Archive: Around Town

Dan Veaner Shanghai'd us at the Lansing Harbor Fest gate last month and launched us on a voyage to explore the growing sub culture known as Finger Lakes Foodies. While neither of us is a trained expert on wine and we love home style food as much as a gourmet meal, the great thing about our area is that you can have it all while enjoying some of the best art, music, theatre, and incredible scenery anywhere on the planet. We hope you’ll join us, add you own comments, and give us tips about places you’ve enjoyed roughly in an afternoon’s drive from Lansing.

Our first “official” event was the Members’ Show at the State of the Art Gallery in downtown Ithaca on Sept.4. Gallery Night is the first Friday of the month for all 12 galleries in downtown Ithaca, www.gallerynightithaca.com and many of them have a free wine tasting by a local vineyard as part of the refreshments. Six Mile Creek was well represented by three white wines all of which were quite good for their price range. Jim normally likes very dry, well oaked red wines, but he enjoyed the 2007 Chardonnay, while I preferred the fruitier 2007 Riesling.

We weren’t there just for the wine; our good friend, Carol Abitabilo Ast, had two new landscapes from her work in the Southwest. The bright sun on rock and sand makes me feel like I’m standing in the desert heat and the dark wind of the other calls to the lightening to appear. Margaret Nelson’s vibrant watercolors and meticulously detailed, insect themed, drawings were a sharp contrast to Stan Bowman’s black and white photos of urban decay, while Dan McPherson’s archival digital prints proved that digital art is more than taking a good picture. There was something for every taste, and it was fun.

Since Labor Day is the traditional last fling of the summer, we decided to venture across the lake to Sheldrake Point and the Simply Red Bistro for Samantha Izzo’s Home Cooking Night and the music of The Evil City Band. We got there just in time to do a tasting with Antoinette, the Wine Club manager, who treated Mary to handmade truffles laced with one of her favorite ice wines (dessert first).

Jim valiantly took on the challenge of comparing the 2006 and 2007 Reserve Merlots. The verdict; 2006 has a slight edge and a more refined taste, but there is a strong hint that the 2007 will age well. For dinner Jim chose a Cabernet Franc with Sam’s Home Style Ribs and made sure he licked every bit of sauce off of his moustache and fingers, while Mary had the equally good Honey Stung Chicken.

The service was excellent, as usual, and Sam was quite willing to share the combination of herbs for her hand cut sweet potato fries (especially yummy with Sam’s mustard dipping sauce) even before she knew we were going to write about the Bistro for the Lansing Star.

While the desserts at Simply Red are wonderful, we opted for a stop closer to home and a visit with Judy and Jeff at The Creamery on Rt. 89 just 17 miles out of Ithaca. It doesn’t get any better on a warm summer night than a big dish of their vanilla soft serve for Jim. Mary is the one with complex tastes when it comes to ice cream so she has the guanduia, (chocolate hazelnut) whenever it is on the list.

We hope you will send us your favorite foods, wines and places to try. Feel free to stop when you see us out and about and chat.

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