In 2003, Josh Kroner had been running a funky little restaurant in sleepy West Hurley for five good years, and felt ready for his next move. “Rhinebeck felt like it had a food scene that was just being born,” he says. “Gigi Trattoria had opened; people loved it, and it had the feel of a trend beginning. So I found a great spot. It had been a pizza place, a failing one, but it was big for a pizza place.” The building, a onetime Baptist church built in 1825, is spacious and beautifully crafted. And “big for a pizza place” turned out to be just the right size for Kroner’s vision, rooted in a love for working with the freshest local ingredients to craft a “loosely American” but globally inspired cuisine.
Kroner had been drawn to the kitchen after earning an architectural engineering degree at the University of Colorado; in New York City, he enrolled at the French Culinary Institute in SoHo (now the International Culinary Center), becoming an instructor there and working with big names like Emeril Lagasse and Bobby Flay. By the time he headed to the Catskills, he knew what he wanted: a restaurant serving the foods he loved to eat, intimately linked to the local farms that were accustomed to trucking their products down to the city for sale. West Hurley loved his creations. Soon Rhinebeck would fall in love too, but it was a bold move. “Looking back, I must have had some big balls back then,” he chuckles. “But at the time, it just felt like I was focused—I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I couldn’t have done it after the 2007 financial crisis, when money got a lot tighter—the numbers would never have worked. But in 2003, I was able to get a loan for $1.4 million. It was kind of the Wild West of financing back then, and I grabbed it and ran with it.”
Kroner’s vision is rooted in a love for working with the freshest local ingredients to craft a “loosely American” but globally inspired cuisine.
It turned out to be a solid choice. Restaurants have come and gone—Rhinebeck’s dining culture has, as Kroner foresaw, gotten even more exciting—and 22 years later, Terrapin remains on a great many people’s short list of favorites with an award-winning, dynamic cuisine that the New York Times has called “a fantasy come true.” The bistro side offers a build-your-ownsandwich board and what’s been named the Hudson Valley’s best burger, made with Hudson Valley Cattle Company beef; the dining room, open seven evenings a week, serves up tantalizing creations such as Drunken Shrimp in Sherry-Roasted Garlic Cream Sauce, Barbecued Duck Quesadilla with Mango-Avocado Salsa, and Maple Brined Double- Thick Pork Chop with Calvados- Apple Demi-Glace. All animal products are freerange, grass or natural grain fed, and raised with no hormones or antibiotics, and there are plentiful vegetarian, vegan, and wheat-free choices, along with other items that can be made that way on request.
All animal products are free range, grass or natural grain fed, and raised with no hormones or antibiotics, and there are plentiful vegetarian, vegan, and wheat-free choices.
Kroner, a world traveler, is always on the lookout for dishes he can put his own Hudson Valley spin on and serve with joy. “I went to Japan for two weeks in March and brought back a bunch of things that I saw there that inspired me,” he says. “I got obsessed with Chicken Karaage on the trip; I was like, ‘I definitely need to make a version of this.’ So I do, and it actually turns out to be the thing that I have for lunch almost every day. I like it so much, but now I’m obsessed with my own version.”
Kroner, a world traveler, is always on the lookout for dishes he can put his own Hudson Valley spin on and serve with joy.
It’s all part of Kroner’s philosophy of making the foods he loves to eat and keeping it fresh in every sense of the word. “I think we strive to just give people what they want,” he says. “The way restaurants work, it’s all about making people want to come back and come back often. If you convert a once-a-year guest to a twice-a-year guest, that’s a big win.”
And who wouldn’t want to return to what a typical reviewer on Google describes as “an amazing restaurant with an unbeatable atmosphere”? Kroner delights in the moments when he has time to chat up a customer at the bar, and still encounters some guests who’ve been relishing his creations since the West Hurley days. His fondness for the laid-back yet sizzling Hudson Valley social scene has inspired a whole new chapter in the saga: Hudson Valley Unleashed, a podcast he’s hosting with Dave Leonard, a DJ with 3 decades on the Hudson Valley and Catskills music scene, and Megabrain Comics owner and founder Jean Michel. “I was listening to SmartLess, a very successful and fun podcast that’s just three celebrities who are good friends and started it for something to do during the pandemic, and I thought, ‘Wow, I could do that with a couple of friends,’” he says. “So we’re doing it in my house, in the kitchen, and we’re having great, casual conversations with people like Gary Chetkof, who owned WDST and founded Mountain Jam, and Pete Caigan, who runs Utopia Studios Bearsville and has so many great music stories. We’ll never run out of great guests—we know so many amazing people. You get to meet a lot of high-powered celebrities up here, and it’s their happy place, where they can be themselves, which leads to a lot of fascinating stories.”
Hudson Valley Unleashed—focusing on “the people, passions, and peculiarities of one of America’s best-kept secrets. From local legends and cult creatives to celebrity guests with unexpected ties to the Valley, we’re here to ask the questions no one else dares. It's part local love letter, part kitchen- table therapy, and 100% unapologetically real”—is available across a wide range of platforms; give them a listen if you’d like to truly understand the culture here. And by all means, stop in for a bite at Terrapin for a dining experience that’s as Hudson Valley as it gets: globally inspired, locally crafted, and elevated in a way that invites everyone to share in the flavor.
Photo by Jen May.
Photo by Jen May.
terrapin restaurant
6426 Montgomery St, Rhinebeck
845-876-3330
terrapinrestaurant.com
