Top of the Morning Cafe in Utica, NY

If you get hungry for breakfast while driving through Utica on the Thruway, Top of the Morning Café in north Utica, is a delightful, reasonably priced breakfast destination.

On the winter morning when I came to Top of the Morning, I pulled into the parking lot half an hour before sunrise. The restaurant was bright and cheery in the overcast dawn.

Inside, the restaurant has a large, bright dining room with a counter for diners in a hurry. On the walls are many appealing color photographs taken in Ireland. The photograph by my table showed the Cliffs of Moher, on the rugged west coast of Ireland.

The waitress was welcoming, cheerful and efficient.  On the menu are a variety of offerings. They include omelettes, pancakes, waffles and eggs. Also available are egg dishes made with egg whites and oatmeal.

I started with coffee.  It was hot and just strong enough.  Then I had two eggs over medium, with dry white toast and potatoes. The eggs and potatoes were just right and not at all greasy. Although the breakfast was cooked to order, it was also served quickly.

The café has a lunch and dinner menu. I did not look at them but, based on how well they prepared breakfast, this would be a good place for lunch or dinner.

Top of the Morning does not have a website but can be found on Facebook at

https://www.facebook.com/topofthemorningcafe 

The café telephone number is 315-507-3141 and is about five minutes from Thruway Exit 31, the main Thruway exit for Utica. If you want to locate the café by GPS or computer mapping, the address is 414 Trenton Road, Utica, NY.

Winter Storm Nemo



The day after the storm in Guilderland Center, New York


For now, it looks like the snowy weather in New York and New England has settled down. However, in mid-Long Island and mid-Connecticut, Nemo took its best swing, leaving up to three feet of snow.  Actually, since writing this yesterday morning, one reader wrote that the deep snow was more widely distributed than I thought.  There was 30.5 inches of snow 15 miles west of Boston!

To all my New England and Long Island readers: hope you are dug out soon and that your power and other utilities stay on or come back on as soon as possible!
  
 


The snow was great for snow-blowing. 
Photo courtesy of D. Holt




The snow is starting to blow around

    In New York’s Capital Region, the snow fall was eight to 10 inches in most places. The snow is light and fluffy.  Thanks to the gift of a snow blower from my friend Don, clean up was easy.  Later on, however, blowing and drifting snow across the highways may make driving challenging.

Before the storm, some odd things happened. At Empire Wine and Liquor, a steady stream of people lined up to buy red wine - - probably a heart-healthy move for snow shoveling.

At the Guilderland Hannaford, the shelves were thoroughly shopped - - but not stripped bare. However, all the shredded mozzarella was sold out. Did all those people at Empire decide they wanted a homemade pizza with their wine?

If you have a story from this snow storm, please comment below.  If the commenting software is too difficult to use, please drop me a line and I will add it in for you!

Trout Fishing Countdown

Hot Creek, near Mammoth, California. 
Photograph courtesy of D/ Greninger

New York state's trout season is approaching faster than one might think, opening in less than 60 days, on April 1st. 

In many parts of upstate New York, it is tempting to compare this date for the first day of fishing with the jokes and pranks of April Fools Day.  On a regular basis, hopeful anglers find streams inaccessible from snow drifts or ice - - or unfishable from high runoff.  In 1983, Ben Lockett and I were fishing the Battenkill on Opening Day and found ourselves in the midst of a snow storm that felt more like February than April.

Anglers have a doctrinal split about April 1st.  Some people go because it's time to get out of the house.  Even if conditions are bad or marginal, they think a bad day of fishing is better than a good day of a lot of other things. 

Others, say that fishing on April 1st is an empty ritual.  They prefer to wait until the water warms up and the insect start hatching for fly fishing.

Regardless of how you feel on this issue, Opening Day is getting ever closer. 

If you do not want to wait until then to fish, there is plenty of fishing around, weather permitting.  New York and California, for example, have catch and release trout regulations where the fisheries are open all year.

The picture at the top of this post is of Hot Creek in the eastern Sierras of California. 

When Dennis Greninger was at Hot Creek, he saw an angler fishing with nymphs.  This angler caught two fish while Dennis was watching.

A Few From California

One of the most fascinating things about our most recent trip to southern California was witnessing how winter comes to the region.

When we arrived, the daytime temps were in the upper 50's with a soft rain, similar to that in Ireland in the late spring. People apologized for "the cold," but leaving cold, overcast Albany we had no problems.

One morning, on the way to the car, we looked to the north from the parking garage. Guess what we saw on the San Gabriel Mountains, behind the palm trees?

That's right . . . Snow!  It rained in Pasadena during the night but in the mountains, the rain came down as snow.

The San Gabriels are a fascinating place.  They are implacable wilderness.  People who live along their edge are subject to mudslides, flooding and wildfires.  When these pestilences are not happening, the mountains serve up other surprises. 

One person we talked to had a bear regularly visiting his house this fall.

Here are the San Gabriels on a non-snowy day.

One of my favorite days of this trip was Friday, December 28th, when Dennis and his son, Ethan, took me fishing in the San Gabriels.  There were actually trout rising and the mountain vegetation looked more like fall than winter.

This is now my personal record for the latest day in the year that I have been trout fishing.  Some hard-core New York angling friends are not impressed by December fly fishing in southern California but it is a pleasant memory that will sustain me when the wind blows and the snow falls!

12 Restaurants for 2012

Here are my 12 picks for exceptional places to eat in 2012.  In all cases, the food was good.  In many cases, the dining experience was even better because it was spent with friends and loved ones. 

The Alabama Hills Cafe

The Alabama Hills Café, in Lone Pine, California the southern gateway to the Sierras, serves traditional, innovative and healthy breakfasts. When Dennis and I stopped there in mid-September, we enjoyed several different types of pancakes. While enjoying breakfast there, we saw, all around the room, happy eaters enjoying fruit salads, waffles piled high with toppings healthy and decadent or home-made pastries.



At the Barnsider in Colonie, an Albany, New York suburb, you have many choices. The first is whether to dine casually in the restaurant’s bustling Iowa Hawkeye Grill or in its formal, but comfortable dining room. Then you can choose from beef, chicken or fresh fish dishes - - or a vodka or gin martini. Steak and seafood are Barnsider specialties, but we know vegetarians who have enjoyed the restaurant’s extensive salad bar and potato/vegetable side orders.

Cafe Bizou, in Pasadena, California, offers a delightful variety of entrees.  Whether the entree is vegetarian, seafood or beef, the food is delicious.  The service at this restaurant is exceptional, with servers who are attentive but not overbearing.

Max, owner of Café Max in East Hampton, New York, bills his restaurant as “the Unhampton;” fortunately that slogan is only half true. Café Max offers the best of the Hamptons, without the cranks and crowds. The café has friendly staff, fresh ingredients from local farms and fishermen and welcoming table service. Although Max’s offers a varied, reasonably-priced menu, I keep reordering three favorites: the house salad with creamy tarragon dressing; the Max Burger and the dry martini - - straight up with a twist.

The Courtyard, a worldwide Marriott hotel brand, is one of our favorite places to stay. The Courtyard in Old Pasadena, California, has an excellent restaurant and room service. They offer filling, nutritious meals and snacks, served by friendly and capable staff. My favorite here is the breakfast sandwich: two scrambled eggs, cheese and sausage on an outsized English muffin.

The Green Street Tavern, on Green Street in Pasadena, California, served us one of the best lunches of the year, possibly the decade, this past Christmas Eve. The Tavern turns restaurant classics into gastronomic wonders with a combination of fresh, quality ingredients and well-chosen variations. For example, adding avocado to a turkey pannini and keeping it out of the sandwich press resulted in a light, yet filling lunch that carried me through a long afternoon and evening of last minute shopping and celebrations.

The appealing menu at Milano Restaurant, also in Colonie, offers traditional and innovative Italian dishes. Depending on your appetite and price; you can order a complete dinner or a pizza. Along with the good food, the restaurants bartender makes exceptional cocktails, particularly their Manhattan with Wild Turkey bourbon and served straight up.


Pinocchio’s Pizza in Altadena, California, a suburb north of Pasadena, offers delicious, reasonably-priced lunches and dinners. Our family has enjoyed the restaurant’s pasta dishes, pizza and salads. All these choices are delicious and served in an appealing manner. During fall and winter, an added treat at Pinocchio’s is a wonderful variety of football on television.

Ruby Tuesday’s is a national chain with a varied menu and healthy meal choices. I find the Ruby Tuesdays near Carrier Circle in Syracuse to be the nicest of the chain’s locations in upstate New York. It offers diners who have been in the car or at the desk all day a bracing walk to and from the hotel. Its food is fresh and appealingly presented and the staff are capable and welcoming.

The Tender Greens in Pasadena is part of a small chain of restaurants devoted to sustainable dining. Service is cafeteria-style but the food is anything but steam table fare. The dishes, whether vegetarian or omnivorous, are reasonably priced, attractively presented and made with tasty, natural ingredients.

Thai’D Up in Mammoth, California has good food and convenient hours for hungry and thirsty anglers - - and other travelers. The restaurants Pad Thai has a rich, brown sauce and many other Thai mainstays are on the menu. Thai’D Up offers a good selection of beers from national and local microbreweries.

If you visit Tom Cavallo's in New Hartford, a suburb of Utica, New York, you will find one of the best red sauces in New York state.  The sauce makes anything on the menu totally wonderful, including my favorites, a sausage and pepper pizza or linguine marinara.  There is also magic at the bar in Cavallo's: for some reason, any beer brand ordered here tastes colder, crisper and better than anywhere else.

Tricoastal Holiday Fun and Nostalgia

  The name of this blog reflects my and my family's love of the Atlantic, Pacific and Great Lakes coasts.  On Christmas Eve, all these coasts came together in Pasadena's branch of  Cost Plus World Market, a retail chain that is part Pier One Imports, part Trader Joe's and part "je ne sais quoi." 
  We had a delightful Christmas Eve morning at the store, looking at: housewares and glassware from places such as India, Tunisia and Portugal; chocolates from Canada; wines from California and Italy; and an excellent series of dog cards not found in the malls. 
  Although all of this food, drink and merchanidise are incredibly fun and wonderful, Pasadena World Market often hits the highest numbers on the eclecto-meter with its beer selection.  In September, they had a pumpkin beer made in western New York that had a connection to the Buffalo Bills, the only real New York football team - - which is destined for Super Bowl glory.
  Yesterday, the store hit another high on the beer ecleto-meter.  World Market now offers its customers the chance to assemble a six pack from a great assortment of imported beers and micro-brews. 
  Their inventory includes Genesee Cream Ale, in the short, iconic brown bottles that the Rochester, New York beer company used in the 1960's and 1970's. 
  Genesee was a strong regional beer brand.  At one point, it had a series of witty commercials that were narrated by the late Fred Gwynne.  Then it dropped out of sight.
  Now, Genesee is back.  I do not know how it will do with a new generation of beer drinkers and a new market on the West Coast, but seeing it in the World Market was a pleasant reminder of past travels. 
  My father took me on a college trip to Syracuse in April, 1972.  While we were stranded in a rural motel, waiting out a spring blizzard, we saw these television commercials with upstate expatriates in places such as Oregon, and ending with the comment, "I miss my Genny." 
  On one fishing trip to the Delaware River in the Catskills, my friend Bryce Butler and I fished this trout stream on a humid summer night.  Afterward, we found a restaurant open late in Hancock, New York that had organic cheeseburgers, before the concept was fashionable.  We had Genesee beer in long neck bottles with these excellent burgers.  The beer's taste and coldness made it one of the best beers I have ever had.
  Some years earlier, on a trip along the Great Lakes, I came to Sodus Bay, in Wayne County east of Rochester.  The Bay had a large building and dock complex which was Genesee's malt house.  At the mouth of the Bay was two long, sturdy breakwaters and a lighthouse. 
  While Sodus Bay was more neglected and used for recreation when I visited it, it was amazing to see that this place was once a major Great Lakes port.  In my mind, I could hear the sounds of railroad locomotives and cars banging in the yard and the sounds of ship whistles and horns in the bay.
  Genesee Beer is hardly one of those far madeleines that inspired Proust's personal associations that made him a best seller and staple in literature classes.  But seeing Genesee in the World Market this week was a surprise gift.  It reminded me of friends, family and travel in the past, present and future.
  

Eastern Sierra Eateries

Whether you are in a blizzard of mayflies on a trout stream or a blizzard of snow on the ski slopes, you will find lots of great, reasonably priced food in the eastern Sierras.

If you leave Los Angeles early in the morning for the Sierras, you are likely to feel hungry about the time you reach the village of Lone Pine.

Just off Main Street is the Alabama Hills Café, with a breakfast worth the long drive. The Café, named after the hills to the west of Lone Pine, serves traditional, innovative and healthy breakfasts. My friend Dennis and I both tried pancakes: Dennis ordered them with fresh blueberries, I tried honey wheat nine grain. All around the room, we saw happy eaters enjoying fruit salads, waffles piled high with toppings healthy and decadent and home-made pastries with a cup of coffee.

The Alabama Hills have been the setting for many movies, from early westerns to Star Trek episodes. I wonder if they came for a meal at the Café; oops, many of the films appeared before the Café was open . . .

For more about the region’s movie history, visit http://www.eugenecarsey.com/camp/alabamahills/movies.htm.

For anglers a key requirement of a good restaurant is that it is open before or after the fishing trip. After some action-packed fishing on the Middle Fork of the San Joaquin River, Dennis and I were driving through Mammoth, seeking a restaurant still serving at day’s end. Through the surprisingly dark late summer night, we found Thai’D Up. We both enjoyed Pad Thai with a rich, brown sauce and two different beers from a local microbrewery.

The next day, we ate a competent breakfast at the MacDonald’s in Mammoth. The food was a capably rendered MacDonald’s breakfast. What was noteworthy about the experience was how attractive this restaurant was. It looked more like a Victorian mansion than a fast-food outlet.

We had lunch in June Lake, at the Tiger Bar and Cafe. We had great sandwiches, a French Dip with roast beef and a Reuben. The server was capable and friendly; the food arrived just in time for several tired anglers.

After staying later on the stream the next night, even fewer restaurants in Mammoth were open. So, we went to a Von’s and got an assortment of appetizers, salads and cold cuts. We had these back at the hotel and accompanied them with one of the last bottles of Steelhead Red wine on the West Coast.

Before returning to LA, we had breakfast at The Breakfast Club. We had meals, excellently cooked and capably served. Sometimes simple foods, grilled steak, home fries or yellow cake, are the hardest to cook right. The Breakfast Club got the basics exactly right.

It was sad to leave the Sierras. However, I plan to return next year. It will be great to dine at these favorites again - - or to experiment and enjoy new restaurants.

Milano Restaurant in suburban Albany



The dining room and some dinner treats!

 Milano Restaurant, in Latham New York, is a warm, attractive place, in a suburban shopping center. It is a large-ish restaurant with lots of tables. Thanks to good interior design, the place feels busy but not crowded.

The restaurant kitchen is open to the dining room. My life dining out often includes regret, wanting to order something else about just after a server brings another dish to a neighboring table. Milano’s open kitchen offers a non-intrusive view of menu options.

Milano has excellent staff. The maitre d’ was welcoming. Kimberly, our waitress, was attentive without being intrusive. She was knowledgeable about the different menu entrees.

We started with cocktails. The Milano bartender knows that a person can never make a gin martini, served up with a twist, too cold. He or she is gifted at making a Manhattan straight up with Wild Turkey. The drink was so nice that I tried to duplicate it at home - - but had no luck.

The only drinking concern was the restaurant’s house Pinot Grigio, Santi Sortesel. It was drinkable but did not have any personality or zing.

The menu is appealing, with a nice selection of traditional and innovative Italian dishes. It has a variety of items depending on a person’s appetite and price; you can order a complete dinner or a pizza.

Milano’s opens dinner with warm and fresh bread with a dipping sauce. I started dinner with an Insalata Milano. The salad was generous and was filled with fresh vegetables.

For entrees, we had linguine all’ Adriatica and linguine with white clam sauce. The linguine in both dishes, spinach for the Adriatica and regular for the clam sauce, appeared to be homemade. The linguine all’ Adriatica had scallops, shrimp, calamari, mussels, clams, red peppers, leeks and tomatoes in a white wine sauce.

The linguine with clam sauce was capably prepared. The linguine was cooked just right and the sauce had a generous amount of clams in it.

There was a small dinner party next to us. We had a short chat with the two couples about the menu. It was nice to have people nearby but not intruding, as happened at one dinner at another restaurant, where an over served guest in an adjoining booth was declaiming loudly about special male medical afflictions he was experiencing.

This was a delightful dinner and we plan to return!

Bruscetta

Milano is located at 594 New Loudon Road, Latham, New York. 
The telephone number is 518-783-3334

What's next?

In the next few days, look for posts on dining in Albany and the eastern Sierras.  Two posts are almost ready to roll, they just need pictures. 

Hope everyone is having a great holiday so far.  Boy, 2012 rocketed by, didn't it?

John

Beautiful New Stamps for Travelers!

With the issuance of its Earthscapes stamps, the Postal Service has outdone itself.


The 15 stamp sheet includes aerial photographs of diverse American countrysides and cityscapes. The vivid and striking photographs were taken by photographers in ultra-light and regular aircraft - - and from satellites - - at heights ranging from several hundred feet above the earth to several hundred miles in space.

These stamps are immediately relevant to readers of this blog. As you fly across the nation, you will see one or more of the views on the stamps, which are grouped into three categories of earthscapes: natural, agricultural, and urban.

“Once you’ve seen the world from above, you never look at it quite the same way again,” said U.S. Postal Service Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President Joseph Corbett. “That’s why the Postal Service is proud to offer these Earthscapes stamps, which invite us to take a bird’s eye view of the land we all share.”

In the top row, we fly over America’s stunning wilderness. While a volcanic eruption scars the forests of Washington State, fog drifts over the timeless sandstone towers of Utah’s Monument Valley. In Alaska, a wide stripe that looks like a highway is a glacier, an immense conveyer belt of ice. The jagged white shards at its base, resembling broken glass, are icebergs, bobbing in a lake.

The stamps in the center row may look like abstract art, but they show five agricultural products: salt, timber, grain, cherries, and cranberries. Center-pivot irrigation systems create the beguiling play of geometric shapes in the middle stamp, although ground dwellers may see only sprinklers in fields of wheat, alfalfa, corn, and soybeans.

Urban life is celebrated in the five stamps in the bottom row. Highways corkscrew around themselves and neat subdivisions sport tiny blue pools. It’s our familiar world, shrunken into miniature — and seen with the new eyes that a fresh perspective can bring. Art director Howard E. Paine designed this educational and visually rich pane of stamps.

The only downside with these stamps is that they are so popular that they sell out quickly at post offices, including Guilderland, New York, my favorite mail stop. However, they can also be purchased from USPS.com   You may have to hunt for the stamps, but once you see them, you will know it was worth the hunt.