Upstate New York is finally back in the spotlight – here's why

When I close my eyes and think of my favourite place in the world, I am on my porch in the mid-Hudson Valley, watching a fat groundhog peering out of his hole, wondering if he can nip on the roots of my Christmas trees before I chase him away. Or I am dipping my bread into the thick, soupy kale sauce of the gnudi di cavolo nero at GioBatta Alimentari, my favourite local restaurant, in nearby Tivoli. Or I am in my car high above the Hudson River, purple mountains ahead, the curving river banks behind me.

I spent the happiest days of my childhood at a Russian bungalow colony near the town of Ellenville in the Catskills. Surrounded by kids who spoke my language, I found I felt more at home in the country than in the city. I learned to love nature and farm-fresh eggs (which my father would drink raw), and to recognise the mad glint in a hungry groundhog’s eye. A dozen years ago I bought my house, not far from where I spent those summers growing up, and since then I have split my time equally between this rural part of the state and New York City. While the deep winters can be grey and a walk to the nearest dry cleaner is impossible, living upstate brings me more joy than the city has in decades. With each year, the amenities, especially the burgeoning selection of food and drink, continue to grow, especially since the pandemic brought legions of fleeing city dwellers north (along with property prices I can only describe as satirical).

Unlike the eastern tip of Long Island and the tiny sliver of Manhattan, this vast scenic playground still has enough room for artists and writers to form strange colonies of the like-minded, which is how I found myself drawn to the place I now consider home (my last novel, Our Country Friends, was essentially set at my house. A groundhog and a Russian bungalow colony make cameos). To my friends, I am now Mr Upstate. Not a week passes without someone demanding a quick cheat sheet on Hudson or Kingston or Rhinebeck, with allowances for children, dogs or vegans. And so I write this article partly to move on with my life and also because, as much as I love having friends stay in my guest cabin, there’s been a renaissance of new hotels sprouting on both sides of the Hudson to satisfy the upstate-curious; to feed and entertain the Brooklyn cognoscenti as they get their weekend fill of gnudi and art.

Hudson was the first town I discovered in the mid-Hudson Valley as an adult. Most people know it for the antique wares of Warren Street, which have helped make it, in the last decade, a prime destination for status-obsessed weekenders (it was even mentioned on the show Billions, which is about how much some of these antiques cost). But Hudson also contains swathes of public housing and burgeoning Bangladeshi and Caribbean communities. There are several good hotels, but The Maker is the most exquisitely perfumed and evocative, fusing notes of belle époque, art deco and mid-century. Founders Lev Glazman and Alina Roytberg have turned three historical Warren Street buildings into a fantasia of twin fireplaces, murals made out of burlap and lamps with nicknames such as The Falcon. My room, modelled on a Parisian atelier, features the prow of an early-20th-century boat jutting from one wall.

Hudson, which bills itself as Upstate’s Downtown, is not short on exceptional food and drink. The brasserie Swoon Kitchenbar was the first truly great restaurant to open on Warren Street; I’ve spent many an evening feasting on its crispy artichokes in black garlic aioli and sipping its grapefruit-flavoured Health Margarita. Just across the street, BackBar is a Southeast Asian place with spicy dishes and funky outdoor dining that saved my family’s butt during the worst of the pandemic, and the newish Feast & Floret on South 3rd Street does pasta right – I love the squid ink sorprese with spinach and nduja. But the most heralded newcomer is Cafe Mutton, which is open only four days a week for lunch and Friday nights for dinner. Set in a humble space far off the beaten path, it offers seasonal comfort food that bedevils: how can something as simple as a fried bologna sandwich taste this good? Who knew that red lettuce with anchovy and stracciatella was the best salad in the world? Is it using crack in the rice porridge?

Neven & Neven Moderne is still my favourite antique store in Hudson, but then I’m a midcentury-modern kind of guy. On a recent visit, a pea-coloured Arne Jacobsen swan chair almost had me reaching for my wallet. The same block of Warren is home to the venerable Carrie Haddad Gallery, which recently showcased the nebulous cloud and river-scapes of Jane Bloodgood-Abrams. A few blocks down on Warren, Spotty Dog Books & Ale has amazing readings (I’ve done a few) and plenty of a writer’s most important companion: alcohol. If you walk all the way down Warren to Promenade Hill Park, atop the Hudson, you will break free of its most touristy element and find yourself with a river’s view of Frederic Church-like proportions. The landscape painter’s much-visited estate, Olana, whose “Orientalist” stylings might have Edward Said rolling in his grave, is a short drive away and is filled with works that attest to Church’s prominent role in the 19th-century Hudson River School.

In Tivoli, a few towns south, is the restaurant I dream about: GioBatta Alimentari, the latest from local chef Francesco Buitoni and his wife, Michele Platt. The man who made the first great kale salad in the Hudson Valley (now every restaurant within 100 miles serves one) is a ubiquitous presence around here, coaching kids’ football and catering memorials. Down the street, Fortunes serves unforgettable ice cream: the halva honeycomb and anything with labneh are musts.

Across the river in Kingston is Hutton Brickyards, possibly my favourite of the region’s hotels for one reason: its proximity to the Hudson, which laps the bank mere feet from your Adirondack chair. Flags emblazoned with the word “thirsty” are provided to guests; hang one outside your room and suddenly a minibar of delicious alcoholic beverages will materialise before you. This, I think, is the highest point of our civilisation. The hotel, per its name, was built among the ruins of the former Hutton Brickyard, which reportedly supplied materials for the Empire State Building and Yankee Stadium. An old crane hovers above the Hudson, lending the retreat an elegiac feel. Most of the rooms are cosy cabins, perfect for a carnal getaway. The restaurant celebrates local ingredients (some of my most heavenly meals have been in late spring, during sugar snap pea season), simply prepared, and the main on-site activity is a lovely private wood-barrel sauna from which you can watch the Amtrak hurtle like a silver bullet on the other side of the river.

Kingston may also be my favourite of the small mid-Hudson cities. Its Stockade District consists of incredible 17th- and 18th-century Dutch Colonial architecture. The area includes the Four Corners, the only intersection in America where all the buildings date from before the Revolutionary War. One of them houses Rough Draft Bar & Books, which opened in 2017 and is already beloved. A block away, the Hotel Kinsley is home to the best martini in the valley and does incredible things with fish and lobster rolls in season.

Close by, Lola pizzeria wows with pies such as the Fig & Pear, and the venerable Le Canard Enchaine presents snails, foie gras and eponymous duck dishes that complement the stylised decor. Midtown Kingston is home to Top Taste, a celebrated low-key Jamaican joint. The chef, Albert “Sammy” Bartley, a James Beard nominee who runs the place with his wife, Malenda, coaxes incredible flavours from goat and oxtail. Nearby Masa Midtown is a quieter destination, perfect for Turkish tapas and pastries. The diminutive Ozlem Oguzcan-Cranston, better known as Chef Oz, makes a terrific simit, a Turkish relative of the sesame bagel.

Further south, the tie-dyed college town of New Paltz is a bit far from my usual stomping grounds but Wildflower Farms, a new Auberge resort in neighbouring Gardiner, had me speeding down the interstate. The rocky outcroppings of the Shawangunk Mountains (the “Gunks” to natives) preside over slick cabins and yellow mustard-flower-filled fields. Wholesome experiences abound. Care to chop wood at dusk? I lacked the upper-body strength for that but I did help feed some hens in the morning, then plucked warm eggs right out from under their butts. You can present your bounty to the kitchen, which will cook up a delicious omelette for you. (Speaking of eggs, Clay, the property’s restaurant, also serves a perfect farm egg with white button mushrooms, aged cheese and truffles for dinner.) A flower-pressing pottery class was the last activity on my bingo card. Some newlyweds joined me as I imprinted hydrangeas on a votive-candle holder forged with my own two clumsy hands.

Back on my side of the river, Habitas-on-Hudson, in Staatsburg, just outside Rhinebeck, is part of the Habitas resorts movement, the brainchild of three dudes who met at Burning Man. It’s set in an 18th-century mansion overlooking the river (alas, a highway runs between it and the property), and Habitas’s goal, according to the young woman who checked me in, is to “bring out the inner child in people”. Before I’ve even settled in, Victoria Messinger, the resident food and beverage manager – who, despite her youth, has already mixed coupe-sized sips of heaven on both sides of the Hudson – is teaching me how to make a Naked and Famous cocktail. It’s equal parts yellow chartreuse, mezcal, Aperol and lime juice – and did you know that a coupe glass supposedly gets its shape from Marie Antoinette’s breast? The house is a maze of nooks and crannies, with literature scattered about and the constant promise of a stiff drink from the gorgeous wood-panelled bar. Dinner thrills with local blue oyster mushroom lettuce cups and a smashed cucumber salad zinging with carrot ginger purée and salsa macho.

This part of the valley offers amazing hiking at Mills Mansion; the trails hang above the Hudson and are ridged with rocks like a stegosaurus’s back. I’ve never considered nearby Rhinebeck to be the most exciting of towns – I have no idea what most of its shops, aside from the excellent Oblong Books, are even trying to sell – but the dining-and-imbibing scene has been heating up. In addition to the always-pleasing pastas of Mill Street restaurant, newcomer Café con Leche offers juicy mounds of Puerto Rican pernil. Meanwhile, Pretty to Think So (love the name) is raising the roof on craft cocktails in a space where distinctive patrons such as Vogue contributing editor Lynn Yaeger are often to be spied having a ball.

My final hotel destination takes me to the exact area where I spent those summers at the Russian bungalow colony. Inness is a newish retreat in the town of Accord, cradled between the Catskills and the Gunks, with views of both, alongside endless fields flanking farmhouses, pools, a tennis court and a nine-hole golf course. The restaurant is a dream, with fresh mint and rocket salads, boquerones with spring garlic and salsa verde, and cauliflower brought to life with vadouvan and tahini. It’s strange to think that in the 1980s we paid as much money for the entire summer season as some of the hotels I have stayed in cost per night (granted, we did not have a golf course). But nonetheless there is a strong bungalow vibe at Inness, with people relaxing on the porches of the Scandinavian-style cabins and playing with their dogs. Instead of Russian, though, I hear Spanish, Chinese and Hebrew.

I decide to drive down to Ellenville to see what’s left of the bungalow colony. The buildings are barely standing and the pool has been trashed, but I can still hear all those young immigrant voices chattering away in a combination of Russian and English, being chased by their babushkas with plates of kasha. Ellenville used to be a gloomy town, but the cinema where I saw Octopussy (my first encounter with James Bond) still stands. There are also new tapas bars and the almost two-decade-old Aroma Thyme Bistro, where I perused a menu that includes strong Belgian ales, and ordered melt-in-the-mouth, slow-cooked smoked brisket. But the past has not been entirely erased. I pass the edifice of a building that purports to be the future home of the Catskill Borscht Belt Museum and realise the circular journey I have taken, having travelled to this vibrant and creative new Eden by way of the old.

Gary Shteyngart’s little black book

Hudson

Stay at The Maker, three historic buildings conjoined into an 11-room haven of sophisticated mid-century bohemianism by the founders of the Fresh beauty brand.

Eat crispy artichokes in black garlic aioli at Warren Street’s original farm-to-table brasserie Swoon Kitchenbar; bao buns and pimento smash burgers at BackBar; squid ink sorprese with nduja at Feast & Floret; and bologna sandwiches at newcomer Cafe Mutton.

Kingston

Stay in one of the glass-fronted cabins of Hutton Brickyards, with the old brickyard crane overlooking the river, as well as barrel saunas and a locavore restaurant; or in town at the 42-room Hotel Kinsley, spread across four buildings in the old Stockade District, with much-loved martinis and a New American restaurant.

Eat eponymous confit duck or escargots at the venerable Le Canard Enchaine; fig and pear pizzas at Lola Pizza; flavour-packed curried goat or jerk chicken at low-key Jamaican joint Top Taste by James Beard nominee Albert “Sammy” Bartley; and Chef Oz’s simit sesame bread rings at beloved Turkish Masa Midtown.

Elsewhere

Stay in a crisp cabin overlooked by the Shawangunk Mountains at Gardiner’s Wildflower Farms, part of the Auberge Resorts Collection, with foraging and woodchopping part of the deal; in the nooks of Habitas-on-Hudson, in an 18th-century riverside mansion in Staatsburg, given an earth-vibes redesign; or in the cedar-clad cabins of Inness, by hotelier-restaurateur Taavo Somer, also of Hudson’s Hotel Kinsley.

Eat in Tivoli: linguine vongole and the Hudson’s original kale salad at GioBatta Alimentari; andhalva honeycomb ice cream down the street at Fortunes Ice Cream. In Rhinebeck: Puerto Rican pernil at Café con Leche; and craft cocktails and poached turnip pappardelle at Pretty to Think So. And in Ellenville: slow-cooked brisket and strong Belgian beers at Aroma Thyme Bistro.