the road | the food | a new direction
Decades of lawsuits settled once-and-for-all the long-running feud between the two branches of the family that owned the side-by-side Managanaro’s stores on Ninth Avenue, near Port Authority. This resulted in the closure of the Grosseria a few years back. Hero Boy was the larger, and more modern (and generic) looking store of the two, a cafeteria-style restaurant; no groceries for sale here. Continue reading
The Oxford, Ohio Graeter’s ice cream shop that, last we heard, was slated for a May 2015 opening finally opened its doors to the town at 1 p.m. yesterday. Their address is 29 West High Street.The owners say business at the store, which specializes in handcrafted French pot ice cream, was very good on opening day and about as expected. An official grand opening has not yet been announced.
Seed spittin’ and watermelon eatin’ contests: sounds like a watermelon festival! Pageland, South Carolina, the Watermelon Capital of the World, just over the border from North Carolina, is where all the fun will happen on Friday and Saturday, July 17th and 18th. Continue reading
Sue places a breakfast order for a Taylor Ham, egg, and cheese sandwich. She does not like runny yolks.
SUE: How do you do your eggs?
COUNTERMAN: Well… when I get here in the morning I turn on the grill and let it heat up. Then I get the eggs out…
(Laughter from the working men dining at the counter, almost to a man with work pants riding down low enough to expose butt cleavage)
SUE: I get enough smart-ass answers from my husband.
(More chuckles)
BRUCE (to counterman): I think she’s falling in love with you.
(Further laughter from the pew)
COUNTERMAN: It happens that quick, does it? Continue reading
It’s the smallest state in the union, by area, yet Rhode Island provides the culinarily curious with a surprisingly extensive selection of local cuisine. Much of it can be sampled at Evelyn’s Drive-In, a summer-only shack on the water in Tiverton. You’ll find The Ocean State’s unique and fabulous clear-broth clam chowder, and those fried balls of clam-spiked dough that go so well with the chowder, clam cakes. Stuffies, lobster rolls, fried belly clams, Grape Nut pudding, and frappes are also on Evelyn’s menu (as well as the notorious chow mein sandwich). Read more about Evelyn’s in this profile in The Boston Globe.
Free peaches and ice cream! Do you need any other reason to attend the 49th Porter Peach Festival in Oklahoma? The festival dates are July 16th through 18th. The peaches and cream will be handed out Saturday at 1 p.m. When it comes to peaches, that’s not all: earlier Saturday, contestants will be competing at the Porter Civic Center in the annual peach cooking contests, in the categories of cobblers, desserts, and preserves. And you’ll be able to pick your own peaches (or purchase them already picked) at Livesay Orchards. Continue reading
1/2 Melone al Porto: The melons we encountered were just amazing. Never have we had melon in the US as ripe, sweet, and full of flavor as the ones we had in Italy.
Chef and owner Hoover Alexander and General Manager Alvin “Skip” Walker of Austin’s crowd-pleasing Hoover’s Cooking were named Outstanding Restaurateurs of 2015 by the Greater Austin Chapter of the Texas Restaurant Association. Said Hoover, “I am just a working man, and am so humbled and honored to be chosen for this by my peers who best understand the sweat, sleepless nights, sacrifices and hard work that goes into our business.” Congrats to Mr. Alexander and Mr. Walker!
“Brown Eggs Are Local… And Local Eggs Are Fresh.” So says the website of the Central Maine Egg Festival. We guess that rule applies to Central Maine; don’t know if that’ll work in the rest of the country. Anyway, the town of Pittsfield, in Maine, is host to the egg fest, which begins Monday the 13th and will continue through Saturday the 18th. Continue reading
We knew of one woman, 85 years of age, who lived in the northern suburbs of New York City. She probably shouldn’t have been driving at all anymore, yet she still made the twice-weekly trip to Madonia Bakery, 97 years of age, in The Bronx, for her fix of the Italian bread she grew up with. Good, old-fashioned bread will do that to true yeast fanatics. Continue reading
“The hot-dog contest is a physical manifestation of the concept of freedom.” Those are the words of George Shea, the man behind the annual 4th of July Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island, New York. Have you ever heard a bigger pile of horseshit in your life? (Well, election season is upon us, so sure you have, but you get the point.) We love the spirit nonetheless! Ken Hoffman, who has been a judge at the contest for 10 years, takes a backstage look at this Independence Day tradition, from the highs (free dogs and fries for judges) to the lows (getting splashed when a contestant experiences what is euphemistically referred to as “reversal of fortune”). Celebrate America and have a read.
For most of the 20th century, Hoboken, NJ was primarily an Italian-American enclave. Like many other Northeast industrial cities, Hoboken fell on hard times from the 1950s forward, losing over half its population, until late-century gentrification took root. Throughout it all, some of the classic Italian bakeries and delis, such as Fiore’s, survived, and others, like Dom’s bakery, sprouted with the city’s rebirth, carrying on this Hudson River city’s Italian heritage. In the latter category is Vito’s Deli, one of Hoboken’s premier sandwich makers. Continue reading
Not everyone will be grilling this holiday weekend, but most everyone will still want to partake in the 4th of July tradition of burgers and dogs. Larry Olmsted, writing for USA Today, surveys his favorite spots in America to consume beef and pork in disc and tube form, from the site of the annual Independence Day hot dog eating contest, Nathan’s of Coney Island, NYC (though we quibble with his description of Nathan’s dogs as “better-than-average but not-quite-great.” If you get a Nathan’s frank in natural casing — the casing’s important — you are enjoying one of the world’s greatest dogs) to Santa Fe Bite‘s (yes, in Santa Fe, NM) truly superlative green chile cheeseburger. Have a look.
It was 1973 when Grand Bay, Alabama revived an early 20th-century local tradition and put on the first Grand Bay Watermelon Festival of the modern era. The festival is courtesy of the local Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and it begins today, with free admission, at 3 p.m. On the 4th, there’s a $5 per vehicle charge for the 8 a.m. till 4 p.m. festival but admission comes with all the locally grown, ice-cold watermelon you care to eat! Continue reading
National expansion continues apace: Giordano’s brings its deep-dish Chicago pizza to Minneapolis on July 15th. The restaurant will be located at 2700 Hennepin Avenue South. Look for Giordano’s soon at a city near you!
What’s a raspberry festival without raspberries? Why, that would be the Hopkins Raspberry Festival in Minnesota! When the festival began, in 1934, the area was surrounded by raspberry farms. The farms are long gone and, while the festival continued to be held, the raspberries eventually disappeared from the raspberry festival as well. In 2009, for the 75th edition of the raspberry festival, they experimented with bringing the raspberries back – pints of berries were sold all over the festival, just like in the old days. But the gesture towards a new tradition didn’t take. Continue reading
There are a surprising number of foods that are either unique to the Buffalo area (locally referred to as Western New York or WNY) or are simply particular favorites of Buffalonians. Everyone knows about hot-sauced wings and beef-on-weck. The wings you can today get all over the country but, oddly, the weck never made it out of the city. Continue reading
5 Rabbit Cerveceria, the first Latin microbrewery in the U.S., located in a Chicago suburb, brewed an exclusive beer for Rebar, a Trump Hotel Chicago bar. That is, until Donald Trump opened his mouth. 5 Rabbit severed their ties to Rebar, which left them with a load of kegs of Rebar beer. In swooped Gino’s East, who will purchase those kegs, sell the beer at Gino’s East restaurants, and donate the proceeds from sale of the beer to Chicago’s International Latino Cultural Center. No word yet on whether Gino’s will continue to use the founder’s new name for the beer, Chinga tu Pelo. Silver linings and karma in action!
The fishing community of Ballard, a Seattle neighborhood that sits alongside Puget Sound, got together with the local Elks to hold a salmon barbeque dinner in 1971 to raise money for the Chamber of Commerce. That dinner has since grown into the two-day Ballard SeafoodFest, drawing over 60,000 people to what was once a center of Scandinavian-American salmon fishermen. This year’s festival will be held on Saturday and Sunday, July 11th and 12th. Continue reading
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