There are just three restaurants at the Miraval Berkshires, with Harvest Moon as primary option for most and we thought it’s worth the upcharge for 1894.

View other posts in this series:

• Miraval Berkshires Review: A Pristine Resort in the Northeast
• Harvest Moon and Roost: Simple Dining at Miraval Berkshires (this post)
• Miraval Berkshires 1894 Restaurant – An Exquisite Dinner for Two
• Miraval Berkshires Activities: The Best Feature of the Resort
• Comparing Miraval Berkshires With Alila Ventana: Which Is Better?

Information on Harvest Moon, Roost, and 1894 Restaurant can be found on the Miraval Berkshires website.

Breakfast at Harvest Moon: Locally-sourced and familiar

We had a total of three meals at Harvest Moon over our two-night stay at the Miraval Berkshires. The dining area is large and makes you feel like you’re in a barn with the high, pointed ceiling. At breakfast, service is divided between a mix of a buffet and ordering off the menu.

Breakfast service is 6:30AM to 10AM daily.

Buffet

Let’s start with the buffet, which tries to have some healthier options compared to other buffets we’ve been to. There is an extensive spread, but with a little less emphasis on pastries and bread with a little more on simple ingredients. We’ll let the pictures speak for themselves, but the one thing I didn’t get a picture of was the omelet station.

From the menu

While you could only dine off the buffet, there is a menu with a few options to choose from. These dishes tended to be on the smaller side due to the existence of the buffet.

Jenn chose the avocado toast with an over easy egg on top. It tastes exactly like how you would expect: avocado toast with an egg on top. There are some pickled carrots, tomatoes, and radish on top to add a little depth of flavor, but otherwise it’s as you would expect.

I ordered the Harvest Moon Huevos Rancheros. In particular, I was very curious how heavy the dish would be. I’ve ordered huevos rancheros in the past at other places and have been a little scared off by how greasy the dish can be. But this one is actually the healthiest version I’ve ever eaten. Dare I say I actually borderline loved it. The tortilla chips offer up some texture and the sauce underneath is positioned so you can get as much of it as you want.

Lunch at Harvest Moon: A very simple menu

We stopped in Harvest Moon to have a later lunch. We probably didn’t need to come eat lunch, but let’s just say we wanted to do our research. As with breakfast, lunch service is divided between ordering off the menu and a buffet.

Lunch service is 11:30AM to 2PM daily.

Menu

Let’s start with the menu this time, which is one of the smallest menus I’ve ever seen. It consists purely of two options: a soup and a burger. Hope you weren’t looking for anything more than that. Almost makes you wonder if they need a menu for that–they could just put it on the buffet too.

But while we’re here, it’s fair to call out the other options from the dessert and drink menu.

Buffet

The lunch buffet is a bit more filling than what they had at breakfast. There is plenty of variety here to make up for the lack of variety on the menu. Once again, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Ordering off the menu

Since there were just two options for lunch, we ordered both. First up was the soup, which was a bean soup. Jenn ordered it with a kombucha (I stuck with water). The soup was good, but unmemorable.

We also ordered the burger, which comes with either regular fries or sweet potato fries. Our server was nice enough to provide a mix of both. In terms of burgers, it’s pretty close to average (which isn’t a bad thing). The bun was a little too bready in relation to the meat and the rest of the toppings. Both fries were excellent.

Dinner at Harvest Moon: Good but lacks a personal touch

While you don’t need reservations for Harvest Moon at both breakfast and lunch, the Miraval Berkshires does recommend reservations for dinner. When you call in to book your activities, the phone agent will also ask for your preferred dinner time each night.

Dinner service is 5:30PM to 9PM daily.

Before talking about the food, I want to point out on confusing thing. At check-in, you receive a schedule showing everything you have booked for your stay. It shows all the activities and even reservations at 1894, the elevated dining experience, but not reservations at Harvest Moon. If you need to remember when it is, you’ll need to talk to the Harvest Moon host stand.

We arrived at Harvest Moon in time for our 6:30PM dinner reservation and were quickly seated at our table.

Sadly, the format of the dinner felt very much abbreviated. There was little personal interaction with anyone along the process, with employees focused on just going through the motions instead of building connections. More so than other meals, dinner feels like it should have a little more of an elevated touch, which could be as simple as the server asking how our day was or engaging in any conversation. It feels like a miss.

Menu

As with the other courses, the focus of the menu is on locally-sourced ingredients. From what we could tell, the emphasis appears to be on food that’s a little more unique. Thankfully, there was a selection of seven different entrees to give variety.

Drinks

We started with some drinks. I chose the Dandy Lion Haze IPA ($9) and Jenn went with a Harvest Swizzle (free). She wasn’t feeling like drinking alcohol, so instead chose a non-alcoholic option. Oddly, not all non-alcoholic drinks are free; the drinks that intend to taste like alcohol cost money.

Appetizers

We started off with the Heirloom Beet Salad, which had beets hiding under all the greens. It’s a good salad if you’re a fan of beets. You could make the argument that Jenn is a real Dwight Schrute when it comes to liking beets. But the salad itself lacked a little bit of moisture aside from the beets.

We also ordered the House-Cured Salmon Gravalax. This is where we didn’t pay attention much to the details underneath the main description. The menu tells us that it has “popcorn espuma” in it but we didn’t see that until the dish arrived. The salmon and caviar are good and, really, that’s all we wanted. The popcorn was a disappointment. Not because we weren’t expecting it but more because it tasted stale and soft and got stuck in our teeth. We’d avoid this one.

For the table, we also ordered the High Lawn Farm Cheese Board. This was one of the best dishes from the evening. The honeycomb that comes with this cheese board is excellent and delicious. The cheese is also quite good, with the bleu cheese not being too strong in flavor.

Entrees

I ordered the Simply Balanced dish with chicken, which wasn’t as balanced as I thought it would be. Sure, there are a lot of vegetables on the plate, but there’s also a lot of rice. This dish was also massive, much larger in amount than the lamb Jenn ordered. You won’t go hungry after this dish.

The food itself is fine. The vegetables are lightly seasoned and the chicken had good flavor. I don’t care much for kimchi, but Jenn thought it was fine but unremarkable. Overall, the dish probably works best if you’re very hungry.

Jenn ordered the Grilled Lamb Loin, which was fine. You’ll notice I called several dishes “fine”, which is more a reflection of the overall dining experience being perfectly acceptable but a little lacking. With a menu as unique as what they’re presenting, we were hoping for an interesting twist on flavors or a punchline to each dish. But instead, we got dishes that just didn’t stand out. Perhaps it’s our fault for choosing the dishes we did, but it’s hard to tell from the menu.

Anyways, Jenn ordered the lamb as medium, but found it too tough and would have preferred medium rare in retrospect. Asparagus and turmeric couscous round out the flavors in this dish. This isn’t a dish intended to get you full like the Simply Balanced dish did. Instead, it’s a bit simpler, and arguably the better dish between the two.

Desserts

There are a total of six different dessert options to choose from at the end of your meal, and we each chose one. Jenn opted for the Crema Catalana, which has a nice contrast of flavors between the matcha, the charred pineapple, and the tangerine sorbet. We were expecting something closer to a crème brûlée, but instead you can think of this almost as a deconstructed version of it.

We also ordered the Chiboust, which was tasty. Surprisingly, there wasn’t as much chocolate in the dish as we expected based on the menu. However, the lemon mixed in offers a nice contrast in flavors that we can get behind.

Lastly, since we told the Miraval Berkshires that we were celebrating our anniversary, they provided a special dessert at the end of the meal. I could best describe it as trompe-l’œil, which is French for “deceive the eye”. It’s shaped like a rather large cherry, and inside its firm exterior is a very flavorful cake. The dish is quite unique from everything served at Harvest Moon, so don’t be surprised if you get a few looks from others around you.

Roost: All-day dining and drinks

Right outside Harvest Moon is Roost, which you can almost think of as a Starbucks-style coffee shop with a bar and nice furniture. This was perhaps the most popular place to hang out aside from the outdoor pool. We’re guessing that once winter weather hits, it will be even more popular.

Roost has a nice bar on one end and a coffee shop feel on the other.

Roost operates during the following hours:

• Smoothies and grab n’ go snacks are from 6AM to 2PM.
• The bar is open from 2PM to 10PM.

Drinks

Since we’re here at the bar, let’s knock that one out of the way. Come here in the morning, and you’re sure to find the blinds partially down. This is to let you know that drinks are not currently available, but they’ll become available starting at 2PM.

There is a menu describing all the coffee, tea, soda, juice, and smoothie options available prior to 2PM.

The thing that Miraval Berkshires–and all Miraval Resorts–pride themselves on are the free smoothies. It was brought up no less than two times when I called in to book, and then reinforced once on property. There are two options for smoothies:

• Balance (spinach, mint, apple juice, coconut yogurt, chia)
• Refresh (mixed berries, oat milk, flax seeds, agave)

Refresh is marginally sweeter than Balance, but they’re both not overly sweet. I’d say try them both and figure out which suits your tastes. It’s nice to have the option to get smoothies, but I think they hype it up a little too much.

If you don’t want to wait in the line in the morning to get barista-made coffee, regular drip coffee is readily available.

Food

Lastly, Roost has plenty of grab n’ go snacks prior to 2PM. I was able to take a picture of the morning options, but didn’t get a chance to take a picture of the lunch options.

Both service times have plenty of yogurt and fruit. At breakfast, there are also some refrigerated breakfast sandwiches if you just want something quick. This might also be relevant at 6AM given Harvest Moon doesn’t open until 6:30AM. (Yes, a microwave is nearby.)

At lunch, replace the cold breakfast sandwiches with packaged salads and sandwiches. The sandwiches didn’t look too appealing so instead we chose salads right when we arrived. They’re fine if in a pinch, but we wouldn’t pass on lunch service at Harvest Moon over this.

And hidden away in a corner are some bakery treats. They have the same options as the pastries and cookies you’ll find in the buffet next door. Makes sense to source it from the same place. Since it’s behind glass, you’ll need to wait for the barista to stop by and assist.

1894 Restaurant

We’ve talked about 1894 Restaurant in detail, but wanted to mention it here for completeness. It’s best to think of this restaurant as a paid upgrade to Harvest Moon, which is good given how we weren’t that wowed by dinner service there. Dinner at 1894 Restaurant is only available Friday through Sunday from 5:30PM to 8:30PM.

It costs $129/person to dine here, which feels a little heavy given the alternative is free food. But, there are a few things to consider:

• Each paying guest gets $175 in resort credit daily, which can be used to cover the dinner charge.
• The food and service is significantly better at 1894 Restaurant.
• 1894 Restaurant is also on-property, but disconnected from the hotel’s system of covered walkways (in case you’re here in the winter).

We found the upcharge to be worth the price, a reflection of how we viewed both Harvest Moon and 1894.

Stay tuned for the next installment where we will discuss the activities available at the Miraval Berkshires.