Get the details on not one, but two upcoming events featuring our city’s growing fleet of mobile food purveyors, plus a buffet of restaurant openings and other local food news.
Dining Reviews
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DINING REVIEW: Delish Bakery
There’s a stretch of Park Avenue, roughly between Goodman and Oxford, that might be considered a sort of pan-European hideaway. Roam Café, with its vaguely Italian theme and its ardently Italian Vespas, holds down the spot at 260 Park. The dearly departed but not forgotten Dutch Market used to occupy the house across the avenue […]
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Pack Your Lunch
Just in time for back to school, James Leach looks at some grown-up alternatives to the boxed lunch, including Japanese bento boxes.
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The new reliable
“Reliable.” In a hyperbolic age when anything short of hosanas and accolades is the equivalent of damnation, reliable has become a dirty word. It’s not. Reliable, along with other disfavored words like “steady,” “dependable,” and “workmanlike,” are strong, noble words, describing people who work hard, deliver what they say they will deliver, and do it consistently day after day.
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Spoon fed
Eight hours. That’s how long it took Chhaya En, the owner and chef The Soup Spoon in Victor, to make the broth that fills the bowl in front of me. Eight hours of intense labor, starting with not much more than beef bones, vegetables, and water, and ending with a soup that is richly fragrant […]
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Taverna for the green
Rochester has waited a long time for a Greek restaurant. That’s not to say that we don’t have excellent restaurants that are Greek-ish — broadly Mediterranean places that offer Greek food alongside other dishes that are more Middle Eastern in origin, like falafel or tabouli or pita bread, for that matter.
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Putting China back in Chinese food
In 2009, Chef San Lee made a clean break with the past, closing his successful restaurant China Garden in Henrietta and, as his son Brandon put it, “taking a break” from more than 30 years of restaurant cooking. The chef took a vacation and started to consider what he wanted to do next. The elder […]
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A taste of Chinatown
Those who dined at South City Garden won’t notice any significant changes in the interior of White Swans. The dining room still has a vaguely Miami nightclub-café sort of feel to it, with a smattering of Chinese figurines — dragons, a laughing Buddha, a frog with coins in its mouth — and bamboo plants scattered […]
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A series of unfortunate events
Tiny catastrophes can put a restaurant off its stride: a new menu, new management, a late delivery or a shortage in the kitchen, the sudden and unexpected departure of the chef. Any of these could throw a wrench into the works of even the most seasoned of places. But when all of this happens at […]
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Meat heaven
Everything is bigger in Texas — even the take-out boxes. At lunchtime recently I dropped in at Texas Blues BBQ on Monroe Avenue for a quick bite to eat. I had my eye on a burger, but the ribs got my attention, too. Thinking that a quarter rack would be a nice and not overwhelmingly […]
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Thai with training wheels
The first time I set foot in Mao Seng and VilaySysavath’s Viet Thai Restaurant in Irondequoit a couple of weeks ago, I had a strange feeling of déjà vu. It wasn’t because the place is similar to the couple’s popular pho and noodle restaurant SEA on Monroe Avenue — it’s not. There was something about […]
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Fill up your tank
Chile rellenos, golden brown outside, bursting with beans, shredded pork, and queso fresco, and slathered in salsa roja. Consomme-clear chicken broth garnished with bits of fried tortillas, avocado, and a dusting of queso fresco. Frijoles — refried beans — a deceptively mundane-looking study in brown, stoked with garlic and just enough chipotle pepper to make […]
