The best eating and drinking in the Catskills

A husband-and-wife team bake up traditional German pastries like butter cake from heirloom recipes at Bradenburg Bakery. They sell espresso, artisan chocolates and local honey.

A restored farmhouse in the town of Big Indian now hosts, appropriately, a farm-to-table restaurant. Local produce like celeriac and lacinato kale often pop up on the menu at Peekamoose Restaurant & Tap Room along with hearty mains like leg of lamb or rainbow trout.

The young guy-girl pair behind Wayside Cider started to gather up wild, heirloom and dessert apples around the Delaware County town of Andes back in 2014. The incredible Catskill cider that results creates a unique new cider that bucks the current trend of European-inspired ciders.

Bed and breakfasts might not conjure up too much excitement, but the Spruceton Inn in West Kill describes itself as a “bed and bar,” which immediately has our attention. Owned and operated by a husband and wife duo, this nine-room inn boasts a long history. Crack open a brew and sip it by the fire while hearing more tales of the inn's historic past. 

In Roscoe, the birthplace of American fly fishing, several guys’-guy distillers took over the town’s handsome brick 1929 firehouse a few years back to open Prohibition Distillery. They now make robust Bootlegger vodka, gin, and whiskey for inclusion in cocktails like a Catskill Manhattan—and all within two hours of the city!

This homey breakfast-and-beyond café, a Phoenicia standard since 1984, offers what may be the best stack of pancakes in the Catskills. Other faves at Sweet Sue's include the poppyseed-swirl French toast.

This new 1,600-square-foot timber-frame brewery and tasting room has a rough-and-tumble mountain feel, with fish and game mounted on the walls. Roscoe Beer Co. brews like Trout Town Logger, a Bohemian-style lager, evoke the great outdoors, too.

A rambling Woodstock farmhouse is now home to a warm, modern Italian restaurant. Plunk down at a 24-seat communal table and feast on dishes like pork scallopini in true famiglia-style at Cucina.

This scrupulously authentic family-owned Italian shop in Roscoe makes special homemade pasta varieties like garginelli and squid-ink fettucine. They stuff their ravioli with seasonal ingredients like garlic scapes or zucchini blossoms. Northern Farmhouse Pasta is also the first to use 100 percent New York-grown wheat, keeping things as local as possible. For a real Italian fix, twice per week the shop turns into a restaurant where guests can sample the pastas in a rustic farmhouse setting.

The Bull & Garland, a British-inspired gastropub in Hobart serves up all the pub classics (Scotch eggs, hanger steak, maple sticky-toffee pudding) but with modern updates and local touches (like a Ceasar salad with quail egg). It’s all set in an understated white country inn, with picnic tables and strands of white lights out back.