LAKE PLACID – When Paul Smith’s College assistant professor Kelly Cerialo showed her “Field Studies in Hospitality” students the schedule for the inaugural EAT ADK Restaurant Week, some couldn’t believe what they were reading.

“Some students said, ‘We didn’t actually think they’d use our ideas,'” Cerialo said.

Last spring, 10 students pitched the restaurant week idea to Lake Placid business people. Eleven other students continued that work this spring, and now EAT ADK Restaurant Week will kick off Friday night, running through Sunday, May 22. Twenty-five restaurants will offer three-course, price-fixed menus. Ten hotels will offer lodging packages, too, but this event isn’t just for visitors – it’s also for people who live in the area.

Several other village businesses will host specialty events, such as a healthy cooking demo by Green Goddess Saturday afternoon, a bowl-and-dine-deal at Bowlwinkles throughout the week and dinner-and-a-movie offerings through the Palace Theatre. A committee formed to run EAT ADK tasked students with these cross-marketing promotions.

“(Paul Smith’s) motto is, ‘It’s all about the experience,’ and I think this class speaks to that,” Cerialo said. “It allowed students to roll their sleeves up and see that there are a lot of factors that go into this, and a lot of stakeholders involved.

“It is a symbiotic relationship, 100 percent.”

The students, the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism and the Lake Placid Business Association have been working for nearly 12 months to put together this event. Kelsey Torrance-Cassidy, manager of Great Adirondack Brewing Company, was chosen early last summer to lead the committee, which meets twice a month. Now Main Street is blanketed with signs and other promotional material leading up to the event’s kickoff this Friday night at Saratoga Olive Oil Co.

“What was great was that throughout the process, as the committee was weighing in, they used student research continuously,” Cerialo said.

For Cerialo and Joe Conto, director of Paul Smith’s hospitality program, this seems like a long time coming.

“(Conto) and I had been to restaurant weeks throughout the country before, and he asked me, ‘Why doesn’t Lake Placid have one?” Cerialo said. “I said, ‘I don’t know,’ and he said, ‘Why don’t you do it through the Field Studies class?”

Paul Smith’s students will attend the kickoff Friday night and help with carriage rides Saturday evening, conducted by the college’s Draft Horse Club and run by Paul Smith’s professor Bob Brehl – another student idea. Cerialo said it embodies how Restaurant Week is centered around cuisine but is about the entire community experience.

“Every component led back to food, but there are fun components to it as well,” she said.

Both semesters, students met twice a week for three hours a day, researching restaurant weeks in places with similar demographics to Lake Placid, such as the Hudson Valley, Stowe, Vermont, and Asheville, North Carolina.

One member of the committee, Mirror Lake Inn Restaurant Supervisor Nichole Dunford, said EAT ADK has been tailored to fit the tight-knit nature of Lake Placid’s restaurant and service community. In future years, she said, the shoulder-season event could be looked at as a kickoff for the area’s busy summer season.

“We want our locals to feel appreciated,” Dunford said. “The work we have in the restaurant industry is seasonal, and it’s nice to have an event that brings us together.”

Cerialo said Paul Smith’s students decided on the EAT ADK name with the idea that it could spread beyond Lake Placid into neighboring Adirondack areas in future years. Committee members said business people from Saranac Lake, Tupper Lake and Wilmington reached out about being part of this year’s event, but after their research, the students decided to keep the event to Lake Placid in year one, grow a foundation and expand in subsequent years. And the committee followed their advice.

Torrance-Cassidy said it was interesting explaining to business owners that EAT ADK would be as much or more for locals than tourists.

“We had no start-up cash, a lot of them had no idea what a restaurant week was, and that was half the battle, kind of explaining it,” she said. “It’s different explaining why we’d want to do something for locals rather than tourists, because it’s out of the norm for this area. So we kind of just pitched it to them that locals are the ones who spread the word about the business and keep you afloat in the dead season.

“Everything we do is for them ultimately.”

Toast of the Tri-Lakes

Chris Ericson, owner of the Lake Placid Pub & Brewery, praised the efforts of Torrance-Cassidy and the committee. His pub is hosting a “Cheers To EAT ADK Party” the final Sunday afternoon of Restaurant Week.

He also decided to promote his own inaugural Toast of the Tri-Lakes event as part of EAT ADK. He said the two events “share a similar spirit.”

Toast of the Tri-Lakes will be the first time six area breweries serve all in the same room at the same time, Ericson said. For $25, each of 75 guests will get 10 sampling tokens, be able to feast on appetizers and take home a souvenir pint glass. In addition to his brewery and Great Adirondack, the participants will be Ausable Brewing Company of Keeseville, Blue Line Brewery of Saranac Lake, Big Tupper Brewing of Tupper Lake, Raquette River Brewing of Tupper Lake and Saranac, made at the Matt Brewing Company in Utica.

At the party, Ericson said his brewery will offer an EAT ADK Ale to celebrate the end of Restaurant Week.

“I’m extraordinarily impressed because they put it together in enough time to do a really good job marketing it, which is really refreshing,” Ericson said. “They’ve been planning it forever, they really got their act together, and it’s been a joy to be a part of the planning process.”

For menus and participating restaurants, visit www.eatadk.com.