LOUDONVILLE — After six months, Landoll’s Mohican Castle has risen from the ashes of the fire that destroyed the resort’s restaurant earlier this year. The restaurant was the only portion of the estate that was harmed by the May fire; what was left was torn down shortly thereafter. As the estate recovers, the resort still offers rooms, room service, a lunch and dinner menu, and can hold a wide range of group events.
About three weeks ago, Landoll’s Castle began to serve Sunday lunch buffets.
“We have had a really good turnout the last three weeks ... and [the buffet] has a lunch menu; main entrees, salad and desserts. It is set up in our event center dining room and it is decorated really nice; people have a great time,” said Marta Landoll, co-owner. Also in the evening, dinner is served by reservation.
Although the Landoll estate was without a restaurant, company officials made sure room service and an eating facility was available to all its guests. During the summer, the gazebo was set up to offer outside dining on the lawn.
“People really liked it,” said Landoll.
“It devastated us when we lost the restaurant, but what could we do? We had to move forward,” said Landoll. “The whole time we always had our event center with another kitchen.”
For the Landolls, that was a huge help in providing food for their guests.
“If we hadn’t had it, we would have really been in trouble, but we recovered fairly fast actually [from the fire],” she said.
The area where the restaurant once stood is now a cleared grassy space.
“It is just a beautiful, grassy knoll now,” said Landoll. “Actually, we had [the debris from the restaurant] cleaned up in less than two weeks — it was amazing — and grass was planted. Because our first wedding was two weeks after the fire, they didn’t even think one thing of it. Of course, the wedding didn’t have anything to do with the restaurant, but grass ... the seeds were coming up already, so a lot of [the guests] didn’t even know [about the fire].”
Landoll said that during the spring, summer and fall months many weddings are held at the event center, but now that the wedding season has slowed, it is being used as a dining hall and kitchen in order to to serve lunch and dinner. Future renovation includes remodeling an existing building to make a permanent restaurant facility.
“We have an existing building on the premises; it is a nice little building —an A-frame house with a fireplace and a loft. We are looking into, right now, with an architect switching it into a dining room for the guests and evening dinners, open to the public,” she said.
As of now, no plans have been made to rebuild the restaurant, but by summer of next year Landolls hopes to have a renovated dining facility.
“Right now we have no plans to rebuild, at least not in that spot,” she said. “I think if we hadn’t had our event center and the kitchen, it might have been different, but we decided to remodel a nice existing building and turn that into our dining area for our guests and outside guests.”
