Red Onion

About

The Red Onion Restaurant has become a standard for elegant food, killer cocktails and good fun for Woodstockers and the like.

Story

Specialties

The Red Onion Restaurant & Bar is a full-service casual fine-dining restaurant serving dinner seven nights a week. The Red Onion prides itself on its menu of fresh, hand-made food, properly made cocktails and well-chosen beer and wines-by-the-glass, house-made pastas and desserts, daily seafood specials, delicious soups, sauces and individualized vegetable garnishes. Along with consistency of preparation, these are some of the things that have established The Red Onion as a Hudson Valley dining destination for 10 years.

History - Established in 2002

Kevin Katz and Rochelle Farnsworth opened The Red Onion in 2002 in an historic pre-1850 farmhouse on the main road between Woodstock and Saugerties, 3 miles east of Woodstock. While the building has served as both a business venue and private home over the last century and a half, it is mostly remembered for its resident ghost. In the late 19th cenury, the building was known to be a "house of ill repute". One winter day in 1937, one of its "ladies of the evening" was discovered outside, dead in a snow drift. It is conjectured that she is the spectre that haunts The Red Onion to this day. Alas, most people now come for the great food, drinks and relaxed ambiance.

Meet the Chef, Kevin Katz

Kevin began his cooking career in Woodstock at the legendary Bear Cafe. He went on to cook for the likes of Chef Yannick Cam at Le Pavillon, Chef Jeff Tunks of Passion Fish Restaurant Group and Chef Gianni Scappin of Bice Group in the early '90s in Washington, D.C.

Kevin moved to San Francisco working as sous chef for chef Reed Hearon at Lulu and Cafe Marimba. Returning east, Kevin did a season in East Hampton, at The Maidstone Club, one of the countries' oldest and most esteemed golf clubs as Dining Room Chef.

Kevin returned to the Hudson Valley in '97, working for the owners of The Bear Cafe as catering chef and as chef of their second restaurant, The Petersen House. In 2000, Kevin was asked to help develop the dining room at The Red Dot, an early comer to the explosive revitalization of the City of Hudson. After receiving accolades for his work there, Kevin, his then fiancee and old friend thought a place of their own was in order.

There you have it folks!