In September, a restaurant on Mottville Road made Travel + Leisure's list of the 25 best hotel restaurants in the world. It was just past its first birthday. It also serves breakfast every morning, has a children's menu called "Little Scouts" and parks you in a free private lot. Fields Restaurant at Skaneateles Fields Resort & Spa now has a global reputation, but the way it runs suits people who live nearby. On October 8, syracuse.com's critic made the same point: whether Fields lasts depends on locals who come back.
On the List With Ocean Liners, at the End of a Long Driveway
Fields opened in September 2025. For its first year it ran fairly quietly. In his review for syracuse.com, Jacob Pucci explained why: the restaurant sits "at the end of a winding driveway, not visible from the main road and too far to be stumbled upon by the village's bustling pedestrian traffic."
That changed in September 2026 with two honors in the same month. Travel + Leisure named Fields to the 25 best hotel restaurants in the world, part of the magazine's first edition of The Checkout. Wine Spectator gave its wine program a Best of Award of Excellence. Pucci described the company Fields now keeps as "rarefied air," with restaurants on luxury ocean liners and in some of the most scenic places in the world.
The property itself is mostly unknown to anyone who hasn't turned in. When syracuse.com covered the opening in 2025, it described an 89-room resort on 100 acres north of the village at 1000 Mottville Road. The owner is Syracuse-based Woodbine Hospitality Group, and the resort is part of Hilton's Curio Collection. Plans at opening also included pickleball and bocce courts, fire pits and trails for hiking and snowshoeing. The restaurant began taking public diners without a room booking in October 2025.
A Hotel Kitchen Keeps Hotel Hours
Pucci put it simply: "it is still a hotel restaurant, after all." It serves breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week. The posted hours are 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. That schedule makes the award-winning kitchen available far more often than a dinner-only restaurant would be.
The practical details from the review support the same idea.
| Detail | What Fields offers |
|---|---|
| Parking | Free private lot |
| Kids | "Little Scouts" menu at breakfast, lunch and dinner |
| Reservations | Booked through the restaurant's website |
| Payment | Credit cards accepted, no surcharge |
| Diets | Plenty of meat-free and gluten-free options; hosts ask about allergies before seating |
| Room | Restaurant, bar and lounge share one open space, with moderate noise |
| Takeout | Not offered; dine-in preferred |
Pucci also found that the kitchen's creativity and the bar program show best at dinner. Dinner is also where the October menu runs into real money. His party of four paid $439.36 for shared starters, entrées, shared desserts, three alcoholic drinks, tax and a 20% tip.
The Menu Runs From $2 to $167
That dinner total can make Fields look like a once-a-year restaurant. The menu prices from Pucci's October visit cover a much wider range, and the menu changes with the seasons, so treat these as examples:
- House-baked focaccia, $2 a piece. It's fried in olive oil during baking and served with cultured butter and black garlic salt.
- Harvest salad with apples, dates, pears and a maple vinaigrette, $12 small or $18 large.
- Mushroom medley or popcorn polenta, $12 each. Both are big enough to share.
- Sea scallops with pomegranate gastrique and persimmon, $32.
- Duck served as both seared breast and confit leg, with figs and a port-wine reduction, $42.
- Steaks from an 8-ounce hanger at $40 up to a 42-ounce tomahawk ribeye at $167.
The local Press-Observer listed the entrée range as $22 to $167. Cocktails cost about $15, and the review called that a value given the ingredients and the work behind them.
The steaks earned the strongest praise. All of them are grass-fed and come from local producers, and the menu notes that they are aged with koji, the mold used to make miso and soy sauce. Pucci ordered the 16-ounce ribeye at $67. It came with sunchokes three ways and a caper demi-glace. His verdict in syracuse.com:
"For me, this is the new standard against which all other steaks are compared."
He also wrote that some dishes "were among the best from any restaurant in Central New York." His caveats came on the same visit. Service was attentive but slow: about 20 minutes passed before his table could order, and starters took another 25. He found the desserts less consistent than the entrées, and the caramelized banana pudding was his favorite of them. For anyone choosing between a quick lunch and a full evening, it helps to know that the kitchen's strengths showed most in the entrées.
One detail from the awards coverage doesn't line up with the menu. Travel + Leisure's write-up praised executive chef Esperanza Guzman's koji-aged chicken, but Pucci noted that the menu he saw mentions koji only for the steaks. Guzman's earlier kitchens include RPM Italian and Ramen-San in Chicago, Otra Vez in New Orleans and Bondo at The 'Quin House in Boston.
Most of the Wine Award Comes From the Finger Lakes
The Wine Spectator honor fits the same theme as the kitchen. Wine Spectator's 2026 listing credits Fields with 510 wine selections and 2,000 bottles in inventory. It names the Finger Lakes first among the list's strengths, ahead of Champagne, Burgundy, the Rhône and Italy. Travel + Leisure counted 65 Finger Lakes labels. Pucci described a list more than 20 pages long, with a multi-page section of Finger Lakes wines. He noted that wines by the glass leaned toward California and France, with at least one Finger Lakes option in each category.
Wine Spectator lists Alison Ferretti as sommelier and BJ Simmons as wine director, and records a $30 corkage fee. The tap list stays regional too. Pucci found Other Half, Prison City, Frequentem, Strangebird and Skaneateles Brewery pouring. The cocktail list was developed with William Elliott of Brooklyn's Maison Premiere and Manhattan's Tigre. It includes what the review called "a refreshingly robust selection" of non-alcoholic cocktails.
Pucci wrote that plenty of restaurants promise local sourcing and that Fields' commitment "is legitimate."
The Farm Next Door Also Sells to the Public
Much of that local sourcing comes from right next door. Tap Root Fields supplies the restaurant with produce, herbs and flowers, and Guzman's kitchen uses Italian and French techniques on what changes each season. Woodbine credits the Allyn family with founding the farm. According to the resort, the farm uses regenerative practices. Tap Root Fields describes itself as a supplier of produce and packaged goods to both restaurants and the local community.
The farm also runs a Farm Cart with seasonal vegetables, herbs and locally crafted goods, and it operates from spring through fall.
Past the Dining Room, Access Depends on the Booking
Beyond the dining room, access to the resort varies. Here is how the resort describes it now:
- Lobby Bar. Morning coffee and pastries through evening cocktails.
- Day-spa booking. Includes the fitness room, indoor saunas in the locker rooms and the Wellness Sanctuary. The sanctuary has an indoor hot tub, a relaxation area and a Himalayan salt inhalation chamber, plus an outdoor hot tub and cold plunge.
- Outdoor cedar barrel saunas. Booked separately through the spa.
- Overnight guests only. The Pool Bar, the outdoor pool and the activities calendar.
As a result, someone who lives nearby can spend a full winter afternoon there: a spa visit, then dinner on the same drive, with no room booked.
The village's own calendar also gets busy right after this post comes out. The Skaneateles Area Chamber of Commerce's Fall Fest Weekend starts Friday, October 23, with a shop-window scavenger hunt. On Saturday, October 24, a 10 a.m. trick-or-treat sidewalk parade starts from the alley at 22 Jordan Street. The same day, the Skaneateles Community Center hosts a craft and vendor fair from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Five weeks later, the 33rd Dickens Christmas opens on November 27. For more on the village and the lake, see our guides to Skaneateles and Skaneateles Lake.
If you're thinking about a home near the village or along the lake, the team at High Falls Sotheby's International Realty can show you how Mottville Road, the village and the shoreline fit together day to day. Contact Us to start the conversation.
