The Red Lion Inn has stood centrally on Main Street since 1773, when it served as a stage coach between Boston and Albany. The old clapboard building has a history going back to the Revolution, and today it brings locals and visitors to its restaurants and shop of goods from local artists and artisans.
Year-round, regional musicians perform most nights in the Lion’s Den Pub: Folk, blues, rock and jazz with a dinner menu of locally sourced comfort food — the kind of menu that gives its own slant on shepherd’s pie, meatloaf and house-smoked hot dogs. (The inn serves breakfast, lunch and dinner in the main dining room, and lunch and dinner in the tavern and outdoors in warm weather.)
On cold nights, the inn serves hot drinks by the wood fire. Locals and visitors can sip a hot rum in an arm chair by the fire any time the tavern is open, says front desk manager Shelly Swofford. The inn serves hot toddies, hot cider and more. And the hotel cat may come to welcome you.
Around the holidays, you may find harp music there or carolers. Live musicians and storytellers come six days a week to give informal performances by the hearth and the lighted tree.
On summer evenings, people sit on the porch or outside in the courtyard. The inn may host an informal performance of Shakespeare or Shaker music. On select nights you may find a pop-up bar with a tasing of dry rosés from the slopes of Mount Etna or the south of France — or gin and tonics from citrus to the piny spice of juniper berries. They have been known to pair Berkshire Distillery gins with local botanicals — cherry tomatoes from Taft farms, or strawberries.
