Prime Potatoes

I made a commitment a while ago to promote those restaurants that were doing good things. Sometimes I have a tendency to see something good and continue to push for it to be better still. Or there may be one thing that’s good and another thing that could use improvement.

You think it’s tough being married to me, try being one of my children.

Anyhow, today I’m not going to do that. Because while on the surface this may look like any old blog post, it is not. This is The Good Stuff. It even has its own separate category on the right hand navigation bar, and it’s one of the few things directly accessible from the masthead.

Really I should make more of an effort to write at least one of these per week, because there is still a lot of good stuff out there I haven’t mentioned. But today it’s about a new restaurant owned by an established restaurant group, and I’m glad to see them learning new tricks.

The most notable part of Angelo’s Prime Bar & Grill menu is the prominence of one local product: potatoes from Sheldon Farms.

Hooray!

Sheldon Farms does great work with potatoes. Not only do they grow heirloom varietals, but they also do not spray their spuds with sprout inhibitors, like many or most potatoes from the West. On top of it all, they were hit extremely hard by the storms in our region this past growing season.

And the farm is mentioned about half a dozen times on the dinner menu. If people don’t walk away from a dinner at this new restaurant knowing that Sheldon Farms is something special, I don’t know what else will convince them.

There are other good things on the menu too.

A few other regional producers get mentioned by name, including Coach Farms (goat cheese), Mapledale Farm (farmhouse cheddar), and Bowman Orchard (apple chutney).

Plus some premium ingredients are called out, most notably wild king salmon, organic chicken, Parmigiano Reggiano, Berkshire heritage breed pork, and extra virgin olive oil.

And on top of it all, their wine list contains two selections from the Finger Lakes, and only one of them is a Riesling. I can vouch for the 2010 Ravines Cellars Dry Riesling. But now I’m especially curious to learn more about the 2008 Red Tail Ridge Chardonnay.

Well done, Angelo. It’s great to see all of these things on a local area menu. Best wishes with the new venture.