Brooklyn, New York. She enjoys capturing slice of life moments or elevating the beauty and connections in the world around us. Her work has been recognized by Society of Illustrators, American Illustration, and Communication Arts.
Not the mean gay Nosferatu and Crucible-coded Natasha Lyonne! This made me laugh so much- a bummer of a bad dinner for y'all but a cackle-inducing treat for ME.