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1000 Islands,
NY/Ont. The
Wellesley Hotel The ever-so-quaint, Victorian-relic community of Thousand Island Park is home of the old Wellesley Hotel, which has a seasonal restaurant on the main floor, a second floor of Victorian boutiques and a wing of eight bare-bones hotel rooms of the old school, now rented as suites with a bedroom and sitting room with a bath in between. The lessees seem to come and go, but we had one of our better meals on the summery dining porch here a few years back. In 2003, the restaurant and hotel operation was leased to Gerry and Diane Brinkman, who upgraded the accommodations as best they could and whose food was an instant hit. The couple, who owned the former Rochester Club Restaurant in Rochester for eleven years, offer a short, affordable menu in the main-floor dining porch with a view of the river. Expect starters like crab cakes rémoulade, yellow perch cocktail, escargots in a skillet with roasted garlic and blue cheese or a rustic steak and spinach tart. Entrées range from Thai sea scallops with a spicy Asian garnish to grilled New York strip steak. Cherry-wood planked salmon and Tuscan-style pork chops are signature dishes. (315) 482-3698. www.wellesley-hotel.com.
Entrées, $18.95 to $22.95. Dinner nightly, 5 to 9 or 10. Pub daily,
noon to 11 or midnight. Closed early October to late May.
Locals are partial to the Simpson family’s restaurant beside the highway east of Clayton. The exterior and the menu could be anywhere, but the interior, the food and the service are quite distinguished. The dining rooms are contemporary with stained glass, skylights, hanging plants, and cane and chrome chairs at pink and mauve-linened tables spaced well apart, particularly in the dark and intimate non-smoking room where, a few years ago, we were seated. A freebie starter of pasta salad with roasted red peppers, a basket of rolls and bread, and an unusual house salad combining everything from niçoise olives to pepperoni to mandarin oranges hinted of pleasures to come. Among entrées, we lucked out with two specials: the smaller portion of prime rib, a man-size slab of perfect rare beef with horseradish sauce, and garlic-crusted rack of lamb, an extraordinary presentation of nine racks, french fries and broccoli with hollandaise sauce, a serving so abundant that even the lamb-lover among us could not finish. An excellent, modestly priced French cabernet accompanied from a wine list priced from yesteryear. We tried to save room for one of the great-sounding desserts, but could only manage a shared dish of raspberry twist frozen yogurt. Two mints gilded the bill – it was the best $50 dinner we’d had in a long time. Over more than two decades, chef Mike Simpson has deservedly garnered a loyal following for his continental/American fare, especially his shrimp scampi. You can’t go wrong with anything on the extensive menu, but we prefer to go for the specials. Skip an appetizer or you’ll never finish. (315) 686-3842. www.clipperinn.com. Entrées,
$14.95 to $29.95. Dinner nightly in summer, 5 to 10; Wednesday-Sunday in
off-season. Closed November-March.
Alex Bay’s most glamorous hotel claims its most glamorous restaurant, a fourth-floor beauty in blue and white with windows onto the water on three sides. Elaborate rattan chairs are at tables set with Steuben crystal, alstroemeria and frosted-glass oil candles. A pianist or harpist entertains in season. A team of chefs executes a pretentious French menu that changes every two weeks. Caesar salad and flambéed desserts are prepared tableside. Items like slow-roasted lobster tail, loin of venison and rack of lamb are cooked on a French rotisserie in a space open to the room, handsomely bordered with blue and white tile. Other choices range from seafood medley over lemon pepper linguini to filet mignon and grilled veal chop. Appetizers include escargots served in a garlic cream sauce over snow crab and mesclun greens, chiffonade of lobster and wild mushrooms in puff pastry, and sliced caramelized muscovy duck breast with baby spinach and candied pecans. Desserts run to chocolate and strawberry gâteau and grand marnier torte. Three meals a day are available in the hotel’s Windows on the Bay restaurant on the ground floor, where we gobbled up the specialty strawberry pancakes for breakfast. (315) 482-9917. Entrées, $28 to $35. Dinner
nightly, 6 to 9:30. Closed mid-October to mid-May.
Across from the Thousand Islands Country Club in the most posh area of the Islands, this venerable Mediterranean-style resort has undergone several incarnations in its 101 years, Since the mid-1990s the sprawling establishment has reverted to a casual seasonal restaurant serving dinner only, which seemed not to be the highest and best use for so substantial a property. The waterfront location remains as appealing and glamorous as ever, with a couple of large and pretty interior dining rooms furnished in rattan looking out onto a long, covered dining veranda and lawns leading to boats and water. The leased operation seems to change every few years. The extensive continental/American menu runs from stuffed grouper and salmon oscar to four steaks and rack of lamb. Veal and chicken are offered three ways: piccata, marsala and parmigiana. You might start with tuna sashimi or crispy calamari with a sweet Thai sauce. Desserts run to tiramisu, amaretto cheesecake and mudslide mousse pie. There’s also a lounge, where we ate at one visit – quite elegant and pleasant, except for piped-in music that was so loud we had to ask that it be turned down. The lounge menu produced an exceptional spinach salad paired with a seafood pie in one case and rare sesame-seared tuna served with ponzu sauce and wasabi in the other. Those plus a bottle of J.Lohr chardonnay from a short and pricey wine list and a shared dessert of ice cream resulted in a not-so-lounge-like tab of $70 for two. Yet it was glamorous, no doubt about it. (315) 482-9999. Entrées, $14.95 to $31.95.
Dinner, Wednesday-Sunday, 5 to 10. Closed November-April. Captain's
Landing We ate dinner here, and breakfast, too – such is the watery allure of this floating barge with a restaurant right at river’s edge. As you approach, you think you’re about to enter a shingled house on a pier between two sections of the Capt. Thomson motels. Inside, you realize you’re right on the water when the restaurant pitches slightly as waves from a passing freighter roll in. The Thomson family’s latest hit, this has a pleasant candlelit, two-level dining room (all tables with views of the water) on the ground floor and an upstairs lounge with old postcards inlaid in the tables. Both levels come with decks at one end and a couple of open alcoves for outdoor dining. For dinner, we enjoyed poached salmon béarnaise and pork cutlets with a good mushroom-leek sauce. And, because of a kitchen delay on the salmon dish, we took them up on their offer of free desserts (raspberry sherbet and a dense chocolate chambord cake, which went particularly well when mixed together). The extensive dinner menu seems to have lost some of its zip lately in favor of the tried and true, from broiled haddock, seafood pasta and chicken tenders to prime rib and filet mignon. At breakfast, we enjoyed eggs benedict at a table for two in our own outdoor alcove beside the water. The all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet for $6.95 is a popular item these days. (315) 482-7777. www.captthomsons.com. Entrées,
$12.95 to $23.95. Breakfast daily, 7 to 11. Lunch, from 11. Dinner, 5 to
9 or 9:30. Closed mid-October to early May.
The large rear deck beside the river is the place of choice for lunch or dinner at this casual storefront establishment that succeeded the innovative Wild Goose Café when it closed. Owners Roger and Cheryl Wakeel scaled down the menu and reduced the hours to the point they had just closed when we arrived for dinner at 7:40 on a summer Sunday. We had planned to try a couple of Greek “specialties:” shrimp à la grecian and chicken souvlaki. Otherwise the dinner menu is Italian/American, ranging from fried clam strips and stuffed sole with basil sauce to prime rib and steak remo. Expect things like baked lasagna, haddock marinara, chicken parmesan and a fried seafood platter. An extensive roster of appetizers, salads, burgers and sandwiches is available all day. A couple of lunch specials proved adequate: a haddock sandwich and a crab cake sandwich on homemade french bread, both accompanied with fries and coleslaw. (315) 686-2940. Entrées, $12.95 to $19.95. Open
daily, 11:30 to 8 or 8:30, Sunday noon to 7:30. Closed November-April. Harbor
Inn Across the street from the Antique Boat Museum complex is this funky, restored 1860s riverfront home with a glimpse of the river. New chef-owners Roger and Vicki Hyde dropped the “diner” from the name, which harked back to the seats around a central dining counter. Theirs is more of a restaurant with assorted tables topped with vinyl cloths, a few tables with water views on the front deck, and a collection of old tools, bottles and such on the walls. We had a good lunch here of monkfish chowder, vegetable quiche and cobb salad, accompanied by a mason jar full of iced tea, the biggest drink we ever saw for 85 cents. For breakfast, you can order Texas french toast with toasted almonds or choose among ten omelets. Roger’s background as executive chef for large Texas hotels shows in his dinner specials. Served with soup or salad, they are quite innovative for the area, perhaps sautéed Canadian walleye pike fillets with lemon and sherry, sautéed chicken with asparagus and white wine, and blackened sirloin with sautéed mushrooms and mustard-garlic sauce. The pastry intern’s desserts come highly recommended, and the wines are nicely priced. The Hydes also offer three guest rooms with views of the river for $83 a night. (315) 686-2293. Entrées, $9.44 to $11.97. Open
daily, 6 a.m. to 9 or 10 p.m.
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