Many chefs at restaurants throughout the Hudson Valley learned their trade at the Culinary Institute in Hyde Park. And one of their final classes happens to be at a restaurant that you can find fine Italian food.
"The restaurant opened in 1985. It's been here for 30 years. It's here to promote authentic, carefully crafted Italian food. It's really not what we would call a red sauce restaurant. It's much different than that. It is a classroom as well as a restaurant open to the public," said Waldy Malouf, the senior director of food and beverage operations.
Your entire experience will be driven by those students at the school.
"There's usually anywhere from 24 to 30 students. Half of them in the dining room, half of them in the kitchen. They have a menu that changes every three months with the seasons. It is their last class before graduating," said Malouf.
And while the menu shifts from season to season, the overall cuisine is derived from Italian influences.
"The cuisine is simple, straightforward but also very elegant and well crafted and well researched. We bring authentic recipes here and we constantly look for different ways to present that and cook that," said Malouf.
"The homemade pasta that we do here. We teach the students to do from handmade to machine made. Of course the cooking part of it, different types of filling, the shape, and of course, some of the traditional main courses. Kind of a Mediterranean style of Italian cooking," said Giovanni Scappin, the instructor chef.
Though it may be a classroom and a restaurant, the hope is that you'll never know that it's the former.
"We want the customer to experience great hospitality, great food. Can either relish in the fact that it is a classroom or almost not know that it's a classroom. We enjoyed it, it felt like home, and the food was wonderful. That's the experience we want them to take away," said Malouf.