How do you review a restaurant that has no dining room, no posted hours, and no sign on Broadway, but has already fed more of downtown Troy than half the places on a "what's new" list?
That's the question First and Adams has been quietly raising all year. The restaurant is expected to open in Troy sometime in 2026, and it still hasn't. What it has done instead is show up. At a bar. At a farm. At a brewery in another county entirely. If you've eaten at one of those pop-ups, you already have an opinion about a restaurant that, on paper, doesn't exist yet.
The Restaurant With Three Addresses and No Address
Co-owners Paula Patterson and Jake Robins have spent the summer building First and Adams one event at a time, and the pattern is worth laying out because it's not how restaurants in Troy usually announce themselves.
| Stop | What Happened |
|---|---|
| Whiskey Pickle, Troy | Early August pop-up, the first public taste of the concept |
| Croix Farms | A farm dinner with one of the restaurant's core produce partners |
| Subversive Malting and Brewing, Catskill | A counter-service, order-and-mingle format, the third pop-up in the series |
Three stops, three completely different formats: bar crowd, farm-to-table dinner, brewery counter service. That's not a chef testing recipes. That's a restaurant testing whether it can travel before it has to sit still.
How a Building Turned Into a Restaurant Before It Had a Kitchen
The building itself has its own local story. Russ and Jody Brooks, friends of Patterson and Robins, bought the property and decided they wanted a restaurant in it. They brought the idea to Robins first, who immediately called Patterson. The two had met years earlier while working together in Troy, and neither needed much convincing.
What's notable here isn't the meet-cute. It's the order of operations. A building came looking for a restaurant, rather than a restaurant going looking for a building. That's a small but real difference in how a place gets its identity in a city like Troy, where a lot of the food scene runs on repurposed storefronts and second-generation spaces rather than ground-up construction.
What That Means If You Live Here
If you're the kind of Troy resident who tracks what's opening before it opens, here's the part that actually matters: by the time First and Adams gets its permanent address, it won't be introducing itself. It'll already have a following that knows the food, has an opinion on the farm partnerships, and has been telling other people about it since August.
That's a different kind of opening than the one most new restaurants get. Most places open cold and spend their first six months building word of mouth from zero. First and Adams is doing that work in reverse, in public, at other people's bars and farms, before a single table is bussed under its own name. Whether that translates into a packed room on day one is impossible to know yet. But the strategy itself, using someone else's space to build your own reputation, is a distinctly small-city move. It works in Troy because the food crowd here is small enough and connected enough that a pop-up at the Whiskey Pickle actually reaches the people who'll show up later.
The Friday That Downtown Double-Booked Itself
None of this happens in a vacuum. This Friday, September 25, is the last Friday of the month, which means it's Troy Night Out, the monthly arts and culture event that keeps downtown retail open late with music pop-ups, art openings, and food specials running from 5 to 9 p.m.
It's also the night Bootlegger's on Broadway is running its Samuel Adams Stein Hoist competition from 6 to 8 p.m., with a full pour of Sam Adams Oktoberfest and a giveaway of ceramic mugs to whoever holds their stein the longest. Bootlegger's operates out of the historic Hendrick Hudson Hotel building, a space family owners Abby and Nate Rock have run since 2011, and the Oktoberfest programming this fall is stacking directly on top of the city's own monthly event calendar rather than competing with it.
For a resident, that means one trip downtown covers two different reasons to be there. The galleries and shops are staying open for Troy Night Out. The stein hoist and the beer flow are happening two blocks away. Neither event moved to accommodate the other. They just happen to land on the same night, which is the kind of overlap that only becomes visible if you're actually paying attention to what's on the calendar and not just what's advertised.
The Beer Calendar Keeps Going After That
Bootlegger's isn't stopping at one Friday. The next two weeks fill in fast:
- September 28 — National Drink Beer Day, with the bar's full craft lineup on tap
- October 2 — Jukebox Rebellion plays live from 8 to 11 p.m., part of the bar's regular live music rotation
None of this is a one-off promotional push. It's a bar leaning into a season that already has natural momentum in a city that takes Oktoberfest seriously, and doing it inside a building that's been serving Troy since 2011.
Then Chowderfest Decides Who Really Shows Up
The bigger test comes October 11, when Chowderfest returns to Downtown Troy. Bootlegger's is already confirmed to participate with a brand-new chowder recipe, one they're keeping under wraps until the day itself.
Chowderfest works differently than a pop-up or a themed Friday. It's a communal, competitive event where the whole point is that everyone shows up with something to prove, and the crowd decides who nailed it. It's the kind of event that rewards a place with real neighborhood standing, not just buzz. Whether a still-unopened concept like First and Adams factors into that conversation this year is genuinely unclear. What's clear is that Troy's fall food calendar runs through events like this one as much as it runs through any single opening.
That's the throughline connecting all of it. First and Adams has spent its pre-opening months building a following through other people's spaces. Bootlegger's has spent decades building its standing through recurring, dated, communal events inside one historic building. Both strategies work in Troy because this is a city where reputation moves through repetition, showing up at the Pig Out, showing up at Chowderfest, showing up at Troy Night Out, more than it moves through a single grand opening night.
If you live here, you already know this rhythm. The interesting part is watching a brand-new concept try to build a reputation the same way the established spots did: one appearance at a time, in front of people who were already going to be there anyway.
If you're keeping an eye on what's changing in Troy, whether it's a new restaurant finding its footing or a downtown block finding new energy, that kind of local detail tends to matter later too. Robert Taylor and the team spend as much time tracking what's happening on the ground in the Capital Region as they do tracking the market itself. If you're ever curious what any of that means for your own home's value, request a free home valuation and we'll walk you through it.
