DOFL: The Orchard Tavern
Some people may see Dining Out For Life as a fancy affair. And they wouldn’t be wrong with more expensive restaurants like Mingle, Yono’s, Athos, Creo, and the new Javier’s agreeing to give a percentage of their sales to the AIDS Council of Northeastern New York.
But there are plenty of ways for people to participate in this fundraiser on Thursday, April 25 that are decidedly more down to earth.
Albany’s taverns are some of the Capital Region’s greatest treasures. And The Orchard Tavern is the oldest among them. In an attempt to better understand tavern culture, I sat down with its owner Mike Noonan and his son Brendan to learn what makes this place tick.
Media Failures Large and Small
Wow, this is a shitty week. Last night a fertilizer plant exploded in the Texas town of West, just outside of Waco. This comes on top of the Boston bombing and its subsequent media circus. And then there was the Senate buckling to the gun lobby.
Food is not feeling all that important today.
I did have an amazing conversation with Brendan Noonan at The Orchard Tavern yesterday, and I got to look a little under the hood at how they make their signature style of pizza. Hopefully I’ll have more on that for you tomorrow.
While my heart aches for those in West who wake up this morning with their lives forever changed, I’m also feeling more than a little annoyed at the media frenzy surrounding everything. Maybe the news media in general is just slipping. I’m really close to giving up on the Times Union.
Some other local food lovers have been displeased too.
AskTP – Green Machine
Sunday at the Schenectady Greenmarket, Migliorelli Farm actually brought their newest crop of broccoli rabe and some baby arugula leaves. There are little flowers popping up from the grass. And dammit, there are buds on the ends of trees.
I’m calling it. Spring is here. Time to finally take off the snow tires.
Those greens from the market by the way, were delicious. So young. So tender. To steal a line from a friend of mine, they were the veal of the vegetable kingdom.
Still, the changing of the season is another sign that time marches on. So hopefully you aren’t too surprised that another Ask the Profussor is already upon us. This is when I take all of the unanswered questions from the last two weeks and give them all the sense of closure they so richly deserve. My pledge from the beginning has been that as long as a question is asked with proper punctuation in the comments of this blog, it will eventually be answered.
Now, without any further ado, onto the questions.
DOFL: Rock Hill Bakehouse Cafe
We could all probably use a shot of good will today. So let me take the opportunity to highlight another restaurant that will be participating in the upcoming Dining Out For Life event on April 25.
It’s an easy and delicious way to help raise money for the AIDS Council of Northeastern New York.
I was very impressed that the money that’s collected during this event goes almost entirely into programming and isn’t raided to pay for overhead expenses like salaries or building maintenance. They are helping people who need help. That’s why I agreed to participate with the AIDS Council by writing a small handful of posts in the days leading up to the big event. It also gave me a good excuse to visit places that had long been on my radar, but that I’ve never tried.
Like the Rock Hill Bakehouse Cafe in Glens Falls. Actually, in my almost six years as a resident of the region, my feet had never touched the ground in Glens Falls. Even still, the legend that is the Rock Hill Bakehouse have rung out and I was excited to make the trek up to eat there.
Basic Breakfasts
Food is different than it was 50 years ago. In many ways it’s a lot more complicated. Even at a simple meal like breakfast.
Eggs are now raised mostly from chickens that live in deplorable conditions and are fed unconscionable mater that poses as feed. This goes for cage free and free range eggs too. The bread that is used to make toast is almost sure to contain high fructose corn syrup and a long list of unpronounceable ingredients. Conventional potatoes are raised using so many chemicals that there are potato farmers who won’t eat the potatoes they grow. And that’s just scratching the surface, because there are modern problems with breakfast meat, butter and cheese, maple-flavored syrup, and even ketchup.
I know all of this. I care about all of this. Yet still, on occasion, I’m able to ignore these concerns and enjoy a basic breakfast at a diner. Other times it’s a bit more of a challenge. But just yesterday I found myself sitting down at the counter of a diner deep in Schenectady. Not some gussied up version of a diner, but the real deal.
And I did the best that I could.
Dining Out For Life: Mingle
Helping people is what I love to do. Sometimes that may be hard to see. But the driving force behind this blog is to try and make things better. I’d like to do more, and maybe one day I’ll be able to figure out how to balance my available time, the need to make money, and the desire to heal the world.
For now, I’ve been given a small opportunity from the AIDS Council of Northeastern New York. So over the next two weeks I’m going to help them promote their April 25, Dining Out for Life event by highlighting a few participating venues on the FLB.
Besides being flattered that they reached out, the clincher was that in discussing how this promotion actually works, I learned that just about 100% of the money collected goes directly to programming. Overhead expenses are largely covered through other grants, so the money you donate by eating at a favorite restaurant goes right to helping people in need.
Plus doing this gives me an excuse to eat at some restaurants I’ve been meaning to visit for far too long, and talk with some interesting people.
One of those interesting people is Jose Andrew, who is a co-owner of Mingle on Delaware Avenue. While most restaurants are generously donating between 20-25% of their revenues from the evening, Mingle is the only restaurant in the region and one of just a small handful of restaurants participating nationally that are donating at the 100% level.
Naturally, there’s a story. And it’s a fairly remarkable one.
The Last of the Dinosaurs
Twitter isn’t my medium. Short form kills me. I can barely communicate my ideas in 140 words much less 140 characters. Intentions have been misconstrued, complements have been misread, and tone has been lost.
My favorite ongoing twitter punchline has been when I say something critical and Zack Hutchins falsely accuses me of trying to publicly shame someone. That has never been my intent. Well, at least not until this past Monday.
I’m going to blame Zack for putting the idea of public shaming into my impressionable mind.
But all of a sudden, Twitter seemed like the perfect way to call attention to an astonishing admission from the Times Union. Somehow, the newspaper saw fit to consider a $120+ dinner for a family of four (including one kid’s meal) as “cheap eats” in last Sunday’s issue.
Still, I was planning to let the whole thing drop until I found myself awash in tweets from Kristi Barlette yesterday. Really, she just had a question. And you know how I feel about questions.
Just in case you missed it, here’s what she asked: Read more…
Dare to Share
Once again, the FUSSYlittleBALLOT is off to a great start. Thank you to those of you who have already checked out this version and voted for the slate.
Jon in Albany had a few nits, but he shared the ballot on his fantastic food blog. Mr. Dave is advocating for his readers to write in “Kurger Bing” for every category in the Times Union poll, but still he put my scheme out there as another alternative. @DC2ALB tweeted about it to all of her followers too.
Maybe you too have helped spread the word in other ways. If you have, please let me know so I can properly thank you. But now that the vast majority of you FLBs are keenly aware of this poll, it’s time to move to Phase Two.
For Better And For Worse
Yesterday I was so busy ranting about the results of Capital Region Living Magazine’s Best of the Capital Region poll, I didn’t even have a chance to tell you about my weekend.
If you actively follow me on Twitter, you probably have a pretty good sense of what I was doing. Actually that raises up an important side note I’ve been meaning to mention for some time.
I’d love to meet you. Seriously. It’s one of the reasons I check into places publicly–just in case someone happens to be in the area and wants to come over and say, “Hi.” So if your phone chimes, and you see a tall, bald, guy who looks like me, shoot ‘em the Junior Birdman goggles. If it’s me, I’ll give you the Carol Burnett ear tug in return. Or, you know, you could just come up and ask if I’m Daniel.
But this was a weekend full of food adventures.
Saturday I played hookey from my family and went out with a book for a slice of pizza followed by a quiet beer outside on a lovely (if slightly chilly) early-spring day. Sunday I let my kids play hookey from religious school, and we enjoyed some donuts at Bella Napoli, dumplings at Ala Shanghai and the first Snowman homemade hard ice cream of the season.
I won’t bore you with all the details. The notable thing I want to discuss with you today is how the places you love can change.
What CRL Says About Our Best
The detractors may be right. The more I start looking at all of the Best of the Capital Region poll results, the more ridiculous it all seems. When the Times Union results come out over the summer, part of me wants to compile a weighted average meta list based on all reported findings across all media.
But by then, I’m sure I’ll be sick of it all. Presumably, you will be too. Heck, I’m just about sick of it now.
As with previous polls, like the one from Metroland and the one from the Troy Record, now that the results are published for Capital Region Living, I’ll run down the picks that I made and share how those played out against the actual results.
This poll had so many categories, I’m really finding it hard to get worked up about many of them. But the ones I feel strongly about, either positively or negatively, I’ve highlighted in bold for your convenience. In case you haven’t seen this grid before on the FLB, the list below gives the category, my pick, how it did, and in parentheses the category winner.
Just tell me this. When I keel over from an aneurism, who is going to take over this blog? Okay. Here we go.
FUSSYlittleBLOG 