A Glimpse into the Holy Land of Beer, aka Vermont

Heady Topper and Ms. Pac-Man, before The Alchemist brewery closed to the public

A couple weeks ago I detailed the eating portion of my first weekend trip to Vermont, a stroll through Burlington and nearby parts.  Very tasty.  But to be honest, I was looking forward to the beer even more than the food on this visit.  Thankfully, as I mentioned in that last post, there are a number of good restaurants that also serve some damn good beer on tap.

It's interesting: judging from the places K and I visited in Burlington--and the many others I read about online--it seems like a good beer list is just par for the course in restaurants, at least in this part of Vermont.  And why not?  There are so many fantastic local breweries, with residents who seem to appreciate good beer and visitors who are making trips to get those beers, that it only makes good business sense for these restaurants to have good beer on tap.

But coming from the Capital Region, where I've found it challenging to find good beer at restaurants that serve anything beyond standard (or worse) pub fare, it was a real pleasure to find some great beers in restaurants that offered some interesting (and tasty) food items on their menu.  But I've already talked about the food; here I want to talk about the beer--including my first taste of an offering from Hill Farmstead and my successful trip to The Alchemist's brewery to pick up some Heady Topper, just a short time before they closed to the public.

A long post about two days of eating in and around Burlington, Vermont

I've lived here in the Albany area for more than a year now, so I was getting more and more eager to get up to Vermont.  Fortunately, K and I got the opportunity this fall and spent a couple days near Burlington.  It was, of course, the perfect time of year, the fall foliage in full color, the temperatures just right.

I've always subscribed to the belief that Vermont is some kind of uniquely beautiful and special place, and my only fear was having that notion shaken.  Now, it's not like I got the experience of living there, but in our few days around the state (we also headed down to Brattleboro for a literary festival), I found a place that possessed all the physical beauty I could have hoped for, a place where good food and good beer was the norm, and where the arts and creativity seem to be both thriving and embraced, both in the small and large towns of the state.

While I could go on and on about all of that, here I'll focus on the food and beer, especially around the Burlington area.  It was pretty crowded with all the tourists out to look at leaves and some UVM alumni event, but that didn't do much to diminish the experience.  I only wish we had more time to explore: to try out more restaurants, to drink more beer, to hike a little, to take a ferry across Lake Champlain.  But hey, we're close enough--another visit wouldn't be too hard.

Here are some food highlights from this first visit--with a recap of my beer adventures to come soon.

Heavyweight Fast Food Burger Battle: In-N-Out vs. Shake Shack

I know it's just fast food, but I'll admit, I can be something of a snob when it comes to fast food burgers.

I've ranted about disappointing and overpriced local burgers on the blog before, I've dropped bits of praise for North Carolina chain Cook-Out, and I'm not shy to admit that as a California native the In-N-Out burger chain has always been tops for me.

The issue with In-N-Out is that its locations are confined to California, Nevada, Texas, Arizona, and Utah.  And while I've been living in the eastern half of the country over the past decade, I haven't found myself able to make too many trips back home to the west very often.  This summer, though, K and I flew out to visit her family just outside Las Vegas and I made a quick trip north to see a few members of my family.  Of course getting my hands on some In-N-Out wasn't my top priority, but let's just say that I was pretty determined to make that happen at some point.

I did get to In-N-Out on that trip, and it was still as good as I remembered it--better in some ways, in fact.  But I also recently made a weekend jaunt down to New York City and got my first taste of Danny Meyer's praised and popular Shake Shack burger.  And I have to say, those were some good burgers, too.  In the end, my heart still rests with In-N-Out, though not fully because of the food itself.

A West Coast Beer Sampling, featuring Deschutes Obsidian Stout, Port Brewing Mongo IPA, and Stone Old Guardian Barley Wine

As I go through everything I meant to write over the past two months but didn't find the time for, here's a post highlighting some of the best stuff that came back with me after a quick trip to the west coast earlier this summer: the beer.

It's kind of sad to think that, as a California boy, I didn't really get into craft beer until I was long gone from the state, and I've since discovered that there are some really great west coast beers that we don't have access to on the east coast.  I would have liked to have gotten my hands on some Pliny, but there wasn't any available in the areas I traversed--except for the Davis Beer Festival, where Russian River had a tent and was pouring out some Pliny the Elder.  I got a small taste, and yeah, it was very good, but I'd need a bottle to savor at home to really get a sense of how it compares to so many other great double IPAs out there.

But I can't really complain.  I got to try a ton of great beers at the festival, and the beers I was able to try while there--and bring back with me to New York--were varied and all quite good.  I can't talk about them all here (and I'll have a post coming soon highlighting a variety of just Sierra Nevada beers and another on saisons), so I'll pick the three that stood out to me the most.

Eating Boston, Part II: Burritos, Beer, Brick Oven Pizza--and Toscanini's for Dessert

Harvard Bridge into Cambridge

While it was fun exploring the many corners of Chinatown during our recent trip to Boston, circumstance dictated that we move out of that comfort zone for a few other meals during our trip.  That's not a bad thing, even if it meant not getting one of my beloved Chinese roast ducks.  And though I haven't seen them hanging in windows, at least I know I can get roast duck here in Albany.

After three nights in Back Bay, we relocated for the weekend to Le Meridien in Cambridge.  This hotel was smaller, not as nice as the Revere, but conveniently located just off of Massachusetts Ave. near MIT.  One regret we have is that we didn't make it to Baraka Cafe in Cambridge; we'd walked from the T station north of Harvard all the way down Mass Ave. on Saturday and had to stop for sustenance before we got as far as Baraka Cafe.  That meant not having room for some good Moroccan food.  Next time, eh?

But when you try as much good food as we did over the course of the week, you can't really complain.  Here are the rest of the details of our eating adventures in Boston:

Eating Boston, Part I: Chinatown

It's been impossible not to have the city of Boston and its people on the mind the past couple weeks.  I don't need to rehash everything that went down there, and I wasn't more personally affected by the bombings than the average person.

But just a month before the attacks, K and I were in Boston, walking along Boylston between our hotel and the Hynes Convention Center where the AWP Conference was being held.  I remember walking past the library, the Marathon Sports store, in front of which these bombings occurred, and still get such an awful feeling about what happened there--how such an innocent spot could be so suddenly transformed into a war zone.  It's unreal to think about, and I can't imagine what residents of Boston, or Watertown, or anyone more directly connected to the attacks, must feel after it all.

My memories of Boston are, as usual, fond--it's a city I've loved every time I've visited over the years.  The conference?  That drives me crazy, being surrounded by more than 10,000 writers and academics and wanna-bes and nutcases (though admittedly I probably fall into more than one of those categories).  It was nice, though, so see a few people from the writing community that we know, attend a fine reading and talk with Richard Russo and Amy Bloom, and in general just enjoy the city and its food.

Yes, the food.  We ate lots of it, skipping out on much of the conference to enjoy ourselves, and my goal is to recap this part of the trip, because it was pretty memorable.  Enough to cover two blog posts.  Here, then, is part one, in which I detail our adventures around Boston's Chinatown neighborhood.

Yes, but... (or, I eat at Juicy Burgers and am sent on another rant about value)

It's funny.  I'm a big burger guy, but I haven't found myself talking about them much on the blog.  And for a while, I don't think I even ate many around town after moving here.  One at City Beer Hall, one at Five Guys.

But then I had one at Ruby Tuesday, and it was good.  I'm not one to advocate chain restaurants, typically try to avoid them, but I can appreciate quality and value when I get it.  And for $9.99, Ruby Tuesday offered a properly-cooked "handcrafted burger" with two sides (I chose mashed cauliflower and grilled string beans from an extensive list).  Service was good, the Sam Adams Alpine Spring beer wasn't bad, and all in all K and I left as a couple of well-fed, satisfied customers.

Since then, I also finally got out to Guilderland to try a cheeseburger I'd read a bunch of good things about, the one from from Juicy Burgers.  I won't deny that Juicy Burgers can make a tasty burger, but my feelings after eating there are complicated and leave me wanting to dig a little deeper into the whole idea of "cheap eats" in this area, and why I think that concept is flawed on so many levels.

What Might Have Been for St. Joseph's and Ravens Head: Remembering Pittsburgh's Church Brew Works

Church Brew Works in Pittsburgh (left); St. Joseph's in Albany (right)

This might initially seem like a negative post, and in a way it is.  But positives first: Ravens Head Brewing, which had a lengthy dalliance with St. Joseph's Church in the Ten Broeck neighborhood of Albany, has settled on what seems like a great space for their brewery and restaurant--the Cohoes Armory.  So anyone looking forward to tasting Ravens Head's beers in a unique location in the Capital Region can rest easy--we might be able to do so before the end of this year.  And that's a great thing for this area.

But in my typical backwards way of doing things, I want to spend a little time thinking of what could have been, not what actually will be.  And I like to think I have some justification for doing so, in that I lived for a few years in Pittsburgh, where Church Brew Works operates a brewery/restaurant out of a gorgeous old church, and I can speak first hand to just how awesome an experience it was to go there for a meal and a beer.

Here's a disclaimer before I get in too deep: I'm new here, I don't know much about all the politics that govern the Albany area, and I can understand the concerns people had about St. Joseph's being turned into a brewery/restaurant considering what seems like a residential location.

That being said, if Ravens Head could have turned St. Joseph's into anything like what Pittsburgh has in Church Brew Works, we've missed out on something incredible here in Albany.

Dinner and Beer at PUBLIC eat+drink in North Adams

A few days after a post in which I wished for more casual, interesting restaurants that also serve good beer here in the Capital Region, K and I made a trip out to the Berkshires.  We'd been offered a couple days at a timeshare up on Jiminy Peak, and since neither of us is a winter sport enthusiast, we didn't spend all day and night on the slopes; we had the time to drive down the mountain for a familiar meal in Pittsfield one night, and took the chance to visit North Adams on our second night, where we had dinner at PUBLIC eat+drink.

I was drawn to Public immediately after looking at their menu online in the days before our trip; this seemed like just the kind of place I wished we had more of in the Albany area.  There were a number of interesting, reasonably-priced dishes on the menu--from flatbreads to fish tacos to falafel--along with a rotating tap list certain to impress any serious beer drinker.  I was sold, and it didn't take much to convince K once she saw the menu and the many glowing reviews of the restaurant.

Mission Chinese Food: So Hot (In More Ways Than One)

You know what I haven't done much of over the years?  Eaten out at hot, new, trendy restaurants.  I'm not talking about some falafel joint in Pittsburgh that all the cool kids would flock to.  I mean the kind of restaurant that's getting written about in magazines, reviewed by the Times.

Part of that is simply lack of opportunity--not enough time spent in the kinds of cities where hype machines rage endlessly.  But there are other explanations that offer a slightly deeper glimpse into what kind of person I really am:

1) I do not handle crowds or long lines particularly well.  These often must be negotiated if you want to get seated at some hot new spot.

2) It is hard to find a hotly-discussed new restaurant that is not fairly expensive; this would require spending large sums of money on a meal, which is something I generally avoid doing.

But in the weeks before K and I made a holiday trip to New York City, I don't know how many magazine articles or internet posts I read about Mission Chinese Food, the sort of fusion Chinese restaurant in the Lower East Side that opened up in May 2012.  Mission Chinese was started first in San Francisco by Oklahoma native Danny Bowien, and what struck me in all I read about the restaurant was the way Bowien takes many of the Chinese flavors and cooking traditions I know and love and puts a decidedly 21st century American-kid spin on them.

Kung Pao Pastrami?  Chongqing Chicken Wings?  Tingly Tea-Smoked Chicken?  I could go on and on--almost everything on the menu grabs you by the wrist in a devilish way, begging you to come closer.  Close enough to touch, close enough to smell all that chili oil and Szechuan pepper.

Smoked Eggplant and Angora Throws: Dining at Depot 62 Cafe in Manchester, VT

It's a subject I've touched on before, one I'm curious about because of how unquantifiable it is: the way outside factors, other than the food, can muddle one's memories of a dining experience, elevate good food to magnificent (or the opposite). 

None of us are immune to this way of thinking, and I'll admit I could have fallen into this trap with the Depot 62 Cafe when we visited Manchester, VT, last month.  This is a restaurant we chose primarily based off of some positively glowing Yelp reviews.  We'd just wrapped up our Washington County Cheese Tour, and instead of heading straight home, figured we might as well swing by Manchester Center for shopping and dinner.  There'd been a threat of rain all day, but we were lucky on the farms--nothing more than a moment of drizzle while driving between them.  The sun even came out while we were at Consider Bardwell.

Things started to change while we were in Manchester, poking around shops featuring the quaint and overpriced.  We heard on the radio of a tornado watch, and soon a black cloud, the likes of which I hadn't seen since Kansas, crept out from behind a mountain to block the last of the day's sunlight.  And then, while we were looking around the Manchester Sports and Clothing Co. store, the skies opened. 

At the risk of ruining a rare moment of chivalry by talking about it, I'll mention here that I was the only one who had taken my raincoat from the car that afternoon.  K and her friend, F, who was visiting us, had left theirs behind.  So I ran from the store back to our car--which had seemed a lot closer in my memory--to bring theirs over.  The roads in Manchester were torn up, cordoned off in places, under construction.  I found myself leaping into muddy rapids of water that were filling the streets, and by the time I returned to the store, my jeans and sneakers were both completely soaked.

"You brought the car over, right?" they asked.  I said no, tried to explain that there was too much construction, watched as their faces fell. 

"It looks close on the map," I said of Depot 62.  "It's probably easier just to walk."  Of course, this was one of those cartoony, tourist-town maps, so nothing was drawn to scale.  

Though the rain had eased up a bit, we arrived at Depot 62 wet and cold after about a fifteen-minute walk.  Did we let this negatively affect our experience?  I like to think not--we were awfully hungry, after all, and just happy to sit down in a dry space.  And ultimately, we enjoyed most of what we ordered.  But was it as amazing as some reviews suggested?  I'm not sure about that.

Weekend Drink Pick: Smuttynose "Finestkind" IPA (with a bit on the Montague Bookmill)

The IPA is a beer style for all seasons, really, but sometimes I wonder what season it's best suited for.  Some of the heavier, higher-ABV versions can be nice and warming on a chilly spring or fall night.  But maybe just because I drank more IPAs this summer than ever before, I think the IPA is a brilliant alternative to some of the lighter beers associated with steamy afternoons and stuffy nights: the wheat beers, the Belgian whites.

This especially goes for a pleasantly, but not overly-hoppy, IPA with some citrusy overtones, like the Smuttynose "Finestkind" IPA, which I tried for the first time in early August on tap at the Montague Bookmill's Lady Killigrew Cafe, and for the second time by bottle earlier this week (where it still fit nicely against the backdrop of cooler temperatures).

Washington County Cheese Tour, Part I: The Farms

In his essay "The Case for Short Words," Richard Lederer writes,

When you speak and write, there is no law that says you have to use big words. Short words are as good as long ones, and short, old words—like sun and grass and home—are best of all. A lot of small words, more than you might think, can meet your needs with a strength, grace, and charm that large words do not have.

This passage, and the sentiment from the entire essay, seems relevant because, in thinking about the three farms I visited on Saturday as part of the Washington County Cheese Tour, I'm taken back to that old freshman writing problem of feeling the urge to use too-large words to get my point across.  How else will people understand just how splendiferous the vistas are at 3-Corner Field Farm?  Or how resplendent the fields at Consider Bardwell Farm once the sun broke through?

I'll see what I can do without all those syllables.  Some pictures might help my case (though that's not a tip for any freshman comp. students out there!)--especially ones featuring adorable farm animals.