New Year Brings a New Look to the Venerable Red Onion Restaurant

For two decades, Kevin Katz’s Red Onion restaurant has reigned as one of the Hudson Valley’s most popular and acclaimed eateries. It’s a delightfully warm and welcoming environment housed in a circa-1800s farmhouse, one that delivers a consistently delicious selection of classic American cuisine and some bold offerings from beyond our borders.

But as 2024 rolled in, there were some changes afoot at this classic local eatery. It’s a refresh of its landmark interior envisioned by a sustainably-minded Kingston-based designer, Brooke Lane.

“I’m your classic chef story,” begins Katz, “a college dropout-turned-dishwasher who learned his craft by working at a long line of restaurants in San Francisco, Washington D.C., East Hampton and Woodstock.”

“But my most formative influence came here from working with Eric Mann at the old Bear Café,” continues Katz. “Eric ran a restaurant based on the realities of Upstate New York. It’s all about providing a menu of timeless, reliable favorites that attract a solid local following, as well as visitors. It’s the kind of formula that will help you survive the off-season, which kills many Hudson Valley businesses. And it’s the model we’ve followed ever since we opened our doors in July 2002.”

But why a renovation now, when reservations are still often hard to get on many nights and weekends?

“When we opened, all the restaurants here were like ours, chef-owned-and-operated,” adds Katz. “But since the pandemic, there’s been a radical shift. There are some deep-pocked hospitality groups and rich individuals investing heavily in dining and lodging in the Catskills, all to attract a new audience of Gen X and Z customers.

“We’ve taken this step with the interior renovations to appeal to the younger crowd and to give our current clientele something new to be excited about. It’s something that I think will keep us competitive, especially with the younger demographic for whom the Hudson Valley is a new choice for vacation getaways and as a permanent home.”

Fans of Red Onion should fear not, as the refreshed décor is very much in line with the restaurant’s traditionally warm and historical feel. This is the philosophy guiding the work of Brooke Lane, a Tucson native who arrived in the Hudson Valley in 2016 and opened her interior design business in 2019.

“We wanted to be mindful of the restaurant’s legacy, not to wholly remake but to enhance and extend the old farmhouse warmth,” adds Lane. “Mixing antiques with modern elements is a tone and template that has worked very well here. The goal was to modernize the space while giving a nod to its history. Utilizing sustainably-minded resources for the project was also important to both of us. This was accomplished both through the selections we sourced and the paint we used.”

Lane continues: “The Red Onion is one of my favorite restaurants anywhere, a true gem of the Catskill dining scene. I have always loved historical structures, and working on this circa-1800s farmhouse has been a distinct treat.”

Though the bulk of the renovations took place when the eatery was closed between Thanksgiving and Christmas 2023, a dry run of sorts took place a year earlier, in 2022, when Lane was enlisted by Katz to renovate the restaurant’s side dining porch. The area, which features six tables and seating for 24 diners, had been enclosed with screens and a permanent roof in 2020, along with new track lighting and flooring, but Katz felt it needed a visual boost to complement the restaurant’s new interior.

Lane worked with Brenna Chase, a local fabricator and stained-glass artist, to create six original lighting fixtures for the space – beautiful vintage/modern designs made with recycled glass and mirrors. Local photographer and carpenter Tim Geaney was brought in to create another bold visual signature – an enlarged and custom-framed map of the town of Saugerties from an 1875 Ulster County Atlas. Another outstanding addition was the porch’s artistic centerpiece, a six-by-twenty-foot landscape painting of the Catskill Mountains by acclaimed local artist Nancy Ostrovsky. The finishing touch was a beautiful dried floral installation created by Nancy Geaney.

“Working with local talent and suppliers like the above was an important part of the project for both Kevin and myself,” adds Lane.

As part of the interior design process, Lane first presented an image board that would serve as the guidepost for the project. This project began with the exposure of the hand-wrought brick walls in two of the dining rooms and the upstairs hallway, a move designed to draw attention to the original architectural pieces. A series of 38 newly installed fixtures cast ambient light on the brick, adding more warmth to the environment over the 18 downstairs tables. There’s also a new track lighting system that can be programmed to create changing moods, along with new pendant lamps for each of the dining tables. The bar area boasts new stools designed to match the chairs at the dining tables, and the restaurant’s banquettes have been reupholstered. The floors have all been refinished and darkened, and the restaurant’s ceiling, walls and bar wainscoting have been refreshed with eco-sensitive, low-VOC paints from Backdrop. The taupe, burgundy and blue color palate enhance the restaurant’s historical look by drawing attention to the newly exposed brick.

One of Katz’s primary requisites was the gut renovation of the restaurant’s two bathrooms. They now feature all-new floor and wall tiles with antique brass sinks, faucets and door fixtures. “A bathroom can really break the magic spell of a restaurant,” says Katz. “ You don’t want to have a great meal and finish your night by heading to the ‘facilities’ and seeing a toilet brush and a plunger.”

Lane’s period remodel continues with more curated art pieces. Eight vintage works now hang in the downstairs and upstairs dining areas. These include a large landscape from a Hudson Valley River School painter, an unsigned work dating to the 1880s, which hangs above one of the restaurant’s fireplaces. A wall of six antique brass mirrors now adds a new visual focal point to one of the lower dining rooms, along with a series of dried floral arrangements with flowers purchased from The Quiet Botanist in Hudson, NY.

The final piece in the modernization is a new stereo system. This was created with the help of Pete Caigan, record producer/engineer and owner of the renowned Utopia Recording Studio in Bearsville.

Written by Sal Cataldi, a musician, writer and former publicist living in Saugerties
Photos by Sabrina Eberhard

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For more information + reservations, connect with The Red Onion via Website | Facebook | Instagram | Inside+Out Spotlight

Connect with Brooke Lane on her website and at her office/studio, which she opened at 5 Field Court in Kingston in May 2023.