Just after 5 p.m. on a Thursday in September, groups of friends and couples were already filling the room at Margaux Bar, with dark blue walls and a crowded wall of art behind them. Hudson Valley One described the scene less than a month after the bar opened at 83 Partition Street. The owner, Sarah Viator, has run Miss Lucy's Kitchen just across the street since July 2020.
The two addresses face each other on purpose. Margaux was built to answer a question Miss Lucy's staff kept hearing at the end of dinner: where can we go for a cocktail now? Viator's answer for years was to send people elsewhere. Now she points them across the street, where the bar stays open well past the hour the dining room closes.
The Question At The End Of The Meal
Viator told Hudson Valley One that the idea came from the small bar at Miss Lucy's. She often heard from couples on dates who wanted a cocktail bar after dinner. She would send them to "the Pig or the Dutch," and she kept thinking, "It would be kind of cool if I could have that."
The idea took about a decade to happen. Around 2015 she was weighing an MBA against opening a cocktail bar, and she signed a lease on the corner space that is now Ohana, but the deal fell through. Then Mark Proper, who for years had told her in passing that she should just buy Miss Lucy's, suggested it again, and she did. When 83 Partition Street became available, her husband, chef and restaurateur Ryan Viator, asked her how she would feel watching someone else open her idea across the street every day. "That was the moment I knew I had to try," she told the paper. Chronogram reports she signed that lease in early 2025.
She also told Hudson Valley One that Saugerties already has its own bars, "they're institutions," and that she wanted Margaux to be something different. The difference shows most clearly in the clock.
What The Clock On Partition Street Looks Like Now
These are each business's posted hours on its own website. Seasonal schedules change, so check before you head out.
| Miss Lucy's Kitchen | Margaux Bar | The Dutch, 253 Main St. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | Closed | Closed | 12–9 p.m. |
| Tuesday | Closed | Closed | 12–9 p.m. |
| Wednesday | Lunch 12–3, dinner 5–9 p.m. | 4–11:30 p.m. | 12–9 p.m. |
| Thursday | 12–3, 5–9 p.m. | 4–11:30 p.m. | 12–9 p.m. |
| Friday | 12–3, 5–10 p.m. | 4 p.m.–12:30 a.m. | 12–9 p.m. |
| Saturday | 11–3, 5–10 p.m. | 1 p.m.–12:30 a.m. | 12–9 p.m. |
| Sunday | 11–3, 5–9 p.m. | 1–11:30 p.m. | 12–7 p.m. |
Margaux keeps the same five-day week as Miss Lucy's, Wednesday through Sunday, so whenever one is open the other is too. On Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday, dinner across the street ends at 9 and Margaux stays open another two and a half hours. On Fridays and Saturdays the kitchen closes at 10 and the bar runs until 12:30. The Dutch, the restaurant and craft beer bar on Main Street, closes at 9 every night but Sunday, when it closes at 7.
The early hours line up too. Miss Lucy's closes between lunch and dinner, from 3 to 5. Margaux opens at 4 on weeknights and at 1 on weekends, so on a Saturday or Sunday a late lunch at Miss Lucy's can turn into an afternoon drink across the street without a gap. Ohana, down on the corner, is a daytime café, open 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday, which sets it at the opposite end of the day.
A Menu Priced For Every Kind Of Nightcap
A bar meant to follow dinner has to work for people who have already had a glass of wine, and for people who are driving home. Chronogram lists Margaux's cocktails in three price tiers: $9 with no alcohol, $13 low-proof and $15 full-strength. The low-proof list includes the Adonis, made with sherry, vermouth and bitters, and the Day Tripper, made with strawberry amaro, lemon and club soda. A separate section of nonalcoholic "Prohibition" drinks includes a Nojito and a Shirley Temple.
Viator told Hudson Valley One that the drinks list is about 70 percent classics and 30 percent originals. "You can go to many bars and order a Manhattan, but you might not get a good one," she said. "So my idea was, let's just do them, and do them well." For something less familiar there is the Freak of the Week, a rotating cocktail. Chronogram's examples include a Beet Martini made with pickled beet juice and garnished with star-shaped pickled beets, and a Pineapple Express topped with egg white and made with smoked pineapple, lime and honey. The agave section includes a margarita, a spicy mezcal Paloma and a Rosita. There is also wine by the glass and beer from Catskill Brewery in Livingston Manor.
The food is built for a second stop, too. Chronogram lists a three-cheese mac for $10, with a hot dog added for $3, a pâté board with pickles, mustard, jam and bread for $16, and charcuterie. Chronogram's October roundup of new Hudson Valley spots also mentions trout roe-topped chips, pimento cheese, an 'Nduja chili dog, and Cheetos. It is a menu of small plates for people who have just eaten or are about to.
Built From The Neighbors' Pantries And Print Shops
The bar faces Miss Lucy's, and its menu and design draw on businesses across the region. Chronogram traced the local suppliers:
- Kilcoyne Farms in Hudson Falls supplies the beef for the $12 chili dog.
- See & Be Kitchen in Cairo bakes the focaccia for the $16 panini with stracciatella, mortadella, pesto and olives.
- BuddhaPesto, a local maker, supplies the pesto in the $10 hummus.
- Maverick & Muse, the Woodstock design firm run by Christine Ferrante and Sam Weller, designed the space and the menu.
- Quick Brown Fox Letterpress, Kate Murray's stationery company with a shop on Main Street in Saugerties, printed the menus.
- Chef Rich Reeve, formerly of Bia and Elephant, advised on the food.
"Our local business owners are amazing," Viator told Chronogram. "So many of them really do try to support each other." The menu in your hand at Margaux was printed a few blocks away on Main Street.
Even the name is local. Margaux is her daughter's middle name, Viator told Hudson Valley One. Viator also described the bar as her first "from the ground up" project, after years spent keeping Miss Lucy's as Miss Lucy's. "You also have to build the name," she said.
A Late-Summer Opening, Heading Into Winter
The opening date depends on which account you read. Chronogram's profile says late August, and its October roundup says early September. Either way, Viator called it "a weird time of year" to open, with the season ending and families going back to school. Still, she told Hudson Valley One that weekends had been "really great" and that she was already seeing repeat customers.
The bar's first stretch of cold weather starts now. The village's Saturday farmers market at 115 Main Street ended its season on October 24, and no winter dates are posted. The evening calendar on Partition Street is still filling in:
- Wednesday, November 18, 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. The Saugerties Chamber of Commerce's November mixer takes place at Mirabella's, 123 Partition Street, a few doors from Margaux. That Wednesday, Miss Lucy's dinner service and Margaux will both be open afterward.
- Sunday, December 6. Holiday in the Village brings toy giveaways, crafts, sales around the village, a Christmas parade, and the tree lighting at Seamon Park. That Sunday, Margaux opens at 1 p.m. and stays open until 11:30, and Miss Lucy's serves dinner from 5 to 9.
On every one of those nights, dinner on Partition Street can now end across the street instead of at 9.
If evenings like these are part of how you picture your next chapter in Saugerties, or anywhere along the river, Melissa Dubin would be glad to talk through it with you over coffee or a Wednesday-night drink. Work With Melissa.
