This will be the last post for Hudson Valley Restaurant Week, and after today, I’m going to cut off for the contest. I’ll choose the authors of my five favorite comments and give them each a pair of tickets to the Greater New York Wine & Food Festival the first weekend in April at the Doubletree Hotel Tarrytown.
I’ve been so busy getting ready for next week’s TV special on RNN (tune in at 630 PM Wednesday to see tons of local stories about the food and wine scene!), so I didn’t get a chance to dine out this week. Luckily, I had plenty of volunteers to help me out, including Judith Hausman, who headed to Jackson & Wheeler for lunch on Wednesday. Judy needs a bit of practice with the camera, but she has plenty of experience writing about food in Westchester. Here’s what she found. Judy:
I’ve been meaning to get back to Jackson and Wheeler in Pleasantville for a long time. The place is always filled to the gills on weekend movie nights; it’s so convenient to The Jacob Burns Film Center. And I’m always getting wind of events, holiday meals and performances there too.
It seemed like a good bet for another Restaurant Week lunch.
Unfortunately, I found the menu choices uninspired. Standard baby spinach with (a little too much) respectable lemony vinaigrette and real bacon. The dressing on my friend’s regular-menu beet and goat cheese salad was really sweet though. I could’ve tried the butternut squash soup, or the iceberg and blue cheese salad.
Of the three entree selections, I bypassed a buffalo chicken wrap and fussili with spinach, olives and chopped tomato for the grilled portobello sandwich with mozzarella and red peppers. The mushroom cap was juicy but the dish had little flavor other than what the roasted peppers contributed. The hamburger bun was unacceptable. Why didn’t somebody slice some good bread or grill a panino? Otherwise, the sandwich was fine and as billed…just not an event-level, show-off-our-menu offering. My friend’s sweet potato fries and gooey grilled cheese from the regular menu were better but expensive.
Now dessert…Raspberry swirl cheesecake is just too much for lunch so we shared the napoleon. Tough pastry but decently flavored cream filling. Bit of a boring choice, tough.
If Hudson Valley Restaurant Week is an opportunity for marketing, Jackson and Wheeler didn’t take it. The selections did not show off what they could do at all and was calculated, I think, down to the $16.09.
Jackson & Wheeler, 25 Wheeler St., Pleasantville. 914-741-2000. jacksonandwheeler.com
8 Comments
Last chance! I’m closing comments soon! What did you think of Jackson & Wheeler — or any other HVRW restaurant?
Tell me here in the comments field. I’ll choose my five favorite comments and give the authors each a free pair of tickets to the Greater New York Wine&Food Festival on April 4, 5, and 6 at the DoubleTree Hotel Tarrytown.
The contest ends at midnight tonight.
My husband and I thought restaurant week would be the perfect time to try x2o, assuming we would not be able to afford it under normal circumstances. Not only was the food fantastic, the view spectacular, the decor exquisite, the service excellent, we also had an exciting visit from the very famous yet down to earth Peter R Kelly! Most importantly while looking at their regular menu we realized that X2O is not as expensive as we thought and we can’t wait to return to try their crispy duck1 Thank you restaurant week!
I really didn’t know what to expect since I had never been to Jackson & Wheeler. Once I arrived, I did realize that I had seen the restaurant on several occasions when I ate a Bollywood, one of my favorite Indian restaurants just done the street. I actually thought it was a bar when I passed it before. I never would have given it a second thought if it had not been a participant in the Hudson Valley Restaurant Week. I was very pleasantly surprised at the atmosphere. It was not formal, but far less casual than I expected. We started with Calamari as we waited for others to join us. It was okay, nothing special and I have tried many calamari offerings. Of the two sauces served with the calamari, the Sriacha Sauce was my favorite. It was nicely spiced and creamy, full bodied a really nice compliment to the dish. The other was a Marinara Sauce. While I don’t usually eat marinara sauce on my calamari, I did try it. It was a really good marinara sauce, very fresh with subtle hints of a wonderful blend of herbs and vegetables.
Someone else from our party arrived and we decided to order. Unfortunately the had run out of the Butternut Squash Bisque listed as on of the options for the first course. I ordered the Jackson Wheeler house salad and was pleased with the taste. It had a wonderful blend of flavors. The combination of Mixed Greens, Carmalized Apples Candied Walnuts, Bleu Cheese & Apple Cider Vinegarette was the perfect balance of sweet & tangy as well as soft and crunchy. I certainly felt that the salad portion could be larger. In place of the bisque, one of my companions had a Stracciatella. Our waiter explained that this is an Italian Egg Drop Soup. She enjoyed it and wasn’t disappointed about not getting the bisque. Our main course came and my Fussili Pasta with Shrimp was presented in beautiful fare. The colors were attractive, but the taste didn’t live up to what the eyes told my stomach. The pasta was quite bland and the standard black olives were just too simple for the dish. A more exotic olive would have been nice. I must say that the shrimp in the dish were just the right size and were very fresh and flavorful. The components of the dish did not marry together and create the kind of union of flavor that one hopes for. Finally, it was time to have dessert. Like Liz I had the Napoleon and agree that the pastry was tough. Several of us had it, had to use a night to cut it. The filling was good and our presentation was a little better then in the picture shown in the earlier blog, in that we had raspberry swirls on our plate. Overall, I was pleased with the experience. The ambiance, the wonderful decor and the lavish attention given by the Owner and the waiters made up for any flaws in the food.
My friends and I very much enjoyed our dinner at The Bird and Bottle on Friday evening. None of the four of us had ever visited this Hudson Valley landmark. We could smell the wood smoke from the fire in the main dining room as we walked from the parking lot. We were greeted cheerily when we arrived and seated immediately. The Bird and Bottle Inn made a special Restaurant Week menu. We each choose one of the four appetizers, tomatoe tarte with herico vert, shrimp and couscous, house salad and the standout, potatoe and cheddar soup which also appears on the regular menu. The fellow who chose the soup, joked “I’ll take anoter bowl.” My tomatoe tart with green beans was a close second for the best appetizer. Unkowingly, three of us made main course selections found on the regular menu. Two selected the Scalops with succotash and I choose the Fricase Chicken. The Scallops were nicely golden in appearance and the winning entre at our table. The entre not taken from the regular menu the Lasagne Bolanese was also declared to be “delicious.” The desert selections were: Banana Rum Raisin Bread pudding, Apple Crumble a la Mode and Chocolate Lava Cake. The Banana Rum Raisin Bread pudding was loaded with bananas and “not too sweet”, a real winner. The Choclate Lava Cake was also not overly sweet, however, the Apple Crumble was overly sweet. Our service was attentive and pleasant. All in our party plan to return to this warm Hudson Valley restaurant.
Hey Liz, it’s not fair you cut off comments Friday night and several of us were still eating out that night!
After reading several other’s experiences about Stoneleigh Creek Restaurant I felt I needed to elaborate on just how bad my experience was, in order to save others from a pricy and poor meal. I had been to Stoneleigh Creek when it was a small place in Croton Falls. I loved it there – and they had a terrific fish. Upon being seated on Friday, (after our coats were not even offered hooks on wall) I asked if they were still getting the fish from the same distributor. The seater said he didn’t know. He wasn’t going to find out for me until I asked him to. He went toward the kitchen and met another server coming out. He asked the question to the other person who gave an I-Don’t-Know-Look and then said “Sure!” It was clear the person had no idea one way or the other and the seater then returned to me and said “Sure!” The attitude was so rude and flippant. Approx four times help came by, 3 times by the same person, to ask up what alcohol we were having. None to all four times. Even ordering the food was difficult here. I asked for the tuna tataki without the mayo-wasabi and the mango and was told that they were part of the meal, especially the decoration of the plate. Great, but I still don’t like them and I still didn’t want them. The waitress, clearly annoyed by questions, had to ask if the kitchen could leave off the decorations. They obliged and the tuna came. I recieved four ends of the tuna. I don’t even know how you get four ends when a piece of tuna usually has two (and usually are not served to paying customers). Anyway, the menu failed to mention that the tuna came au poivre, or covered in peppercorns. My mouth was on FIRE!! It was unreal. I tried to cut the pepper out or scape to salvage but could not even do so. When it was brought to waitress’s attention she got even angrier and literally walked away when we were talking to her. At this point we thought “maybe we should leave” as none at the table, HWRW or not, had been treated this poorly in a restaurant. I should also mention the LOUD yelling that was clearly audible from the table that came from behind the kitchen’s closed doors. Yelling, screaming, berating of employees was loud and unprofessional. No wonder not one of our help cracked a smile, joke or any other pleasantry. They were as miserable as the person in the kitchen yelling and as stoic as a construction worker flagging in the rain.
Onto ordering, my husband, not a mushroom fan, requested the truffle sauce not be spread on his short ribs. He was sternly told that the ribs would be “really dry and bland” and that they would be tasteless with no sauce. The waitress was really arguing/debating this with him. He insisted no mushrooms and was eventually granted this but after much hassle. I ordered the fish, a red snapper. The waitress later came by to inform that they had run out (at 6:00pm) of the red salmon. I told her that was OK, I hadn’t ordered the salmon and hoped my order was at least for a fish since I have never heard of RED salmon. The main courses were good, generous portions with lumpy mashed potatoes. The red snapper did come as my entree (as I had ordered). However, due to the spicy tuna I really couldn’t enjoy it because my mouth was numb. Husband’s ribs were good but dry, as promised. Yelling in kichen continued throughout meal. As other diners were being seated they were asked if they were there for HVRW. If they said no, they were only given the regular menu and had to order the same foods I was eating, but they had to pay full price which was in the $20 – 30.00 range. Not very kind or generous of the restaurant especially since their HVRW menu had all of the regular menu food on it (in a limited but varied selection).
OK, on to dessert. We asked the waitress, who at this point, my husband was seriously afraid of, about the apple tarte tatin. She compared it to the apple pies at McDonalds. You know, the ones that are 2 for $1.00!?. Interesting comparison for an “upscale” restaurant! I went for the zeppoles which were soft but oily and came with a chocolate dipping sauce. I think it was Hershey’s chocolate syrup that you make chocolate milk with. I was not impressed. The yelling in the kitchen, the rudeness of the waitresses who didn’t even know who to give what to when our food actually came, and the appetizers that scalded our mouths made this an unfortunate experience that I will not be repeating. Following dinner, on the way home, we all agreed to leave a restaurant, even mid-meal, if we were ever treated this poorly ever again.
I didn’t find Stoneleigh Creek’s service to be as bad as you, but it wasn’t great and the staff was clearly not up to the standard you’d expect at a restaurant of these prices. This place actually gave us a really nice table, they put us at a table for 4 because the only 2’s were near the door and I guess they had an extra 4 since we had changed our reservation from 3 to 2 an hour or so before we arrived (not intentionally to get a better table, of course). The tables for two against the wall seemed pretty cramped.
The short rib sauce likely would not have had any mushroom flavor just because it was advertised as with truffles; my wife did not find any and it did not taste like mushrooms. He definitely should have at least had it on the side. That was strange about your getting 4 end pieces. I only had one of those, but I could see how those would be more peppery than the middle ones.
BTW I felt just as strongly about the service at Equus, but obviously for different reasons.
PPS my wife had the leftover short rib from Stoneleigh Creek for lunch today and confirmed that it did in fact have mushrooms in it. My bad.