Cake and Beer at the Museum
Mostly, the food scene in the Capital Region has improved during my time in the area. When I arrived there was no place to get a reliably good cappuccino, nobody had a grassfed burger on the menu, and our most expensive restaurants were proudly serving farmed Atlantic salmon.
Those days are gone. Huzzah!
Of course, there have been some notable steps backward. All Good Bakers is gone, Bread and Honey has recently closed up shop, and Mahars, which paved the way for our current excellent beer culture, lost its footing and is now just a memory.
I’m sure for some the shuttering of Saso’s is still a sore spot. Pasquale’s made the best thin crust pizza this region has ever seen, and nothing has passed it yet. But for me, the most tragic of all the closures was when Crisan ceased operations of its Lark Street cafe.
Hopefully by now you’ve heard the good news.
Florida’s Orwellian Milk Laws
Yesterday I almost froze my fingers off. You know how there are people who run out for milk and bread when a storm approaches? Well, I don’t do that. But last night, you know what I realized we needed?
Milk. Specifically skim milk.
On this snowy April day I worked entirely from home, so I neither had to move the car, nor shovel the driveway. But that just meant that it iced up a bit. And after several hours of flurries there were a few inches of accumulation. It probably doubled our snow levels for the winter.
I mistakenly thought that I had only 30 minutes to make it to Stewart’s before it closed. So I hustled outside with only the fingerless gloves in my pockets, not realizing how much snow I’d have to move to get my car out. It wasn’t pretty.
But you don’t want to be around the Fussy household on a morning where there is no skim milk. Personally, I don’t get it. I think skim milk is awful. However, the kids and wife insist on drinking it and using it on their cereal.
Now there’s a whole thing that The Consumerist has been covering about skim milk. Have you heard about it? Let’s start with an easy question: What do you call milk after you skim all the fatty cream off the top?
Green Snow
Snow in April. The week before the snow hit, I was looking out my back window into the woods and saw something I couldn’t believe. It was a deciduous tree with a full coat of green.
Every morning, I bring Little Miss Fussy to the bus stop, and we’ve been slowly watching buds form at the end of long dormant branches. And we’ve been observing those buds slowly opening. We check the tree canopy for other colors and signs of spring.
But what a shocker to see this little tree totally covered with green leaves. Looking deeper into the woods, I realized there was a second one too. But most of the other trees were still in their early budding phase.
And then of course, the snow came. I am so glad that I don’t garden, much less farm. It has to be crazy making. Speaking of farmers, yesterday, I went to the Schenectady Greenmarket to visit some of my favorite ones in the region. Where else can you brave the snow for a taste of spring.
Stealing From Chef Dominic
Have you read the chefsday blog? I love it. I’ve never met chef Dominic in person, but I feel like I know him. For some reason or another, I never made it to The Wine Bar in Saratoga Springs to try his food there. However, I’m very encouraged about his new gig at The Merry Monk.
Well, mostly encouraged. The thing about chefs is, when they get a new gig, they kind of drop off the face of the earth. God knows when I’ll see my buddy Brian again. He took a new gig at Sperry’s, and throwing yourself into a new project like that just takes a crap ton of time.
So the down side of Dominic’s new job is that his blog hasn’t been updated for a while.
One of my favorite features on chefsday are the snippets. Instead of trying to write an entire post on one subject, Dominic just fires off a collection of short thoughts on food and other matters that interest him.
Today, it turns out that there are just a bunch of disconnected things I want to share. So, I’m going to give this snippets thing a shot.
The Jewish Food Festival Lawn Sign
Nothing moves quickly on the FLB. Everything happens slowly. And that’s largely because I like to take the long view on things. Take the Tour de Cider Donuts. It’s been a huge project, and is going into its seventh year. Which is totally fine by me.
Thanks to those who weighed in yesterday on the egg custard question. I’m going to wait and see if more thoughts come through. But it may still be some time before we pull the trigger on that plan. After all, I am still on a stupid diet, and we’re going to have the Tour de Soft Serve some time next month.
I’ll probably let you know at the very last minute. Actually, that’s a terrible idea. Part of me really wants to do it on April 9. But we may need to push it off until April 30. I promise to keep you posted. But you may want to tentatively mark those two dates on your calendar.
So speaking of last minute news, I’m here to tell you about something special going on this Sunday.
A Half Baked Egg Custard Idea
Did you see they are predicting snow on Sunday? Then again on Tuesday? I’ll believe it when I see it. But at least these lingering cold days of winter will give me a chance to make another batch of chicken stock. Man, I love making chicken stock.
You know what else I love? A great dan tat.
For the uninitiated, those are Hong Kong egg custard tartlettes. And far and away the best I’ve ever had came from a place called Golden Gate Bakery in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Luckily, my office used to be right down the street, so I got to enjoy my fair share of this decadent treat.
The pastry was composed of a thousands delicate layers, and the edges would shatter when you took a bite. The custard was tender, eggy, and delicately sweet. But the thing that put these custards over the edge was that they were always served piping hot out of the oven with centers that had just set and were still a bit jiggly.
All of that joy came at the remarkably low price of a dollar and some change. Anyhow, I’ve been missing these terribly. But recently I came up with an idea that would satisfy my craving for a just-baked dan tat. Usually, I like to fully form these ideas before writing about them, but this could go in a few different directions, and I’d love your input.
Idiot Box
Did I ever tell you why I went into advertising? It’s because I loved TV. And I blame my parents. But the funny thing is that they didn’t use the television as some form of electronic babysitter. In fact, they did just the opposite.
My screen time was highly regulated. I remember poring over the TV Guide in anguish trying to budget my allotted time and figure out which shows I really wanted to watch on a given week. The forbidden fruit is twice as sweet.
Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I’d be the kind of person who says, “I don’t watch TV.” But I don’t watch TV. Which isn’t to say that I don’t watch sitcoms, or serialized dramas. I do. I just watch them on DVD or streaming over Netflix.
But television? It’s kind of incredible to me that people still watch it. What’s even more incredible to me is the number of eating and drinking institutions that think it’s a good idea to have a flickering screen as a part of the decor.
Dim Sum In Douglaston
Never drive to Flushing on a Saturday around noon. Oh, the humanity.
This past weekend, I made a poorly planned trip down to the city. As usual, we were there for a mere few hours. So once again the number of people who I did not get to see makes me want to hide my head in shame. I feel like there has to be a way to visit with more people on those rare occasions when I make it down to Manhattan.
But obviously, we did more than just Manhattan. A trip to my grandmother was in order, and she lives on Long Island, just past Queens. And it’s awfully tempting to try and make a pitstop in Flushing. But we just didn’t have the time.
We gave it the old college try, but we couldn’t find parking to save our lives, and even if we did the dim sum parlor would have been far too packed to make it out on schedule. Seriously, after seeing Flushing on a Saturday afternoon, I don’t want to hear anyone in Albany say we have a parking problem. You. Have. No. Idea.
Fortunately, there’s more dim sum in Queens than just Flushing. Have you ever heard of Douglaston?
The Return of Funday
Has it really been six months since I’ve posted a collection of press releases? Where does the time go? Look. It’s Good Friday. The kids are out of school. Fish Fry places are mobbed. I’m on deadline with a future issue of The Local Yelp.
As far as I can tell, this isn’t really going to be a high readership day regardless. Plus, as it so happens, I’m sitting on a bunch of press releases from some of my favorite people in the PR community.
So let’s give Sell Out Funday a roll, and see what things the local public relations agencies want you to know. But first, I have a couple of promotional plugs myself.
April 2010: The Best Ballot
Until future notice, this will be the very last FLB TBT. This brings us through April 2010 and that’s the complete first year of Fussy. Now let’s never speak of it again. I knew it was a bad idea in the first place, but hey, sometimes good things can come out of bad ideas. And although I was encouraged to hear last month that some people actually enjoyed this experiment, they were in the minority.
Personally, I think it was a great reminder to see where the blog has been, how it got here, and what we missed. Clearly, a lot has changed. Some for the better. Some for the worse. There were a few ideas from the past that are still relevant today. I kind of thought there would be more, but that points to just how much change has gone on over the past several years.
In April, the blog was dominated by the FUSSYlittleBALLOT which was my attempt at trying to highlight some of the great local businesses in the Capital Region that were being overlooked year after year in the Times Union’s Best of the Capital Region readers’ choice poll. Since this was a brand new effort, it began with an introduction, then the ballot itself, followed by a bit more explanation, and a pitch to help spread the word about this effort. There were also some important donut and pizza posts, along with my first real experience with Downtown Albany’s Restaurant Week.
So how did it break down day by day? I’m glad you asked. And the color coded key below will hopefully help to make sense of it all.
FUSSYlittleBLOG 