Friday, June 8, 2012

Anchor Bar (Buffalo, NY): Home of the Original Buffalo Wings

Anchor Bar may no longer be the best place to go for buffalo wings in Buffalo, NY, but it will forever be the place where the wings were first invented. Naturally it still draws plenty of tourists; it's after all fun to go to "the home of the original buffalo wings!"

The buffalo wings were said to have been invented by Teressa Bellissimo in 1964, when she served them to her son and his college friends late one night. Now, there's a 15-30 minute wait for a table. Photos of celebrities at Anchor Bar and articles fill the walls. Shot glasses and t shirts are available as souvenirs.

We got a "bucket" of 50 wings ($39) to share among 8 people. I was worried about the spiciness and we ended up ordering a "medium" which the waitress said had a good kick to it but wasn't too spicy. Well ... the "medium" was actually super mild ... even for me!

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The skin on the wings were nice and crunchy, but we could barely taste the buffalo sauce. They were still good wings, but towards the end of the bucket, I decided to ask the waitress for extra hot sauce. It was much more flavorful with the hot sauce, but she charged us for it.
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Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Melisse Ups the Ante with New Cocktails by Steve Livigni and Pablo Moix

Melisse has always been one of the top restaurants in the city, but it lacked a good cocktail program - until now. Chef Josiah Citrin and the team at Melisse recently hired the team behind La Descarga and other great LA bars, Steve Livigni, Pablo Moix, and Lindsay Nader, to come up with a bar program to meet the level of their food.

The result? A fun and sophisticated list of cocktails. There's no physical bar at Melisse, but with a kitchen of this caliber, they can do a lot of fun and ambitious things "table side" that you cannot do at a busy bar, like this deconstructed Zombie.

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Watching the setup and action is certainly part of the draw for this drink.
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Steve Livigni pouring in frozen nitrogen
The deconstructed zombie consisted of rum jello made with three different rums (Flor de Cana 4 year, Appleton VX, and Smith and Cross Navy Strength), Passion fruit "dippin dots", mint gelee, and passionfruit juice. It's beautiful with the style of a Melisse dessert.

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Giant Cactus! Valle de Los Gigantes in San Felipe, Baja California,Mexico

People think of the beach and ocean when they think of San Felipe in Baja California, Mexico, but it is also a desert. A desert with giant cacti!

Thanks to Street Gourmet LA, I went along on a media trip to San Felipe this past week and saw these giants with my own eyes.
Valle de Los Gigantes in Rancho Punta Estrella features gigantic sahuaros, which are only 6 mm when it's a year old but can grow for 2000 (yes, 2000!) years!

They don't produce the first seed until they're about 75 years old, and after that it will go on to produce millions, but maybe only one will survive until maturity. Well, when "maturity" in the desert amount to thousands of years, that's not so surprising ...
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For size comparisons:
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See Street Gourmet LA with his camera to the right? It's not that he's far away in the background, that really is how big that cactus is.
I don't know why this one didn't sprout any branches, but it sure grew to be a lot taller than the rest!

San Felipe gets really hot in the summer months (March is the ideal time to vacation here), but it was definitely worth the trek to see them.

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