Photographs courtesy of The Woodshed on Park
Pâté chinois served in a cast-iron skillet. Chicken, stewed vegetables and gravy over biscuits. Crusty bread. If you’re craving this French-Canadian comfort food, you’ve got to check out The Woodshed on Park, in Tupper Lake.
Flannel meets the dress code, but don’t expect looming stuffed animal heads or cross-cut saws mounted on the walls. Instead, inside the roomy space that was once the Red Barn Family Restaurant you’ll find woodsy decor and antiques, funky lamps and vintage typewriters. Siobhan Spencer and Chef Evan Sloan, who opened The Woodshed last spring, go as far as describing the vibe as “cozy Alice in Wonderland.” It’s another example of how the couple has created something fresh and unexpected while embracing the town’s culinary and lumberjack past.
Sloan grew up here. He met Spencer in Schenectady, where they worked together in a café and he attended culinary school. Next came a decade or so in Brooklyn until the pandemic hit, pushing them to the North Country, where they could be with family and stretch beyond the confines of a tiny apartment. The plan was to stay put in Tupper Lake, which led to realizing their dream of opening a place of their own.
The cuisine was a no-brainer. “Being from Tupper Lake and being French Canadian,” says Sloan, “I’d come back here and visit and people were trying to do everything but French-Canadian food. Why not that kind of good, from-scratch food that we grew up with?”
He remembers his grandmother’s pâté chinois—a version of what other folks call shepherd’s pie—and meals “made from different kinds of lards and roasting the bones.” They’re techniques he’s incorporated at The Woodshed.
Sloan makes the bread, buns and biscuits as well as ricotta cheese, so versatile, he says, that “there are a lot of fun things you can do with it.” The menu focuses on local ingredients, like meat from Donahue’s Farms in North Bangor.
Cocktails, created by bartender Emma Crouse, continue the nod-to-the-North theme, with names such as Touk Toddy and the Caribou, “A Québécois Classic Meets the Manhattan.” (Mulled wine and brown cinnamon sugar syrup are part of the magic.)
Our place “is about the whole package,” says Spencer, who serves as the restaurant’s general manager (and decorator; she’s also the artist behind the moss sculptures). “All we want to do is give people a good experience, and we’re trying hard to make that happen.”
It’s working. People are talking about the place and it’s usually packed.
Credit goes to The Woodshed’s staff of eight—all “talented people” who bring their game, from food and drinks to exceptional service, says Sloan. And “we’ve been getting amazing support from the town—we already have regulars, mostly locals. Siobhan will tell me, ‘They got dragged in by their wife, but are enjoying everything.’ That makes me happy.”
If You Go
Find The Woodshed on Park (518-929-8067) at 218 Park Street, in Tupper Lake. Winter hours are Wednesday through Saturday, 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. Learn more at www.thewoodshedonpark.com or on Facebook and Instagram.
