Naples Ain’t Just Pretty

Front dining room at the Naples Hotel in Naples New York
Front dining room at the Naples Hotel in Naples New York

We were not the first customers at the Naples Hotel. The bar was lively with the after work crowd and one woman was reading and sipping a glass of wine in the front dining room. We had eaten here with Peggi’s parents the summer they rented a place on Canandaigua Lake, the summer it rained every day. As we ordered our food another couple walked in. I never turned around to get a look. I was afraid to because one of them was wheezing loudly and there as a clucking sound at the end of each breadth. We overheard the hostess telling them that her sister was the chef.

Someone has a lent this place a creative touch. It still looks more than a century old but the dark patterned wallpaper is new. I remember German food in here but that’s all gone. The sour dough bread was dense and packed with olives and it came with olive oil and balsamic vinegar for dipping. The salad with craisins and roasted pecans was fresh and delicious. We split a roasted shrimp appetizer (they were calling them tapas) that came with a raspberry chipotle sauce and a Friday Fish Fry but we ordered it broiled. That was our one false move. It came buried in butter. We would have been better off picking the deep fried batter off.

We’re knew we were near High Tor State Forest so we cruised around and found a trail head. A sign near the path read “Public Hunting Grounds” so we turned around. We asked someone who was just strapping on a back pack if we should worry about that and he said gun season was over and it was only bows now. He said we didn’t have to worry about them. They only fall out of trees. We hiked almost straight up to a circular meadow that overlooked something like the gorge at Letchworth, as stunning as the “Grand Canyon of the East” in the next county.

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