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Cooperstown on a
Budget
Gas
prices and general inflation got you down? Maximize your
hard-earned money by following these money-saving
Cooperstown vacation tips.
Cooperstown Family
Calendar of Events
Read about the
latest family attractions events in the Cooperstown area,
including news from the National Baseball Hall of Fame, The Farmers'
Museum, and Fenimore Art Museum.
National
Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum News Alerts
Stay
current with late fall and early winter news and event updates from the
National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum's News
From the Hall of Fame
Family Travel
Beyond Cooperstown
Howe
Caverns in Cobleskill, NY, features an 80-minute tour of a living,
limestone cave, carved by an underground
river over the course of millions of years, located 156-feet below the
earth's surface!
Cooperstown For
Your Parents' Special Getaway
Parents
need their own special time together, too. read about why Cooperstown
can be a special getaway for Mom and Dad!
The Truly Splendid
Cooperstown Slide Show
Take
a
visual tour of Cooperstown at The
Cooperstown Slide Show. Depending upon your computer speed,
it may take anywhere from one minute to 12 years to load (OK, a bit of
a stretch -- maybe 11 years).
The
Adventures of Goldilocks O'Brien
 These original kids bedtime
stories feature lots
of
laughs while giving your family a detailed tour of Cooperstown through
Goldilock's adventures!
Read
the Adventures of Goldilocks O'Brien in Cooperstown
A
Cooperstown for
Kids Feature Presentation
Cooperstown
family travel and classic baseball videos can be viewed
on
every page of this site (after each article, excluding the homepage)!
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FAMILY DINING IN COOPERSTOWN
NEW YORK!
There's
no shortage of Cooperstown area restaurants that cater to
every taste at affordable prices.
The Cooperstown Diner serves breakfast, lunch and dinner in a family-friendly, classic hometown diner setting
(photo by Eric H.)
(Cooperstown
Family-Friendly Restaurant Dining Reviews, Cooperstown, NY) - Cooperstown,
NY, has a lot of "specials" on its vacation menu,
including many family-friendly restaurants featuring colorful settings,
affordable prices and delicious food.
 Our
favorite Cooperstown restaurant is the Doubleday Cafe (93 Main St., Cooperstown,
Tel. 607-547-5468), located in the
heart of the Village of Cooperstown. Whether breakfast, lunch or
dinner, the Doubleday Cafe seems to hit a home run with every meal they
serve -- omelets, wraps, salads, steak dinners, creative seafood
specials, delicious desserts, to name a few. The Doubleday
Cafe
perhaps catches the spirit of Cooperstown the best of any Cooperstown
restaurant. The busy, inviting dining room/bar area with high ceilings,
big picture windows overlooking beautiful Main St., sports on the
televisions, and crowds
of "locals" and visitors help make the Doubleday Cafe an
unofficial community
meeting place -- with terrific food, of course!
Despite
some
minor annoyances (like charging 75 cents for a lemon in our glass of
water), T.J.'s Grille (124 Main St., Cooperstown,
Tel. 607-547-4040) is also an excellent family
dining choice for breakfast,
lunch and dinner. T.J.'s atmosphere is fun with neon flourishes, a
large screen television, black and white tile floors, a display case of
baked goods, statues of Laurel and Hardy, an adjoining gift shop,
pinball games at the entrance and a Dino the Dinosaur (from that
brilliant television and transcending cartoon show, The
Flintstones)
ride out front. T.J.'s makes an excellent mac and cheese, roast chicken
and turkey dinners, meatloaf and over sized sandwiches. T.J.'s is also
located in the heart of the Village, making it convenient to many
Cooperstown attractions.
An
up-and-coming restaurant is The
Pit (34-36 Pioneer St., Cooperstown,
Tel. 607-547-9611),
located in the cellar of the Tunnicliff Inn. Formerly a mediocre
restaurant with a limited lunch menu and really crabby waitresses, The
Pit has transformed into an extremely well-run restaurant with more
sophisticated, pleasant service, a wider variety of comfort and
healthier foods, and a childrens' menu with bargain prices.
The
Pit always had potential with its cozy, dimly-lit basement oasis and
now it has finally delivered on its promise. Parents can have tasty
salads, soups, burgers, sandwiches for lunch or impressive looking
steak, seafood and chicken dishes for dinner, while the kids can enjoy
the requisite hot dogs, chicken fingers and pasta -- by the way, done
better than most other restaurants. The Pit has a very good
chef
in its kitchen!
Of
course, no visit to Cooperstown would be
complete without a visit to the tiny Cooperstown
Diner (136
1/2 Main St., Cooperstown, Tel. 607-547-9201). This
landmark diner really does a tremendous job with breakfast and lunch,
as well as with their limited dinner menu. It's everything a diner
should be -- pleasantly plain with quick, friendly service, booths and
a counter area, and lots of home style food. The Cooperstown
Diner
isn't much bigger than your home's family room, so you can expect a
wait sometimes -- outside of the restaurant as there's no
indoor
waiting area, of course!
Hoffman
Lane Bistro (Hoffman Lane, Cooperstown, Tel.
607-547-7055) and Hawkeye
Grill (60 Lake St Cooperstown, Tel.
607-547-9931)
in the Otesaga Resort Hotel might initially seem like more like special
date places for parents, but both are quite accommodating to well-
behaved children. Hoffman
Lane Bistro features multi- level dining with
a sleek, contemporary design. Hoffman's has a children's menu, and
paper tablecloths for children and really immature adults to color with
crayons. For the adults, the menu selection and quality of food rivals
that of any highly regarded urban dining spot. We recommend a mixed
greens or Caesar salad, chicken alfredo with roasted red peppers,
artichokes, pearl onions and penne, pan seared salmon with basmati rice
and lemon caper sauce and the beyond tasty meatloaf dinner.
The
Hawkeye Grill is simply wonderful, a restaurant with
lovely views of
Otsego Lake (with memorable outdoor dining in the summer) and type of
food you'd
expect from a first-class hotel landmark. The Hawkeye allows casual
(but neat) dressing and is actually a good family vacation -- unusual
for restaurants of this genre. We love the fillet mignon of
beef
tenderloin, the grilled shrimp risotto and any "seafood of the day"
special. Service is professional and refined but very friendly, thus
adding to the Hawkeye's presence as a valid place for a well-behaved
family to eat!
With
its own delicious freshly-brewed roasted coffee made in small batches
and excellent salads, wraps, baked goods and ice cream,
Stagecoach Coffee
(31 Pioneer St., Cooperstown, Tel. 607-547-5568) is sure to please
virtually everyone in the family looking for something yummy to eat in
the Village of Cooperstown. It's a small, modern clean and
attractive
place with a charming, private outdoor dining patio for the warmer
weather.
Service is pleasant, always quick, the atmosphere is joyfully
small-town, and the quality of everything we've had here is perhaps the
overall best for lunch and breakfast in Cooperstown. Recommended:
the fresh roasted coffee, and ham or turkey panini sandwiches.
DiMaggio's
Cooperstown Hot Dog
(4561 State Highway 28, Milford, NY, Tel. 607-2547-5400) puts the fast
food chains to shame, offering very tasty all-beef New York, Chicago
and southern-style hot dogs, hand-pressed burgers and even
health-conscious meals like the grilled veggie sandwich with portobello
mushroom, eggplant, zucchini, onion, carrot, provolone (hey, wait,
that's not a veggie!) and sundried tomato mayo. DiMaggio's also
features the one-of-a-kind "Cooperstown Hot Dog" with New York cheddar,
apple relish, sauerkraut and bacon! DiMaggio's makes an
excellent
New York pastrami and Philly Cheese Steak we've been told, as well as a
surprisingly good grilled chicken Ceasar salad and grilled
chicken Asian
salad. There's enough ice cream selection to feed an entire
baseball
team and the portions are astounding -- especially the "specialty"
sundaes (banana
split, chocolate chip cookie, strawberry shortcake and hot fudge
brownie). The atmosphere is pleasant enough, too, with a counter and
booths inside, an outdoor patio. DiMaggio's is truly a great family
dining destination with fast food done right at affordable prices.
You can have a complete meal for just over $5.00 (includes
baked
beans, chili or fries).
We wish DiMaggio's was open beyond just the summer, but we'll take its
fast food greatness for this short amount of time,
anyday!
Although we
recently discovered KC's
Corner (5705 US HWY 20, East Springfield NY, Tel. 607-264-9392)
it will always have a special place in our hearts. Coming in
from a
gray, dismal summer day (unusual in the Cooperstown area), we were
greeted by a
kind, smiling staff, and some wonderful-smelling homemade pies just out
of the oven. We felt at home right away and the excellent homemade
meatloaf, turkey dinners and spaghetti dinners (with great sauce!) just
validated the whole
down-to-earth dining experience. Unfortunately we didn't have
room for
the pies, but regained out appetites the next morning for a
return to KC's for some
breakfast. The omelettes, belgium waffles and pancakes were
about the best we've ever had, but what really clinched the whole,
memorable experience was looking across the room and finding such a
pure sense of community. At the counter and booths, everyone
seemed to know each other -- wrapped in conversation, laughs and
genuine
interest in the other person(s). Now, we get some of that
small-town
feeling back home in our Boston suburbs, but nothing like this. What a
warm feeling it was coming to K.C.'s for some great food and neighborly
ambiance that cannot be fully described, but only experienced -- I
guess
you just had to be there! We'll
be back many more times for breakfast, lunch and dinner (KC's also has
a well regarded motel, right next to the restaurant).
Brooks'
House of Bar-B-Q (5560 State Highway 7
Oneonta, NY, Tel. Phone: 607-432-1782) , about a half-hour drive from
Cooperstown in Oneonta,
offers a wonderful family-style dining experience. The
barbecue
chicken and St. Louis pork ribs are standouts. With very friendly
service, a seating capacity of 300 (hard to believe this was a
concession stand in the 1950s) and perhaps the indoor longest barbecue
pit in the country at 38 ft. in length, Brooks' House of Bar-B-Q
creates a
welcoming, fun atmosphere for the family. Oh yes, we almost
forgot,
the delicious blueberry pie with vanilla ice cream is not to be missed!
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THE
COOPERSTOWN ONLINE MOVIE THEATER
Featuring
Cooperstown travel videos and classic baseball clips to get you in the
Cooperstown spirit!
All videos are rated G for the whole family to enjoy!
This page features a tour of shops on Main St., and some fascinating
Cooperstown history:
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