In downtown New Paltz, something brand-new is happening at an old favorite eatery. For the first time this millennium, the Main Street Bistro is open for dinner service, from 5 to 8 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. But the evening menu is a world apart from the offerings that entice visitors and locals alike to line up outside the restaurant for breakfast, brunch or lunch. Dinner at the Bistro is now Vietnamese — and it’s entirely vegan.
The venturesome culinary mind behind these additions is Mary Le, already known in New Paltz as the owner of the popular IPho a little further uptown. Le purchased the Bistro business from Doug and Teresa Thompson last October, amidst a wave of anxiety from devoted patrons that the much-loved destination for all things eggy might undergo some sort of radical change. She was wise enough to recognize what makes the Bistro a winning formula, and kept both the seasoned, efficient, gracious staff and the daytime menu.
To call that brunch menu “iconic” is scarcely an exaggeration. Longtime Paltzonians can attest that not only are many of the items the identical dishes that established the venue’s popularity when it was known as the Gay Nineties, in the 1970s, but they even still have the same names. Want an egg-and-cheese on a toasted hard roll to go? That item was dubbed the Egg McMann way back in the days when Johnny Carson ruled the late-night airwaves and Ed McMahon was his sidekick. It’s still called the McMann today. The same goes for a long list of the most popular breakfast and lunch dishes, with names that pay homage to classic rock performers or fondly remembered former employees.
One might think that a restaurant designed to serve mainly a college crowd, with its casual come-as-you-are aesthetic and affordable prices, would be expected to morph with the times lest it become seen as a nostalgic relic for ex-hippie Boomers. To the contrary, it’s the Bistro’s reliability above all that makes it so appealing to so many, and a mandatory visit for SUNY New Paltz alumni passing through the area. Whatever your favorite menu item may be — the cheap breakfast special, the 59 Main bacon-and-egg burrito, the legendary salmon hash with hollandaise, the Franklin Lakes cranberry/almond pancakes, the Guaca Baca burger, the Bistro Waldorf salad — over time, that becomes your comfort food. You need to know that it will always be there when you’re in town. And when you are, on a weekend, you’re willing to window-shop for half an hour while you wait for a table, because you know it’ll be just as good as ever.
Much credit must go to the Doug and Teresa Thompson for preserving what was already loved about the restaurant when they bought the Gay Nineties from former owner Steve Axelson in 1993. They changed up the art on the walls from time to time, making it a showcase for painter Ryan Cronin when he was first making his mark. But they kept the food mostly as-is, and they treated their staff well enough to keep turnover at a minimum. So, it’s not surprising that Bistro fans were worried when the Thompsons announced their decision to retire and sell the business last year; the relief when Mary Le kept things mostly the same was palpable.
What was long missing from the Bistro, of course, was hours of operation past 3 p.m. Efforts to keep the place open for dinner in decades past had not proven successful enough to be worth the expense of maintaining a second shift of cooks and servers. There were simply too many alternate choices in New Paltz in the evening. Mary Le is playing a long game here, however. She says that she always wanted to open a vegan Vietnamese restaurant, but her previous business ventures lacked either the kitchen space or a local culture that embraced vegan cuisine. When she decided to take over the business at 59 Main Street, she saw her opportunity.
Vietnamese-born Le learned to cook from her mother and went on to make food for fellow students in her dorm at college. She came to Los Angeles in 1997 via a student exchange program, applied herself to learning English, moved to New York City in 2000 and married a Vietnamese American engineer in 2003. All along, she says, it was her dream to open a restaurant. With support from her husband, she’s now on her fifth over 15 years. In all of them, she creates the menus and makes the traditional sauces, handing over the rest of the ingredients to family members and other kitchen staff to assemble.
When Le launched Saigon Pho Authentic Vietnamese Noodle Bar in Wappingers Falls in 2013 (the name has since been changed to Miss Saigon Pho), she says, “I wanted to open vegan already, but not many people wanted vegan.” She found the same to be true of her clientele in Newburgh, where she opened New Sai Gon Pho, which is now run by her brother. The family also opened the seasonal Oasis Vietnamese in Lake George, where they vacation in the summers.
It was only when they came to New Paltz to open IPho in 2016 that they tested the waters and found a receptive audience among the collegetown community. “We put some vegan on the menu, but people wanted more,” Le says. “In New Paltz they like vegan more than Newburgh.” Unfortunately, the kitchen at the former My Hero isn’t big enough to accommodate preparation of a full-scale vegan menu, so she continued to keep an eye out for a more suitable location. When the Bistro came on the market, she knew what she had to do — and she was smart enough to keep the business’ main draw, the extensive brunch menu, just as it was.
What remains to be seen, now that the Bistro is serving fresh, exclusively vegan Vietnamese cuisine in the evenings, is whether the community will support the new menu. She introduced it via a “soft opening” for a week before the official launch on March 15. Le expresses some anxiety about the viability of the concept, noting, “Of 100 people, 20 will eat vegan.” But college kids seem more open to the idea of a sustainable, mostly plant-based diet, and even non-vegans in a progressive town like New Paltz are more apt than most to add a Meatless Monday to their routines. So far, the response has been encouraging. On the night HV1 visited, there was no line out the door, but customers began arriving promptly at 5 p.m., and only one couple got up to leave when they realized that there was nothing for strict carnivores on the menu.
What we sampled left us with a positive impression. For appetizers, we tried the light, chewy avocado rolls and jicama-and-vegan-chicken rolls, served with a chunky peanut dipping sauce, and hot, crunchy, petite Vietnamese egg rolls with a tangy sauce. The pho chay was similar to many of the soup entrée offerings at IPho: a generous bowl of rice vermicelli served in a flavorful broth with mounds of tofu, carrots, broccoli and bok choi, with various toppings — bean sprouts, basil, jalapeño and lemon slices — served on the side, plus hoisin and sriracha sauces as optional condiments. The biggest hit of the evening at our table was the vegan curry over rice, loaded with fried tofu cubes, broccoli, mushrooms, peas, bok choi and potatoes in a mildly spicy sauce, which Le had especially recommended.
Beverages available included boba tea in ten different flavors, which Le noted is popular with college students. The only non-vegan item on the menu is the ice cream, which is the same as that served at the Bistro in its daytime incarnation. Different specials including a soup du jour are offered on a daily basis. While some menu items feature such exotic ingredients as taro, banana flower and peanut tops, there’s also a “children-friendly” simple fried rice dish available. Everything is freshly and expertly prepared by a separate kitchen staff, trained in Vietnamese cuisine by Le at her other restaurants. She is hopeful that even people who aren’t diehard vegans or vegetarians will give the place a try and discover some dishes they’d like to incorporate into their diets.
The Main Street Bistro at 59 Main Street in New Paltz is open Monday through Sunday, with the standard menu available from 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and the Vietnamese menu on Wednesday through Sunday from 5 to 8 p.m.
Join the family! 
