In late September, I ended up having my third trip to the Adirondack region, this time with Carol and the dogs accompanying me, which really opened up a lot of options when it came to dining since we didn’t have to race anywhere to take care of the doggos. My previous trips had focused primarily on breakfast joints, local watering holes, and smaller dinner spots, and this time, we decided it was a good excuse to go with our hosts Liz and Wesley to one of the better high-end dining options in Saratoga Springs, Hamlet & Ghost.
Hamlet & Ghost sits a block east of Broadway at the corner of Caroline and Putnam Streets, in an old converted storefront that has the general appearance of an old hardware store (edit: I looked it up: it used to be a plumbing supply store). The owners of Hamlet & Ghost gave the place an impressive makeover centered around an elaborate old-school wooden bar, and that’s well-aligned with one of the primary missions of the restaurant: serving good craft cocktails making use of locally-sourced spirits. They then partner this with a menu of “New American” food with a limited, rotating menu of seasonal dishes making use of the currently available meats and produces. After getting seated at a nice, bright table by the window, we all ordered a starting round of cocktails.
Myself, I started with their Charlevoix Gimlet. Named for the Charlevoix region of Quebec northeast of Montreal, this featured a rich herbal gin from Menaud distilling in Clermont, QC, rounded up with some fresh basil, lime, and cane sugar. The result was basically a more-herbal gimlet with some nice bold herbal notes between the Menaud gin and the fresh basil. Bright, green, and refreshing.
Carol, meanwhile, started with one of their house specialties, a Fennel Martini. This is made with fennel-infused Supergay Vodka (from Supergay Spirits in Yonkers, NY), Cocchi Americano, and pickled fennel. This was a cocktail with some surprising depth: the fennel two ways (infused and pickled) gave some really nice herbal-almost-minty notes (as an aside, I learned the other day that the terpene giving fennel and caraway it’s primary aromatic note, carvone, is a stereoisomer of the carvone molecule that gives spearmint its flavor. Neat.). And the overall astringency, acid level, and sugar were really well-balanced, resulting in a cocktail that would dance with some wonderful legs as you rock the class. A great drink overall (I ended up getting one for myself later).
As a table, we enjoyed several other great cocktails, including the Aviation Milk Punch (clarified milk, gin, passion fruit, violet, citrus, and Earl Grey), the High Society (Chili-infused campari, gin, lemon, orgeat, and orange oils), and the Quite the Pear (Prickly Pear gin, bell pepper, raspberry, ancho liqueur, and lemon). Really, Hamlet & Ghost has got a great cocktail program going on, and stands on its own just from that.
However, as we finished our first round of cocktails, the appetizers we ordered started showing up. First up, the mushroom tempura. This was made with local mushrooms, lightly breaded and fried to a perfect crisp, with a porcini furikake for more of a umami punch, and a calamansi ponzu with some sour, citrusy, and salty notes. The combination was good, one of the best mushroom dishes of recent dining. And the calamansi ponzu? Good enough that we kept the server from taking the bowl as they whisked away the empty mushroom bowl.
Another appetizer we ordered was the gold shrimp: a half dozen large shrimp served up with a light tomato sofrito and some tomato water, with a baguette on the side. The star here was the shrimp itself: nicely poached to a perfect texture, with the sofrito adding some nice herbal notes without covering up the shrimp itself.
Similarly, an order of PEI mussels, served over a sweet corn and tamarind broth with peekytoe was ordered up and nicely presented. The mussels were all nicely cleaned and perfectly cooked, the broth nicely complementing the mussels themselves, and the crab (which was surprisingly plentiful in the broth) adding both a nice body and substance to the broth.
Our final appetizer was my personal favorite: a black cod crudo. High-quality, perfectly-sliced and prepped coins of delicate black cod, served up with salted lovage, pickled apple, apple leche de tigre, and nasturtium leaves. The acid of the apple, the bitter of the lovage and nasturtium leaves, and the salt all combined to make a really great crudo where every single bit had bits of fish, apple, acid, salt, and herb flavors.
For my main course, I went for the bistro steak. A very nicely grilled bistro steak (a sub-cut of the larger chuck, taken from the more tender end of the cut) with a nice, tender interior cooked at a perfect medium-rate, and a nice crisp with salt crystals on the top. It was served over a bed of shishito peppers and baby Yukon potatoes. This was topped with a Brazilian atolada sauce, which was new to me. Meaning “stuck in the mud”, it’s a dark sauce made of red wine, garlic, fresh herbs, and stock, and worked really well in this dish. This was one of the best steaks I had so far this month.
Carol, meanwhile, went with the garganelli. This was a decent-enough dish: al-dente garganelli with preserved lemons, smoked mozzarella, and sunflower seed pesto. But overall, we agreed that this was good, but not in the same class as the rest of the dinner.
Dessert, however, put everything back on a firm footing. This was no simple s’more, but a a graham-flour cake over toasted marshmallow creme, with whipped marshmallow cream and a dollop of chocolate pot de creme. The thing that impressed me about this dessert is that it got all the basic flavors right, especially the chocolate and toasted sugar notes, but without being overly sweet. And the chocolate pot de creme: the perfect, smooth texture that’s hard to get with chocolate this rich. Overall, this was a perfect dessert, and reminded me pleasantly of a similar s’more-inspired dish I had back in 2022 at The CIA’s Apple Pie Bakery.
Overall, I really adored our visit to Hamlet & Ghost. The cocktails were inventive and flavorful, the dishes simple but well executed, and the flavors quite sharp. I’m definitely looking forward to a return visit on one of my future visits to the Saratoga Springs area.
