Dish ROCHESTER FOOD & DRINK 2015
bEAN TO CUP | An update on the booming craft coffee movement ON THE RISE | 5 food trends worth keeping an eye on in 2015 GRAIN TO GROWTH | Black Button Distilling finds spirited success
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Food culture tends to constantly change. Restaurants open and close every day, often instantly replaced by a new concept. Trends come and go, and they’re usually centered around the most unexpected food items. (Has anyone else heard about gourmet toast?) And it seems like once a restaurant introduces a new, successful menu item, other nearby businesses put their own spin on the dish. In this year’s edition of Dish, City’s guide to Rochester’s food and drink culture, we explore some of the more recent changes in the area’s dining scene. Dining writers Dave Budgar, Laura Rebecca Kenyon, and Chris Lindstrom took a look at five food trends that have started to become popular in Rochester — things like vegan baking, gourmet fried chicken, and pho. And Katie Libby takes a look at three new coffee shops that roast, brew, and sell their coffee all in house. To top it off, we visited Black Button Distilling, a grain-to-glass distillery near the Public Market that has seen tremendous growth in its first year. We know there’s a lot to be excited about when it comes to dining in Rochester, so we would like to hear from you. Chime in on these articles on our website at rochestercitynewspaper.com.
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On the cover: photo by Mark Chamberlin Publishers: William and Mary Anna Towler General manager: Matt Walsh EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT: (themail@rochester-citynews.com) Arts & entertainment editor: Jake Clapp Contributing writers: Katie Libby, Dave Budgar, Laura Rebecca Kenyon, Chris Lindstrom ART DEPARTMENT: (artdept@rochester-citynews.com) Art director/production manager: Ryan Williamson Designers: Aubrey Berardini, Mark Chamberlin ADVERTISING: (ads@rochester-citynews.com) New sales development: Betsy Matthews Sales representatives: Christine Kubarycz, Sarah McHugh, Tracey Mykins, David White, William Towler
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BEAN TO CUP [ COFFEE ] BY KATIE LIBBY
In 2012, City contributor James Leach wrote about three new coffee shops in Rochester that were roasting, brewing, and selling their coffee all in house, a relatively new concept: Joe Bean Coffee Roasters, Canaltown Coffee Roasters, and Java’s at the Market. Fast forward to 2015 and I had the chance to interview the owners of three more small-batch coffee roasters that have opened since then: Press, Pour, and Fuego. I am not a coffee purist. I like my coffee with cream and sugar, or if I’m feeling saucy, I’ll go for a vanilla latte. Prior to visiting these coffee shops, I didn’t know a lot about where coffee comes from, the different ways to prepare it, and what I should taste when I take that first sip. The phrases “single origin” and “pour-over method” were not in my lexicon. As a coffee consumer, I learned that the choices go way beyond “regular or decaf.” Damian Serafine opened Press Coffee Bar (480 East Main Street) last year. He got his start helping his cousin, Joe Palozzi (Java’s at the Market), open Java Joe’s on Gibbs Street in 1992. Palozzi taught Serafine how to roast, and after spending 20 years in the coffee business in Arizona, Serafine moved back to Rochester and opened Press. Serafine roasts about 20 to 25 pounds of coffee a day, taking him about 10 minutes per pound, and if you arrive early enough, you might be able to watch him while he does it: The roaster sits against the wall in a room right off the entrance. continues on page 6
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Joy Ebel brews coffee at Pour Coffee Parlor. PHOTO BY MARK CHAMBERLIN
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Press mostly offers blends, which Serafine researches online to find new and exciting ones to offer. “I’m always roasting for espresso,” he says. “It was the way I was brought up. Each coffee has an incredible characteristic and when you add them together, to me it rounds out perfectly and you get a beautiful, smooth, gorgeous espresso.” Serafine poured me a cup of the house blend, which was a Costa Rican-Brazilian brew. “It’s going to be bitey, and it’s going to be earthy,” Serafine explained. “The Costa Rican is not going to give you chocolate like a Guatemalan will give you, but it will give you more dirt. It’s real earthy. The Brazilian gives it a soft finish.” I drank it black and definitely got the bite — but the dirt? I wasn’t so sure. How do you develop a palate for dirt? The menu at Press includes coffee drinks, as well as bagels, pastries, and sandwiches. Its proximity to the Eastman School of Music guarantees that Press has music a few nights a week. “I just want people to come in and enjoy themselves,” Serafine says. “I’m old school. I come from an Italian background where you sit down, drink espresso, and don’t worry about the other stuff — just pour a really good espresso.” To say that the guys who run Pour Coffee Parlor (23 Somerton Street, off Park Avenue),
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which opened in 2014, are passionate about coffee would be the understatement of the year. Listening to them talk about everything from the farmer to the bean to the brewing process is almost like listening to someone talk about a religious experience. Director of Coffee (DOC) John Cannon talks about finding his true calling: “It’s a super inspiring thing. I can go to work and see this super exotic thing [the coffee bean] that’s gone through so many different hands to get to me, the barista, and it made me feel like I’m the only one that could screw this up.” Owner John Ebel got into the coffee culture once he saw a Siphon coffeemaker being used for the first time. “It looked like a science experiment,” he says, “and when I tasted it, I thought, ‘This is not coffee, this is awesome.” So he bought one himself and started experimenting. Pour primarily uses a Chemex coffeemaker, which uses a pour-over method to brew the coffee. The filters on the Chemex are about 30 to 40 percent thicker than a standard coffee filter. The thicker filter catches more oils and solids and allows for a “cleaner” cup of coffee. The whole process takes about three to four minutes. “This coffee is bit heavier bodied than what we normally have at the bar,” Ebel says when handing me a sample. “There are a lot of sweet flavors like lemon and grapefruit, lots of citrus hidden beneath a creamy body.” It really was a “cleaner” cup than what I typically taste from brewed coffee — light and citrusy. Ebel also says that he doesn’t like coffee right when it’s poured, that as it cools more flavors are released. Ebel and Cannon know that not everyone has the time to wait for the pour-over, so they do make some ahead of time and have it ready to grab and go. They encourage people who want to know more about coffee to come in. “We built our bar around doing this, talking to people and having that human interaction,” Ebel says. They also offer a nitro cold brew pulled from a tap. The coffee is pre-brewed in five-gallon batches and put on nitro gas, like Guinness. Seasonal lattes, like the current lavendercardamom latte, are available; they offer a maple latte in the fall. Sandwiches and salads are on the menu as well as a few craft beers on tap. After talking to Tony Colon from Fuego Coffee Roasters (167 Liberty Pole Way), I felt I needed
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to go home and do some serious soul searching. “I work seven days a week and I don’t feel like I work a day — so if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life,” Colon says. Colon and his wife, Renee, opened Fuego in 2013 and they roast onsite; Renee is the master roaster and you’ll find her back there four to five times a week roasting beans. Most of the coffees they get are farm direct, which means they have a direct relationship with the coffee farmer and pay them a better wage than they would get going through a broker. Their single-origin coffees come from Ethiopia, Burundi, Indonesia, and South America. Colon used an AeroPress to brew my Ethiopian coffee. The AeroPress method is a full immersion process that is powered by a vacuum and pressure; the coffee will have more of a body than if he used a Chemex, which he also has available. “Right off you should get some citrus, almost like a lemon,” Colon says. “Then it goes into a candied flavor, almost like a candied apricot, and as it cools you’ll get a nice, chocolaty, sweet body.” I asked Colon what his thoughts were on cream and sugar: Are they evil? Am I a horrible person for wanting it? His answer: “I don’t judge people who put cream and sugar in their coffee. It’s all about the experience, the education. And who am I to say how you drink your coffee?” Fuego has a menu of espresso drinks available, using only single-origin espressos that change daily. All of its coffees are brewed by hand using either the AeroPress, Chemex, or Clever coffee makers. Baked goods are available from Flour City Bread Company.
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Poutine at Lento. PHOTO BY MARK CHAMBERLIN
8 CITY • DISH 2015
City takes a look at five food tr ends that have started to take hold in Rochester [ TRENDS ] BY DAVE BUDGAR, LAURA REBECCA KENYON, AND CHRIS LINDSTROM
The worlds of food and fashion have at least one thing in common: trends. What’s deemed cool one day is quickly replaced by something new. With Rochester’s food and dining scene in the midst of a renaissance, it’s no longer necessary to visit a larger city to sample the latest and greatest. City Newspaper’s dining staff has curated a list of its five favorite 2015 food trends and where you can find them in the Rochester area. Let us know what food trends you enjoy locally by commenting on this article online at rochestercitynewspaper.com.
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Chocolate peanut butter cheescakes at Pudgy Girl Bakery. PHOTO BY MARK CHAMBERLIN
Voluptuous vegan baking Lush and creamy cheesecake, topped with layer of thick, chocolate mint ganache. An Elvis cupcake, with dollops of rich peanut butter frosting and coconut “bacon” perched upon a tender banana cake. Truffles stuffed with salty pretzels and sweet caramel. They’re 100-percent delicious, 100-percent vegan, and 100-percent made by Jenny Johnson, owner of the Pudgy Girl Bakery (678-1630, pudgygirlbakery.com). Johnson has had a lifelong passion for baking. As a photography student at RIT, she would bake vegan treats to use as photo subjects. Post-graduation, she pursued both passions, freelancing as photography assistant and honing her pastry skills at The Owl House. Today, baking is her primary focus, but tempts customers on her website and Facebook page with photos of carrot cakes slathered with vegan cream cheese frosting and toasted nuts, sugar cookies shimmering with citrus glaze, and chewy maple bourbon pecan pies. Johnson was drawn to vegan baking through
the idea of cruelty-free eating. “Replacing dairy and eggs with plant based ingredients such as soy and starches is a small step in making a smaller, less destructive impact on the cows and chickens as well as the environment,” she said. While Johnson explores the possibility of selling pastries from a food truck or opening a storefront, you can custom order items through her website (cakes start at $35). Pudgy Girl Bakery items are also available at Abundance Cooperative Market (62 Marshall Street), Balsam Bagels (288 North Winton Road) and Lori’s Natural Foods (Genesee Valley Market, 900 Jefferson Road). You can find more vegan baked goods at Get Caked (274 North Goodman Street, 319-4314, getcakedroc.com), Scratch Bakeshop (113 Park Avenue, 360-4844, scratchbakeshoproc.com), and The Red Fern (283 Oxford Street, 5637633, redfernrochester.com). — BY LAURA REBECCA KENYON continues on page 10
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Fancy fried chicken Butapub’s Korean fried chicken is almost too good to believe. The half-chicken entrée ($18) presents four, fat pieces of chicken — legs, thigh, breast. There are also two ramekins, one packed with kimchi, another stuffed with thinly-sliced pickles, and a small bowl mounded with white rice. Though the sides are good, the chicken is the star. Each piece is battered and fried until richly browned. The coating is craggy, with peaks approaching chestnut brown, and valleys a shade of blonde. Smeared across each piece is gochujang, a deep red, thick and sticky chili paste made with fermented soybeans and glutinous rice. The gochujang adds heat, depth of flavor, and sweetness to the chicken, but it doesn’t subdue the coating’s crispness. Each bite releases a satisfying crunch that resonates in the mouth. Even a day later, after a drumstick had chilled in my refrigerator, the crunch and flavor remained. This is chicken that lives up to the tagline finger-lickin’ good. Butapub’s chef-owner Asa Mott serves up Korean Fried chicken nightly as a wing appetizer ($11) and an entrée ($18 for half a bird or $32 for a whole). During Sunday brunch, the white rice with the dinner entree is swapped out for house-fried donuts. I’m pretty sure that’s what they serve for brunch in Heaven. Butapub is at 315 Gregory Street (563-6241, butapub.com). You can find more fried chicken at Good Luck (50 Anderson Avenue, 340-6161, restaurantgoodluck.com), The Revelry (1290 University Avenue, 340-6454, therevelryroc. com), and TRATA (145 Culver Road, 2705460, tratarochester.com). — BY LAURA REBECCA KENYON
Beneficial bacteria Fermenting is one of the oldest methods of preservation for both food and drink, and in the last few years there has been a resurgence in using these age old methods. About three years ago, Small World Food (90 Canal Street, 563-9018, www.smallworldfood.com) started fermenting with kimchi and sauerkraut, which has become the core of its ever expanding product line. I counted more than 25 different varieties when I visited at the Public Market with most of them using raw local and organic produce as the base. 10 CITY • DISH 2015
Butapub’s Korean Fried Chicken served with gochujang, kim chi, pickles, and rice. PHOTO BY MARK CHAMBERLIN
An explosion of interest in fermentation’s healthy byproducts, like probiotics and digestive enzymes, was the catalyst, but according to Nathan Carter of Small World that’s not all there is to it: “Introduction to fermented foods or probiotics usually starts from a health perspective, but once you try it, the depth of flavor you get can’t be replicated.” For example, the miso ($5 for soy, black bean, or chickpea versions) and fermented garlic are staples in my fridge. Personally, I use them to make my own vegetable base for soups or stews when I’m looking for that umami boost without the meat. If you’re interested in learning more about cooking with miso, Small World will offer a class on Saturday, May 30, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Small World has also recently delved into making apple cider vinegar — another product of fermentation. Vinegar is hot right now in the drink world with the use of shrubs (flavored and sweetened vinegar) for both non-alcoholic and traditional cocktails. Currently, Cure (50 Rochester Public Market, 563-7941, curebar.net) is using a gastrique in one of its cocktails and Joe Bean Coffee (1344 University Avenue, 319-5279, joebeanroasters.com) and The Revelry (1290 University Avenue, 3406454, therevelryroc.com) are both using shrubs in items on their menus. — BY CHRIS LINDSTROM
Pho sure
As recently as five or six years ago, I’d never heard of pho, and I certainly wasn’t aware of the pronunciation issues surrounding this Vietnamese noodle soup. Nowadays there are at least 10 places to slurp it within a 10-minute drive from the center of Rochester. Pho may be beef-based (pho bo) or chickenbased (pho ga). Either way, pho begins with an earthy and aromatically complex broth created through long hours of simmering bones, along with the addition of spices like star anise, cinnamon, cardamom, and ginger. Within that broth you’ll find voluminous rice flour noodles, along with either chicken or various cuts of beef, and possibly chopped scallions. From there, choose your garnishes to add more complexity to both flavor and texture. Most restaurants offer mung bean sprouts, Thai basil, wedges of lime, and Thai chile peppers or jalapeños. You’ll also typically find Sriracha and hoisin sauce at the table to further liven up your soup. The newest addition to the Rochester pho scene — a mashup of Vietnamese, Russian, and American cuisine — is East/West Kitchen at 337 East Avenue, where the recipe (also a mashup) originated with the wives of two of the Vietnamese owners. Chef Keith Finch conjures up a fresh batch from scratch daily. Finch beings by boiling beef bones with onions for eight hours before adding star anise, caraway, beef
paste, coriander seed, black cardamom, and even rock candy, but no MSG. After another four to eight hours, his broth reaches culmination. The finished product has a clean citrusy flavor highlighted by fragrant anise. While beef is sometimes a footnote to pho, the thinly sliced rare beef here was among the most flavorful I’ve had in a bowl of pho, perhaps due
to its local roots, as Finch tries to source all his ingredients locally. A few other prime picks for a sensuously sumptuous bowl of pho include Dac Hoa (230 Monroe Avenue, 232-6038), SEA (741 Monroe Avenue, 473-8031), and Saigon Pho (1384 Lyell Avenue, 235-3611). — BY DAVE BUDGAR
Duck fat frites, duck gravy, and First Light Creamery cheese curds makes up Lento’s poutine. PHOTO BY MARK CHAMBERLIN
Our new neighbor from the north Migrating south, poutine has passed through customs, crossed the Canadian-American border, and taken up residency in Rochester — the dish now populates more and more menus of local bars and restaurants. A simple dish, yet one whose ingredients demand balance and harmony, poutine — (ideally) fresh cut French fries and nuggets of slightly melted cheese curds smothered in gravy — has its roots in 1950’s rural Quebec as something of a cheap fast food. The rise of poutine’s popularity in our area could be attributed, at least in part, to Le Petit Poutine. One of Rochester’s most beloved food trucks, it has spread the gospel of poutine for four years now at the Rochester Public Market, the Brighton Farmers’ Market, the Memorial Art Gallery, the corner of Broad Street and South Avenue, and at night outside South Wedge bars. Perhaps this area’s quintessential poutine comes from Lento chef and owner, Art Rogers. Having had duck fat frites on the menu since Lento opened eight years ago, Rogers was persuaded about six years ago that those duck fat frites could have a higher calling in poutine. He
sees his poutine as a fine fit for his farm-to-table philosophy: duck (for fat and for the stock used to make the gravy) sourced from Gansz Farms in Lyons, Kennebec potatoes (“Ideal for frying, better than Russet,” according to Rogers) from Greater Tater in Wayland, and the cheese curds from First Light Creamery in East Bethany. Rogers perfects this integration of textures and flavors by placing the frites, topped with the cheese curds, under the broiler before adding his signature gravy and locally grown chopped herbs. He suspects the recent upsurge in poutine popularity — beyond Le Petit Poutine raising awareness locally — has much to do with our proximity to Quebec and the Internet’s effect of shrinking our world. These days, you can find various incarnations of poutine at such places as J.B. Quimby’s (3259 South Winton Road, 272-9780, jbquimbys. com), Simply Crepes (which uses wedges of red potatoes in lieu of French fries) at 7 Schoen Place in Pittsford, Victoire (duck-fat fried, with duck gravy and duck confit) at 120 East Avenue, and numerous other places in the area. — BY DAVE BUDGAR
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GRAIN TO GROWTH [ DRINKS ] BY JAKE CLAPP Black Button Distilling founder and head distiller Jason Barrett. PHOTO BY MIKE HANLON
Just inside the entrance of Black Button Distilling on Railroad Street — right next to the door that separates the business’s product and bar area from the back room packed with barrels and equipment — is a large poster board that lays out Black Button’s process. The simple diagram walks the viewer through the distilling process, from preparing the grains and turning longchain starches into short-chain sugars before going to the fermentation tanks and the shiny hybrid pot still. But one of the more noticeable facts comes at the very beginning of the process. Black Button is a grain-to-glass distillery — the first of its kind in Rochester since Prohibition — and takes it a step further by working with only one farm, Edgewood Farms in Groveland, for all of its corn, wheat, and rye. (Black Button gets its malted barley from Rochester’s Pioneer Malting.) The distillery does everything in-house, from starting with grain that’s stored in silos behind the building to hand 12 CITY • DISH 2015
Black Button Distilling 85 RAILROAD STREET 730-4512; BLACKBUTTONDISTILLING.COM
filling and labeling each finished bottle. “We have a big philosophy here that the closer you are to nature, the better,” says Jason Barrett, Black Button’s founder and head distiller. “Higher quality grains grown in specific ways yield better products. Rather than trying to get as much corn per acre that you can get, that’s the opposite of what we want to do. The farm uses all-natural, cow-shit fertilizer. No GMO corn either. What you get is this nice hard red corn. It would be awful corn on the cob, but it makes for a really pungent, really great corn whiskey.” It’s a philosophy that has resonated for Black Button. The distillery, tasting room, and retail store opened to the public in January 2014,
and the business has already seen remarkable growth. When Barrett started, there were only three full-time employees (not counting himself and his father). By June 1, there will be seven. The business installed two 15-ton silos — one to store corn and one for wheat — behind the building in April. Black Button has a second still coming in and another bank of fermenters, and it just signed a lease on a new warehouse space to store aging barrels and packaged product. To top it off, Black Button’s Citrus Forward Gin — a crisp gin that finishes with an orange tone — won a bronze medal in the contemporary gin category at the American Craft Spirits Association 2015 Awards. “Third out of 458 in your first year is not bad,” Barrett says. Along with its Citrus Forward Gin, Black Button makes a moonshine, wheat vodka, professional proof vodka, apple pie moonshine, and a bourbon. (While Black Button’s bourbon
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will be its signature product, the majority of what they have created is still finishing its twoyear aging process in white oak barrels. The distillery did launch a “little barrel” series on Black Friday last year; the smaller, five-gallon barrels take only four months to age.) And on May 1, the distillery used lilac petals and complementing botanicals to make a limited run Lilac Gin. Barrett says the American Craft Spirits award has opened the door for Black Button to reach new markets and choose the distributors the distillery wants to work with. Its spirits are now available in New York and New Jersey, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Michigan, and Georgia. And Barrett is aiming to have the whole East Coast covered by the end of 2015 or beginning of next year. The name, Black Button, is a tribute to Barrett’s
family and its history of manufacturing in Rochester. Barrett’s great-grandfather started by sweeping floors at the Shantz Button Factory — the factory that’s been converted into Button Lofts — before becoming a shop foreman. His son (Barrett’s grandfather) ended up owning the company by the mid-1980’s. Barrett grew up working with his family in the factory, but being color blind, could only “see” the black buttons. A native of Penfield, Barrett graduated from SUNY Cortland with a political science degree and took a job in Washington, D.C. A longtime home brewer, he started to taking classes in distilling and was sucked in. With distilling, there are just so many worlds of flavors to still explore,” he says. “Especially in the whiskey and gin categories.” Barrett adds that craft distilling is still a young, smaller industry, which excites him about the possibilities to make new spirits. continues on page 14
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The team at Black Button Distilling includes: Jason Barrett, Nicole Noce, Tom Stock, Derek Carlson, Zach Cedruly, William Mayes. PHOTO BY MIKE HANLON
Barrett started going to distilling schools across the country — Chicago, Colorado, Kentucky, Michigan, Cornell — and his hobby started to morph into a business idea. “I was a young guy who had a good amount of vacation time on my hands, and just going to learn about distilling was fun for me,” he says. “Then when this started to become more of a serious thought, I realized I was only one program away from a master distiller’s certificate. If I could get into one of those programs, I’d probably have the knowledge I needed to really feel confident opening my own place.”
At only 24 years old, Barrett pitched his business idea to banks in 2012, quit his job and moved back to Rochester in early 2013, and got to work building the distillery. (The space where Black Button is located was once dry storage for its neighbor, Rohrbach Brewing Company.) As it grew closer to opening, funds for Black Button were quickly running out, so Barrett launched a $20,000 Kickstarter campaign to afford the barrels needed to make the company’s bourbon. The distillery was able to raise $26,000 and bought 26 barrels. “It was really neat to see the Rochester
The tasting room at Black Button. PHOTO BY MIKE HANLON
community come out and support it,” Barrett says. “We’ve had a lot of these people come in and see their barrels.” Black Button offers tours of its facilities, and its tasting room is open Tuesday through Saturday with a menu that highlights specialty cocktails. All of Black Button’s products — and a large selection of other locally produced barrelated products — are for sale in the distillery. In addition to the business’s rapid growth, Barrett is also spearheading the Rochester Craft Beverage Trail, a loose drinking path that highlights locally made craft beers, spirits, and wines — including Rohrbach, Roc Brewing, Iron Smoke Whiskey, and Heron Hill Tasting Room. “This past December,” Barrett says with a laugh, “I was able to define that we’ve been successful because I was able to get out of my parents’ house and into my own apartment.”
Put down the fork and pick up the phone
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