Hungry? Your last chance to catch these track-themed treats around town.
PLUS: What your cheese plate never saw coming.
Welcome to the Daily Dispatch, the afternoon Saratoga Springs news email straight to your inbox.
TOP: We found all of the track-themed treats around town that you have one more week to enjoy.
BELOW: The GF, low-glycemic accoutrements that your home cheese plate never saw coming. (And the owner used to prize-produce for ‘Let’s Make a Deal!’
Dish Saratoga
Track-themed treats? Here’s where to get ‘em these last 7 days.
It’s your final chance to indulge in these track-themed menu items before the end of Saratoga’s 2025 meet.
By Melanie E. Snyder, Special to the Dispatch
With the end of the 2025 meet upon us, there’s no better time to support the local bars and restaurants of Saratoga Springs that went all out for track this year with themed menu items that should be gone after Labor Day. So head downtown and indulge in some track-themed drinking and dining before the racing season ends on Labor Day!
If you’re on the hunt for a place that celebrates Saratoga’s racing-rich history, the first place to check out would be The Wild Horse — formerly Dango’s, across from Clancy’s on Caroline Street. As the establishment’s name suggests, they’re not shying away from the track- and horse-themed items. First up: the joint’s burgers, both of which are named after Thoroughbred superstars.
The “Saratoga Sovereignty burger” (shown below) is made with two smash burger patties served with Mac and Cheese on top. When the menu debuted early summer, Sov was Derby and Belmont champ, but has since picked up steam with a win at the Jim Dandy and this last weekend’s crushing of the Travers. The Wild Horse’s second burger — the more standard smashburger double — is named after Sackatoga’s famed Funny Cide, whose owners rode to Churchill Downs and Pimlico in a school bus ahead of his 2003 Kentucky Derby and Preakness wins.
Moving onto the venue’s summer drink menu, Wild Horse’s refreshing cocktail “Post Time” is made with Hendricks gin, elderflower liqueur and club soda. They also offer the “Winners Circle Old Fashion,” with Horse Soldier bourbon, bitters, sugar, orange and cherry.
Another spot that offers its own version of a “Winners Circle” cocktail is the old-school, southern-themed bar and restaurant Hattie’s on Phila street (they also have a location at the track, conveniently). The legendary fried chicken joint’s take on the cocktail is Redemption Rye, St. Germain, grapefruit juice, lemon and a splash of tonic.
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Hattie’s also stays true to its southern heritage and race-town roots by offering a Mint Julep – a Southern classic served in a traditional julep coupled Woodford Reserve Bourbon, simple syrup and fresh mint. The famous cocktail is also the official cocktail of the Kentucky Derby.
We would be amiss if we didn’t mention the famous June-September Trackside Grill near the 1863 Club. Track season just is not complete without stopping by for at least one breakfast sandwich to mingle with all your favorite track workers before they enter the gates. For a last hurrah, pick up a Trackside Bloody Mary with your Egg & Cheese.
Finally, the newest nod to Saratoga’s horse industry is the recently-launched Whitman and Druthers collaboration beer that is only on tap in the Spa City. The “Stinger and Steed” is a clear beer, a West Coast IPA brewed with honey with a firm bitterness. Find the beer at either Walt Whitman Brewing or Druthers on Broadway.
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Dish Saratoga
Say 'cheese': new Farmers’ Market star’s tasty new ventures
Shannon Onstot's Tyromance Fine Snacks wants to up your cheese plate game, one GF and low-glycemic treat at a time.
By: Abby Tegnelia
After a successful TV career — that included both local news and gigs such as being prize producer for Let’s Make a Deal — Shannon Onstot was ready for change. She left L.A. for upstate New York to be closer to family and as she, her partner, Jeff Patridge; and their son, Bruce, now 4; settled in, she began to set her sights on…cheese.
It was quite the pivot for someone who had never worked in restaurants or retail, but the path was clear. Her first East Coast job was at a hotel in the Berkshires — for which she was quickly handed solo managerial duties for an entire weekend when the owner couldn’t be there.
“Compared to TV production, it was nothing,” she laughs. “But I was working with the chef; I was working with the servers, all for the first time. I was doing a lot of customer relations, too, and I started doing cheese plates for them. My friends love food and wine, so they got into it, and we started doing really fun stuff for the hotel’s clientele.”
Then she stumbled on
the book Cheese Sex Death by Erica Kubick, where she learned the word “tyromance.”
“It’s the reading of fortunes in cheese curds,” Onstot says of choosing that unusual word as her new business name. “From that little nugget, I started building.”
While she did get a part-time job behind the elite cheese counter at Whole Foods, Onstot’s entrepreneurial endeavors veered — at first — away from working directly with the creamy treat.
“I'm gluten free, diabetic and bougie.”
Shannon Onstot
“I thought I was going to start doing cheese plates to go, and people could just pick them up,” she says. “New York State was like, ‘No, no, no you can’t do that.’ But now I’m a registered home processor.”
The Tyromance Fine Snacks owner decided to focus instead on the accoutrements for a home cheese plate — but with food restrictions on the mind. “I'm gluten free, diabetic and bougie,” she says. “It's really hard for me to find food that fits into all those categories.”
Within a year, Onstot had learned her way around the state permitting system, the inevitable art of failure when it comes to trying new recipes, and the confidence to put her creations on the market. She’s now a staple of the Saturday and Wednesday Saratoga Springs Farmers’ markets and their Monday satellite in Clifton Park.
For sale at the Tyromance booth: gluten-free and low-glycemic crackers, nut mixes and single-serving jams for cheese plates, and a thriving granola business that surprised her. Right now, since the weather’s cooled off a bit, she’s gearing up to bring back her breadsticks made with Parmesan (“the butter has to be a certain temperature, so if it’s hot or humid they never come out”). And by the end of September, she’s hoping to introduce a fifth granola flavor she calls an “apple currant hazelnut situation,” and a low-sugar apple butter with maple.
There’s also a new Substack newsletter, and come winter she’ll be doing more wholesale — so keep your eye out for the Tyromance logo when shopping for nuts, granola and buckwheat crackers.
“I’m currently hoping to upgrade to a kitchen — not necessarily as a retail space, but just a kitchen where I can become a 20-C license and work with cheese,” Onstot says. “I want to focus on local and imported cheeses, less charcuterie and more of a monger’s plate.
“Eventually, maybe I’ll want a brick-and-mortar or a truck, which could go to weddings, breweries, wineries — a little mobile cheese charcuterie truck since I don’t want to be stuck in one spot.”
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Keep reading for more Dish!
The $8 bread debate at BuonaSera on the Lake
Phila Street’s serving up a restaurant renaissance
Jon Batiste came to party; Opera Saratoga's surprise announcement
