The best bars, restaurants, and breweries for an excellent weekend getaway to the mountains.
LessHarana Market’s foot-long lumpia has been one of our favorite post-hike snacks for years, and the Filipino deli recently relocated to a bigger space right off of Route 209. The menu has expanded, too—you’ll find platters of tofu sisig and zingy fried chicken, as well as soups and stews like arroz caldo and pork sinigang. Watch the action in the kitchen from one of their indoor tables, or bask in some sunshine in their yard where you’ll spot more than one goldendoodle.
This is one of our favorite places in all of upstate New York. Westwind Orchard sells fruit on their farmstand, offers cider tastings, and has a yard that’s covered with picnic tables and a wood-burning pizza oven. Their margherita pizza is on par with what you’ll find at the best spots in NYC, and they also do creative things with their own produce—like the raspberry and sausage-covered pie. Westwind Orchard is perfect for kids, but it’s also perfect for pretty much anyone else.
Arrowwood Farms doesn’t just produce great beers onsite—they also have a distillery, and one of the best summer lineups of outdoor concerts and festivals (check their events roster before you go to see if anyone’s playing). The outdoor space is super kid- and pet-friendly: let the kids run around with the free range chickens and make new friends by the duck pond while you enjoy an Accordian pilsner, Mohonk IPA, or their award-winning sour, Porch.
Whether you’re staying at Inness or just passing through Accord, make a reservation at the hotel’s restaurant, especially if you need a spot that fits the "nice sit-down dinner" bill. Try and snag a table on the porch, which has great scenic views of the property. The sprawling indoor dining room is a great plan B. Start your meal with some sourdough and boquerones, then follow that up with one of the pasta dishes and the juicy roasted chicken on a bed of creamy potato puree.
Brushland Eating House is on the far western side of the Catskills, and it’s worth driving out of your way for. It’s on the first floor of an old farmhouse, and the space has floor-to-ceiling windows, a giant bar, and nice wooden banquettes. Dinner costs $75, and consists of a three-course family-style meal. The menu changes weekly, so check Brushland's website to see what's in store. If you’re picking just one restaurant to go to in the Catskills, this is it.
There’s a beer for everyone at Subversive, a brewery that specializes in a slightly archaic method of brewing called “floor malting.” But we’re mainly here for the smashburger. The Classic has two patties topped with american cheese, housemade pickles, and sauce, all served on an airy milk bun, alongside fries and a necessary order of beer cheese. This is the type of meal you’ll want when you’re too lazy to cook, celebrating a birthday, nursing a hangover—really anytime at all.
There’s not a ton going on in Delhi in the Western Catskills. But it does have Hollow, a combination cafe and back bar where you could start your day with excellent pastries and end it with a plate of incredible trout dip and a Manhattan. In the daytime, the cafe feels like a fishbowl of bright natural light, filled with glistening pastries and a few cafe tables instead of rocks and plastic plants. Once the sun sets, they start doing small plates that show off the quality of Upstate produce.
Ollie’s Pizza is the platonic ideal between a hype-y Brooklyn pizzeria and Upstate charm where you can spend a weekend afternoon hanging out with your friends on the huge outdoor patio. Share some local beer and sesame-crusted pies, or take a long lunch inside the cozy barn dining room filled with dark wood beams and booths. Thin crust, wood-fired pies are the star here, like the onion pie topped with shallots, calabrian chilis, and fresh herbs.
Sitting just in front of Hunter Mountain, Fellow looks like it could be on a postcard. But the location isn’t the only thing going for this spot—their luscious BLT with garlic scrape mayo is the perfect lunch, and their iced espresso drinks are excellent and make for refreshing pre-outdoor adventure fuel. The large indoor seating area and some quiet outdoor tables on the porch are also ideal if you “forgot” to tell your boss you were coming Upstate and have to fire off a few quick emails.
Jagerberg Beer Hall & Alpine Tavern is located just outside of Hunter Mountain’s resort, so you won’t have to go far to après-ski with a pint of German beer and a boiled pretzel. The draft list has mostly Bavarian beers, with some local IPAs, so you can broker a peace between your friend who keeps talking about the Alps and your buddy who feels legally obligated to consume a hazy beer every 24 hours. The portions here are huge—our strategy is to come with a group.
Regardless of if you’re not staying at Scribner’s Lodge for your mountain getaway, it's super fun hanging out at their bar in a fur coat, grabbing a drink to sip by the lobby’s circular fireplace, and pretending you’re actually in Aspen. The giant windows look out over Hunter Mountain’s slopes so you can watch the last-chair stragglers make their way down in the cold while you’re warming up with a hot toddy and a basket full of parmesan herb fries.
This Jalisco restaurant is worth seeking out no matter where you’re staying for incredible masa and goat birria in a dining room that looks like it could have been AI generated from Mad Men concept art and issues of Architectural Digest. Dishes like scallop aguachile are so pretty you’ll momentarily resist digging into it with a tostada shard, but you’ll get over it as soon as the scallops melt onto your tongue.
The Kaatskeller is right across from Main Street Farm. They’re managed by the same people, and we’ve witnessed the owner running from one to the other carrying a wheel of parmesan in his hand. Kaatskeller is a pizza place that’s 85% outdoors, and very family-friendly. The patio space feels a little like a German beer garden, but with the addition of Neapolitan-style pizza, dogs, children, and a fire pit in the back. Make sure to order the White Album pizza and the trout rillettes.
None of the food at Oliver’s, a British spot near Mount Tremper, is super flashy, but that’s exactly why we love it. Pub staples like savory hand pies and lamb bangers and mash are hearty and restorative, especially on a colder fall day or after your outdoor plans get rained out. The tavern sits on the ground floor of a restored 19th-century inn, and we’ve definitely thought about booking a stay here so that we can linger at the bar for a few rounds of elderflower spritzes and rosemary Negronis.
Phoenicia Diner has become so emblematic of the Catskills’ food scene that it’s become a meme, but it’s impossible not to love it. The menu is full of stuff you want to eat, including all-day breakfast with pancakes that need to be part of any order. The inside has a quintessential diner feel, but if you arrive to a long wait on the weekend, don’t hesitate to order at the food truck and dine at the picnic tables.
Peekamoose is an even better restaurant than it is a word, and that’s saying a lot. We’d put it alongside Cucina in Woodstock as a must-visit for dinner. The space is in a restored farmhouse, with two options for seating: make a reservation for the more formal dining room, or head to the deck where there’s plenty of first-come, first-served outdoor seating. The menu includes a list of dishes that make you want to order everything, including plates of wood-grilled octopus and homemade gnudi.
Despite the name, Woodstock Brewing is technically located in Phoenicia. The indoor space has huge windows and a tap list that includes beers like a pineapple passionfruit gose, an IPA with malted oats, and a porter that tastes like Dr. Pepper. Outside, there are tons of tables and a full food menu, including a phenomenal burger.
Hasbrouck House is an old inn that was taken over and renovated, and it has a fine dining restaurant called Butterfield. The walls are stone, there’s a fireplace, and the whole spot generally makes you feel like you’re in a fairy tale where food-based plots are motivated by locally foraged mushrooms rather than poisoned apples. The setting makes a great spot for celebrating a birthday or having a super-romantic date over trout rillettes, plus there’s a solid cocktail list.
Cherries has s a food menu with kid-friendly classics like burgers, sandwiches, and hot dogs, but you should not get back in your car without having at least one scoop of their small-batch ice cream. Classics like cookies and cream and cherry chocolate chunk are decadent and refreshing, and the rotating seasonal flavors like oat milk banana cookie inspire us to check back regularly.
At first glance, Tabla is indiscernible from any wine and pasta spot in Williamsburg. There’s moody lighting, a vaguely Mediterranean menu, and a bunch of people wearing pristine Carhartt jackets and nursing browned butter Old Fashioneds. By the time the check comes around, you'll find yourself waxing poetic about steaks from cows farmed in nearby New Paltz and booking a return visit to dig into the giant lamb meatball appetizer and rigatoni bolognese topped with a generous mound of ricotta.
Matilda is the hotel restaurant at the Henson, a 16-room inn that charges $389 a night for rooms engineered to look good in your end-of-summer film dump. It’s also from the same team that brought us Wildair and Day June, so there’s a lot of menu crossover (think: wine and delicate, vegetable-forward small plates). The dining room is gorgeous and the quiet location along the hills will have you looking up the availability during peak leaf-peeping season.
Day June partially exists to cater to the weekenders and transplants (the fancy, modern diner is from the same team behind Wildair), but the food is so good you won’t even mind running into your coworker. The comfort food dishes are the type of food you’d dream of eating while watching Saturday morning cartoons: cheddarmelt pancakes are topped with cheese and chipotle salsa, and the chicken fried steak is breaded with mini saltine crackers that look like gems poking out of a geode.
Come to this Southeast Asian spot on a Tuesday and you might find some parents sharing walnut larb and grilled trout while their children doodle in coloring books. Roll through on the weekend and you’ll likely see a big group kicking off a craft cocktail-filled birthday weekend with 10 of their closest friends. This is just a snapshot of the vibe at Good Night, a Woodstock restaurant with really delicious drinks that’s good for any occasion.
The first thing you’ll see when walking into Silvia is the roaring fire at the center of the open kitchen. Fire is a recurring theme in the dishes, too, with wood-fired pita, smoked beets drizzled with charred jalapeno chimichurri, and a 14-ounce steak that outshines pretty much every other piece of beef we’ve eaten in the Catskills. Warm lightning and exposed ceiling beams feel very rustic, yet the food itself is polished enough to impress persnickety parents.