Liquids and Solids at the Handlebar
A Meal in the Mountains
Rillettes and boudin. Sweetbreads and marrow bones. Chicory root and trumpet mushrooms. A quick perusal of the menu at Liquids and Solids is a lesson not only in culinary creativity but in horticulture and animal anatomy.
For an unadventurous diner, the terms can intimidate. But with an open mind and an appreciation for unquestionably delicious food, even those with pickier palates will come away not just satisfied but with a newfound curiosity for flavors and ingredients.
As farm-to-classroom educators who love experimenting with recipes, my husband, Elie, and I are always on the lookout for restaurants that feature something new. Something innovative. Something we haven’t attempted in our own kitchen. Something delightful in the truest sense of the word.
For that sort of elusive experience—the one full of flavorful surprises and delight—we go to Liquids and Solids.
When co-owners Keegan Kramer and Tim Loomis opened Liquids and Solids at the Handlebar in 2010, they knew what they wanted out of a restaurant experience, and what they didn’t want. “The American food scene was changing, and so was the cookbook scene,” Keegan explains. “It wasn’t just standard fine dining and how-to recipe books. We were seeing people’s individual philosophies and unique voices. And we saw our own values—meals prepared from scratch using local ingredients; an experimental but approachable experience—echoed in what was happening around us.”
Keegan and Tim have both worked in the restaurant industry for the majority of their adult lives. When Tim, a graduate of the culinary arts program at Paul Smith’s College, spent a semester studying in France, his passion for lesser-known ingredients was ignited. Keegan, who grew up in the Adirondack Park skiing, hiking and biking, holds a deep love for the North Country, despite the challenges the lightly populated region poses for many businesses. She and Tim both worked at many of the area’s bedrock establishments for years, and when they saw an opportunity to acquire a restaurant space located a few blocks from Lake Placid’s Main Street, they decided it was the time to build something of their own.
“We were young and scared out of our minds,” Tim says, “but we knew we wanted something that was ours, and that we didn’t want to open up a traditional American brewpub.”
“We definitely didn’t choose the North Country because it would be easy,” Keegan adds. “We’d considered moving somewhere else before starting our own place, but the idea of not being in the wilderness, not having access to the outdoors, we knew it wasn’t for us.”
The cozy, rustic gastropub—decorated with eclectic artwork and heated by wood stove—is just far enough from the center of town that it doesn’t get many walk-ins. “It can mean that Main Street is buzzing with clientele, every restaurant packed, and we can still have a slow night,” Tim says. “We’ve had steady business for years, but it never stops being stressful. We still wonder if tonight will be the night no one shows up.”
When I ask Keegan if they wanted to move closer to the center of town, she laughs. “I’d put our restaurant in the middle of the woods if people would still show up. I love the mountains and the space. And our location is perfect for what we want. People don’t accidentally come here. It’s a choice when people decide to have dinner with us, so we generally have visitors who are excited to try something a little bit different, along with a great community of local clientele.” That clientele includes many of the farmers whose ingredients are featured on the Liquids and Solids menu, including the owners of nearby Sugarhouse Creamery, Asgaard Farm, Mad Crazy Flowers, Mace Chasm Farm, Fledgling Crow Farm and Wild Work Farm.
The “liquids” part of the operation is firmly Keegan’s arena. In addition to co-managing the business, she tends bar nightly and creates the restaurant’s many unique cocktails that feature fresh herbs and creative syrups. Few things are as lovely during a long Adirondack winter as her Maple and Spice, which pairs maple syrup from trees tapped right down the road with the heat of cayenne pepper.
The “solids” belong to Chef Tim, a finalist for the James Beard Best Chef in the Northeast award, and his thoughtfully prepared food gives the simple, and not-so-simple, ingredients room to shine. Rich pâté on warm crusty bread, seasonal gnocchi, Scotch eggs—one of the world’s most perfect foods—made from local eggs and housemade sausage. Though they love their respective roles, Keegan and Tim frequently collaborate to come up with new ideas and unexpected flavors, particularly during bumper-crop seasons when certain ingredients are overabundant, or when attempting to put a new spin on winter storage vegetables.
By definition, using seasonal ingredients means that options are ever-changing, though there are some menu staples. “There are certain things we’ll always serve because our regulars want them, like the fried Brussels sprouts,” Keegan says (and this local, for one, hopes the poutine stays on that list), “but we have so much freedom to experiment, to add and remove things from our menu. Every day we go in and can try something new.”
Tim agrees. “The two or three quiet hours where I can just look at our ingredients and brainstorm new recipes—that’s the best part of my day.”
Kreature Feature
One outcome of Keegan and Tim’s farm-to-table philosophy that the pair didn’t expect is the nostalgia some patrons feel for lesser-used ingredients. “I’ll never forget the first time we served chicken liver,” Keegan says. “Older customers kept coming up to me saying they hadn’t had the dish since they were children. They wanted as much as we could serve them. When we opened Kreature we became one of the only places people could get certain things like that.”
Opening a butcher shop had always been in Tim’s plans, so when the space adjacent to the restaurant became available five years ago, they knew they had to jump on the opportunity. “It happened a little sooner than I’d expected,” Tim explains. “I thought it would be what I did in my retirement, but the space was perfect.”
Through Kreature Butcher Shop, Tim and Keegan are able to purchase whole animals from local farms at an affordable cost, allowing the two to expand their already innovative menu-planning. And using less popular, but still delicious, cuts of meat such as pork hocks, beef tongue and organ meats doesn’t just reduce food waste, it allows Liquids and Solids to provide creative fare at a lower cost to their patrons. “The year-round population here is on a budget,” Keegan says, “and food is often the first place people cut in their spending.”
Nowadays, Kreature Butcher Shop provides the community access to well-sourced local meat with their weekly share program as well as for purchase at their storefront. And while one can certainly pick up the steak, bacon and sausage that appear in standard cookbook recipes, creative cooks can also—depending on the day—snag a slab of pork belly, some savory sweetbreads (my personal favorite) or those chicken livers of meals past.
Food Evolution
In the years since Liquids and Solids opened its doors, the North Country farming landscape has changed dramatically. What was once a small but dedicated cohort is now a thriving community that includes dairies, diversified farms, breweries and distilleries, along with individuals dedicated to sourcing not-quite-local ingredients like seafood in a sustainable manner. “The farms have grown alongside us,” Tim says. “Everyone is doing something different and there is a demand for their products, so no one is stepping on anyone else’s toes. We have so much to choose from.”
It keeps things interesting, the pair explains, describing the items they look forward to, like the first greens in spring, root vegetables fresh from the ground, or the edible flowers Keegan loves using in her drinks. “Every day we’re like, ‘What’s coming in, what’s in the larder, what’s on the shelves?’” Keegan says. “‘And what interesting thing can we do with it?’”
“There will always be hard days owning a restaurant,” she continues, “but there’s this sound when people are enjoying their meal—this buzz that I listen for, a humming that means we’re doing it right. And for me that’s perfect.”
Liquids and Solids | @liquidsandsolidsNY
Sugarhouse Creamery | @sugarhousecreamery
Asgaard Farm | @asgaardfarm
Mad Crazy Flowers | @mad_crazy_flowers
Mace Chasm Farm | @macechasmfarm
Fledgling Crow Farm
Wild Work Farm | @wildworkfarm
Kreature Butcher Shop
