Snow? So what! It's July in January Time

Kick the winter back with some vibrant, spicy ass food and fun

Welcome to January in Woodstock!

Winter in the Hudson Valley of New York is kinda beautiful, kinda gross. On a good day the sun is sharp and the air is cold, crisp and clean. But too often January brings bitch-slaps of slush, snow, ice, wind and gruesomely chilling temps. Along with the bad weather comes the gloomy malaise of closed farm stands and empty restaurants. After a beautiful summer and autumn cooking with the abundance of local veggies and foraged delights, the winter life of a chef can become emotionally challenging. To save my sanity and my business, I invented a dead of winter celebration week to energize myself and my customers. I called it July in January.

In May of 1993, I opened my first restaurant, New World Home Cooking Co, in a 1720 stone farmhouse in the Zena area of east Woodstock, in the upper Catskills, about 100 miles north of NYC. We created quite a pre-opening buzz that spring. I ran weeks of creative and quirky advertising, teasing the audience with mysterious headings like “Jack Sprat and his wife will eat here,” “Watch for upcoming traffic on Zena Road,” and “Reserve as soon as we get a phone.” 

My old-school advertising moxie was successful. We opened in late May like gangbusters. Both our 60-seat cafe and 40-seat patio were filled with locals, summer tourists, music and art celebs, and many other local restaurant people every night. Business exceeded our expectations. We worked like banshees to keep up with the demand for our American Melting Pot cuisine. It was a fresh concept. I created a fun, upscale casual menu that celebrated any and all American immigrant cooking styles and at 33 years old, I was living the chef life I imagined. In the mornings, I cruised the Catskill countryside, connecting with local farmers and makers for their products long before the term Farm to Table was even thought of. Then at night I cooked my ass off on the line. I was having lots of cheffie fun. 

Then I received my first Hudson Valley setback. Immediately after our first Labor Day and the kids returned to school, the weeknight business fell off dramatically. Like 50% down dramatic. Thankfully, the weekend business stayed strong all September and into October as thousands of leaf peepers sojourned to the Catskills for their Woodstock fantasy escapes. The farms were full of bounty and I was cooking with inspiration. We were doing ok. No longer piling up cash, but getting by just fine.

Then, as the last leaves swirled to the ground by November, so did our business. Without travelers to the area, we had only locals to rely upon to make ends meet. They were loyal and enthusiastic, but there weren’t enough of them. We, along with the other 4 or 5 other decent restaurants in town, carved up that small pie, slivers for each of us. In case you don’t know, Woodstock’s population swells to about 18,000 in July and August, when all of the summer homes, BnBs, and cottages are booked solidly with city folks, vacationers, and their families escaping the swampy heat of the NY Metro area. However, once the summer season ends, the population drops to just over 5000. We had to fight for every customer. What a revelation that was. That cheffie fun became a struggle for survival. Instead of cutting back like most places, I dug in harder, got more creative, brought in cooler (and pricier) products, thinking I could lure more customers in with snazzier creations. Foie Gras, Chilean Sea Bass, Veal chops, even Caviar were making their way into my specials. But it was the ol’ “Blood from a stone” syndrome. All I did was burn money. We were definitely wowing our flock of regulars, but the numbers didn’t really change. By mid December, we started falling behind.

Our first winter was especially harsh. By December, the snow started falling. And falling. And falling. 1993-4 was an unusually snowy El Niño season. Being three miles from the village on a winding country road meant magic in the temperate months and Hell in the winter. If the roads were slick and of course they were indeed slick much too frequently it meant little of no business at all. There were those dour weather nights where my sous chef and I ran the entire place; porter, host, bartend, wait, bus, cook, and dishwash. We actually prayed for mid-week snow because since it would be quiet anyway, we would be able to slide through it, but the weather Gods barked “FUCK YOU! I WANNA SNOW EVERY SATURDAY!” and it did.

After chatting with my friend Eric Mann, the chef at The Bear cafe I held out a glimmer of hope. The Bear was our main competition and Woodstock stalwart restaurant. The oped five years before us and he had a better handle on what to expect in winter.

“Man, winter sucks. It like death from a thousand cuts. The only bright spots are Christmas break and Presidents weekend, when we all get our asses handed to us. Be ready.” He said with a resigned tone.

So, heeding his words, I looked forward to Christmas break and a nice 12 day burst of revenue when college kids came home and the city people opened their country houses to celebrate the holidays. Nope, we were thwarted.

It snowed three times that week including on New Year’s Eve. Arg. The sidewalk from the parking lot to the cafe’s front door carved through about three feet of crusty, crunchy, graying layers of snow.

My ever-persistent optimism was challenged, but I lumbered on, as I always have. I was still schlepping to local farms gathering the remains of local winter veggies for my menu, but how many dishes can I make with butternut squash, apples, and kale, week after week, without losing my mind?? I needed more locals to choose us. I needed inspiration. I needed attention. I needed vibrancy. I needed money.

I was determined to shake things up. I approached my wife who was crunching numbers in yhe office, trying to decide who to pay and who not to pay. We were on the Not to Pay list.

“Lizzie, what should I do? This snow is making me crazy!” I told my wife.

“Ya think? What the fuck. pay attention! We are dying here. Try not to spend any money,” she said with a slight panic in her voice.

“Stop with the Foie Gras. Cook for the locals! Put on your Darren Stevens cap and come up with something exciting, but make it cheap. You’re the marketing guy here,” She responded.

“OK baby, you asked for it,” I said with false bravado. I was scared shitless. She just sighed without meeting my eyes and held up her right hand with her fingers crossed while with the other hand she gave me the finger.

Fuck, pressure was on. I needed something to recruit more Woodstock locals to spend their money with us. Of course the conundrum was that much of the local economy was dependent on each other. Realtors were slow in winter. Local shops were slow in winter. Other restaurants were slow in winter. Landscaping and much construction was slow in winter. Free spending money was tight all around. The only locals making money were the snowplow guys, not exactly gourmands.

Sitting in my attic office, staring into space, dreamily looking at the bindings of the cookbooks, the epiphany happened. Catching a glimpse of the worn binding of the Sugar Reef cookbook, I had my answer! Before I moved upstate I was a manager at Sugar Reef, a legendary East Village Caribbean-theme restaurant the roaring 80’s Manhattan crowd every night of ther week. . Sugar Reef’s decor, food and drink were over the top colorful, big, loud and vivacious and the priced were cheap. Every night was a party. That was it. I would recreate a week of Sugar Reef. I was going to try to capture that Sugar Reef energy in Woodstock in January. It will either be a triumph or a shit show.

Now that I had a plan, I needed a marketing hook. As I sat, staring out the window sipping a ginger beer, our manager Brock walked into the office, stomping dirty snow off of his boots. Without even looking up, the first thing he said was “Man, I wish it was July already.” And the hook came to me like a shot of lightening.

July in January! That was the hook I needed! July in January Weekend at New World Home Cooking Co. I quickly built a menu of classic Caribbean dishes. Among them were golden conch fritters loaded with chewy bits of that beautiful sweet sea snail, spicy and crunchy coconut shrimp from scratch with a sweet and musky guava-horseradish sauce, and perfumed and succulent curried goat served with slabs of buttery roti bread. I also featured two dishes that were not your standard Caribbean menu fare, Barbados-style “Bajan” chicken and fish. We also designed the campiest, beachiest drink menu that included Rum Punch, Bahama Mama, Goombay Smash, Surfsider and Zombie. I brought in Red Stripe and Dragon Stout beer. We encouraged our already theatrical front-of-house staff to dress up in Hawaiian shirts, swim trunks, and sunglasses. I made cassette mixes of non-stop Island music. July in January week was born.

During the two weeks leading up to the launch, I promoted July in January hard with print ads in the local papers. I also worked out a barter arrangement with our Woodstock radio station and ran a blitz of advertising without laying out desperately needed cash. As luck would have it, Martin Luther King weekend was nice and busy, as three day weekends were. So I had a little extra money. Instead of paying bills and waiting for five log weeks for President’s weekend, I gambled. My hope was to parlay it with July in January. Trying not to confuse hope for s plan, I made a menu and a very tight shopping list, drove down to the Bronx Terminal Market and loaded up my old Volvo wagon tropical foodstuffs like yucca, goat, whole coconuts, banana leaves, calaloo, scotch bonnets, conch; all the good stuff. I even bought paper beach balls and little umbrellas for the cocktails.

As I was unloading my wheezing old wagon, my wife leaving to pick up the kids from school. She glared when she saw how much stuff I had purchased.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she asked sardonically.

“Yea, yea, I know. Whud’erya’gunna’do? I had your blessing!”

Then I stood my ground. “Go all in or don’t go at all,” I said. 

She rolled her eyes and said tersely. “I hope so because you spent all of our cash on hand. We will be floating into this weekend with our fingers crossed!”

“Keep the faith, baby,” I said. I put on a good front, but behind the confident glow, I was shitting bricks. 

I prepped alone all week, making amazingly colorful. vibrant and most importantly, inexpensive food. I built the bar menu, made the mixes, everything! And guess what? July in January was a stunning success. We were booked solidly all week! We turned up the heat up to 85f, cranked up the soca, salsa, dub and reggae music, and rocked the special menu in that tiny kitchen of ours. The staff got creative, even putting on smelly suntan lotion to help create the vibe. Our grade school-age kids even got involved, dressing up like they were going to the beach. My 6-year-old son Willie even exclaimed that his Dad invented a holiday and wanted to go to school in his bathing suit!

The most important result however was that many locals who though of us as a bit too New Yorky and fancy for their tastes, realized that we had the best fun, party vibe in town, and they returned more frequently throughout the winter. The local Deadhead/Jimmy Buffet fans were totally buzzing about the fun scene, food and yes, the nice prices at New World. I even let some of the more Woodstocky Woodstockers smoke their joints on our empty winter patio. We were the winning the locals over, toke by toke. It was a wild week, and it was as busy as the busiest week in mid-summer. 

July in January influenced they way I cooked and marketed my menus for the rest of my career. When your restaurant’s menu and vibe makes people happy, you earn their regular support. We ran July In January week for 25 years at my Woodstock location until we closed in 2018 and 11 years in the Albany New World Bistro Bar until I left in 2020.

Lesson learned. Know your locals and give them a reason to love you.

So, in the July in January spirit, Here are three Barbados style, or “Bajan” recipes to fire up your winter kitchen. They are hiding behind th paywall, bugt hey, I think i earned $8, don’t you? Please subscribe.