With a career spanning over 30 years and an impressive professional resume, chef Marcus Guiliano has mastered the art of turning natural ingredients into mouthwatering entrees. He’s the mastermind behind the innovative cuisine at Aroma Thyme Bistro, a must-visit restaurant on Canal Street in Ellenville where you’ll find a menu full of focused natural cuisine that reflects balance and well-being.
Guiliano’s consistent objective has been to create impact through the use of natural ingredients with minimal manipulation. You won’t find heavy dairy products, white flour, or refined sugars in his cooking. The restaurant uses essential oils and organic local ingredients whenever possible. The highest-quality ingredients bring an extra layer of flavor and nutrition to each dish.
Aroma Thyme Bistro is committed to sustainability and social responsibility. Guiliano sources his ingredients from free-range, pasture-raised, and certified organic sources. He works with local farmers to cultivate crops specifically for the restaurant. The use of sustainable and socially responsible food has earned Aroma Thyme Bistro many awards. Meeting eco-friendly or environmentally sustainable standards of operating, it’s the only certified Green restaurant in Ulster County – and was the first upstate restaurant to receive that designation.
I sat down recently with owners Marcus and Jamie.
Jason: So how long have you guys been in Ellenville?
Marcus: Since the end of 2003. So 22 years.
J: And what were you doing before that?
M: I was the chef at Millbrook Golf and Tennis Club, but I moved back a few years prior to that from Colorado to take a job in Westchester at the Bonnie Briar Country Club. I was the executive chef. They were the ones who brought me here from Colorado.
J: So let’s rewind. What’s your cooking history? Where did this all start?
M: Oklahoma. Born in Oklahoma and raised in Colorado until I was nine. Then I moved to New York — here in Ellenville, and then left Ellenville after high school. I went to the Greenbrier, West Virginia, then to the Broadmoor in Colorado, and then worked in London. In London, I worked at La Tante Claire for Michelin three-star chef Pierre Hoffman. It’s the same place Ramsey trained, and Marco Pierre White. My wife Jamie was teaching in London. When we came back to the states I got a job at the Broadmoor. I was out there for a couple years. Became a chef at local country club, and then was lured back to Ellenville in 2000.
J: What was your culinary training like before all these restaurants?
M: Yeah, so I went to Sullivan County to get my degree. But the Greenbrier is where I really learned how to cook. The Greenbrier is in West Virginia, and they have an amazing apprenticeship program there. Really just amazing facilities. That’s what they do. They refine cooks. I spent three years there.
J: So then when did you meet Jamie?
M: I met Jamie in high school. High-school sweethearts. She worked at the Greenbrier also in the summers when I was down there.
J: How long have you guys been together?
M: So 35 years, 34 years. No, 35 years
J: What inspired you to get into cooking? Italian family?
M: Yeah. Southern Italy. Apulia. Fasano, right outside Bari.
J: So did you go over to Italy as a kid?
M. No, I didn’t start going there until 2008 or 2009. Then just got addicted to it and been going back ever since.
J: You guys are going in two weeks, right?
M: Yeah, less than two weeks.
J: And you guys are going in the fall, too, I think.
M: We had to alter some plans. In the fall, we’re doing France only. Then in the spring, We’re doing Italy again. Piedmont this time.
J: What about Mexico?
M: Mexico is at least once a year, sometimes twice. Oaxaca for Mezcal and Guadalajara for tequila. Tequila is very popular destination. It’s a popular drink. So the goal is to get there once a year as well, and take small groups, four or six people. After Thanksgiving is our traditional Valle de Guadalupe wine region trip. So the Monday after Thanksgiving, we venture off for that tequila. Those groups are unique, those trips are unique because we’ll do as few as two people on those trips. You can pick your private dates. It’s nice in the beginning of December to get away to where its warm, for sure. That typically works well for us, December or January for Mexico trips. All the dates are listed on www.vipwineryvacations.com
J: Do you do any wine tours in America?
M: We do the Finger Lakes. In 2020 and 2021 we were doing two or three trips a year up there. We couldn’t really travel anywhere else during Covid. That was big. We’ve done Santa Barbara before, and I’m happy to do Santa Barbara again. There’s so many regions, and now we are doing France and Spain. So all the pictures throughout the restaurant are pictures I’ve taken on our adventures. So you can see crushing the agave. You can see the cheese being made that we serve here. You can see an Italian vineyard in a Puglia or Spain. We just have been to so many regions that we’d love to show people. If you say, Hey, let’s go to Chile! I’m like, I want to go to Chile, too! If you want to go to southern Africa, I want to go to South Africa, too! Who doesn’t love to travel? So instead of just specializing in one specific region we are open to exploring it all. I have connections with a lot of areas. Being in business 23 years, you have a ton of connections. Relationships are a good currency. You know, we are friendly with everybody we do business with, and we do business with the right people. They take care of us. I’d call two or three importers that I know and they will hook us up with a great time in the wine valleys.
J: What do you consider local? What’s the definition of local?
M: What’s the definition of local? Local and regional kind of play a part of each other. So, for example, we buy cranberries every Thanksgiving from Cape Cod. I like to say they’re local, but they are more of a regional thing. There’s no true definition for what is sustainable or what is local. Nobody wants to go into a store and buy Italian shoes, but then you see the tags say made in China. right? That’s misrepresenting a product. And it’s the same thing with food. Food is more intimate than shoes because you eat food and it goes into every cell of your body. You become what you eat. We are what we eat is the most profound statement ever.
J: You know, thinking back as far as I can, you were the first local only farm-to-table restaurant I can think of. You were always pushing that mentality and that lifestyle.
M: I ate like that before I opened the restaurant.
J: I think I heard you on the radio all the time back then.
M: We’ve been on tons of radio and tons of stuff. We’ve literally been on Good Morning America with David Burke. I was talking about the salt meters, because it comes down to every ingredient, not just the main ingredients or the expensive ingredients. It comes down to every single ingredient, from the salt to the sugar.
J: Straighten me up. You guys have the largest tequila selection, or wine selection, or what is it?
Jamie: Yelp gave us best bar in Ellenville, or something like that. I don’t know where that little plaque is, but yeah, we have a lot.
J: Do you have a number?
Jamie: I think there’s like 80 agave spirits behind the bar.
J: what about bourbons?
Jamie: Oh, god. I would say there’s at least 40 different bourbons.
J: What’s your big thing? Is it wine list?
Jamie: Our wine list is curated from wineries that we go to visit. We’ve been to over 350 different wineries. So we’ve curated the list in the more recent years, probably within the last ten years, of places that we go to and bring those wines in. I mean, we have a lot of bottles.
J: How would you describe your bar?
Jamie: It’s filled with local and independent spirits, so there are no big brands behind our bar whatsoever. We are a little guy. We want people to come support us. So we want our money to go towards families that need the money to grow their business. You have to support independent.
Jason: So would you say that in order to be pro-craft beverage, you almost have to be anti-corporate?
Marcus: I don’t think you have to be 100 percent anti, but I feel like putting a sign over the front door that says anti corporate headquarters. General Mills owns so much of our food supply. If I have an option to buy an organic product from General Mills versus an independent, I’m gonna buy it independent. Our food system is so infiltrated with these mass companies that only four or five beverage companies own the majority of spirits. So you need to be as conscious about as much as you can. By no means is every restaurant perfect. I’m not perfect but I’m conscious.
J: You know, being the southernmost point of Ulster you guys are just as close to Jersey as Saugerties. People would never consider New Jersey local to Ulster County. I’m in Saugerties, and if I get my lettuce from Catskill it’s only five minutes down the road but you’re saying local is from Jersey. That’s crazy to me. I never think of it that way.
M: Yeah. We source down in the black dirt in Florida, New York year-round. The border to Jersey is right there. We round up potatoes from a bunch of farms. I drive 30 minutes to a farm. So like what is local? Italy figured this out. They call it zero kilometers. They’re measuring how far the food is from where they’re eating it. Their goal is to be zero kilometers. One kilometer is 2.2 miles. So zero kilometers is their goal. One thing I have to say is don’t be fooled by farmstands. Sometimes farmstands bring products in and say it’s local.
J: I used to deliver beverages to all the farmstands, and they would get their stuff delivered. Like berries all year. Twelve flats of Driscoll boxes sitting there by the back door. It creates financial sustainability, because you’re able to offer more than you’re really producing.
M: But is it ethical?
J: So we’re coming into springtime. It’s starting to get warm outside. What are your favorite spring seasonal fruits and vegetables?
M: Rhubarb spritz. Sorry, I was still thinking about alcohol. Yeah, rhubarb spritz. Morel mushrooms or asparagus. Asparagus is the big one. I will do ramps and stuff like that, too. We only buy asparagus from local farms. From New Jersey to the Finger Lakes is our span. So we have maybe eight weeks that we can buy asparagus at this restaurant, and we don’t serve it any other time of the year. So we have an asparagus celebration! Cabbage is coming in right now. New crop of cabbage. We have bok choy already.
J: How do you know you are getting the best products, then?
M: You gotta be careful. The world has a love affair with Italian food. How do you make enough prosciutto for the whole world in such a small area? How do you meet worldwide demand? Sometimes corners are cut and sometimes you’re not buying prosciutto Parma, or you’re buying prosciutto that’s declassified from another region. It’s totally different than Parma. There’s a love affair with olive oil. Most olive oil isn’t made in Italy, it’s just packaged in Italy. So it is up to you to do your homework, to find an Italian company that’s using Italian products. It’s interesting.
J: Your menu goes into very specific details of every ingredient
M: Because it’s part of being transparent. If you’re not that kind of restaurant, no problem. But if you claim you’re a farm-to-table restaurant, you need transparency. There’s nothing worse for me than going out to a farm-to-table restaurant and asking what’s local? And nobody can answer me. Where is this from? We don’t know or we don’t have anything right now, because it’s out of season. You can buy stuff twelve months a year in the Hudson Valley. Right now it’s March and we’re getting fresh bok choy and fresh cabbage. All the storage crops, all the cheeses, grains, all the beans. So much is available!
J: What are some of the challenges that you’ve faced starting a restaurant in Ellenville? As it pertains to, you know, opening a restaurant, sustaining a restaurant, remaining viable?
M: This is a good question. We opened in 2003, when there wasn’t anything else available besides pizzerias and Chinese takeout. So we were really bucking the trend of what was open here. And we love the locals, but we understand that the locals aren’t a primary target, and we wanted to create something elevated that people would drive for. That was our main goal. I want you to come here as a destination. As a chef, I’m honored when you make a trip for my food. That’s what I wanted. Ellenville was kind of like the forgotten area of Ulster County, because we’re almost in Sullivan County. Within two years, the Nevele closed and there were no more hotels. The people weren’t coming here to vacation any more, and it was an extreme challenge to get tourism here. We joined every chamber out there. We went to all kinds of events. We networked and networked and networked to get our name out there. We just kept working as hard as we could. Now, don’t forget, this is pre-social media. Things started really changing when Facebook was open to everybody in 2008 or 2009, and YouTube was not a dating site any more. We jumped on YouTube right away, and it was a slow progression. There were days in the beginning when we thought we weren’t going to make it. We were working so hard for so little. We always stayed true to our vision. So one of the challenges was when somebody walks in and says, I want a Budweiser. I’m like, sorry, we are craft, not corporate. And people didn’t understand back then. So to stay relevant, you know, we were on that farm-to-table, healthier food way before a lot of other people were. I was like, if I can’t get beef from a local supplier, I’m not going to have beef on my menu for a while. That wasn’t available from mainstream distributors back then. Because we’re in Ellenville and there were no other restaurants here, companies sometimes wouldn’t deliver. So I found a beef that met my approval: hormone-free, antibiotic-free, and no feedlot. Our first two years, I drove to the Bronx to pick up our wild salmon and bottled water and stuff.
J: Do you think that being the only upscale restaurant in Ellenville had its benefits?
M: To a certain point, I thought it was a benefit. There’s synergy with other restaurants in the area. I think having other restaurants helps. Nobody is as strict as us in the area. Building trust with people is huge and keeping us relevant. What do we do in 2025? What are the trends? Well, you know, of course, one of the trends is agave spirits. Hands down, tequila and mezcal. So we went from 20 tequilas and mezcals to 200 to fill that need. Now all the tequila geeks, all the agave geeks, are finding us. People are making special trips to us. The distributors know we are serious. So we’re getting bottles that nobody else can get right now. We’re doing Binchotan on the tables right now. That’s a smokeless Japanese charcoal grill box that you cook over. People love showy things, so something like that, where they’re interactive, they’re cooking themselves. Even upscaling your cocktails to where it’s a show. I mean, we have all seen smoking cocktails. It’s still fun and never gets old.
J: Here’s a question I ask everybody. It’s kind of a joke. What is your least favorite vegetable?
M: Ooh, rutabaga. Rutabaga!
J: Why rutabaga?
M: I put in a soup once. In like one of those cleanses. I was doing a cleanse, and it called for rutabaga stew. I got so sick of it. It kind of tastes like socks. I mean even celery root is better. There’s so many things that are better, right? So there’s a reason why it’s not more mainstream popular, right?
J: Do you think the influx of affluent people to Ellenville has increased your customers’ expectations?
M: They are used to a certain level of service coming from New York City.
J: They come up here and they’re expecting this higher-quality experience? The locals may not expect that, you know. I’m trying to stay politically correct.
M: This a good question. People say we are “the Manhattan escape.” People say you’re like Manhattan, but you’re not in Manhattan. So I think the level that we’ve given over the years meets what they’re used to in Manhattan or wherever they’re coming from. Don’t forget, we’re hospitality people. I worked for Pierre Coffman at a Michelin three-star. I worked at the Broadmoor, which is major, major hospitality, right? So we’re deep in the hospitality business. We do a whole training for our staff on how to smile. We go above and beyond on everything. Customer satisfaction, customer service, guest satisfaction, is super-important to us and doing things that beat expectations of other places. This has been my career forever, and I know good food. I know good service. You know service is just as important as food. People want to be heard. People want to be pampered. They sit down and they don’t have to think. Here’s a sample of our most popular bourbons. Here, try them. You like this one, right? We are used to providing that higher level service to begin with. When it snows, we shovel right to their car — and it’s in a village parking lot, not even ours.
J: How do you see the food scene in Ellenville going forward?
M: Better than it’s ever been.
Recipe for Marcus Guiliano’s Yellow Curry Sweet Potato Soup
• 3 cups large diced and peeled organic sweet potatoes
• 3 cups water
• 1 tablespoon yellow Thai curry paste
• 1 ea 14 oz can organic coconut milk
• salt to taste
Simmer diced sweet potatoes, water and curry paste on low heat until the potatoes are soft and cook through. Add coconut milk and puree until smooth in a blender. You can wait until the mixture cools a bit. Take caution when blending hot liquids. Cover the top with a kitchen towel and start by pulsing. Place back into a pot and salt to taste. Serve or refrigerator until later.
Chef notes:
Organic sweet potatoes are a must for this recipe. Use Garnet or Jewel organic sweet potatoes. The flavor is far superior. I would rather not make the soup if I didn’t have the right sweet potatoes. You can adjust the curry based on your personal liking of spice. If the soup is too thick you can thin down with some water. If it’s too thin, then cook to reduce.
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