All Over Albany

ummm: "I think local people are just coming around to the idea of eating locally". Really? Because the people of the Hudson Valley haven't' been eating from the farms around them long before the first hipster squeezed himself into skinny jeans?

the article smacks of NYC/downstate superiority--"from a new vanguard of New York chefs who are retrofitting their culinary skills to the tastes and demands of rural communities"--and everything north of Westchester is rural.

I need to not read these articles they just annoy me.

... said colleen on Aug 14, 2013 at 4:13 PM | link

Well, wouldn't ya' know it, but I was just sittin' at the breakfast table this mornin' with a plate full of bacon an' eggs, and thinkin' about getting myself to Sears to buy me another brown suit.

And I says to the missus: "Ya' know, Gertie, we got ourselves a bunch of fine eatin' establishments 'round here. Except for one thing -- we need one of them real good farm-to-table restaurants. You know, like the ones they got in New York City. With those fancy chefs who are always followin' farmers around askin' about their turnips."

And the missus goes to me: "Now, Jimmy-Bob, don't you go off and get yourself any fancy ideas. I've been cookin' for you over 40 years and all of it's been farm-to-table goodness. Hold on for a minute while I finish getting into my new gingham dress, now."

"Now, Gertie, you know you've always been center-stage for me, and that goes for your cookin', too. An' you look mighty fine in that gingham dress. But I was readin' that New York Times newspaper this mornin', you know, just after I was done feedin' the chickens, and I saw about these places that...well, I'll just read you what it says:

"But places like Fish and Game are the first to bring urban chefs’ ideas of farm-to-table back to the land. Tasting menus with pig cheeks, green strawberries and goat yogurt are surely farm-based, but in farm country they are also revolutionary."

"Now, Jimmy-Bob, you know I've been cookin' pig cheeks for you ever since that flood back in '64. And Floyd down the road says my goat cheese is the best in the county. So, Jimmy-Bob, you keep talkin' all this foolishness 'bout some center-stage chef bringing his farm-to-table cookin' around here, well, you'll be sleepin' tonight out with the chickens. And I'll teach you somethin' about revolutionary."

Well, let me tell ya' one thing: I threw that New York Times newspaper out in the coop so the chickens could put it to good use. And I never again said nothin' 'bout no farm-to-market restaurants. Because I know what's center-stage in my life. And it sure ain't no chef from New York City.

... said Bob on Aug 14, 2013 at 8:02 PM | link

I can't tell you how these twee articles on how precious our little lifestyles are up here make my head explode. I used to work for a place where every summer we could rely on sudden, strange requests for information from the NYT about something they would not normally have the slightest interest in. Why? Because the reporter was on vacation in one of our trackless backwaters and found out something AMAZING, like that there's a statewide canal system, or that our dairies make cheese.

BTW, the chefs aren't bringing their skills to the demands of rural communities, they're bringing them to the weekenders and second-homers from the city who eat at these places. If they came up to Albany, non-anointed and beyond the reach of that market, they'd never be mentioned in the Times again.

... said Carl on Aug 15, 2013 at 9:20 AM | link

Bob--I have a completely innocent AOA crush on you for your story telling ability and capturing the true essence of what it is like "upstate"

... said colleen on Aug 15, 2013 at 3:11 PM | link

I'll give them the green strawberries.

... said Daniel B. on Aug 15, 2013 at 11:42 PM | link