What started as a casual chat around our conference table a few weeks ago quickly spiraled into a friendly, albeit heated discussion about local cuisine. What dishes do we return to, and what could we kiss goodbye forever? Where do we send newbies for a good meal, and what should they avoid at all costs?
Stand back and read on, because a few of the CITY staffers are about to serve up their hot takes:
DEATH TO: PLATES
Before you light these pages on fire, hear me out. Some cities are known for bagels. Some cities are known for deep dish pizza. Regardless of its incredible food scene, Rochester is known for a takeout container layered with processed meats, some variety of poorly fried potatoes, cold mayo-soaked noodles, canned beans, more processed meat in something they call hot sauce, and usually topped with the most repellent food of all: raw white onions. (Sounds worse when you write it out like that, eh?) Not to mention it’s roughly 3,000 calories. In the words of Gen Z, plates give me the ick. Hangover cure? Pass. Give me a greasy spoon diner breakfast instead. —LEAH STACY
DEATH TO: CHICKEN FRENCH
Let me begin by saying: I do not aim to be a hater. I want to love all foods. As a youth, I proudly (and successfully!) tricked myself into liking pickles and olives, because I didn’t want to grow up to be a picky eater – a hater. I want to experience joy in food, and a pan-fried chicken cutlet delivers, to me, a joyous food experience. Do you know where that joy stops, though? When you douse that gorgeously-fried, perfectly-seasoned piece of chicken in a murky, floury, unimaginative lemon goop. Am I against using citrus to cut through the heaviness of fried food? NO! I am not a newborn baby. Calamari without a squeeze of lemon is no friend of mine. But dumping lemony muck on an otherwise beautiful, crispy piece of chicken and telling me it’s good and that I should be proud of it because we were born in the same place? Excuse my French, but get the f*ck out of my face with that nonsense. Or, better yet, please tell me where to go so I can properly enjoy this dish – I am willing to give it 1 million more chances, because like I said, I do not aim to be a hater. —JACOB WALSH
DEATH TO: BUFFALO WINGS
Stop. Read that again. Before you take your pitchfork out of Leah’s garbage-plate deficient corpse, let me make it clear that I love a good chicken wing. Stop. Read THAT again. A GOOD chicken wing. I’ve had gigantic chicken wings that were still squawking and I’ve had airport chicken wings that are probably closer to tiny pigeon wings. Also you need financing to buy them. Ten is the new dozen. Cool! And it’s hard enough to get these things cooked through correctly while still leaving them crispy on the outside, now you want to dump hot butter sauce on them? It’s uninspired and rustbelt-y. There are better options. Why do you think there are so many different sauces? Because they made Buffalo Wing sauce first and said “we can do better than this, right?” Give me garlic parmesan, bee-sting, Carolina gold, Thai curry, Caribbean jerk, cajun gold. The list goes on. Give me sticky and sweet, not burnt and runny. Anything but Frank’s Red Hot and butter. Extra bleu cheese, please. —RYAN WILLIAMSON
DEATH TO: FANCY BURGERS
Aren’t we all sick of fancy burgers? You know the ones I’m talking about. They cost $16. Want fries with that? That’ll be an additional $8. And, of course, it’s not made with anything as pedestrian as ground beef. No, this ‘proprietary blend’ of ‘pure sirloin and chuck’ is ground in house. Add ‘chef’s sauce’ – AKA mayo and mustard – as a final touch to ensure your one-of-a-kind delight tastes like every other burger. I won’t even try new ones anymore, no matter the office buzz. Yes, even if it’s gigantic and feeds four. I’m sure it’s good, but who wants to negotiate burger toppings with three friends? Somehow they’ve taken over restaurants across Rochester and the nation and I’m sick of them. You know what I miss? Beef and onions on a poppy seed bun, the burgers at Contoi’s in New Haven’s East Rock neighborhood were absolute perfection. They’ve gone legit after 89 years — they pay taxes now and have a permit — but for $8 cash, you’d get a Bud on draft and a burger that reminded me of my grandpa’s. I’m not asking for much, but if you can’t give me the warm embrace of unconditional love, at least include some french fries. —DAVID STREEVER
DEATH TO: ELEVATED CUISINE
In “The Divine Comedy,” Dante declares the seventh circle of hell as reserved for fraudsters, while the eighth the final home for the treacherous. Somewhere in between is the haven for the culinary auteur who decided to charge $20 for a cheeseburger—fries extra—because he had the absolute vision to mix gochujang with mayonnaise.
Look, there is no shortage of chefs in Rochester thinking outside the box to create utterly unique culinary experiences, and I’m willing to shell out the cash to support them. But there is an ever-thinning line between creativity and pretension, and the worst offenders are the elevators.
I’m talking about restaurants charging premium prices for a cheese quesadilla because it’s on a bespoke, misshapen homemade tortilla. A place that thinks its aglio e olio is worth its weight in gold because it’s served on a square plate. An eatery that thinks it’s reinventing the wheel by creating a forced marriage of cultures inside a bowl of something, against all reason, ethics, and morals, called phở. These are all experiences I’ve had at various Rochester restaurants. (I’ll leave it to you to guess which, although I’ll say one rhymes with “litter money.”)
These dishes are ubiquitously overpriced, the servings small, and the flavors rarely noteworthy. But the worst offense? These upscale takes on rustic cuisines are just simply boring. They’re forgettable meals that tread ground already well-traveled. On some occasions they offer something completely new— usually not by ingenuity, but because it never should have been done to begin with.
I’m of the belief that a truly good dish is thoughtful. It is built intentionally from the ground up, with a final vision of how the flavors should meld. A good chef with that mindset can elevate any dish into something high-end and special. I think of Velvet Belly’s divine deconstructed meat-and-potatoes take on beef tartare, Good Luck’s unexpected-flavor-bomb golden beets, or Rooney’s best-in-Rochester-and-it’s-not-even-close crabcake. These dishes were doted over, and it shows.
Too often though, hubris is mistaken for art. I’m always on the lookout for a dish that surprises, fruitfully bonds odd flavors, and makes me rethink a meal I’ve had a thousand times. Too many chefs struggle to do that. To them I say: put down the culinary foam and just get me a goddamn burger. —GINO FANELLI
This article appears in Oct 1-31, 2023.
