Restaurant review: Front Street Social Club in Ballston Spa

Ballston Spa may have other charms, but those of an edible variety appear to be stuffed on Front Street. The short, sparkly road continues to fill up with day-to-night eateries, from brunch at The Iron Roost or Whistling Kettle, lunch at Two Birds deli, pints at Henry’s or dinner at the ever lovely Next Door Kitchen & Bar. Almost all my visits to this spa town end up on Front Street, where the pretty, historic facade of The Medbery Inn and Spa has anchored the street since 1804.

Back then, Ballston Spa was an upstate resort town like Saratoga or Sharon Springs — de facto Baden-Badens for “taking the waters” from underground mineral springs. And while The Medberry, an old-fashioned, 11-bedroom hotel-spa, is still fed by the sulphury Sans Souci mineral spring, owner Jon Taisey has partnered with artist James Fronk to build a restaurant and bar in a corner of the hotel once occupied by a salon dolled up in purple and pink.

And so The Medbery finally joins the Front Street dining scene with the arrival of the Front Street Social Club and its retro-nostaligic pastiche, craft cocktails and frothy pints pulled by manager Barry Whitaker, familiar from the former Bayou Cafés in Albany and Glenville. With its 200-year-old pressed-tin ceilings and slightly younger tin tile walls convincingly aged with brown and black paint, you could be fooled into thinking the place has existed for years. Crown molding slopes, floors are pitched and candles flicker, lending a vintage vibe.

Back-bar shelves and the custom bar were built with beams salvaged from the attic and inlaid with cuts from the basement, some singed from a hotel fire. Tiny coat-of-arm shields are tucked in high corners, chalkboards talk up local brews and seasonal cocktails, and a wall in the rear dining room is entirely covered with a Fronk original: a collage of…

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