12/29/08

Auntie's Hung

The most iconic hangover in film (ignoring the depressingly real Days of Wine and Roses) comes in the 1958 movie, Auntie Mame. It starts with nephew Patrick, bounding into an elegantly decorated room with clatter, noise, and a certain amount of joie de vivre. Cut to a kimono-clad Rosalind Russell, greenish, looking on with an expression of sick dread. Her line, “Please, dear—your Auntie’s hung,” is uttered with a helplessness that we all should remember at this time of year.

It turns out that Mame’s remedy for six or twelve too many

Posted at 02:51 PM | Permalink | Comments: 0

12/22/08

First Taste, Part Deux: The Farmhouse

I know—we left you hanging in the middle of dinner, with only the first few courses to keep hunger at bay. Here are some more first impressions of the Farmhouse, the top tier dining venue at Richard Gere’s Bedford Post spa/inn/restaurant complex www.bedfordpostinn.com.

Pastas are all handmade at the Farmhouse, and include some favorites from Dinner at the Barn – like the dish of three ravioli, singly containing sheep’s milk ricotta, spinach and a luscious, locally-raised egg yolk. (A slice across all three pockets makes the perfect single bite.) One pasta we hadn’t seen—a mouth-slickingly rich agnolotti filled with gooey, slow-cooked veal, small-production robbiola cheese and hazelnuts -- felt equally at home by the fire in Bedford, as it...

Posted at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments: 0

12/15/08

First Taste: The Farmhouse at Bedford Post

Finally, Westchester is seeing Bedford Post’s Grand Plan manifested: the Farmhouse, the higher-end venue anticipated by Dinner at the Barn, is now open for business. We managed to sneak in on its third night of official existence, and here’s what we found.

Posted at 04:48 PM | Permalink | Comments: 4

12/04/08

Get Your Fin de Siecle on at Pour

Think the Left Bank of the Seine, Van Gogh, striving artists and other fringe-y Bohemians. Think a drink so magical, so powerful, that it’s actually a drug – thought to contain a neurotoxin so potent that it’s responsible for permanent brain damage. The drink is Absinthe, the Ecstasy of its day, and its sale was banned by France in 1915. Several European countries, as well as the US, followed suit.

Absinthe, an herbal concoction traditionally made with the medicinal wormwood, does not...

Posted at 03:55 PM | Permalink | Comments: 0

12/02/08

Bedford Post’s Farmhouse Is Open!

To be honest, the folks behind Bedford Post have passed a season or two earnestly promising that in the next couple of weeks, their premier restaurant would debut. It actually got embarrassing to keep asking. Then this announcement popped on our inbox to announce the big event….and if Chef Brian Lewis’s Dinner at the Barn is any predictor, the Farmhouse is destined for greatness. Here’s a clip from their PR:

“The plans for the 14 acres of wooded bliss became reality in 2008 and piece by piece Bedford Post is completing its mission. First on board was chef Brian Lewis, who hails from Westchester to head the 2 restaurants on the property. Chef Lewis has made his way through the food scenes of Washington DC, New York City, London and...

Posted at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments: 0

12/01/08

Trader Joe’s, or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love It

Oh, we were resistant at first.

When Trader Joe’s first hit Larchmont, Scarsdale and Hartsdale, it felt so foreign, so goofy, so California, with a tacky Polynesian logo and “trader” style shipping theme. It had a ship’s bell. It was manned by workers in Hawaiian shirts. It had a theme, for god’s sake, just like Disneyland. Meanwhile, here we were New Yorkers, happy to elbow our way through the cramped, croded aisles of the Harlem Fairway, donning nit-infested loaner jackets to freeze our personal bits in the cold room. When TJ’s hit, we thought, We’re Fairway shoppers, bro, so take your bell and silly shirts back to Cali.

Then we realized, in a...

Posted at 09:44 AM | Permalink | Comments: 3