By Noa Maltzman ’18, News Editor
Saratoga Springs was recently ranked 7th on the list of the 20 Best College Towns for Food in America, an article written by Nikkitha Bakshani ’12. The article was published in The Daily Meal on April 15, 2015. It was an update to an article written in 2011 10 College Towns with the Best Food. Saratoga Springs did not make the original list of the top 10. “The easy and most truthful reason is probably that it is because I didn't write that list,” said Bakshani, when asked why Saratoga Springs didn’t make the original list of the top 10.
The new 20 towns contain many from the top 10 “because research shows us that the towns we chose back then have culinary scenes that have stayed strong. Many have become even stronger with the addition of more ethical coffee shops and farm-to-table restaurants,” wrote Bakshani in the 20 Best College Towns for Food in America article. Bakshani also wrote that the other new towns on the list were chosen “by examining the Spoon University website to find out what the student favorites were among the many colleges and universities that the website covers. After cross-referencing them with reviews from food critics and customers, we settled on our final 20.”
In the slideshow of the top 20 towns Saratoga Springs’ description is the following.
Picturesque Saratoga Springs, with its Revolutionary War aesthetic, had a thriving culinary scene even before Skidmore College became one of the most well-known liberal arts schools in the country, with charmingly old school Mrs. London’s (and now, her hip brother next door, Max London’s). Fair trade coffee shops, like Uncommon Grounds and Saratoga Coffee Traders, are where you’ll see most students when they’re not studying in the library. Caroline Street is bustling with bars that are packed with college students and locals alike. If you are looking to get away from the summer crowds that come in with horse racing season, drive or take a Saratoga Taxi further out to pizza place Harvest and Hearth or English pub The Local. And, of course, no trip to Saratoga is complete without two things: a black raspberry softie from Dairy Haus and a doughboy (chicken, cheese, and scallions baked in just-browned pizza dough) from Esperanto, which is rumored to have been invented by a Skidmore professor.
When Bakshani was asked what she felt made Saratoga Springs deserving of being on the list and number seven she talked about her own experiences being a Skidmore student and said, “I know some of the best memories I had were eating food off-campus with my friends and classmates. If it were entirely up to me, I'd make it number one, but unfortunately, I couldn't let my own biases get ahead of me.” Some of the reasons why she also thought it deserved number seven opposed to a higher number was because “while the food in Saratoga is excellent, a lot of it is very pricey and not entirely friendly to a student budget, which is as essential to college town food as the food itself. Also, since many very good restaurants in Saratoga are not walking distance from campus, I had to factor that in as well,” Bakshani said.
When Bakshani was asked if she felt there was anything else important for readers to know she said, “I think the most important thing to know is that while the food on Broadway is great, there is plenty of great food outside of it, like The Iron Roost in Ballston Spa, Van's in Albany, and Harvest and Hearth.”