Friday, January 9, 12:00 noon
Members $60, guests $70

“Red Hook, just minutes north of Rhinebeck, is serious farm and orchard country—a lovely place with a quiet village at its center, home to a fashionably cozy new townhouse restaurant called Mina,” Laura Stanley wrote in Wine Spectator. The proprietors of Mina, husband-and-wife team Natalie Steward and John DiBenedetto, take their location in New York’s Hudson Valley to heart. Steward’s menu features products from local farms, dairies, and wineries. Dutchess Magazine writer Allison Craig described Mina’s food as “Hudson Valley cuisine—composed with indigenous fruits and vegetables, meat and poultry—where vegetarians can feel loved, and great pasta can be found.” Craig posited that “there may be some truth to the theory that native cuisine is always the most healthful and the most satisfying…Or, in the case of Mina, it may be that Natalie Steward has a gift.” Stanley noted: “Steward excels when it comes to rustic elements, such as the buttery, zingy flageolets that come with her rack of lamb, and caramelized onions that accompany her veal sweetbreads, cooked down to a toothsome jelly.” Zagat called Steward “inspired,” and her cooking, “wonderful sophisticated food for grownups.” At Mina, according to the guide, “not a detail is overlooked.”

DiBenedetto and Steward’s painstaking approach can be attributed to their passion and enthusiasm. The couple met when they were students at the CIA. While DiBenedetto continued on with the CIA’s bachelor’s program, Steward took over the kitchen at Bois d’Arc in nearby Red Hook. When the restaurant became available, the couple purchased the space and opened Mina in February 2001. They were married in October that same year. Mina’s menu is influenced by their dedication and commitment to the Hudson Valley region. In a letter to us, Steward wrote that “our menu is crafted weekly in hopes of capturing the rapidly changing seasons the Hudson Valley brings. We wholeheartedly try to use local purveyors, farmers, and food artisans whenever possible and even grow and forage our own produce in season…we believe in searching out food and winemakers that share [our] same philosophies of preserving fine, traditional, and artisanal products.”