Greeks in Troy

After all these years, finally there’s a Greek house in Troy

Ok, make that a Greek House, as in, The Greek House on 3rd.  The Greek House has been around for a few years now and we’ve been 3 or 4 times, most recently this weekend.  It’s a haul from the Schenectady region, but it’s worth it if you’re craving their particular menu or want something different – and it rises above similar dishes offered at local diners.  It’s been reviewed before, including in The Record and The Times Union.

The Greek House, without a doubt, qualifies as a hole in the wall.  With about 7 tables and one more outside in nice weather, it’s hit or miss if you get seated.  They do offer takeout and, honestly, if we lived nearby we’d get takeout probably twice a month from them.

Let me knock off the negatives right away: It’s a touch pricey for some items, but I guess with so few tables they need to make it work.  And not everything is spectacular, but everything we’ve had is quite good and worth going back for.  It’s good enough that we’ve brought people from out of the area there.

I’ve always gotten the gyro and their gyro meat is fantastic.  At the Blue Ribbon Diner it’s perfectly acceptable.  At The Union Cafe it’s very good.  The Greek Houses is my favorite in the area.  Their full menu is on their site.  It’s short and sweet.  Before this most recent visit I’d always gotten a gyro with a side of lemon potatoes (actually called an appetizer on their menu).  Strongly lemony and well cooked, it’s a great accompaniment to the gyro.  This time I got the Gyro Platter, which deletes the tomato and red onion from your gyro and gives you greek fries (generic fries with parmesan and oregano) and a small salad.  The salad was undressed but went over well enough with the provided oil and vinegar.  ‘Well enough’ meaning we’re out of salad season, local produce-wise.  It had a lot of tomatoes in it that I mostly relocated to my gyro to go along with the tzatziki.  I was full when I left and I didn’t finish the slightly undercooked fries.

My wife tried the spanakopita this time and got quite a surprise.  Instead of a layered dish, The Greek House takes the filling and rolls it up into a tube of phyllo and then shapes it into a snail (spiral shape) before baking.  She liked it, saying it tasted “like spanakopita”, just in a different shape.  She’s previously gotten the chicken souvlaki that was good.  Not amazing, but good.

Our guest this time ordered the special, which was sort of disappointing.  It looked like a grilled chicken leg (there may have been other chicken as well) in a sort of tomato-y sauce with mushrooms served over orzo.  It mostly got eaten but didn’t seem like anything to write home about.  Surprisingly it didn’t come with salad and probably should have.

We also ordered eggplant fries to try because they sounded interesting, but we never got them, which our server realized before she gave us the bill.  It was so crazy there that we didn’t bother asking about them earlier.  They had a full house, one cook, and one server.  I can’t blame her for the missing appetizer, she was literally running between tables at times.  She did her best to make sure drinks were kept up with, people didn’t wait too long to pay their bill, etc.  It wasn’t what you would call excellent service, but she was certainly giving it her all, it was just too much.  Apparently the owner left earlier, leaving her alone.  Yikes.  Despite our missing eggplant and extra time (we weren’t in a hurry) I gave a good tip, I don’t think she could have been working any faster or harder the whole time we were there.  She even sat a table of four outside and was dealing with them.

As far as the rest of the menu goes, the only other item we’ve had in the past was the tzatziki appetizer.  It’s good enough and does the job.  Their pitas are OK and the tzatziki is standard stuff.  I’ve definitely had worse, but I’ve also had better (Al-Baraki‘s springs to mind).  Maybe I just like an extra kick of garlic.

Drinks are acceptable.  Sodas in bottles served with a glass of ice.  Even the unsweetened iced tea was just a bottle of tea.  Having a big pot of freshly brewed tea to offer, maybe even at a lower cost than something bottled, could be a nice draw.  They also have wines and beer, none of which I know enough about to enlighten you in any way.  Or you can just get a glass of Troy water like I did.

Since we first went there it looks like they’ve spruced up a bit.  It’s not fancy, but the paint was bright and looked fresh, things were clean.  Generally just nice and tidy looking.

All in all this is a place I’d love to love more.  I like it.  I like it a lot.  Everything is pretty good and a few things are quite good, but it’s just not quite worth a regular drive all the way to Troy for it.  Especially if you don’t know if you’re even going to get a table.  In some ways I feel the space is really working against them, you can see people strolling down 3rd and they look in, but see that it’s full and keep walking, off to eat somewhere else.  They’re clearly losing diners that way.  Still, being full is good as long as you turn your tables over efficiently.  Maybe they do a good takeout business during the week.  I hope so.  Eliminating the cost of a tip and drinks, we’d be all over their takeout.

The Greeks are ensconced in Troy, pay them a visit.

(Don’t) Live Free, Diet!

(ok, lame post title, obvious, etc.)

Live free or die, New Hampshire?  Ah, those were the days, eh?  So much for that -

MANCHESTER — Cupcake-filled birthday parties could become a much rarer occurrence in city schools under a new nutrition policy given preliminary approval by school board members Tuesday.

Teachers would be encouraged to have only one group birthday party a month, rather than one for each student, under the revised policy, which was approved by the board’s Coordination Committee.

In addition, the policy would limit holiday parties to one per month, “unless nutrition standards for healthy snacks are followed.”

And there goes another rite of childhood for another group of children.  It’s funny (not ‘haha’ funny) – all of these new draconian anti-obesity rules and laws are being set by people whose parents managed to eat a cupcake or some bacon, yet their own inability to control themselves, resulting in a surge in obesity, means that instead of being allowed to live (and eat) free as they were, everyone else should be punished for their lack of control (which they have passed on to their springy offspring).

I can’t help but be reminded of a recent post over at Spoil Your Dinner about Cracker Jack.  I remember (admittedly lame) Cracker Jack toys.  Apparently now the best you can hope for is a sticker or rub on tattoo or something.

And we can’t forget poor Cookie Monster.

Osrac YaeMr

Methinks Oscar‘s a little mixed up and confused.  Basically they are now going for the ‘be everything to everyone’ demographic…nice work if you can get it.  Seriously, look at the range of what they’re offering now, in addition to the old standbys:

What’s that?  You want hot dogs but you want to be healthy, too?  Oscar’s got you covered:

Yes, that would be a chicken breast hot dog.

What?  ‘Screw that!’ you say?  Healthy-shmealthy?  Dare we say…

Bacon dogs?  Yeah, you heard Oscar…BACON dogs.

But the OM also makes those Lunchables – aka salt licks for kids.  Oh, but they’re not just about the salt now.  Just look at what the Junk Food Guy spotted: Lunchables Snack Duos.  Hey, sweet.  Fruit and veggies?  Crackers and cheese?  Pffft.  Right.  When your tubby little 6 year old needs a man-sized snack for their man-sized appetite you need a little snack…like tortilla chips and salsa AND mini oreos!  Or how about a little something to tide them over between 10:00 snack and lunch?  Just a nibble?  Maybe some celery?  An apple?  No…S’MORES DIPPERS!  Honey graham crackers AND marshmallow creme AND chocolate chips!

But then they’re offering ‘healthier’ Lunchables with smoothies and such.

I don’t know they’re playing at.  All I know is that it’s a little creepy…but not as scary as the Lunchables Facebook page.  Hey, kids, it’s bikini season!  Have some S’MORES DIPPERS!  And all the parents commenting on there about stuffing their kids full of these things.  Yikes.

That thumb’s not green

Annnnnnnnd….I killed most of my seedlings.  Oh well.  More purchased plants again this year, I guess.

Fail.

Most of the tomatoes survived the slaughter, though, as well as the few peppers that actually germinated.

On the road – Alta Restaurant and Wine Bar

A recent road trip to the Berkshire Museum to take in the Ansel Adams exhibit involved a stop in the area for lunch.  Tripadvisor.com pointed us towards Alta Restaurant and Wine Bar, the highest rated restaurant in the Berkshires, located in Lenox.  We got in around 12:30 and were seated immediately, it was pretty empty, but filled a bit by 1:00.

Alta is the sort of place that would fit right in in downtown Saratoga Springs.  They’ve got the whole natural food thing going with a touch of the eclectic, a little more expensive that you think it might cost, and a limited menu allowing them to focus on getting a few things right.  The short review is that, like most of these places, it was pretty good, but nowhere I’d go out of my way to visit again.

First, if you do happen to go when they’re busy and want to have a conversation – well, good luck with that.  With just a few small groups the room we were in was very loud, I can’t even imagine what it’s like on a Saturday night filled with groups pounding down the wine.

The service was attentive but not overbearing.  The food tasted fresh.

We went with the turkey burger with fries and the Paris with fries.  We were warned that the turkey burger would take a while to took thoroughly, which seemed a little odd, but was fine and, yes, it was thick enough to justify the 15 minutes of cooking – I have to think that means they’re not squashing it down and squeezing all the juice out of it – so that’s good.  My Paris wrap was decidedly interesting and I’d call it an OK near-miss.

The menu lists the ingredients as: Ham, Brie, Apple, Caramelized Onion, Romaine Lettuce.  The lettuce was fresh tasting for this time of year, but present in slightly too large a quantity.  The caramelized onion was pretty much useless – I could see it, there was plenty of it there, but the flavor was not.  The apple was thin slices of granny smith, soft and sad this time of year and I had to second guess their inclusion, or even the inclusion of the wrap itself this time of year if they’re to be featured.  The brie combined with ham was a flavor combo that took me a few bites to wrap my tastebuds around, but they did sort of work together (I did find myself wishing the tart crispness of the apple was present to work with them, though).  However, the ham was basically just slices of deli ham piled in a block and the brie was all in a sort of tube of cheese in one part of the wrap.  The wrap itself was a sort of multigrain affair, lightly toasted to lock it together.

The main problem was the same as that experienced with a weak burrito where everything is all spread out so you’re not getting a bite of multiple things, just individual tastes here and there.  It was either a big blob of semi-melted brie, ham, or, most of the time, lettuce.  Unlike a burrito where you can do some twisting and squishing, the toasted, sort of flattened wrap was not flexible enough to allow for it, so I was stuck eating a bit of this, a bit of that, etc.

As usual, I’ve probably focused too much on the negative.  All in all it was pretty decent and, with fries for $11 wasn’t a bad deal.  The burger went over well.  The fries were a mix of hand cut sweet and regular potatoes, just very slightly undercooked leaving them a touch shy of crispy, but they were tasty.  I don’t usually go for sweet potato fries, but these were pretty good.

Given that the vast majority of other top reviewed restaurants were pizza joints and pubs, this was a pretty decent stop.  My wrap, while suffering from weak apples and poorly-thought-out assembly, mostly boasted quality ingredients.  There were a couple of other things on the menu that looked good, also.

So, while I wonder if dinner would be more exciting, I sort of hope this isn’t the best the Berkshires have to offer.  It was a perfectly fine stop for lunch and you will likely be satisfied with a meal at Alta if you’re passing through Lenox.

And sodas were only $2 – a bargain it seems nowadays.

 

Wendy’s flat

Well, well, well.  Wendy’s recently decided to launch a couple of flatbreads, leaping ahead, well, into the past when flatbreads were all the rage.  Fortunately for them, they seem to have at least gotten it pretty right given their late entry in this market.

They look pretty tasty, right?  Well, surprisingly enough for fast food, they actually sort of looked like that and, yes, were tasty.  In fact, the Smoky Honey Mustard was tasty enough that my wife has had two of them.  I finally decided to give the Asiago Ranch a spin last night.  I should point out that I’m already pretty much a sucker for anything ‘asiago ranch’ at Wendy’s.  It’s a flavor profile they do well as far as I’m concerned.

Nutrition wise, they’re not a bad option.  At just 370 calories for the Honey Mustard and 530 for the Ranch, these aren’t belly busters.  Both contain tomatoes (expectedly lame this time of year) and lawn clippings…uh, “spring mix”.  Sorry, I’m just a romaine kinda guy when it comes to sandwiches.  A (very) generous splurt of sauce and surprisingly filling quantity of chicken folded up in a multigrain flatbread.  The Ranch also has asiago cheese and a couple pieces of typically lame Wendy’s bacon.  Take that off or ask not to have it and save 90 calories if you want.

Let’s break it down a little more.  The bacon, as noted above, is worthless.  Hard, cool, and flavorless and adding 90 calories and almost 25% of the sandwich’s fat.  Don’t get me wrong, I love bacon, but this wasn’t worth the trouble, I honestly tasted zero bacony goodness.

The veggies were what they are – limp, sad, April tomatoes.  The lawn cli…spring mix was mostly inoffensive, no bitter tang or anything.  I guess it’s fancier than romaine and certainly a better choice than iceberg.

The cheese and ranch were typical of Wendy’s – very tasty.  My one complaint would actually be that they’re actually a little too heavy with the ranch.  I don’t know if they used the ‘recommended’ amount or not, but of the three we’ve bought so far, all were pretty heavily sauced.  2/3 of what was provided would have been sufficient.  A secondary problem was that the ranch was just too dang cold.  In such a large quantity, squirted all over my warm chicken, well, by the time I got about halfway through everything was sort of cool and then cold by the end.

The chicken was fine, nothing special, perhaps a little dry, covered up by all the sauce.

Finally, the multigrain wrap.  I don’t want to call this the best part, but I was impressed.

1. It has definitely come by the name ‘multigrain’ honestly.  They’re full of various grains and seeds, in fact the ingredients read: “millet, natural sesame seed, flax seed, rolled oats, cracked wheat”.  Wheat flour, malted barley flour, some molasses in there.  Sure, it’s not super all-natural, but there’s a lot of good ingredients in there and in there in sufficient quantity that you know they’re in there with simple visual inspection.
2. It’s tasty.  Breaking off a corner and sampling it by itself showed the wrap to be tasty indeed.  No bitterness.  Soft-ish.  Firm crust and reasonably flaky interior.  Didn’t taste dry.
3. Strong.  I’ll admit that I had my doubts, having encountered flat breads before.  I figured there was no way this thing was going to hold up to bacon, chunks of chicken, and a river of ranch.  Now I didn’t bother trying to be dainty or particularly careful, nevertheless the bread did not crack at the seam until the absolute last little bite and that was only after I had picked it up and put it down a number of times.  A definite ‘A’ for durability.  The hint of toasting probably helps with that.

Finally, this was a pretty filling meal.  There’s enough chicken and other ingredients to fill you up pretty well.  I mean, compared to a triple baconator or something, well, no.  But for normal mealtime?  With some fries or a salad, this was fine for a meal.  More than fine.  I think they need to emphasize that a bit more in their commercials, that it’s not just a ‘snack wrap’ sized thing, this is a legitimate sandwich.  Honestly it’s ripe for a ‘Wow this is good’ with ‘real people’ commercial.

So, there you go, yet another reason to go to Wendy’s.  Pretty tasty.  I’d easily order one again.

 

More yogurt

Yes, the self-serve frozen yogurt and a zillion toppings craze is in full swing in the capital region.  One of the (seemingly endless) new options is Sweet Frog Premium Frozen Yogurt that just opened in the slowly-developing Mansion Square across Balltown from Mohawk Commons in Niskayuna…or Schenectady…wherever that line is, it’s right around there somewhere.

We gave it a try a week ago, wondering how it would stack up to the TCBY in Shop Rite Plaza.

The Bad:

1. The layout is a lot more annoying than TCBY.  It’s just tighter, which means that if there are more than about 3 people getting yogurt it’s elbows and sighing and thinking ‘this isn’t worth it’.
2. Although similar, the toppings bar seems tighter as well.  More sighing, more waiting.  Put the phone away, get your crushed cookies, pay, and GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY!
3. The machines are a little hard to control – maybe because they’re new?  It’s hard to judge when to stop, seems like you get too much, a sample cup is inevitably overloaded (I guess you might like that).

The Good:

1. Tasty flavors.  The strawberry smokes TCBY’s.  The pistachio was pretty tasty,  a light, but easily identifiable pistachio.  I had a swirl of peanut butter and chocolate and it worked out pretty well, about on par with TCBY’s peanut butter cup, the one flavor I really like there.
2. Topping selection about the same as TCBY.
3. Covers are way easier to put on compared to TCBY’s.  Weak praise, but true.
4. Sample your heart out.  This may be brought under control once the newness wears off, but for now you can basically just take all the sample cups you want and go to town.  In fact, I hope they do get it under control, because there was one guy there having a feast while we were trying to get yogurt, a stack of sample cups in his hand.

The cost is comparable.  The flavors seem a little stronger, fuller.  It may be the emphasis on ‘premium’ vs. low fat or no fat that a lot of TCBY flavors showcase, but whatever, they’re yummy.  All in all, we’re not sure the hassle of trying to get a yogurt there, especially once the hot weather hits, will be worth it.