Author: Margaret McCormick

Back in the day, Amy Robbins and Ted Long, co-hosts of Ted and Amy in the Morning (WNTQ-FM 93.1), had a pre-Thanksgiving tradition. After talking turkey and pie and family and rituals on the air, they would head out to the former Plainville Farms Restaurant in Cicero to get their gobble on. “We’d make a pilgrimage just because we were ‘jonesing’ for turkey so bad,” Robbins recalls. “There was never a better smell in Central New York than that restaurant,” Long adds. “Roast turkey and cinnamon-y. We always got the buffet. Turkey with mashed potatoes, stuffing and gravy. All the…

Kasai Ramen, a new restaurant in Armory Square, aims to bring an almost exclusively ramen menu to Syracuse. The business will be at 218 Walton St.

Main Street Farms and Head + heal aren’t only helping people eat better; they’re using hemp and CBD oil to make them feel better, too.

Immigrants and New Americans use Salt City Harvest Farm in Kirkville to grow produce native to their homelands and the U.S.

Many of us are committed to buying locally grown produce and handmade, artisan food products. Now let’s give some consideration — with a spoonful of local pride — to the utensils with which we can choose to eat those foods. Liberty Tabletop, a division of Sherrill Manufacturing, Inc., is the only manufacturer of stainless steel flatware in the United States. It’s made in Central New York, in Sherrill (“the Silver City”), to be exact, and sold directly to consumers online. Inviting a Liberty design to the table takes eating local to a whole other level. “We like to call it…

Some people collect gems and jewelry. Others are on the hunt for antique clocks and watches. And there are those who can’t say no to old books, magazines and postcards. Stephanie Neidl has her collector’s eye trained on colorful, humble, decorated vintage Pyrex. The more, the merrier. Covered casseroles share space with glassware and family keepsakes in a tall hutch in her dining room. In the kitchen, Pyrex ware of all shapes, sizes and hues is stacked neatly in cupboards, holds leftovers in the refrigerator and even cradles her sunglasses on a shelf. Still more is packed away in boxes…

At least once a week, sometimes more, Molly Swartwood and her family pile into the car and take a ride from their home outside Auburn to Bliss Ice Cream in North Syracuse. It adds up to more than 50 miles round-trip, but it’s more than worth it, Swartwood said, for the vegan soft-serve ice cream. Bliss opened in April in the ice cream window spot between CoreLife Eatery and Chuck Hafner’s Farmers Market and Garden Center, at 7265 Buckley Road. The venue serves two flavors of non-dairy soft serve (chocolate and vanilla), regular soft serve and eight flavors of local…

Richard and Victoria de Graff walk into the kitchen of a local restaurant carrying a “Mystery Box” of organic produce from Grindstone Farm. A chef pulls out onions, carrots, acorn squash, butternut squash, beets, turnips, watermelon, radishes and more, plus pastured meat, and sets out to prepare a spontaneous, creative multi-course meal for two dozen guests, some of whom will descend on the kitchen, cellphones in hand, to snap photos to share on social media. The Grindstone Farm owners, better known as Dick and Vic, are long accustomed to supplying restaurants with their produce, but don’t always see preparations firsthand…

Emma Frisch is accustomed to balancing multiple projects. When she competed on the Food Network Star reality TV series’ season 10 in 2014, she headed back to Ithaca to open Firelight Camps, one of the country’s premier glamping (short for glamorous camping) destinations. Following the arrival of her daughter Ayla, now 2, Frisch gave birth to her “book baby,” Feast by Firelight: Simple Recipes for Camping, Cabins and the Great Outdoors, published in April by Ten Speed Press. While promoting the book, Frisch has been busy getting Firelight Camps open for its fifth season. She co-founded Firelight with her husband, Robert Frisch, better known as Bobby. She’s the culinary director and he serves as chief executive officer. They…

It’s (almost) summer in Central New York. Can you envision a picnic, barbecue or cookout without Cornell chicken, hot dogs, salt potatoes and baked beans? If you’re loyal to hometown brands, the hot dogs better be Hofmann’s and the salt potatoes from Hinerwadel’s. And chances are the beans in a casserole next to the platter of grilled corn are Grandma Brown’s Baked Beans, the pride of Mexico, Oswego County. “Around here, you try serving people any other kind of baked beans and there’s going to be a problem,” says Thomas Connors, owner of Syracuse Crate, a local foods-focused gift box and shipping company whose motto is “a bit of Syracuse delivered to your door.”…

What if the opening of a restaurant predicated on healthfulness and wellness caused traffic jams and traffic advisories, like Chick-fil-A did when the national fried chicken outlet opened a Central New York location earlier this year? That could happen when CoreLife Eatery comes to DeWitt this fall, and eventually to Fairmount. The Rochester, Buffalo and Albany areas now have several CoreLife locations to choose from and expansion is not limited to New York state. The fast-growing, fast-casual chain now has nearly 40 outlets in 10 states, with more on the way. North Syracuse is home to the flagship CoreLife Eatery, which opened in 2015 in the former…

Get ready for “CeleBrunch” with these Cayuga Wine Trail fun facts!

Defi Cuisine is scheduled to open around May 2018, the owners say.

Have you ever hosted or attended a party where guests cluster in the kitchen, talking food, wine, recipes, cooking techniques, favorite food TV shows and the new restaurant that’s the talk of the town? That’s the atmosphere Michele Bellso aims to offer with Let’s Cook Syracuse, an ongoing series of cooking classes she debuted this winter. The classes are held in her Cicero home. “The classes are part entertainment, part instruction, part social and part dinner party,’’ Bellso says. “They’re a lot of fun. There’s no shopping, no menu planning and no cleanup. Everyone gets to enjoy the food. And…

Yemen Tounsi had never heard of Syracuse before he responded to an ad for a bakery position here. The Frenchman, who was living in Austin, Texas, at the time, had to “put it on Google” to see where it was and make sure it wasn’t Siracusa, Sicily. After lengthy correspondence and conversations with Eric Alderman, Tounsi was fairly sure he wanted to come to this Syracuse to help shape the Stoop Bakery Café and put it on the map. And Alderman was confident he had found the missing ingredient in his restaurant team. “I was looking for someone special; I…