Hot New Summer Menus

Diners discover the new bar menu at Nines in Germantown. Photo by Katherine Arias.

A lot has changed on the regional restaurant map since last summer. Gaskins became Nines. A diner held together by scotch tape and decades of goodwill got a serious kitchen. A pop-up that spent a year and a half traveling from North Adams to Tivoli finally signed a lease. What follows is not everything worth eating this summer—but it's a good start.

Nines

2 Church Avenue, Germantown

For nearly a decade, Gaskins was a communal center for Germantown. When it closed, the question wasn't whether someone would take over the space but whether whatever came next could fill the big shoes. The answer is yes. Avery Jannelli and chef Ryan McLaughlin—life and business partners who moved back to the Hudson Valley after meeting in Philadelphia—opened Nines in April, and the direction was immediately distinct and personal while continuing their predecessors' dedication to great food and a relaxed room.

The menu is a coastal riviera inflection on the Columbia County farm table: French and Italian technique applied to the best seasonal ingredients. Mackerel crudo brightened with aji amarillo. Lamb meatballs. Swordfish skewers. The wine list leans toward natural producers with a real eye for the glass that belongs next to what's on the plate. The name nods to the Routes Nines threading through the region—9, 9G, 9H, 9W, 9J—and to the number's literary use as a kind of placeholder. The logo looks like a comma.

The Pink House

34 Lower River Road, West Cornwall, Connecticut

Getting here means crossing the red covered bridge over the Housatonic—the 1864 bridge is one of the last of its kind in Connecticut, and the walk alone is worth the trip. Chef CJ Barroso, who came up through New York kitchens including Aquavit and Saxon + Parole before running the kitchen at the Lost Fox Inn in Litchfield, joined the Pink House earlier this year. Born in the Philippines, Barroso folds global flavors into whatever the region is producing: a fava bean hummus with pickled vegetables and chips seasoned with what he calls West Cornwall spice, his riff on Old Bay; a sweet potato mash with brown butter, Aleppo pepper, thyme, and hazelnuts. The dining room is small. The Housatonic runs past outside. Book ahead.

Belden House & Mews

31 North Street, Litchfield, Connecticut

When Belden House opened last year in a restored 1888 Queen Anne mansion on Litchfield's historic green, it made a mark fast—31 rooms, a Michelin Key within five months, and a restaurant that's a big reason why. Chef Tyler Heckman, a Connecticut native who left New York after years at El Quijote, Ferris, and Le Turtle, draws heavily from the New England coast and nearby farms. The sourdough focaccia with koji cultured butter settles the question of whether to fill up on bread. Pink Moon oysters from Prince Edward Island arrive with green strawberry sauce and horseradish jam instead of mignonette. Almost everything is made in-house.

Haema

538 Warren Street, Hudson

Hannah Wong spent her early career in demanding New York kitchens—Gramercy Tavern, db bistro, co-founding the Michelin-recommended Van Da—before moving to the Hudson Valley to run the kitchen at The Aviary in Kinderhook. It was there she met SJ McLaughlin, who ran New World Bistro Bar in Albany for over a decade. After 18 months of pop-ups across the Berkshires and Hudson Valley, they opened their brick-and-mortar on Warren Street this spring.

The menu draws from Wong's Chinese, Korean, and American background and her travels through Southeast Asia. Handmade noodles are the signature—hand-pulled and silver needle, the latter a rice noodle from Hakka cuisine in southern China. Chiang Mai sausage larb with toasted rice powder and sesame crackers. Hand-pulled noodles with braised Kinderhook Farm lamb, cilantro, celery, and chili oil. "Street food is just what I gravitate toward," Wong says. "The flavors are unapologetic."

Dove's Diner

1016 Route 82, Ancram

The West Taghkanic Diner had been a Taconic Parkway landmark, held together—in co-owner Emma Rosenbush's words—"by scotch tape and bubble gum for 50-plus years." Lauren Stanek and Rosenbush reopened it in March as Dove's, preserving the feel of the historic lunch counter while vastly upgrading the menu. Stanek cooked at Chez Panisse and founded Kitties in Hudson; Rosenbush co-ran the celebrated San Francisco restaurant Cala. The menu doesn't reinvent the diner but the revision is in the sourcing: Northwind Farms, Ronnybrook Dairy. Stanek won't put a BLT on the menu until the tomatoes actually get good. That's the whole philosophy in a sentence.

Hilltown

224 Hillsdale Road, South Egremont, Massachusetts

Rafi Bildner worked political campaigns in Alaska, led hiking tours through the Middle East, and apprenticed in small southern Italian kitchens before coming home to the Berkshires and starting a pizza truck in 2019. What opened last November, after a down-to-the-studs renovation of an 1790s farmhouse, is the brick-and-mortar version of everything the truck was reaching toward. The pizza is "Neapolitan-ish"—sourdough crust, wood-fired oven, locally sourced dairy and veg. The wine list is Southern Italian and deliberate: Aglianico, Falanghina, Nero d'Avola. No Pinot Grigio. The center room has a communal table made from a sugar maple taken down on the property.

Serre

302 Warren Street, Hudson

The Maker Hotel is made up of 11 rooms across three connected historic buildings on Warren Street. It has always had a restaurant though no one really knew that. This spring it finally has the chef to match the jaw-dropping dining room. Jonas Offenbach, who cooked at Gramercy Tavern, Momofuku Ko, and Contra before Covid sent him to Aspen and a Nakazawa pop-up, arrived last summer and has recently rebranded the glass conservatory space as Serre—French for greenhouse.

The cooking is French in technique and exacting in application. "Not having had the experience of cooking in a classic French kitchen," Offenbach has says, "it's my own interpretation of these things." The potato dauphine with Boston mackerel and sauce au poivre is a case study: classical French method applied with the precision of a sushi kitchen. The lamb chop crepinette—Kinderhook Farm caul fat, spring peas, mint, sauce madere—traces to 19th-century peasant preparations. The room, all glass and candlelight and tropical plants, turns date night into a vacation.

No Comply Foods

258 Stockbridge Road, Great Barrington, Massachusetts

No tipping, no reservations, no wait staff, no alcohol, and a menu that changes every single day. Steve and Julie Browning's pink building on Stockbridge Road has been breaking the restaurant playbook since it opened in 2024, and it works because the morally driven operation is also genuinely delicious. Steve and chef Dimitri Koufis write the next day's menu after service based on what's available. The sourcing is seasonal and local—there's no other way to do it when you're starting from scratch every twenty-four hours. Japanese sweet potato with labneh and chili crisp, pork-and-fennel meatballs, falafel salads, roasted carrots with cilantro chutney. Entrees rarely exceed $25. "We wanted a place that's accessible for everybody," Julie says.