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We look forward to seeing you soon!

Mark Ganem, Adam Klersfeld and the staff of Vico

Please call us at 518.828.6529 to reserve your table today.

We were overwhelmed at the response to Karl’s post-Thanksgiving Sunday brunch, with many guests asking us when we planned to do it again. Well, Karl has graciously agreed to serve his special menu every Sunday in December as well as New Year’s Weekend – That’s 12/13 , 12/20, 12/27 and 1/3/10. (And he promises some surprise specials as well!) So please drop by and enjoy! Please call 518-828-6529 for reservations, or just drop by !

HUDSON—Mark Ganem got his first glimpse of Columbia County when he came up from New York City  to interview Spencertown artist Ellsworth Kelly for W magazine. Now, years later, he is chef and co-owner  of Vico Restaurant on lower Warren Street.

Having a literary adventure lead to the kitchen is nothing new for Mr. Ganem. He mastered Italian cooking at a bed-and-breakfast near Florence, where he was planning to settle in and write a novel after  giving up his job as Milan bureau chief for Women’s Wear Daily.

A 1985 Harvard graduate with a major in biology, Mr. Ganem went directly to Fairchild Publications, publisher of Women’s Wear Daily, from the headquarters of the Harvard Lampoon, where he worked  with Conan O’Brien of NBC’s Late Night with Conan O’Brien. The two also roomed together.

The world of women’s wear was something Mr. Ganem knew nothing about: He’d merely sent out his  resume to a few dozen publishers, and Fairchild was the one that called him.

He was given a freelance assignment, and that led to a full-time job. “I didn’t know anything about  fashion and here I was, sitting in the front row at the shows,” says Mr. Ganem. He says he soon learned  to concentrate on the essentials: “Mr. Fairchild told me to ‘forget about color, look at the line’.”

He’d had a year of Italian at school, and eventually he was sent to Fairchild’s Milan bureau, where he  found himself struggling to carry on conversations with such world-famous designers as Giorgio Armani  and Gianni Versace. The six-hour time difference between New York and Milan required that he have  their private telephone numbers for after-hours fashion emergencies. He once called Valentino at nearly  midnight. A minor scandal had erupted, alleging that first lady Nancy Reagan was using her husband’s  influence to satisfy her taste for beautiful clothes without paying retail. He had to ask the designer  whether he cared to comment.

Mr. Ganem majored in biology in deference to his parents, both of whom are medical doctors. His facility  for language seems to have been inborn—he’s also fluent in French. But cooking was always his first  love. He says he especially likes Tuscan cooking because “you can tell what every ingredient is.”

“Vico” means “village” in the Tuscan dialect, and the menu at Vico follows the Tuscan model of using  locally produced, seasonal ingredients. In addition, the wine list features naturally produced, small-scale  wines from Tuscany.

Mr. Ganem is enthusiastic about small-scale agriculture in Columbia County, where he has joined a  newly organized farm-to-chef initiative. Nearly all the meat at Vico comes from Van Wie Natural Foods on  Route 9 in Stottville, and local farmers are now providing some of the fresh vegetables.

Mr. Ganem and others in the farm-to-chef program hope to establish a system that will make it easier for  restaurants to use local produce, noting a growing demand on the part of their customers. “I know it’s  there,” says Mr. Ganem, “but there doesn’t seem to be a coordinated distribution or information system.”

Mr. Ganem and his partner, Adam Klersfeld, bought what was intended to be a weekend house in  Canaan in 2000. But they moved in full time after they lost their jobs in the city, simultaneously, four  months after taking ownership. Mr. Ganem had been working as editor-in-chief for Style.com, the
Internet site for Vogue and W magazines, and Mr. Klersfeld, who has a degree in psychology and a  teaching background, was on the staff at Housing Works, an AIDS charity.

Mr. Klersfeld oversees the “front of the house,” taking reservations, greeting customers, and supervising  wait staff. Mr. Ganem is in charge of the kitchen. They have about half a dozen employees. The two had  been looking for restaurant space in Chatham for three years or so when they came upon the building at  136 Warren Street, which had been remodeled and equipped by Bolgen and Moi, the local branch of a  Norwegian restaurant that went out of business after just over a year. A new grill has been installed, the  walls have been redecorated, and a garden dining area has been refurnished and graveled.

Mr. Ganem would like to offer cooking classes, although the size of the kitchen could make that difficult.  There is barely room to turn around between the stove and the chopping block. The restaurant has  been able to accommodate parties of 10 and even 20, nonetheless. In the latter case, Mr. Ganem said,  the meal’s hosts decided to offer their guests three menu options—one grilled, one roasted and one  sautéed—making his job considerably easier.

Main courses start at around $20, with the most expensive item on the menu being bistecca Florentina,  a 22-to-24-ounce, locally raised, organic Porterhouse steak. The restaurant is currently open for dinner
only, but a weekend brunch is being contemplated.

Among the culinary pearls that ornament antiques-laden Warren Street in downtown Hudson, two-year-old Vico Restaurant & Bar shines on several counts. It is a sincere and genial spot, always eager to please, and with a chef who turns out honest, regional Italian fare employing the best of the Valley’s provender.

The restaurant occupies an 1880s Victorian building that has housed many lodgers over the years, the most nostalgic among them an old-fashioned soda and ice cream parlor. If you sit at Vico’s long steel- topped bar you’ll see the original chrome soda pulls. Alas, the pulls pull no more. In their place are two beers on tap. I sampled something called Blue Moon Belgian White Wheat Ale. It was cloudy in the glass, foamy, and with a light orange hue — an attribute that inspired our bartender to garnish the glass with a slice of orange. Hey, why not?

“Dominique,” I nudged my friend and dining recruit for the evening. “Taste this stuff. Belgian. Pretty cool.”

Being a professional wine taster, Dominique possesses a palate that is not easily amused. I couldn’t wait for his assessment. “Interesting,” he mumbled, in deference to his friend who was paying the check. (The following day I researched this exotic libation, only to learn that it is owned by the Coors Brewing Company, and is made in Memphis.)

The modern bar is done in a sponged — or “ragged,” as it is sometimes called — warm brick tone. “Burgundy tone,” Dominique volunteered. All of the rooms are enlivened with bold, brightly colored abstract art from area painters. The restaurant’s sole nod to Victoriana is two clusters of chandelier crystals dangling above the bar. A front room, seating 25, received the rag treatment as well, in this case pale orange; the comfortable and larger back room is yellow and white. On clement evenings you can dine outside on a 25-foot-long wooden deck. The menu is sizeable — nine main courses supplemented by daily specials — and leans toward northern Italian fare. This is not surprising, as Mark Ganem, the owner and chef, with his partner, Adam Klersfeld, spent five years chowing down there while working as a fashion journalist. Following that stint he took up professional cooking.

For appetizers we started with exceptional deep-fried calamari that had been dusted with Japanese panko, which is sort of like bread crumbs only lighter and better for deep frying. It came with a snappy tomato sauce. Torta di Verdura, a vegetable and custard tart, could have used a kick of seasonings, if only salt; on the lighter side there is a first-rate caponata (a sweet blend of eggplant and tomato), and colorful crostini, garlic toast topped with a changing assortment of fresh vegetables. I am not a big fan of fruit in salads — in this case poached pears — so I opted for the pleasant mix of local greens in balsamic vinaigrette and shaved pecorino.

Having finished my citric suds it was time to delve into the wine list. Vico has a short (27 bottles) selection, which is a relief from all those show-off cellars that carry more names than a small city’s telephone book. Commendably, the lineup is well suited to the food, and fairly priced. Among whites, you can’t go wrong with the fresh and tangy 2006 Vernaccia di San Gimignano DOCG “Le Rote” from a winery that once had a reputation for spewing out mediocre table wine but has improved markedly. If you want something with a bit more body, two can be recommended: the charming 2005 Tocai Friulano Colli Orientali del Friuli DOC Bastianich and the 2006 Reserve Chardonnay Montgras (Chile), which exudes pear and apple essences. For reds, I can recommend the 2005 CMS Hedges, a simple, fruity, and well-balanced wine that is the second label from the highly regarded Hedges Cellars Washington State winery; and the vanilla-tinged 2002 Montepulciano Zaccagnini. Many wines are available by the glass.

On any evening there are half a dozen or more pastas, and most are straightforward and satisfying, like the pappardelli in an gutsy ragù of eggplant (the chef clearly likes eggplant), tomatoes, and sweet Italian sausage. It’s hardly summery, but don’t tell that to an adjacent table where two diners were going at it. Homemade fettuccine comes with chunks of sautéed salmon and vegetables in a light cream sauce — well executed, but it fell short of the goal line for lack of seasonings, particularly salt. Better was the linguine swathed in a piquant puttanesca sauce with slices of yellowfin tuna.

Again, a paucity of salt muted an otherwise fine filet of Scottish salmon set over a nice combination of white beans, sage, and Swiss chard. A final seafood dish, grilled yellowfin tuna, was oddly tough and tasteless, somewhat redeemed by a sprightly sauce of tomatoes, olives, and capers. If you could have one dish here it might be the outstanding Black Angus steak from Grazin’ Angus Acres in nearby Ghent. It had just enough fat to give it a succulent texture, as well as an intensity of beefy flavor rarely found in today’s mass-produced, Cryovac-aged specimens.

I should note that the two women servers in my dining room couldn’t have been more gracious, even as we peppered them with a hundred questions about the place (a sure giveaway that a restaurant critic is in the house).
For dessert there is a respectable rendition of the ubiquitous molten chocolate cake with whipped cream. It was a split decision when it came to the millefeuille, which, in its classic version, is a construction of parchment-like sheets layered with pastry cream. This one, given thumbs up by Dominique, was essentially puff pastry atop pastry cream. Perhaps my less enthusiastic assessment was influenced by my childhood memories from the Bronx, where Napoleons were exceptionally flaky, quite dry in fact, topped with a layer of sugary icing, and as thick as a Russian novel.
Again, if you only have the time — or are medically restricted — to sample just one dessert, go for the textbook-perfect orange crème brûlée. The consistency was ideal: neither flaccid nor too firm, with a thin brittle crust, and it was served at the proper temperature (slightly cool). As a bonus, it was baptized with Grand Marnier. Why am I craving a slice of orange?