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New Leaves

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AFTER 16 YEARS AND 65 ISSUES, you’d think that things would settle down around here. You’d think the routine nature of a lot of what we do—seeking and developing content, planning budgets, tailoring information and content to what our readers want—you’d think that by now we could kick back a bit and run The Valley Table by remote control. Not a chance.

In fact, over the past eight or ten months or so, some significant events here have, for lack of a better phrase, recharged our batteries.

By the time you read this, we should be in the somewhat painful but thrilling process of moving our offices, lock, stock and barrel. To say that The Valley Table has been an intimate part of our lives for the past 16 years is putting it mildly—our offices in the basement have served us well as outpost and shelter and transportation hub—not such a bad thing, really (after all, our commute was only 13 steps). We knew we’d inevitably outgrow the accommodations, both psychologically and physically, and we have. We’re officially relocating the “home offices” (get it?) of The Valley Table to new digs in Beacon—just a little over five miles away, but across a river that historically seems to have divided the valley’s sensibilities, loyalties and even economies for years. We’re excited about the move and to bridging the east and west shores.

Another leaf: Compulsive readers of our masthead (to the right) no doubt have noticed some new names—new blood—at The Valley Table. Justin Satkowski, formerly sports information director at Mount Saint Mary College (and still men’s tennis coach) has signed on as associate editor. He’s got a sharp ear for language and a quick pen (and eyes on the Division 3 trophy). We’re also happy to have signed coordinator Emily Sneyd, one of our former interns, now packing a brand new English degree from SUNY New Paltz.

Not as much a new leaf as a milestone is this spring’s Hudson Valley Restaurant Week, number 10 in what has become one of the largest food events in the East (at least as far as geographic coverage is concerned). We’ve come to regard it as “114 miles of food,” give or take a couple of hundred yards. Considering the winter we’ve had dumped on us this year (there’s another snowstorm due any minute now, in fact), the two weeks, 114 miles, 190 restaurants of Restaurant Week can’t come a moment too soon.

Finally, a bow to those good readers who still enthusiastically quiz us about the legendary (mythical?) kitchen re-do we announced, oh, a couple of years ago. Well, it’s sort of taking a lot longer than we anticipated to make it happen. Thank you for asking, though, and yes, there will be a new kitchen sometime soon, but it’s a frustrating process that would test Job’s patience, as they say. On the other hand, we haven’t had to put a divorce attorney on retainer, and now we’ve got this great basement, and if we just put a sofa and some chairs down there with a big-screen television, maybe we’ll stop worrying about where to put a new oven.

Hudson Valley Restaurant Week is back this April 8-21!