Dreamaway Lodge

1342 Country Road
Becket, MA 01223-8725
(413)623-8725

The Dreamaway is a Berkshire legend, known for its former existence as a speakeasy and possible brothel, and then for a night in 1975 when Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, and the Rolling Thunder Review spend a night jamming in the parlor. It is also now known for good food and being notoriously hard to find.

However, I took two visiting friends there last weekend and I was pleased to find that if you follow the directions on the website, it's not hard to find at all. We had left early, basically prepared with snacks, blankets and a compass in case we were never seen again. But we found it right away and it was perhaps a 15 minute drive at the most from my house in Lee. One tip that is one the website I can vouch for, though - don't assume your GPS is smarter than the directions the restaurant gives you. After dinner, we got in the car and tried to GPS just to see what it would do - it directed us the wrong way, and then showed the road ending on the screen - and then shut off. You would not think that in a location just a few miles from the Mass Pike you would be so far off the beaten path, but at least to the satellite, you are.

The Dreamaway is in a beautiful location on a rural road, and old farmhouse surrounded by gardens, a wildflower maze, and in the front, a fire pit and area to sit down. At 6:30 on a warm Saturday night, people were wandering around the grounds with drinks and the dining rooms were packed. We were seated in the back near the bathroom (the Loo Gallery where exhibits change regularly) and the kitchen, so I would suggest asking for a table near the front of the house. Reservations are a must.

The interior is shabby chic/antique store/yard sale, with an array of old kitchen implements, toys, religious icons and the like in every nook and cranny. The walls are hung with a combination of kitsch and contemporary art. Very charming and very unique. The menu is relatively small but covers it all: fish, steak, lamb, chicken and spareribs, and a vegetarian option (which actually appeared to be vegan). There are also small plates - mac and cheese, pizzas, and a hamburger.

It was hard to decide - it's a nice menu and there are many appealing options. We ended up going for three salads - the mixed greens with green goddess dressing, a frisee salad with bacon and cheese, and a roasted baby beet salad. Everything was extremely fresh and delicious, as the restaurant is committed to using local ingredients. The baby beet salad was five beets around Greek scordalia mi kapari - basically, a cold roughly-mashed potato with garlic, capers, and almond. Definitely unusual, tasty, and worth trying. The frisee salad was also rather revelatory in the simple way a vey good salad sometimes can be - I am not a big fan of bitter, spindly frisee that usually comes in a mixed green salad. This frisee was still a little bitter, but it was not like eating twist-ties - it was substantial and more the texture of "normal" green. I would order any of those salads again.

For entrees, we ordered pizzas - two shrimp pizzas and one feta, beet greens and garlic. A side of lemon should come with the feta pizza and if you order it, make sure you let the waitress know right away if it isn't there - the spray of lemon really brings the flavors alive. The feta pizza had a little too much raw, crunch garlic for my taste - it imparted a bit too much onion-y flavor, as raw garlic can, and that's not my scene with a pizza. Neither had sauce on it. The shrimp pizza was just fabulous - the shrimp were beautifully cooked.

We were all worried that the pizzas would not be substantial as they were under the "small plates" - but they are solid individual sized pizzas that were quite filling, and the crust was thin, crunchy and flavorful - very authentically Italian.

For dessert, I had the vanilla bundt cake - a choice that seemed to go with the nostalgic funky decor of the place. It was quite good, although I was full so I could not enjoy it as much as I would have - I think a lighter fruit dessert might have been a better choice, or the buttermilk panna cotta. The chef formerly owned a bakery, so she is an excellent pastry chef. My friends had a raspberry sorbet from SoHo Creamery which was bursting with flavor - it really tasted as if it had been just made from fresh raspberries.

I would highly recommend the Dreamaway - it is definitely a unique Berkshire experience. There were diners of all ages when we were there, from small kids in booster seats to a group of older couples. Before I had visited, I was wondering if the place would be too "hipster" to bring older folks or young kids - not the case. There is music after 10, and my sense is this place changes flavor then completely, and the hipsters descend. The band for the evening was happily sitting outside at a picnic table enjoying some ribs as we left around 8pm.