Restaurants Archives - Page 7 of 27

Restaurants

World on a Plate: Kelowna, B.C. cherry tomato salad

Posted on August 21, 2020August 21, 2020 by Pat and David

We took the photo above at the Terrace Restaurant at Mission Hill Family Estates Winery (missionhillwinery.com) in Kelowna, British Columbia. The property sits at the northern end of the Okanagan Valley, where Canada grows some of its best table wines and a lot of astonishing fruits and vegetables. Before it was wine country, it was peach and cherry orchard country and those stone fruits still thrive there. In more recent years, Okanagan farmers have expanded their row crops as well. Some of the best cherry tomatoes we're ever tasted were grown in the Okanagan. This tiny salad of fire-peeled cherry tomatoes, blueberries, prosciutto, Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, and paper-thin sourdough toasts was an amuse bouche at Terrace. It's seasoned with a couple of dots of balsamic...Read More

World on a plate: Welcoming tomatillos

Posted on July 10, 2020July 9, 2020 by Pat and David

As summer rounds the corner and comes scorching down the midway, the tomatillo plants in our garden couldn't be happier. The bees are buzzing and flitting into the profusion of yellow blossoms and the half-vine, half-branches of the plants are sprawling into every available space. We try tying them up, but how do you restrain a plant the grows like Jack's proverbial beanstalk every night? Answer: You don't. If tomatillos were frost-hardy, they would probably be more invasive than kudzu. Their seeds, on the other hand, could probably outlast a nuclear blast, and since we're not always as quick to clean the garden as we should be after the first frost, a few seeds become embedded in the soil. Once the soil temperature reaches about...Read More

World on a Plate: When in Rome…

Posted on June 19, 2020June 21, 2020 by Pat and David

While nothing quite compares with eating big plates of pasta at an al fresco table with the Pantheon in the background, we remain eternally grateful to the chefs at Ristorante-Caffe di Rienzo (Piazza del Pantheon 8/9, 06-686-9097, www.ristorantedirienzo.it) for teaching us two of the basic Roman dishes made with dried pasta. They are both in the photo at right—bucatini all’amatriciana in the foreground, and cacio e pepe behind it. In fact, we can almost hear the light jazz of the street musicians on the Piazza del Pantheon. If you'd like the recipes for the two dishes as the DiRienzo chefs taught us, see these two posts: hungrytravelers.com/learning-roman-pastas-1/ and hungrytravelers.com/and-then-there-was-amatriciana/. Both dishes remain among our favorites that we turn to when need a delicious but quick...Read More

World on a Plate: Chile en nogada

Posted on June 12, 2020June 8, 2020 by Pat and David

Memory is as haunted with tastes and smells as with sights and sounds. When we recall one of those senses, the others often follow. Just looking at a dish can transport us back to a moment in the Before Time when we still roamed far and wide. We can then close our eyes and taste and smell the dish and hear the clatter of plates and buzz of conversation in the restaurant where we ate it. HungryTravelers is devoted to bringing the taste of travel back home, but as long as physical travel is constricted, we thought we'd revisit some of those moments in food photos we'll post weekly. Since the dishes come from all over, we're calling them ‶world on a plate.″ With its...Read More

Patatas a la riojana feeds the pilgrim body and soul

Posted on April 6, 2020 by Pat and David

We have all become pilgrims, if only in spirit, during our days of worldwide plague. The sign above marks a bar in Plaza del Rey, San Fernando in Burgos, Spain, named ‶The Pilgrim.″ The insignia above the name shows the scallop shell of Santiago (St. James) on a field of blue—the universal marker along all the variants of the Camino de Santiago. We say ‶variants″ because there are innumerable paths that lead finally to the cathedral in Santiago de Compestela in Galicia, just as there are a multitude of paths to any form of enlightenment. One of the most popular routes of the Camino is the French Way across northern Spain from Roncevalles (where the Basques repulsed Charlemagne's forces led by Roland in 778) west...Read More

From the market’s parish church to the tastiest street in Paris

Posted on March 3, 2020March 2, 2020 by Pat and David

In Paris this winter, we visited Saint-Eustache as consolation for the closure of Notre-Dame cathedral. With its soaring spaces and grandest pipe organ in Paris, Saint-Eustache (saint-eustache.org/) provided a real spiritual uplift. Although the church's present structure dates mainly from the 16th century, part of the plan was loosely modeled on the 12th-13th century French Gothic cathedral—a hint of glory by association. Saint-Eustache was originally the parish church of the market district, known as Les Halles since medieval times. When Paris moved the central fresh market to the suburbs in 1971, many people viewed the destruction of the old market buildings as a crime against the spirit of the city. One of the side altars in Saint-Eustache memorialized the loss in a mass of statuary...Read More

LEON makes us happy again, this time with curries

Posted on February 17, 2020 by Pat and David

Between the ubiquitous Gordon Ramsey and ‶The Great British Baking Show″ on PBS, the long-battered reputation of British food is enjoying something of a rehabilitation. Moreover, the LEON restaurants, which launched in London in 2004, inoculated British cuisine with the idea that healthy eating and fast food were not necessarily mutually exclusive. The chain spread its gospel of ‶Naturally Fast Food″ to Washington, D.C., in 2018 and has started building more in the capital region. By our count, LEON Happy Curries (Octopus Publishing, London, $19.99) is the eighth cookbook in the LEON series showing how to replicate the restaurant's dishes and philosophy at home. But this book is a little different than the earlier ones. It represents the magnificent fusion of a homely European cuisine...Read More

Jeff Ruby’s brings prime beef pizzazz to Lexington

Posted on February 8, 2020February 8, 2020 by Pat and David

Every great American city deserves a great steakhouse but we confess that steakhouse chains give us pause. We're especially suspicious when the nationwide roster rises to 50 or more or when the chain trades on associations with various gambling destinations. We get it. Steakhouse spells success, glamour, ostentation. When you walk in, you might think that's the aroma of beef on the grill, but it's really the scent of money to burn. So when our friends in Lexington, Ky., suggested we all go out to eat at the newest pride and joy of downtown, Jeff Ruby's Steakhouse (101 West Vine St., Lexington, Ky.; 859-554-7000; jeffruby.com/lexington), we kept our expectations in check. The Lexington incarnation, after all, was following versions in Louisville, Nashville, and Columbus, Ohio....Read More

Honeywood showcases updated Kentucky cuisine

Posted on January 31, 2020January 16, 2020 by Pat and David

When we visit our friends in Lexington, Kentucky, they usually can guess our first question. “What's Ouita been up to?” we ask, referring to chef Ouita Michel. In the two decades since she and her husband Chris Michel opened Holly Hill Inn (426 N. Winter St., Midway, hollyhillinn.com) in a mid-19th century Greek Revival home, Ouita has led the dining revolution in Bluegrass Country. Ouita is fiercely committed to local growers and producers and is equally at home showcasing Kentucky products in fine and casual dining establishments. She now oversees nine restaurants and cafes, including two outlets of Smithtown Seafood (501 W. Sixth St., Lexington and 119 Marion St., Suite 160, Lexington, smithtownseafood.com). Here's the link https://hungrytravelers.com/at-smithtown-seafood-local-is-measured-in-feet-2/ to our earlier post about this unique collaboration...Read More

Happy as a pig in … well, you know

Posted on January 13, 2020 by Pat and David

The Pig: Tales and Recipes from the Kitchen Garden and Beyond is not, strictly speaking, a cookbook, although it does contain a lot of great recipes. It's more a lifestyle book (complete with decorating advice) touting a contemporary update of English country house living. It does, of course, obsess about food and the marvels that can be extracted from the kitchen garden. And the kitchen pigpen. And the kitchen barn. The book is distributed in Canada ($44) and the U.S. ($40) by Hachette Book Group. Here's a link to Amazon. Robin Hutson, wife Judy Hutson, and David Elton opened The Pig in New Forest, Hampshire, in 2011. That was the first of the country house hotels. Now a whole litter of them are sprinkled around...Read More