Caramella Bistro Catering — Restaurant in Kingston

I’ve had the pleasure of eating at Caramella several times over the past five years, and every experience has been excellent.

The website is a Facebook page; if you read the posts, you will realize that Caramella is reservation only because the space is very small. Reservations book up months in advance. Generally, dinner is served Friday and Saturday nights and there is Sunday brunch; however, they don’t open when they’re away for catering.

Your best bet for making reservations is to call or text the number provided on the Facebook page with the desired date and party size. You can reach the chef/owner via Facebook, but he may or may not see the message in time to get you the reservation you want.

The cost for dinner is a flat $75, and the chef sets the menu. He buys only the ingredients he needs for each night, which helps him budget higher quality items for the price he charges (yes, the price has gone up throughout the pandemic and current economic times—it’s still well worth it). There has always been an appetizer, salad, fish course, meat course, and dessert, and my SO and I always leave very full. If you have dietary restrictions, tell them when you make your reservation and the chef will happily accommodate you. It’s BYOB for alcohol and drinks other than water and tea.

Dinner is an experience, not just the meal. You sit in a cozy, intimate space, enjoy some excellent food, and get to talk to the chef multiple times. If you’re lucky, he will regale you with stories of his youth in Hungary.

Because it’s a small place and reservation only you can’t get take out orders. As I once heard the chef tell a guest, you should feed the fish course to the cat rather than try to reheat it, and the meal is best enjoyed fresh.

I have had the privilege of eating some great food in my travels, and Caramella has never disappointed me. To give some local context, I would rank it up there with Lonesome Dove and Osteria Stella in Knoxville.

Make a reservation and enjoy an experience you can’t get elsewhere, then come back and tell us...

We went to Caramella’s Riverside Bistro last night. My 18 y/o son decided on this restaurant b/c of our excellent experience we had during our last visit. I will describe my fabulous experience. I made reservations two weeks ago and asked what time we should arrive. Chef Andras said to arrive after 6pm. The rain was awful on our drive and it gave me comfort not having to be there exactly at a specific time. We arrived as a party of 7 about 6:20pm. Chef Andras greeted us immediately and described with enthusiasm, the delicious food which was in store for us. There was nothing to decide, no staring at menu’s and no choices to make. Instead, we all talked and laughed and looked at this eclectic decor. A museum in itself! Our first cource was roasted cauliflower and breaded shrimp. He gave us so much, that alone this would have been enough. Scrumptious. Then, a European mixed green grilled pear salad was placed in front of us. Flavorful and light! Next came delicious cod and mussels. Light...fluffy...yummy. Next, an assortment of bread with real butter, (great and why did I think I needed to eat bread?...because it was crumptious). The main course was beef tenderloin. I do not know where he gets his beef but it was DELICIOUS. Let me just say that again...DELICIOUS. I can’t remember if we had a steak knife or not, but none was needed. It was tender and amazing. I overheard other patrons echoing the exact same thing! Yes, a nice side of real mash potatoes and fresh broccoli was arranged beautifully on my plate. Then, Chef Andras brings dessert. How in the world could I eat dessert? A wonderful chocolate homemade cake with fresh raspberries. Chef Andras is full of stories. He shared about his friend, Arnold Schwatzenegger, who is pictured on one of his walls. In equal enthusiam, he talks about a local wood working company who made him special butcher blocks to shuck oysters on...So, if you want to go to a restaurant where everything is made fresh and absolutely delicious and have an amazing dining experience, Caramella Riverside Bistro...

Well, you won’t hear anything bad from us about Caramella and especially its owner. We were down there on 7th October after a long road trip and, having checked in to our motel nearby, searching for a nice place near the lake to have a beer and a wine. So we walked into the Caramella and asked the owner if we could only have a drink there as it was obviously an intimate restaurant where the guests were starting to arrive. The owner apologized that he couldn’t SELL us any wine or beer as he didn’t have a license. However, he could GIVE us a bottle of nice white wine and if we wanted he would make is some nice cheese and bread to go with it. As you can imagine, we were dumbfounded and, to be honest, a bit uncomfortable how to read the situation, but the owner insisted and it became clear to us he really wanted us to sit there and enjoy his hospitality. Still a bit confused, we were seated outside in the fading evening sun and soon he returned with a very nice cold bottle of white wine, two glasses, a plate with good tasty bread (hard to find for us Europeans in the States) with a fine combination of Parma ham and good cheese and a tin of sardines. He insisted that he wanted to give it to us at no charge at all, and only wanted us to enjoy the evening. He told us he had just returned from a holiday tot Austria and his native Hungary and maybe us being Europeans as well (we’re Dutch) brought back the memories? He told us he could make us a nice burger of we wanted to, but as my wife is a vegetarian we really couldn’t accept this. He immediately went back to the kitchen and came back with an excellent salad for my wife, as she had been unable to enjoy the food he had offered us and we found it awkward to impose even further upon him by telling him that she couldn’t eat his nice food. So, that was a very memorable evening in Caramella Kingston with certainly an eccentric owner but you won’t hear a bad word about him from us. And the food he prepared for us was simple but very tasty. What a...