Chef Alex Napolitano confesses that his favorite food group is much humbler than you might expect from a seasoned chef: the good ol’ sandwich.

In fact, among his stints shaping the menus at A Voce, Charlie Bird, and Rubirosa in Manhattan — and now as executive chef at Prospect — Napolitano has always toyed with the idea of one day opening a simple little sandwich shop.

That sandwich shop now exists as more than an idea — it recently took up residence on Main Street in Hunter. At the end of 2020, Fellow Mountain Cafe was brought to life by the design studio Post Company, branding studio Revolver, and the Escape Hospitality Team including Napolitano.

The bakery and sandwich shop serves up more casual fare than what’s on the menu at Prospect, focusing on breakfast, lunch, and pastry treats pre- or post-hike. “We always knew that as an extension of the hotel itself, there was a need to be able to pick up a lunch that felt homemade but was restaurant-quality and more on the healthy side of things,” says Matthew Ricke, Project Manager for Escape Hospitality. “But the more opportunities we have to create something that is unique and special for the town, and signals that we’re a long- term part of the community, is a good thing.”

The name Fellow comes from the building’s previous incarnation as a meeting place for the local chapter of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. “They were sort of a lighthearted fraternal organization,” explains Napolitano. “And a lot of their paraphernalia was left in the space, little trinkets and minutes from their meetings and stuff.”

The original tin ceilings and wainscotting, the hard wood floors and open layout, fit perfectly with what the Escape Hospitality team envisioned. And, with the help of Post Company — the designers formerly known as Studio Tack, who also designed Scribner’s Catskill Lodge — the duo freshened up the paint and finishes, and added in a kitchen, bar, and custom furniture. “It’s very classic, which is a departure from the design of Scribner’s,” notes Ricke, of Fellow’s interiors. “It’s a lot less modern because we wanted to retain the history of the building. ”

It’s not just sandwiches and pastries on offer at Fellow, but also another gustatory prize that city dwellers often seek while traveling: a great cup of coffee.

While it would have been easy to bring in the beans of one of the big-city coffee darlings, Napolitano wanted to keep things more local, and chose instead to serve Peak’s Coffee from Syracuse. ”We wanted to stay with a smaller New York state company to supply our coffee,” he explains. “One of their core values is that they roast in-house and use single-origin and sustainably harvested coffees that they distribute themselves, which we really agree with. And part of my ethos that I’ve kept with me is to stay as local as possible with the sourcing of all my ingredients.”

That commitment also extends to the bakery’s flour (much of which is from local grainery Wild Hive Farm) and to its dairy products (including homemade gelato) from Clark’s Dairy Milk, a family-owned dairy farm in Delhi, New York. “It’s probably the most delicious milk that I’ve ever had,” says Napolitano. “It doesn’t get any fresher or any more local than literally milked and bottled and processed half an hour away from here and driven over by the farmer.”

Keeping things simple was the strategy for Fellow’s menu, so that the ingredients themselves could sing. “On paper, an egg sandwich is an egg sandwich, but this egg sandwich that you get from Fellow is incomparable to the egg sandwich you’d be getting from your local bodega in the city,” says Napolitano. “The brioche is handmade and cooked in our wood oven every single day. The eggs are from local farms. The hash browns are made in- house. The mushrooms are roasted daily. We’re taking what people think of as an egg sandwich and exceeding their expectations by far.”

And then there’s the secret Odd Fellow sauce, made in-house from an alchemy of ketchup, aioli, ancho chiles, vinegar, honey. “It’s a little sweet, a little savory, it’s got a little heat, but it’s not overpoweringly spicy at all.”

So what, exactly, is the secret to a good sandwich? “You can’t have anything without fantastic bread, that’s the backbone of the sandwich,” says Napolitano, adding that they bake all of it — brioche, baguettes, sourdough, sea salt focaccia, and dark rye — in-house. “And the right ratio of ingredients is key. You need enough moisture. It can’t be too much meat. You need the right cheese. You need the right crunch. You need a little something pickled for acidity. But most of all, you need a good balance of ingredients without one thing overpowering the other. There are so few elements, so each one of them has to shine.”

Find @hellofellowcafe in Hunter

By Mikki Brammer

Photography by Moriah Wolfe

Volume 6