PRESS

Adirondack Daily Enterprise: The Fiddlehead Bistro offers locally-sourced world cuisine

SARANAC LAKE — Locally made and eclectic.

That’s how you’d describe just about everything at the Fiddlehead Bistro, from its menu to its tables to the paintings on the wall.

Two years and nine months after Shamim Allen and Craig Bailey bought 33 Broadway, and spent countless hours gutting and rebuilding it, the 40-seat restaurant opened its doors Thursday night to a packed house.

www.knowwhereyourfoodcomesfrom.com: Fiddlehead Bistro in Saranac Lake: First Rate Dining in Upstate NY’s Adirondacks

June 1, 2017
With inlayed tiles of fiddlehead ferns above the windows the only identifying features (and the colorful façade more suggestive of Tuscany than the rustic Adirondacks), you might easily drive by without registering that this was your farm-to-table dining destination in New York’s Adirondack Region, but it would be your loss.

Boston Globe: Sleepy Saranac Lake Awakens

By Rob Duca Globe correspondent June 19, 2018

In a way, Saranac Lake, N.Y., reflected its history for years — just not in a way this tight-knit community of approximately 3,500 residents would like. A center of tuberculosis care in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, patients from around the world once flocked to the village to take in the clean mountain air and to recuperate on “cure porches.” But the advent of antibiotics ended the scourge of tuberculosis, and with that, the once vibrant village began a downward slide that was further exacerbated when neighboring Lake Placid hosted the 1980 Winter Olympics.

But Saranac Lake is on the rise, emboldened by the reopening of historic Hotel Saranac following a three-year, $30 million restoration, and by a lively downtown scene that is transforming it into a destination for foodies and lovers of art and music.

CNN: Saranac Lake, New York’s Healing Town

(CNN) — Saranac Lake, nestled in the Adirondack Mountains in far upstate New York, started drawing visitors in the late 19th century.

But they were looking for more than just a travel escape from crowded East Coast cities in the United States — many had tuberculosis, and in the days before antibiotics, the standard treatment was the “fresh air cure,” or sitting outside in the clean mountain air for extended periods in the hopes of recovering.

Given the constant influx of outsiders from New York City and beyond into the town, there has long been a cosmopolitan feel to Saranac Lake, despite its relatively small size.

Among those who “chased the cure” or came for a rest included many in the arts and entertainment sphere, including Robert Louis Stevenson, Béla Bartók and Mark Twain, as well as countless vaudevillian performers (who had their own dedicated sanatorium) — and their artistic vibe remains today.

Though it was tuberculosis that originally brought visitors to Saranac Lake, it’s the area’s rich history, natural beauty and burgeoning local food scene that continues to attract people today.<br/>