Memorial Day Weekend 2023: Hudson Valley

Years ago we started this tradition of heading up to the Hudson Valley during a 3-day weekend, but just for a day trip. It started off only on Labor Day weekend, but we’ve since introduced it to Memorial Day weekend as well, provided we don’t have any other longer term trips planned. This year we headed north to first stop by the Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park, NY. This was their “humble” countryside home and has since been donated to the National Park service so the guided tours are very affordable. Tip: they do not sell the tickets online, you must purchase on site and the rangers will let you know when the next available tour is.

We toured the gardens very briefly, mostly because it was getting to be quite hot out and also we were starved and needed to find some food. After much googling about area restaurants, we decided on the Eveready Diner.

Driving up to the restaurant you could tell immediately that it looked like it had such a fun 50s old school diner feel, and on top of that it was located next to a disco roller rink. Obviously we were the tourists taking pictures from the entrance to the parking lot, but who cares?

The interior did not disappoint either in regards to the 50s fun. It was like stepping back in time.

As usual for a diner, the menu was pretty extensive and I settled on the meatball sandwich while my companion chose the Santa Barbara Club (Grilled chicken with crisp bacon, avocado, swiss cheese, chipotle mayo, tomato and baby spinach).

The sandwich itself was a little disappointing. First off, it was supposed to come on a roll, but instead it was in burger bread? which did not taste toasted, which could have improved it a bit. It really was the meatballs that weren’t the best. I’ve had ones that tasted like this before and it’s an off-taste like they didn’t use a great quality beef to make them. I have to say though, the french fries were great, super hot and freshly out of the fryer and very crispy. The other highlight was the cole slaw. I benchmark my cole slaw off of KFC. That was the only kind I had growing up and it’s still my favorite; I’m not a huge fan of vinegar based slaws, so if it tastes like the KFC slaw, I’m all for it. This one was pretty close but you could tell the veggies were fresher, which almost made it better. Almost.

While at lunch, we determined our next stop. We usually like to do a cider or wine tasting and seeing as it really wasn’t cider season, we went for the wine. We found a vineyard that we passed on the way up and the website looked pretty promising so we headed that way.

We discovered after we arrived that Milea Estate Vineyard had only been operating since 2016, with their first crop yield in 2020. They started off as a farmland and stables, which I believe they still operate. Since we were new, we decided to go for their tasting menu, comprising of 4 different wines.

Well, I didn’t do a good job of remembering what any of the wines were, but enjoy the photos and the view from some adirondacks over the vineyard.

Then, before heading home, we like to get some ice cream, especially since there are so many creameries in the area. This time we headed down to Poughkeepsie to Spoons. We chose this since my companion is looking for no-sugar and potentially gluten free choices due to medical conditions and they advertised these options. And they sure did have a lot of choices.

I tried out the cannoli flavor and then I HAD to get the one called Trash Can. The cannoli was smooth and creamy with chocolate chips and I didn’t reailize until the bottom that they also included some cannoli shells broken up into it. I thought it was a cracker? but not a cracker. I also thought it might be something from the Trash Can scoop. This was a vanilla based ice cream with M&Ms, cookie dough, heath bar, fudge and caramel. The best of most worlds. There were a lot of mix ins - this is something I have issue with at other places as they don’t include enough then you feel like you’re only eating vanilla ice cream.

Overall we were so efficient that we were home much earlier than I expected. Plus we stopped at a Stewart’s on the way home to pick up a couple of pints of ice cream to go. I wanted the mango dragonfruit sorbet, but settled on the Creamsicle.