As the Adelphi Hotel’s motto states, “Embrace the Extraordinary,” the renovations to this iconic Saratoga Hotel before the Covid pandemic are indeed extraordinary. The grand boutique hotel of years past is brilliant again. Its present state, is once again the beautiful face of Broadway in downtown Saratoga Springs.
The Adelphi was destined to live! With the many renovation efforts and total transformations over its decades of graceful existence, the history is just too deep and treasured to not go forward in time. The Victorian-style Adelphi Hotel reopened in 1877, from humble beginnings during a burgeoning American economy and when travel to Saratoga Springs from NYC became vogue.
One of the first famous guests to embrace the new Adelphi was Congressman John Morrissey, the founder of The Saratoga Race Course. The champion boxer/bare-knuckle prizefighter was quite notorious. In 1878, John Morrissey lived hard and died within the hotel. Today his legacy lives on with nightly toasts to him at the aptly named Morrissey’s bar within the hotel’s lobby.
From the first major expansion and facelift to the present transformation, the Adelphi has served as host to “robber-barons”, literary greats and larger-than-life entertainers and personalities. Inside the hotel, the Blue Hen Restaurant and the aptly named Salt + Char Restaurant, as well as the Morrisey Bar should be a draw for todays celebrities and personalities of reality T.V. cooking world too. The Adelphi Hotel and its Culinary Director, Award-Winning Chef David Burke, has a unique and patented salt dry-aging process used in Salt + Char cuisine. This process for dry-aging meat features a room lined with pink Himalayan bricks of salt, where Prime Beef is allowed to dry naturally while absorbing the subtle flavors of the salt. Diners readily recognized that this certainly raises the bar for excellence.
The five-year renovation revitalizing the Adelphi Hotel has the unique style that is quentissential Saratoga Springs. It is simple yet with elegant indulgences. You feel like you are in the most refined Victorian luxury yet firmly planted in modern-day technology. If you want a weekend getaway or Upstate New York vacation, this is a great bet (pardon the racing pun).
