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Canandaigua/ Lincoln
Hill Inn Everybody's favorite restaurant
hereabouts is Lincoln Hill, and with good reason. It has a grand setting
on a hillside overlooking Canandaigua Lake within earshot of the outdoor
Finger Lakes Performing Arts Center shell. It has tables inside and out.
It has an extensive menu. And the food is consistently good. Cheryl and Bill Ward, who were
teaching at Monroe Community College in Rochester, bought the 1804 brick
homestead and converted it into a large restaurant, opening fortuitously
in 1983 on the same day as the arts center shell. Inside are several
small, cozy dining rooms with pastel linens, antique lace curtains and
soft lighting. One room is strung with little white lights. A lounge
contains remarkable modern American primitive paintings of the lake and
the area as it was in the latter part of the 19th century by Adelaide
Cook Kent, who was influenced by Rufus Porter. But it was the open front porch with
its white-over-floral clothed tables, citronella candles and fresh field
flowers to which we were attracted on a summer's evening. It, plus an
enclosed side porch and a back patio called the Garden Room, seat 120,
half again more than the number inside. For dinner, you can order light:
an appetizer and a dinner salad, the day’s comfort-food offering
(perhaps an open-face prime rib sandwich or baked meat loaf with gravy)
or a “demi-dinner,” a smaller portion of selected entrées. Or you
can order grilled Jamaican jerk-spiced tuna, Louisiana jambalaya,
crab-stuffed jumbo shrimp, sesame chicken, duckling à l’orange, veal
piccata or filet mignon. Dinners come with a garden salad but
we’d spring for the signature mandarin orange and walnut salad with an
excellent honey-poppyseed dressing. We liked the tender calves liver,
grilled with onions and bacon, and the prime rib, a thick slab with
horseradish sauce. The ample plates, garnished with edible nasturtiums
from the gardens out back, yielded potatoes or rice, garlic cloves and
zucchini stuffed with vegetables and cheese. French chocolate decadence
is one of the good desserts. (585) 394-8254.
www.lincolnhillinn.com. Entrées, $17.95 to $28.95. Dinner nightly in
July and August, from 5; Tuesday-Sunday from 5, rest of year. Also
closed Sundays in winter.
People come from miles around for the
pasta in this red brick townhouse at the edge of downtown, we were
advised. And the restaurant received the highest rating from a Rochester
newspaper reviewer. Chef-owner Dominick Dardano's six
pastas are fairly standard, except perhaps for the Italian platter for
two including an antipasto, flatbread and a platter of lasagna, stuffed
shells, meatballs and housemade Italian sausage. Entrées run from whitefish marinara
to shrimp scampi and filet mignon. Veal parmesan, pork pizziola and
chicken marsala are menu fixtures. The starter of crispy calamari with
marinara sauce and the beef braciole stuffed with prosciutto and
parmesan come highly recommended. Diners enter through a convivial bar.
Beyond are two intimate, noisy dining rooms with pine wainscoting and
red and white oilcloths and curtains – a spirited place for regulars
who relish homemade Italian cuisine. (585) 394-3710.
www.casa-de-pasta.com. Entrées, $11.95 to $19.95. Dinner nightly, 5 to
9:30 or 10.
A fish is sculpted out of the wall at
the entry and waves ripple across the walls of this ultra-colorful
restaurant with a mod nautical look. It takes its name from the Greek
word for kitchen, according to chef-owner George Stamatis. There's a lot to look at in the
large, high-ceilinged space that once housed a Wegman’s supermarket:
faux columns, colorful angles, a tiled kitchen and hanging fisherman
lamps from Greece. “We tried to give it flair,” says
George, whose food follows suit. He, a chef and six cooks man the open
grill, producing a wide variety of wood-fired pizzas, pastas, panini,
salatas and the like. The choices are staggering. You might start with
bruschetta, polenta portobello, spanakopita or calamari salad. A cup of
soup and half a panini sandwich makes a light supper. So does one of the
thin-crust pizzas, or any of the dozen pastas, from pignoli with banana
peppers and ziti to scallops sautéed with spinach, diced tomatoes,
black olives, feta cheese and fusilli. Main courses are fewer in number, but
cover the bases: grilled shrimp with vegetables, wood-fired chicken
topped with mozzarella, twin veal chops and Grecian T-bone steak topped
with kalamata olives, plum tomatoes and scallions. George makes most of the desserts,
among them baklava, kahlua torte, berry tart and tiramisu. (585) 396-0360. Entrées, $11.50
to $14.75. Open Monday-Saturday, 11 to 10. Sunday, noon to 10.
Taken over by the owners of
Canandaigua Wine Co., the old Sheraton Inn was renamed the Canandaigua
Inn on the Lake. They redid some guest rooms, but concentrated their
efforts on the dining operation. An innovative chef elevated the fare,
and the elegant dining room with upholstered armchairs, shaded candles
and fanned napkins atop service plates is quite stylish. Big windows
look onto the lake. For dinner, expect such entrées as
grilled salmon with roasted shallot-citrus vinaigrette, paella, twin
pork chops topped with a spiced rum-cider glaze, roasted duck with peach
glaze and pistachio-crusted rack of lamb with sweet vermouth cream
sauce. Starters could be lobster cocktail with citrus crème fraîche,
shrimp or beef quesadillas and grilled portobello mushroom layered with
prosciutto, roasted red peppers and mozzarella. Locals like the
restaurant’s lakeside terrace called the Sandbar for a summer lunch.
The lounge is known as Baco’s wine bar.
(585) 394-7800 or (800) 228-2801.
Entrées, $16 to $25. Lunch, 11 to 4. Dinner, 5 to 9 or 10.
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