Offbeat Eats

There’s one other annual dining tradition associated with our annual pilgrimage to Lake George’s Tiki Resort for our annual Ohana Luau at the Lake gathering. After the event has wrapped up, and we’ve cleaned up and restored the Tiki Resort to as-found condition, it is traditional for a bunch of us to go down the road to visit a long-time Lake George restaurant, the Log Jam.

One of my more established traditions of our annual trip to Lake George is getting up early one morning and hiking from downtown Lake George up to Prospect Mountain via the Prospect Mountain Trail that approximately follows the old incline railway route. After arriving back at the trailhead in late morning, we almost always follow it with another tradition: eating at Lake George’s The Breakfast Spot.

Downtown Lake George is fairly busy and touristy during the summer, but there actually is a reason for it; Lake George itself is actually a very nice, scenic lake with several nice beaches, with nice vista of the surrounding mostly-undeveloped Adirondack mountains. At the end of the day, it’s enjoyable to find a nice restaurant with a deck overlooking the Lake, and soak in the sunset over a light dinner and a beer. However, it’s actually a bit difficult to execute that vision, since the nature of downtown Lake George’s development resulted in a lot of long, narrow alleys perpendicular to the Lake, so a lot of places just don’t have the real estate for a nice deck. But a notable exception to this is Christie’s on the Lake.

I’ve previously noted in my Lake George area reviews that there are almost uncountably many places to get breakfast in Lake George, but the quality is hit and miss, the prices are tourist-level, and sometimes it’s just nice to get a fresh view. Luckily, the Glens Falls area, about 15 minutes south of Lake George, is a lot quieter than Lake George, but it’s got a lot going for it. A nice, fairly vibrant downtown. Two breweries. A decent art musuem. And a good number of cheap, affordable restaurants. One that we had been driving by a lot in the last few years, just down the street from Common Roots, is the Peppermill Family Restaurant.

As I’ve mentioned a few posts ago, this was our 6th year attending and volunteering at Ohana Luau at the Lake, and that gives us quite a few opportunities to explore some of the dining options around Lake George, especially when we need to grab a quick bite. The immediate answer for this is the A&W Root Beer next door (yes, Lake George is a time capsule, including a still-functioning A&W, albeit one without car hops). But usually we’re craving something a bit more exotic, and just a short distance down the road from the A&W is one of the area’s hidden gems: the Spice Gyro & Kabab, tacked onto the end of the Sunoco station.

As I’ve mentioned in few of my upstate New York reviews, ever year I help operate the annual Ohana Luau at the Lake charity fundraising Tiki event. In addition to attending the event, we help with event logistics, and that means that at least twice a year we end up traveling to Lake George multiple time (usually once to stage everything, and then attend the event itself), and staying in the greater Lake George area several nights each June. Since we’re now in our 7th year of doing this, we’ve started to explore the area a bit more, and we’re starting to pick up a few favorites. One of these is about 15 minutes down the road in South Glens Falls, Common Roots.

We’ve all got them. The roadside dining spot that we’ve driven by dozens of times, noting the relatively packed parking lot, and think to yourself, “I should check that place out sometime.” But you never get around to it; you aren’t hungry, it’s not the right time of day, or the folks you are with don’t want to stop. One of those places for me was The Man of Kent, a roadside bar on the edge of Route 7 in Hoosick Falls, NY, one of the few dining places road-side on that stretch between Troy and the Vermont border. Well, my recent New Jersey trip had me both driving through Hoosick Falls around dinner time, and I didn’t have any else traveling with me, so I finally decided to pull over and give the place a try.

The next stop in my travels was Lake George, NY, in the Adirondacks, for our annual visit with our Tiki friends at Ohana Luau at the Lake, staying at The Tiki Resort, one of the few remaining intact Tiki-style resorts in the US. While most of our activity focused on either the Ohana event, or several trips for mini-golfing to some of the many nearby courses, we do occasionally find ourselves venturing forth looking for breakfast. You can see from such previous reviews of The Lone Bull and Biscotti Bros. that the Lake George area has an almost uncountably large number of places that serve up breakfast fare in restaurants featuring some combination of “lumberjack” and “north woods” themes; while we previously have enjoyed The Lone Bull a couple of times, when we head that some of our friends were heated to Flapjack Pete’s, we decided we’d check them out, since they seemed to be one of the better in-town options.

When my brother was visiting the States last fall, in addition to satisfying his cravings for, among other items, New Haven Pizza and American-style pancakes, we also had a bit of family busy to attend to, visiting my aunt and uncle in Rhinebeck, NY. There are a lot of nice places to dine around Rhinebeck, but heading just south of town, there’s an attraction you can’t really miss in Hyde Park, the Culinary Institute of America.

Our annual trips to Ohana Luau By The Lake (“The Best Little Event in Tiki”), have us doing most of our activities at The Tiki Resort. Like much of Lake George, while it’s definitely a bit rough around the edges at times, it’s more than a bit of a Mid-century Americana Time Capsule: a mostly intact Tiki-themed resort, with Tiki-themed bar, a nice pool deck, and even (during high season) a Polynesian stage show. It’s also got it’s own breakfast restaurant, the Garden Cafe, located just off the lobby.