GUILDERLAND — Visitors to Orchard Creek at Altamont Orchards will have a new experience this spring. An expanded and renovated patio, a new banquet room attached to the restaurant, fire features, and indoor golf and movie entertainment will let Orchard Creek be a year-round facility when it reopens this April.

The restaurant will open as soon as the 115-acre golf course, owned by the local Abbruzzese family, opens at Altamont Orchards.

“We’re going to expand the menu, said Kevin Efaw, who has been the food and beverage director at Orchard Creek for five years. “We're known for pub fare and comfortable, casual dining. We are, foremost, a golf course,” Efaw said.

“We're freshening up the current restaurant [with] new paint, carpet, a new kitchen. We’re building a 100-person banquet room attached to the restaurant,” he said.

The restaurant, which hosts parties and weddings along with tired golfers and local diners, also has a pavilion that seats 300.

“A 40-person party was lost in it,” Efaw said. The new banquet room is climate-controlled and can handle parties with up to 100 people, he said. The addition worried some customers who enjoyed views off the patio, Efaw said.

“It’s a gorgeous backdrop here, a real nice view of the Helderberg mountains. One of the major draws is the patio and the patio seating,” he said. “We have plans to have a bigger, better, and badder patio.”

The addition was built on top of the old patio, but the new patio is three times the size of the former. The patio is now off the front of the building, Efaw said, wrapping all around the new structure.

“We probably won’t do most seating around the patio,” Efaw said. Parties’ cocktail hours could be held on one portion of the patio, he said, but most of the patio will be open to the public.

Patio patrons will see flaming towers, or fire features seen in areas like Las Vegas, Efaw said. The imported Italian propane heaters feature an eight-foot flame through a quartz tube that runs through the center of the tower, serving as a heater and a showpiece, he said.

“They’re unique to describe, but they’re really, really cool,” Efaw said.

“We’re putting in a frosted beer tower,” he added. Draft beer is guaranteed to come out at 29 degrees Fahrenheit, he said.

The banquet room addition has new audio, video, and microphone connections for parties, but golfers can use the room next winter. Orchard Creek is installing golf simulators that allow patrons to use real balls and clubs to play different golf courses on an 11-foot screen. A high-definition projection is shown on a wide screen for the simulator.

Efaw is hoping to offer movie nights for families. He also has plans to appeal to more mature patrons, who can have both dinner and a movie at the restaurant.

Efaw is already booking parties for the summer in the new space, and continuing to book larger parties in the pavilion.

“Our banquet menu is very extensive,” he said. Information about the menu and the party spaces can be found at www.orchardcreek.com, he said. The restaurant will be open seven days a week starting at 11 a.m. for lunch and dinner.
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