Comments

|

E-mail

|

Print

10/14/2008

I really have no excuse for having not visited Stamford’s new Greek restaurant, EOS Greek Cuisine.

Multiple, extremely enthusiastic recommendations have gone unheeded. My own inspection of the menu has me fantasizing over possible dinner order combinations. iPhone photos of grilled octopus sent my way have only increased my interest.

Yet, sadly, I have not been able to taste the lamb chops, lemon potatoes, grilled fish, or various mezedes firsthand. Actually, I don’t even have any lame excuses, I don’t know what my problem is.

So in lieu of original content, I leave you with with a link to the Advocate’s official restaurant review. Enjoy.

–CP

Comments(2)

|

E-mail

|

Print

The chocolate pecan bourbon pie is not necessarily a thing of beauty…but the taste more than makes up for aesthetics.

MICHELE’S PIES: 666 MAIN AVE., NORWALK

In search of America’s best pie, a crew from Good Morning America filmed a segment with Michele Albano of Michele’s Pies in Norwalk on Tuesday. Michele is one of a handful of finalists – selected by viewers – who will appear on the show this Sunday for an all-American pie showdown.

Of course, this is a gimmick, I mean, I have no idea how viewers are going to be able to judge pies they haven’t eaten. But I can tell you this much, Michele’s pies are no joke.

I took an informal poll of patrons as to their favorite pie and I pretty much uniformly received an obfuscation: ’I like them all’ they told me.

Fred Coppola, who just celebrated his 85th birthday, when pressed indicated that pumpkin was his favorite “with a little cream on it, ya know.” He then told me pecan was good, but retreated leaving me with, again, “I like them all.”

READ: Norwalk reporter Lisa Chamoff’s story.

–CP

Comments(3)

|

E-mail

|

Print

11/10/09

I’ve been perusing the Epicurious Ultimate Thanksgiving Guide for ideas for this year’s meal. Of course, I am not actually cooking (oh, the horror), but I’ve been informed I should probably make a thoughtful contribution to the dinner party I will be attending.

As a transplant from California, I’ve either flown back to the West Coast for Turkey Day or have ended up working at the newspaper and have been forced to join the sad assemblage at Boston Market. This year, however, I’ll be in Connecticut and I won’t be working. (I drew Christmas. Again.)

So, I’m looking for something to make. I’m intrigued by the New Orleans Acadian Syrup Cake in the Saveur Thanksgiving issue. Eight years ago, I spent Thanksgiving on the photo desk at the Baton Rouge Advocate and was grateful to have been delivered a hot plate from an editor’s family meal: oyster stuffing, dirty rice, sweet potatoes and pecan pie are certainly not staples of Preovolos family holidays, but I won’t soon forget that Louisiana holiday meal.

–CP

Comments(2)

|

E-mail

|

Print

My dinner table always looks better with a trio of warm Lakeside Diner doughnuts adorning it…though they don’t last long around here.

11/09/2008

LAKESIDE DINER: 1050 LONG RIDGE ROAD

Breakfast has always been the one meal that I would almost always prefer to cook myself. Unless I’m on the road, I don’t really see the point of eating out before noon.

However, working weekends is just one of those things you have to deal with in newspapering and this isn’t always conducive to leisurely Sunday breakfasts.

As a photojournalist at the Advocate, I have been working Sundays for over five years and the good comes with the bad – so to speak. There is nothing better than hitting up Lakeside Diner for a bag of hot doughnuts on the way back from an assignment.

It became a ritual of sorts: whenever I had an assignment anywhere near the Parkway on a Sunday morning, I would pickup a dozen of the warm, fresh, sugar-coated masterpieces and rush back to the paper to share a couple with Al, the head security guard in our old building.

The retired cop would then regale me with stories from his days on The Job, pulling middies as a patrolman in the bad-old-days of Southfield Village and the West Side in the 70s and 80s.

This seemed to work to my advantage as I’m pretty sure these conversations over doughnuts were what made me one of the few people Al would let upstairs if I had forgotten my company ID badge. (Stan the Man was a whole different story)

Lakeside Diner is something of a Stamford institution. Weekends see the dining area packed, often with a line for seating heading toward the door. At breakfast they serve solid diner fare (but terrible coffee), great pancakes, eggs, bacon and sausages, but the doughnuts – the glorious sugar doughnuts – really steal the show.

I’ve had the famous cider doughnuts at the Greenmarket in New York, samplings from Vermont and New Hampshire, but Lakeside really holds their own, especially when you get a batch right out of the fryer.

These are nothing like the doughnuts of my childhood, when we would get a box and load up the VW Vanagon and head off on a family trip with these oddly addictive, yet cardboard-tasting pastries…Lakeside doughnuts are how doughnuts are meant to be: warm, soft but slightly crisp, sugary. Delicious.

While I’m not writing this post to encourage my photo editor to assign me a job that will require dragging myself out of bed next Sunday morning, I must admit, if there are Lakeside doughnuts involved, I won’t even have to set my alarm clock.

–CP

UPDATE: I buttonholed Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele at an awards banquent tonight. Fedele, a Stamford resident, is a regular at the restaurant. “Lakeside diner is a landmark in North Stamford and clearly the doughnuts are part of that. They are a staple for many of us in the morning,” Fedele said, then he added with a laugh as he walked into the dining room, “So, I’m the doughnut guy now?”

Comments(1)

|

E-mail

|

Print

11/07/2008

A 80,000 square-foot Fairway supermarket is tentatively slated to be built on the old Yale & Towne factory site in the South End, as reported early today by the Advocate’s Elizabeth Kim.

Rumors that have been circulating on a Chowhound forum since early October have been confirmed by our development reporter: here.

FROM KIM’S STORY: “We think Stamford is a fantastic location,” said Aaron Fleishaker, Fairway’s vice president of real estate. “It’s a great city that has lots of major companies.”

Fleishaker said the store would be built at Canal and Market streets. It would include 65,000 square feet of retail space with a 15,000-square-foot mezzanine for storage. It would be the company’s first expansion into Connecticut.

Among other things – hopefully – this means we will finally have access to freshly roasted coffee in Stamford. And barrels and barrels of olives. And tons of fresh bread. And mountains of quality produce.

Stamford residents have been waiting a long time for something like this. No longer will we be relegated to dealing with things like the Whole Foods in Greenwich, whose parking lot was described this year by the New Yorker’s Nick Paumgarten as “a notorious battleground of eight-cylinder automobiles piloted with near-comical rage by over-caffeinated women and overcompensated men.”

–CP

Comments

|

E-mail

|

Print

Chris Preovolos/The Advocate

Nick Wendell, 10, left, and Andrew Hale, 10, right, and sell brownies, wraps, chips, sodas and other food items outside of the polling place at Davenport Ridge Elementary School. Proceeds will benefit the school via the Parent Teacher Organization.

11/04/2008

Parents baked and area businesses donated food: everything from clam chowder, wraps, coffee, pizza, brownies and even battered, deep-fried hotdogs (which I was not adventurous enough to try).

My polling place didn’t offer any food, but I managed to stop by Matthew’s bakery for an empanada on the way home.

–CP