CIA students honing their craft in the Colavita Center for Italian Food and Wine.
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On a bright autumn day, the view from the slender Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge, which stretches over the Hudson for more than a mile, is suitable for framing, just like one of those grand landscapes from the Hudson River School. On the eastern, thickly forested side, extravagant green lawns tumble down to the shore, crowned at the top by ethereal white mansions. The water mirrors the fiery fall colors that captivated those 19th century painters and that still draw visitors to this region of historic house museums, old-fashioned family farms and fine restaurants.

Move inland, and you'll discover the farms -- orchards and vineyards heavy with fruit, lazy grazing cattle and sheep, late-season field crops pressing right to the roadside. They're the darlings of the food community in Manhattan, two hours distant. The big-city chefs routinely snap up much of the best that the region has to offer -- foie gras, meats, poultry, cheeses, apples, cherries, berries and a dazzling variety of roots, greens and legumes, exotic and prosaic -- and often brag about the provenance of these ingredients on their menus. Local restaurateurs are plenty enthusiastic, too. The produce you get here is the freshest of the fresh, says Anthony Balassone, chef-owner of Calico Restaurant & Patisserie, in Rhinebeck, N.Y. And it isn't mainstream, plain-vanilla kind of stuff. The growers I deal with regard themselves as artists.

Balassone, like so many of the region's best chefs, is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America. The nation's top training ground for chefs just happens to be right here, a mile from the Roosevelt home in Hyde Park, and the central Hudson Valley wouldn't be the same without it. Stroll the school's halls any day of the week and you'll find yourself in the midst of an army of focused-looking young people in toques and crisp chef's jackets. Most move on after they graduate, but a significant few stick around, raising culinary activity to a degree of excellence unimaginable in most rural areas.

It's a pretty picture, very attractive to tourists and affluent city folk in search of a weekend home. The historic waterfront estates (many open to the public), designed by architects like Stanford White and landscape artists like Calvert Vaux, add immensely to the area's appeal. The charming small towns -- Rhinebeck, Red Hook, Kingston, Saugerties -- are home to not just restaurants, but dozens of chic shops and art galleries.

Ironically, the agriculture that gives the area so much of its character is imperiled, squeezed by rising real estate values and stiff competition from bigger, distant factory farms -- some as far away as China, now a leading exporter of cheap apples. Where there used to be dozens of beekeepers available to service local orchards, there's now just one, and he's especially grim about the future of farming in the area -- It's dead, he declares.

Others are not so pessimistic, though they admit there's plenty to be worried about. We're in a period of acute contraction, says Elizabeth Ryan, an orchardist and vocal activist for Hudson Valley farming. Those who sell to the wholesale market are most at risk. A buyout scheme from Scenic Hudson, Inc., a nonprofit land conservancy group that purchases development rights from farmers, has slowed the loss somewhat, but the crisis is far from over.

The answer -- for Ryan and for many of the other growers who supply the CIA kitchens, the local restaurants and those picky Manhattan chefs -- is more boutique production. Visit the Rhinebeck Farmers' Market any Sunday morning in season and you'll find Ryan, of Breezy Hill Orchard, and lots of other highly motivated small producers on their feet in the hot sun peddling their goods -- apples, fresh-pressed cider, venison, lamb, sausage and mounds of just-picked vegetables -- directly to chefs and consumers, on the one day of the week when most farmers get to sit down and rest. A surprising number of these growers are retired big-city professionals who have cast their lots with the better-established farmers. Anybody that's doing this up here now is fairly well-educated, says Darryl Mosher, a former IBM product manager who now grows heirloom lettuces, tomatoes, potatoes and more for Red Hook's Mina restaurant, among others, on his 75-acre Brittany Hollow Farm, in Rhinebeck. There isn't a restaurant within 15 miles of here that I haven't sold to, he says with pride.

The results of all this small, focused production are delicious. Munch on a leaf of Mosher's hot mustard greens, and you'll agree -- these little farms are more than just pretty. They, along with the steady supply of highly trained cooks, are what make a weekend jaunt to this region a gastronomic adventure.

It's great fun to begin such a journey with a guided tour of the CIA itself, conveniently located at the southern end of the so-called Great Estates District, which follows the river from the Roosevelt and Vanderbilt places, in Hyde Park, to Olana, painter Frederick Church's fantastical Moorish villa, 30 miles north. Students are unfazed by tourists peering through big picture windows into their gleaming kitchen classrooms. Sign up for a hands-on lay class in pastry, pasta, Mediterranean or Asian cooking (highly recommended -- you'd be hard-pressed to find better culinary instruction for home cooks), and you may never get out of Hyde Park. There are four student-run restaurants as well, and if you're intent on having a full CIA experience, a meal is a must.

The big dining rooms, from the Escoffier Room (high French) to St. Andrew's Cafe (contemporary, health-conscious American), are beautifully turned out. The 138-seat Ristorante Caterina de'Medici, in the freshly minted, mustard-stucco Colavita Center for Italian Food and Wine, is downright spectacular -- a grand, airy Tuscan theme-park of a place, trimmed with plenty of wrought iron, Italian country pottery and stunning Venetian blown-glass chandeliers. Sit in the Al Forno Room by the open kitchen and you can watch students pull thin-crust pizzas out of a wood-burning brick oven. The food is a bit impersonal, but it's textbook-perfect -- clearly the work of earnest cooks with bright futures.

Not surprisingly, the CIA has had a huge impact on neighboring Rhinebeck. At Calico, Balassone (CIA class of 1981) and his wife, Leslie, have a 17-seat vest pocket of a dining room across the street from the Beekman Arms, a landmark 18th century inn with a restaurant that's owned and operated by Larry Forgione (CIA '74), a celebrated doyen of the American regional-foods movement. Balassone has bested his predecessor, at least in this town, with elegant but full-flavored food that's especially welcome in autumn, featuring dishes like sage-infused risotto fritters set in a rich mushroom reduction, and tender roasted duckling breast in a creamy cranberry-Champagne sauce. Downstairs, Leslie constructs world-class French pastries out of dainty genoise, and cloud-light mousses and buttercreams.

At Cripple Creek Restaurant, just one block from the Balassones, 32-year-old Benjamin Mauk (CIA '01) turns out lush, modern American fare that's well-suited to the restaurant's mellow, gauze-draped dining room. There's a nice collection of Chagall lithographs on the walls; the artist spent some months in the Hudson Valley, on assignment for the Rockefellers, and remains popular with local collectors. Manager Patrick Hayes, who has also done course work at the CIA, usually entertains on the grand piano, and if you like to dine to live classical music, that's reason enough to come here. He's very skilled, a Juilliard graduate, with a relaxed, generous style that keeps people lingering over their wine and coffee, unwilling to depart from this genial cocoon of a place. On balmy evenings, there's garden dining as well.

For a signature Hudson Valley experience, head 3 miles south of downtown to the Belvedere, the only mansion that's open for dinner. The food is top-notch, but that's just one of the attractions. It's a place where you can really feel like John Jacob Astor (his descendants still live nearby) as you dine under high ceilings painted with clouds and hung with antique crystal candelabras. The glossy tables, chairs and sideboards are vintage Gilded Age, and there's a wealth of dark oil paintings -- portraits, ships, floral still lifes -- in rococo golden frames. Choose from three over-the-top dining rooms, or eat outside on the wide front porch, looking down the big lawn to the river at sunset. Book far enough in advance, and you can even sleep upstairs in one of the nine French Empire bedrooms.

After 20 years in Manhattan, where they ran the popular Panarella's on the Upper West Side, the mansion's owners, Nicola and Patricia Rebraca, now work the front of the house at the Belvedere, which they restored and stocked with finery themselves. Whatever we do, we do to excess, sighs Nicola, as if all this opulence were the result of some weakness.

The luxurious menu by Michael Dederick (CIA '89) is well-matched to this place. His smoked Muscovy duck consommé is an earthy, chestnut-brown elixir, and the rack of lamb, served with a light truffle-Parmesan potato soufflé, is succulent with flavor-bearing fat. The Rebracas' 170-label wine list is backed by a 5,000-bottle inventory, stored in a big cellar that Nicola is renovating to include a tasting room and a cigar room. If the setting puts you in the mood for a splurge, you can order a Ch‚teau Talbot 1971 ($900) or a Ch‚teau Haut-Brion 1981 ($1,200).

Red Hook, just minutes north of Rhinebeck, is serious farm and orchard country -- a lovely place with a quiet village at its center, home to a fashionably cozy new townhouse restaurant called Mina. Chef Natalie Figgy Steward is a slight, freckled young thing (CIA '98), who co-owns the place with her fiancé, John DiBenedetto (CIA '00). Their menu is highly seasonal, Mediterranean-American in style, and dependent on local bounty. Go for the ravioli stuffed with sheep's-milk ricotta, if it's on offer. The c¸eese, from Old Chatham Sheepherding Company, has a wonderful barnyard character. Steward excels when it comes to rustic elements, such as the buttery, zingy flageolets that come with her rack of lamb, and caramelized onions that accompany her veal sweetbreads, cooked down to a toothsome jelly.

After Red Hook, it can be difficult to keep going. There's so much to see, including three stunning estates: a fabulous Queen Anne dowager called Wilderstein, the Beaux Arts Ogden Mills mansion and the 434-acre Montgomery Place, landscaped by Andrew Jackson Downing. You may want to stop by Breezy Hill to pick a bushel of apples, too. But Church's Olana, which the painter named after an ancient city near Mount Ararat, is like no place else on earth; if you're a fan of the Hudson River School or 19th century Orientalist excess, then you must make a pilgrimage.

Stop in Saugerties on the way -- it's another classic Hudson Valley small town, very serious about antiques. Chef James Tamayo (CIA '81) of Café Tamayo serves up sensational beef brisket and veal bolognese over fresh pappardelle -- home cooking taken to another level, in other words, served in a century-old country dining room. As in many other Hudson Valley restaurants, you'll find some of the better local wines on offer.

Past Saugerties, the Valley reaches into Columbia County -- no longer estate country, but a paradisiacal stretch of rolling farmland that seems untouched by time. When one drives these roads as they ascend to the Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts, it's hard to believe that these magnificent hills are threatened by commercial rivals in faraway California, Texas, Central America and Asia. What this region will look like in 20 years is anyone's guess. In the meantime, it's ours to see and taste.

Belvedere Mansion
Route 9 S., Rhinebeck, NY 12572
Telephone: (845) 889-8000
Web site: www.belvederemansion.com
Chef: Michael Dederick

Café Tamayo
89 Partition St., Saugerties, NY 12477
Telephone: (845) 246-9371
Web site: www.cafetamayo.com
Chef: James Tamayo

Calico Restaurant & Patisserie
9 Mill St., Rhinebeck, NY 12572
Telephone: (845) 876-2749
Web site: www.calicorhinebeck.com
Chef: Anthony Balassone

Cripple Creek Restaurant
22 Garden St., Rhinebeck, NY 12572
Telephone: (845) 876-4355
Web site: www.cripple creekrestaurant.com
Chef: Benjamin Mauk

Getting a hotel room in the central Hudson Valley in leaf-peeping season can be difficult. For up-to-date information on vacancies, call the Rhinebeck Chamber of Commerce at (845) 876-4778. There are many appealing inns and B and Bs in the area, including these favorites:

Beekman Arms
6387 Mill St., Rhinebeck, NY 12572
Telephone: (845) 876-7080
Website: www.beekmanarms.com
Rooms: 63
Rates: $85-$145

This is a good choice for visitors who want to stay in the heart of Rhinebeck. The Inn proper, which has been in operation since 1766, has 13 guest rooms -- all of them done in period style but equipped with the amenities travelers expect in a modern hotel. The Inn also maintains 50 comfortable motel-style rooms in a collection of buildings across the street.

Belvedere Mansion
Route 9 S., Rhinebeck, NY 12572
Telephone: (845) 889-8000
Website: www.belvederemansion.com
Rooms: 20
Rates: $95-$275

If you can't reserve a French Empire— style room in the mansion, consider staying in the converted stable (hooked rugs, country-primitive antique furnishings) or the new Japanese lodge (slate floors, rice-paper lanterns, soothing earth tones). All rooms are small but very tasteful, and there's a pretty pool and orangerie on the ample back lawn.

Lakehouse Inn
Shelley Hill Road, Stanfordville, NY 12581
Telephone: (845) 266-8093
Website: www.lakehouseinn.com
Rooms: 10
Rates: $125-$675

There's fabulous luxury to be found deep in the forest here, at the side of a tranquil lake where you're unlikely to encounter anyone else all day -- except, perhaps, another guest equally focused on total escape. The plush suites are enormous, with lavish canopied beds and hot tubs big enough to float in. Owner Judy Kohler has collected enough antiques to start a small museum. Three more modest rooms are available for $125 to $175.

The Merrill House
710 Salisbury Turnpike, Rhinebeck, NY 12572
Telephone: (845) 758-9162
Website: www.themerrillhouse.com
Rooms: 3
Rates: $225-$375

From Hyde Park to Hudson, there are seven mansions open to the public year-round, plus more as you head south in the lower Hudson Valley. For more information call Hudson River Heritage at (845) 876-2474 or log on to www.hudsonriverheritage.org.