American Holiday - 2
The Inn at Hastings Park is the luxury Relais & Chateaux inn in historic Lexington MA that Trisha Pérez Kennealy built - well, not physically, but effectively. This incredibly extroverted and talented Puerto Rican-American decided long before she was a well-established investment banker that she wanted to have her own restaurant and hotel. As a starter, she did a full Cordon Bleu diploma and looked around for suitable properties. Finding anything to convert in this area of Old Massachusetts is well nigh impossible, but she came across three 19th-century traditional wood clapboard houses, fortunately next to each other, and planning permission was already there to convert them to what she wanted to do (she beat out another would-be developer who had Disney experience: she had none on the operation side, but she had legal persuasion skills). And so the Inn opened, and with 22 bedrooms total, it's packed out.
Trisha's inn probably can't expand because of zoning permits. It opened in 2014 with the three adjacent 19th century houses that it still has, together making 22 rooms in total. #14 is ground floor, rear of Isaac Mulliken House, built 1841and named for Isaac Mulliken 1790–1859, a local carpenter who represented Lexington in the Massachusetts legislature for 3 years. One of the room’s high point is its log-look electric fire, button-controlled for up to 30 minutes. There's a structural challenge hallenge in that all the rooms are different shapes. Freestanding Smeg fridges are okay, but putting safes in some rooms is going to be a bit of a challenge. Mike and Trisha, who have three children, also have a house in Acadia ME, where they fell in love with Abby Rockefeller's gardens. Trisha variously studied here at Harvard and also in New York, and years ago, she and her husband, Mike, spent time in UK. He’s a wants-to-be Governor of the State of Massachusetts
Dinner, like all meals during our too-short stay, was outside on the hotel’s front porch. It's all very flexible and some others seemed to prefer eating inside. There is ample space inside, by the way, for ‘the boss’ to give cooking lessons, up to 50 at any one time, and for pop-up visits by other famous chefs, and wine names.
Tonight, from the simple menu and served by Peter on Syracuse china, with Degrenne cutlery, dinner started with a whole magnificent baked Hasselback potato (photo below), named in the 1950s after a Stockholm restaurant that invented cutting a baking potato, almost completely through, in such thin slices that it fans out when baked. This was topped with caviar and crème fraiche. It’s a side on the menu but Girlahead found it made a great entire course.
Next came half a Giannone chicken from Quebec, air-chilled without added water: it was served on a bed of Marsh Hen Mill grits with Cabot Cheddar and sides of sautéed greens, and the most delicious long-stalk mushrooms from Joyberry Farms, an hour away in Mason NH. Dessert was an affogato, choice of ice cream, espresso poured over with a chocolate biscotti on the side, and a glass of Provence rosé. We finally tried a signature cocktail, Hastings Iced Coffee, a martini coupe holding Belvedere, milk coffee liqueur, coffee foam, coffee beans…
