"Many decades later, my husband and I sat on the patio at Tourists, a reimagining of the archetypal American motel built on the site of an old motor lodge halfway between Williamstown and downtown North Adams. We took in the crowd around us: a guy with a New Order T-shirt, a gay couple with a big white dog, a stylish man and woman in their eighties. The scent of burning wood filled the air. I heard a train pass in the distance. Caleb's beer came in a can designed with the same font and color palette as the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album. Then a server spread an entire garden before us: sweet and spicy hummus with marinated vegetables and a sheet of naan the size of an elephant's ear; crispy quinoa and freekeh tossed in a creamy kefir dressing and topped with avocado and jack cheese; a salad of fire-alarm-red tomatoes. Moments before, I had overheard a man at another table going on about how 'fresh' the food was. Yeah, yeah, I thought. Everything's 'fresh' these days. But this was picked-five-minutes-ago fresh. Watching the sky above the lodge's peaked roof turn a smoky purple, I mopped up the last of the hummus and felt a tingling sense of delight." - Travel + Leisure Editors
