A New Burger Shack Opens in Great Barrington
A good drive-in is the elusive essence of American summer. You sit at a picnic table and eat a hamburger or hot dog so good that you close your eyes to savor the moment. The Great American Hot Dog and Hamburger Company, which opened last week in Great Barrington, is such a spot.
The formula and menu are simple: Foot-long hot dogs, hamburgers (with a choice of toppings including avocado and grilled mushrooms), milkshakes and sundaes (including the “Fundae,” which has 12 scoops of ice cream and is served in a bucket.) That’s it. (Eventually, there will be French fries, too.) Chuck Hubler, who’s managing the red-white-and-blue shack and used to run Napa in Lenox, understands the mythic nature of great roadside food and the reverence Californians have for places like In-N-Out Burger. “We’ve mirrored this after the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park,” he says, referring to postmodern burger joint in New York City, which is operated by Danny Meyer who owns top-rated restaurants like Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern.
The savory all-beef hot dogs ($3.75 and $7) are grilled and served in a buttered split-top New England bun with a warm Indian relish studded with corn and dried cranberries. The burgers ($3.75 and up, depending on toppings) are wrapped in wax paper, which, for some inexplicable reason, is key to a good drive-in burger. So is juicy meat, really crisp lettuce, and a roll that does not disintegrate but does not overwhelm either.
The drink menu includes milkshakes ($5.50), Root Beer Floats ($5.75) made with SoCo ice cream, and the “Arnold Palmer,” which is half lemonade and half iced tea ($2), Thankfully, Hubler is not trying to create a souped-up retro experience; rather, he’s attempting to pay homage to the past in a humble way. “The whole idea is to be old school all American, and give people good value,” he says.
The Great American Hot Dog and Hamburger Company
940 South Main Street, Great Barrington, MA
Daily 11 AM - 9 PM
Posted by Dan Shaw on 07/24/08 at 09:11 PM • Permalink
The Trojan Tea Shop
The Accidental Restaurateur, Ex-Professor Kim Bach in the garden at Verdigris
“I inherited a tea shop in Park City, Utah from my mother,” says Kim Bach. Actually, this assertion is not entirely accurate. To begin, Bach’s mother, Bonnie Deffebach, now 85, is still very much in the picture, so not technically in a position to “leave” anything to anyone. Moreover, once the elder decided to retire from the combination teashop/art gallery business, she did not so much “leave” it to her daughter, as pack it up and ship it to her—cabinetry, apothecary jars, teas, the whole shebang. Unwieldy? No question. Unwelcome? Not entirely.
Bach, a painter and professor of film theory at Long Island University, was, at the time, living in New York City and spending weekends at her place in Hillsdale. For some time, she’d been toying with the idea of moving to the country full-time. So, with the teashop-in-storage in mind, she began poking around Hudson. A carriage house under renovation on 3rd just south of Warren caught her eye. “I watched as it was being worked on, thinking it would be such a nice building for a teashop and art gallery,” she recalls. Friends with businesses in Hudson warned her of the perils of being even half-a-block off the beaten track. She waffled. That’s when her mother swept into town, saw the building, liked it, bought it, looked around, and bought a couple more.
Teashop in a crate: just add water? Not quite. Bach got the big counter at Hudson Armory.
For the first couple of years, all that was served at Verdegris Tea was topnotch tea, lavender lemonade (the recipe for which Bach credits Teany, a teashop on Manhattan’s Lower East Side), scones, madeleines and lemon cakes by Sarah Lipsky, a renowned freelance baker who supplies a number of Columbia County restaurants. There was always an art exhibition on the gallery-room walls. The tea-drinking public, undaunted by the ostensible inconvenience of the location, beat a path to its door. Tea drinkers, it would seem, value serenity: The herb garden with tables out front, the good music playing softly inside, the light and airy gallery room, all seemed to please them, but they wanted more. Eventually their earthbound appetites put the squeeze on art. “People wanted to be able to sit,” Bach says. “We had this big gallery room, so we brought some tables in.”
Gradually, it dawned on Bach and her crew that lunch might be a welcome addition, but, lacking a chef, they couldn’t see how to pull it off. “Then one day Regina came through the door,” says Bach, still amazed at her good fortune. Regina Simmons, a CIA graduate who had worked at Central Market in Germantown, makes perfectly pleasant salads, quiches, and soups. But it is her apple pies, cookies, savory biscuits, and biscotti that are remarkable: One lemon-lime pistachio biscotti with coconut topping packs as much punch as an entire case full of anybody else’s sweets.
“We do all the desserts for the Metropolitan Opera live feed at TSL,” says the accidental restaurateur, ex-Professor Bach, with evident pride. “And we are famous for our weddings cakes.”
Verdigris Tea
13 S. 3rd Street, Hudson; 518.828.3139
Wednesday - Friday & Monday 11 - 6
Saturday & Sunday 8 - 6
Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 07/10/08 at 06:47 AM • Permalink
La Cienega: A New Spot for Tacos off the Taconic
UPDATE July 10—We heard today from our friend Teepoo Riaz that he will probably not be back at La Cienega because of differences with his partners, who are the landlords, too. He wasn’t sure whether the restaurant would be open or not, and he suggested calling ahead to make sure before heading over.
Anytime a new restaurant opens that isn’t serving “American bistro food” it’s a cause for celebration. And that’s why the Literary Lady sent me an urgent, enthusiastic email last week after her first meal at La Cienega, a one-week-old restaurant in Milan, NY (halfway between Pine Plains and Rhinebeck, and 1.4 miles west of the Taconic Parkway exit). She gave me a brief sketch on the owner: “His name is Teepoo; he’s Pakistani but running a Mexican restaurant and just quit his job as a litigator at a white shoe law firm.”
Teepoo Riaz, who had an all America childhood in St. Louis, is not another Manhattan lawyer-turned-restaurateur who’s had a midlife crisis—he’s too young. After practicing corporate defense for a couple of years, he decided what he really wanted to do was open a restaurant. To learn the ropes, he went to work for a big New York caterer as a banquet manager, which taught him what he did not want to do. “Catering in New York is about selling real estate for an evening,” he says. “I was interested in restaurants because I love food.”
Meanwhile, he and his wife, Dr. Marisa Kollmeier, an oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York, who has an infectious smile, bought a weekend house in Pine Plains. “I realized if I opened a restaurant in the city I would have to stay there on weekends, and I’d never see my wife so I decided I would open one here,” he says. “And yes, my wife the cancer doctor is a bartender on weekends.” When he learned the old Milan Roadhouse was available, he decided it would be ideal for the kind of unpretentious and fun Mexican restaurant he envisioned. “I lived in LA for ten years and once you’ve eaten Mexican food in LA you are hooked for life,” he says. “I hope people say our food reminds them of LA. It would be even better if they say it reminds them of Mexico.”
So far, La Cienega shows great promise. It still looks like a rough-and-tumble roadhouse from the outside, but inside it looks like a Hazmat team from Martha Stewart has passed through, giving the restaurant a fresh, clean pared-down country feel. If you’re craving a margarita, you’re out of luck because the restaurant only has a wine and beer license for now, but the Chilada beer cocktail—you pour beer into a salt-rimmed glass with lime juice—is a refreshing compromise. The tacos are the real thing: soft corn tortillas with diced fillings ranging from chicken and beef to shrimp and chorizo. You get a trio with bowls of rice and beans for $12. The chef seems to be timid when it comes to spice, and we added bottled hot sauce to the salsa and guacamole served with warm chips. But for a week-old restaurant run by a former Manhattan lawyer, La Cienega has potential to be hot.
La Cienega
1215 Route 199, Milan, NY; 845-758-8333
Wednesday, Thursday & Sunday 5:30 - 9:30; Friday & Saturday 5:30 - 10:30
Posted by Dan Shaw on 07/03/08 at 01:53 PM • Permalink
Bubby’s is the Burrito Stand of Your Dreams
Most people we know turn up their noses at trailers, except for the little trailer near the intersection of Route 9G and Route 199 in Red Hook (or Annandale on Hudson, depending on who you ask), which makes you want to turn cartwheels. It is the home of Bubby’s, a seasonal burrito and quesadilla stand that has become a local landmark beloved by college students, historic house buffs and serious foodies like Lora Zarubin, 
the author of I Am Almost Always Hungry, who blogged last year that Bubby’s was the “coolest and most original roadside food stop.”
Run by Bjanette Andersen, who grew up in Rhinebeck and attended Bard College, and her Mexican husband, Rodrigo Pak Sautto, the stand has only two items on the menu: a burritto (rice, black beans, cheese, salsa, lettuce, tomato with guacamole optional) and a cheese quesadilla that can be served with the limey guac too. “It’s not authentic Mexican,” admits Andersen, who lives eight months a year in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. “I’m told it’s West Coast style.” There’s only one table on the lawn and regulars know to bring a blanket for an impromptu roadside picnic. (If you want dessert, you can go to the adjacent Montgomery Place Orchards farm stand for fresh fruit.) 
Come mid-September, Andersen (whose childhood nickname was Bubby) closes up shop and returns to San Miguel where she and Sautto now run a cafe. It’s hard to imagine that she could find a more appreciative audience anywhere than on Route 9G. As the globetrotting Lora Zarubin says, “It’s grass roots operations like this that are so pleasurable because they are real and innocent at the same time.”
Bubby’s Burrito Stand
Route 199 and Route 9G
Red Hook, NY
Tuesday - Saturday noon - 5 PM
Posted by Dan Shaw on 06/26/08 at 06:19 PM • Permalink
(p.m.), a New Tapas & Wine Bar in Hudson Unveils
This Saturday evening when (p.m.), a new tapas and wine bar in Hudson, finally tears the paper off the windows and opens its doors, Lower Warren Street’s glamour quotient will soar. Co-owned by Mario Pollan and Kevin Moran, (p.m.) offers serious wines by the glass. In addition to covering the usual bases (sancerre, cabernet sauvignon, the pinots grigio and noir), they break news. Their red list includes Herminia Tempranillo and Hacienda Monasterio; whites, Burganes Albarino, Martnsancho Verdejo; and sparkling, Raventos Cava, Damas Gassac Rose. The fare is light and enlightened, and the atmosphere so convivial and relaxed it’s hard to figure out how it can simultaneously be so chic (definitely worth studying).
The answer probably lies in the personalities of the owners. Pollan, who is Vice-President of Design and Merchandising for a clothing company in Manhattan and comes by his love-of-tapas curcuitously--he is Cuban--is funny and easy-going. Moran, who left behind a career as logistics manager for Bodum, Inc., the Danish company that manufactures French-press coffee makers, to concentrate on (p.m.), is warm and sweet. At a very wet dry run for friends a couple of weeks ago (where our friend Sam Pratt took these photographs), Mario worked the room, while Kevin kept everyone’s glass topped off. Then they switched.
True-to-tapas form, the mostly finger food at (p.m.) is piquant and served in morsels; some arrive on sheets of paper, others on plates. The size of the plate dictates both the contents and the price, with Marcona almonds, cherry capers, aceitunas mixtas (mixed olives and herbs) @$3; sardines de Rianxo (sardines mixed with olive oil,onions and capers); albondigas al ajillo (meatballs in a garlic sauce) @$6; pesto shrimp @$9, and a plate of either mixed cheeses or meats (including, of course, the pride of Iberia, Serrano ham) @$12, or a combination of both meats and cheeses, @ $14.
Sharing is so fundamental to the tapas tradition that, in the back room, the (p.m.) partners have opted for one large communal table instead of several smaller ones. So if you get to chatting with a stranger, don’t be alarmed if he snags one of your capers and pops it in his mouth. That’s just the kind of place (p.m.) is.
(p.m.)
119 Warren Street, Hudson; 518.828.2833
Tuesday - Thursday 5 - 10; Friday & Saturday 5 - 12; Sunday 1 - 6
Closed Mondays
Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 06/16/08 at 01:01 PM • Permalink
Food Festival: The Long Day of the Knives and Forks
This Saturday, the Cornwall Free Library’s Food, Glorious Food Festival will have us covered in delicious crumbs from breakfast through cocktails.
The day starts at 9:30 with coffee and breakfast baked goods under the tent. But for our money, things get serious at 11 a.m. That’s when Judith Jones, to whom anyone who likes to cook or eat owes such a debt of gratitude, we should all be on our knees before her, will be interviewed by Alex Prud’homme. Who, you might ask, is Judith Jones? And, for that matter, Alex Prud’homme?
Well, Judith Jones was the editor at Knopf who fought for a book that had been turned down all over town, including by the publishing giant that originally had it under contract. Had it not been for Jones, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck might never have seen the light of day. And, had it not, there probably never would have been the PBS Series, The French Chef. And, without those two seminal events, we all might still be eating molded gelatin salads and Meatloaf Surprise. So, fellow foodies, on our knees!
Alex Prud’homme, as luck would have it, is Julia Childs’ nephew (that’s them in the photograph) and her collaborator on the lovely memoir, My Life in France, in which Julia/Alex tell the dramatic tale of how Jones hectored the higher-ups at Knopf into saying (a reluctant) yes. This is territory Jones also covered in her recent memoir, The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food. But this history-making told-ya-so is just one of the captivating tales in these lovely books. They are, in sum, stories of lives well-and-truly lived.
AND THAT’S NOT ALL!!!
The day is fully loaded with wonderful things to do, see, smell, eat, and drink. There will be a blind wine-tasting overseen by Elin McCoy, author of The Rebellious Wine Taster (may the cheapest one win!). And a panel discussion moderated by Joseph Montebello with Chris Prosperi, Courtney Febbroriello and Peter Elliot, the authors of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Restaurants, How They Work, Where to Eat…Globally, and More!. There will be a farmer’s market, a food-themed art silent auction, and a sale of gently used cookbooks and kitchen equipment at great prices. There’s a cooking class for little ones, and (how’s this for a bonus?) attendees are encouraged to bring their knives, as Nick Jacobs, a pro, will be on hand to sharpen them. Hello? I am so there.
Cornwall Free Library
30 Pine Street, Cornwall; 860.672.6874
Click here for a complete schedule of activities and ticket prices
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 06/11/08 at 12:04 PM • Permalink
The Greening of the Red Lion Inn
Chef Brian Alberg is rocking the Red Lion by focusing on local foods
Like the rock band Wilco playing at Tanglewood (on August 12), Brian Alberg’s running the kitchen at the Red Lion Inn is a case of cultural dissonance. Like many old guard Berkshires institutions, the Red Lion wants to maintain beloved traditions while developing a modern sensibility. Even as the venerable Stockbridge hotel innovates from the inside out by becoming greener (winning the Good Earthkeeping Award from the Massachusetts Lodging Association and buying as much food as possible from local farmers), many guests still crave the familiar. “The Inn’s signature dishes are roast turkey and prime rib,” says Alberg. “But they’re not mine.” They certainly aren’t. Alberg’s ever-changing repertoire depends a great deal on what local farmers are harvesting, and he’s proud to say that he spent more than $300,000 last year purchasing milk, cheese, beef, pork, bread, beer, vegetables and fruits from suppliers within a 100-mile radius of his kitchen. His current offerings include dishes such as Moroccan spiced Hudson Valley poussin, Steamed organic salmon Nicoise, and Medirerranean lamb ragout with polenta (as well as the obligatory turkey and prime rib.) The menu has the de rigueur list of credits where Alberg acknowledges the farms and producers who’ve made your meal possible: Equinox, Markristo, Bella, High Lawn Dairy, Stonehedge, North Plain, Farm Girl, Ronnybrook, Old Chatham Sheepherding, Rawson Brook, Blue Moon Shrooms, Berkshire Mountain Distillers, Cricket Creek, Jasper Hill, Bacon on the Side, and Hilltop Orchards.
This week, Alberg has designed a prix-fixe menu that celebrates local food in honor of Berkshire Grown Restaurant Week. From June 8 - 12, member restaurants will be offering a special three-course $25.08 menu for Berkshire Grown members. (A Berkshire Grown community membership is $40 and can be purchased online or at the restaurant where you’re dining, and it allows you to order two of the prix-fixe dinners.) Alberg’s menu for restaurant week:: Equinox arugula salad with Rawson Brook goat cheese and Bella Farms duck confit; Braised North Plain pork shoulder with Cricket Creek mac and cheese; Ronnybrook vanilla ice cream. Cooking with local ingredients isn’t as easy as it sounds because of the short growing season and the high costs, but Alberg likes challenges. (An avid motorcyclist, he leads bike tours of farms called Roaring Rambles a few times a year for Red Lion guests.) In order to be able to serve grass-fed lamb and beef affordably he does braises and ragouts with the less-expensive cuts of meat. He raises heritage-breed pigs on his farm in Columbia County, and their diet includes scraps he brings home from the Red Lion’s restaurant. “I make my own bacon,” he says. And if you’re wondering how he can claim there’s native corn in a dish this time of year, you should know that last fall he froze the kernels from 1,500 ears of local corn. He still has a few bags in his freezer, which will see him through until this summer’s corn harvest.
Berkshire Grown Restaurant Week Participants
Note: Restaurants will most likely be keeping their regular hours; reservations are advised.
Allium, Great Barrington
Baba Louie’s, Great Barrington
Cafe Latino, North Adams
Cafe Reva, Pittsfield
Castle Street Cafe, Great Barrington
Gramercy Bistro, North Adams
Helsinki, Great Barrington
Jack’s Grill, Housatonic
John Andrews, Egremont
Mezze Bistro + Bar, Williamstown
Napa, Great Barrington
Pearl’s, Great Barrington
Pittsfield Brew Works, Pittsfield
The Old Inn on the Green. New Marlborough
Red Lion Inn, Stockbridge
Route 7 Grill, Great Barrington
Stagecoach Tavern, Sheffield
Swiss Hutte, Hillsdale
Viva, Glendale
The Williams Inn
Posted by Dan Shaw on 06/05/08 at 11:38 AM • Permalink
The Saturday Night Special
Leave it to Matthew Rubiner to turn eating a prosaic grilled cheese sandwich into an event. A few weeks ago, Rubiner decided to start keeping Rubi’s cafe in Great Barrington open until midnight on Saturday nights (it closes at 4 PM the rest of the week) and feature grilled cheese sandwiches and cocktails. “Of the five best things in the world, grilled cheese sandwiches rank second (sorry love, peace and bacon),” he wrote in an email to his customers. “Come early for a coveted patio table. No reservations.”
When we arrived at 10:30 on Saturday night (after seeing The Caretaker at BTF), we discovered that Matt stops making grilled cheese sandwiches at 10 PM, but the joint was jumping anyway. We “settled” for the cheese and pâté platters ($10.50 and $12.50, photo below) and it’s hard to imagine that there is any cheese sandwich as delicious as these pâtés (which our waiter said came from Williamsville Inn in West Stockbridge.) 
It seemed late for cocktails, so we chose from the small but thoughtful list of beers that includes Nantucket’s Cisco Brewery Whale’s Tale Pale Ale. It was a perfect late night supper, and we drove home happy. Nevertheless, we were determined to try the grilled cheese and could not wait for Saturday so we went to Rubi’s for lunch this week. At $5, the Classic--comté on pullman white--is a scrumptious bargain. Besides using great ingredients, Rubiner has his own technique for making grilled cheese sandwiches: He wraps them in parchment paper before putting them in the panini press, which means the sandwiches never touch a dirty grill. The result? It’s just as Rubiner had promised in his email about the wonders of melted cheese: “When it flows like magma from seared, buttered bread, it ascends nearly to heaven.”
Rubi’s
264 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA; 413.528.0488
Monday - Friday 7 AM - 4 PM; Saturday 8 AM - midnight; Sunday 8 AM - 4 PM.
Posted by Dan Shaw on 05/29/08 at 10:00 PM • Permalink
Restaurants: An Awesome Indian on the Lake
Some secrets are not worth keeping, and the Bombay Bar & Grill in Lee is one of them. Located at the Black Swan Inn motel on Laurel Lake, it’s one of those hidden gems (well, perhaps, it’s more a diamond in the rough) that my friend the Vivacious Vegan introduced me to a few weeks ago. As you pass through the motel lobby, you can see the murky lake through the windows of the greenhouse dining room. The bright yellow room is incongruously forlorn, which I find beguiling and romantic. It makes me think that I’m inhabiting a short story by Pulitzer Prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri, who writes so affectingly about first generation Indians acclimating to American life.
While the lakeside setting makes the restaurant sui generis, the food and service are what make it memorable. Our waiter was the epitome of graciousness as we ordered Chicken Ammwala (the “signature” dish of Chicken Tikka cooked with mango and spices) and Palak Paneer (cheese in a mild spinach sauce). But when we asked for Bhamia Koota (spiced lamb with okra in a tamarind infused onion tomato sauce), he couldn’t contain a knowing chuckle, and we think we understood why. Bhamia Koota is described on the menu as a “Calcutta Jewish Specialty,” and it seems to be some sort of signifier for secular Jews like myself that we are not just welcome here but that we belong. (I would bet a million rupees that one out of two first-time Jewish visitors orders that dish, and I will order it again because it was at once exotic and familiar—comfort food that wasn’t bland.)
Everyone is made to feel welcome at Bombay Bar & Grill: the menu has about a dozen vegetarian dishes and another dozen vegan dishes, so it’s one of those rare places where carnivores and herbivores can dine happily in harmony The Vivacious Vegan can make a meal out of a single Dosai, an astonishing 18-inch long rice-and-lentil crepe filled with spicy potatoes. The buttery nan (left) is so good that my companion asked if they would wrap up the small piece left in our basket to take home. And while Bombay Bar and Grill has all the quirky charms of a family-owned business, I learned from its website that it is actually part of the Fine Indian Dining Group, which also has restaurants in places like Westport and Greenwich, CT. I also learned that Martha Stewart has featured chefs from this restaurant group on her TV show. (Is it just me or does it seem to be Martha Stewart Month at Rural Intelligence?) We should thank Martha, because she got four recipes from the executive chef—for Bhindi Masala, Chicken Malai Kabab, Dosa, Onion Khulcha—which you can print out if you click here.
The restaurant has a buffet lunch and Sunday brunch, but I prefer to (over) order a la carte, because that way there are delectable leftovers to take home—and, yes, everything tasted even better the second day.
435 Laurel Street, Lee, MA
412.243-6731
Lunch: Tuesday - Saturday noon - 2:30; Sunday Brunch: noon - 3
Dinner: Tuesday - Thursday & Sunday 5 - 9:30; Friday & Saturday 5 - 10
Posted by Dan Shaw on 05/21/08 at 09:33 PM • Permalink
Tasting: Apple Blossoms, a Walk and Some Wine
On Friday and Saturday, Furnace Brook Winery at Hilltop Orchards introduces its eagerly awaited Dry Riesling at the 6th Annual Apple Blossom Bash. In 2007, their Johannisberg Riesling won the Gold Metal at the Big E Northeast Wine Competition (having copped the silver just the year before), so hopes for the new wine are running high.
Our advice: first drink in the 30-mile views from the pristine back country trails on this magnificent property, then have your hard-earned share of nibbles and sips. For out-of-towners, orchard-and-vineyard owners John and Julie Vittori also have Garden Gables Inn in Lenox, where they are offering special rates this weekend in honor of the Bash.
Friday & Saturday, May 17 – 18, 1 – 5
508 Canaan Road (aka Route 295), near the intersection of Routes 41 and 20, Richmond 413.698.3301; 800.833.6274
Hiking, live music, hors d’oeuvres, and wine tasting; free.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 05/13/08 at 11:33 AM • Permalink
