Upon entering the night of the grand opening, I saw a table with a little fishbowl full of business cards. So, seeing that some sort of prize give-away was in the works, I threw in one of our Puente Flamenco business cards and thought nothing more of it. After all, I simply never win anything.

Much to my surprise, I was one of the first winners of a gift certificate, the perfect excuse to come back, sit down and really focus on the food. Which is exactly what we did a week later, the night before Thanksgiving. That is, after most of the students and all of the faculty have vacated the area.

Where people had been crammed in the week before, it was, quite to be expected, quite empty. Ashley, our very pleasant and professional bartender, brought us menus, got us our glasses of Shiraz (good, not mind-blowing), and took our orders.  She also ended up being a lot of fun to talk to.

I had the jumbo lump crab cake served with lettuce and fried tomato. It came with three mayonnaises on the side, one nicely green and herbal, another very mild made, I believe, with roasted red peppers, and a third that was very spicy which I adored. The crab cake was just a tad more mild than I usually like, but with the trio of mayos, anyone could make it taste just as they desired. House specialty potato chips were heavenly.

Dave ordered the grilled Gorgonzola pizza with candied pecans and caramelized onions. If this sounds too sweet, it was not. As I told beverage manager John Gallagher, I love it when a dish teaches me something new. This pizza was the teacher, and what better place to go for a lesson than university hill? You already know what each of those ingredients tastes like, but to convey what they did all together is essentially impossible. You live in Syracuse (or perhaps will be visiting?). Just go there and try it.  It’s well worth the small tuition you’ll pay.

Sitrus on the Hill
Sheraton Syracuse University Hotel
801 University Ave, Syracuse, NY 13210

Open daily 2:00 pm to 11:00 pm
Weekly jazz nights
315-475-3000

You know how it is when you get stuck in a rut. At the moment when you’re the hungriest and most brain function has shut down, all you can think of is that one item that you know they’re serving over at your usual spot… whatever that is.

So it’s Friday evening and we’re hungry and we just want some fried haddock.  Where to go? Well, we live in Eastwood and we’re fairly near to the Fish Cove in Shop City and I can’t for the life of me think of any other place in Eastwood that serves haddock (and I’m sure there are at least a half dozen). So Dave drives over there to pick up the fish and returns almost immediately. “The Fish Cove is gone. There’s just some pizza place there.”

This is what I get for sending a brilliant designer/musician on a fishy errand. He’s already got fried brains – how is he going to find fried fish?

I can’t believe that Fish Cove is gone. They always seemed to be doing such a booming business! But alas, these things happen. I accept his report as true (although it’s not). This is a good thing, because it forces my own fried brain to focus… focus… Where… is… the… fish?

Oh YEAH!  The Melt Shop! Silly us! We can walk over there. It will take us maybe five or six minutes to stroll over on this glorious summer evening. And we’re so glad we do.

We’d been in the Melt Shop months before. Times are tough, we’re not eating out quite as often, we don’t usually look for sandwiches. We wondered how the place was doing.

Quite fine, as a matter of fact! The place is still immaculate, the walls are now even more covered than before with fascinating huge photos of iron works and aluminum smelters, men doing some of the most incredible, hot, dirty work. I mean, they’re pouring molten steel from buckets the size of my house!

There are black and white checked table cloths on every table and the counter has five people sitting at it. Lots of room to sit and relax in here. A TV is going (the only negative point in my book, but I guess people like it) and the service is extremely friendly and spot-on.

We order the beer battered haddock. I’m not interested in anything but the fish so I order the sandwich without the bread. Who needs it? (Dave, as it turns out, but he’s a guy…) I just want to dip that fish in the ample tartar sauce that’s served with it. Utter simplicity, nothing to get in the way of the crunch of the batter, the delicate warm juices from the fish, the perfectly tender yet ample white flesh of the fish, and just the right level of tang in that sauce.

I eat the thing with my fingers, it’s so crispy on the outside. I’ll confess, I’ve been known to surreptitiously lick the plate in high-end restaurants… when the sauce simply could not be washed down a drain, when nobody else was left in the room, when the lighting was low.

But not here. In this brightly-lit dining room, I stick my fingers right into the tartar sauce and lick them while taking more bites of the fish. Shameful!

Heavenly.

Check out the Melt Shop’s website. Nice photos, all the information you need right at your fingertips (it’s not overdesigned by some college kid who’s more impressed with his Flash skills than with your need to find the hours of the restaurant). It’s a reflection of what you find at this restaurant: down-home, bright, cheery and hey!  it’s close to everything!

August is a tough month for restaurants. If you’re reading this, then do yourself a favor, this month. Pay them a visit. Then let us know what you ate there and how you liked it.

It’s not often that a great chef happens by to chat over the garden fence. But that’s what happened a few weeks ago as Dave and I worked out in the veggie plots.  Mike Sweetman and his wife and daughter were out for a walk and found us with dirt under our fingernails. We ended up in a long conversation about food, all of us more than a little pleasantly surprised to find serious foodies just three houses apart on the same street!

So when Mike got a job at the River House in Pulaski (north of Syracuse, NY, for you international readers), he started sending us emails detailing the evening’s specials and we just couldn’t resist. We travel for food, and 40 minutes on 81-north isn’t too much of a sacrifice for a meal like the one that awaited us.

River House is smack dab in the middle of little Pulaski, so you can’t miss it even if you try. It’s sitting on a spot that has had one hotel, tavern or restaurant after another, each one burning down in turn. Well, we hope this one doesn’t follow suit! It’s a new building with ample parking, a ramp and stairs up to the front door, and three separate rooms for the public. The first is the bar, a casual place for dining and/or drinking. Then there are two distinct restaurant rooms, one of which you see here – look at the picture over the mantle to see one of the earlier iterations:

We were seated in the next room over (didn’t get a picture of it) and, after looking over the menu, decided to go with the specials that Mike had put together for the evening:

The appetizer:  SURF AND TURF- Pan seared tenderloin and scallop medalions – shitake mushroom – white truffle butter:

I don’t quite know how to convey the series of sensations that this dish caused to take place in my mouth. Every bite was a descent into the depths of every flavor Chef Mike could bring out of the simple ingredients. I do not remember ever having had a scallop so expertly prepared, incredibly moist and tender, the caramelization and black pepper contrasting so pleasingly with the tender textures and flavors of the interior. Amazingly, the tenderloin provided the same experience, in its own beefy way. Even the bit of greens was an eye-opener. Heavenly.

Dave ordered the pasta dish, described by Mike thus:

PASTA – Shrimp & Angelhair al’ Arrabbiata – Seared jumbo shrimp – house-made arrabbiata sauce – aglio spinach.

“Arrabbiata sauce is made with whole plum tomatoes, garlic, basil, sugar, olive oil. It has a very faint spice and is sweet and just a nice hint of garlic. I know it may sound a bit strange; arrabbiata means angry. It was made by an old Italian chef who got pissed off one night and threw a pan of sauce that landed with another; someone tried it and loved it. There is nothing angry about how it tastes.”

Again, expert handling of the seafood, and this time a sauce that was certainly not angry-making, but indeed surprising. I don’t like sweet stuff in my dinners, yet in this case the wee bit of sugar was used like a salt or a spice. It just brought out the best in the sauce. Dave was very kind to let me have as much of it as he did.

My own meal was something I haven’t dared to order in decades, literally. Delmonico steak. I have fond memories of one of these from back in the’70′s, and every other one since then has disappointed. Well, not tonight. Mike managed to coax out all those deep, dark layers of flavor that a good Delmonico should deliver.

Delmonico steak – caramelized onions – white truffle butter – wild mushroom risotto:

The caramelized onions were the deepest brown I’d ever seen. I asked Mike about this some time later and he said that those onions are in the pan for over an hour. It takes that long for all the chemical changes to take place. This is dedication to an onion ideal.

The wild mushroom risotto was as good as my own. I don’t make a lot of really outstanding food (most of it is good to pretty good), but I’m picky when it comes to risotto being done right. I make a good one. But this one was every bit as good… okay, it was better. It was sooo good! When I need comfort food, this is what I want.

Most meals fall into one of three categories:

1. It’s pretty bad, but we’re traveling in upstate New York and there’s no good food for fifty miles so we’d better just shut up and eat.

2. It’s a decent meal. You know, most of it is average but one or two items are really good, worth considering a return trip.

3. It’s memorable. Everything is right – the lighting, the service, the food, the beverage selection. One or two items are truly outstanding and the rest is quite good. But mostly, you’re glad you came and will return some day.

But then there are those meals that just build, one course at a time, from one excellent experience to another. The care that the chef or cook takes, the feel that they have for what treatment would make these ingredients really sing, is evident in every single bite.

We’ve had two other experiences like this just in the past few months; once at Amada Restaurant, chef Jose Garces’ place in Philadelphia. We were eating their tapas menu and at one point, overcome with sensation, I simply started weeping. I couldn’t help it! Fue superior a mí.  It bested me.

The next time was at the home of a couple we happened to meet at an art opening in Albany. They guided us slowly through course after course, and at one point that feeling of overwhelm started to bubble up. Trying to look like a rational human being, I dabbed daintily at my eyes and admitted that it was all so delicious I was moved to tears.

And wouldn’t you know, it happened again at some point at the River House Restaurant – probably during the steak. You don’t get this with just one great dish. It’s like a symphony – every instrument has to be in tune and every movement has to be played not only expertly but with feeling and even love. If you have never cried at some point while listening to the Ode to Joy, then you might not know what I’m talking about.

But you might give it a shot at the River House. Tell them you read this blog and you want Mike’s suggestions for the evening. I’d be interested to know how it goes for you.

That’s Chef Mike Sweetman. Actually, he’s adamant about introducing himself as co-chef along with co-chef Sam Carpenter, whom he dragged out of the kitchen so we’d know who was responsible for part of the meal.

The RiverHouse Restaurant is at 4818 Salina Street, Pulaski, N.Y. 13142
Phone: (315) 509-4281

I went there today with my friend and we were just blown away by the menu. All the right stuff there, folks: local, organic, whole-grain (quinoa!) enough meat to keep us carnivores happy and plenty of vegetarian or vegan offerings so we can invite all our friends.

My friend had the Mexicali Blue salad which she pronounced delicious. I could tell; every last bit was gone by the end of the meal. I had their quiche of the day (ham and cheese) with a house salad. This was the big test, for I make a darned good quiche and I grow my own salad greens. The results? I’ll give the quiche an A- and the same for the salad. The quiche was, like most restaurant quiches, not quite as custard-y as I would like. It was flavorful in a soft, comforting way but there were no herbs to make me stop, close my eyes and say, “What is that in there?”  That would have been nice. The crust was fluffy and in parts flaky. Good enough. But overall it was as tasty a quiche as I’ve ever had outside my own kitchen.

The house salad was a surprise. I normally avoid these things like the plague, as they are invariably made with iceberg lettuce (maybe with a bit of romaine tossed in to make it look “upscale”), flavorless tomato slices, lye-cured, canned black olives, unpeeled, tough and flavorless cucumber slices, and maybe some kind of pickled pepper. This salad, though, was made with the best greens most restaurants can get: a nice mesclun mix. The tomatoes were tiny grape tomatoes bursting with flavor, and the Italian salad dressing automatically came on the side so I could decide how much to use. It did have the unpeeled flavorless cucumbers in it, a few sliced, bland black olives and again, no exciting herb to perk it up. But it was miles and miles ahead of almost any other “house salad” that one finds in upstate New York.

My recommendation to the chef: go over to Samir’s and get a few scoops of their pitted Kalamata olives and slice those up for your salads. Just four or five slices (one olive) would go far in giving them a bit more interest. And surely someone must have more mint in their garden than they know what to do with… it is, after all, a pretty invasive weed. Throw in a few of the tender leaves and your customers will think they’d died and gone to heaven. This is, from April to October, a practically no-cost addition to an already very good salad.

We’ll be back for many more food adventures, including dessert. This time we drank water (excellent, free Syracuse water in a glass goblet), so we’ll have to try the coffees as well. There’s free wi-fi in there, so you’ll want to add this to your list of fun places to sit and get that online work done.

Sparky Town is located at 324 Burnet Ave in Syracuse. Notice: it is a destination restaurant. It has no great parking – just three spots in the back. As in real cities, you will park on the street and walk about a block or two at most. It is well worth it.

Hours
Monday – Thursday, 8 am – 3 pm
Friday – Saturday 8 am – 8 pm
www.sparkytown.net
Phone: 315-422-8401
Fax: 315-422-8403

The staff is quite friendly.  The lighting is somewhat lurid fluorescence, so it’s definitely not a dating spot.  For the sports freaks out there, they have a huge TV.  For us, the lighting and TV aren’t our preferred decor, but the dining room is still nice enough that we like eating there.

Don’t just take it from us.  My brother is from Buffalo and lives about a mile from the famous Anchor Bar, home of Buffalo wings.  After having the OIP wings, he said, “I like these better”.

There are several OIP’s in central NY, and I’ve heard vague rumors that they differ in quality.  This can happen with any chain.  While we think the Eastwood one is great, I’d be curious to hear more about this.