Chappaqua Restaurants in Fall 2026: Two Reopenings Compared

"For the families of Chappaqua, I envision Basso by PXK as their go-to destination, from romantic date nights and casual gatherings with friends to celebratory feasts with loved ones and a quick stop for a plate of pasta and a glass of Barolo on the way home."

Chef Peter X. Kelly said that when he took over the kitchen at 11 King Street back in January 2025. Twenty months later, the quote reads less like an ambition and more like a description of a Tuesday night. Basso by PXK has settled into the kind of place people stop into without planning it, which is exactly what a rebrand is supposed to accomplish and rarely does this cleanly.

A few hundred yards away, the Kittle House Inn spent that same stretch of time closed for something much larger than a menu change. Both stories got covered as "Chappaqua restaurant news" when they broke. They are not the same kind of news, and the difference matters if you care whether the place you like eating at next year still resembles the place you like eating at now.

The Kitchen That Changed Hands, Not The Building

Basso 56 was already a fixture on King Street when its owners, Sammy Ukaj and Sherif Nezaj, brought on Kelly as culinary director. Kelly had spent four decades building a reputation across the lower Hudson Valley, including a James Beard nomination and a run at X20 Xaviars on the Hudson in Yonkers before that space became Sea Fire Grill. Ukaj and Nezaj kept their restaurant. They kept its address, its lease, its front-of-house team. What changed was who controls the food coming out of the kitchen.

The result is a restaurant now built around a single signature ritual: the Sunday "Pots, Pans & Pasta" brunch, a tableside procession of braised meats, fresh pastas, and seasonal sides with no fixed menu, inspired by a meal Kelly had in Milan. Add $5 Harry's Bar Bellinis and a wine list heavy on Barolo, and you have a restaurant whose identity now tracks one chef's sensibility layered onto someone else's ownership. That structure can be a strength. It can also mean the restaurant's character is only as stable as Kelly's contract.

The Building That Changed Hands, Not Just The Menu

The Kittle House tells a different story, because the story isn't about a chef arriving. It's about a family buying a piece of Chappaqua.

Christie and Scott Krase, Chappaqua residents for more than two decades, learned the property was for sale over dinner in January 2024. They reached a deal with longtime owner John Crabtree that September and became the new stewards that October. What followed wasn't a menu refresh. It was a ground-up renovation of a building that has stood on the same site since 1790, touching the guest rooms, the Tap Room, the event spaces, and the landscaping, with the main restaurant and rooms back open by the tail end of 2025 and the downstairs event space completed by spring 2026.

The Krases also brought in a new chef, Nick Arnerich, who kept the Kittle House dishes that regulars would revolt without and added others with French and Spanish influence. They expanded the Tap Room, because as Christie Krase put it, "everyone wants to be in the Tap Room, so we're expanding it." The 150-guest Carriage Room reopened as a renovated event space. The property picked up recognition in The Knot's Best of Weddings 2025 and in Best of Westchester's food and drink coverage along the way.

This is the difference that a headline like "Chef Joins Chappaqua Restaurant" or "Historic Inn Reopens" tends to flatten.

A chef-led rebrand can shift again whenever the chef's contract does. A family-owned reopening is anchored to whoever holds the deed, which in this case is people who have lived in town for more than twenty years and are raising the next generation of the business inside it.

Everything Built Around Those Two Anchors

Neither reopening happened in isolation. The rest of Chappaqua's dining scene filled in around them without much overlap, which is part of why the town doesn't feel like it's competing with itself.

• Mentor's Mediterranean Steakhouse brought Balkan and Mediterranean-influenced steakhouse fare to a more dinner-oriented, upscale niche that didn't really exist on King Street before.
• Taco Street covers the casual end, tacos and margaritas in a modern, energetic room.
• Le Jardin du Roi has been serving French-American bistro fare with a patio for eighteen years, the kind of tenure that makes a restaurant furniture rather than news.
• Ibiza Kitchen, at 76 King Street, is chef Ignacio Blanco's Spanish kitchen, built on paella and tapas.
• Quaker Hill Tavern stays what it has always been: the neighborhood sports bar where people land after school and town events, burgers and wings and a room full of people who already know each other.

None of these compete directly with Basso or the Kittle House. They occupy their own lanes, which is a big part of why the last two years of change have felt like addition rather than disruption.

The Market Nobody Thinks Is Still Running

There's one more piece of Chappaqua's food calendar that gets overlooked because people assume it ended with summer. The Chappaqua Farmers Market runs Saturdays at Train Station Plaza on South Greeley Avenue, 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., and it doesn't stop when the leaves turn. The season runs through December, with more than 40 vendors, live music, and kids' activities built in alongside the produce and baked goods.

That means the market is still running on the same Saturday mornings that the rest of the King Street corridor is settling into its new lineup, which makes fall the season when both halves of Chappaqua's food scene, the outdoor market and the reopened restaurants, are operating at full strength at the same time.

A Saturday In Chappaqua Now

Walk it in order and the shape becomes obvious. Saturday morning starts at Train Station Plaza, where the market runs until 1 p.m. and will keep running into December. Lunch might be Taco Street or a stop into Le Jardin du Roi's patio while it's still warm enough to use it. Dinner is where the choice actually says something: Basso by PXK if the mood is a quick plate of pasta and a glass of something Italian, no reservation drama required. The Kittle House if the occasion calls for it, a table in a 236-year-old building that a Chappaqua family now owns outright and plans to keep for a long time.

That second option is the one worth remembering the next time news breaks about another Chappaqua restaurant changing hands. Ask who bought what. A chef joining a kitchen is a good meal. A family buying the building is a fixture.

If you're weighing what daily life actually looks like within walking distance of King Street, I'm happy to talk through the specifics beyond the restaurant page. Reach out to Lena O'Neill to plan a conversation about Chappaqua.