Dining in a restaurant housed within a grocery store — a store featuring an animatronic crowing rooster — is an odd sensation. In the span of a few minutes, you can move from dodging grocery carts in the parking lot, to walking by cupcakes decorated to resemble Cookie Monster and Elmo, to being asked if […]
Dining Reviews
Posted inCulture
Espada Brazilian Steak
If you do a Google image search for “rodízio,” a Brazilian-style restaurant in which servers continually bring diners food until the patron signals they’ve had enough to eat, one of the first images you’ll see is a man sitting in a restaurant. Before him is a table cluttered with dishes, food scraps and used utensils. His […]
Posted inCulture
Fired up
Pollsters tell us that more than 90 percent of Americans eat pizza at least once a month, and statistically we consume some 350 slices of pizza per second. Pizza is probably as universally popular a food as there is in this great land of ours. The vast majority of that pizza is baked in gas […]
Posted inCulture
Go slow
Syracuse native Caleb Piron had been practicing law in Manhattan for a little while before he made the choice to move his legal career to the back burner. “It was just an itch I had to scratch,” the self-described “food nerd” says of his decision to trade pocket squares for side towels and dive into […]
Posted inCulture
DINING REVIEW: Brown Hound Bistro
Summer is in full swing, which is a good excuse to get out of the city. Head south on Route 64, down toward Canandaigua Lake, through Bloomfield, past Bristol Mountain Ski Resort (marvel at the green summer slopes), and stop before you reach Monica’s Pies and downtown Naples. Near the “Y” where Route 64 meets […]
Posted inCulture
RESTAURANT REVIEW: Swan Market
Parsells Avenue is part of a residential neighborhood. Children and dogs play behind chain-link fences in shaggy grass, men and women gather to chat on porch stoops, and teenage men bicycle bare-chested down the street, their wheels gliding past a broken bottle or two. It’s not where you’d expect to get a taste and feel […]
Posted inCulture
DINING REVIEW: Pomodoro Grill and Wine Bar
On the surface, Pomodoro Grill and Wine Bar in Pittsford appears to have little in common with its older sister establishment in Rochester. The original Pomodoro, which opened in 1994, occupies the rear of a former sawmill factory on an otherwise restaurant-free stretch of University Avenue. Freight and passenger trains rumble by occasionally on the […]
Posted inCulture
DINING REVIEW: Orange Glory Cafe
Jackie Powers, the owner of Orange Glory Café on East Avenue, would like you to have a cookie. She says so on her website. Every review and evaluation of her restaurant swoons over them. Without exception, over the course of four visits, every diner I saw leaving the restaurant was carrying one out of the […]
Posted inCulture
DINING REVIEW: Opa Authentic Greek Koozina
“The secrets of the Greek cuisine,” Toula Votsis told me recently, “are simplicity, good olive oil, the freshest ingredients, spices, and love.” Votsis, who is the manager of the six-month-old Opa Authentic Greek Koozina on Jefferson Road, knows of whence she speaks: she, and most of the other members of the Votsis family who are […]
Posted inCulture
DINING REVIEW: Harry G’s New York Deli & Cafe
My tax worksheets this year were a little bit hard to read by the time I actually got around to filing on Monday morning. On one corner of the first page of my 1040 form was a mustard-colored blot obscuring the signature block. My Schedule C was spattered with tiny dots (and not-so-tiny dots) of […]
Posted inCulture
DINING REVIEW: La Casa Restaurant
UPDATED 4/4/13 to correct the spelling of Lyjha Wilton’s name. La Casa on Alexander Street is certainly the most hotly anticipated Mexican joint in the city; countless fans and aficionados have been waiting eight years for it to finally open. A bit more than eight years ago, Omar Ramos, his wife, Mia Bocanegra, and their […]
Posted inCulture
DINING REVIEW: Banzai Sushi & Cocktail Bar
The South Wedge is quickly becoming my go-to place for just about anything I might need. Craft beer? The Tap & Mallet fills that niche admirably. A reliable place to take your girlfriend and her parents for dinner? Zeppa Bistro’s a great choice. Jamaican for lunch? Peppa Pot. A dive bar to suck down PBRs […]
