finger lakes

Warning: Long post ahead. And it might make you hungry. Also, it’s the first of several posts about our summer vacation.

If you’ve known us for more than a few days, you’ll know that food–good food–is important to us as a family. That doesn’t change when we’re on vacation, and we had some unique food experiences in New York that I think warrant their own blog post. So, if you’re a fellow foodie, then feast your eyes on the following. And if not, then feel free to skip this post in favor of another vacation related post (which I haven’t written yet).

We have this rule on vacation. I’m not sure whose family it originated with, but in general it is this: When eating out, choose a place that is unique to the place you’re visiting (or is something you can’t eat anytime you want at home). I have some memory of my dad abiding by this rule on some vacations, and honestly this is the sort of thing that would give me some anxiety as a child. Mostly because I didn’t know what to order in an unfamiliar place and I didn’t enjoy the process of trying to choose something new. I’m a little bit better about that now.

While traveling, we try to work a balance between eating out and cooking in/packing sandwiches. While food is important to us, we cannot spend all of our vacation budget on eating out, so we make some sacrifices on the food side of things so we can have more experiences.

On this family vacation, I was really pleased with our balance.

The bulk of our vacation was spent at a rustic cabin in the Finger Lakes. “Rustic” in that it had electricity but no running water and no heat. We had a stove and a fridge and beds, as well as a flush toilet adjacent to the cabin. I know this might sound like a nightmare to some of you but it was heaven to me. Slowing down and taking more time to do the everyday ordinary tasks resets something in my soul.

Take breakfast, as an example. Each morning at the cabin, I set water to boil for coffee and added some instant granules to a tin mug. I spooned the water into the mug then waited a minute or so for the mug itself to cool down so I could drink it.

In some ways this is faster than my usual process of coffee intake, but it was a different method. We cooked eggs in some form most mornings because that’s what I need to start my day. One day, we cooked bacon in the cabin and set the smoke alarm off. It was just like cooking at home! Next time, I’d ask my husband to build a fire and do it outside. Another morning we cooked spam and ate it with our eggs. It actually tastes better than it smells. Because my husband works in produce, we packed a lot of fruit to bring with us. We had apples and nectarines and bananas to eat with breakfast or lunch. Sometimes it’s hard to eat vegetables and fruit on vacation. We wanted to do what we could to include those important food groups.

We wanted our dinners at the cabin to be over the fire as much as possible. We planned two campfire meals on our first grocery run and added a third on the last day because cooking over a fire is fun when you’re camping. The first dinner was our take on campfire packets. We divided ground beef and frozen hash browns with dry onion soup mix (because I forgot to pack an onion from our stash at home) onto squares of foil and wrapped them up. When that was done we topped them with cheese. They turned out okay.

Our son, who wasn’t excited about them in the first place, said, “It’s not the BEST thing I ever ate.” (But he ate almost all of his.) We made up for it by toasting giant marshmallows in the fire and making s’mores with peanut butter cups, caramel-filled chocolates and dark chocolates.

The next night, we roasted hot dogs over the fire and had stopped at a local grocery on our way back from an adventure to pick up a creamy salad of some kind. It was maple bacon potato salad, which sounded more interesting than it tasted. Too much maple, I think. We also ate all the hot dogs, which was too much. Two of us nearly made ourselves sick! 

The meal for the third campfire night was my husband’s decision. He and our son went to the store while my daughter and I tended the laundry at the laundromat. He was going to make me guess what the meal would be by putting the groceries away, but the kids took care of that and then our son blurted out: “we’re making quesadillas!” I was skeptical but let me tell you, it worked out beautifully. I made a Napolean Dynamite joke about “quesadillas” (pronounced with a DILL in the middle) and then changed it to “quesa-GRILL-as.” You’re welcome, and I’m coining that.

Next time, we’d do a little more pre-planning for meals to make over a fire. This was our first camping foray in more than five years and the first ever with the kids, so we weren’t as confident about our cooking abilities. Knowing we can do it and do it well makes us more sure for the next time.

If you read through all of that and aren’t bored yet, let me now tell you about the restaurants we found on our vacation.

We started our trip in Cooperstown, N.Y. and since our hotel didn’t include breakfast, we just ate a couple of breakfast bars and planned to eat at a diner that served all-day breakfast for an early lunch. Just down the street from the Baseball Hall of Fame Museum (our reason for being in Cooperstown) is a place called the Cooperstown Diner. I forgot to take a picture of the building, so click here to get an idea of how tiny this place is. We waited outside for seats to free up, and it was kind of a first-come, first-served sort of deal and the honors system among the people waiting. Apparently, there was a baseball tournament going on in town, so lots of places were extra busy. We didn’t wait long, though. I had the diner muffin, which is basically a breakfast sandwich (egg and bacon on a English muffin) with a side of home fries. The kids had cinnamon roll french toast and Texas french toast. Phil had corned beef hash. It was all tasty and filled our bellies for our afternoon at the Hall of Fame Museum.

Between Cooperstown and our cabin in the Finger Lakes, we stopped for dinner in Syracuse. My husband had heard of this place calle Dinosaur BBQ. He can’t quite remember how he stumbled on it, but we were all up for it. To be honest, the place has a dive-bar vibe, but not in a scary way, really. We waited maybe 20 minutes for a table. Phil had checked out the menu ahead of time and pretty much knew what we were going to order to share. I had a honeycrisp cider to accompany my meal, and it was DEE-LISH. Our meal included ribs, beef brisket, and pulled pork with sides of greens, baked beans, cole slaw and mac and cheese, and we started with a sampler plate that had fried green tomatoes, deviled eggs, spicy shrimp, and chicken wings.

If that sounds like a lot of food, it was, and yes, we had leftovers. We took them to the cabin and ate them with breakfast two days later. The ribs were as tasty as any I’ve eaten, and the brisket was second favorite. I’m not a big beans or fried green tomatoes fan, but I enjoyed those as well.

I should mention that our lunches while at the cabin consisted of sandwiches, chips, fruit and cookies. Usually we were out on an adventure or between adventures, so we packed sandwiches to eat picnic-style or had them at the cabin. 

On Wednesday we had ice cream in Interlaken, N.Y. at the Cayuga lake Creamery. (If you know us at all, you know that we also take ice cream very seriously.) This place was on the way to our adventures that day and had won some awards for its ice cream. Among the four of us we had the following flavors: red, white and blueberry; lavender; crunchy grasshopper; and mocha chocolate chunk. None of us were sorry.

Our next eating out place that same day was Ithaca Beer Co. Phil and I enjoy the occasional alcoholic beverage, mostly when we’re out at a restaurant, but even if we didn’t, I would recommend local breweries as eating places while on vacation. Ithaca Beer has been around for a while. The venue itself is magical, with a large outdoor beer garden and seating area, and the food is fresh and local. The menu rotates with seasonal availability. We had a fry flight, which comes with three sauces and let me tell you, plain ketchup was not one of them. I had to fight my kids for a turn with the fries and the sauce. Pickled vegetables with a buttermilk-pistachio dip and crackers was a second starter. I had a chorizo soup and our daughter had hoisin meatballs. The guys–father and son–both had pulled pork sandwiches after our son found out they didn’t have bacon for the cheddar burger. (Kid loves his bacon.)

On Friday, we left for Niagara Falls and did our usual quick-bite breakfast before packing up and made sandwiches for the car. After walking around Niagara Falls State Park for hours, we stumbled onto Anchor Bar, which originated in Buffalo and is the home to the original buffalo wings. Anchor Bar was one place we thought we were going to miss by not going to Buffalo, but there was one right there in Niagara. Phil was pleased to learn they also had beef on weck, another local speciality we were told to try. He was able to get that and wings on the same plate.

I had buffalo chicken on a salad.

The kids both had pasta dishes that were larger than their heads. Buffalo chicken is not something I’m going to choose first, but here, it was unlike any similar chicken I’d had before. Personally, I thought the beef on weck was too salty, but I guess that’s part of its charm.

We knew going into the weekend that we were going to eat out a lot. We were back in a hotel that didn’t have a fridge and we were staying in Canada, which gave us opportunity to try some truly unique fare because we didn’t want to eat at all the overpriced places on the strip. (And yes, there’s a strip in Niagara Falls that rivals Las Vegas and Nashville, if you ask me.) I asked the locals working the desk where we could go that wouldn’t break the bank but would also give us a sense of what the locals do. The recommendations were spot on.

Saturday breakfast was at the hotel. There’s a little made-to-order restaurant on premises and we got the usual diner breakfast fare with all the Canadian kindness we could handle. For lunch, we walked across the parking lot to the second restaurant on premises, Zappi’s Pizza and Pasta Italian Eatery. We were told they were fair-priced and a mom-and-pop kind of place. (To compare, our other options were things like TGIFriday’s, Margaritaville, My Cousin Vinny’s, and the like.) The Greek salad came recommended, and it wasn’t a wrong choice. I also had the stuffed mushrooms, which tasted like pizza inside of a mushroom–yum! Sweet potato fries were crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Phil ordered a pizza with sausage and rapini (broccoli rabe), our son had ravioli, and our daughter had Caesar salad (that’s kind of her thing). Here, our son also had C-plus orange soda. We’d never heard of it but we all took a sip and it was tasty.

Dinner was the piece de resistance to our culinary adventures. Doc Magilligan’s is an Irish pub in the middle of Niagara Falls, Canada, and its chef recently was awarded Best Irish Chef in North America. While it’s not what I would expect to eat in Canada, we were assured it was the kind of place the locals go. I’m so glad we did! Not only was the atmosphere unique and inviting, but the food was worth the extra (small) effort it took to find the place.

I’d read online that ordering a boxty was the way to go. It’s like an Irish potato pancake, sort of, only thin and stuffed with meats and veggies. I had a haddock taco trio boxty. Phil had a chicken curry boxty, which was probably my favorite of the ones I tasted. Our daughter had a reuben boxty. And our son had a slider trio that included a lamb burger. I drank a local blood orange cider. It’s this sort of thing that I love about travel–experiencing food and drink you can’t find anywhere else.

On departure day, Sunday morning, we hit up the Tim Horton’s just up the block because it’s the thing you’re supposed to do in Canada. The coffee was good and I had a breakfast egg sandwich. The Timbits (donut holes) were a big hit with the rest of the fam, too.

Although our vacation was technically over, we let the culinary curiosity take over on the way home, too. We met my parents in Toledo, Ohio, something we’ve done on the regular for years, but we had never eaten at Tony Packo’s. There’s now one near where we stop. It’s like Hungarian fast food. I had chicken paprikash over Hungarian dumplings. Our daughter had stuffed cabbage. There were hot dogs galore at the table and a variety of pickles.

After sending our children off with their grandparents, we ate pizza with our friends in their home just outside of Pittsburgh, PA, and walked to the local diner for breakfast. There, I had a spinach and tomato eggs benedict, which was different and good.

Our of necessity for time, Phil and I grabbed a sandwich from Roy Rogers on the turnpike back to Lancaster.

Years ago, when I went on my second mission trip, the trip leader was given the advice to “feed them well” because we were working on disaster relief. I feel like vacation deserves a similar principle. We “eat in” just enough to not feel bad about spending money on good quality food on other days.

And the food experiences add to the overall travel experience.

I’m curious: What’s your vacation eating style? What unique places have you discovered while traveling?