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Finger Lakes Rosalie's Cucina A plaque on the wall in
the rear foyer says this was “built with great love for my sister”
and, after listing the architectural credits, adds “with way too much
money.” Both the love and the money are manifest in the chic
Tuscan-style restaurant, wine cellar and bakery – a testament to the
late Rosalie Romano from Phil Romano, the restaurant impresario who
started the Fuddrucker’s chain. It seems that Phil, who
grew up in nearby Auburn and lives in Texas, still summers on
Skaneateles Lake and “wanted a nice place to eat,” in the words of
co-owner Gary Robinson. “He’d been all over Italy, so he built this
the way he wanted it for himself.” His $1.5 million
investment includes a stylish 120-seat restaurant backing up to a
designer’s dream of an open kitchen, a downstairs wine cellar and an
upstairs Romano Room for private parties, a bakery, an outdoor bocce
court, a small vineyard for show, and an elaborate herb layout and
vegetable garden for real. The
result: The hottest culinary establishment in the northern Finger Lakes
area. Without advertising, no press kit and not even a listing in
Skaneateles or Finger Lakes promotional materials several years after
opening, the place was mobbed nightly, and up to two-hour waits were the
norm on weekends. The bocce court, the wine cellar and a delightful
Mediterranean-style courtyard – all holding areas for the waiting
crowds, who are given bread, olives and cheese – get quite a workout. Inside the salmon-colored
building identified by a sign so small we missed it on the first pass is
a dark and spacious dining area understated in white and black. Black
chairs flank well-spaced tables covered with white butcher paper over
white cloths. A few columns break up the expanse. The white walls are
enlivened with hundreds of splashy autographs of customers, who pay $25
each to charity to enshrine their name and the date for posterity. Most
of the color comes from the open kitchen at the end of the room, where
cooks work amid hanging ropes of garlic, arrangements of bounty and
chickens roasting on the rotisserie. Seven chefs, most of whom
had been executive chefs elsewhere, team up with head chef Greg Rhoad to
vary the menu daily. The specialty is prime meats, as in aged New York
strip steak and grilled veal loin chop. The grilled lobster tails with
orzo and spinach and the lamb loin with white wine and garlic are done
according to family recipes. So are the scampi alla Rosalie (with
artichokes and garlic butter) and the veal piccata. Portions are huge, as we
learned upon sampling the signature farfalle con pollo (chicken with
pancetta, asiago cream, red onions and peas). That and one of the
enormous salads were plenty for two to share. Even so, part of the pasta
dish went home in a foil wrap shaped like a swan, along with several
loaves of the dynamite bread that begins the meal (extras are freely
given and accepted at the end of the evening). Antipasti include
carpaccio, pizza margherita, manicotti, steamed mussels and grilled
portobello mushrooms. Of the insalatas, the one with arugula,
prosciutto, reggiano and lemon is special. The homemade desserts
change daily. The pastries and breads come from Crustellini’s,
the bakery at the rear of the establishment, where several varieties of
sensational “hand-made breads” are for sale Wednesday-Sunday from 9
a.m. A strolling mandolin
player serenades tables and adds a touch of Italian charm. Rosalie came
in most nights to be hostess before passing on to her eternal reward.
The staff continues her legacy in this cucina that love built. (315) 685-2200. Entrées,
$20 to $36. Dinner nightly, 5 to 9 or 10.
Mirbeau
Inn & Spa The restaurant is a highlight of this new $7-million luxury resort patterned after a French country estate and notable, in the words of a Syracuse newspaper headline, for “Monet and Money.” Across the lobby from the spa area is the Mirbeau Dining Room, with beamed ceiling, French and American impressionist paintings on the walls, French antiques and a terrace for outdoor dining. Executive chef Edward J. Moro cooked at the Little Nell Hotel in Aspen, Colo., and at the historic Hotel Hershey in his Pennsylvania hometown. Here he offers what is touted as “Mirbeau Estate cuisine,” available to the public as well as spa guests. The food and service are impeccable and the terrace setting magical, according to innkeeper-restaurant friends from Ontario. The dinner menu changes seasonally. The meal is available à la carte or prix-fixe, $59 for four courses or $64 for five courses, plus canapés to start and les mignardises to finish. Start with oysters on the half shell with ginger mignonette, house-cured smoked salmon with potato crisps and crème fraiche, or venison carpaccio with romaine hearts, reggiano and a lemon-dijon-caper vinaigrette. Or how about a hearty sweet potato and vanilla soup with jumbo prawn and andouille sausage? Main courses could be pesto-marinated halibut with wild mushrooms, butter-braised Maine lobster, Hudson Valley duck breast with sundried cherry sauce, garlic-crusted beef tenderloin with bordelaise sauce, and “the year’s first lamb chop” with white beans and lamb cassoulet. Desserts range from vanilla crème brûlée with almond biscotti and warm chocolate cake with bourbon ice cream and toasted walnuts to a trio of sorbets with fresh fruit. Lunch is similarly exotic, from a four-course tasting menu ($32) to a smoked salmon BLT or sautéed beef tenderloin. (315) 685-5006 or (877) 647-2328. Fax (315)
685-0661. Dinner entrées, $29; prix-fixe, $59 and $64. Lunch daily,
11:30 to 2:30. Dinner nightly, 6 to 9:30.
Ensconced next to Talbots
in the Community Corners shopping plaza in tony Cayuga Heights, this
storefront operation has matured with age, vaulting into the ranks of
best in Ithaca. Starting small and with a decor that was plainer than
plain, it has expanded to offer three dining rooms seating a total of
100 and now sports crisp, chic decor in white and brown. Each table is
topped with flowers and a votive candle, and fresh flowers sprout in
wall-mounted vases as well. Hands-on chef-owners James
and Heidi Larounis, who moved here from the Four Seasons Hotel in
Philadelphia, are known for imaginative American fare with Mediterranean
flair, beautifully presented. The dinner menu ranges
widely, from bacon-crusted monkfish with a red wine sauce and
bayou-style roast swordfish and scallops with a cilantro-saffron fish
broth to Mongolian flame-roasted pork loin with tamarind-lemongrass
sauce and Mediterranean chargrilled rack of lamb with a lemon-mint demi-glace.
Don’t be surprised to find a teriyaki tofu steak and duck à
l’orange on the same page. Also available are inventive brick-oven
pizzas (one of duck, lingonberry and sweet potato) and assertive pastas
and noodles, including the Heights macaroni and cheese. Everything comes
with choice of Greek or caesar salad. Starters could be
portobello mushroom, honey-coconut tempura shrimp, caramelized sea
scallops Greek style and sautéed crab cake served on a bed of shredded
barbecue pork shoulder with a roasted red pepper-pineapple salsa. Highly
rated desserts range from baklava to crème brûlée. The award-winning wine
list is deep and varied. So is the roster of single-malt scotches. (607) 257-4144.
www.heightscafé.com. Entrées, $22.95 to $28.95. Lunch, Monday-Friday
11:30 to 2:30. Dinner, Monday-Saturday 5 to 9 or 10.
The downtown space that used to be the main floor of Rothschild’s department store is unrecognizable in its latest transformation. The owner of the family-owned Thai Cuisine restaurant (see below) went off on his own in 1997, opening the stylish Madeline’s at a prime corner of Ithaca Commons. Sunit ("call me Lex") Chutintaranond and a friend, Phoebe Ullberg, started with a patisserie named for a favorite character from French children’s literature. The establishment has since expanded into the city’s handsomest restaurant. Slick and urbane, it would appear to be more at home in Manhattan than in upstate Ithaca. The look is modern-minimalist Asian, colorful and vaguely art deco, with a bar and tables spaced well apart on several levels. Gregarious Lex, the head chef, oversees Pacific Rim fusion fare that dazzles in flavor and execution. “We call it East meets West,” he says. In his lately expanded kitchen, “we can do anything.” Changing the menu every couple of months, he and his kitchen staff might pair French and Japanese or Italian and Asian. For dinner, they could offer shrimp in a roasted chile and coconut milk sauce over green tea rice or broiled sea bass marinated in a light miso-jalapeño sauce. They might serve grilled pork loin with a sundried cherry and pancetta veal demi-glace, and finish the New York sirloin with a port and three-peppercorn sauce. Accompaniments could be five-root salad, purple slaw, Asian greens, steamed baby bok choy, garlic-sesame bean sprouts, spinach ohitashi and chilled steamed napa cabbage. Starters are as simple as grilled Thai-style calamari over buckwheat noodles and as complex as poke, a Hawaiian seafood preparation, served sashimi-style and seasoned with seaweed, chiles, onions and such. Crisp lobster rolls are served with a roasted chioli, carrot and tarragon aioli. The house-baked focaccia with caramelized onions and kalamata olives is to die for. Ditto for the desserts, which fill sixteen feet of display cases in the restaurant. Pastry chef Teresa Miller prepares up to twenty patisserie-style treats a night from a repertoire of more than 50. We’ve heard their praises sung across the city. The bar features more than 80 single-malt scotches as well as rare cognacs, grappas and small-batch bourbons. (607) 277-2253. www.madelinesrestaurant.com. Entrées.
$17 to $22. Dinner nightly, 5 to 10 or 11.
Peripatetic Ithaca restaurateur Lex Chutintaranond spent $800,000 to transform a video store into a showplace Italian restaurant that opened with great buzz at the turn of the new year 2003. Four designers took four months to ready a space that a fellow restaurateur called “very dramatic – not what you expect to find in Ithaca.” The 160-seat restaurant is quite a sight, Lex agreed – “people think it belongs in Manhattan or San Francisco or Florida.” He said the building lent itself to being a replica of an Italian house, with a sunken seating area evoking a Roman bathhouse surrounded by columns in the front, a large fireplace and bar, and a remarkable ceiling mural at the end near the open kitchen. He named it for “a beautiful, mysterious woman who comes in and says, “Hey, eat your food, eat your pasta.’” Lex took his chef to Italy to prepare a menu of regional Italian cuisine. So, hey, eat your pasta – you’ve got quite a selection, from wild mushroom ravioli with walnut sauce to taglierini with tuna sauce to orecchiette with wild boar sausage and broccoli rabe to fettuccine with duck ragout. To start, how about semolina-crusted fried calamari, rosemary-lemon shrimp with a lima bean salad, beef carpaccio with shaved parmigiano-reggiano and truffle oil or grilled wild boar sausage over sautéed bitter greens? Move on to secondi like poached red snapper in a wine-tomato sauce, Liugurian shellfish stew, grilled swordfish with a lemon-oregano sauce, balsamic roasted half chicken with eggplant relish and herbed polenta, braised veal shank with saffron risotto and T-bone steak florentine. Only the seriously hungry have room for the evening’s sweets. (607) 273-9292. Entrées, $15 to $23. Dinner nightly, 4:30 to 11 or midnight.
Take a late-blooming New Jersey cooking instructor and caterer. Have her vacation in the Finger Lakes and fall in love with a 100-year-old farmhouse overlooking Seneca Lake. She and her husband spontaneously decide to buy the place to open a small restaurant. She spends her time prepping and cooking, he commutes weekends from New Jersey and voila! “Here I can live my dream,” says Suzanne Stack. Her little Brigadoon – a “pure” restaurant with an oddball name – reflects a way of life, connecting indigenous food with the land. Suzanne cooks with ingredients from her backyard organic garden as well as from local farmers, cheesemakers and vintners to create a dining experience that captures the flavor of the Finger Lakes. From the initial amuse-bouche (perhaps a shot glass of creamy tomato soup with a tiny cheese puff) to the final plate of petit-fours, diners are in for a country-chic treat without pretense. The menu is seasonal and modest – generally a couple of appetizers, a soup and two salads and no more than five entrées. You might start with a rich and creamy asparagus soup, poured into a bowl at the table. More complex starters are a charlotte of lump crabmeat, asparagus and fingerling potatoes with a leek vinaigrette and a quartet of pan-seared diver scallops crowned with capers, shallots and almonds atop a swirl of madeira-mirin glaze. Main courses typically range from Asian-marinated yellowfin ahi tuna with savoy cabbage slaw to filet mignon seared with garlic mashed potatoes and a port wine sauce. The signature muscovy duck breast might turn out savory with olives, lemon confit and a potato-leek gratin layered with goat cheese from Lively Run Goat Farm in nearby Interlaken. Another time it could arrive sweetened, fanned around the plate in slices with a port wine sauce, pinenuts and currants. The rack of lamb might be sauced with local cabernet wine and accompanied by baked polenta and ratatouille. Many diners opt for the cheese course ($10), a choice of three from perhaps five local and imported, served with appropriate fruit and breads. Desserts generally combine Finger Lakes fruit and Suzanne's homemade ice cream, as in an apple galette with toasted almonds topped with vanilla ice cream. Bob Stack put together the wine list – about 30 vintages from the Finger Lakes, and the rest from France, Italy and Australia. He also tends the herb and vegetable garden as well as serving as a line cook on weekends between five-hour commutes from their home near the Jersey Shore. The cheery dining room, looking properly farm-like, has ten well-spaced tables. Adjacent is a private dining room with a long pine farm table for ten with shelves holding Suzanne’s collection of provençal pottery and a wall of 300-plus cookbooks. Four bistro tables on the front porch yield a view of the sunset across the lake. (607) 582-7545. www.suzannefrc.com. Entrées, $19
to $26. Dinner Thursday-Sunday 5 to 9, June-October, Friday-Saturday
off-season. Closed January and February. Simply
Red Village Bistro Some of the area’s most imaginative food is served up in this storefront diner turned spirited bistro. Red-haired chef-owner Samantha Izzo wears a red baseball cap as she cooks in a snug open kitchen for a convivial crowd at booths and tables in an urbane, “simply red” place from table cloths to walls to the red-related words painted whimsically around the ceiling. Local artworks and live music often follow the theme. Self-taught Samantha, a native of South Africa and much traveled for her years, cooked in Boston before moving to the Finger Lakes in 2002 with her husband Gary, a theater producer from Syracuse. Her fare is an eclectic mix of flavors from Provence, Spain, Africa, Mexico and, on Mondays, the American South, reflecting time spent in Atlanta. The always-changing menu is short, innovative and sometimes provocative (as in her dessert of “slow ass ginger spice apple cake” on a December night). To start, the soup might be roasted garlic-french onion and the salads could include quail à l’orange or a specialty she calls Mexican flowers featuring chile-lime spiced pumpkin seeds, grilled chorizo, avocado chunks and banana chips tossed with mixed greens and more in an orange-chipotle vinaigrette. Appetizers could be a black truffle mousse, steamed mussels with the works or “killer shrimp” – jumbo shell-on shrimp steamed in Ithaca Beer Co. nut brown ale and a spicy cajun sauce. Main courses change weekly to allow “the culinary bounty of local producers to inspire the dishes we prepare.” There are always a couple of vegetarian dishes (think pad Thai, linguini primavera or stuffed acorn squash). She might bake parmesan-crusted monkfish topped with sliced potato and layered with oven-roasted tomatoes in a lemon beurre blanc, roast half an organic chicken with shallots, smoked bacon, red potatoes and apple chunks in a white wine and thyme broth, and offer herb-seared tenderloin medallions topped with a wild mushroom-sherry cream sauce and served over basil whipped potatoes. Dessert could be cappuccino mousse nestled in dark chocolate cups on a bed of sabayon, blackberry marsala trifle layered with mascarpone custard and chocolate-raspberry torte finished with rum sabayon. Shrimp and grits, country-style pork ribs and grilled cajun ribeye steak are offered on Monday evenings, which feature Southern-style food and old-time Appalachian mountain music and turn out to be the busiest night of the week. Live music is offered several other nights as well. With her newborn daughter at her side, “Sam” expanded the bistro’s schedule in 2006 from four to six nights a week, including Mexican Night on Tuesday. (607) 387-5313. www.simplyredbistro.com. Entrées.
$14.95 to $24.95. Dinner, Monday-Saturday 5 to 10. Daño’s
Heuriger on Seneca A classified ad in the New York Times led former Czech ballet dancer Daño Hutnik to Ithaca, where he opened an acclaimed downtown restaurant called variously Daño’s on Cayuga and Daño’s Vienna that was widely considered the best in the city. His seasonal Viennese-style deli-pub at Standing Stone Vineyards inspired him to bigger things. He and his wife, artist Karen Gilman, closed their chic Ithaca bistro to open a larger enterprise in 2005 on property overlooking Seneca Lake south of Wagner Vineyards. The result is America’s first heuriger (pronounced hoy-rig-er), similar to a wine bar outside Vienna. Visitors pass a kitchen herb garden as they enter the airy and modernistic, architect-designed building with huge windows onto the lake. Visible through an inside window in front is an open kitchen where Daño does the cooking and Karen the baking. Display cases show what’s available beneath a menu written in fancy Viennese script on a black wall. Beyond is an elegant yet casual two-level dining room full of Karen’s large paintings, handcrafted tables and earth colors, seating about 90. Outside the soaring windows is a seasonal dining terrace for 50. Customers pick and choose their meal – as little or as much as they want – at the display counter or from servers who take wine orders and deliver the food. They can come in for a snack or linger all evening. Some of the rustic European food is unfamiliar, Karen explains, so people like to see what they’re ordering as they assemble their meals family-style for sharing. Guests liken the experience to that of Manhattan’s ground-breaking Craft restaurant, although with local ingredients and not so fancy nor expensive. Daño’s offers an enticing selection of breads and spreads, salads, charcuterie and rotisserie items, entrées and side dishes (some of them vegetarian) as well as Karen’s luscious sweets. Terrines, bratwurst, smoked trout, Hungarian sausage, cold poached salmon, roast pork, wiener schnitzel, chicken paprikash with spaetzle, wiener schnitzel, pan-fried catfish – you name it and Dano’s probably has it. Snack on liptauer cheese, the Austrian house specialty, or some of the other seven spreads to dab on the assorted contents of an artisanal bread basket. Perhaps you’d like to try Hungarian goulash or Viennese potato salad. Feast on mussels steamed with Viennese sausage in local wine; a farmer’s plate of pork shank, knockwurst and smoked pork chop on a bed of braised sauerkraut with Viennese dumplings, or a Viennese bento box (“a taste of everything” for $17.95). The initial all-Finger Lakes wine list has been supplemented by a few from Austria. Daño’s heuriger was filmed just prior to its opening on a national TV show called Opening Soon on the Fine Living channel here and the Food Network in Canada. (607) 582-7555. www.danosonseneca.com. Entrées,
$12.95 to $17.95. Open daily, noon to 9, April-November; Thursday-Sunday
noon to 8, rest of year.
The Inn at Glenora Wine
Cellars offers 30 upscale guest rooms and an appealing restaurant in a
new $5 million building straddling a hillside overlooking Seneca Lake,
behind and beneath the winery. The view of the lake and
vine-covered hillsides here is arguably the most spectacular of any in
the Finger Lakes. At one end of the sprawling building is a 150-seat restaurant, a knockout of a space with vaulted ceiling, white walls with wood trim and well-spaced tables decked out in green and beige. Chef Joseph Sutton has
revised the menu to include appetizers like baked shrimp and brie in
puff pastry, Atlantic clam fritters and blue crab cakes with jalapeño
tartar sauce. Entrées range from Caribbean-seasoned yellowfin tuna on a
bed of roasted red pepper coulis to grilled filet mignon with choice of
sauces. Limoncello shrimp scampi and veal marsala are sauced with the
company’s products. In season, the prime
attraction is the spacious rear deck, where we were fortunate enough to
book a table with an unencumbered lake view. Dinner began with an amusé,
tapenade with crackers, to accompany a $13 Glenora chardonnay, selected
from a list of Glenora wines plus those from “our neighbors along
Seneca Lake.” A loaf of bread sliced on a board and a choice of
excellent salads (one bearing grapes, toasted pine nuts and shaved
ricotta on baby greens) came next. Main courses were excellent Montauk
scallops served with a corn salsa and herbed risotto cake and succulent
medallions of grilled sea bass, sauced with herbed pinot blanc and
served with roasted Israeli couscous. Dessert was a flavorful
port-poached pear and ice cream. At breakfast, we were
impressed with the Veraisons poached eggs, topped with crabmeat and
hollandaise sauce and served over herbed risotto cakes. Super-sounding
salads, interesting sandwiches (smoked salmon, a crab cake po-boy) and
entrées like rock shrimp scampi sauté and baked salmon oscar are
featured at lunch. (607) 243-9500 or (800)
243-5513. Entrées, $18 to $26. Lunch daily, 11:30 to 3. Dinner nightly,
5 to 9 or 10, to 8 midweek in winter.
The Knapp family launched one of the earliest and best of the Finger Lakes winery restaurants at the rear of their winery, which they sold recently to the principals of Glenora Wine Cellars. The culinary tradition continues in an interior dining room that opens onto a trellised terrace where vines grow above, herb and flower gardens bloom beyond, vineyards spread out on three sides, you can see or hear wild turkeys and pheasants, and bluebirds fly all around. It's a delightful setting for some inspired meals. New chef Eric Pierce, son of the one of the winery’s owners, changes the menus seasonally to take advantage of local ingredients. The dinner menu produces a choice of six entrées. They range from baked shrimp tossed with vidalia onions in a chipotle sauce and served with goat cheese toasts and seasonal vegetables to grilled flank steak served with rice pilaf over a bed of roasted corn-pancetta salsa. A specialty is New Zealand racks of lamb, smoked with hickory and rosemary, topped with a mint gremolata, and served with roasted garlic polenta. Starters could be crab cakes with a chipotle dipping sauce or a wild mushroom sauté sauced with a Knapp cabernet bordelaise served with garlic croutons. Desserts vary from cold lemon soufflé to kahlua crème brûlée. Strawberry riesling sorbet with fresh fruit was a special at a recent visit. Lunchtime brings more basic fare, from a burger or a smoked turkey wrap to a fruit and cheese platter. More substantial options include a fancy blackened chicken salad, limoncello shrimp salad, crab cakes with lemon-chipotle mayonnaise and pasta tossed with mussels, tomatoes, artichoke hearts, spinach and parmesan cheese. (607) 869-9271 or (800) 869-9271.
www.knappwine.com. Entrées, $17 to $23. Lunch daily, 11 to 3:30.
Dinner, Thursday-Sunday 5 to 8. Closed November-March. The
Bistro at Red Newt Cellars Local caterer Deb Whiting and her husband Dave, the winemaker, run this winery with spacious dining room and covered deck in renovated space that once housed the Wickham Winery. Dave had proved his winemaking mettle for a decade at Standing Stone and other Finger Lakes wineries before going on his own. Deb ran the upscale Seneca Savory catering service in nearby Burdett before launching the bistro. The innovative food is highly rated, presented in a stylish, white-linened dining room and on the adjacent deck with a view of the Seneca Lake valley. The changing menus are brief and intriguing. Among starters all day are phyllo triangles with scallops and water chestnuts, chicken and mushroom empanada with a sherry cream sauce, and quesadilla with cheese, guacamole and pulled pork. Lunchtime might yield a meatloaf sandwich with chipotle mayo on parmesan cheese bread, a grilled chicken and asparagus wrap or a phyllo cup with couscous, leeks, artichokes and roasted red peppers on a bed of spinach. The dinner menu adds entrées like fillet of sole stuffed with pesto and asparagus, bacon-wrapped pork tenderloin stuffed with spinach and garlic chèvre in a mango-white wine sauce, and grilled beef tenderloin stuffed with porcini mushrooms and topped with gorgonzola butter. Desserts might be rhubarb crumble with whipped cream and chocolate-covered cherry cheesecake. The winery is named for the Eastern red spotted newt, which the Whitings consider one of nature’s more beautiful but obscure creatures. Their spacious tasting room also is a gallery showcasing local art. (607) 546-4100. Entrées, $20 to $29.
www.rednewt.com. Lunch, Wednesday-Sunday noon to 4. Dinner,
Wednesday-Sunday 4 to 9. Closed mid-December to mid-February.
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