In our house, Halloween isn’t so much a holiday as it is a month-long celebration of the harvest and the Fall, and also of murder, mayhem, and death.  We’re equal parts pagan and horror-movie-obsessed, and October is for us a month both high and holy.

Beyond trips to pumpkin patches and abandoned-prisons-cum-haunted-houses, we make a yearly pilgrimage to the town of Sleepy Hollow, New York, of Headless Horseman fame.  These people do Halloween properly, right down to their street signs, which are orange and black and feature a silhouette of their most infamous resident. It’s a great little town, with a few wonderful bars and restaurants to round out an evening visiting their Halloween attractions.

This year, between the Horseman’s Hollow haunted trail (one of the best haunted attractions in the surrounding four states), and a lantern-light tour through the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (residents include Washington Irving, author of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” as well as Andrew Carnegie, of Pittsburgh steel fame), we stopped in at the Bridge View Tavern, which turned out to be a warm, beer-filled pause in the chilly evening.

Sleepy Hollow is next to Tarrytown, just north of the Tappan Zee Bridge in Westchester, and the Bridge View Tavern has a great view of the bridge and river (obviously).  The view inside is also fantastic- 18 craft beers on tap, with a focus on New York State breweries, and a sizable bottle list.  They have excellent bar food, and the service in the bar area is quick and warm.

What’s refreshing about BVT is that it doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is: a local family dinner spot that happens to have a great tap selection.   We had a brief chat with Chris, the owner (he recognized us from a previous visit), who told us that his family has owned a restaurant in some form at this location for 30+ years.  While they have several large TV’s in the bar (attracting in a slightly different crowd on game nights), and do the occasional tap takeover event (drawing in more beer nerds), they are careful to not alienate their core customers.  They tried hosting live music, for example, but found that it cut into the dinner business, so they stopped.  The resulting vibe is very close to that of a real English pub: a Public House, in the truest sense.  Hanging out at BVT felt, in other words, like having a drink with some friends in our living room.

We’re hardly the first to give the Bridge View Tavern a gushingly positive review; they have a very rare 95 rating on Beer Advocate, with lots of other positive local and national press.

For me, a good drink is always part of a larger experience, a detail in a broader story.   From now on, whenever I have Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale, I will be transported back to the warm bar at the Bridge View Tavern, sipping a pint after being chased through a chilly field by the Headless Horseman, on my way to visit the grave of the author who gave the Horseman life.  Cheers to Washington Irving, to the Village of Sleepy Hollow, and to the Bridge View Tavern.