The avian flu has decimated the Midwest egg-laying flock, and the result has been skyrocketing egg prices that are not expected to subside for a year or two. Garcia’s Kitchen, for instance, expects costs, in eggs alone, to increase about $45,000 a year. For now, at least, Albuquerque restaurants like Frontier and Garcia’s are resisting raising menu prices, choosing instead to absorb the increased egg costs. For more on how ABQ restaurants are dealing with rising egg prices, see this Albuquerque Journal story.
Author: Bruce Bilmes and Susan Boyle (Page 28 of 61)
HAPPY NATIONAL STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE DAY!
2016 is the 74th year for South Carolina’s “oldest continuing festival.” The Hampton County Watermelon Festival begins next Saturday, June 18th, and will continue through Sunday, June 26th. Most, but not all, of the events take place in the town of Hampton. Some of the edible highlights: Continue reading
REVIEW
Everyone seems to have done their best to keep this fact hush-hush but Mastoris was sold a couple of years ago to Jimmy Manetas, owner of their neighboring diner, Town & Country. Unfortunately, the new ownership has not, in our experience, been good for Mastoris. The most readily visible sign of change is in those cinnamon and cheese breads at the start of the meal. One, they don’t always arrive if you don’t ask for them and, two, they have been made smaller. More importantly, we’ve had some problems with the food since the transfer, serious enough that we have stopped going to Mastoris, at least for the time being. Here’s hoping that they straighten things out and return to their former glory. What follows is our review of the pre-sale version of Mastoris: Continue reading
One of Chicago’s big deep-dish pizza specialists, Giordano’s, is planning to enter the Denver, Colorado market with a company-owned restaurant by summer of next year. A location has not yet been chosen but downtown is a likely landing spot. That first Denver restaurant will be followed by additional franchised stores. How’d they choose Denver? They judge suitability by the volume of mail-ordered frozen pizzas that get sent there! Read more here.
HAPPY KITCHEN KLUTZES OF AMERICA DAY!
Tekoa (pronounced tee’-ko), a small eastern Washington town, is holding their annual Slippery Gulch Celebration next weekend (Friday, 6/17/16 through Sunday, 6/19/16). Tekoa gets a jump on the festival proper with a fishing derby on Wednesday and a “Royal Tea” Thursday evening, the 16th. Friday night will see a teen game night and adult dance. Saturday’s the biggest day, beginning with the Chamber breakfast at 7:30 a.m., which, in the past, has included German sausage and cinnamon rolls. Continue reading
REVIEW
Fall River, Massachusetts is one of our favorite towns to enjoy a day grazing. From urban hot dog joints topped with sweet-spiced chili to substantial British pork pies to the Portuguese specialties emblematic of its cultural heritage, there’s no dearth of options in Fall River for the adventurous omnivore. At the end of the day’s buffet (and probably smack in the middle of it, too), a visit to one of the region’s many ice cream spots sounds like a terrific idea. Here’s a story from The Herald News detailing ten worthy candidates.
HAPPY NATIONAL PEANUT BUTTER COOKIE DAY!
Hot summers call for cool watermelon! For over half a century the town of Monticello, just east of Tallahassee in northern Florida, has put on an annual celebration of this ultra-refreshing summer fruit. Jefferson County has been a major supplier of fruit and seeds to the rest of the country since the late 1800s. This year’s 65th annual festival began last Saturday (6/6/15) with all the pageants and will continue through Saturday the 20th of June. Continue reading
REVIEW
Let’s get this out of the way up front: Stahley’s does not serve the best anything. We know that some people who come to LAF care about the food, and nothing but the food, and we have no problem at all with that approach but we have to say, if that describes you, do not come to Stahley’s. You will be disappointed. Continue reading
Eater spoke with Gary Bimonte of Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana (originally of New Haven, CT). If you are a pizza fanatic who swears by Pepe’s pies (we are and we do!), it’s required reading. Some key points: the current expansion to eight restaurants was spurred on by the fact that Frank Pepe has seven grandchildren, and one store won’t support seven families. They hope to open a new store every 18 months, reaching a total of 20-30 restaurants in the northeast (not, in our view, the “massive expansion” of the Eater headline, but significant). They’ll focus on college towns, with three to five total in the Boston region.
HAPPY NATIONAL GERMAN CHOCOLATE CAKE DAY!
The dates? Friday through Sunday, June 17th through the 19th, 2016. It’s the 119th (119th!) Annual Strawberry Days in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Pie Day is Friday at 9 am at the First United Methodist Church. The food booths open at noon Friday in Sayre Park. There will also be a beer garden. The food highlight of Strawberry Days has to be the free strawberries and ice cream handed out on Saturday after the 10 a.m. parade, in Sayre Park (named Strawberry Park for the weekend). Fresh, local strawberries will be available for purchase all weekend. And don’t skip the Rotary Pancake Breakfast Sunday morning. Continue reading
REVIEW
How did Portland become such a hamburger-eater’s paradise? We expected to find all manner of local seafood, such as exquisite salmon, both smoked and fresh, and the enormous razor clams and Dungeness crab that this region is deservedly known for, and a farm country bounty of fresh-from-the-earth produce. What we did not expect was the burger-mania evident in this city. Continue reading
HAPPY NATIONAL ICED TEA DAY!
The first Arizona Shake Shack will open in Scottsdale next year, in Scottsdale Fashion Square at the corner of Scottsdale and Camelback. No word yet on the special concrete flavors planned for this desert location.
The town of Marysville in Washington state is situated between the Cascade Mountains and the Puget Sound, in a region where rainfall, sunshine, and soil conditions are ideal for the growing of strawberries, a major local crop. In 1932 town leaders gathered with the thought of coming up with some way to publicize the local berry, and the Marysville Strawberry Festival was born. Today it’s one of the oldest festivals in the state. The 2016 fest will run from Saturday, June 11th through Sunday the 19th. Continue reading
REVIEW
A gentleman at the next table was regaling his family, and the waitress, with tales of how, when he was a teenager, he used to eat two hamburgers at Grover’s. We wondered at the amazed reactions to his dog-bites-man confession. Eating two burgers doesn’t seem so outlandish to us. Then our own burgers arrived, and we understood. Continue reading