Down by the River

Bywater Bistro

by Harold Jacobs and photographs by Jennifer May, September 26, 2007

A neighborhood bistro that will delight and excite even jaded diners has joined the growing number of Hudson Valley restaurants. Situated on Main Street in Rosendale, the Bywater Bistro takes its name from the Rondout Creek, which the restaurant’s garden overlooks. Sam Ullman, its 26-year-old chef, bought the building with family backing from the owners of the Rosendale Cement Company. After remodeling the cavernous restaurant, the bistro opened in July 2006 with a brighter, more open, and vibrant look. Ullman’s concept: To make a bistro approachable to people from all walks of life and to offer simple, flavorful dishes.

The dining room’s walls are done in an adobe terra cotta hue, giving the interior a warm Southwestern ambience. To the right of the dining room sits an imposing Honduran Mahogany bar with a poured concrete counter top and back-lit liquor cabinet encircled with royal blue tiles. Cylindrical gray metal light fixtures are suspended from the ceiling over the bar area, while yellow and orange hand-crafted stained glass fixtures light the dining room. In addition to the bar’s nine stools, there’s table seating for 30 inside and another 20 on the rear deck. The deck affords a view of the spacious garden bordering the creek, and is accessible to the public. Created and nurtured by the previous owners, the stunning garden has grown even more lovely under the stewardship of Ullman’s mother, Mimi Labourdette, who has tastefully expanded its array of colorful annuals and perennials. (On summer weekends, the restaurant offers a light fare menu in the garden, prepared on a charcoal grill. Ullman has also wisely kept the Cement Company’s Airstream trailer bar, where mixed drinks can be bought. On a clear night, this is one of the most pleasant locations in the Hudson Valley to enjoy a bite or cocktail.)

Ullman had years of prior restaurant experience before opening the Bywater Bistro. In the Berkshires, he apprenticed in the kitchens at Bizen, a fine Japanese restaurant in Great Barrington and at the Old Mill, a restaurant known for its New American and Continental cuisine in South Egremont. Ullman wanted the Bywater Bistro to be a casual, middle-level restaurant that would serve well-prepared American food. He has designed his menu to entice and satisfy a broad range of palates. But the chef also has shown an inclination to draw on the full range of essential spices from around the world to give an exciting and sometimes unusual uplift to classic comfort food preparations. You can expect his food to be neither contrived nor overly composed yet still contain elements of sophistication; the food combinations are not extensively layered but utilize clean, complementary, and sometimes contrasting flavors to create well-balanced dishes with visual appeal.

You might start with the crab cake. A generous portion of Jonah lump crabmeat mixed with shallots, garlic, celery, Dijon mustard, mayonnaise, parsley, chives, and panko bread crumbs is pan fried just enough to lightly brown the cake and retain the succulence of the meaty crab. The mixture results in an almost-weightless cake with a mildly spicy kick. Another seasonal appetizer is the corn chowder in which onion, celery, and garlic are sweated in rendered bacon fat for added flavor. Then fresh corn kernels and diced potatoes are added with flour, thyme, and chicken stock and simmered until the ingredients are cooked through and the liquid thickened. The chowder is finished with heavy cream and garnished with parsley and chives. No surprises here in the relatively standard ingredients, but Ullman shows his adroit way with marrying flavors. The natural sweetness of the corn plays off nicely against the texture and taste of the dairy-enriched liquid base with the garlic adding depth and the various herbs rounding out the chowder.

More off the beaten path is an Asian-inspired shrimp dumpling with kimchee accompanied by a dipping sauce. Here pureed shrimp seasoned with mirin (a mildly sweet Japanese cooking wine) and dashi stock is encased in a shumai dumpling wrapper and steamed, then served with hot mustard. Ullman succeeds admirably in balancing the sweetness of the shrimp dumpling with the seriously spicy but not overwhelming hot flavor of the kimchee.