Finger Lakes NY [General]

2013 Jul 31
The Foodnetwork site has zilch and Tripadvisor is all over the place...
So pls, help me out here OFoodies...
Finger Lakes region down in New York state... any recommendations?
Anything to be avoided?


2013 Jul 31
PM blubarry - I think he has knowledge of area. Have you checked chowhound and roadfood?

2013 Jul 31
Try www.fingerlakes.org/ or
www.tripadvisor.ca

I think it's best to pick the name of one of the towns.

i.e., Rocherster, Syracuse are the big ones, Geneva, Seneca Falls, Dansville, Ithaca (site of Cornell University and site of the original Moosewood Restaurant of Mooswood Cookbooks and Molly Katzen fame).

We've been to the Premier Outlet Mall (Waterloo) a few times and stayed in a place called Geneva. www.premiumoutlets.com

There is a relative new Microtel hotel (new as in the building was built in last 3 or 4 years) in Geneva that I've stayed at a few times. There are other Microtels in Seneca falls for example.

Refer to this:
www.tripadvisor.ca

Hope this helps!

2013 Jul 31
Interested in checking out wineries whilst you're there? I think I know a guy who can set you up.

2013 Jul 31
If you don't mind low-browing it a little, I'm a huge fan of Doug's Fish Fry. Incredible fried shrimp, fish and chips, clams (Tuesdays only), etc. OMG I miss that.

www.dougsfishfry.com/

Best enjoyed at the flagship location in Skaneateles, (former?) holiday playground of the Clintons.

2013 Jul 31
Not sure what route your taking but the Bville diner in Baldwinsville is a good bet. www.bvillediner.com/

Also if you're going through Syracuse, Heid's of Liverpool has great snappy grillers heidsofliverpool.com/

Jim's bbq in Candor NY is a good place to try pit bbq cornell chicken. All of the above I've found on roadfood.com and have enjoyed though not recently.

If you are lucky enough to be near a big Wegman's grocery store with a cafe, you MUST go in and have Beef on a Weck. Sandwich with rare roast beef cut to order, placed on a Kimmelweck roll, which is sort of like a Kaiser roll but with caraway and a liberal dose of coarse salt. Ask them for horseradish and to coat the cut edges of the roll in au jus. That's the way the locals do it...sublime.

You can look for casual local places everywhere in your travels, especially places that may have hand written "fish fry today" signs. That sometimes means the best local fish and chips you can find. And there are also a number of places that do house brewed root beer, which I always stop for when I see it advertised or with a big permanent root beer barrel on the sign.

Byrne dairy stores have good ice cream and top notch donuts when they are fresh - not weird gourmet flavours, just good genuine donuts.

There are a number of upscale wineries/restaurants in the finger lakes now, but can't help you there, as I am all about the road food. Have fun and let us know if you find something else interesting. There's always something new.

2013 Aug 1
Tnx muchly, some helpful info upthread.

@Momo - that's the plan. What you got?

@FFoodie - won't be there Tuesday. next time.

@blu - Tnx that's the sort of info i was looking for. Syracuse is all about Dinosaur BBQ but after that anything goes.

2013 Aug 1
In case I wasn't totally clear, it's just the *clams* that are Tuesdays only. I haven't actually tried those. The shrimp and the fish are spectacular!

2013 Aug 1
Ah, noted then.
Too bad about the clams tho', per elsethread. I would have taken pics and made Rizak headsplode.

2013 Aug 2
The company we use in Niagara for our tours has a sister company that does Finger Lakes: www.crushoncanandaigua.com/

I'd look into using them to cart you around if you plan on going to several wineries (we tend to do four over the course of an afternoon, and that number seems perfect.)

Now, I haven't toured the Finger Lakes, so I don't have any specific recommendations as to where to go. Their "sniff and swirl" tour is probably a good cross-section of the area.

2013 Aug 2
I don't know what route you are taking and exactly what you are looking for but if you are in North Syracuse looking for a great made-to-order sandwich, look no further than Vince's Gourmet Imports.

2013 Aug 6
Silly me, i had zero idea how much there was to the Finger Lakes. Barely scratched the surface...

Day 1 stopped in Syracuse NY, had lunch at Kitty Hoyne's pub based on a Guy Fieri D3 reco... the reuben balls and the Irish meatloaf were exactly as good as he promised. Throw in the solid beer list and the place is definitely worth the visit.

Dinner was Dinosaur BBQ. If you've been there, you know why.

For the FLs themselves we did skimmed Seneca Lake area this time. Some highlights...

Belhurst Castle is a beautiful set up and seriously great wines. Their cab franc is a religious experience.

They sent us on down the road to the Fox Run winey which was in the midst of a Garlic Festival.... I've never had '50 cloves pulled pork' before. Now i need more. The garlic kettle corn was like little bits of crack. The garlic white pizza was good. The sliced fresh garlic ready to eat was pure garlicy awesome.

Starkey's Lookout Winery/Brewery has only been in business a year and a half but they've got the beer side of things nailed. We did a flight tasting of 8 that included some great beers plus home made rootbeer and orange cream soda. So good. Great setting too, view and all. Couldn't manage any wine at that point.... next time.

Dinner in Watkin's Glen was a bit of a challenge... we wanted to be by the water and the first two places Harbour Stations and Bluepointe) seemd to be trying to be high end and touristy burgers family dining at the same time. We found the Village Marina Bar & Grill a little further down the harbor... decent list of local beers, solid burgers... not a foodie moment perhaps, but good enough.

The walnut maple caramel bread pudding at Wildeflower Cafe, however, was foodgasm worthy.

Next day we discovered that yes, Scuteri's Cannolis really are as good as everyone says they are. No mere hype, the pastry is made daily and they fill them to order. A LOT.

The Finger Lakes Distillery is worth a stop. they're doing good whiskey, great gin and a bunch of other interesting products.

Also enjoyable was a tasting at Eremita Winery in Lodi... the tasting room is a converted church. It's a (pun intended) hell of a setting to sip some nice wines, esp the pinot noir blanc.

So a fun trip and we'll head back, likely with more time to dig deeper into the foodie side of the area.

2013 Aug 8
Just in case anyone else is looking for places enroute to the finger lakes, thought I would add this pic that I took at Wegman's grocery store in Syracuse this week. This is one of two displays of Marcona almond and quince products in the store. If you haven't been to one of the huge Wegman's, you owe yourself a trip. They are enormous and the variety of stuff that's available is pretty astounding. Sushi grade fishes, about twenty types of mushrooms, fresh local produce in season, wagyu beef, fresh oysters, clams, crayfish, etc.
In addition to all the good stuff you can cook yourself, Wegman's has a large prepared food section and a huge cafe to eat it in if you don't want to take it home. One whole cafeteria line of high quality vegetarian foods, with interesting things like Pesto crusted roast tofu with pine nuts and sun dried tomatoes. Two other hot lines with things like pulled pork as well as more traditional steam table fare. Salad bar. Sushi bar. Grilled Panini bar. Soup bar. Carving station with hip of beef and turkey. In store bakery with artisanal breads, home style pies and cakes and french pastries. Gourmet pizzas. Hard to believe you are in a grocery store and will be going again today for another beef on a weck, pic of which I'll post under roadfood porn. And they have more pez dispensers than I've seen anywhere LOL including collectible sets for KISS, Star Wars, Star Trek and Disney.

2013 Aug 8
We were recently in a Wegmans in Fayetteville (suburb of Syracuse) and I second everything blubarry said. It is the most amazing grocery store I have ever been in. We spent close to four hours in the place. It puts our grocery stores to shame.

2013 Aug 12
Feline Fan we may have been in the same one. Not sure if it's actually in Fayetteville or Dewitt, but it's in the east end.

2013 Aug 13
Yes, that would be the one. Amazing place, isn't it? The plaza, if that is the right word for it, has a liquor store on the other end where we bought a particular wine for half the price the LCBO charges.

2013 Aug 14
The Old Erie in Weedsport ia a good bet for a road-lunch. There's a brick oven pizza place, Halsey's in Geneva that is quite good too.
We ate at a Puerto Rican place in Genevas that we didn't care for, tho they did have blood sausage.

2013 Aug 14
Geneva was kind of strange... massive beautiful houses esp on Greek Row, but the businesses seemed to all be closed or closing. Entire blocks of storefronts were papered up.


2013 Aug 15
Yes OSM, the downtown is pretty desolate, but the lake is nice.
It's typical of small town America, or Canada even for that matter, very sad. . . . .

2013 Aug 17
We had a great breakfast at the American diner in Liverpool, just outside of Syracuse. The Fretta is an amazing dish although the large plate could feed an army.

While in Syracuse, we tried to get into both Pastabilities and Kitty Hoynes but it was over a 90 minute wait at both places. I wonder if someone has done a study to figure out what a visit by Guy Fieri does for the bottom line.

The one dinner place we went to that I would recommend is the Blue Mingo cafe that overlooks Lake Otsego, just north of Cooperstown.

2013 Aug 18
Feline Fan that Liquor store is "Liquor City" and one of my favorite things to do is check out the "Wines under $6" section at the front of the store. Also forgot to say that they have a really nice local/farmer's market in downtown Syracuse on a weekday (forget which one). Huge farmer's market down near carousel mall on saturdays, but the downtown one is not far from niagara mohawk and has good quality local stuff.

2013 Aug 19
Thanks, blubarry. I'll check out the markets next time we are there.

2013 Aug 28
...in the vein of New York state, anyone have any recos for Alexandria Bay?

Tripadvisor isn't encouraging.

2013 Aug 28
haven't found anything interesting in A-bay, but a couple places in Sackett's harbor are charming/interesting. I remember a bakery on the main street - sorry name escapes me - that was quite good for breakfast and another place across the street that had a memorable appetizer of hot potato chips with blue cheese sauce.

there is also a really great wooden boat museum in Clayton, and when the weather is good, you can get an hour long ride through the thousand islands in a beautiful 1940's mahogany runabout.