Photo: R.A. Hermans
The Stissing House in Pine Plains has been singled out by the prestigious James Beard Foundation as one of the 30 best new restaurants in the United States.
The nominations, announced on Jan. 25, are one of the crowning distinctions in the U.S. culinary industry, with awards handed down across nearly two dozen categories recognizing everything from chefs to wine stewards to hospitality experts. Finalists for the restaurant and chef awards will be announced on March 29, followed by an awards ceremony on June 5.
Chef and restaurateur Clare de Boer, who assumed ownership of Stissing House in 2022, said she and her team were “incredibly surprised and honored by the nomination.”
It’s the second James Beard nod for 33-year-old de Boer, who was a 2018 semifinalist as a rising chef at King, a French and Italian restaurant in New York City.
De Boer was born in the United Kingdom to a British mother and a Dutch father. After a childhood spent in India, she attended college in the United States before training at the Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland.
From there she headed to London, where she spent two years working at the Michelin-starred River Cafe before returning to the U.S. to team up with Jess Shadbolt and Annie Shi to launch King in the city’s SoHo district. De Boer, Shi and Shadbolt also opened a second restaurant, Jupiter, in Rockefeller Center in November 2022.
Stissing House is the first solo venture for de Boer, who has lived in Dover Plains for the past several years. She says she first noticed the stately building, which sits at the southwest corner of Main and Church streets, while attending a Memorial Day parade in Pine Plains.
In 2021, the restaurant that had operated in the building for 15 years was closed, with its owners Michel and Patricia Jean opening a new restaurant, Champêtre, down the street.
Shortly afterward, de Boer was approached by the Stissing House owner and invited to open a new eating establishment. She says she was smitten when she explored the inside of the building. “I was just blown away by the history and the beauty,” she said. “I couldn’t resist taking on the challenge.”
Stissing House was first built as a log tavern in 1782 by Cornelius Elmendorf. It has operated nearly without interruption for over 240 years. Among the artifacts de Boer has from the old days is a diary with a folk art drawing of a camel which now adorns the Stissing House’s logo and menus.
De Boer says she has been fascinated by Stissing House tales about a horse being ridden into the bar and police chases that have culminated there. “This building is just filled with history,” she said. “It’s a real honor to be a steward of the building.”
Photo: R.A. Hermans
De Boer said the Stissing House restaurant is “totally different” than her ventures in New York City. For one thing, a wood-fired grill is used for most of the Stissing House cooking. There are other differences as well. “A lot of city restaurants call themselves farm to table, but it’s not. It’s truck to table,” she said. “We’re lucky in Pine Plains to be surrounded by incredible farms. We have a catchment area of an hour’s drive in any direction that we are sourcing things from.” Ronnybrook and Fat Apple Farm are among the local businesses that supply Stissing House.
So how does one juggle involvement in three restaurants? “I have very good teams. Like all things in life, it comes down to people,” de Boer said. Stissing House employs 36 people, led by the general manager, Nathan Rawlinson.
De Boer has a busy home life, too. She and her husband, entrepreneur Luke Sherwin, have two toddlers and are expecting a third child this spring. De Boer admits that these days, most of the cooking she’s doing is at home.
“Taking care of a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old, there’s a lot of early mornings and food on the floor,” she said.
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The date of the final award was corrected from our original publication.