Wiggins Tavern at Hotel Northampton

The Restaurant

Wiggins Tavern occupies a rebuilt eighteenth-century stagecoach inn that was disassembled and reconstructed inside the new Hotel Northampton when the hotel opened in 1927 — a piece of New England theatre that gives the room one of the most atmospheric backdrops in western Massachusetts. The dining room is dark wood throughout, with low beamed ceilings, brick fireplaces at both ends, hammered copper sconces, and a working antique cradle in one corner. The hotel sits on King Street one block off Northampton's Main Street, opposite Pulaski Park.

The cooking is honest, well-executed American tavern fare with a New England spine: a six-ounce filet of beef tenderloin with a Madeira reduction, pan-seared scallops with pea risotto, roasted half-chicken with a sage and brown-butter sauce, lobster pie under a flaky pastry top, and the room's long-standing Sunday brunch with the popovers that hotel guests post about a generation later. The wine list runs through a tight, conservative selection of California, Bordeaux, and Italian — nothing that will surprise a sommelier but everything sized for a special occasion.

Service has the practised pacing of a hotel dining room that has run continuously for nearly a century: the second wine glass arrives without being asked; the dessert menu is left at the table without pressure to order; the check moves with the diners' cue rather than the kitchen's. It is the room in Northampton most diners propose in, celebrate a fiftieth birthday in, and close a Smith College development conversation in. Book three to four weeks ahead for parents' weekend, commencement, or any Saturday in September or October when the Berkshires foliage drives weekend traffic into the Hotel Northampton.