food
motion minded kitchen design cabinets & installation accessible design green materials
SamClarkDesign.com Ian Maas (802) 454-1856 For info & images: KitchensforFoodies.blogspot.com
Dock-To-Table « p.40
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What’s on this week
8/11/14 4:11 PM
Wednesday - Ray Vega/8:30PM Thursday - Acoustic Thursday with Brice Guerriere/8pm
Saturday - Cynthia Braren Trio/9PM Monday -Trivia/7PM — go to hotelvt.com/events
SEVEN DAYS
08.13.14-08.20.14
SEVENDAYSVt.com
8/11/14 4:28 PM
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“We are getting a few younger people,” the 79-year-old Essex native tells Seven Days via phone. “They’re coming here for farming.” Near Fledging Crow, a modest farm community has started to take root on Mace Chasm Road in Keeseville. Essex Farm, founded in 2004 and offering a large CSA, is the subject of farmer Kristin Kimball’s critically acclaimed 2010 book, The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love. When LaForest was a girl, she says, the Essex Inn was “all dirty, old, dusty rooms that hadn’t been used in years.” A friend lived “in one end of the building,” she recalls, and the kids would wander the vacant rooms. “It was fun to use our imaginations about the people who had been there before.” Those people allegedly include spies. According to Morris Glenn, another local history buff, the Essex Inn was a hotbed of espionage in the War of 1812. “Spies and military people using the Essex ferry would hang out at the inn trying to find intelligence,” Glenn says. At that time, Essex militiaman Delavan Delance owned the inn and regularly housed troops there. “It’s nothing super exciting or specific,” Glenn says, “except that they were here.” Two hundred years later and just down the street, two men linger over a leisurely meal at the Old Dock House. Inside the bar, we join them, sitting amid pirate flags, the Red Sox on TV and kitschy signs that declare, “Lowcut shirts are looked down upon at this establishment.” Awaiting the 9:30 ferry, we chat with the friendly barkeep about the bar, made from boxcar floorboards, and drink cold Switchbacks. As we wander away from the sleepy old town and onto the dock, Jimmy Buffett’s voice calls across the water, crooning a slow Grateful Dead classic: “Once in a while you get shown the light / In the strangest of places if you look at it right…” and the boat pulls up to take us home. m
Few experiences are more delicious than
arriving for dinner by water.
Friday - The Beerworth Sisters/9PM
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hefty pour of Widow Jane bourbon (distilled in Brooklyn with water from the Widow Jane mine in the Hudson Valley) and blood-orange bitters. While whiskey and roasted meat may seem to say “serious,” Castro’s food is not without whimsy. A first course of pheasant and waffles is a playful take on the fried-chicken classic. The nutty bird, country-fried to a delicate crisp, tastes as though it gorged on acorns weeks before its death. Perched atop an airy Belgian waffle in creamy maple gravy, the dish reveals Monahan’s influence. “I love chicken and waffles,” she says as she brings the plate to the table. “So I begged [the kitchen] to do this.” If the cooking is both sophisticated and fun, the restaurant’s interior is classic Adirondack: Wooden walls separate hand-hewn, exposed beams and wide-plank floorboards cut from ancient North Country hardwoods. It’s old-fashioned but cozy, not stuffy. It’s also the kind of place where an entrée still comes with a salad — super-fresh greens from Keeseville’s Fledging Crow Vegetables, tossed in a bright vinaigrette. When the entrée comes, it’s a hearty, thoughtful dish that suddenly casts a silent, hungry spell over the table. It might be tender medallions of Magret duck breast, cooked a perfect, bloody rare; or that thick-cut pork chop, seared deep brown and topped with glazed apple on a bed of braised white beans and greens. Castro says he and Monahan rewrite the menu weekly, keeping a few standards such as pan-roasted chicken and filet mignon for less-adventurous eaters. They view their inn as a lab. “We’re a test kitchen,” the chef says. “We’re constantly changing things and trying new recipes, and we cook the way we like to eat.” Before taking over the Essex Inn, Castro says, he worked as a production chef, preparing packaged dinners for folks with special needs. “We did a lot of sous-vide cooking,” he notes. Before that, he helmed the kitchen at Café Mooney Bay, on the Mooney Bay Marina in Plattsburgh. In his own space, Castro seems ready to indulge his creative side, and to make the most of local agriculture — an industry that, according to local historian Shirley LaForest, is starting to blossom.
6/30/14 2:53 PM
Contact: hannah@sevendaysvt.com
INFo Essex Inn on the Adirondack Coast, 2297 Main Street, Essex, N.Y., 518-963-4400. essexinnessex.com The Old Dock House Restaurant and Marina, 2754 Essex-Charlotte Ferry, Essex, N.Y., 518963-4232. olddockrestaurant.com