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.