An Expression of Terroir

By Nancy Matsumoto

Just 140 miles due north of Albany, the Adirondacks’ Lake Placid region is home to fertile farmland, passionately run livestock enterprises, and a highly evolved artisan dairy culture. Yet one familiar catch-phrase that guests at Mirror Lake Inn’s Four Diamond-rated restaurant The View will never hear is “farm-to-table.”

The term is commonly overused, says Executive Chef Curtiss Hemm, that it’s become next to meaningless. A better way to describe what both the inn and the restaurant express is “terroir,” and not in the narrow sense of local wines expressing local soil. To Hemm, the term encompasses “a multi-dimensional, three-hundred-and-sixty degree” view of the northern Adirondacks. Sure, it includes wines, though Cabernet Franc is the star here, not the more familiar Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot Noir. But it also includes New York maple syrup, Gladsheim goat’s milk Gouda from Asgaard Farm and Dairy, aged raw cow’s milk Dutch Knuckle cheese from Sugar House Creamery, and, he adds, “some of the best yogurts in the country” from North Country Creamery.” Terroir can also be found in North Country’s supremely happy Brown Jersey cows, which Hemm passes every day on his way to work.

In their embrace of this concept of terroir, Mirror Lake Inn and The View, with their casual Adirondack elegance, are reminiscent of Europe’s finest ski resorts and luxury hotels, where a robust roster of winter sports, year-round activities, complete spa services, and seasonal, classic-yet-creative European cuisine administer to body, soul, and stomach. The beauty of cooking European-influenced foods in the United States, says Hemm, is that he has a freedom that European chefs lack: “If I want to take skate wing and put ponzu sauce or truffle on it, I can,” he says. “I don’t have to put a caper cream sauce on it.”

Family owned since 1924, the inn passed into the hands of Ed and Lisa Weibrecht in 1976. Their son Andrew is a retired World Cup alpine ski racer and two-time Olympic medalist, in Vancouver and Sochi. Today Andrew and his wife Denja serve as the innkeepers.

Even the annual Ironman Lake Placid triathlon, which changes the complexion of The View in the weeks leading up to the big July event “is part of the terroir of Lake Placid,” Hemm asserts. The View’s house-made pastas come to the fore during this time as carbo loading commences, while alcohol sales decline. “We brought in a whole line of beneficial beverages, too, like kombucha and cold-brew coffee (which is less acidic, and some believe, healthier than hot brewed) and a lot of botanicals and teas.” The spa, too, goes into overdrive, with deep tissue massages and reflexology among the most popular services. In the kitchen, Hemm emphasizes dishes that aren’t “heat denatured,” in other words, raw or cured foods (ceviches, crudos). Preparing them this way keeps their nutrients as accessible to the body as possible.