2 Years: Where We've Been, Where We're Headed

Two years ago this week, we posted our very first episode of the Eating Ithaca podcast. At the time, we had no idea if anybody would care, or if anyone would listen at all. We were excited to see something we made out there in the world, but it was hard to tell what Eating Ithaca was really going to be.

So we made it all up as we went along. Gradually more and more people found us, we watched the number of downloads go up and comments started coming in on this blog we'd thrown together. Then Andrea became co-host, and our little podcast about the local Ithaca dining scene began to grow into something more than just talking about food.

We started getting out to meet the people behind the local foods of Ithaca and the region. We interviewed our very first guest, Kevin Cuddeback of Gimme! Coffee, in Episode 5. In that time, the podcast continued to evolve, more people found us, and now...

• That first episode has been downloaded more than 500 times; and we're about to hit our 10,000th download overall.
• We've produced 45 podcasts, plus a few specials.
• We've featured more than 34 exclusive interviews with people from all over our food community.
• We've given you our one-of-a-kind reviews of over 70 different restaurants in Ithaca.

It's been great fun . . . But we're just getting started!

Since we went on a podcast hiatus in December, we've been working on a better Eating Ithaca. Thanks to all the great input we got from our recent audience survey, along with the list of ideas we've been wanting to include on our website since the beginning, we're finally taking the time to make some of those changes happen. While we can't promise anything for sure, we will definitely be improving the look and navigation of our website, with a fully searchable and easy to use restaurant guide. We'll also be writing capsule versions of our restaurant reviews to complement our podcast, which will be archived and easy to access when you're looking for where to dine out in town.

Our primary mission remains the same: to keep you connected to local food. We will continue to interview the people behind the food we eat, and share news and stories about what's happening in the community. We're also planning our next special live event, and working with other organizations in the area to help spread awareness of the food culture of Ithaca and the Finger Lakes with the rest of the country. And we're going to have some exciting new opportunities for you to get involved and support us as we grow.

The new year is filled with great opportunities for us. We may still be making it all up as we go along, but at least we know you're listening and reading and sharing, and that makes it all worthwhile. Thank you.

We're still here in the meantime, and we're active most days on Twitter or Facebook if you want to stay in touch. The podcast will be back in February 2010. Talk to you then!

--Your pals at Eating Ithaca

Local food abounds in this week's Ithaca Times

We just picked up the newest edition of The Ithaca Times (Jan. 20-26 issue) and it's filled with some great local food updates.

Start on page 13, where Rob Montana writes an overview of new business developments in the City of Ithaca, including:

• A restaurant space on the ground floor of the proposed Hotel Ithaca, located where the Rothschild Building stands now at the edge of the Commons at Aurora Street. We presume this might interfere with the space currently occupied by Madeline's, which could bring interesting changes.
• A new restaurant from Lex Chutinaround, owner of ZaZa's Cucina, opening in the former Plantations on Ithaca Commons.
• A large restaurant opening in the beautiful glassed in space on the first floor of the Cayuga Place apartments off of Green Street, behind the soon-to-open Palmer Pharmacy and the new Gimme! Coffee. The local restauranteur is unnamed, but we hope they do that space justice. Given the right talent and the right menu, it could be the new destination restaurant of the year.
• The Finger Lakes Wine Center could open as soon as this spring.
• Panera Bread and the Olive Garden are still on track for opening in Southwest Ithaca, as we reported earlier, though we'd be surprised to see anything open before this summer.

The article also hints at the possibility of another food franchise opening in the Southwest neighborhood once the old Salvation Army store is demolished. Montana did a nice reporting job and covers a lot in this well-written piece.

There is also a Winter Times supplement in this latest edition, which includes an extensive preview of the upcoming 12th Annual Downtown Ithaca Chili Cook-Off & Winterfest, written by Taryn Thompson. That event has always offered plenty of fantastic cold-weather eating and we're looking forward to this year's event.

Finally, for all you home cooks, don't miss Henry Stark's interviews with chefs from four local restaurants offering their favorite soup and stew recipes. It includes Moosewood's Spicy Carrot Peanut Soup from Melissa Bergman, a Hearty Sausage and Tortellini Soup from Tim Gaffney at Ithaca Ale House, the hearty Arizona Pumpkin and Vegetable Stew from Liz Van Every at Greenstar Coop, and - our personal favorite - an amazing Hungarian Beef Goulash recipe from Dano Hutnik himself, of Dano's Heuriger in Lodi.

The best part about all this is The Ithaca Times is FREE! Most of these articles aren't yet available on the Ithaca Times website, so pick up a copy today, because next week they'll all be gone.

Behind the Blog: Ithacork

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We're wrapping up the year on a festive note as we go "Behind the Blog" to meet Tom Mansell of Ithacork. Though he's relatively new to the local wine scene, his blog offers a fresh, fun, and scientific perspective that makes wine easy to understand and worth getting excited about.

In this interview, Tom takes Dave on a tasting tour of some of his favorite Finger Lakes wines, covering the best grapes of our region. With the enthusiastic mind of a chemist, he helps Dave learn something new about how wine works, how we taste, and generally makes wine less intimidating and easier to comprehend. This episode is 96 minutes long, but it's worth listening to every minute, a perfect download to listen to on your holiday travels. However you choose to listen, and no matter how much you already know about wine, you can still learn something from Tom.

This is also our last podcast of 2009. We'll be back next year with new episodes of our regular Eating Ithaca podcast. In the meantime, you can find updates by following us on Twitter and on Facebook. We'd also love to hear from you, so write a comment here on the blog, leave a message on our voicemail line 607-216-8624 (607-21-MUNCH), or send an email with your thoughts to: feedback [at] eatingithaca [dot] com.

If you really enjoy what we create here at Eating Ithaca, why not make a donation? Your support goes directly to helping us keep this blog and podcast running, and keep making it even better as we go. Just click on the Donate button on the main page and you'll be helping us keep Eating Ithaca!

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MORE ON TOM MANSELL:

• www.Ithacork.com
• Follow Tom Mansell on Twitter
• Tom's writing at The NY Cork Report
• Tom's writing at PalatePress.com

THE WINES WE TASTED:

• 2007 Shalestone Cabernet Franc (Seneca)
• 2007 Thirsty Owl Reserve Pinot Noir (Keuka)
• 2007 Heron Hill Old Vines Riesling (Keuka)
• 2007 Hermann J. Wiemer Dry Riesling Reserve (Seneca)
• * Tom's Wine of the Year:
  2008 Sheldrake Point Gewürztraminer (Cayuga)
• 2008 Fulkerson Winery Vidal Blanc Iced Wine (Seneca)

TOM ALSO RECOMMENDS:

• Heart & Hands Pinot Noir (Cayuga)
• 2007 Keuka Spring Vineyard Lemberger (Keuka)
• Tom's Lemberger Review on Ithacork

TOM'S PICKS FOR FINGER LAKES SPARKLING WINES:

• Heart & Hands Brut Rosé
• Damiani Wine Cellars Sparkling Wine
• Hermann J. Wiemer Cuvée Brut
• Château Frank Célèbre and Blanc de Noirs
• Bellwether Cider King Baldwin
• Eve's Cidery

ALSO DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Gary Vaynerchuk on Wine Library TV
• Riedel Glassware
• Jamie Goode's Wine Blog

Ithaca Dining Update

We've seen a lot of changes in the local dining scene this year but we're not done yet. Here's the latest news you need to know about what's happening for Ithaca Eaters:

OPENINGS

• Bandwagon Brew Pub (114 North Cayuga Street) officially opened this week, serving a bar menu and dinner all week. They're brewing their own beer on site and it must be good, because they ran out of beer on opening day! You can follow them on Twitter (twitter.com/BandwagonBeer) or check out their website (www.bandwagonbeer.com) for a look at the menu and the latest updates on their brews.


• Also opening this week was the Prize Diner, which has given a modest makeover to the former Ithaca Diner on West State Street across from the State Theater. The Tiny Town Times has an encouraging early look at this new eatery that has us ready to give it a try.

COMING SOON

• The Ithaca Journal confirms that there will be an Olive Garden coming to Ithaca in 2010, located in the new building currently under construction at K-Mart Plaza on South Meadow Street. While this had been rumored for some time, it's the first public acknowledgement of the plans that we've seen. The article also repeats the news that a Panerea Bread franchise will also be opening at that location.

CLOSINGS

• Our friends at 14850 Dining reported that Hog's Back BBQ has decided to close while they search for a new location. Mark writes that the owner "hopes to reopen in another Ithaca location -- perhaps the former Olivia location near East Hill Plaza -- before long." Like Mark, we'd love to see someone bring good food back to that location.

East Hill Plaza can also count on changes in grocery shopping options in 2010, as the P&C Grocery chain filed for bankruptcy in November. According to the Ithaca Journal, the Price Chopper chain has made a bid to buy P&C, but there is currently no way to be sure that any of the three P&C stores in Ithaca (at East Hill Plaza, North Triphammer Road, and Hancock Street) would be converted or sold by whatever chain eventually buys them out. In the meantime, for those who rely on P&C for certain brands and unique choices others don't have, the coming change is sad news. We'll keep covering this story as it develops.

If you've got more info on any of these topics, or have heard of another opening or closing we should share, leave us a comment below or drop us a line: feedback [at] eatingithaca [dot] com.

Happy Eating!

Behind the Blog: Ithaca's Food Web

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We're taking a break from our regular podcast series to introduce you to some of the other local food bloggers who have been making names for themselves in the Ithaca food community. We've been lucky enough to get to know a few of these people over the past year and we're excited to share their stories with you.

This time we're talking with Alison Fromme, creator of the blog Ithaca's Food Web, which is a uniquely hyperlocal resource for news stories on food-related issues in Ithaca and Tompkins County. Alison writes about everything from local cooking trends and farming updates to broader topics of food safety and the ongoing debates over natural gas drilling and its potential effects on agriculture in our area. She also has the best calendar of food-related events in Ithaca we've seen.

If you missed it, you can also listen our first "Behind the Blog" podcast for our chat with Amy from the Eggs on Sunday cooking blog. We'll have another episode in this special "Behind the Blog" series in a couple weeks, as well as more ongoing updates on the local food scene here on our website. For continuing updates on everything we're doing, be sure to follow us on Twitter and on Facebook. We'd also love to hear from you directly: write a comment on the blog, leave a message on our voicemail line 607-216-8624 (607-21-MUNCH), or send an email with your thoughts to: feedback [at] eatingithaca [dot] com.

Have you taken our Eating Ithaca Audience Survey yet? We're taking time to make improvements to our site and we'd love to know what you think about what we're doing. It should only take 5 minutes for you to participate, and everyone who completes the survey is eligible to be entered in our drawing to win one of two $25 gift cards for Ithaca Coffee Company. The more people we hear from, the better we'll know what you enjoy about Eating Ithaca, so please CLICK HERE TO TAKE OUR SURVEY and thanks for your help!

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Links for this episode:

• Ithaca's Food Web
• Follow Ithaca's Food Web on Twitter
• Calendar of Events on Ithaca's Food Web
• Food topics on Ithaca's Food Web
• Natural Gas Drilling and Farms on Ithaca's Food Web
• Other writing by Alison Fromme
  
• Take the Eating Ithaca Audience Poll