Drive past Demarest Farms on Werimus Road this week and you'll catch the smell before you see the parking overflow: fresh-picked McIntosh, the first cider of the season, someone's kid already covered in powdered sugar from a donut that was still warm five minutes ago. It's the same smell it was last September, and the September before that, and, as far as anyone in town can trace it, most of the Septembers going back to 1886.
Drive four minutes the other direction to Broadway and you'll notice something else. The Italian restaurant on the corner has a different name than it did a year ago. So does the bakery two doors down. Same buildings, same block, same foot traffic. Different signs.
That contrast is the whole story of Hillsdale right now, and it tells you something worth knowing if you live here: the things that feel permanent in this town aren't the ones with the newest paint job.
The Sign Above 343 Broadway Has Changed Twice Since Last Spring
For more than a decade, 343 Broadway was Osso Buco Italian Grill. Randy and Kathy Pioli opened it in 2013 with Sam Kaoutarani, bringing over a menu built on the veal shank the restaurant was named for, along with a client base carried over from three Zagat-rated Pasta Cucina locations the trio had run in Rockland County for twenty years. It became the kind of place regulars call by the owner's first name, the kind of place where the bartender remembers your order.
Then, sometime around spring 2025, ownership changed. A new owner, known to customers simply as Jimmy, took over the space, kept the Osso Buco name, and refreshed the dining room with a brighter, more contemporary interior.
That version didn't last long either. By the fall of 2025, the space had rebranded again, this time as Alba Italian Grill under owner Agim Kortoci and chef Nicholas Molina, still serving Italian classics out of the same 80-seat room with the same full bar and the same seasonal outdoor seating.
Here's the same address, laid out plainly:
| Era | Business at 343 Broadway | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| Before 2013 | Cafe Capri | Original tenant |
| 2013 to 2025 | Osso Buco Italian Grill | Opened by Randy and Kathy Pioli with Sam Kaoutarani, veterans of Rockland County's Pasta Cucina restaurants |
| Spring 2025 | Osso Buco Grill, new ownership | Purchased by an owner known as Jimmy, name kept, interior refreshed |
| Fall 2025 to present | Alba Italian Grill | Rebranded under owner Agim Kortoci and chef Nicholas Molina |
Three ownership eras in one address, and the most recent turnover happened less than a year ago. If you haven't eaten there since 2024, you're not walking into the restaurant you remember.
Ninety Feet Away, the Bakery Just Went Through the Same Thing
Walk a short block to 94 Broadway and you'll find the same pattern with a different cuisine. Le Carré Café & Pâtisserie opened there in 2023, an authentic French bakery built by chef Raphael on imported butter and flour, later carried forward by Pierre and Marybeth, who built a loyal following around croissants and a kouign-amann regulars still talk about.
This past June, that space changed hands too. L'Insolent Coffee & Bakery moved in, keeping the bakery concept but bringing its own French-inspired coffee program and a fresh menu of pastries, cakes and desserts.
One detail is worth sitting with. L'Insolent isn't a first attempt at anything. This is the company's third location, after shops in West Nyack and Brooklyn. Le Carré, by contrast, was a first-time concept for its original owners, built from scratch in a town that hadn't seen a French bakery before. Whether that difference matters to how long the new tenant stays is impossible to know yet. But it's the kind of detail that separates a business betting on a brand-new idea from one repeating a formula it's already proven twice.
That's two storefronts, ninety feet apart, both changing hands inside the same twelve-month window. It isn't enough data to call it a trend. It's enough to notice that turnover on this stretch of Broadway isn't a sign anything is wrong with the block. Both spaces stayed occupied. Both changes came from ownership decisions, not empty storefronts.
The rest of that same stretch is still doing what it always does. The Cornerstone Restaurant and Bar keeps its usual crowd on weekend nights. Lou's Tavern still books its Saturday lineups. Ken's Broadway Deli, Ronnie's Hot Bagels, The Barista's Touch and Koon Thai Eatery are all still exactly where they've been, filling in the rest of the block while the corner spots change costumes.
Two Miles Away, Nothing Has Changed Since August 29
Now go back to Werimus Road.
Demarest Farms has been on that land since 1886. The pick-your-own tradition that draws most of the town out there every fall didn't start until the late 1970s, when Peter and Marsha Demarest opened the orchards to visitors directly. The farm store you'd recognize today, the one with the bakery counter and the deli and the ice cream window, opened across the street from the original property in 1991, on what used to be cornfield.
This year's pick-your-own apple season opened right on schedule, August 29. According to the farm's published ripening calendar, what's actually ready to pick this week is McIntosh, Gala, Honeycrisp, Ruby Mac and Daybreak. That's not a guess. That's the list the farm itself puts out every year, updated variety by variety as the orchard actually ripens.
Later in the fall, once the trees are picked closer to bare, the farm shifts into its Halloween-season Orchard of Lights, the drive-through light display that's become its own tradition for the families who go back year after year.
None of that required a rebrand. None of it required new ownership, a new name, or a fresh coat of paint. It required the same family doing the same thing on the same twenty-plus acres they've been doing it on for close to a century and a half.
Hillsdale residents don't have to wonder what's true at Demarest Farms this week. The schedule is published, it's public, and it hasn't lied yet.
What Actually Stays the Same in This Town
If you've lived in Hillsdale a while, you already know Broadway changes. What's easy to miss is how fast it's happening at any given moment, and how little that turnover tells you about whether the block itself is healthy. Two well-regarded, well-reviewed businesses changed ownership within a year of each other on the same short stretch of sidewalk, and the block kept functioning the whole time. New signs went up. The sidewalk traffic didn't stop.
The lesson isn't that Broadway is unstable. It's that Broadway was never the thing to rely on for consistency in the first place. If you want a piece of Hillsdale's fall that's dependable in a way you can actually plan around, it's not going to be whichever restaurant currently occupies 343 Broadway. It's the apple schedule two miles down Werimus Road, still running on the same clock it's kept since your grandparents' generation was picking McIntosh in the same rows.
If you're already a Hillsdale neighbor, you know all this without needing a website to tell you. But if you're the kind of person who reads local dining turnover for fun and finds yourself wondering what else is changing in this town, or what's staying exactly the same, that's a conversation worth having. Nicholas Salemme has been tracking Hillsdale block by block for years, not just the restaurants but the streets behind them. Let's Connect.
