CITY Newspaper's Dish 2018

DISH

ROCHESTER BURGER WEEK

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CITY NEWSPAPER DISH 2018 PAGE 4 - EDIBLE EXCURSIONS Food tours highlight local offerings

PAGE 8 - FOOD FOR A FIGHT Going out to a protest? Fuel up right.

PAGE 10 - LET NOTHING GO TO WASTE A Q&A with Flower City Pickers

PAGE 14 - SPLIT CHECK Behind the east and west side dining split

On the cover: Illustration by Jacob Walsh Publishers: William and Mary Anna Towler Editorial department themail@rochester-citynews.com Special Sections editor: Adam Lubitow Contributing writers: Jake Clapp, Katie Libby, Pete Wayner Art department artdept@rochester-citynews.com Art director/production manager: Ryan Williamson Designers: Renée Heininger, Jacob Walsh

[ INTRODUCTION ] BY ADAM LUBITOW

Rochester’s food culture has never existed in a vacuum. Our dining scene is a rich and varied arena, subject to the influences of history, tradition, and shifting trends that shape the culinary landscape of a city. With that in mind, CITY tried something a little different with this year’s edition of DISH, focusing less on the food itself and more on the effect those myriad factors have had on creating the cuisine.

Writer Pete Wayner takes a look at how geography has impacted Rochester’s restaurant landscape by delving into the age-old divide between the city’s east and west sides. Katie Libby, CITY’S Chow Hound, spotlights some regional food tours, which give diners a chance to explore the diversity of local cuisine while getting a sampling of the area’s history.

And because even what we eat isn’t free from the influence of our country’s evershifting political climate, we also look at the city’s food culture through the lens of social justice and humanitarianism. Jake Clapp interviews the founder and acting director of Flower City Pickers about the group’s mission to help those in need by collecting leftover produce from the Rochester Public Market and redistributing it to shelters, soup kitchens, and food pantries all around the city.

With everything that’s going on in the world today, activism is on the rise — and that’s a good thing. But all that protest and resisting can wear a person down, so CITY’s staff has put together some helpful nutrition tips to nourish the mind and body, while keeping your energy up and directed toward affecting change. Because you’ve got to heal yourself before you go out and heal the world.

We always love hearing from readers, so join the conversation and leave any comments or feedback online at rochestercitynewspaper.com.

Advertising department ads@rochester-citynews.com New sales development: Betsy Matthews Sales representatives: Tracey Mykins, David White, William Towler Operations/Circulation kstathis@rochester-citynews.com Circulation manager: Katherine Stathis Distribution: David Riccioni, Northstar Delivery Dish 2018 is published by WMT Publications, Inc. Copyright by WMT Publications Inc., 2018 - all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, photocopying, recording or by any information storage retrieval system without permission of the copyright owner.

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Walking food tours, like the Whistle Stop Dinners run by Boomtown Table (above), give an overview of an area’s history and dining options. Whistle Stop was one of the first food tours in Rochester, but is currently on hiatus. PHOTO COURTESY BOOMTOWN TABLE

Exploring local flavors and forging new friendships through walking food tours [ ROUND-UP ] BY KATIE LIBBY

Walking through a neighborhood, you’re able to find hidden gems that you wouldn’t be able to see if you were just driving by in your car, whether it be a pocket park you never knew was there or a small restaurant that ends up having the best Cuban sandwich in town. And sometimes, you might need a little guidance.

Food tours — small, guided outings taking diners to various restaurants and bars — offer the unique opportunity to not only entice your palate but also explore neighborhoods in your city that you might not be familiar with.

It also gives you a chance to meet new people who share an interest in finding the best fare that Rochester and its surrounding areas have to offer. As the gastronomical queen herself, Julia Child, said, “People who love to eat are the best people.”

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CITY has looked into food tours in Rochester and beyond and collected them for you below. All of these are walking tours, with the exception of the Rochester Pedal Tour. Each tour is a little different, so check the details, but generally ticket prices include a planned dish at each stop. If you know of any food tours that we missed, leave them in the comments below this article online at rochestercitynewspaper.com.

The original concept for Flower City Food Tours was to entice diners to explore Schoen Place and Pittsford Village, but it has since expanded to include the Park Avenue neighborhood. Tours run weekly, May through November — Pittsford tours take place on Thursdays and Saturdays, and Park Avenue tours take place on Wednesdays and Sundays. Each tour runs for about three hours and costs $57 to $59, with a capacity of 12 people. Stops on the Park Avenue tour include F. Oliver’s, Magnolia’s Deli & Cafe, Baker Street Bakery, and more.

If you’re interested in dining on (and near) the Erie Canal, the Pittsford tour has stops at Erie Grill and Pittsford Farms Dairy & Bakery. More information at flowercityfoodtours.com.

If you live in the city, there is a good chance you’ve been in your car behind a Rochester Pedal Tour, thinking to yourself, “I want to be mad, but they look like they’re having so much fun.” The popular bar crawl bike tour also offers a progressive dining tour. Peddlers can choose two different restaurants where they will preorder food so it’s ready when they get there.

Participating restaurants include Ox and Stone, Char Steak & Lounge, ButaPub, and others. Dessert can either be brought on the bike or purchased and picked up at Sinful Sweets. The cost of the excursion, for up to 13 people, is about $265 plus the price of food. Tours are currently only available during the week as weekends are already sold out for the summer — however tours are offered all year round and the price is reduced after Thanksgiving weekend.

Rochester Pedal Tours also has a Taco Tuesday Mixer for smaller groups that takes them to two different restaurants for tacos.

More information at rochesterpedaltours. com/progressive-dinner.

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For those looking to get outside the city proper, Finger Lakes Food Tours offers a Canandaigua Uptown Food Adventure Tour.

The tours are held on Friday and Saturdays, May through December, from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. and are meant for all ages. Tickets are $65 and include stops at Eddie O’Brien’s, Sweet Solutions, Flavors Indian Restaurant, and more. Participants will also learn about the history of Canandaigua’s culture and architecture. You can purchase tickets and find out more information at flfoodtours.com.

Warmer weather provides the perfect opportunity for a day trip outside of Rochester to experience more of the food Western New York has to offer.

Sampling Syracuse runs a Discover Downtown Food Tour on Saturdays from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m., May through the first weekend in November. Downtown Syracuse has had a significant facelift over the years, making the area more accessible and appealing to students and young professionals. The goal of the food tour is to support local, family-owned businesses and also drop some knowledge about the history of the area. Tickets are $41 and include stops at six area restaurants, including the original Dinosaur Bar-BQue and Café Kubal. Each tour has a capacity of 13 people. Find out more at syracusefoodtours.com.

Lewiston is only about an hour and a half drive east from Rochester, and Lewiston Food Tours offers both a Food Tasting and Historical Tour as well as a Prohibition Tour. The Food Tasting and Historical Tour stops at six restaurants, including some that were featured on The Food Network and The Travel Channel.

The tour runs on Wednesdays and on the weekends from May through September.

The cost is $53 for adults 12 and over and $35 for children under 12. Diners will also hear about Lewiston’s history, with ties to the Underground Railroad and the War of 1812. The Prohibition Tour includes food and drink and a history lesson about Prohibition Era Lewiston and runs on Fridays and Saturdays from June through September. Tickets are $59 for adults 21 and over and $35 for an alcohol-free tour

PHOTOS PROVIDED

for those 18 and older. Both tours have a capacity of 12 people. More information on both tours at lewistonfoodtours.com.

Who says you can’t do two food tours in one weekend? That actually sounds like the ideal weekend for me. Niagara Culinary Tours offers both a Niagara on the Lake Foodie Tour and a Niagara Falls Food Tour: Beyond the Falls. The Niagara on the Lake tour runs from April 1 to November 20, Thursdays through Sundays. Tours start at 1 p.m. and tickets are $69. Participants will visit four to six restaurants in a three and a half to four kilometer (you are in Canada after all) loop — about two miles. The Beyond the Falls tour runs from May 18 to September 30 on Friday through Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are also $69 per person and include a guided tour of Niagara Parks along with the food experience. Both tours require tickets to be purchased in advance and have a capacity of 12 people. More information at niagaraculinarytours.com.

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[ CRASH COURSE ] BY JACOB WALSH

It’s a chaotic time. Every week has felt like a month in the current news cycle. Let’s just say that a year of the Trump administration has left a lot of people fired up about a lot of issues.

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism, and our right to protest is so important that it’s there in the first amendment -- right along with freedom of speech. So when something needs to change, lace up your boots, grab a sign, and get together with your allies to make your voices heard.

But being out in Washington Square Park all day or marching down East Main Street is going to take energy, so remember to feed your body well. To help out, CITY has a few ideas on how to fuel up for your protest.

• Turns out that water is the key to everything (physical functioning, mental acuity, immortality, etc.)

• Regular, coconut, or otherwise. Get some seltzer if water is too boring. Skip the Perrier, though; it’s probably not great to look bougie at a protest.

• Key during moving demonstrations, especially during the hotter months. But map out your public restrooms.

• A big vat of chili never killed anybody.

• Especially good for stationary displays of resistance. Gather ‘round for some slop, y’all.

• Encourage a PYOP system (Provide Your Own Protein) and keep the base vegan so everyone can play.

• Avocado is business up front, p nutrient-rich, high in fiber, and rules. Don’t forget the cilantro.

• Bring a ton of hummus: It’s den and is a good anti-inflammator you’ll bring pine nuts, too.

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• Vegetables that hold lots of wate are a good way to keep your bell

• GORP: Granola, oats, raisins, and peanuts for when you’re feelin’ munchy.

• Include a generous amount of good fats, like pistachios, cashews, and almonds.

• Make sure you have a nut-free option for members of your party with allergies. Sharing is caring, especially when it doesn’t involve anaphylaxis.

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• Bread is generally a crowd-pleaser, and honestly everyone will like you more for bringing it.

• Has real potential as a self-defense implement if push comes to shove.

• Even though the portability of bringing along your aeropress to a protest march is tempting, leave the single-cup nonsense at home. Strong, focused coffee is a potent diuretic and will dehydrate you pretty quickly -- besides, you should be sharing anyway.

• Opt for a low-octane, cost-effective, large-format box of coffee to share with the members of your party. Don’t mess around with flavored coffee, that stuff is gross.

• Non-dairy creamers like almond milk are a good thing to have on hand for your vegan and lactose-intolerant friends.

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a wet baby diaper run over in the road, so that’s kind of what it looks like at the market in some places. And so not only is there food waste, but there’s also the problem of the packaging and recycling.

CITY: I might be jumping ahead a little bit, but it sounds like a lot of solutions would need to take place on the front end, like how things are packaged, or how produce comes to the market to begin with.

Humphrey: Exactly. We’re not a local

Flower City Pickers volunteers help sort food at the Public Market. PHOTOS COURTESY FLOWER CITY PICKERS [ INTERVIEW ] BY JAKE CLAPP

On an average Saturday, Flower City Pickers will collect between one and two tons of unwanted produce and food products from vendors around the Rochester Public Market.

About 60 percent of that, says FCP founder Khoury Humphrey, is still good for human consumption — the rest of it can feed livestock or be composted — so the group sorts and redistributes the collected food to local shelters and hunger relief organizations.

Since it started in January 2015, FCP has saved 300,000 pounds of food from being dumped into landfills.

You might have seen the FCP bus parked in a corner of the Market, with volunteers hauling produce, sorting, and boxing up goods to go out to groups around Rochester. There’s a grading system: Food that receives an A (for “astonishing,” the group says) still has a relatively longer shelf life; a B (for “blemished”) graded item goes to organizations that will use it immediately, like Food Not Bombs, which serves healthy meals at St. Joseph’s House of Hospitality on Saturdays; and the C-grade (for “critter and compost”) products can help feed livestock or head to the compost pile.

In general, American culture’s relationship to food is through a complicated, tangled, disconnected industry — it’s driven by convenience and the ability to get every kind of item at any time from any supermarket. “We very much rely on stores and Amazon.com and whatever to get produce and get everything that we need,” Humphrey says. “We’re not actually relying on our communities to provide what we need anymore.”

Grassroots groups like FCP give Rochesterians a chance to get back to a 10 2018 DISH

personal understanding of where our food comes from and where it goes, while helping out those in need. You can learn more about Flower City Pickers, including about how to volunteer, at flowercitypickers.com.

CITY spoke with Humphrey and FCP Acting Director Evan Zachary to learn more about what drives food waste at the Market, what the solution might be, and their thoughts about food activism in Rochester. An edited transcript of the conversation is below.

CITY: What do y’all see as the biggest drivers of food waste at the Market?

Khoury Humphrey: Most of it is the wholesalers.

I like to tell people if your food doesn’t have dirt on it, don’t buy it. You want your food to be dirty because that means that it’s local, it means it came from a farm. You want it to look a little wonky because somebody grew that.

So a lot of the waste, at least food waste, from the Market comes from these people who have hardly any control over what they buy.

Unfortunately it’s a vicious cycle, because it all comes down to numbers. All of the credibility and liability falls onto the individual vendors, and so what happens is a lot of this produce, instead of them selling it for the dollar deal, it’s just easier for them to buy another truck for a couple of thousand and just throw away old produce than it is to try to relocate it — or restore it with limited storage space available.

Also the produce that is coming off these trucks is highly packaged. So these things are coming in boxes, and inside those boxes, there’s different packaging that absorbs wetness. There’s these different chemicals, and stuff that’s kind of like baby diapers. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen

culture and local society anymore. We want everything that we see in a travel magazine — instead of going and taking a vacation to a beach and having a pineapple, we can go to Wal-Mart and just buy a pineapple and watch “Gilligan’s Island” on TV and kind of simulate the same thing.

Evan Zachary: Quickly just to add a couple things, to take us back to what is causing food waste at the market: I think it’s useful to segment what you mean when you say food waste, because there’s a couple of different stages of that process. When it doesn’t sell at the market and the vendors are no longer interested, there’s a certain extent of food waste associated with that.

However, that it’s not viable for a retail setting doesn’t necessarily make it food waste yet.

One of the reasons that so much of the food is going bad, that I’ve been made aware of by talking to some of the folks who physically

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CITY: A lot of these issues are really tightly interconnected. How do you think these things can start to unravel and move forward?

Zachary: The food waste issue — and the

FCP Founder Khoury Humphrey

transport stuff around the market, is the types of storage that’s available to the wholesalers within the market itself. A deficit of temperaturecontrolled storage is something that they struggled with, for example. So in the winter months, it’s challenging for them to prevent certain sections of their food inventory and storage from freezing. So that is one piece of it.

To us, wasting food — the way Flower City Pickers looks at that — is sending it to a composter. Our top priority, and the way the Environmental Protection Agency prioritizes what you do with food waste, sets feeding people at the front of the line, basically at the top of the chain.

The barriers to increased food recovery include transportation that’s available to us. There was a study done in Seattle over like four or six years that looked at food retailers and what their barriers to donation were. It specifically categorized what the limitations were; 46 percent of those vendors and retailers cited transportation constraints, distance, costs to the fleet as their biggest barrier.

One other interesting thing is in that array of barriers, one thing that is decreasing — in terms of preventing retailers from donating — are liability concerns. Because as re-use increases as a common practice more people are interfacing and understanding the Good Samaritan Act, which is what sort of protects us. So the physical barriers, at this point, have kind of become a logistical puzzle as opposed to a legislative puzzle.

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unjust access to food — is a problem that runs up and down the supply chain in terms of how products are bid for and what food you are even able to be exposed to over the course of your development, based on where you live, what schools you go to, and things like that.

But like with any issue relating to sustainability action at home, there’s a component of that. We recognize that to a certain extent we aren’t — well, not to a certain extent, in a whole extent — we’re not solving hunger. We’re sort of treating one of the symptoms of it in a way that is low impact. To get more at the root of why food insecurity is happening, you need to look at nutritional education and access to that information and access to exposure to those kinds of foods. But there’s also the pretty significant conditions in which someone might be exposed to those which are a little bit larger scale. It’s individual, it’s educational, but it’s also kind of systemic and economic.

FCP Acting Director Evan Zachary (left)

CITY: I wanted to pivot to a bigger view about food activism in Rochester. I wanted to get your general thoughts about how you see the scene here.

Humphrey: There is a scene for it, I feel. There’s

actually a group that we work very closely with called Food Not Bombs. They come and pick up from us at the market and they use some of the food that wouldn’t normally have that long of a shelf life, and they use it the same day to cook and serve it. And they also get groceries out to people.

Zachary: Taproot is a newer partner of ours, but we like to think of them as our neighbor. So the Taproot Collective does urban agriculture education workshops and consulting. Basically they’re attacking food deserts from the ground up by creating productive food spaces in settings where you wouldn’t normally find them. I know that they did just purchase a quarter acre at the corner of First and Pennsylvania — which is just a stone’s throw from where we are set up — that they’re now actively converting into this cool urban farm, and they have a grant to fund the construction of the greenhouse there.

So you’re going to see a neat new addition to the Marketview Heights neighborhood when it comes to food security.

We’re going to be working closely with them, taking some of the things that they grow there and distributing that to our network, as well as sending them our compost. We love that example because it’s sort of this instance of a really localized food processing system that is acceptable and pretty just.

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There’s a perception that west side food doesn’t match east side offerings.

There might be some history behind that.

[ FEATURE ] BY PETE WAYNER

East-siders are snobs. West-siders are bumpkins.

Welcome to Rochester.

At least, that’s the stereotype, reinforced in the minds of those who entertain it every time a Chili visitor complains about small portion sizes or a Pittsford sojourner snuffles at a wine menu. Let’s just say, right up front, there are snobs on the west side of the Greater Rochester Area. And there are east side diners who refuse to accept something because it falls afield of their daily meat and potatoes. People are just people, regardless of geography — and yes, Jeremiah’s has west side, city, and east side locations, and Bee Sting sauce is teaching the world to sing.

With that out of the way, different food and drink options are afforded to the different sides of the Genesee, and the levels of hype just don’t match.

We hear about a parade of new places opening in the city, particularly on the east side and in the eastern suburbs. Buzzwords like “gastronomy,” “mouthfeel,” and “mindfully sourced” get tossed around like duck meat in a cassoulet, or if you like, tater tots in wing sauce.

From the west side, we hear relatively little. A craft brewery may open to local acclaim, but limit your Yelp search to “Hot and New” and (aside from Chick-fil-A) there tends to be more buzz on the east side.

So, what’s going on? Are new places just not opening up? If not, why not? Or is there actually an east side conspiracy to keep the press firmly entrenched?

If you go back to the early days of Rochester, there was East Avenue and West Avenue (now West Main Street) branching out from the Genesee River. Based on “East Side, West Side: The Development of East and West Avenues in Rochester,” an online pathfinder published by the Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County, historian Blake McKelvey called East Avenue the “Avenue of Presidents” because of the number of business magnates that lived there.

Their names are as familiar as their mansions, which still populate that picturesque promenade.

Sibley, Powers, and of course, Eastman were some of the first real east-siders.

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The west side was much more middle class. And that’s not to say it wasn’t full of extraordinary people — Susan B. Anthony lived in a relatively modest house on the west side of the city. The library’s business directory for her neighborhood reveals railyards, canal yards, a prominent carriage factory, and small businesses like tobacconists, bakers, and druggists.

Today, there’s some debate about what towns constitute Rochester’s west side. It’s generally agreed that Greece, Gates, and Chili are in. Parts of Irondequoit, Ogden (including Spencerport), and Sweden (including Brockport) are also usually included in the designation.

It’s possible that these population demographics spread farther east and west, respectively, resulting in distinct cuisines. After all, the restaurants flourishing on the west side seem to place a premium on homespun values, like family and heritage, rather than the caprices of culinary trends. Staples like Agatina’s, Red Fedele’s Brookhouse, and Rohrbach Buffalo Road Brewpub started decades ago and still hold true to the ideals of family, tradition, and consistency — not necessarily fancy, but consistently good. Those ideals breed a loyal local following of regulars.

“It’s people knowing people,” said John Urlaub, founder and owner of Rohrbach Brewing Company. “I look at our customers that come in on a Friday night and well over half come in every Friday night … their shoulders just drop, like, ‘I’m home.’ Our staff brings them their favorite beer before they even sit down.”

Urlaub said he knew Red Fedele since he was a kid. Today, the Brookhouse proprietor still personally greets everyone walking into his restaurant, shaking hands, doling out hugs, and even sitting down at friends’ tables.

It’s that kind of place.

Then again, there are those that say an emphasis on good food and drink at fair prices is what drives traffic — not which side of the river you’re on. Stoneyard Brewing owner and founder Jay Nichols said in the 10 years since Stoneyard opened in Brockport, he’s not really thought about fitting into the west side.

“We appeal to all demographics — it could be an electrical contractor or a computer engineer — you kind of have something for everybody,” he said. That includes those with a taste for culinary adventure, apparently, as Stoneyard’s menu includes a rotating game burger, a menagerie of unusual ground meats like elk, yak, and camel.

Stoneyard’s business philosophy seems to be working, as the brewery moved to a new, larger location in Brockport last year. And other places have opened on the west side in the last year as well — notably, Taste of Soul (also in Brockport), Casa Merlita Philippine Cuisine in Gates, and #Snap Burger & Fries in Gates.

Still, as universal as the appeal of good food and beer may be, some concrete data can apparently block new places from opening up.

Restaurants’ “method of picking a site becomes a little problematic,” said David Dunning, Supervisor for the Town of Chili.

“Basically they put a pushpin in the map and draw circles in a 1-, 2-, and 3-mile radius and count rooftops, and if the rooftops aren’t there, they aren’t coming.”

For a town full of farmland like Chili, with a population density of 729 people per square mile (compared to the city’s 5,885 people per square mile), that can indeed be problematic.

Dunning said that method also ignores the fact that Chili gets significant through-traffic to the University of Rochester, Strong Memorial Hospital, and other west side towns.

Whether the relative dearth of coverage is due to new restaurants opting out of the west side, the fact that existing restaurants are happy with their books of loyal regulars — and can afford to wait for new ones — or a historical divide as deep as the Genesee River itself, what is known is that the west side has some places worth visiting. Not only will you get a plate of great food, but you’ll be welcomed to the table like they’ve been expecting you.

And so, let’s gather around those tables as unified Rochesterians, thankful for culinary diversity in our city. And also thankful that we’re better off than those clods in Buffalo and Syracuse.

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