This Tasty State: New York
From the column "Ravenous" from Ulster Publishing
Travel fever runs in me at a low burn all the time, and crazy for food, I love to explore the roadside eateries, food markets, even the supermarkets of places I've traveled to, from Little Rock, Arkansas to the tiny Greek island of Naxos, to Saigon, Vietnam. But I don’t have to travel far to find food of such quality and diversity that it rivals anything anywhere: the food of my own state of New York.
I was born in Poughkeepsie but left for Vermont when I was an infant. Nine years ago, by chance, I returned to live in the state of my birth, the same county, even. And here I remain, still traveling when I can, but glad to live in a place of such awe-inspiring natural beauty, such variety of people and places.
And its food as good as any I’ve found anywhere. New York ranks high in its production of milk, maple syrup and apples, and many other products. The first potato chip was created here, and the state was also the birthplace of Buffalo wings and hot dogs on buns, of mayo in a jar and margarine and Thousand Island dressing. The nation’s first cheese factory opened here, in Oneida County, and the first public brewery in New York City. The wines of the Finger Lakes, the Hudson Valley and Long Island continually make names for themselves.
The state of New York is divided into eleven touristic regions and I have visited all but two of them. You can find it all here, culinarily, from the multi-ethnic smorgasbord of New York City to the seafood bounty of coastal Long Island to the game and short-season crops of the Adirondacks.
To explore it all would be a lifetime adventure, with roadside meal stops part of the fun. There the food is not always good or even dependable, but far more interesting than the predictability of the ubiquitous chain eateries.
For example, until a recent drive along Routes 17 and 86 to the state’s western portion, where I had never gone before, I didn’t even know that in the Binghamton area there is a specialty called “spiedies.” Skewered chunks of pork or chicken are marinated in garlic, vinegar, peppers, oregano and other spices, then grilled over charcoal and eaten as a sandwich with pieces of bread. Although we hit Binghamton at the same time as the lunch hunger pangs hit us, we couldn’t find Sharkey’s, recommended for their spiedies in Jane and Michael Stern’s Roadfood (Random House/Broadway Books, 2005). So I will have to try them another time.
Instead we stumbled across a popular counter eatery called Lane’s. Fancy luncheons are not our style these days, traveling with two small and energetic children. Lane’s looks like it’s been around forever, nearly 50 years in fact. An elderly gentleman took our order and turned out to be Lane himself. Lane’s specializes in poorboys (subs) and fried seafood, and we chose two poorboys, the New Orleans (Fish Boy) and the Captain (Fried Clams). Although the seafood was not hot and had obviously once been frozen, it was great anyway, crispy and golden but not greasy. With lettuce and really good homemade tartar sauce on a fluffy sub roll, both fillings made killer sandwiches.
Traveling on westward through the state, we passed towns with names like Fishs Eddy, Deposit, Painted Post and Cuba. We went by the Friendship Dairy (named after its town), which makes the only cottage cheese I ever eat any more. I have been known to put away a quart of it in one day. It has no bitterness, with a perfect balance of creamy and tangy, and I longed to stop at the farm and ask for samples.
After checking into a motel near Chautauqua Lake, in the furthest western part of the state, we set off in search of sustenance and found Vullo’s Veal House. Unfortunately, it was a Saturday night at peak dinner hour and the rustic spot appeared to be the best game in town and too popular. We were told to expect a ten-minute wait, but that stretched to 50, and then we were finally seated next to the kitchen at a wobbly table with a wet tablecloth. At the next table was a caterwauling tot whose young mother smacked him instead of bringing him outside. It took another 50 minutes to get our food, no joke with two cranky kids in tow, but at least our baked clams casino were crispy and perfect. My husband’s smallish veal chop was of good quality and my Veal Chautauqua, a concoction of veal scallops with frozen broccoli but plenty of real crabmeat, was savory enough.
A week later, on our way back though the state after driving to Michigan, we stopped at the Cuba Cheese Shoppe and I bought a bunch of that famous New York State cheese: an assortment of their cheddars, some Amish goat cheddar and a great salt-rising wheat bread from Max’s Bakery. Almost crispy, slightly sweet and pleasant, this type of bread is made with a fermented starter of milk, sugar, salt and cornmeal with its germ.
Dinner that night offered the best roadside dining experience of the trip. Where Route 17 pulls abruptly away from hugging the Pennsylvania border and begins to make its way toward the Catskills and on down to the City, we pulled into Hancock, Delaware County, for a bite at the Hancock Family Restaurant. Local color included a couple sitting in the back to hide the woman’s black eye, a friendly older man a couple booths over that we had a lot in common with, and the sweetest, kindest waitress we’ve ever had, who served our kids at the counter by themselves so they could eat “alone” and pretend to be grownups. My husband had a tasty rib eye steak dinner for $8.50 and my open hot meatloaf sandwich tasted like my Grandma had made it. We brought home with us a slice of homemade pie with the crispiest of crusts and a thick and luscious filling of perfectly sweet real blueberries.
Other regions offer good stuff to eat, too, of course. Years ago my parents used to take us camping in the Adirondacks and I remember pan-fried eggs and freshly caught trout over the campfire but don’t remember sampling anything distinctly local.
The Saratoga area is known for being the birthplace of the potato chip and Breakfast at the Track, and the town and Albany share a touristic region that is full of up and coming restaurants with reputations for innovation and quality.
Here and there the Catskills are studded with German restaurants and food stores, wonderful for a wurstophile (and wienerschnitzelophile) such as myself.
The Hudson Valley region, of course, is where I do most of my tasting these days, and I admit a bit of bias, being more familiar with its cuisine than that of other parts of the state. It’s a cuisine with varied elements, bred of the foods of Native dwellers and brought by immigrants over the centuries from England, Holland, Germany, Mexico. There are superlative onions and garlic from the fertile black dirt of Orange County, and we have great eggs, free-range poultry, cheeses, potatoes and mushrooms. We have our famed apples and the great hard and soft ciders made from them. There are our wild foods like the river’s shad and the duck, partridge, pheasant, quail, rabbit and venison of the fields and skies. Some of our products have reputations that go far beyond the region’s borders, like Miles and Lillian Kahn's Coach Farm goat cheese and Hudson Valley foie gras. We have the Culinary Institute of America here, famous for producing skilled chefs, some of whom fortunately stay around after graduation to cook for us.
New York City is a region without a cuisine. Some might argue that high-end restaurants like those owned by Daniel Boulud and Jean-Georges Vongerichten define the cuisine, but to me New York City is a place to taste the world. After three years of living in Brooklyn and twenty of visiting my Manhattan in-laws, I have tasted only the tip of the cornucopia that is the City. I have eaten Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Polish, Jewish, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish, French, Mexican, Jamaican, Cuban, Colombian, Argentinean, Peruvian, Brazilian, Russian, Ukrainian, Moroccan, Senegalese, Ethiopian, Afghan and Indian. And there remain hundreds of places whose doors I have yet to darken, serving Turkish, Chilean, Persian and Basque specialties, and many more.
A fine way to sample many of these cuisines in one place is at the Ninth Avenue International Food Festival held each year for two days the weekend after Mothers Day. One of the oldest street festivals in the City, it attracts more than one million ravenous visitors each day.
Travel fever runs in me at a low burn all the time, and crazy for food, I love to explore the roadside eateries, food markets, even the supermarkets of places I've traveled to, from Little Rock, Arkansas to the tiny Greek island of Naxos, to Saigon, Vietnam. But I don’t have to travel far to find food of such quality and diversity that it rivals anything anywhere: the food of my own state of New York.
I was born in Poughkeepsie but left for Vermont when I was an infant. Nine years ago, by chance, I returned to live in the state of my birth, the same county, even. And here I remain, still traveling when I can, but glad to live in a place of such awe-inspiring natural beauty, such variety of people and places.
And its food as good as any I’ve found anywhere. New York ranks high in its production of milk, maple syrup and apples, and many other products. The first potato chip was created here, and the state was also the birthplace of Buffalo wings and hot dogs on buns, of mayo in a jar and margarine and Thousand Island dressing. The nation’s first cheese factory opened here, in Oneida County, and the first public brewery in New York City. The wines of the Finger Lakes, the Hudson Valley and Long Island continually make names for themselves.
The state of New York is divided into eleven touristic regions and I have visited all but two of them. You can find it all here, culinarily, from the multi-ethnic smorgasbord of New York City to the seafood bounty of coastal Long Island to the game and short-season crops of the Adirondacks.
To explore it all would be a lifetime adventure, with roadside meal stops part of the fun. There the food is not always good or even dependable, but far more interesting than the predictability of the ubiquitous chain eateries.
For example, until a recent drive along Routes 17 and 86 to the state’s western portion, where I had never gone before, I didn’t even know that in the Binghamton area there is a specialty called “spiedies.” Skewered chunks of pork or chicken are marinated in garlic, vinegar, peppers, oregano and other spices, then grilled over charcoal and eaten as a sandwich with pieces of bread. Although we hit Binghamton at the same time as the lunch hunger pangs hit us, we couldn’t find Sharkey’s, recommended for their spiedies in Jane and Michael Stern’s Roadfood (Random House/Broadway Books, 2005). So I will have to try them another time.
Instead we stumbled across a popular counter eatery called Lane’s. Fancy luncheons are not our style these days, traveling with two small and energetic children. Lane’s looks like it’s been around forever, nearly 50 years in fact. An elderly gentleman took our order and turned out to be Lane himself. Lane’s specializes in poorboys (subs) and fried seafood, and we chose two poorboys, the New Orleans (Fish Boy) and the Captain (Fried Clams). Although the seafood was not hot and had obviously once been frozen, it was great anyway, crispy and golden but not greasy. With lettuce and really good homemade tartar sauce on a fluffy sub roll, both fillings made killer sandwiches.
Traveling on westward through the state, we passed towns with names like Fishs Eddy, Deposit, Painted Post and Cuba. We went by the Friendship Dairy (named after its town), which makes the only cottage cheese I ever eat any more. I have been known to put away a quart of it in one day. It has no bitterness, with a perfect balance of creamy and tangy, and I longed to stop at the farm and ask for samples.
After checking into a motel near Chautauqua Lake, in the furthest western part of the state, we set off in search of sustenance and found Vullo’s Veal House. Unfortunately, it was a Saturday night at peak dinner hour and the rustic spot appeared to be the best game in town and too popular. We were told to expect a ten-minute wait, but that stretched to 50, and then we were finally seated next to the kitchen at a wobbly table with a wet tablecloth. At the next table was a caterwauling tot whose young mother smacked him instead of bringing him outside. It took another 50 minutes to get our food, no joke with two cranky kids in tow, but at least our baked clams casino were crispy and perfect. My husband’s smallish veal chop was of good quality and my Veal Chautauqua, a concoction of veal scallops with frozen broccoli but plenty of real crabmeat, was savory enough.
A week later, on our way back though the state after driving to Michigan, we stopped at the Cuba Cheese Shoppe and I bought a bunch of that famous New York State cheese: an assortment of their cheddars, some Amish goat cheddar and a great salt-rising wheat bread from Max’s Bakery. Almost crispy, slightly sweet and pleasant, this type of bread is made with a fermented starter of milk, sugar, salt and cornmeal with its germ.
Dinner that night offered the best roadside dining experience of the trip. Where Route 17 pulls abruptly away from hugging the Pennsylvania border and begins to make its way toward the Catskills and on down to the City, we pulled into Hancock, Delaware County, for a bite at the Hancock Family Restaurant. Local color included a couple sitting in the back to hide the woman’s black eye, a friendly older man a couple booths over that we had a lot in common with, and the sweetest, kindest waitress we’ve ever had, who served our kids at the counter by themselves so they could eat “alone” and pretend to be grownups. My husband had a tasty rib eye steak dinner for $8.50 and my open hot meatloaf sandwich tasted like my Grandma had made it. We brought home with us a slice of homemade pie with the crispiest of crusts and a thick and luscious filling of perfectly sweet real blueberries.
Other regions offer good stuff to eat, too, of course. Years ago my parents used to take us camping in the Adirondacks and I remember pan-fried eggs and freshly caught trout over the campfire but don’t remember sampling anything distinctly local.
The Saratoga area is known for being the birthplace of the potato chip and Breakfast at the Track, and the town and Albany share a touristic region that is full of up and coming restaurants with reputations for innovation and quality.
Here and there the Catskills are studded with German restaurants and food stores, wonderful for a wurstophile (and wienerschnitzelophile) such as myself.
The Hudson Valley region, of course, is where I do most of my tasting these days, and I admit a bit of bias, being more familiar with its cuisine than that of other parts of the state. It’s a cuisine with varied elements, bred of the foods of Native dwellers and brought by immigrants over the centuries from England, Holland, Germany, Mexico. There are superlative onions and garlic from the fertile black dirt of Orange County, and we have great eggs, free-range poultry, cheeses, potatoes and mushrooms. We have our famed apples and the great hard and soft ciders made from them. There are our wild foods like the river’s shad and the duck, partridge, pheasant, quail, rabbit and venison of the fields and skies. Some of our products have reputations that go far beyond the region’s borders, like Miles and Lillian Kahn's Coach Farm goat cheese and Hudson Valley foie gras. We have the Culinary Institute of America here, famous for producing skilled chefs, some of whom fortunately stay around after graduation to cook for us.
New York City is a region without a cuisine. Some might argue that high-end restaurants like those owned by Daniel Boulud and Jean-Georges Vongerichten define the cuisine, but to me New York City is a place to taste the world. After three years of living in Brooklyn and twenty of visiting my Manhattan in-laws, I have tasted only the tip of the cornucopia that is the City. I have eaten Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Polish, Jewish, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish, French, Mexican, Jamaican, Cuban, Colombian, Argentinean, Peruvian, Brazilian, Russian, Ukrainian, Moroccan, Senegalese, Ethiopian, Afghan and Indian. And there remain hundreds of places whose doors I have yet to darken, serving Turkish, Chilean, Persian and Basque specialties, and many more.
A fine way to sample many of these cuisines in one place is at the Ninth Avenue International Food Festival held each year for two days the weekend after Mothers Day. One of the oldest street festivals in the City, it attracts more than one million ravenous visitors each day.