Kristi's

For 21 years, Kristi Gehrig waited for a crab cakes recipe. She finally got it from her favorite Pennsylvania restaurant after she and her husband, Greg Gehrig, built their own beef and seafood joint in 2005. Located on County Route 1 in Oswego, Kristi’s Restaurant & Bar is the perfect combination of comfort and function in a quaint, woodsy location.
The restaurant is the most recent addition to the pre-existing Gehrig family compound, which already included a campground and eight overnight cabins. The Pacific lodge-style dining room, with its high ceilings, wide windows, and warmly colored walls is a clean and comfortable setting for a meal. Although at this time of year, the restaurant is gearing up to embrace the warm weather—with live music and events like its “Crab and Coronas night”—it’s easy to imagine that in the dead of winter, the ‘dining lodge’ would make an inviting escape from the endless droves of Oswego’s lake effect precipitation.

Kristi’s plentiful but well-mannered bar guests occupy one corner of the spacious, 77-person dining room. Here, an Adirondack theme is carried out in woven-antler chandeliers, deer heads above the bar, fish and tackle embroidered seat cushions, and one massive fishing trophy presiding over the dining room. If this all seems a little fishy to you, fear not. Greg Gehrig’s other full-time summer is chartering his fishing boat, Top Gun, around Lake Ontario. For fishing enthusiasts, Kristi’s is, in fact, a must see; even the back of the menu includes Greg’s own fishing tips, sure to result in “Bent Rods and Screaming Drags,” for all.

For most guests, however, it’s the inside of Kristi’s menu that is really worth investigating. Loaded with hearty beef and seafood items, the menu offers creative appetizers like Captain’s Calamari Steak with lemon and caper-butter sauce and Osaka beef with ginger aioli. I tried the fantastic littleneck steamers, made in a decadent Sicilian garlic butter sauce with scallions and red peppers that smacks of white wine.
For those in search of alternative to seafood, Kristi’s has an array of sandwiches, chicken dishes, and pasta options like fettuccini alfredo, marinara and pasta primavera. Non-beef entrees (with the exception of platter-style meals) range in price from $10 -$20, and all entrees include both a side soup or salad and choice of potato, rice, or vegetable. There’s also a full list of nightly blackboard feature entrees.

As both Kristi and Greg profess, however, that the real draw for most of their patrons are the choice cuts of Kristi’s black angus beef: prime rib, sirloin, and their famous dry aged prime center cut which is so good the Gehrig’s have a hard time keeping it in stock. The tender, ‘Top Gun’ cut of prime rib is hand-carved and slow roasted in natural juices and served with a spattering of sautéed mushrooms.

But for me, it was all about the crab cakes. After all, anything worth waiting 21 years for is more than worth a try in my book—and I wasn’t disappointed. In fact, Kristi’s crab cakes made me reconsider my whole definition of crab cakes, and on a more frightening note, wonder just what kind of “crab cakes” I’ve been eating for all these years. Made from 100 percent fresh lump crab, Kristi’s entrée-portioned cakes are sautéed and served decoratively over micro greens with a red pepper remoulade sauce that’s loaded with zesty Cajun spices. They’re plump, juicy, and bursting with buttery flavor. The result? Worth waiting for.

Kristi’s Restaurant & Bar
1881 County Route 1
Oswego, NY 13126

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