Comments on: Now That’s Italian

By: Sysonby

Sysonby — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 05:25:51 +0000

I just came to this post via a link. Sorry so late to the party, or funeral as the case may be. Allow me to defend by town, Guilderland. As nice as it may seem to note the farm of origin for the tomatoes or the eggs at a location in California, what chance does a restauranteur have in upstate NY?
Meza Note may get much of it’s produce and dairy and meats from local farms, but … a) this area doesn’t have a close “relationship” with such providers and b) for 8 months of the year nothing is coming out of the ground but mud and ice. No restaurant in the Albany area can say “tomatoes from X farm” when that farm is only harvesting for 5 months.
Sure the foodies at Oliveto may understand what it means to get vegetables from “X farm” but most don’t know or care as long as it’s good food, well prepared. The hardcore foodie tends to think that everyone else in that restaurant is just like they are but most of us are not. We like the experience of a meal cooked by someone else. We like having the chance to linger over coffee or a glass of wine and not having to jump up to do the dishes. We don’t care if the cherry tomatoes are not the best we ever had or if the salad had too little arugula.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:35:16 +0000

Do adjectives make the food better? Or do they simply make the place seem more pretentious? In a large market like SF, you can afford to alienate people by putting on airs, in Albany you don’t want to appear snobbish or off-putting. Is a Sanitation Removal Teamworker worth more than a Garbage Man? A Petroleum Dispensing Specialist more desirable than a gas pump jockey?

Stop doing yourself and readers a disservice, why not report on the food and actual dining experience at a restaurant rather than get caught up in judging the value of a dining experience based solely on menu verbiage?

By: omaxwell

omaxwell — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 04:34:09 +0000

I wouldn’t mind a side conversation on personal space and how it is different in Upstate vs. the Bay Area. Fussy, I’ll bring it back to food in a minute so you don’t think we are off topic.

I have missed a kind of abstract “freedom” since arriving in Saratoga, and didn’t realize till I read appauld’s post that I am probably thinking about personal space. In SF, people live their lives as they wish as long as they are not blatantly criminal or antisocial, and tolerance prevails. Upstate, folks seem much more concerned about each others’ business and can be ready to report in some detail on the comings and goings of some 3rd party that may not truly merit the attention.

The upside of this is situations like when I’m at the beer store getting my growler refilled, and a guy I’ve met once at a friend’s hears I am moving and offers to help for the afternoon; that would never happen in SF.

But I do miss the opportunity to disappear when I want to, though maybe that’s a matter of personal perception. My own view is tinted by growing up in the South where people could be branded as “bunny no-goods” who were “beyond the pale” with no prospect of redemption if they violated some obscure social tenet. I’ve always felt I was somehow in danger of falling into that “bad” group, while being unsure how to avoid it.

Appauled et al, am I making sense here? Oh, and the food angle. I’m out to dinner last night in SF at a rather expensive restaurant, with good friends who happen to be from NYC. And over the hours the guy is insistent on building a jovial relationship with our waitperson, bringing them into each others’ personal space as it were. I’d never thought about it before but maybe that is “acting like a New Yorker” as opposed to a Bay Arean.

By: appauled

appauled — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 19:45:07 +0000

I’ll start off by saying that I respect your endeavor, but I can tell you that you’ll probably always leave your heart in the Bay Area. I’ll explain something to you from two perspectives; one being a person who has lived and worked with a good deal of San Francisco-Berkeley-Oakland people who have relocated to Boston/NYC/Albany. There tends to be a great deal of dissatisfaction at certain things; one of them being food and the other being personal space. We’ll deal with the first one. People from the Bay Area seem to really enjoy knowing a lot about where their food comes from. People in the Northeast – and perhaps this is a part of the cold, bitter windswept, puritanical culture that has left its mark. We’re not exactly like folks from Mississippi who will shovel pork rinds down our throat and wash em’ down with a big gulp of Mountain Dew, but knowing that our ingredients are organic is usually sufficient for the most discerning Northeastern, whether he lives in Saranac Lake or Brooklyn. The other thing is that we sometimes, when relocating, tend to see the flaws and the shortcomings in our new place. A few years ago I moved to Utica from Brooklyn for several months. It was the ultimate culture shock for me – and I was born and raised in Upstate New York. The things people heralded as groundbreaking and hip in Utica were well worn in Albany even. Part of it is just becoming comfortable I suppose in the new area, perhaps doing your own garden (I know I enjoy stealing items from one shared by my brother and father) and maybe trying to see what you can grow that’s native to the Bay Area. Good luck with your adjustment.

By: omaxwell

omaxwell — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 02:35:05 +0000

I am new here, from the bay area like you, and trying to fit in. I do notice the prices in the cap district–and not just at restaurants but for salad fixins at a farmer’s market, or a hour of a moving company’s time–approach or exceed those in one of the most expensive metro areas in the world, and I wonder why that is when the cost of living is overall significantly lower.

Part of this is volume: if you are going to sell a few pounds of mesclun or a couple of chops rather than carloads, the per transaction cost is going to be higher. But that doesn’t explain everything and certainly doesn’t explain why a fine dining establishment is going to charge big-city prices but make compromises on variety and ingredients. Especially when there are a few places (I’m thinking of Max London where I’ve eaten a number of times as well as the apparently legendary meal I missed at Top of the World, as documented on the Slow Food blog at http://slowfoodsaratogaregion.com/blog/ ) that really are trying hard to be inventive and getting their patrons to come along.

And the real irony is that we live in the middle of a rich bounty of local farms, many of which truck their goods to farmers markets in NYC because they assume there is no local demand. When we expect more, perhaps the restaurants will deliver more. There are certainly chefs in the region that want to do that.

By: Mr. Dave

Mr. Dave — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 04:47:15 +0000

Oh Fussy, you break my heart. Don’t get me wrong, I wholeheartedly agree with you that places like Mezza Notte (btw, the location of the place makes me laugh as I am a life long Guilderlandian), and in fact most Albany area “fine dining” places, deliver over priced plates of shite. Am I wrong for finding this endearing? It makes me laugh that Creo with all of its pseudo-modernity stands in the former location of an orange roofed Howard Johnson’s (ma and da’ took me there for a milk shake or two in my halcyon youth). In the Bay Area we are not. We are smack dab in the middle of, in my opinion, one of the stodgiest and most conservative food-cultural areas of the nation. You are going to need to stop expecting culinary sophistication and start enjoying our post industrial, New England-esque, culinary stubbornness as bleak as it may be. But hey, I am from here, I have been everywhere, I come from a culinary trained family, and goddammit all I love our local restaurants. Warts and all.

By: Vanessa

Vanessa — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 01:15:04 +0000

http://toscagrille.com/spring_menu.pdf

getting closer..still not as adjective heavy..but more descriptive and adventurous (?)

By: Vanessa

Vanessa — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:28:31 +0000

I think that Mezze Notte may need a bit of work on the semantics of their menu…but my husband and I eat there frequently and have yet to be disapointed. The food is fresh, and delicious. They do source from their own gardens (from what I remember) and for a local (within 5 minutes) we love it.

Yeah, it might not stand up to the Bay Area..but this is not the Bay Area..it’s Albany.

p.s.maybe we should double date sometime

By: phairhead

phairhead — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:00:47 +0000

never sampled mezzanotte. as a resident of Sch’dy and coming from an Italian family, i go to Italian places. if you want good and plentiful, check out Petta’s. It’s the Sch’dy GHETTO, but it does not disappoint

By: Mama Ass

Mama Ass — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:12:49 +0000

Thanks for the exercise.
Though we are close to Philadelphia, the food in our town isn’t that good. But the town about two miles away has some really excellent restaurants. So it isn’t an issues of supply or location, but inspiration.
Perhaps your local restaurant could take the cue to make the menu more seasonal and more descriptive. If the food is already good, why not present it that way?
P.S. Homemade potato chips threw me off. Is that really Italian?