Oneonta native Kurt DuBois brought nearly 40 years of food industry experience when he and his wife, Lisa, took over The Hidden Inn, a historic 1893 carriage house in South Kortright, in August 2022.
“I, personally, have been in the food industry since 1985, in one capacity or another,” he said. “I was a cook and chef in Oneonta for a few places, a manager at Ponderosa Steakhouse for a while and then, in 1990, I took a sales job with Oneonta Grocery. They sold to a major food distributor called U.S. Foods, so I worked for (them) for 26 years in food sales.
“I got an opportunity to get out of that business and into the restaurant business when my ex-in-laws offered me their restaurant in Stamford,” he continued. “We knew that The Hidden Inn, which was a restaurant for the better part of 50 years, was available at the time we were dissolving the lease with my old restaurant. We had to go through a lot of groundwork about who owned it, because it had been closed for 10 years, but we found it with help from the Delaware County Economic Development Corporation.”
Because of the building’s long vacancy, DuBois said, he purchased the “property and building for a very inexpensive price,” then spent nearly two years renovating the site.
“Two guys took it over who knew nothing about the restaurant business and renovated it a little, then opened it for one year, then closed their doors New Year’s Eve 2012,” he said. “It had been sitting vacant since that time, that’s why it was such an extensive renovation process.”
The results, he said, include eight “very nicely appointed guest rooms, each one completely different,” two dining rooms, a pub area, an outdoor pavilion for weddings, reunions and parties up to 130 people and, in summertime, an al fresco dining space for around 50 people.
Though DuBois said accommodations at The Hidden Inn have become “very, very popular in the summertime,” and in demand in the winter as skiing popularity grows, the restaurant is his mainstay.
“We’re open Monday through Saturday for dinner, and it is only dinner,” he said. “I don’t want to categorize what we do and say it’s white tablecloth or high-end, but that’s where we started and, now, we have something for everybody. We have a really good high-end, signature burger for $18, and we have other items that are under $20, that’s why we just introduced (a lower price menu).
“We are very known for our prime rib,” he continued. “My chef has a perfect rub and we cook it perfectly and everybody raves about it. We have a filet mignon trio and everybody loves that, and our chicken Milanese is a huge hit and it’s very fresh. The demographics of our area are a little different than Oneonta, and the average income around this area is not the greatest, but people still want to go out to eat or take something home. We introduced the (under $20 menu) and we are bringing our pizza program back from our old restaurant. When we closed in Stamford, it created a huge void in the community for pizza.”
Staying attuned to such demographic shifts has generated a diverse clientele.
“We have a really good mix but, in the wintertime, we have to cater to the locals more than what we call the downstate people,” he said. “But, from summertime, we are completely packed with downstaters.
“People have been ecstatic that we’ve opened back up and gave them a choice of where to go,” Kurt continued. “We have a Friday night bar crowd, and we’re packing the bar, and it’s locals; they come and they want a nice place to go and there are not a lot of places around here. We do have a really good mix. We’re Oneontans and we have a lot friends in Oneonta and they do support us, and we’ll have people from Cooperstown. They’re coming from all over, just because they’ve heard how good it was. We have good food and, because I’ve been in the food business such a long time, we do care, and, with my wife running front of the house, she cares about the customer experience.”
“You have your regulars that come in and you know their kids, you ask about their families and how so-and-so’s doing,” Lisa DuBois said. “We want the experience to be … where friends become family.”
The couple said they hope to continue evolving, enclosing the pavilion to facilitate year-round usage.
“We’d love to be able to do weddings every weekend and make that a standalone operation,” Kurt DuBois said, “Right now, we can only do it in the summer. We’d love to have a catering facility we could use 365 days and cater all sorts of things.”
The Hidden Inn is located at 10860 County Route 18 in South Kortright. For more information or to view a menu, visit thehiddeninn1893.com, find “The Hidden Inn” on Facebook or follow @thehiddeninn1893 on Instagram.