Bartender Graham Chrystie photograph by Carrie Marie Burr
After sitting vacant for a decade, Bolton Landing’s former Sagamore Pub had lost whatever luster it once possessed. But on their visits to Lake George, Paty and Richard Boccato—who have launched successful businesses on both coasts—saw it as a diamond in the rough. Situated at the intersection where guests leaving the swanky Sagamore Resort turn onto Lake Shore Drive, the empty building “seemed so wrong in this cute little town,” says Paty.
In 2020, the Boccatos partnered with Kristan Keck and Kirby Farmer, proprietors of the Hudson restaurant and guesthouse Wm. Farmer & Sons, to buy it at bankruptcy auction. Two years and much polishing later, they opened The Gem, a smokehouse and cocktail bar named for one of the hundreds of islands dotting Lake George. (Sister business Little Gem, a wine and spirits shop, is next door.)
There was more than business savvy behind the purchase. Paty has family roots in Bolton and grew up spending summers at the lake. “My memories of the Adirondacks—it was total freedom as a child. I never had any limitations on what I could and could not do. I was in the woods, in the mountains, in the lakes. It was a life-changing experience as a kid to be able to spend two full, solid months of that.” She and Richard wanted their son, who is now six, to have the chance to make similar memories.
Along with Paty’s local knowledge, the partners brought a trove of combined experience in the hospitality industry.
Richard, born in Florence and raised in Brooklyn, made his name as an early player in the craft cocktail movement in New York City, working with Sasha Petraske at the iconic speakeasies Milk & Honey and Little Branch. He later opened cocktail bars in New York and Los Angeles, plus a specialty cocktail ice business, Hundredweight Ice, manufacturing and delivering the crystal-clear blocks required by true connoisseurs. “If you’re going to pay top dollar for a superior cocktail, then the frozen water that goes into that cocktail should be as important an ingredient as everything else that goes into it,” explains Richard, in an oddly mesmerizing short documentary for the food website Eater.
Richard also consults on beverage programs for restaurants internationally, which is how he was introduced to Farmer and Keck. The couple, who, like the Boccatos, have a young son, restored a historic building in Hudson, opening Wm. Farmer & Sons restaurant, bar and guesthouse in 2015.
At The Gem, chef Kirby made the strategic decision to center the menu around the use of an outdoor smoker, which optimizes the output of the relatively small kitchen while calling on both his North Carolina roots and training from the Culinary Institute of America. Nothing is frozen, and the menus rotate seasonally. Sandwiches and platters feature Baltimore black Angus pit beef, St. Louis ribs, Carolina pulled pork or roasted portabello mushrooms, served with sides that might include bourbon baked beans, a watermelon salad or Kansas City cheesy corn.
The décor is an upscale but comfortable take on a classic Adirondack lake house, with banquettes upholstered in Pendleton blankets, vintage souvenir pennants and backlit scenic photographs on the walls. “We’re inspired by the Great Camps and by the surroundings,” Paty says. “We never wanted to create something that didn’t feel like it belonged there.”
The well-stocked bar takes up most of one wall, with plenty of seating for those who come to partake of the carefully curated drink selection. The menu, which also changes seasonally, credits the source of each cocktail, ranging from the retro rum drinks of tiki lounge Trader Vic’s, to the classic Cape Codder, published in The New Yorker in 1965, to more modern concoctions from the Boccatos’ other bars, using fresh juices and house-made syrups. The beer taps are devoted to New York State brews, including nearby Bolton Landing Brewing Company, and the lengthy list of sipping spirits hail from around the globe.
If you taste something at the bar you can’t live without, Little Gem Liquors stocks “more than the same 20 labels you would see everywhere,” Paty says. And, yes, you can get hand-cut ice, too.
In the summer, when Bolton’s population balloons, the party spills out back, where guests can carouse around the fire pit to a Tom Petty–heavy playlist, while a vintage camper serves up food and drinks to go.
A few years in, the partners have begun to get a handle on the seasonal roller-coaster that opening a business in a resort community entails. “Bolton, especially, is such a summer town,” says Paty. “The drop-off is so abrupt. We had to reestablish ourselves with the locals as not only being here for tourists.” In the off-season, they’ve experimented with adding brunch, plus trivia nights and a tropical-themed “Mele Kalikimaka” holiday party.
But they have no illusions about what it will take to make it work. “People coming to us from even 30 minutes away is what’s going to keep us afloat as a business,” Paty says. “Their support means everything, and every person who walks through the door is important to us.”
IF YOU GO
Find The Gem restaurant and bar and Little Gem Liquors (www.thegemlittlegem.com, 518-240-6083) at 4983 and 4981 Lake Shore Drive, in Bolton Landing.
