Among the entertaining elements of Hudson’s holiday season Winter Walk were tableaux performed in storefronts. Children ballerinas executing pirouettes in one window, Santa getting his locks shorn in another. But perhaps the best show in town was invisible from the street. And for good reason. It was happening behind the imposing walls of a bank. Or should I say Banque.
That’s the name of the new chocolatier and cafe that opened that evening at the imposing former Farmer’s National Bank on Warren Street. I’ve been visiting Hudson since its 1960’s nadir and have been impressed — perhaps shocked better describes my reaction — by the way it’s rebounded. I’m not saying that’s always a good thing. Gentrification has a way of catering to the rich while neglecting everyone else. But food is a somewhat affordable luxury and window shopping is free.
I’m not easily blown away — that has more to do with a repressed personality than any claims to connoisseurship — but walking into Banque was a mind-blowing experience. Hudson now has atmospheric cafes and bakeries to rival some of New York City’s finest but this was an altogether different order of magnitude. Were it not so bright and shiny I might have believed that I walking into Vienna’s Cafe Central at whose tables Trotsky and Freud once lingered.
The bank building was designed by Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, the architects of the Empire State Building, and share elements of the skyscraper’s triumphant ambition. For example, its thirty-seven foot ceilings. Those soaring aspirations appear embodied in the delicate form of Arden Fuchs, Banque’s young owner. A former ballerina whose career was sidelined by injury Arden hopes that the cafe’s quality and experience — the walls’ hand painted floral murals, marble counters and energetic sophistication — is something that can soon be scaled up. “There’s the possibility of expanding beyond the walls of the place,” she told me during a recent visit to Banque. “That was always the plan.”
I have many flaws as a journalist and one of them is my inability to eat and interview at the same time. If I’m working I find it hard to enjoy the food no matter how fancy the restaurant. That was the problem at Banque as Arden shared with me her chocolates and pastries, among them rich milk and dark chocolate dunked caramel cookies, s’mores, and orange peel. I’m not complaining, even though my heart broke when we returned from a tour of the state-of-the-art downstairs chocolate enrobing tunnel, tempering machines and lamination room where the chocolates and homemade gelato are crafted, only to discover that my barely touched plate of treats had been swept away.
It didn’t seem right to ask where they’d gone or whether they could be salvaged but I usher from a family where a cupboard full of candy feels like money in an actual bank to normal people and discarding such treasures are a misdemeanor that ought to be bumped up to a felony.
Arden grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, attended high school and college at Bard/Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington so she’s familiar with the region. But she honed her cooking skills and her pastry and chocolate palate at culinary schools in Switzerland and Australia. That’s where she met Paul Kennedy, her mentor, an award-winning Irish chocolatier, and the maestro behind the jewel-like chocolates and delicately flaky croissants and pastries that greet customers.
Did I mention that one of the products that was whisked away before I could take more than a bite or politely asked for it to be boxed was some sort of divinely inspired raspberry compote with vanilla custard pastry. For the record, Arden sent me home with a box of chocolate and several pastries but I hate to see anything sweet go to waste.
We were joined by Paul with whom I shared formative memories of Cadbury Flake and Dairy Milks; Irish not British Cadbury, that is. We’re both of the belief that there’s something about Irish milk that makes its chocolate superior to any other Cadbury version. I was also posing him and Arden something of a test. My belief is that chocolate can get too fancy and full of itself. Can even a world-class chocolate maker appreciate mass produced candy? Paul certainly could. He told me he grew up down the road from the Cadbury plant in Dublin where his uncle worked and snuck the family free samples.
I was more suspicious of Arden — “I wouldn't say I eat a lot of chocolate,” she told me, “I do everything in moderation” — but she also passed the test by citing Peanut M&M’s as a childhood favorite. I think we can all agree that Peanut M&M’s rise above America’s typical commercial candy fare. I wouldn’t even be surprised to learn that it was good for you.
Arden told me that the discipline that ballet taught her translates into what she’s doing with Banque. “Ballet instills pressure while maintaining a calm facade and a certain level of elegance,” she observed. There’s also, she added, “the many hours that goes into creating something beautiful. There’s a lot of analogies that can be made.”
I was impressed when she fielded a call from a customer who basically wanted to be read the entire menu over the phone; and without betraying a whiff of impatience. “You can have the most beautiful space but the hospitality is what brings them back,” Arden noted. Banque is open for breakfast, lunch and tea Thursday through Sunday and until 10 p.m. on weekends where the action shifts to an elegant bar and a well-chosen if not inexpensive bar menu.
You may have gathered that I’m somewhat suspicious of precious seeming chocolates. But I was converted by Banque’s colorful chocolate bon bons in exotic flavors. Each one was a decadent artfully crafted taste adventure — to take just one: mandarin ganache and buckwheat crunch in a milk chocolate shell. I’m looking forward to taking that journey again in the not too distant future.
Ralph Gardner Junior is a journalist who divides his time between New York City and Columbia County. More of his work can be found in the Berkshire Eagle and on Substack.
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