Leaving Bard College’s Fisher Center after a performance last month, I was going east on 199 through the town of Red Hook. It was around 10:30 p.m. on a Friday and nothing seemed open. All lit up on a dark street, the restaurant Mercato was an unfamiliar but welcome sight. As it turned out, Mercato’s official closing time is 10:00 p.m. But I asked a waitstaff if I could bend the rules a bit and was told to speak to the manager; she said sure. That was the first of many nice things about this place.
The restaurant is housed in one of those wonderful old buildings that seem to have grown by asymmetrical stages. The style is farmhouse plus Gothic bargeboard. There seem to also be apartments in the building and a little balcony. At one time the main wing looks like it must have been turned into a store, as evidenced by the large open room you eat in. And you can also eat on the front porch.
As it turned out, I didn’t have much to eat but what I did have was superb: troffie genovese – the string-bean shaped pasta traditionally served with pesto sauce. That’s the way Mercato did it, using its own pesto, which was tangy but not too salty. Into the mix also went local potatoes, as well as string beans – a visual pun vis a vis the pasta shape, but adding contrasting texture and taste. Since the potatoes were diced the starch factor wasn’t oppressive. Call it, in fact, appropriately post-Bard symphonic: the way all the different.ingredients complemented and enhanced each other.
There are daily specials and the menu changes frequently. I want to go back again soon.