The restaurant is located in Ithaca, NY, which is just far enough from expressways in the state that it isn’t a convenient stop if one is crossing through. I figured I should finally take the extra time required to go have a meal there, and see just what the place is like.

It’s located in an old building that’s been made into a little mall. This is the building:

And here are exterior and interior entrances to the restaurant:

They have a very large repertoire of recipes, as they’ve put out more than a dozen different books over the years. As a result, they don’t have a set menu – they offer small lunch and dinner menus that change daily.

I had a bean burrito with onions, peppers and hot sauce, served on a bed of brown rice. Also had a bottle of local ginger beer, and a blueberry-apple cobbler for dessert. The food was good, but ultimately no better than I’ve had at other vegetarian restaurants, and somewhat pricier.  I’m glad I made the trip once, and I’ll certainly eat there again if I find myself in Ithaca, but I won’t go out of my way to return to the place.

As you can see, the scale is well above that of a human vehicle.  Giant, indeed.

Regular-sized Pocky has the sticks grouped in bags within the box – at least 4 sticks to a bag.  These are individually wrapped:

When unwrapped, they look like the usual chocolate kind, only bigger:

And they taste about the same, except that the biscuity stick taste (kind of like a barely-sweet cracker) dominates the chocolate more, perhaps because the chocolate layer is not as thick in proportion.  They’re still tasty, as they use a slightly bitter chocolate on these (as opposed to Men’s Pocky, which is even more bitter).  They’re still good, and I’ll definitely eat the whole box (though it will take a while to go through).

Nothing gold can stay, of course, and the melon is no exception – we’ll eat the whole thing within a week.

I got there and discovered a sign on the door indicating that they were closed for vacation, and would be back at the end of the week.  Annoying to be sure, but I decided that I could go to a different bread bakery in town (Hungry Ghost Bread Co.), and get some there.  It’s pricier, and not quite as good as BN, but still nice bread.

Turns out that they were specially closed as well for the next couple of day – no reason given on the sign.  Bah!  I ended up getting some okay bread at a small grocery store across the street from HGBC, but I have to wonder if there is a bakers’ conspiracy convention going on.

There was something odd, though. The price was 35 cents per bar, or 3 for a dollar. “That’s really cheap, since it’s imported!” I either thought or said out loud. I picked one (or maybe three) up, and noticed that the package was different. In Canada all packages have to be marked in English and French. These bars were labeled in English and Spanish. Then I noticed, in smaller print, the URL nestleusa.com. “Could it be true?”

A check of the web later confirmed it – Nestle is now selling Coffee Crisp in the U.S. An online petition effort helped make this happen, apparently. It hasn’t got very wide distribution yet, but fans can lobby stores to carry it.

All I can say is, “Yum.”

Oh, if you’re wondering about the Swiss link, it’s that Nestle’s parent company is based in Switzerland.

Here is the story: Marge’s Kitchen is a small breakfast restaurant in Northampton, MA. It’s a short walk from where we live now, and, as we often like going out for brunch, we decided to try it today. The menu is not very extensive, but has most of the breakfast staples, and has very reasonable prices. There are a few unusual items as well, such as the choice of sweet potato home fries in addition to regular potato ones. The place also seems to have a slogan: “The customer is never right.” I found this amusing at first, but apparently it isn’t a joke. More on that later.
There were 3 of us, and among other things we ordered french toast and the sweet potato fries. We each just had water to drink (that detail will be important later). We waited 20 minutes or more for the food, which was not so unreasonable, given that the place was busy. Our server (who actually seemed to be be serving every table in the place – about 20 people total), seemed to get our order confused with another table a couple of times (she told us they were out of hash, and later said the bagel was coming – we hadn’t ordered either item), but again, that wasn’t so unusual given that they were busy.

Things got annoying when we were told, after about 25 minutes of waiting for food, that they were out of french toast. I must admit, I’m not sure exactly what it means to “run out of french toast.” The most likely definition would be running out of the batter, but in my experience, even the most complicated french toast batter is pretty simple to make. It shouldn’t take very long to whip up more, and I don’t imagine it would be a waste to make more batter at 12:30pm when your restaurant is open until 3:00.

At most restaurants, that probably would have been the most annoying part of the experience. The person who ordered the french toast was not interested in trying anything else on the menu, so we all thought it might be best to leave and eat at home. Plus, we were peeved about waiting that long, and getting hungry, before being told that that order couldn’t be filled. So, we got up to leave, and I went to the counter and said to the server and to the owner (who was doing the cooking) that we were going and that they should cancel the rest of our order. The owner’s response was to say that we weren’t leaving without paying – that we had ordered food and she had started cooking it, so we were responsible for paying for it. We pointed out that we were unhappy with how long they made us wait before informing us of the lack of french toast, and turned to leave.

At this point, the owner left the grill and grabbed the phone. It took me a second to realize that what she was doing was calling the police. The others were already outside, and the owner followed them. I came out after that, hesitating because I wondered if we ought to stick around if the police were coming. As the others continued leaving (and told me to quit standing there), and the owner started providing our descriptions over the phone, I left as well, still kind of stunned by the overreaction.

On the way home, a patrol car pulled up next to us and the officer got out to talk to us. He asked what had happened back there, and we explained the situation. He asked us whether we had received any food yet, and we pointed out that we hadn’t – that we only had water, and left before any food was served to us. That was all he needed to know – he said we clearly hadn’t skipped out on the bill, and then got in his car and headed off, presumably to the restaurant.

I must admit, I think this is the first time I’ve ever had the cops called on me. The crazy thing is that, while we hadn’t been so happy with today’s visit, and were going to leave without eating, there was still the possibility that we (or at least I) might have come back to try the food another time. Once the owner decided to make it a police matter, that certainly destroyed any possibility of our return. So the owner lost potential future business trying to recoup whatever she might lose in the few eggs and pieces of toast that were being cooked for us. Heck, much of what we ordered may have been able to serve other customers – there was a side of bacon in our order, and I heard another table order bacon later – so there probably wasn’t much wasted food at all.

In summary, I think the owner’s reaction was stupid and petty, and she may have preferred to merely intimidate us into paying with the threat of police intervention, but that’s still pretty short-sighted, and is no way to treat first-time visitors. I should point out that I’m only angry at the owner – the server seemed to be doing the best job she could and relayed information to us when she became aware of it. I would certainly recommend that readers living around here not eat at this restaurant. I do welcome comments from people about this, and would certainly be interested in hearing from anyone who has eaten there before, though I don’t think you’d persuade me to go back. I now know that the owner is quite serious about her slogan “The customer is never right.”

PS: The title of this post is patterned after an essay by Doug Shaw on The Olive Garden. His reasons for not eating there, however, are completely different from my experience today.

I didn’t notice the wraparound nature at first. So you can imagine my reaction when I saw this item in the corner:

Once I realized what was going on, I opened it to see the real item:

Much more appetizing!

Pumpkin pizzas

Crust for 1 pizza (modified version of a recipe from Carolyn Yackel):

1.75 tablespoons yeast

1 cup warm water

1.5 cups white flour

1 cup wheat flour

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

extra flour or corn meal for pan and for handling dough

Toppings:

0.5 lb gouda cheese, shredded (per pizza)

1 small to medium pie pumpkin

1 or 2 portabella mushroom caps, sliced

1 to 1.5 cups chopped fresh spinach

dried sage leaf to taste

cinnamon to taste

First, cook the pumpkin. Do this by slicing the pumpkin in half vertically, scooping out the guts, and placing the halves cut side down in a baking pan. Fill the pan with a half-inch of water, and place in the oven at 400 degrees (Fahrenheit). Cooking time should be 45 minutes or less, depending on the size of pumpkin. Test for doneness by sticking a fork through the skin into the pumpkin. It should easily pass through.

When done, drain the water and allow pumpkin halves to cool with cut side up. Then remove skin and slice flesh (quarter-inch thick slices work well).

To make the crust, put yeast in a medium to latge mixing bowl, and pour water over it. Wait a minute or two, then add other crust ingredients. Stir together until a ball of dough is formed. With floured hands, knead dough a little in bowl, then set aside for 5 to 10 minutes.

Grease a 16-inch diameter pizza pan or 10×15 inch cookie sheet, then coat the pan with corn meal or flour.

Flouring your hands to prevent sticking, flatten the dough ball in the middle of the pan and spread the dough to the edges. Add more flour as needed, and repair any tears by pressing dough back together. Make sure to have dough thicker around the edge.

2 possible topping combinations (these are the ones I tried):

• Layer spinach on crust, covering the whole surface. Put cheese on top of spinach. Put slices of pumpkin on top of that (you’ll use one third to one half of the pumpkin), and sprinkle sage around the pizza as desired.
• Put cheese on crust. Layer several slices of pumpkin and portabella around pizza, mostly covering cheese. Sprinkle with cinnamon as desired.

Once pizza is assembled, bake at 450 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes. It should be done when crust is hard and cheese has browned in spots.

Enjoy!