DINING OUT: Warfield’s
Clifton Springs restaurant continues its tradition of good food — more than three decades after its opening
By Jacob Pucci
Warfield’s
7 W. Main St., Clifton Springs, NY, 14432
Bakery open Tuesday to Saturday, from 9 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Lunch served Tuesday to Saturday, from 11 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Dinner served Tuesday to Thursday, from 4 – 8:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, from 4 – 9 p.m.
Closed Sunday and Monday.
Sometimes a restaurant’s best dishes are family recipes passed down for generations or signature items refined through decades of work and repetition. Sometimes, as it was during dinner at Warfield’s in Clifton Springs, a star was born through sheer serendipity.
This restaurant, bakery and tavern, which opened over three decades ago in a stately brick building circa 1871, might not be the first place you’d think to find elk chops on the menu. And you’d be right. As our server explained, the wild game chops on special that evening arrived by mistake from one of the restaurant’s suppliers.
The kitchen took that curveball and hit a home run.
Cooked to medium-rare (the kitchen wouldn’t cook it beyond that, we were told), the meat was very lean, yet tender enough to cut with a butter knife, with a rich, slightly sweet flavor akin to grass-fed beef, boosted by a rich demi-glace. Sautéed summer squash and pleasantly garlicky mashed potatoes rounded out the plate.
That was only one of the many pleasures waiting at Warfield’s, a dining experience that began with their signature salty bread a Rochester-area staple and concluded with a tempting selection of homemade desserts.
Fried calamari always runs the risk of disaster, as it’s only a few moments in the fryer that determine the difference between a tender, lightly briny bite and a plate full of crispy rubber bands. Warfield’s version ($20) was thankfully the former, with a light, crispy batter that adhered to the squid, even the pieces in contact with the marinara sauce at the bottom of the plate. A scattering of kalamata olives and sliced banana peppers offered complementary punches of saltiness and a little heat.
Whether it’s a potluck dinner or a fine dining meal, if there are deviled eggs available, I will be eating them. Here they’re generously filled and topped with cubed pancetta. I wish the smoked paprika and chives listed on the menu were more prominent, as the eggs themselves felt somewhat plain.
While the elk may have stolen the show, the rest of the offerings — a succinct, seasonal menu of proteins and several pasta dishes — were also excellent.
At $56, the 14-ounce ribeye isn’t cheap, but it does include a choice of two sides and a sauce (the cracked peppercorn and cognac sauce was well worth the $2 upcharge). Cooked precisely to a medium-rare, the steak was served atop generous portions of roasted fall squash and the same skin-on mashed potatoes that accompanied the elk. Nothing about the dish is particularly novel or boundary-pushing, but it’s a classic steak dinner executed exceptionally well.
Seafood pasta dishes always sound great in theory, but I’ve had enough stodgy, gluey Alfredo sauces that drown out everything in their wake, or loose, oily sauces that pool at the bottom of the bowl instead of coating the pasta, to know that this simple concept is more complex than many realize. So, I was happy to find that Warfield’s shrimp tagliatelle ($32) suffered none of these issues.
The fresh, wide tagliatelle was paired with a generous portion of jumbo shrimp, pancetta, cherry tomatoes, and spinach. While the menu described it as a cream sauce, a hearty dose of white wine and garlic gave it a much lighter, brighter flavor than expected. Still, the cream provided enough richness to coat every bite. Any sauce left behind was quickly sopped up with a slice of salty bread.
I wasn’t asked how I wanted my salmon cooked, but thankfully the fillet ($32) was grilled to a perfect medium-rare (notice a trend? The kitchen’s precision in grilling proteins is exceptional). The butternut squash risotto the fillet was perched upon needed salt, but the broccolini was just the right amount of tender and the salmon was truly one of the best-cooked pieces of fish I’ve had in some time.
Both the seasonal pumpkin cheesecake and Italian lemon cake (both $12) — our server’s favorite — were flavorful without being overly rich or dense. The lemon cake, with its cream filling, tender crumb and thin, crispy top, would be a particularly good choice if you only saved a sliver of room for dessert.
Considering Warfield’s opens up its bakery at 9 a.m. each day and stays open for at least 12 hours until the end of that day’s dinner service, top-notch precision is essential to keeping this well-oiled machine running and each dish reflected that skill. Service was punctual and extremely friendly without feeling overbearing. The restaurant’s adjoining English garden, a lush space complete with a koi pond, gazebo, benches and outdoor tables, would have been a lovely dining locale had we visited on a warmer day. There are few places where you can enjoy a fine dining dinner and then come back the next morning for fresh-baked cookies and a loaf of bread, but Warfield’s somehow finds a way to do it all.