NYC Tastes

Mr. T and I were up in Vermont last weekend, checking in on some of our favorite places.  First stop Blackback Pub for the most amazing Pub Nachos of all time; crispy round tortilla chips layered with cheddar and blue cheese, nuggets of thick cut smoked bacon, green scallions and drizzled with Vermont maple chipotle syrup.   These nachos are AMAZING! Sweet, salty, smokey; every single thing my taste buds ever crave and more.  To make things even better it started snowing when we sat down, which is always the perfect way to kick off a Vermont weekend. On Saturday after an incredible Hill Farmstead visit, we stopped into Parker Pie to celebrate the  Talk Beer  5th Anniversary Party.   This place always rocks some incredible pizza's (devoured too quickly to take a pic) and just take a look at that beer list. Sunday morning we drove back to Burlington for one more delicious stop; brunch at the Farmhouse Tap & Grill.  Mr....

It was another crazy and amazing year that seemed to go by way too quickly as always.  Things got off to a great start with the return of  Founders CBS  one of my favorite beers of all time.  I really didn't think this would ever be brewed again so I spent the first two months drinking it as much as humanly possible.  Fried Chicken Sandwiches became all the rage; Fuku , Delaney BBQ and the Brooklyn Shake Shack continue to have epic lines for these crispy creations.  The Blue Hill pop up WastED  was also a huge highlight of the year.  It was amazing to see the community of chefs, farmers and retailers come together to shine light on the extreme waste of food in the industry and celebrate these "leftovers" by incorporating them into incredible new dishes.  And as a personal success it only took me two full years but I finally got a  Cronut !   Of course as time passes the culinary landscape must change and...

Our first day in Vermont started with a trip to Hill Farmstead and lunch at Parker Pie. We hadn't eaten anything since leaving NYC so after six hours in the car and two in line at the brewery, I was more than ready to power down some serious food like the famous Green Mountain Special. Bubbly, crisp dough topped with cheddar cheese, baby spinach, red onion, bacon, apple and fresh garlic all drizzled with sweet maple syrup.  It's a big mishmash of everything wonderful about Vermont in one amazing pie. Being so close to the Canadian border it only made sense that Poutine was on the menu... ...and being so close to Hill Farmstead of course the beer list was incredible.  We split a Cantillon Gueuze and then slowly worked our way through the draft list.  I'm pretty sure we could have stayed all evening but the snow started to fall again so we hit the road. Onto Waterbury for the next few days and finally a dinner reservation at Hen of the ...