Beacon NY: Cafe Amarcord (September 2015)


My spouse and I dined at Café Amarcord for dinner on a Friday evening in late September 2015. Café Amarcord is open Tuesdays through Sundays for lunch and dinner (closed Mondays). The Café accepts reservations via telephone and using the Open Table system. Parking is available on the street.
 
Café Amarcord is located on the corner of Main Street and Brett Street in Downtown Beacon in a charmingly restored house. The front room contains the bar as well as a few tables, and the back room contains only tables for a more quiet dining space. The front window of the restaurant can be opened to the street in nice weather, and two tiny tables outside on the sidewalk allow true al fresco dining.

We ordered the beet and goat cheese gateau (layered beets and cheese sprinkled with walnuts and pomegranate sauce) and the egg and shrimp carpaccio (served over shoestring potatoes) as appetizers (priced at $12 and $14, respectively), followed by the short rib pappardelle ($22) and the veal chop. The veal chop was a special that evening, and priced at $34, was the largest and most delicious chop that we had ever seen; in fact, the price seemed a bit low for such an enormous piece of meat! Regrettably, we were too full to order dessert. Service was extremely professional from everyone that we met, which was a pleasant surprise in this sleepy little river town. We took longer than expected to eat our appetizers, and when the server emerged from the kitchen with our entrees, she noticed from across the room that we were not yet ready for them. So she took the dishes back to the kitchen for a few minutes, an act that we greatly appreciated. (At other restaurants, so often servers just stand next to our table, tapping their foot, holding the next course while we are still eating the previous course and expecting us to make room for the extra plates on the table, or give up our only partially eaten appetizers.) It is evident that the restaurant has trained the staff at this establishment properly and that they take their jobs seriously.

We thoroughly enjoyed our meal at Café Amarcord – fine dining in the Hudson Valley!






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