Begin at the Begin: Taste of Thai Express

I ordered take-out from ToTE just the other night, prompting me to think about how I would cover the close to 50 restaurants that I’d already eaten at when I started this little project.  I think I’ll just add them in, like reruns, when I haven’t eaten somewhere new in a while.  So with that plan….

Taste of Thai Express:

It’s…passable.  And….consistent?  You know what you’re gonna get, and you know it’ll be pretty good, but you also know you’re gonna be debilitated by a food coma for at least three hours after eating.  As the only (?) Thai place in Ithaca that delivers, you just have to learn to love it (and put them in speed dial).

#57 Apollo Chinese Restaurant

Okay, it’s my own fault for thinking that delivery Chinese is going to be anything but gross, but, it was kinda gross. Pat ordered kung pao chicken with pork fried rice and wonton soup, and I ordered steamed chicken dumplings and went out on a limb with the spicy pork noodle soup. I figured that if they were taking the time to try to put something besides sweet and sour chicken and beef with broccoli on the menu, maybe it would be secretly delicious. Actually, I think they just popped on down to Wegmans on the way to our house, bought the nearest giant ramen noodle bowl they could find, nuked it, and then poured a spare bottle of pork-fat-oil over the top.

Also, not to be nit-picky, but their website is weird and terrible, which just made the whole ordering experience a little sketchy.  And I'm not even sure if you can get to the menu online through their website anymore.

Anyway, back to the food.  By the time the delivery got to us the broth of my soup had spilled entirely in the bag, so what I had was a big bowl of oily noodles with hamburger meat (I hope?) stirred in. There were two limp greens floating on top, but like the rest of the bowl, all I could taste was salt and oil. Honestly, they could have put a human thumb in there and it would have tasted like salt dipped in oil, garnished with salt.

Tragically, I'm going to have to cut this rant short, after finishing this dinner I started having chest pains and and my arm feels kind of numb. Next up: a hospital food review?

Less than 100 to go!

Not even close to half way there, but I'm 63 down, 99 to go. That makes me feel full.

#56 Le Pita Pit

Subway sandwiches, but on a pita.

I had fond memories of eating at Le Pita Pit in Montreal--and the tzaziki and falafal--when visiting my friend Carla during college, but either the French-Canadian take on it is just different or Pita Pit has gone way downhill.  Or maybe (definitely) it's just the one in Ithaca that's particularly gross.  The one up-side: they offered me real leaves of lettuce!  Anyway, if I wanted a deli sandwich, I'd go to Rocky's.

On the Road: Eating Boston

I went to visit Miya, my roommate from college, in Cambridge MA a little while ago, so this post is dedicated to her.  We sampled a good variety of restaurants in our three day trip, though for the most part were constrained to locations that were either televising the NFL draft (per Pat’s request) or offering lengthy beer or margarita lists (per the rest of our requests). 

 --Border Café.  Love it.  Best margaritas ever, especially since they come in GIANT awesome glasses.  And the food is delish.  Nothing in Ithaca comes close, that’s for sure.

--Tavern in the Square.  Good standby, although I think best for beer and appetizers.  Nice list of beers on tap, especially seasonals.

--Zoe’s Kitchen.  Mmmmm, brunch.  Standard brunch fare, with really really good pancakes and French toast.

--Pinkberry.  No comment needed, it’s the best place ever.  Actually, I guess second best, to Cultive in SF (because they let you serve yourself AND serve yourself samples without feeling guilty for asking for samples of all the flavors when there’s a huge line behind you).

Overall, a very delicious trip—I’m pretty sure everything we ate was better than what I normally get in Ithaca, and Boston isn’t always famous for it’s high-end fare (at least, not according to Anthony Bourdin).  Thanks Miya and Galen!!!

#55 Greenstar Coop, or, Good in Theory

Following on a common Ithaca theme, Greenstar has pretty good food, but it’s just not worth it.  I stopped in the other afternoon looking for a quick sandwich and drink that I could eat while enjoying the nice-ish (you know, 50 degrees and overcast but not actively raining) day and reading my Kindle.  I ordered a smoked provolone sandwich at the counter, and then went off in search of a beverage and maybe a side dish.  I heard my name paged over the intercom about three minutes later, and marveling at the quick service took my banana and kombucha back to the counter.  Oh, no, wait, they just wanted to tell me that they actually didn’t have any smoked provolone, and would I like a different cheese?  I went with cheddar, paid, and came back to the counter about five minutes later thinking I’d just wait.  After another ten minutes of hippies pushing past me to get to the locally sourced organic all natural olives in the refrigerator behind me, I was starting to get a little impatient.  There was nowhere I could stand where I wasn’t in the way of chaco-clad dads and the egg containers they brought from home, so eventually I decided to go back to my car and wait there for a few minutes until I was sure my sandwich was done.  After another five minutes in the car—bringing my total “quick stop at the deli counter” time to almost forty minutes—I went back in, grabbed my eight dollar cheese sandwich, and made a run for it.

Due to the lack of indoor seating, and the fact that the Ithaca wind had cropped up to the point that trying to eat outside would have led to a hairball foreign body, I ended up eating half my sandwich in the car on the way home, and the other half about an hour later in my room.  The fresh half WAS delicious, but I’m pretty sure that if I had bought some rye bread I could have made it just as delicious in my own kitchen, for less money and without forty minutes of dodging self-righteous coop-ers happily paying $7 for a thing of raspberries.

But I’m not bitter.

New Openings: Spring Edition

Here are a couple new choices we have on the Ithaca roster:

Crespella Cafe
This is the new restaurant where Anna’s Vietnamese used to be, and before that some kind of upscale comfort food restaurant. From the minimal information on their website, all I know is they offer “eating challenges for breakfast and lunch….” Good luck, it seems like this location is jinxed.

They got customers!  But they were closed.

Loco Margarita Bar and Grill
Offers half price sangria and nachos on Thursday’s happy hour. According to the write up in the Daily Sun, it looks like we won’t have to contend with too many undergrads because it's just too far from collegetown (you know, more than 8 steps), but that it will probably be overpriced.

The Piggery
Advertised as “handcrafted charcuterie from heirloom pasteurized pork.” I thought I was getting bacon.  The deli opened earlier this school year (in November), but they’ve had pigs and a blog since 2008, and a stand at the Ithaca Farmer’s Market for years. Also they seem to be expanding, now that Orange Blossom Pancake Company is out of business right in the same little building.


Coal House Café
Looks like it’s a good little brunch spot. It’s not actually new, but it at least got a renovation recently.

#54 Moakley House, or the Robert Trent Jones Golf Course restaurant

Moakley House is also a confusing spot in Ithaca, because it’s not really a restaurant.  Moakley House is the building at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Course that acts like a clubhouse.  They have a catering portion, which is where I ate the other day, but also a little restaurant that is open to golfers and the public called McCormick’s Grill.  I suppose, since the food is entirely different and technically it’s a different establishment, that I’ll have to do a separate post about McCormick’s Grill, but let me just give you a teaser—it’s open from 9 am to 6 pm, and they have hamburgers that they boast about serving in less than 5 minutes.

This is not the etiquette dinner. (It IS the Cornell men's bball team eating at the Moakley House, though.  Thanks Cornell Chronicle).

Back to Moakley catering.  I ate there for an “etiquette dinner” sponsored by one of the clubs at the vet school—we were learning which fork to use, how to politely spit out a bit of gristle, and what to do with the onions on your salad that you don’t want to eat.  Unfortunately, the food was of the standard catering variety—overly salted and likely from Costco.  You could actually find little globs of cornstarch thickener in the mushroom soup, and I’m pretty sure the same soup was used as a sauce--poured liberally over the hunk of dry chicken served as an entrée.  The dessert was a giant cup of chocolate pudding with cool whip dolloped on top.  At least I didn’t have trouble leaving a little bit of food on my plate.

Backing up: #50 Taste of Thai (not-Express)

This restaurant is more than a little confusing because Taste of Thai – “the original and only one in Ithaca (no affiliations)”-- and Taste of Thai Express are actually NOT affiliated in any way.  Taste of Thai Express is a totally different restaurant, and isn’t just the take-out portion of Taste of Thai Regular Type.  Taste of Thai-Not-Express takes great pains to assure that you know that, while Taste of Thai Express seems happy with the confusion.  Really, is it that hard to come up with two separate names for Thai food restaurants?  How about, Thai Taste?  Tasty Thai? Thai Tasting?!

Solidly "On the Commons"

Anyway, back to the food.  Suffice it to say that I get a little overexcited when ordering Thai food, especially when I’m somewhere new.  I feel obliged to try all my favorites just in case.  So, two entrees, a pot of tom kha, and $37 later, I walked out of Taste of Thai wondering if I’d found my new Thai standby, and if Carol Gary would let me take out extra loans to fund this new habit.

Like Sticky Rice, Taste of Thai is good, but not really worth how expensive it is for sort of plain Thai food.  It’s okay, but if this weren’t Ithaca, you could get much better Thai for 1/3 the price at a nice little family-owned hole-in-the-wall.  And you wouldn’t have to deal with parking at the Commons.  The tom kha was the best I’d had in Ithaca, but the noodles were….noodley.

After clearing up the confusion over Taste of Thai Express/Not-Express, what it boils down to is that it’s probably not worth knowing the difference.  I’ll probably never go back to the not-express version—not because it was bad, per se, but just because it wasn’t worth the expense and hassle for a similar quality of food to a cheaper, more convenient place.  Welcome to Ithaca.

#53 Bluestone

 Actually, Bluestone was quite good.  Which makes this review just a little less interesting.

The food is basically American, the type of stuff you’d expect at a bar/restaurant, but they do have a few more unique items on the menu that make it generally more interesting.  Pat got the “WICB” burger—a scale-tipping combo of guacamole, bacon, BBQ sauce, and Monterey Jack cheese, and I was totally impressed.  If I ever just give up and become a fat chick, I’d probably eat this at least twice a week.  Still holding on to my self-respect and some vestige of “healthy,” I went for the salmon wasabi ginger wrap, and was also totally impressed.  It was deliciously asian-inspired, and the salmon was nicely cooked and moist. Heh, moist.

Gotta love abstract art and tiny picture frames

Sadly, Bluestone didn’t accept my Restaurant.com gift certificate—they’re “in a dispute” with the website, and we paid full price for our dinner.  Being Ithaca, it was still only $40.

#52 Rulloff's: A journey into collegetown

The Story: Mr. Edward Rulloff, a genius philologist and sometime Ithaca resident in the mid-nineteenth century, was also a serial killer.  He killed his wife and daughter, among many others, dumped his victim’s bodies in Cayuga Lake and served parts of his sentences in the Ithaca jail.  He was finally caught in Binghamton and executed in the last public hanging in NY, in 1871.  A hundred years later, Rulloff’s Restaurant and Bar opened its doors in Collegetown.  Too soon?

Edward Rulloff: serial killer and master chef?

 Rulloff’s has been around since the 1970’s, faithfully dishing up hamburgers and cheese fries to drunk Cornell students.  They’re also known for their $2 pitchers of Rolling Rock.  It’s a classy establishment, to say the least.

I’ve been to the bar section of Rulloff’s many times with vet school friends, and for a while it was our class’s gathering place after momentous occasions like finishing Block 1 or Thursday, but until I started looking up all the restaurants in Ithaca I didn’t realize they served food.  I sort of wish I had never had to find out.

I most recently dined at Rulloff’s a few nights ago, when some friends and I went for an early beer and I hadn’t yet eaten dinner.  It was the perfect opportunity to try a new restaurant, and on a positive note, the kitchen was open until 10 pm.  But that’s about where the positives ended.  I ordered a turkey sandwich with onion rings for the table, and a Magic Hat.  They hit the mark with the beer, but you’d think after ordering a turkey sandwich I would have gotten a turkey sandwich.  What did I actually get?  A cheeseburger.

Okay, so the waiter/bartender wasn’t so good at understanding the words “turkey sandwich.” But that wouldn’t have been such a problem if they had just decided that I didn’t want the turkey sandwich because of how amazingly delicious the hamburgers were.  Actually what it tasted like was that the kitchen was closed, and the only thing they could find lying around was a three day old cheeseburger they stole from the nearby Cornell dining hall.  Sadly, I ate almost all of it, because by the time they actually brought out my meal the bar was so packed with undergrads that it was impossible to even make it up there to let them know that a cheeseburger is NOT a turkey sandwich. 

Wilder Brain Collection (thanks cornell.edu)

Edward Rulloff persists on, and not only through his eponymous restaurant.  His brain is on display in Uris Hall, right here on campus, as part of the Wilder Brain Collection.  And I bet it would taste better than that cheeseburger.

Restaurant.com is saving my savings

This is a little bit late notice for it to be useful for anyone, so really I'm just bragging.  Restaurant.com has this amazing promotion right now that you can get $25 gift certificates to all kinds of restaurants for $2.  Yeah, two dollars. 

I just spent $11, and got gift certificates to: Delilah's, Kyushu, Bluestone, Crossroads, Scale House, and Rogan's Corner.  $120 worth of food coming my way!

The deal expires at midnight, but for anyone who's interested:
Go to Restaurant.com, search for whatever restaurants you want.  Make sure to double check the fine print because the gift certificates have different stipulations, like the minimum you have to spend for them to apply (most are $35 or $40, so well worth it, but trying to spend $100 to get $25 off at a pizza place might be a little tough).  Then type in the promo code "TASTY," and everything gets 80% cheaper.  And then they send you a $10 credit in your email also.

Thanks, Dealmap.

An addendum to this post:  I recently tryied to use one of these gift certificates at Bluestone, and it was rejected.  Apparently the restaurant is in a dispute with Restaurant.com over the gift certificates and their ability to be used more than once.  I wonder if this is the case at other places?

And going back to #49: The Connection

            The Connection benefits from its (new) location—about four steps from the Chapter House.  While the Chapter House’s free popcorn is delicious, it’s not exactly a fully balanced meal, so after drinking there all afternoon for my friend Sarrah’s birthday the other weekend, The Connection’s extensive menu was calling my name.  I was curious to see how such a hole-in-the-wall could offer a full menu of Mexican and Italian fare, plus burgers and fries, soft pretzels, wraps, salads, wings, ALL the desserts, and something called “The Aphrodisiac”—a 10 inch heart shaped brownie with ice cream, whipped cream, and a chocolate rose.  Sounds more like The Emetic to me.

            Being the most indecisive person in the world, I sat staring at the menu for so long I missed the rest of Sarrah’s birthday, but finally ended up with one of the chicken wraps.  And, it was good.  Which was shocking.  Then again, by the time I finished reading the menu I hadn’t eaten in days--they could have handed me a week old Aphrodisiac and it would have been good.

            The bottom line?  After a night of popcorn and beer, you should probably order a salad.

Skipping ahead...#51!

Buffalo Wild Wings.  I know this is a chain, and it's not that exciting or unique to Ithaca.  But I've never been to one, and for Ithaca getting any chain franchise is a BIG DEAL.  We only got Target in 2006.

Just looking at this meal makes you fat.

The overall experience of Buffalo Wild Wings was excessive.  Too many TVs, too much deep frying.  The only thing they didn’t have enough of was waiters—one poor guy who looked like he was about to collapse was waiting on the entire restaurant, while 3 or 4 bartenders stood around watching March Madness.  I assume the bar experience of BWW is more reasonable, since you’re not trying to fill up on chicken nuggets and mozzarella sticks, and you don’t have to wait for the one waiter to get to you.  And presumably if you’re a sports fan, you’re pretty excited about all the televisions.   

They have more flavors of wing sauce than they do televisions, which seems impressive until you taste them (sauces, not televisions).  Turns out mild and hot aren’t actually different flavors—my roommate Jennine burned her tongue on the mild and I was unimpressed with the hotness of hot.   But the Caribbean jerk was at least an interesting combo of sweet, spicy and tangy.  Delish, but I think I’d rather have a cup of the sauce than the breaded fried nuggets it came slathered onto.   They could have fried my dog’s dental bones and I probably wouldn’t have known the difference.

So, go there to drink cheap beer, watch 47 different sports games at the same time, and snack on wings with even more choices of sauce than that.  Just be prepared to leave feeling ten pounds heavier—and with a nice 25 minute drive back up Rt. 13 to get home.

 

Guess what's closed?

First and foremost, Benchwarmers (link to a nicer review than mine, here).  I'd only been there once for drinks, and I really wasn't looking forward to going back so I'm not too distraught over the closure.  Also, for all I know it could have happened months ago, since no one I know has ever returned there after going once.  After being kicked out during the final few minutes of whatever important sports game they were watching, my friends decided it was worth the drive to the Plant for the next important sports game.  And now that Buffalo Wild Wings opened on Rt. 13, it was only a matter of time until Benchwarmers was driven out of business.  I would be sad to see a local company pushed out by a chain, except when said local company kind of sucked.

Next, Wildfire.  It was only open for 10 minutes, at which time it had no customers and then closed.  Now, the space is filled with what is rumored to be a cupcake-and-beer-bar, Delilah's.  Okay by me.

Finally, Lehigh Valley House.  According to my sources (ahem, the internet) it was the oldest restaurant in Ithaca, and dated back to the town's "railroad heyday," which must have been a lovely--if slightly mythical--time.  It was an old Ithaca landmark, though, and lots of townies (and even a few cultured Cornellians) were sad to see it go.

Anyone know of closures I've missed? 

The Ithaca Eating Project

I've been complaining lately that there aren't any good restaurants in Ithaca.  After driving around for a little while doing errands yesterday, I realized that there are a lot of restaurants that I've never even heard of, much less been to, here in town.  Most of them are Chinese takeout.  I got on the interwebz when I got home, and discovered....162 restaurants currently in Ithaca, to be exact (and not counting McDonalds, Subway and the like).  I also came upon this website, www.eatingithaca.com, and they're in the midst of eating at every restaurant in Ithaca from A to Z.  They're also chatting with chefs and a little distracted by other foodie-related things, but I like the eating part, so I'm in.


I counted up the restaurants I've been to already, and got to 42 yesterday.  Apparently drinking on the Commons clouded my memory of some of the pizza places that I've been to down there, because I realized today that I can check off Ameritalia and Sammy's.  How could I forget Sammy's, with it's famous-Republicans-eat-here window art?

A different kind of pizzeria....is it?

For a list of the restaurants, and where I've been, check out the google doc: The Ithaca Eating Project