Slingerlands' Restaurant Corner Has Changed Hands Twice Since 2022. Here's What's There Now.

Drive the short stretch where New Scotland Road meets Vista Boulevard and you will pass at least three restaurants that did not exist under their current name four years ago. It is easy to miss if you are only half paying attention, which most of us are while merging past the roundabout. But look closer and the corner tells a specific story: this is one of the fastest-turning restaurant blocks in Slingerlands, wedged between businesses that have not moved in over a decade.

That contrast, not any single opening, is the more interesting fact about the neighborhood this summer.

A Corner That Won't Sit Still

For years, Bellini's held down 1365 New Scotland Road, an Italian spot known for its wine list. In December 2022, the owners announced they were relocating across the street into the former Roux space at 10 Vista Boulevard, a move the restaurant framed as a fresh start rather than a closure. That left 1365 New Scotland Road empty, and Las Margaritas Mexican Cantina moved in. The new tenant shares an owner with Margarita City Mexican Grill & Bar in Albany and La Fiesta in Clifton Park, and because both the owner and his partner are Peruvian, part of the menu leans into a Peruvian-Mexican fusion rather than a straight Mexican cantina playbook. As of this summer, Las Margaritas is still serving out of that address, brunch through dinner, with what the operators have called the largest drink menu in the immediate area.

A few doors down at 5 Vista Boulevard, the same pattern repeated on a different timeline. Garden Bistro 24 closed permanently on November 30, 2024, and Mint, a farm-to-table restaurant based in Glens Falls, took over the lease. Mint soft-opened on April 1, 2025, with a full opening later that month, marking the concept's second location after the original Warren Street restaurant in Glens Falls, which opened in 2022.

Two New Kitchens, A Year Apart

Mint is a family operation. It is owned by Johanna Geldern along with her daughters Katriel and Cagney Houlihan, with Thom Hines serving as executive chef across both locations. The Slingerlands kitchen is run day to day by head chef Caitlin Sive, who came over from Nighthawks in Troy. The menu mirrors the Glens Falls original: cheese boards, buffalo cauliflower, chicken schnitzel, pasta, burgers, and a craft cocktail list. Geldern has been direct about the sourcing philosophy behind it, telling a Capital Region news outlet that the kitchen uses "fresh, organic ingredients, and source[s] locally whenever possible."

The rollout was deliberately slow. The first week ran on limited hours, and starting April 8, 2025, the schedule settled into Tuesday through Thursday from 1 to 8 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 4 to 9 p.m., with plans to add lunch service and expand once the team was fully trained and, in Geldern's words, once patio season began in mid-May.

Almost exactly a year later, a different kind of expansion landed on the same road. Down New Scotland Road at 400 Maple Road, Mr. Halal, a Capital Region chain serving halal rice platters and gyros, opened its seventh location on March 13, 2026. The Slingerlands shop mirrors the chain's format elsewhere in the region, from Delaware Avenue in Albany to locations in East Greenbush, Watervliet, Schenectady, and Cohoes, with a menu built around chicken, lamb, kabob, falafel, and fish platters alongside wings, salads, smash burgers, and chicken sandwiches. It runs daily from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., a longer window than either of the sit-down spots nearby.

The Businesses That Didn't Move

What makes the restaurant churn notable is how little else on that same stretch has changed. Corner Gateway, the shipping and printing shop at the intersection of Route 85 and 85A, was established in 2009 by Thea Snyder with the idea of being a gateway to the Helderberg mountains, and it is still the spot neighbors turn to for FedEx, UPS, USPS, and DHL drop-offs, along with notary services and computer repair. A short walk away, Studio 85 keeps the same easy-in, easy-out haircut business it has run for years. Twisted Vine, at the corner of New Scotland Road and Route 85, remains one of the anchor dining spots locals point newcomers toward, the kind of place that has outlasted several restaurant cycles around it.

None of this means the food scene is unstable. It means Slingerlands has quietly become a place where a small commercial footprint absorbs new restaurant concepts every year or two while its service businesses barely change hands. If you have lived here a while, you have probably watched this happen without naming it. Now you have the timeline.

Two Trails Within a Few Minutes of Each Other

The same kind of contrast shows up outdoors, though here it is by design rather than accident. The Helderberg-Hudson Rail Trail runs directly through Slingerlands, a paved multi-use path built for biking, jogging, and walking that connects the hamlet to Delmar and Voorheesville. It is the trail most people picture when they think about getting outside here: flat, social, and easy to fold into a commute or an evening loop.

A few minutes away, inside the roughly 450-acre Five Rivers Environmental Education Center, the Fisher Trail offers a completely different kind of walk. At just 0.66 miles, it is short, but it was built with intention. The trail officially opened with a ribbon cutting on October 11, 2022, a joint effort between the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy, Friends of Five Rivers, and the DEC Accessibility Advisory Committee. The first half-mile, running from a trailhead on Fisher Boulevard to a viewing platform over the Phillipinkill, is built to DEC accessibility guidelines with a well-graded crushed stone surface, making it one of the few fully accessible woodland trails in the immediate area. Past the platform, the terrain changes fast. The path drops down a steep slope into the ravine and connects with the Wild Turkey Trail, which threads into the rest of Five Rivers' network before ending at the visitor center on Game Farm Road.

Two trailheads, a few minutes apart by car, produce two entirely different outdoor experiences: one paved and social, the other quiet enough that regulars report spotting a beaver lodge along the way.

The Rhythm of a Slingerlands Summer

The community calendar this year has leaned into that same mix of steady and seasonal. A weekly farmers market has been meeting Thursday mornings at Farrington Square Courtyard, giving residents a regular stop for produce, baked goods, and artisan vendors without much of a drive. In mid-July, the Historic Burnside site hosted its blueberry festival, a family-friendly weekend built around blueberry treats, crafts, and pony rides that has become something of a fixture for households with young kids. Bastille Day landed on a Tuesday this year, and the Bethlehem Public Library marked it with an outdoor jazz concert that ran into the evening, a small but well-attended reminder that Slingerlands sits close enough to Delmar's cultural calendar to borrow from it freely.

None of these events are exclusive to Slingerlands. What they add up to is a summer where the fixed points, the schools, the trails, the market day, hold steady while the restaurant lineup keeps rotating around them. That is arguably the more accurate way to describe living here right now: less a neighborhood in flux and more a neighborhood with a stable frame around a fast-changing middle.

If you already call Slingerlands home, none of this changes your address. But it might change how you plan a Thursday evening, or which storefront you check on next time you drive past Vista Boulevard wondering what happened to the place that used to be there.

If you are weighing a move within the Capital Region and want a clearer read on what a neighborhood's day-to-day actually feels like before you commit to a search, Tosseia Myers has spent years walking these streets with buyers and sellers alike. Let's Connect.