Last Saturday Stanley and I took the train to Belmar to visit our friends Janice and Eric, and we had dinner at Skratch. The menu combines Italian with Cajun. It was generally excellent, with only one misstep. Stanley had a fig appetizer which he liked a lot. I had artichoke hearts coated with goat cheese and lemon, wrapped in prosciutto and grilled. That was the only disappointment, as the goat cheese was overpowering and the prosciutto too salty.

For mains, I had shrimp and grits and he had a pork loin special. Both very good, and we took half home for another dinner.

Janice and Eric shared fried calamari (a massive plate) and both had a scallop special. They enjoyed all of it. We took a couple bites of their pistachio tiramisu, which was impressive.

Skratch is a bring your own restaurant, so you can save some money by bringing a nice wine.

https://www.skratchkitch.com/

Thanks to Ziggy on Hungry Onion we tried Bananas last week, and it was a wow. The rare restaurant week menu that actually offers good value, and plenty of choices.

We ordered one menu and an additional main course, for the 2 of us to share. It was plenty of food. The menu begins with 2 starters, shrimp chips with shrimp dip, and chicken on a pancake. We chose the char siu pork with caramelized bananas and garlic rice, and for the second main course (not on the RW menu), we got the shrimp and shrimp wonton etouffe. For dessert we chose the frozen banana and they brought out one for each of us.

Wine is pricey but we enjoyed a bottle of a Hungarian white. Overall good value and the food is delicious.

Service was excellent too, and it turned out the hostess knew us from Do Wha, our favorite Korean restaurant which unfortunately closed several years ago.

https://www.bananasrestaurant.com/

Cafe Mutton has quickly become a hot spot in Hudson. It is only open for breakfast and lunch except on Fridays, when it is dinner only, and that’s when we tried it. The dinner menu changes every week and there are usually some organ meats, which we love. Portions are quite large so I suggest not ordering too many dishes. We had 2 appetizers and 2 mains and it was more than we could finish.

Appetizers we had were pig’s feet and chorizo stew, brown bread topped with caramelized onions, cheese and pig’s ear mortadella. If they have this dish again I would ask for just a plate of the mortadella as it was the highlight for me. For mains we had smoked whitefish pie, which was enough for 2 by itself, and blood pudding on a bed of mashed potatoes, which was not bad but unfortunately rather one-note.

Overall, we enjoyed it very much. With a bottle of wine, tax and tip, the bill was $210.

https://www.cafemutton.com/menus/

This had been recommended by Indian friends some time ago, but I was hesitant because the menu is mostly vegetarian. As it happened, we were going to be in the neighborhood, and searching restaurants I found it would be convenient, so I took another look at the menu and saw enough meat and fish choices.

The prix-fixe menus are $88 for 3 courses and $98 for 4. 3 was more than enough food for us. The style is modern Indian, very creative and quite different from the typical Indian dishes we are used to.

We shared everything, including lamb dumplings, pork dumplings, rock shrimp, pickled pork ribs, chicken malai tikka and beef tenderloin. For accompaniments we picked smoked bacon kulcha and dal with naan.

Everything was so good I would consider trying some of the vegetarian choices next time. A bottle of a very good Riesling was $70, a high markup from retail, but we enjoyed it and the slight sweetness worked really well with the flavors of the food.

Service was absolutely flawless.

https://www.indianaccent.com/newyork

View the listing on Wohlfarth & Associates website:

https://www.wohlfarth.com/listing/RPLU-403623657314/