Nightingale 9 Now Does Breakfast

Chef Rob Newton was part of the trip to the Finger Lakes we went on and wrote about for Serious Eats. He cooked an amazing meal one night using local ingredients and we were able to get a look into his passion for not just food, but wine. Newton shared his love of New York State wine (he has many on his list at Seersucker and a some on tap at Nightingale 9) and some of the exceptional wines coming from the growing industry in Virginia.

Newton rolled out breakfast at Nightingale 9 last week. We stopped by to catch up and try some of the new dishes.

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Out in California Part V

We spent three nights camping along the Pacific Coast Highway before arriving in San Francisco. Each night out there exposed us to new people and new environs and left us inspired to share them with you. Sometimes the tales have to do with food, sometimes they don't. Either way, expect one every Tuesday until we get to San Francisco. Read Parts I through IV over here.

The sun was just over the horizon when Patrick told me about the raccoon. I had already finished my breakfast of beans, eggs, and bacon, but when Patrick walked over with a cup of coffee for me I fried up some more bacon and we cut into a loaf of sourdough.

“Did you hear the raccoon last night?” He asked me.

“That’s what that noise was? I had no idea, but definitely heard it outside my tent,” I told him. “It sounded huge.”

Patrick told me he watched the crafty bastard get into the cooler he had sitting behind his camper’s trailer hitch. The only thing that kept the raccoon from eating a week’s worth of food was Patrick waking up and shooing it away. He brought the cooler inside and scratched his head in the early morning hours thinking about hunger and what animals can do to satiate it. We took care of our own hunger getting to know one another as the low sun cast long, sharp shadows everywhere.

Having been to San Simeon State Park before, Patrick went on in great detail about the network of wonderful trails that surround the park. I decided I'd go for a hike before taking down camp and hitting the Pacific Coast Highway. The bacon was gone and Patrick and I finished the bread and drank the last of our coffee. We shook hands. Patrick made his way nextdoor and I started to clean up camp before finding the trails.

That's when Leroy came by to say good morning.

Donde Dinner? - 248 Mulberry Street

Donde Dinner? wants to make your next dining experience an adventure. So, every Friday, we pick a restaurant and post its address for you. The catch is, that's all the information you get. No name, no type of cuisine, and no Googling. But first, here's last week's address:

310 South 4th Street = Shalom Japan

This week's restaurant follows typical Donde Dinner? fashion. Price, quality, and accessibility have all been taken into account. You won't be waiting at the bar for two hours with $15 cocktails and you never have to worry about a dress code. Just hop on the train, or your feet, or your bike, and head to:

248 Mulberry Street (map)

The Finger Lakes

the view at Lakewood WineryIt takes all year to make wine. At least, tending to the vines is a year-round process. (Most) Grapes come in as early as September or hang until as late as November. The variables that determine when they're harvested are plenty, but there's more to making wine than cutting clusters of ripe berries from vines.

Digest NY editor Craig Cavallo experienced harvest first-hand and got a taste of the extensive, intensive, year-roud work that goes into every bottle of wine. His classroom was upstate, in the beautiful, budding Finger Lakes wine region.

What started as a handful of independently owned wineries in the late 70s has grown to over 130. What is now a multi-million dollar industry supplies hundreds of jobs and has become the foundation of a thriving community. The Finger Lake's history, terroir, and climate make it a truly remarkable and unique wine region and half the reason wine from there continues to garner national and international acclaim. The other half is the passionate people who make it.

Craig wrote about his experience for Serious Eats. Read it over here.

Out in California Part IV

We spent three nights camping along the Pacific Coast Highway before arriving in San Francisco. We'll be adding to this series of vignettes as we recall stories from the road. Each night out there exposed us to new people and new environs and left us inspired to share them with you. Sometimes the tales have to do with food, sometimes they don't. Either way, expect one every Tuesday until we get to San Francisco. Here's Part I, Part II, and Part III if you missed them.

One of my favorite sounds is the long zip of a tent opening and closing. I like it because it’s a sound you only heard when you’re far from life’s essentials. At night, the sound rings in the end of a day. In the morning, when your tent may or not may not be wet with dew, the sound marks the start of a day in the same way church bells claim Sundays. Though before daylight can happen, night needs to fall. Full with burritos and hot chocolate from Carolyn and beer from the store back in town, I broke the night’s silence letting myself into my tent.

I was lying on my back. In the pitch black of the Pacific wilderness it doesn’t make sense to sleep in any other position. It was with the top of my tent catching the moon’s glow that I managed to close my eyes. But the last thing on my mind was the reality of the situation. I was going to bed in the woods. Back home in Brooklyn going to bed means walls, memory foam, heat, and a locked door. The hand I was dealt had none of those cards. Are there bears out here? Leroy said something about coyotes. I figured that by putting myself in the situation meant I couldn’t be that concerned with reality, so I let myself drift off to sleep.

It didn’t hit my tent, but it came awfully damn close. It felt close when I woke up in the middle of the night anyway – my only company the unfamiliar skirmish outside my tent and the pitch-blackness it was happening in. Without an idea of the time or where the moon was in the sky, and with my mind washed over with sleep, the sound seemed to be coming from something no smaller than a gorilla. My heart raced and I propped myself up on an elbow. Darkness didn’t fade, nor did the rummaging on the other side of my tent. I waited in a daze for the mystery beast to throw itself at the canvass partition that divided us, but the noises drifted further away. I took the silence as a sign the animal was getting closer – living out its innate instincts and ability to hunt. It never happened. I grabbed my iPhone: 3:48am. I managed to find sleep and held on until the sun came up.

Carolyn's husband Patrick joined me as I got the fire going for breakfast. We shared bread and bacon and coffee. He told me about immigrating to the states from Chile as a teenager and how he works as a mechanical engineer, but most of his interests were biological in nature. When I told him I was heading to San Francisco he told me about Araucaria trees in Ghirardelli Square that are native to Chile. He went on with passion and in great detail about the common firefly, luciferin, and how lampyridae species are billions of years old. He also told me about the animal that woke me up the night before. It had woken him up too, only he caught a glimpse of it from his camper window.

Donde Dinner? - 310 South 4th Street

Donde Dinner? wants to make your next dining experience an adventure. So, every Friday, we pick a restaurant and post its address for you. The catch is, that's all the information you get. No name, no type of cuisine, and no Googling. But first, here's last week's address:

151 Elizabeth Street = Peix Bar de Mariscos

This week's restaurant follows typical Donde Dinner? fashion. Price, quality, and accessibility have all been taken into account. You won't be waiting at the bar for two hours with $15 cocktails and you never have to worry about a dress code. Just hop on the train, or your feet, or your bike, and head to:

310 South 4th Street (map)

Downstairs Dining at Le Restaurant

Kyle Wittels opened All Good Things in Tribeca last year. Ryan Tate, the former chef de cuisine at Savoy, has been with the market since day one - keeping the place stocked with produce and protein - and now is also in charge of the kitchen at Le Restaurant, located in the market's basement. The restaurant was part of the original plan, but took a few extra months to open. We had been looking forward to it since our visit in September last year and were happy to see it open in March. Tate only offers a tasting menu at Le Restaurant. There are no substitutions or a la carte options, and the place is only open three nights a week. In his review today, Wells refers to these as 'the bad news,' but finds plenty to like at Le Restaurant and in Tate's cooking.

"Mr. Tate aims to revise at least half the menu every day," Wells informs, "He has a second job that helps him do this, as the food buyer of All Good Things, ordering sea creatures, meats and odd lettuces that often end up in his kitchen." That encourages Tate to incorporate things like woodcock, skate, water buffalo, and gooseneck barnacles into his menu. "[Finally] if you are an omnivore, if you dream about uncommon ingredients and pure, focused flavors," the critic writes, "then Ryan Tate’s tasting menus are absolutely worth it."

So too are the desserts - the effort of Amadou Ly, who has Mas and Tocqueville on his resume. Wells writes, "Mr. Ly’s desserts have a gentle, natural spirit that feels right after Mr. Tate’s savory courses." Wells has a few gripes with the welcome process, but finds the subterranean experience at Le Restaurant worthy of two stars. [NYTimes]

Out in California Part III

We spent three nights camping along the Pacific Coast Highway before arriving in San Francisco. As we settle back into New York, and recall stories from the road, we'll be adding to this series of vignettes. Each night out there exposed us to new people and new environs and left us inspired to share them with you. Sometimes the tales have to do with food, sometimes they don't. Either way, expect one every Tuesday until we get to San Francisco. Here's Part I and Part II if you missed them.

It’s a strange feeling to not be around any sort of artificial light. Unlike my Brooklyn apartment, camp 229 at San Simeon State Park didn’t have a streetlight outside the window. There weren’t even any windows, lest you count the one that zips open and closed in my two-man tent. Cars didn’t honk or drive by. There was no sidewalk for people to gather on and smoke cigarettes. No bars for folks to loosen up in and carry their fleeting spirit out onto the street. Corner Store carried an entirely different meaning and the closest Chinese Takeout place was easily 30 miles away.

The only light came from the moon, fire, and the headlamp I wore around my neck and turned on occasionally to make simple tasks simpler. For a quick instance I did just that to look at the plate of food Carolyn had brought over. There was a scoop of homemade salsa on the plate next to the burritos and those were filled with beans, cheese, and rice. I ate them quickly and thought about stick-to-your-ribs food and how beans were exactly that. I was grateful to have neighbors and share in their leftovers.

The hot chocolate cooled quickly in the crisp Autumn air and soon it was just me, the fire, and a Mad River IPA. The IPA part of the equation faded quickly and I used a stick to spread the fire thin until it went out and left me with the moon. With the help of my headlamp, I traded jeans for long johns and slithered into my sleeping bag – too naïve to the wilderness to consider the fact that my sleep might very well be disturbed by creatures who know the woods better than I do.