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Westport/Essex Le Bistro at
Westport Yacht Club Long a focus of Westport social life with its dances and regattas, the old yacht club was sold in the 1940s as Westport experienced a decline in tourism and was converted into a private home. After a disastrous fire in 1982, the place was rebuilt as a public restaurant. Perched like a yacht club along the shores of Northwest Bay, it enjoys a panoramic water view up and down the lake. A front cocktail platform, a side deck, a lovely canopied porch and a serene inner dining room take full advantage. That the decor is so sophisticated and the food so good is a bonus. Chef-owner Bernard Perillat, co-owner of the popular Chez Henri at Sugarbush in Warren, Vt., moved here in 1996 when his lease for Le Bistro du Lac in Essex expired. Here he offers a similar bistro-ish menu, which is quite like the Sugarbush model and changes periodically. We lunched on his house pâté with a side salad and a salade niçoise, tasty but different with cauliflower substituting for the usual potatoes, and bits of bacon, anchovy and warm tuna. A signature dessert – frozen sorbet cake ($5), layers of passion fruit, raspberry and black currant topped with frozen kiwi and served on a raspberry coulis with lady fingers – was a sensational ending. Dinner entrées range from changing preparations of chicken and pasta to rack of lamb with rosemary-garlic sauce. Bouillabaisse provençal, duck with fruit or pepper sauce, veal with wild mushroom sauce and filet of beef au poivre are standards. They're supplemented by such nightly specials as blackened tuna with mustard sauce, grilled mahi mahi with salsa, pork tenderloin charcuterie and ragoût of sweetbreads and shiitake mushrooms. The classic onion soup gratinée, country pâté, escargots in puff pastry and endive salad are popular starters. Desserts run to mousses, crème caramel, ice cream and sorbet. (518) 962-8777. Entrées, $15.50 to $26. Lunch
daily in summer, 11:30 to 3. Dinner, 5 to 9 or 9:30. Open mid-June to
mid-September.
If its unprepossessing exterior in a commercial area prompts you to pass on, don't. Hidden behind the evergreens is an elongated restaurant of great appeal, particularly the rear porch screened by trellises and evergreens and looking like something you might find in California – or in an old Adirondack lodge. Hanging bushel baskets contain the lamps. Brightly painted wooden tulips are on the tables and shelves, and there's quite an assortment of mismatched chairs. All the wooden posts and beams and greenery provide lots of atmosphere. There’s additional outdoor dining on the front and side porches. The interior dining rooms are more traditional, with white-clothed tables, beamed ceilings and walls enhanced with paintings by local artists. A pot of impatiens decorates each table, inside and out. A huge picture of a dog team and sled dominates the bar. Chef-owner Ralph Warren used to own the College Inn Restaurant and Lounge in South Hadley, Mass. Here he's gone more upscale with a fairly extensive, changing dinner menu featuring healthful, low-fat choices. Entrées run from vegetarian dishes and raspberry chicken to Montreal peppered sirloin steak and New Zealand rack of lamb with honey, garlic and thyme. Clams casino, marinated herring and chilled shrimp and salsa are among the appetizers. The house wines are some of our favorites from Corbett Canyon. Upstairs off a long central corridor are ten guest rooms, clean but spartan ($50 to $90). Six have private baths. (518) 962-4501. Entrées, $12.95 to $18.95.
Breakfast daily, 8 to 2. Lunch, 11:30 to 2. Dinner, 5 to 9.
A new owner has improved the eighteen-hole championship public golf course and put in a state-of-the-art kitchen for the restaurant, which is open to the public. Chef Randy Turner from Florida runs the busy restaurant operation on a seasonal lease. The place seats 150 in a rustic dining room with pine paneling, a large bar and a garden patio. The dinner menu is short but serviceable, with all entrées at a set price of $14.95, which includes soup or salad and dessert. Expect such main courses as trout amandine, chicken marsala, prime rib, roast leg of lamb and filet mignon on garlic toast. Dessert could be apple pie, rice pudding, fruit or ice cream. Appetizers cost an extra $8.95 for the likes of crab cakes, steamed mussels or clams, or a casserole of shrimp scampi. (518) 962-8283. www.westportcountryclub.com. Entrées,
$14.95. Lunch and dinner from 11 a.m., daily in July and August,
Wednesday-Sunday off-season. Closed October to mid-May. The
Essex Inn The expanding restaurant taking up the front veranda, two main-floor rooms and a little tavern with a cage bar has been upgraded by new chef-owner John Walker, a Culinary Institute of America graduate. Antiques, stenciling and period art enhance the candlelit dining rooms, which innkeeper Trish Walker, the chef’s wife and hostess, has tried to make “relaxed and early American.” The wait staff in Colonial attire serve fare that changes weekly A typical dinner menu might feature prosciutto-wrapped sea bass, grouper sautéed with mushrooms and white wine, chicken tarragon, grilled strip steak and filet mignon with béarnaise sauce. Starters vary from shrimp cocktail to escargots and crab-stuffed mushrooms. Trish prepares the desserts, her signature being warm apple crisp with vanilla ice cream. Spiced pear and apple tart, chocolate lava cake with a molten center and cheesecakes are others. (518) 963-8821. Entrées, $10.95 to $21.95.
Dinner by reservation, nightly except Tuesday 5:30 to 9; off-season,
Wednesday-Sunday. The Galley What owners Dee and Bob Carroll call Lake Champlain's most active marina includes a busy restaurant operation in the old seaplane hangar, whose arched roof gives it something of a boathouse feeling. It's a cavernous place, made more cozy with such personal touches as a gallery of Westport waterfront scenes along one wall, newspapers and games in the restored desk from the old freight office on the dock, and a free paperback book exchange in the pigeon-hole pass-throughs once used for selling tickets to steamboat passengers. The Carrolls keep the place jumping with activities like weekly lakeside barbecues and visiting entertainers on summer Saturday nights. The extensive, all-day menu is affordably priced. Among specialties are tortilla salad, chicken-chutney-curry salad and teriyaki sirloin sticks from an old family recipe. Complete dinner platters include poached or grilled salmon with lemon-dill sauce, cajun-style shrimp alfredo, shrimp and swordfish kabobs, fried clams and ribeye steak with Montreal pepper sauce. All this is taken on redwood picnic tables inside or outside under umbrellas beside the boats. (518) 962-4899. Entrées, $9.95 to $15.95.
Breakfast daily, 8 to 11, Sunday to noon. Lunch and dinner, 11 to 8 or
9. Open mid-June through Labor Day. Material excerpted from Inn Spots & Special Places / Mid-Atlantic, by Nancy and Richard Woodworth. Copyright 2003. Wood Pond Press E-mail feedback to: Home
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