Cafe Frida: Wine & Food Festival Kickoff

Recently I was invited to attend the official launch for the 2012 Cancun-Riviera Maya Wine & Food Festival, to be held in Cancun next March. The event, four days of special celebrations and dozens of tasting opportunities, will honor chefs both in Mexico and abroad for their culinary accomplishments, centered around a tribute to Ferran Adriá, the world-famous godfather of molecular gastronomy at El Bullí in Spain. But this night wouldn’t be about meeting Adriá (boo!), it was to introduce the New York press and blogging community to the richness of Mexican cuisine and, yes, tequila and wine (yay!) at [...]

Paulaner Oktoberfest Marzen

Do I really need to mention Oktoberfest and its German roots? The annual celebration in Munich, with the Big Six breweries hoisting gigantic tents for two weeks starting in mid-September, creating a carnival atmosphere, and charging an awful lot of money for liters of the festival beer, represents everything positive — and quite a bit of the negative — about beer. But we will have none of that. Here, every German beer bar (and an unhealthy number of non-German ones) do their own mini-Oktoberfest. The German bars tend to bring out as many of those Big Six breweries’ Oktoberfest beers, [...]

Earth Bread + Brewery: Philadelphia

Some towns are simply beer-drinking towns. There may not be much else to the place, but there’s almost no way to avoid finding a good beer in most every corner pub or divey-looking bar. I kinda feel that way about Philadelphia. Sure, the cheesesteaks and roast pork are phenomenal, but I just feel… dirty in most of the city. But I keep going back, to join friends in afternoons and evenings of eating and imbibing at our favorite establishments. Earth Bread + Brewery, located in Mount Airy, surely stands above all others with my drinking friends and I from New [...]

Blue Point Oktoberfest

After a bit of a departure the last few weeks, I’ve returned home for this week’s beer of choice. Plus, it’s finally autumn, so why not start reviewing a favorite beer style of the season? Straight out of Patchogue, on Long Island, Blue Point brewery has been bringing beer to me in New York City for well over a decade. I shamefully admit I’ve never tried their fall seasonal Oktoberfest till this week, and I present it to you this first October Friday. I remember Blue Point for its excellent, malty Toasted Lager and a strikingly bitter pale ale, with [...]

Bullock’s Barbeque, Durham NC

Once upon a time, I lived in Durham, North Carolina. There I learned the beauty that is barbecue — whole-hog pulled pork, drenched in a hot pepper-and-vinegar “sauce” — and probably ate that a few dozen times a year. Even after moving to New York, I had a good reason to visit my one-time home at least a couple of times a year, and on every drive down I tried to visit two venerable Durham institutions: Sam’s Quik Shop, for my craft-beer fix, and Bullock’s Barbeque, for all-you-can-eat Eastern Carolina barbecue. I’d not visited the area for over two years, [...]

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