If walls could talk, the ones inside the former William Fuller estate would no doubt speak of the high times of the Roaring ”™20s to the lows of a blaze that nearly destroyed it to an amazing 40-year run as a well-regarded French restaurant.
The 400-acre spread on Studio Hill Road in the town of Ossining was built in 1904 to serve as the country estate of Fuller, a wealthy financier, philanthropist and the president of American Tobacco.
Legend has it that when “Gone With the Wind” was being filmed in the late 1930s, the building was used for exterior shots of Tara, the fictional plantation on which the character Scarlett O”™Hara lived. Concrete evidence supporting the story remains elusive and so the legend remains a legend.
Truer to history, after Fuller”™s death in 1941, the mansion was home to Thoroughbred horses and elephants. The resident pachyderms are easy to explain as the owner of the house at the time, Bernard Van Leer, was a Dutch businessman who fancied himself an “amateur circus master” who, for a short time, had shows in New York City and the East Coast. After he moved on, the mansion served as a riding academy in the 1950s.
It wasn”™t until 1960 that it became the long-running restaurant Maison Lafitte. After it closed in 2000, the mansion became home to a pair of short-lived and less than memorable eateries.
Today, David Breschel is looking to return the mansion to its former glory with
Haymount House and Hudson, which he bills a farm-to-table restaurant.
Breschel, a lawyer from Chappaqua, heard the mansion was available four years ago. So, with three partners they formed North River Hospitality Group Inc. and have leased the site for 20 years from owner Sayed Nayeem of Chappaqua. Renovations began a year ago and on March 28 the restaurant opened. Haymount House will serve as a space for weddings and corporate events. The first wedding reception was held April 14.
Breschel”™s ties to Haymount House are intertwined with his time as a student at Fordham University and Fordham Law School.
“I was first here in the late ”™70s,when one of my professors at Fordham, Father Robert Gleason, a Jesuit priest, said he would take me to his favorite French restaurant. I remember I saw a society woman leaving, thought she was the coat check person, and handed her my coat,” he recalled, laughing.
One of Breschel”™s partners, Joseph LaRosa, went to law school together 30 years ago. The other partners are David Darmanovic, a restaurateur from Pleasantville who owns Pizza Station in Chappaqua and Katonah, and William Gray, a landscaper from Staten Island who is married to LaRosa”™s sister.
Breschel met Darmanovic at Pizza Station. “That was my family”™s Friday night out.” The two decided to go into business together and brought in the other two partners.
One of Breschel”™s goals for the new restaurant is to bring back the French countryside feel of Maison Lafitte as well as locally grown food.
“We have a garden in the back and what we don”™t get from there we get from local farms or if it has to be brought in from somewhere else, it”™s organic, high quality.” The menu, as it stands now, which Breschel said is about half the size of what it will eventually be, features appetizers such as spring risotto, farm house egg and pancetta; and foie gras terrine, dried apricot mustard terrine, and red wine syrup. Entrees include ravioli using ricotta from Sprout Creek Farm in Dutchess County, chanterelles, ramp butter and tomato, and Long Island striped bass with garden peas, horseradish and vanilla. For dessert, there is dark chocolate pot de crème, morello cherry and almond biscotti, and a warm apple tart, with walnut and smoked vanilla ice cream. The creator of these goodies is executive chef Scott Riesenberger, who has worked with David Bouley, Rocco Dispirito, Alain Ducasse and Marc Veyrat.
“My goal is to be something like Blue Hill at Stone Farm,” said Breschel, “but more economical.” He said a recent lunch there was $275 a person, and is aiming for $60 a person at Hudson.
“And even though this is beautiful, I want it to be a little more casual. We”™re going to have a bar menu, with things like burgers and steak frites. I”™d like it to be someplace that”™s not just for special occasions. And I love when people look at a menu and say ”˜There are so many good things on it I”™ve got to come back again,”™” he said.
Breschel said Hudson has all its site approvals, a liquor license and a cabaret license, which is needed even if recorded music is played, which it is in the restaurant. But there will be live music for the weddings, and he said he is hoping to have live jazz, perhaps on Friday nights.
All this will happen in a building that Breschel said really doesn”™t look very different than it did 108 years ago. “The fireplace in the restaurant, the front fountain, some of the furniture. Some has been restored, some had to be replaced,” he said.
The whole project has been time-consuming for Breschel.
“Someday I”™ll have to go back to practicing law,” he said, which is his own criminal defense practice, along with teaching law in Fordham”™s MBA program.
