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Given the cost of gas and the current economic climate, you may find yourself staying close to home this summer. There is no shortage of things to do in the Pioneer Valley and probably no shortage of things to do around the house as well.

That’s all well and good, but sometimes you’ve just gotta say “road trip.” And, often in the same breath, “barbecue.” Bub’s is good, but when you want a trip longer than the drive to Sunderland, you’ll want to think Curtis. That is, Curtis’ Ninth Wonder of the World Barbeque in Putney, Vt., and its sister restaurant, Curtis’ All American Restaurant in Chester, Vt.

The relative merits of ribs versus pork shoulder versus beef brisket can start a fight pretty much anywhere in the United States. (Chicken is always an afterthought, and sausages, no matter how good, are more of an appetizer.) Curtis competes in the rib category so we’ll limit our discussion to ribs. Some rules apply: If you parboil your ribs before cooking, you automatically lose. If you apply the sauce too soon, your ribs burn. To tell if a rib is truly done, squeeze between two bones. The meat should be tender and juicy and pull off the bone with just a touch of resistance.

Putney is just north of Brattleboro at Exit 4 of Route 91. Curtis’ Ninth Wonder of the World Barbeque (802-387-5474; www.curtisbbqvt.com) is located on Route 5 north right next to the Mobil station. Curtis Tuff came to Putney about 50 years ago and started working at the Green Mountain Orchards. Some teachers at the Putney School asked him to help barbecue a pig for one of their events and one thing led to another. In 1978, he opened the Ninth Wonder Barbeque, housed in two blue school buses that he used to take his ‘que on the road.

The pit is off one of the buses and the ribs and chicken are passed inside to be portioned out. Once you get your meal, you take it to a picnic table. Sides include corn muffins, baked beans, collard greens, cole slaw and potato salad. There is no beer or wine, but there is a line of Curtis’ bottled sodas. This year, Every Day With Rachael Ray magazine named Curtis’ sauce the best hot and spicy sauce in the country.

Curtis’ ribs go from package to grill, with no parboiling or marinating involved, and they have a good smoke flavor. The sauce goes on at the end, producing a dark red burnish. When Curtis himself is cooking, say on a Saturday afternoon, the ribs are hot and the sauce is red and spicy. Once the ribs cool off, the smoke flavor can get a little creosote-y unless they are reheated well, which is typical of barbecued meat.

Three out of four of us thought the chicken was a little dry; the holdout was my wife, a Southern girl to the last, who likes her fowl well-done. Compared to Bub’s Hot Bar, being charged for each side seems miserly, but you’ll want to order a few just to round out the meal. Curtis’ baked beans are first-rate, just toothy enough to let you know they’re homemade. The collards are well cooked, but they could use a little vinegar or hot sauce to perk up the flavor. The corn muffin is sweet and moist.

Curtis’ is open Wednesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. until dusk, from early April through the end of October. I’d suggest driving up on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. The food is served hotter and the sides taste better on the weekend.

If you’re feeling adventurous and it’s a nice day, you may want to try Chester. However, if hunger overtakes you on the way, or you need an appetizer, I highly recommend FAT FRANKS in Bellows Falls (92 Rockingham St., Bellows Falls, 802-463-4388). Its tag line, The Wurst Place in Bellows Falls, tells you all you need to know. Do not make the mistake, as I did, of calling the gentleman behind the counter Frank. His name is Jim and the restaurant gets its name from the size of its hot dogs. When you walk in, you are confronted by a case of Italian, lamb, Andouille and other locally made sausages as well as a menu with a half dozen variations on the frankfurter and hamburger. The sausage case always sidetracks me so I have yet to taste the frankfurters, which I bet are excellent. The lamb sausage topped with caramelized onions is worth the detour.

The Chester restaurant is off Exit 6, on Route 103 South. There are signs inside the restaurant with three or four names for the place, but Curtis’ All American Restaurant seems to be the official one. It’s located at 908 Route 103, Chester, 802-875-6999 (www.curtisbbqvt.com/NewPlace.html).

The restaurant is owned by Curtis’ daughter, Sarah Tuff, and her fiancée, Chris Parker. The day we stopped there, Sarah and Chris were off serving barbecue at an all-day music festival, but we ate there anyway. I’m glad we did. I’m going to go out on a limb here and recommend the restaurant in Chester over the stand in Putney.

Curtis’ All American Restaurant is on the way to the Okemo ski area and does most of its business in the winter, meaning that you can satisfy those mid-winter barbecue cravings.There is pulled pork and, on Fridays, beef brisket. And there is sweet tea. Nothing beats homemade sweet tea with barbecue unless it is beer, which the restaurant also sells. But, based on subjective taste tests and the presumption that many of the sides are probably made in one place and trucked to the other, I think the food is better at the restaurant. The ribs are big and meaty, and reheated properly. The chicken is juicier. And the counter help is far, far friendlier.

Besides, you can drop in at the VERMONT COUNTRY STORE (www.vermontcountrystore.com) on Route 103 on your way back. A mixture of tourist-kitsch and old-style New England sundries, it truly has something for everyone (I bought authentic soda crackers) and a stop there will give the barbecue a chance to settle.

Originally published, Daily Hampshire Gazette, Friday, July 18, 2008

I was talking to someone about the Deerfield Inn and her attitude is that it’s good but you pay for it. Whether you want to or not is up to you.

Also, I don’t think I emphasized enough was well made the food was. The presentation was very clean, very confident. Everything was at a high standard. The lobster ravioli could have used some more lobster, the clam chowder had sat in the bowl long enough to form a skin, and the Indian Pudding was more runny than I am used to, but all in all, nothing was disappointing, no one felt like theirs was the clinker.

Drive down the main street in Old Deerfield and you pass house after house that has endured since the 17th century. The mustard and robin’s egg blue homes are painted as they would have been before the Greek Revival of the 19th century covered New England in white, yet there are electric lights and indoor plumbing. Stop in front of the Deerfield Inn and the sight of a Prius and an SUV side-by-side highlights this combination of the old and the new.

The Deerfield Inn opened in 1884, just two years before Emily Dickinson died. It is a working inn with 23 rooms and a dining room that hearkens back to the 19th century in style and the 21st in amenities. Asheley St. Claire III, the inn’s newest chef de cuisine, has mixed the menu in much the same way. Meat and potatoes, French onion soup, and Indian pudding are still on the menu, but they have been updated: the filet mignon ($29) is wrapped in bacon and served with a port wine Gorgonzola sauce, the potatoes are Yukon golds, mashed with their skins, and the Indian pudding ($6) is a smooth rendition of the Yankee classic topped with vanilla ice cream.

Chef St. Claire brings an impressive resume to the inn. A native of Trinidad and Tobago, he studied at the L’Ecole Hotelier in Switzerland, then spent eight years in various kitchens in Europe. In addition to the basic chef skills, he developed the passion that top chefs bring to their restaurants, and St. Claire wants everything in the Deerfield Inn to reflect that, from the way guests are greeted to the ingredients he uses.

After eight years abroad, St. Claire moved first to Trinidad and cruise ships, then to the United States where he cooked at various venues in Miami, New York and Connecticut. Wanting a new direction in life, he became an ordained minister, like his father. However, when the position at the Deerfield Inn came available, he jumped back into the kitchen. The style of cooking there suits him: traditional haute cuisine with some updating of the classics.

St. Claire has only been at the inn since June, yet he has begun to make his mark. Stocks are homemade. Potatoes are mashed with the skins, which adds both texture and the reminder that these are not made from a mix. He makes the soups himself, serving a variety of hot and cold creations in the summer. The sauces are rich, well-reduced and intensely flavorful. He says he tries to buy as much as he can locally, and plans his menus to coincide with the seasons.

Each meal begins with an amuse-bouche, a little dish compliments of the chef, to whet the appetite. On our last visit, this was a shiitake mushroom and onion sauté on a crostini. It disappeared quickly and served its purpose: We were all suddenly ravenous. A server doled out slices of bread, sourdough, focaccia or cranberry, accompanied by a small plate containing olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Four piped swirls of butter also sat in the plate, allowing you to select your topping. The bread was refilled upon request, the olive oil wasn’t.

Our appetizers included the French onion soup ($7), redolent of a good beef stock and topped with Gruyere cheese that stretched forever as my companion lifted a spoonful for me to try. We also had a good New England clam chowder ($7), a portobello pizza ($7) and crab cakes ($11). The crab cakes, commendably, contained more crab than breading. The remoulade was more in the French style than its spicy Cajun cousin.

The rack of lamb ($32) is four ribs, served with snow peas, baby carrots and turnips in a smooth sauce sweetened with a touch of Kahlua and Vidalia onions. St. Claire tends to err on the side of under cooking rather than overcooking: Our order of roasted duck breast ($27), which was accompanied by a good apricot brandy sauce, was served rare. We asked that it be cooked a little longer and it came back perfect. If your tastes run to medium or well, it is best to let your server know.

The Indian pudding was one of the best versions I’ve ever had, sweet without being cloying and clove scented without being overwhelming, a scoop of vanilla ice cream adding a creamy touch. The chocolate mousse cake ($6.50) was rich and chocolaty yet light. You can get an espresso or cappuccino or an after-dinner drink as well.

There is a full wine list that ranges from $30 to $90 or more. The bar also makes a range of martinis and provides a full set of spirits.

A night out at the inn is not inexpensive. With appetizers, desserts, a decent bottle of wine and a tip, dinner for two can easily run to $150. But the beautifully set tables, the heavy flatware and the room, papered in a strawberry floral print, all speak to a certain old-style of elegance. We were not rushed through dinner and we lingered over our coffee until we felt it was time to leave.

The Deerfield Inn is next to the Deerfield Academy and it is easy to picture old money and rich foreigners dropping their progeny at the school with a send-off dinner at the inn. It is just as easy to picture diners stopping in on an October night after a leaf tour of Franklin County or on a snowy evening in January. On a warm summer night, guests sit on the porch as they have probably done for 100 years.

The inn’s blend of the old with a touch of the modern is classic New England.

Originally published Daily Hampshire Gazette,  August 15, 2008

When the lease at Northampton’s Panda Garden was not renewed last year, chef Richard Lau looked around for another venue. The building on Route 9 in Hadley that had most recently housed the All Fired Up restaurant came available, and Lau found a new home. Leaving much of the inside untouched except for new coats of soft blue, green and red paint, Lau opened BUTTERFLY RESTAURANT (48 Russell St., 585-8989; www.butterflyhadley.com) in July 2007.

Lau got his start in cooking years ago in Hong Kong, where his culinary education came from three teachers, two trained in Sichuan cuisine and one in the Hong Kong style. He honed his skills in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and then, after he immigrated to the United States in 1982, in the New York tristate area. He came to the Pioneer Valley in 1985 to open Panda Garden in partnership with financial backers. Butterfly gave him the opportunity to go out on his own.

Named after a restaurant in which Lau worked when he first came to the States, Butterfly is a big operation. A first glance at the menu leads to the question, which menu? There are four: a Sichuan menu, a Japanese and sushi menu, a gourmet menu and a vegetarian “meat” menu. This last, an expansion of the seitan dishes Lau offered at Panda Garden, uses wheat gluten and flavorings to simulate beef, pork and chicken. The gourmet menu is filled with the Cantonese-style dishes Lau learned in Hong Kong when he first became a restaurant cook.

In addition to its restaurant operation, Butterfly does a lot of catering. Lau’s culinary training in Hong Kong included the art of vegetable carving, and photos of some of his creations adorn the entrance. He has standing orders for the carvings from the Boston International Seafood Show, as well as from local enthusiasts. Who can resist whole elaborately carved melons or daikon animals?

The familiar Sichuan dishes at Butterfly are well made. The hot and sour soup is dark and flavorful, but not especially hot or vinegary. The Kung Pao Chicken, which combines dried red peppers with chicken, celery, peanuts and sometimes green pepper, is the best reading of the dish I’ve had in this area. The sauce is a little richer with some overtones of five-spice powder and the toasted taste of red peppers. “You have to put the peppers into a hot wok,” Lau explains. “If you put them in cold, you don’t get the flavor.”

I may be jaded, but Butterfly’s gourmet menu is where the action is. An appetizer of Spicy Dry Fried Salted Squid arrives on a bed of chopped scallions, red and green peppers, and lettuce. The squid is agreeably chewy, salty and crisp, with enough hot pepper taste for some heat. I have a friend who insists on comparing squid to garden hoses long past any humor the comparison might have once had. If I could stand the jokes one more time, I’d feed him these and let him see that chewy isn’t rubbery.

Dr. Chen’s Herbal Energy Soup is a clear broth stewed with chicken, Chinese yam and a variety of ingredients that come from traditional Chinese medicine. The taste is of a good chicken stock with some medicinal overtones, reminiscent of Sichuan peppercorns. Lau got the recipe from a friend who is an herbalist. Perhaps it was the acupuncture session I’d had before dinner, but I did feel more energetic for the rest of the evening.

The menu has its share of translation issues. What exactly is Crispy Fried Roast Duck? I had the Creaky Chicken, which was sliced white-meat chicken sautéed with ginger slices and a slightly sweet sauce that reminded me of the sauce you sometimes get on a whole Hunan-style fish. The chicken was cooked just right: dense and toothsome without being the least bit dry. An order of Wontons in Sesame Sauce, on the other hand, was a little too watery to have much sesame flavor.

I’ve always maintained that, based on most Chinese restaurants, you’d think China had few vegetables other than bok choy and snow peas. And when you do get some Chinese greens, it is rare to find them flavored with anything more than soy sauce. The Chinese Broccoli at Butterfly comes sautéed with chopped garlic and the natural bite of the green was enhanced, I thought, with a little powdered mustard.

Butterfly’s seafood is trucked in from Boston, except for the whole fish; Lau drives to New York City for that once a week. During the summer, the restaurant uses some local produce, but during the winter Lau has to rely on the Boston and New York markets.

Appetizers range from $1.50 for egg rolls to $6.95, with most $4 to $5. Chinese dishes start at $8.95, and the top price is $15.95, for some items on the gourmet menu. Sushi is the usual $3.50 to $5.50 per roll. There is a full liquor license, including the killer Polynesian drinks like Mai Tais, Zombies and Lover’s Bowls. The restaurant is open seven days a week for lunch and dinner.

Every time I look at one of Butterfly’s menus, I find something else I want to try. I haven’t had the sushi yet. My daughter-in-law is a vegetarian and I can’t wait to get her take on the seitan menu. And, since I am often traveling from one place to another at lunchtime, I appreciate being able to pull in, park and get an interesting lunch without a lot of hassle. No Panda clone, Butterfly is more than just a standard Sichuan restaurant.

Originally published in Daily Hampshire Gazette, Friday, June 6, 2008.

 At one range, a cluster of students armed with tasting spoons samples the soup. At another, a student is preparing a mushroom risotto. Chef Carol Kelly demos making pastry horns to the three students assigned to dessert. These will be baked around pastry tips, then filled with whipped cream.

 It is 9:30 on a Thursday morning at Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School in Northampton. The class spent yesterday prepping and today the students have been cooking since 8:30, so that the Oliver Smith Restaurant can open at 10:30. Except perhaps for the size of the staff and the watchful eyes of Kelly and another instructor, John Kislo, this could be any restaurant kitchen just before service. What makes this one unique is that the staff is mostly ninth-graders.

Smith Voke, on Locust Street just past Cooley Dickinson Hospital, opened in 1908 as the first vocational school in Massachusetts. In some ways it is a standard high school with the usual complement of academic classes. However, all the classes that would be electives in another school are here given over to 14 shops, ranging from automotive to cosmetology to manufacturing and, yes, culinary arts. Students alternate a week of academic classes with a week of shop. Upon graduation, they earn a high school diploma as well as a certificate of occupational proficiency.

I first learned about the culinary arts program at Smith Voke when my company donated some computer textbooks to the school library and the faculty adviser took me to lunch at the Oliver Smith Restaurant as a thank you. The restaurant, run by the culinary arts department, is open to the public from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays when school is in session. Tuesdays are buffet days; on Thursdays and Fridays there is table service.

The restaurant has its own entrance on the right side of the school, so visitors do not have to sign in at the main desk. The clientele is roughly half staff at the school and half outside guests, including many senior citizens.

Today is not a typical day, Kelly advises me. Last night, the program catered the General Advisory Appreciation Dinner for 115, an event which thanks people in the community who serve as advisers to the various shops. In addition, Nelson Lacey, the culinary arts department’s third instructor, is on a field trip with five students. It is also the first truly sunny day of spring, and no one knows whether this means more customers or fewer. But no matter. As in any restaurant, when the doors open, the food must be ready.

Two students, checking broiling chicken breasts for Chicken Francaise, ask Kislo what the final temperature of the chicken should be. “175?” one ventures. Kislo laughs. “In my day…” He lets it hang. “You’re a little high.” “165?” “Right.”

At the pastry station, a student uses a rubber spatula to clean out a tub of whipped cream. “The reason you’re having such a hard time is that you have a big spatula for a small job,” says Kelly. “If you can work with it, fine,” she says, leaving the student to decide whether to switch to a smaller tool.

“Students come in with the Cinderella view of the profession from TV,” Kelly tells me. “We stress industry standards and what will be expected of them when they graduate. They see how hard it is and it either makes them or breaks them and those that love it, go on.” Kislo is himself a graduate of Smith Voke. He went on to work at Page’s Loft in the former Colonial Hilton Hotel in Northampton, then spent 20 years teaching in the culinary program at Pathfinder Regional High School in Palmer before coming back to Smith Vocational. A large man who looks very much the chef, he leads students through the various preparations, quizzing them on the details.

Everything is prepared from scratch, Kelly tells me. Students make stock. The breads and pastries are all baked in-house.

A little after 10, the action begins shifting to the service area. Students clean and fill the hot table, using masking tape to indicate what the covered pans hold. “How do you spell risotto?” asks a student.

The program uses the National Restaurant Association’s ProSTART curriculum, which includes a management component as well as strictly culinary instruction. Those who stay in the field might continue their studies at local culinary programs like the one at Holyoke Community College or at nationally known schools such as the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., or Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I. Some join the military or simply work in the field. Many spend two years getting their culinary associate’s degree from the expensive schools, then pay in-state rates to earn their B.A. from the department of hospitality and tourism management at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Helping out today in Lacey’s absence is Mark Stockwell, a graduate who is now enrolled at Johnson & Wales and is doing an externship at the Delaney House in Holyoke. He graduates in May and will leave almost immediately for England to spend a year in a Marriott training program.

As the orders come in, Kelly shifts to the dining room, doing double duty with the front of the house and desserts. Kislo oversees the hot dishes as they leave the kitchen. The warm spring weather has apparently sent people outside, meaning that the pace is more leisurely than it had been the previous week, when rainy weather packed the restaurant.

At 11:30, I sit down to lunch. The student who seats me is as friendly and professional as any server I’ve had recently. Once she realizes I drink a lot of water, she makes sure my glass is filled regularly. I order the clam chowder and a beef roulade filled with roasted red peppers and spinach. The chowder has a good flavor and is packed with clams. The beef is spot-on medium-rare, with whole white peppercorns in the stuffing contributing a burst of peppery flavor. The risotto that’s served with the entree has a good mushroom flavor, and the candied carrots are buttery and not overly sweet. The prices are reasonable: My soup is $2, the beef $7.50. Other choices include seafood casserole for $7.50 and a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich for $3.50. Tips go into a fund that is used for student programs.

As I eat, I watch people picking up orders to go. The restaurant tries to offer food that can be made and served quickly to accommodate the schedules of the school’s teachers and other staff members, who are among the regulars.

Originally published Daily Hampshire Gazette, April 25, 2008

My wife came back from visiting a friend in Greenfield a couple of months ago and told me about a new restaurant where they’d had lunch. “Great clam chowder,” she said. “You’d love it.” Others told me about it as well. The place was called HOPE & OLIVE, which was as evocative and poetic a name for a restaurant as I’ve heard. So, we made plans to investigate.
 Thanks to my new GPS, I discovered that the name was actually the address: Hope & Olive is at 44 Hope St., Greenfield, on the corner of Olive Street (www.hopeandolive.com; 774-3150). Lucky them: There aren’t too many intersections in this area that would work as well for a name. More importantly, it sites the restaurant deeply into its neighborhood, which is where owners Evelyn Whitbeck-Poorbaugh and Maggie and Jim Zaccara, who are sister and brother, want it. They have a strong sense of community, choosing to buy locally as much as possible and pricing their offerings to encourage local drop-in traffic.

Hope & Olive is newly redone, with a dining room to your left, a bar to your right and a middle ground that offers a spot to wait. You’ll need it — the place is popular. The restaurant doesn’t take reservations for fewer than six, although you can call ahead on the day you plan to dine there to get put on the waiting list. Both times we visited on a Friday or Saturday night, we waited for at least an hour. To ease the waiting, Hope & Olive has hired a roving magician, Damien, who offers card tricks and patter. Maggie and Jim’s parents ran restaurants in Connecticut and always had magicians in them. When Damien showed up for dinner at the Hope & Olive bar one evening, hiring him seemed natural to the younger Zaccaras.

Hope & Olive rose almost literally from the ashes of Bottle of Bread, the Shelburne Falls restaurant owned by Maggie Zaccara. When it burned two weeks before Christmas in 2005, the community came out to help. The Tusk ‘n’ Rattle Cafe in Turners Falls held a benefit for the employees; a New Year’s Eve concert and an art auction also helped stabilize finances enough to open a new place. Although they initially wanted to rebuild in Shelburne Falls, the three partners realized that Greenfield offered a better opportunity to buy a place. They opened Hope & Olive last September, taking favorites from the Bottle of Bread menu and adding new ideas.

Of the appetizers, our favorites were the Eggplant Poppers, sliced eggplant rolled around herbed mozzarella, breaded and deep-fried and served with a red pepper dip, and a country-style pate served with cornichons and a spiral of beet. We also enjoyed the antipasto plate and the warm Brie and mango chutney. Bread is accompanied by olive oil and fennel seeds. When you’re seated, a large bottle of water is placed on your table, which is a nice touch. The appetizers range from $7.25 to $11.

Hope & Olive’s approach to food is seasonal, aimed at letting the flavor of good-quality ingredients take center stage. Its pork comes from Bostrom Farm in Greenfield, and its beef from Foxbard Farm in Shelburne, Mass., and Shelburne Farms in Shelburne, Vt. The fish is supplied by Foster’s Market in Greenfield, which also provided Hope & Olive with its first-of-the-season Hadley asparagus last weekend. Much of the restaurant’s sausage comes from North Country Farms in New Hampshire. This summer Hope & Olive expects to buy produce from Seeds of Solidarity Farm in Orange.

This approach comes together in dishes that make the most of these ingredients. The meatloaf, for example, showcases good meat seasoned with a hint of cumin, and is served with mashed potatoes, vegetables and a thin gravy. In other dishes, like the vegetable napoleon, built around a slice of polenta and grilled portabella mushrooms and eggplant along with whatever vegetables are fresh that evening, each ingredient was good, but I wanted something to tie it all together. The napoleon is a popular dish, carried over from Bottle of Bread, and I may be in the minority about that.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, I had a seafood gumbo special one evening that featured andouille sausage, scallops, shrimp and mussels over a corn and red bell pepper combo and rice. The sauce had the right amount of heat, a good thyme taste and a nice roux, although I did get one mouthful of roux that hadn’t been mixed into the sauce. My wife had a pot pie with a good crust and fine gravy, but a few too many turnips in the vegetable mix. Entrees range from $12 to $20.

Desserts shouldn’t be missed. Hope & Olive’s That Chocolate Cake avoids the trap that so many commercial cakes fall into — they are either large and overinflated or dense and flourless. Instead, it has a good dark chocolate flavor, dark chocolate icing and a dollop of clearly homemade whipped cream. The apple tart was layered with custard, apples and blackberries on a nice crust, also dolloped with whipped cream.

The base wine list, which you can view online, offers glasses from $4.50 to $8.50 and bottles from $17 to $33. The emphasis seems to be on affordable, big-tasting wines rather than expensive bottles.

The bar has a good array of beer as well as hard ciders and mixed drinks, and a separate bar menu designed around smaller dishes with a tapas feel. Plus, there’s a lunch menu of soups, sandwiches, pizzas and entrees, including a Cubano sandwich I’ve got to try.

Published Daily Hampshire Gazette, May 02, 2008

Chicopee might not be the first place you think of when you want German food, but Hubie Gottschlicht has created a little bit of Bavaria in Chicopee center with his MUNICH HAUS. Located at 13 Center St., it is set in the old Bernadino’s restaurant across the street from City Hall.

Trained as a chef and butcher in Germany, Gottschlicht came to the United States 26 years ago after marrying a Chicopee native. He worked at the Student Price restaurant in Springfield for 15 years where he says Chef Rupprecht Scherff “taught me the American way of doing things.” Gottschlicht stayed there until getting an offer from the owner of Bernadino’s, who wanted to retire. He bought the restaurant and opened the Munich Haus in 2004.

I’d been there for lunch a number of times and had had some of Gottschlicht’s food at various catered business functions before I tried Munich Haus for dinner.

For lunch, I usually got one of the schnitzels. Schnitzel is traditionally a veal cutlet, pounded thin, breaded and sauteed with various accompaniments. Gottschlicht’s version uses a pork loin cutlet, both to hold down the price and because of his concern over hormones in the veal. He has a dozen schnitzels on the menu, ranging from the classic wiener schnitzel, a simple breaded and sauteed cutlet (which does use veal), to the more adventurous paprika schnitzel (with bacon, some hot paprika and a cream finish) to Berliner style (sauteed apples) and more exotic Parmesan and Bombay schnitzels. For lunch, the schnitzels range in price from $7.75 to $8.95. At dinner, they are $15.95 to $17.95.

There is also changing array of homemade sausages and traditional German favorites like sauerbrauten and beef roulade on the menu. There are a few seafood entrees and a vegetarian pasta, but you’ll want to think German food while you’re at Munich Haus. Prices are reasonable, with dinners in the $15 to $24 range, with seafood dishes, and one or two veal entrees at the high end.

The wine list has a good selection of German bottles, as you might expect, with some reds as well as the more well-known whites. A plus for wine aficionados is that the wine list is on the restaurant’s Web site (www.munichhaus.com). Wines are available by the glass or the bottle. We had the Spatbrugunder Pinot Noir, $7 and $24, which was a nice surprise given that Germany is better known for its white wines.

However, I must say that beer really complements the food and the draft German brews are quite good. We had a Polaner beer, which was fantastic. Beers are available by the glass or by the stein, which seemed the size of a riding boot when it was brought to the table.

Two friends who are German food fans joined my wife and me for dinner at Munich Haus. We started off with the wurstplatte, a sausage-sampler dinner, for our appetizer. All the sausages, except for the knockwurst and kielbasa, are made on the premises. “Pork and seasonings. No nitrates,” explains Gottschlicht.

The sampler consisted of four sausages, a tasty chicken bratwurst, a more traditional pfalzer bratwurst, long Nuremburg bratwurschens and a knockwurst, accompanied by spaetzle (think tiny egg pasta dumplings, sauteed in butter), red cabbage and sauerkraut. They were all good, but we all loved the chicken bratwurst.

Our dinners included a Jaeger schnitzel, sauced with four types of mushrooms, sauerbrauten, a schlacht platter and a Bavarian platter. The schlacht platter was supposed to come with rabbit, but, as Gottschlicht explained, most commercial rabbit is imported from China and is currently unavailable. The Bavarian platter featured sauerbraten, Jaeger schnitzel and more sausages.

Eating the Jaeger schnitzel, I was reminded of another Jaeger schnitzel I had while traveling. That schnitzel was a decent cutlet with a pasty white sauce. Not so at the Munich Haus. The sauce is dark and rich and the different mushrooms contribute a lot of flavor. The sauerbraten was our least favorite, a little drier and not as strongly flavored as we’d like. The beef roulade, which was on the schlacht platter, was wrapped around a slice of dill pickle and reminded my friend Tom of his mother’s version of the dish.

Some of our entrees came with salads. The Caesar arrived with anchovies and the house salad was accompanied by a Roquefort dressing that Gottschlicht learned from Rupprecht Scherff.

We were more than a little stuffed when we’d finished, but duty called and we ordered the apple strudel for dessert. My friend Kitty, an excellent baker, was surprised that the dough was not flaky. “It is Bavarian-style and not Viennese. It has to be chewy,” Gottschlicht explained when I asked him. The strudel is his mother’s recipe and, flaky or not, a fitting conclusion to the meal.

In addition to being open seven days a week for dinner, Munich Haus hosts some special events. The Hops Club is a monthly get-together for beer aficionados. You join the club, purchase a stein, and meet the third Wednesday of every month to sample a German beer along with dinner. In May, when the weather is nice, Munich Haus opens the front deck as a beer garden and offers all-you-can-eat grilled sausages on Tuesday and Thursday nights.

The restaurant is large, with a banquet hall in back, but it is a comfortable place to eat dinner, especially at one of the booths in the bar area. Given the ample parking and ready access off I-391, it is an easy place to visit.

This article originally published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, April 04, 2008.
 

I’ve been writing restaurant articles for a year now. Everyone calls them reviews, but I am specifically directed not to review the place, but to describe it. A review makes value judgements, awards stars, and so on. What I do is go in, describe the food, tell what I liked and didn’t and why, and interview the chef or owner, usually by phone. I don’t trash places and if a place is bad, I move on.

The difference? Here’s an example. At a Bavarian restaurant in a party of four, we had the strudel. The apples and sauce were delicious; the pastry was soft and chewey. Our baker hated it–she wanted flaky. The rest of us weren’t as negative, thinking perhaps that microwaving it had softened the crust. When I asked the owner about it (”I was surprised that the strudel crust wasn’t flaky.”) his immediate response was “It’s not Viennese. It’s Bavarian. You need it chewey.” So, the strudel was done the way he wanted it.

Without the interview, I probably would have trashed the strudel, calling it soggy, perhaps. Was he simply spinning? I don’t think so–he was pretty direct throughout the interview.

I put the interchange into the article so anyone ordering it would know that what they got wouldn’t be flaky and it was intentional. Same result, different attitude. Truth be told, I prefer it flaky, but does that mean I deduct a star? What standards do you use to evaluate a dish? What does the chef’s intent count for? Being witty at someone’s expense is fun for the moment, but in print it lives past the moment and is it something you want to stand for after the moment is over?

The OLD MILL ON THE FALLS, at 87 School St. in Hatfield (www.oldmillbnb.net), has been many things in its history. Built on the ruins of a mill destroyed by fire in the 19th century, the new “old mill” has housed a gun maker, a spark-plug manufacturer, a grist mill and the Valley Advocate. Empty for 10 years after the Advocate left, the building was bought by Tony Martino in 2005. Together, he and manager Ted Jarrett turned the large open space inside into a nine-bedroom B-and-B with a kitchen and dining space for banquets. About three months ago, they began offering dinners on Friday and Saturday nights.

Getting there is a pleasant drive. Coming from Amherst, we head over the Sunderland bridge and down River Road to School Street, which twists and turns, with other streets joining it at odd angles. However, unlike just about everywhere else in Massachusetts, each intersection is marked, making School Street easy to follow. In the winter and in the dark, it is hard to get a sense of the place, which is a boxy yellow Colonial-style building. The landscaping — including a fountain — is buried under snow and the sound of a river behind the mill is muted. But even though I’m local, it feels like a country getaway as we pull into the driveway.

Martino does all the cooking. He went to culinary school in Italy, and has cooked locally in the now defunct Daniele’s in Westfield and most recently at his lunch place in Springfield, the Fantastico Cafe in Tower Square. So it is no surprise that the food at the Old Mill has an Italian accent. The menu, which changes weekly and is available online, features a four-course prix fixe selection: antipasti; insalate or soup; assaggio (a pasta dish); and a main course. The price is surprising, with beef, veal and seafood entrees $21.95, and chicken, pork and vegetarian choices $19.95. Dessert — made in-house — is another $4.50. As my wife observed, it’s hard to run up a big bill here.

The restaurant is BYOB and there are no plans to acquire a liquor license. Jarrett said that the cost is the reason: “The license is $250. The liability insurance is astronomical.” The BYOB policy might well please the wine crowd. I recently talked with a wine aficionado who complained that most restaurant writers omit anything but a cursory mention of the wine list. (Guilty as charged, Michael.) At the Old Mill, you can check the menu in advance online, then bring something from your own cellar. And there is no corkage fee.

The dining room is pleasant, with the kind of decor that appeals to my wife: warm, Victorian, filled with an eclectic assortment of paintings. There is a gas log in the fireplace, cloth tablecloths, tiny ceramic salt and pepper shakers on each table, and enough wood and overhead pipes to evoke a much older space. It’s hard to believe that the room and everything in it was put in when Martino and Jarrett took over.

The antipasti appear as soon as you are seated. The selection changes weekly, but during our visit it featured two slices of Bruschetta Arrabiata (grape tomatoes sauteed with onions, capers, kalamata olives and chunks of Parmesan cheese), two slices of bruschetta with pesto and a provolone cheese melted on top, and two stuffed mushrooms. The arrabiata is not spicy-hot, as the name might suggest, but it is warm and tasty. The bread is sliced thinly and toasted, but not so much that it becomes a crunchy cracker. Our salads — one consisting of greens with balsamic vinaigrette, the other a Caesar with romaine lettuce and croutons (no anchovies) — are fine, with the house balsamic another nice homemade touch.

The pasta course is a plate of ziti with our choice of three sauces: boscaiol (tomato sauce with prosciutto and onion), marinara with a distinct oregano flavor, and aglio e olio, an olive oil-parmesan. The ziti is perfectly cooked, al dente without being crunchy or mushy. The portion is nicely sized, about half of what you’d get if it were an entree.

For dinner, we choose Veal Antonio, veal dipped in an egg and flour wash, then sauteed and served with sun-dried tomatoes and scallions, and Tilapia Mediterrania, pan-fried tilapia with seafood stuffing and a house-made tartar sauce. Two thick asparagus spears and some pan-roasted potatoes accompany each dish. Both entrees are nicely done. The food is not heavily spiced, but that doesn’t mean that it’s bland. To the contrary: It uses the flavor of the ingredients rather than salt, herbs and sauces. I am reminded of a recent meal in a much pricier venue where almost every dish was oversalted or overly herbed.

Midway through our entrees, my wife turns to me and says, “This place is a bit of a surprise.” She’s right. The room has the muted bustle and murmur of conversation that marks contented diners. At the table to our right, a foursome is mixing Cosmopolitans, having brought everything, including glasses; the Old Mill supplied the ice.

For dessert, there are profiteroles (cream puffs drizzled with chocolate sauce and filled with ice cream), a creamy cheesecake with strawberry sauce and a first-rate apple pie with two scoops of vanilla ice cream. We order coffee, and the half-and-half arrives in an antique-style china pitcher.

Dinner is served from 5 to 9 on Fridays and Saturdays. Jarrett told me that reservations are recommended; every table had been filled on the previous three Saturdays, in fact. When the weather improves, he added, the Old Mill plans to offer Saturday lunches.

I’ll likely take them up on that. It would be nice to come back in the warmer months, sit on the patio, and enjoy not just the food, but the Old Mill’s other features, like its English garden and koi pond –and the feeling of finding a surprise on the back roads of Hatfield.

Originally published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, February 01, 2008

This summer, talking with friends about favorite Italian restaurants in the area, I got several replies along the lines of, “Well, Carmelina’s, but it’s closed.” Now, after a change in owners, a face-lift and the completion of some serious road work along its Route 9 location in Hadley, CARMELINA’S AT THE COMMONS, at 96 Russell St. (www.carmelinas.com), has reopened for business.

One-third of the new ownership is Carmelina’s former head chef, Martin Amaya; the other two-thirds are Debbie and Dave Windoloski, a Hadley couple who were regulars at the restaurant for over 20 years.

So far, the transition seems to be going smoothly. When I called to make a reservation (not under my name), the voice at the other end asked if I needed anything special –always a nice touch. The road work has added a curb and cut the parking-lot size, but parking was pretty easy. The hostess was friendly. Our server was knowledgeable and skillful, taking the orders for appetizers, wines and entrees without benefit of pen and paper and proceeding to serve everything to the right person. The restaurant has been redone inside, but it’s not dramatically different.

Nothing, in fact, is dramatically different in Carmelina’s latest incarnation. The restaurant was opened in 1985 by Damien DiPaola, who ran it until he sold it to Amaya and the Windoloskis early this year. When I asked Debbie about plans for the restaurant, she had a simple reply: “building new traditions.” The new owners want to keep the flavors and the feeling of the old Carmelina’s the same while making small additions, she said.

DAVE WINDOLOSKI told me that he originally wanted to go to medical school, but instead took a couple of career detours. First he was a professional wrestler - “Dave Darrow from Holyoke” - and then he spent 25 years in sales at Pitney Bowes. Debbie worked at Kollmorgen for 17 years, mostly in marketing communications, before starting Gardenscapes, a garden design business. Between them, they bring the financial and marketing part of the equation to the table.

Chef Martin Amaya will still be doing the cooking, and since his entire cooking career of nearly two decades was spent working with DiPaola, the menu and the execution are likely to endure. Emery Smith is still playing piano every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, just as he has for the last 20 years. In other words, the many longtime regulars at Carmelina’s can expect more of what made them regulars in the first place. But there have been some changes.

Certain favorites, like Crazy Alfredo (chicken, sausage and red peppers in Alfredo sauce) and Pesce Pistachio (ground pistachios baked over the fish of the day), are still on the menu. But in keeping with today’s trends, what was once the appetizer section is called now called piattini, or “small plates,” and the pasta courses can be ordered in half-sizes as piattini or as entrees.

On my recent visit we did just that, ordering a half portion of Pasta Palmeritana, a spicy shrimp special, stuffed mussels in tomato sauce, and a Caesar salad. The Palmeritana was a version of the familiar Sicilian greens dish - spinach, pine nuts and raisins - over angel-hair pasta. I wanted more spinach in mine, but the greens I tasted were good. In the shrimp special, three large shrimp nestled in tomato-caper sauce that was hot enough to be spicy but not so hot that it obscured anything else. The stuffed mussels weren’t broiled or baked in the usual fashion, but cooked in tomato sauce, which made the breading a little too mushy for my taste. My friend Kitty, who is a Caesar salad aficionado, liked the Carmelina’s version, which added crisped prosciutto in place of the anchovies.

The dining room was crowded, even for a Thursday night. On a subsequent Wednesday-night visit, the room was equally crowded. Everyone seemed to be having a good time and a large percentage appeared to have dined at the restaurant in its former incarnation, judging by how many stopped to chat with Amaya as they left.

On another visit we ate at the bar, where I could watch the chefs at work. For me, dinner theater has nothing on watching two line cooks effortlessly handle hot saute pans.

Osso buco ($29) was tender and falling off the bone. Veal saltimbocca ($27) was unusual in that it was a large chop, split and filled with spinach, prosciutto and cheese. My friend Tom ordered the Pesce al Forno, $25, which came with a choice of four fishes - Chilean sea bass, wild salmon, escolar and swordfish. He picked escolar, which we’d never encountered before. Our server called it a cross between striped bass and swordfish, but a softer-fleshed striper might have been closer to the mark. It came with a good hit of garlic in the sauce, one of the few dishes that did.

Carmelina’s has a large wine list, ranging from $20 to $40 for the most part, and leaning, as you would expect, toward Italian wines, with some California and Australian bottles as well. We ordered by the glass, choosing a Pinot Noir, a Chianti, a Guenoc Petite Syrah (our favorite, we decided after passing the glasses around) and a Sicilian wine that was different from others I have tried. Rather than being dense and earthy, this one had an almost sherry-like taste. Wines by the glass hover around $10.

For dessert, we split a tiramisu and a fruit tart with an intensely lemony curd. Desserts at Carmelina’s are in the $6 to $8 range.

The new owners of Carmelina’s are looking to strengthen local ties - joining CISA, or Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture, is at the top of their list - but the restaurant already uses area sources. Most of the seafood is from Masse’s in Chicopee. Milk and cream come from Mapleline Farms in Hadley, coffee from Rao’s in Amherst, and herbs from Debbie Windoloski’s organic garden. The wine list is due for reworking, Debbie told me, with more wines by the glass. And the new owners are looking to host wine dinners, Sunday family meals, regional tastings and more.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the crowd. Each time I’ve been in Carmelina’s, the room has been full or nearly so. It is perhaps a little pricey for a neighborhood restaurant, but it’s got a friendly feeling and it’s easy to see why the regulars come back, week after week  and sometimes, even, day after day.

Originally published Daily Hampshire Gazette, November 02, 2007

Primavera Cafe Restaurant at 225 East St. on Ludlow’s main drag is an easy place to like. Perhaps it’s the word “cafe” in the name — it’s similar to the kind of small spot you wander into in a strange city, where everyone seems to know each other, the food is good and the portions are ample. My friend Jeff talks about the “tingle” he gets from walking by a good restaurant. Primavera gives you that kind of tingle.

It’s modest and unpretentious, seating around 50, with a small bar and part of the kitchen jutting into the dining room. On a Tuesday night the place is only half-full; many of the people there seem to know each other. At the bar, two men conduct a long discussion about cooking meat: “If you do that, you’ve just ruined $30 worth of steak,” one says, to which the other offers a mumbled reply.

Primavera serves what I think of as “honest food” — that is, it has identifiable ingredients, plus some seasonings that merge into a larger flavor, and it is cooked by someone who would not be afraid to hand you the plate personally. In this case, the cook uses recipes from the owner, John Rocha Nuno, but has also added some ingredients that not even Nuno knows. It is a winning combination.

I start with codfish cakes, six ovals of bacalau (salt cod), which has been soaked for days to remove the salt, then mixed with mashed potatoes and deep fried. There is so little salt left in the cod that I find myself sprinkling a little on the cakes. They are accompanied by a dozen olives.

Mariscado is the Portuguese version of a Mediterranean seafood stew. Primavera’s reading is a tomato-based sauce with hot-pepper kick and some beer to smooth it out. Clams, mussels, sea scallops and half a chicken lobster complete the dish, which is served in a Dutch oven. It comes with rice, but I find myself using the soup spoon on the sauce, which has taken on the flavors of the seafood. Thoroughly satisfying.

I also try the pork and clams, which is another immense plate. Pieces of pork and littleneck clams steamed in a red-wine sauce are layered over cubes of fried potatoes, with some olives and a garnish of what I think is a pickled carrot. Again, I don’t waste any of the sauce, swirling the potatoes to mop it up.

Dessert is a flan. For you crème brulee fans, it is another version of this custard, with the caramelized sugar sauce placed in the mold before the custard is added. When the flan is unmolded, the sauce pours over it and fills the deep plate in which it is served. The dish is not too sweet and the sauce has a little burnt-sugar edge that goes well with both the custard and the espresso on the side.

There is a lot of Portuguese being spoken around me and, anticipating a language barrier, I out myself as a writer to the server. Since she has been watching me trying to surreptitiously take notes, it is not much of an outing. Vanessa is delighted to walk me through the menu and to translate for me. The owner, Nuno, whom everyone calls Rocha, comes over to talk.

He tells me that he worked a variety of jobs in his native Portugal. He rose to the rank of sergeant in the Portuguese army, assisted a diving company in Angola with something to do with diamonds, sold furniture, and then bought a restaurant in Caldas da Reinha in the Obidos area, an hour from Lisbon.

He sold that, however, when he decided to immigrate to the United States in 1989. After working in a number of area restaurants, he eventually decided he could come up with a place where the food was prepared more to his taste and the business was run to his liking. In 1997, he leased the space that houses Primavera from its owner, who was running a small, not very crowded restaurant. Two years later, Rocha was successful enough to buy the building and renovate it.

Part of his success was due to the fact that Ludlow has a large Portuguese community, but the food is what has kept people coming back. Over the past 10 years, Rocha has developed a menu that features various combinations of pork, beef, shrimp, clams, codfish and chorica prepared Portuguese-style. Appetizers range from Pasteis de Bacalhau (cod cakes) and Chourica Assada (flaming sausage!) for $6.50 to Camarao a Casa (homestyle spicy shrimp) and Camarao Frito (fried shrimp) for $8.50. Seafood dishes such as Halibut Grelhado (grilled halibut) and Arroz de Tamboril (monkfish on rice) are around $13.50, with the Mariscado at the market price, which was $22 the night I was there. There is grilled T-bone steak for $14, sirloin steak for $13.50 and Bife na Pedra (beef cooked on a rock) for $16.50. That dish takes a little extra time: It requires 30 minutes to heat the rock on which the meat is cooked.

The wine list is Portuguese, except for a lone Shiraz. Casal Garcia at $12 and Solar Alvarinho at $22 are the whites, and the reds range up to $32, except for a $68 vinto tinto. Customer favorites are Aleveda, a fruity white priced at $13, and Monte Alentejano, a $16 red.

While we were talking, Vanessa pointed out the Javalie, a grilled pork steak for $13.50, and the Febras, pork strips sauteed in sauce, for $12.50. Both are popular, she told me, and so they’re on my list for my next visit. Primavera is open for lunch as well, when you can get the Febras, Pieto de Galinha Grelhado (grilled chicken) and some other dishes for around $8, and sandwiches for around $5.

Ludlow is a little off the beaten path for people from Northampton and Amherst, but if you find yourself south of the Holyoke Range, Primavera is worth the trip. And if you go during the day, you can even stop into the Portuguese bakery and butcher shop across the street and take something home for later.

Originally published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, January 04, 2008

57 Center St. in Northampton has been home to restaurants for many years. I ate there several times when it housed Ladybird, and also took a cooking class in the Ladybird kitchen. Later, I had a number of fine meals in its incarnation as Circa. So, I’ve viewed the space with a totally unwarranted proprietary air. When Circa changed hands last April, I was eager to see what Chef Jeremy Whitcomb would bring to the place.

Whitcomb closed Circa for a couple of weeks while he repainted and did some minor renovations, like adding brighter lighting and cushions on the benches. He has put his own stamp on the menu as well. The style is similar to the former owners’ – a high-end French approach to seasonal and local ingredients – but the recipes are Whitcomb’s own and the execution is quite appealing.

A split pea soup is garnished with duck confit, which replaces the ham nicely. Cabbage pierogi share the menu with a bouillabaisse of monkfish and mussels. A pumpkin veloute graces Parisienne gnocchi, made with a pate a choux dough for a lighter version of the potato pasta. An appetizer of venison medallions is accompanied by winter squash flavored with a pumpkin pie spicing and hazelnuts.

Virtually everything is made at the restaurant, including the desserts. Ingredients from Outlook Farm, Hungry Ghost Bakery, Berkshire Brewing Company and, in summer, local farms contribute to the menu. One of the nicest dishes we had there was an Outlook Farm bacon-wrapped roast chicken accompanied by spinach cooked in bacon fat.

Jeremy Whitcomb grew up in Needham, and his start in the culinary field was fairly typical – jobs in sandwich shops and the like as a teen. A stint at Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Portland, Ore., where he made the dean’s list, was followed by some high-end French cooking in Southern California and Northern Michigan. Returning to the East Coast four or five years ago, he ended up in Northampton. He spent three years at Green Street Cafe, where he rose to the position of chef. Whitcomb had just helped open Dirty Truth in Northampton when Dane Boryta and Liz Ferro put Circa on the market. At the tender age of 29, he made his move, and bought the restaurant.

Eating the food, you wouldn’t think the chef was so young. He has a good feel for how ingredients will work together, like the aforementioned venison, squash and hazelnut combo. The plating is clean and appetizing. The sauce on a lamb shank was dark and rich and the lamb was cooked to tenderness without falling off the bone.

Desserts are all made in-house by Whitcomb’s pastry chef, Lucy. The standout for me was a rice pudding tart with a brulee topping that was accompanied by a quince and cranberry compote. The rice pudding was light, with each grain distinct. In fact, the dish was amazingly light for what is essentially a starch on a starch. We also liked the panna cotta and, of course, there is chocolate – a dark chocolate torte.

The wine list is eclectic, covering California, South America, France and South Africa. Wines by the glass are available for $7 to $8, and bottles range from $28 to $42. There are a variety of beers, many of them locally brewed, priced from $5 to $8, and one wheat-free beer.

During the week, Circa offers a prix fixe menu: $30 for a soup or salad appetizer, any entree and any dessert. Since the appetizers range from $6 to $12 and the entrees hover between $18 and $26, this is a great way to explore the menu. The prix fixe menu is available until 7 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday.

The service is relaxed and comfortable. At dinner, our server went back and forth to the kitchen to get answers to our questions about one dish or another. I wouldn’t suggest tying up a server like that during a busy night, but she was extremely accommodating and it clearly mattered to her that we had a good experience. Whitcomb’s attitude – “We work too hard not to be proud of the food” – seems to permeate the entire experience.

Sometimes, the company at your table can unduly influence your perception of a meal. An argument with my wife ruined one dinner at another place, so much so that I had to completely discount my impressions of the food. Conversely, at one meal with old friends at Circa we enjoyed each dish so much that I wondered how much of our enjoyment was due to the company, rather than the actual food. As we talked, it became clear there really wasn’t any “least favorite” dish. The only criticism we could come up with was a steak that arrived medium rare rather than rare. The Risotto Two Ways, a creamy risotto accompanied by a crisp risotto cake, could have used some protein to make it feel more like an entree. But, we agreed, we’d order any of the dishes again. A separate visit, where I ate alone and undistracted by dinner companions, yielded the same results: a thoroughly enjoyable meal.

En route to the rest rooms, you pass the serving window to Circa’s kitchen. Depending on how busy they are, you might get a chance to chat with the cooks or to simply watch. I am sure there are crazy nights, but each time I’ve peeked in, the pace has been calm and focused and the crew seems to like what they are doing – preparing food they are proud to serve.

Originally published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, December 07, 2007

Now that the Shady Glen is a shadow of its former self, it’s nice to find a place to eat in Turner’s. We ate at the Rendezvous Bar on 3rd Street last night (http://www.rendezvoustfma.com/). It is really new–three weeks new–and it’s really a bar with a small menu. But the menu includes serrano ham, mesculn greens, arugula on the bruschetta, and good panini. We had the Five Cheese, the Chorizo with Roasted Red Peppers, and the Beef Tenderloin  and they were all good. The panini bread was made by their baker in Bernardston, who also supplies the pies. The apple was ok, but the peach was really good.  The Asian slaw was tasty, but could have been cut smaller and marinated longer. The homemade fries were dusted with Portuguese allspice. If you’re in Turner’s, check it out. Apparently they serve dinner only after 3. And make sure to check out the bathrooms.

When I was growing up, espresso and cappuccino were exotic drinks, something you got at the Cafe Remo in the West Village. Later, in Cambridge, I discovered an espresso machine the height of cool, as far as I was concerned in the cafeteria in the Harvard Science Center. And the espresso machine we got as a wedding gift was, for me, the best present in the bunch.

For the last five years or so, it’s been all lattes all the time. Still, you can get tired of so much milk, so last year I went back to cappuccinos. After the 10th cappuccino that was indistinguishable from a latte, I started drinking macchiatos. But it got me thinking: What’s the difference among the three drinks? And where do you go to get a good one?

According to a Culinary Institute of America handout, a macchiato is “espresso ’stained’ with foam,” a cappuccino is “equal parts of espresso, steamed milk, and foam,” and a latte is “espresso and more milk than a cappuccino, generally without foam.” Where does a tall macchiato from Starbucks fit into that classification scheme? What about the leaf pattern a good barista can draw in the steamed-milk foam?

So I put together a Coffee Posse and set out to sample some of the Valley’s offerings. We planned to order a macchiato, a cappuccino and a latte at each place. No sugar. We’d line them up, and work our way from the macchiato to the latte, evaluating the drinks on the basis of taste and adherence to the Platonic ideal, or at least our definition of it. We were looking for a good espresso taste in the macchiato, only a little milk in the cappuccino, and the taste of hot milk in the latte.

We started in Amherst, at RAO’S (17 Kellogg St.; www.raoscoffee.com) and AMHERST COFFEE (28 Amity St.; www.amherstcoffee.com). Rao’s espresso was slightly bitter in the macchiato, and it worked best in the latte. The cappuccino was right on the money and had the tallest foam of any we tasted. In the macchiato, Amherst Coffee’s espresso was less bitter than Rao’s, but lacked a strong coffee finish. The cappuccino was low foam and the latte, which was the best of the three, lacked a hot milk taste.

Our third stop of the day was ESSELON CAFE, where we ran into Scott Rao. Scott had a hand in both Rao’s and Esselon, but is now a private citizen with ties to neither. Esselon offers something called a Flat White, which is between a macchiato and a cappuccino. We included it in our tasting for the sake of completeness. We decided that the macchiato was the best yet, with a slight bitterness and a good finish. The Flat White was steamed froth and a little milk and the best of the three milk-based drinks. There wasn’t much difference between the cappuccino and the latte.

After a not-so-brief discussion with Rao which amounted to a graduate seminar in barista science, we were stuffed with details the amount of suspended material in the various drinks (up to 30 percent in Italian espresso), the length of a pull (between 5 and 10 seconds of steam through the grounds), and the source of most espresso (Brazilian beans). I already knew that espresso contains less caffeine than regular coffee due to the roasting process, but that steaming is a more efficient way of extracting caffeine, which is why espresso has such a kick.

We suspended our investigations while I spent a week in Seattle, for reasons unrelated to the survey. My first macchiato at PEET’S, a San Francisco-based chain, was startling. The espresso was as dark as possible without being burnt, with chocolate-like overtones, absolutely no oil or bitterness, and an intensity that required additional sugar. A lot of suspended solids in that one.

The espresso in Seattle is generally a dark and chocolaty roast. I noticed that the baristas fill the filter head, then pack it down and add additional grounds, which accounts for some of the richness. The cost is about the same as in western Massachusetts, with espresso and macchiato hovering between $1.50 and $2.50 and the cappuccino and latte ranging between $2 and $3.

When I got back to town the Posse resumed its tastings. Our first stop was WOODSTAR CAF￉ (60 Masonic St., Northampton). The macchiato was not as strong as the Seattle blends, and a little oily. The cappuccino was high foam with no milk, with one last little sip of foam to wash down the espresso. Not standard, but good.

At Florence Center’s CUP AND TOP CAFE (1 North Main St.; www.cupandtop.com), each drink was nicely done, despite the noon lunch rush. When I ordered the macchiato, my counter person looked troubled. “Do you want a Starbucks macchiato or a regular one?” She explained that many people were disappointed that Cup and Top’s macchiato is “only” a small cup of espresso with a topping of foam instead of the giant Starbucks’ drink. The cappuccino was a dead-on combination of milk and foam and the latte was mostly milk. The coffee was a little oily, but overall, the espresso stood on its own.

HAYMARKET CAFE (185 Main St., Northampton) doesn’t have macchiato so I compared the cappuccino and latte. The cap was high-foam and the espresso was dark and the most like Seattle’s. The espresso taste came through nicely with the cappuccino, a little less so with the milkier latte.

LA FIORENTINA PASTRY SHOP’s Northampton branch (19 Armory St.) was our last stop. The macchiato was done right, but the espresso was the most bitter of those I tasted. The latte had a good hot milk taste.

There are dozens of other places we didn’t get to. Your experiences will probably vary based on barista and time of day. Unless you’re planning to move to Seattle, your best bet is to find a place that has espresso to your taste and work with your barista to get as much milk and/or foam as you need. And, as far as pastries go, you’re on your own. For now.

Originally published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Friday, September 07, 2007.

First of all, let’s get the matter of the name out of the way. When you place a high-end restaurant across the street from a college and give it a name that sounds like a play on a low-level course (English 101, anyone?), the average Valley restaurant-goer is likely to wonder what that’s all about.

But Chef Alan Anischik says he wanted a name that rolled easily off the tongue, and a restaurant where simplicity meant that “you can taste the product you’re supposed to taste.” He and partner Tim Hardick got both. Food 101 BAR & BISTRO at the Village Commons in South Hadley is no freshman effort.

Anischik is a local boy, born in Chicopee. He got the cooking bug years ago, when he worked at the Cavalier Restaurant in his hometown. After graduating from high school in 1989, he spent a year at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. Then he returned to western Massachusetts and found work at a series of restaurants: Windows on the Common and Fedora’s at the Village Commons, then MULINO’S in Northampton. He left to open his own restaurant in Enfield, Conn., Tosca’s, which featured Italian fare. After three years, he sold that and returned to the Valley to start up Table 9 in 2003 in Mulino’s former space on Center Street, and later Food 101 in his old stomping grounds, the Village Commons. Anischik closed Table 9 last year to concentrate on the South Hadley location.

The Village Commons was built, quite literally, on the ashes of the old Odyssey bookstore in 1991. After two fires, the area was redeveloped into the current Village Commons complex. Windows on the Common was the high-end, dinner out-with-the-visiting-parents restaurant, and Fedora’s the everyday, let’s-grab-lunch-or-dinner kind of place.

Those restaurants are both gone now. When I first heard about Food 101, I assumed that it had opened in the spot formerly occupied by Windows on the Common. However, that space was used to expand Fedora’s. When Fedora’s was sold to the owners of the Hu Ke Lau in Chicopee a couple of years back, they re-opened it as Johnny’s Bar and Grille.

But the Commons needed a high-end restaurant. In 2005 Anischik and Hardick renovated the former Pendleton clothing store and opened Food 101.

The dining area is spacious, and features handsome touches like white tablecloths and good flatware. There is dark wood paneling and dark mustard walls (”Gulden’s, not French’s,” my wife and I decided), and agreeably high ceilings. A bar opens onto the back of the Commons, and I noticed a number of people eating there or at the small tables around it.

Although Food 101 is high-end American and not Italian, Anischik has absorbed the Italian kitchen’s emphasis on food that tastes of its ingredients and doesn’t rely on exotic spicing or trompe l’oeil plating techniques. He told me that the restaurant gets daily deliveries, and that he tries to use local sources as much as possible — places like Arnold’s Meats in Chicopee, and Schermerhorn’s Seafood in Holyoke. “I like the small guys,” he says.

From the bread sticks with a garlic, basil and chopped sun-dried tomato-flavored olive oil you are served while you peruse the menu, things are both familiar and a little bit unique. Anischik told me he serves the bread sticks because so many people don’t want to fill up on bread, but do want something to nibble on while they are waiting. I liked the sun-dried tomato idea so much that I plan to steal it for my next dinner party.

Appetizers hover around $8. On one occasion I started with fried oysters in remoulade sauce; on another, I had a special of clams steamed in a chorizo-accented tomato sauce. Both the remoulade and the clams were more refined than rustic, and both made for good eating. The portions were ample, which seems to be a Food 101 trademark.

Entrees range from $18 to $24. The rack of roast pork ($23) that I ordered on a recent visit came with two chops, cut so the loin lay flat, and was accompanied by pan-roasted fingerling potatoes, parsnips and carrots, sauced with the deglazed pork juices. Our waitress told us it’s one of the most popular dishes at Food 101. My wife’s halibut ($25) was topped with pine nuts and sun-dried tomatoes and set on a lobster-infused mashed potato base. The dish was decorated with some nice squeeze-bottle work using reduced balsamic vinegar and basil oil. Another plus: “This is the first restaurant meal in a long time that doesn’t have too much salt,” my wife observed.

The wine list is organized by varietal, and while the prices go as high as $80, there are a number of bottles for under $35. I was pleased to see there was a good beer list, with a number of Belgian beers in the $7.50 to $11 range.

A good Belgian brew, in fact, would go nicely with Food 101’s 16-ounce New York strip steak or the Maple Farms duck breast, which I ordered on another visit. The meat was perfectly cooked and had the game taste that distinguishes good duck. I had some doubts about the accompanying Brussels sprouts-potato hash –a little overpowering, I thought –but don’t let that stop you from trying the duck.

Creme brulee with fresh berries has become a dessert cliche, but Food 101 offers a good example of how to do it right. There is a selection of ports ($7 to $10) and liqueurs for after dinner, as well as Java Hut coffee.

“It takes a lot of time, money and hard work to survive in the restaurant business,” Anischik told me. Food 101 shows that he’s learned that lesson.

Originally published in Daily Hampshire Gazette, August 03, 2007

To quote that noted rock philosopher Paul Kantner, “Life is change, how it differs from the rocks.” (Of course, geological change just happens on a slower scale.) The Amherst dining scene is alive and well, changing with the times at human speeds.

On Main Street, CRAZY NOODLES has taken the place of MARY JANE’S breakfast place. Offering noodles in styles ranging from Mediterranean to Asian, Crazy Noodles is right on top of the latest trends in dining. Across the street, FRESH SIDE took over the space vacated by the late, lamented AMBER WAVES. Fresh Side did so well selling tea rolls, soups and other Thai- and Vietnamese-inspired dishes that earlier this year it moved around the corner, facing the Amherst Town Common. A couple of doors down, CHEZ ALBERT is successfully bucking the double trend of Asian cuisine and small dishes by running an authentic French bistro that’s so busy that you’ll want to make a reservation for almost any night.

But the biggest renewal story in Amherst is the Amherst Cinema building. Originally a stable, the Amherst Cinema closed some years ago due to complete neglect by its owner. A plan to renovate the theater didn’t work out, and the building remained vacant until developer Barry Roberts and architect John Kuhn came up with a new concept. In addition to a cinema, relocated to the back, the building would house office and retail space.

Early tenants had the advantage of getting space designed for them. AMHERST COFFEE was the first, taking most of the street frontage and quickly attracting a number of loyal regulars with not just coffee but single malt scotches, brandies and wine, along with a small selection of pastries, many from Amherst’s HENION BAKERY.

Kuhn Riddle Architects moved into the second-floor space, and the building began to fill up. Plans for a Mexican restaurant fell through, fortunately, because Emily Wadham and Adrian d’Errico opened the tapas restaurant TABELLA in the space instead.

d’Errico is an Amherst Regional High School graduate and a wine aficionado. Wadham became pregnant when they planned the restaurant and the birth of their child coincided with its opening.

For those not familiar with the concept, tapas are small dishes that are served with drinks in Spain. Tapas have become quite popular in the United States, since they allow you to graze rather than commit to a full meal and their variety provides something for everyone. Tabella offers some traditional tapas, such as garlic shrimp ($8.50), grilled chorizo ($5.50) and mixed olives ($5), as well as more contemporary dishes in the tapas style. Among the dishes that my friends and I have enjoyed are an orange curry crusted cod sprinkled with pistachios ($13) and pan-seared calamari with roasted red peppers, olives and shiitake mushrooms ($9). My friend Betsy tells me she’s never had a bad fish dish at Tabella. The meat is pretty good as well — offerings like organic leg of lamb with a mint pesto cr￨me fraiche ($19.50), a curry, grape and pistachio-spiked organic free-range chicken salad ($11) and grilled venison with an Earl Grey smoked pepper sauce ($15).

As you can see, the food at Tabella has some reach to it. The dishes are always tasty, and always beautifully arranged. The Moroccan chickpea fries ($7.50) arrive stacked like Lincoln Logs in a pool of chili aioli. The outer crunch quickly melts away into a cumin-spiked creaminess that is surprising if you were thinking french fries. The St. Louis ribs in chipotle/espresso barbecue sauce were clearly baked and not simmered into tenderness, but could have used a little more time in the oven. The phyllo roulade ($13), filled with sun-dried tomatoes, quinoa, Cheddar cheese and lentils, was great on its own and the accompanying tomato sauce was unnecessary. Fried green olives are stuffed with feta cheese and are crunchy and agreeably tart, but unless you are a big fan, you might want to include them as one dish for a large party.

The style of dining at a tapas restaurant lends itself to conversation and leisurely dining. You can order all at once if you have a movie to catch, but you can stretch out the evening. Order a glass of wine and a couple of dishes, eat those and then order something else. I am waiting for the warm weather to arrive so I can sit at the outdoor patio.

I asked my friend Kitty, a self-professed “wine guy,” for her take on the wine list. She went through it with growing enthusiasm. “Three Sauvignon Blancs, from California, France and New Zealand! It’s organized by varietal and the vintage is on the list,” she gushed. “I wonder how often they have to reprint it.” Her final opinion: It’s a great list, with some good bottles to be had for $30, which is not often easy. There are less expensive bottles on the list as well and glasses priced from $6 to $9. Kitty liked the Quivira Sauvignon ($9) and the Writer’s Block Syrah (also $9). I try to stay away from anything called Writer’s Block, but it certainly was a full-bodied Syrah.

Given the range of choices and the tendency to order “one more dish,” you’ll find yourself spending some money. One dinner for four, where we overate contentedly, with wine and desserts and tip, came to $45 per person, which is not out of line for one of the better restaurants in the area.

Trying to get Northamptonites over the bridge is hard work and it’s likely to get even harder during the next year of Route 9 road construction. However, I’ll stack the Amherst Cinema’s stadium seating and great indie movie choices with a pre- or post-movie dinner at Tabella against anything Northampton has to offer.

Originally published Daily Hampshire Gazette, Friday, June 01, 2007

No Reservations: Flying high

“So what’s your favorite restaurant?” I asked one of my sources. That person, whom I will call The Young Woman About Town, has not eaten at home for months. “Apollo Grill,” she replied without hesitation. “It’s a great place for me to expand my taste buds. Who knew that I loved polenta? I’m still not sure what polenta is, but I know that I love it.”

That is exactly owner-chef Casey Douglass’ dilemma. When he first conceived of the Apollo Grill, his business plan called for casual food. But given the following he’d gained while he was head chef at the Del Raye BAR & Grill in Northampton, customers showed up at the Apollo and ordered the specials. Douglass followed the demand for higher-end food and the Apollo Grill became what it is today — a destination restaurant.

Located in the Eastworks Building, the former Stanley Home Products factory in Easthampton, the Apollo Grill has a look all its own. From the tinfoil astronaut outside the door to the collection of salt and pepper shakers on the bar to the metal conveyor belt visible overhead as you make your way to your table, the restaurant is funky and unpretentious.

The menu is small but interesting. It usually lists eight entrees, about that many starters, and only a couple of desserts. One cold night we started with grilled shrimp with a guacamole-filled tostito and fresh chipotle salsa, and a crab cake with coconut and pineapple curry sauce. The shrimp was grilled just right, and the salsa had some heat that the guacamole cooled off. The crab cake had enough crab in it to avoid the “let’s save money by adding some more bread crumbs” syndrome.

Our waitress was attentive. She was also a vegetarian, which limited her ability to help us choose meat dishes. Still, we settled on three. A pork tenderloin with caramelized onions was nestled on mashed potatoes. Lamb was also served with mashed potatoes, but included a side of feta and onion salad. A duck special consisted of a sauteed breast of duck and a leg of duck confit with a ginger marmalade sauce, laid on top of a disk of wasabi mashed potatoes that had been fried on each side and folded into a cone. A small pile of pickled ginger accompanied the duck.

Dessert was a pecan tart and a blueberry and peach cobbler, each served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Apollo has a good selection of wines (again, the magic number eight) by the glass and the local microbrews were a hit with a Boston friend who is not used to the Valley’s abundance of good breweries.

Sitting in the warm restaurant, looking at the art on the walls, the arch of the metal conveyor belt and a statue that appears to be a series of coffee percolators welded one atop the other, we lingered comfortably.

The appetizers hover around $7 and the entrees range from $14 to $22, with the vegetarian entrees at the low end and rib-eye steak at the high. Desserts are around $5. Our tab for the evening was about $35 per person, including the appetizer, entree, dessert, a glass of wine and the tip. Not bad for a nice evening out.

Lunch is a selection of salads and sandwiches, with specials. I’ve eaten several business lunches there and everyone found something to their liking. Apollo isn’t just a dinner-time destination.

Casey Douglass comes from a restaurant family — his seven brothers and sisters have all worked in the business. Douglass worked for his brother, who owns Icarus Restaurant in Boston, for 14 years. He moved to this area and put in four years at the Del Raye before venturing out on his own.

He says he likes to combine the flavors, textures, colors and variety of his ingredients to offer as many options as he can without creating inventory and labor problems. You can see that approach in his food. Each entree looks like a party — confetti, colored ribbons, surprises. His salmon is crusted with pistachios and served with a colorful Asian cole slaw and purple sticky rice. It’s a dish that makes you smile just looking at it. And then you get to eat it.

The Apollo is a hit and you can’t beat working a mile from your house, but Douglass told me he’s ready for new challenges. He wants to create a second restaurant, the one with the more casual feel he was originally aiming for. One possible site, the former Memorial Hall in Easthampton, fell through. He turned his attention to building a new house instead. Now that the house is completed, he’s starting to look around again.

“The Easthampton scene is nice, but the restaurants are separate and unique, it’s not a group scene like Northampton,” he said. “If one place is filled, it’s not as easy to walk down the street for other places on a similar plane.” It’s also hard to attract people from outside the area, he notes. “People from Springfield are always telling me they can’t believe how easy it is to get here.”

Northampton is too expensive for the place he is looking to start up: “You end up working for your landlord,” he said. So he’s casting around, considering places ranging from Springfield (his wife works at Baystate Medical Center) on up the Valley.

In the meantime, he’s looking forward to spring and summer at Apollo. This is the second year the restaurant is buying most of its produce from Mountain View Farm in Easthampton. “We’re coming out of the winter cooking season,” he said with anticipation. The man who loves to create is already planning new dishes to stretch the palates of Apollo loyalists like The Young Woman About Town.

Originally published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, April 06, 2007
 

I registered that the real estate office on Main Street was gone. I remembered an old toy fire engine in the dusty windows and posters for bands and indie movies, but the place had the feeling of being abandoned long before it disappeared. I registered the appearance of another Asian restaurant, Zen, but didn’t think too much about it until a number of people told me I ought to check it out. “Very good food,” they said, “very polished.”

Brian and Yei-Yu Sun, a brother and sister team with a background in the restaurant business, had been looking to open a place in Northampton. There were several possibilities, but when they saw 41 Main St., they stopped looking. Yei-Yu said they saw the image of something the space could be.

They hired local designer Tom Douglas and several teams of builders to give that image a shape, and the Suns opened their new place in February 2006. From the Chinese character for fine dining that is featured on its logo to the restaurant’s look — lots of blond wood — to the food itself, Zen Restaurant is clean and modern.

On a weekend night, the restaurant is crowded and energetic. Midweek, it is the kind of place where you want to meet friends and linger over a meal. The space is open and airy without being noisy. Soft jazz permeates the room, muting the conversations at the other tables. The lights over each table echo the traditional look of Chinese restaurants, while the rest of the design is modern — a perfect statement about Zen’s fusion of old and new. The windows above the sushi bar are antiques that Yei-Yu bought in China. Ironically, they were taken from buildings that were having more modern windows installed.

But what about the food? The menu ranges from familiar Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai dishes to a more eclectic mix of cultures. Traditional starters like Shrimp Shumai and Vegetable Dumplings mingle with fusion specialties like Dynamite, a seafood, vegetable and cheese bake. In fact, the menu categorizes the dishes as Traditional and Specialties. It’s this fusion of old and new that makes Zen exciting.

Brian and Yei-Yu come from a culinary family — their grandfather and father were both restaurant chefs. Of Chinese background, they were born in Korea, then immigrated to the United States. They ended up in Northampton about 20 years ago, their parents drawn here by the safety of the area and the educational opportunities.

Brian and Yei-Yu like this area as well. They buy a lot of their food locally, and opt for organic as much as possible. Yei-Yu told me about going to Chang’s Farm in Sunderland in the afternoon and picking bok choy to be served in the restaurant that night.

One evening not too long ago, we settled into what have to be the best seats in the house: upstairs in the mezzanine, overlooking the sushi bar. We started with the Northern Spare Ribs, Meat and Seafood Spring Rolls, and a medley of dumplings. We ordered mostly off the Traditional menu because I was curious about Zen’s readings of standards like Orange Beef and Sesame Chicken. The interpretations were sweet and traditional, but without the heaviness or greasiness that less attentive cooking can impart. We also got Hae Dup Bap, a Korean dish that takes a bowl of sushi rice with salmon and vegetables and ties it together with a spicy sauce. We weren’t having sushi that night, but I saw a mix of hand rolls, nicely served in a sort of test-tube holder, appear at the table beside me and experienced a pang of longing.

On another occasion, we ordered off the Specialties portion of the menu. We had Mango Curry, a Thai-style curry that mixes chicken, shrimp, mangos and vegetables in a coconut curry sauce, and the Basil Seafood, shrimps, scallops, calamari and mussels in a chili-laced dark brown sauce in which the basil stands out clearly. Both dishes have some heat, but not so much that the other flavors are lost.

You could eat here for a while without exhausting the possibilities. Zen’s menu is divided into Noodles (Thai noodles, Japanese udon and Chinese Mei Fun noodles); Rice (various types of fried rice and sushi rice); the aforementioned Traditional and Specialties; and a full sushi bar. For me, it’s the Specialties that have proven most intriguing: entrees such as Passion Fruit Shrimp, Zen Burgers (ground beef and vegetables in oyster sauce), steamed tilapia on mustard greens, and the Jiang Pao Duck, Peking-style duck sauteed with hoisen sauce.

Prices range from $11 to $18, with the rice dishes at the lower end and the mixed seafood entrees at the higher end. Sushi will run you $3 for cut rolls and up to $10 for the specialties. Dinner for four, including the tip, came to $130. You could easily up that $20 or more by ordering additional wine or sake.

Zen has a good wine list, with four whites and four reds served by the glass. It also offers a number of sakes. I had always had sake served warm, but Brian informed me that the better ones at Zen are served chilled to bring out their flavors. He recommended Rabbit Moon Sparkling, a carbonated and slightly sweet sake with apricot and blueberry overtones.

Desserts are often perfunctory in Asian restaurants. Zen has the traditional green tea ice cream, as well as a cappuccino flavor. But it also offers a banana spring roll, fried banana topped with caramel and chocolate and served over ice cream, and a Lotus Bun a la Zen. This last was inspired by a red bean paste bun dipped in sweetened condensed milk, a combination which Yei-Yu remembers having in China. Zen’s version is filled with lotus bean paste and covered in caramel and ice cream.

Life in the 21st century is about fusion, the mixing of cultures and combinations. In restaurants, that sometimes means that novelty is valued over flavor. Not at Zen, which achieves harmony between taste and innovation.

Originally published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette on: Friday, May 04, 2007