Silver Fork @ Vermont

Silver Fork

4201 Main Street, Manchester, Vermont 05254

http://www.strattonmagazine.com/wp-content/files_mf/1324494336silverforkw1112dgweb.pdf

This is a long overdue post and there will be more to come.  As usual, my Christmas is spent at the ski resort and this time joined by my second elder sister's family to Manchester, Vermont.  But of course my vacation always revolves around good food, so here's a review of a local restaurant, Silver Fork.  In my opinion, probably the best restaurant in the area, we absolutely love this place!!!

Rating (out of 5):  

It's a tiny restaurant with only six tables, a warm homey atmosphere with friendly staff and services. The chef's wife attends all the tables and she is a wonderful lady, we chatted with her a little bit at the end of our dinning experience. Yes, it is an experience, not just any regular dinner. You just can't go wrong, starting from the drink, appetizer to main course and finally the dessert, everything is done in perfection and with heart.  The presentation and taste are both top notch! And on top of that, they don't charge you a fortune, it's very reasonably priced.  We all wanted to go to back to this restaurant but we were only in Vermont a few days, so we want to try out as many different places as possible.  But we did go back for my favorite Apple Cinnamon Beignets dessert.


I knew I was going for the duck so I asked for a suggestion on the red wine.  Melanie recommend the Vina Alicia Malbec, Argentina 2007 which was a perfect match for my main course.  Below is the description of Malbec from the wine menu and personally, I found it easy for my palate and enjoy the earthy taste to it.  My brother-in-law is a fan of eggnog and naturally he ordered the eggnog mix drink, I believe it is a Christmas special (sorry, I forgot to make note of the ingredients).  I took a sip of his drink and it was very good, not too sweet with just the right amount of alcohol in it.  It's definitely the kind of mix drink you can keep on drinking without knowing which number you are on. Oh, the eggnog mix drink is decorated with a mint chocolate stick which my niece snatched it away immediately...LOL.

• Complex aromas of plums, dusty earth, tobacco, and a little iron. Plums upfront transitioning to licorice on the mid-palate finishing with black pepper.

Next the appetizers, we ordered the There cheese onion soups and the Wild Mushroom Crepe for the table to share. I think everyone in the table agreed that it is by far the best onion soup we've all had in our lives.  It's like a little artwork with a flowerbed of fried onion on top of the creamy melted cheese.  The soup came with a pair of scissor which we believe is for us to cut the fried onion into smaller pieces. We all laughed trying to figure it out, it's so much fun to eat this soup. The soup has just the right amount of bread crumbs and onion flavor but not too salty, which is the downfall in many restaurants I have tried in the past.  Somehow these other restaurants think that salty beefy soup means french onion soup...wrong!!!  Silver Fork masters this soup to perfection!


My entree is the Tamarind BBQ Duck Breast served with crisp yuca, marinated onions and peppers.  The duck breast is succulent and the sauce is not tangy, an excellent match to capture the wild game flavor.


And when you think things couldn't get better than this, think again!  I am pretty sure no one in the table expected the dessert to become the star of the night.  My sister and brother-in-law ordered the Homemade Cheesecake and I ordered the Apple Cinnamon Beignets.  I have always been a sucker for apples desserts, I absolutely love the texture and the sweet and sour flavor of cooked warm apples.  The deep fried apple slices topped with homemade cinnamon ice cream served on the sweet creamy sauce was phenomenal. I don't know how the chef did it but the apple beignets were not greasy at all, it was so light and crispy and the apples were still tender and not too soft.  And the smooth homemade cinnamon ice cream did not overpower the beignets, it perfectly complemented the apples flavor.  Let's put it this way, my sister doesn't even like apple dessert and she said the Apple Cinnamon Beignets  is good.

Below are photos of this wonderful dinner, I apologize that the quality is less than optimal.  I had some problems with my iPhone camera but I assure you that everything was absolutely amazing.  Everyone cleaned the plates!!!  If you ever have the chance to visit Manchester, Vermont, be sure to reserve a spot at the great Silver Fork!  Bon Appétit!

 

Vive la crêpe!

My boyfriend and I decided to have a little New York getaway trip this past weekend. The plan was to quickly hit Chinatown to get some grocery items and off to Mitsuwa festival. Sidetrack story: We were late to the September Hokkaido Fair at Mitsuwa and the special event ramen noodles were sold out, so we wanted to get there early this time. We did get there earlier this time, around 1pm, got in line and damn it, still sold out! UGH! OK, back to my crêpe story.

We parked the car somewhere in SoHo and started strolling down to Chinatown. The weather was surprisingly pleasant, cool and sunny. It was a nice comfortable walk and my eyes were just swimming around checking out the stores and locked on to the word crêpe in one of the window displays. I tapped my boyfriend and told him about it, he had wanted crêpe for dessert the night before but we were too full and just couldn't shove in any more food. We hadn't had breakfast yet and Mitsuwa was still a couple hours away, so he said, "let's go try it." Hehehe....I was actually smiling from within, I love crêpe and I was getting hungry!

It's a small cafe with a couple of tables, a window-facing bar table and there were a few people around the tables enjoying their coffee. It's a nice cozy setup, definitely a good ambiance. The cafe has both savory and sweet crêpes but is a no brainy for me, I always get the sweet ones. I ordered the Nutella with Mixed Berries and the chef started cooking.  He was very generous with the berries, the berries covered up a good portion of the crêpe. And yes, the price is expensive, it's $9.25 including tax almost $10 for just a crêpes, I didn't order anything else. But when the chef handed the crêpes to me, I have forgotten about the price. It's huge, definitely enough for my boyfriend and I to share! The thickness is perfect, not too thin or too thick. It's crispy on the outside and soft in the inside enclosed in a paper sleeve. There are plenty of berries in every bite, the Nutella had warmed up to the right temperature but not too sweet at all...it's perfect to taste!

We were licking our fingers when we were done, and that's how you know something is good enough to share! What can I say, that's the perfect breakfast to go along a morning walk down the SoHo streets! :)  Below is the website to the cafe and some pictures. Bon Appetit!

• Rating (out of 5)
• 
Vive la crêpe!

Grand Cayman meets Gustav

I'll have to say this is probably by far the worst vacation I've ever had in my life. Everything that could go wrong, went wrong.

Sat - the day of arrival
It was a hot sunny day and things seem to be going fine. We had a pretty good lunch overlooking the beach and after a bit of delay, we each received our keys to our hotel rooms and settled in our rooms. We then took a taxi to Georgetown and was planning to do some light shopping, only to realize that all shops close promptly at 5 in the afternoon everyday and do no open at all on Sunday. I was a bit upset but I figured it's only the first day, so I still have plenty of time to shop. After a day of long flight, we were all very tired so we had dinner and went to bed.

Sun - the beach day
Since no shops open on Sunday at Georgetown, we decided to spend the day at the beach. We were fully prepared with our protective sunscreen, beach towels, goggles and snorkeling gear and were ready to have some fun. Well, we did had "some" fun, maybe 20-30 minutes of it and it started to rain! It was only sprinkling at the beginning, but soon it was pouring. It was raining so hard that all the beach towels were soaking wet. I don't remember much about the rest of the day, it just suck.

Mon - Georgetown....nothing like the Georgetown in DC
In the morning, Addy & I went down to the beach and wanted to relax and get some tan but of course, it had to be cloudy. So, we gave up after spending about 30-45 minutes and decided to go change and begin the shopping day. We were all pretty excited about this because we read in many reviews raving about Georgetown shopping.

First of all, there were hardly anyone in the street, it doesn't feel like a tourist attraction place. Second, there weren't any stores there. I only remembered a couple clothing and jewelry stores, an ice cream parlor and a few restaurants. It was hot, boring and frustrating. It's by far the worst shopping experience I've ever had in all of my vacations. I found more things to buy while I was staying at a secluded ski resort up in the snowy mountains than this place.

Since everyone had such a great time shopping. We all decided to head back to the hotel and lay at the beach. We actually had a great time the rest of the late afternoon to evening. We had so much fun swimming and snorkeling at the beach and by nightfall, we moved to the jacuzzi and pool area to relax.  We took so many pictures while we were snorkeling, and the fishes were so beautiful and colorful.

Tue - off to the Turtle Farm
We left early in the morning because we wanted to skip the crowd, but again, there were hardly anyone there. It felt like we had a private tour at the Turtle Farm. I guess the highlight of the Turtle Farm was that we could actually pick up the turtles and pet them and play with them. The snorkeling area was like a swamp, the walking trails look like someone's backyard who had forgotten to mow the lawn. The bird garden and the pool/waterfall were both mediocre. I guess it's exciting that I could see the fishes on the other side thru the glass from underneath the pool. Hmmm, but I could actually swim with the fishy in Hawaii, Key West and Mexico!

After the Turtle Farm, we visited "Hell" at Grand Cayman...I have nothing to say about this. Really, unless you have absolutely nothing else to do in Cayman, please don't waste your time!

Tue late afternoon - Lobster dinner
We went to a pretty nice restaurant and had a great dinner. Ming Ming and Sze ordered all-you-can-eat lobsters and the rest of us just ordered normal dinner set. But I really want to try the lobster, so I kept stealing the lobster from Ming Ming's plates. And I was so afraid that the waiter would see me, so I was carefully spying on the waiter, left and right, right and left and waited for that perfect moment and off I switched my fork with Ming Ming's and the lobster go into my mouth. It was delicious! :)

Tue evening - Decision 2008
We all settled back into our hotel rooms and planned to do some night swimming at the pool, only to find out that the nightmare had started already.  The hotel management had left a memo at each guest room notifying that all hotel guests should arrange for the earliest flight and evacuate out of Grand Cayman as soon as possible due to the Gustav hurricane.

!?$()*&%^_)#*$%_()#$%($%&@#%$!????!#*(&$%

Above was my reaction.

It was pretty painful but after we gathered as a group and discuss all the pros and cons, we all decided to leave the island and book the next morning flight.

We did stick to our original plan and did some night swimming at the pool. But I think that's when Ming Ming caught his fever and eventually turned into bronchitis.

Wed - vacation cut short
Really, there's nothing more to write about this vacation. We packed, left early in the morning, got scam by the taxi driver, waited in line for hours in a no air-conditioning airport, boarded and landed planes a couple of times and eventually got back to Washington, D.C. airport.

That wraped up my 2008 summer!  Well, at least China had a great Summer Olympics.

4th of July @ NY

So it's been some time since my last post. A lot has happened but was too lazy to update this. I was in NY again, during the 4th of July weekend, I had so much fun...well, so much too eat. We decided to stay 3 days/2 nights this time so that we could try some new restaurants w/o having to sacrifice returning to some good old places to eat. Hahaha....it's always about food.

I bought a Tokidoki for Hello Kitty mirror at the Sanrio store....cost me a small fortune! But absolutely beautiful!!!

Memorial Weekend in NY/NJ & HELLO KITTY!!!

With nothing else better to do this Memorial weekend, my friends and I decided to go to NJ/NY. Well...actually, there is a very important reason to visit NY this time. I saw a post from Hello Kitty Hell about a Hello Kitty exhibition by Tom Sachs in NYC. So, the mission of this trip is to see the Hello Kitty statue!!!

The collection is located at Gordon Bunshaft’s Modernist Park Ave tower and it includes one gigantic Hello Kitty, a 10-foot-tall Hello Kitty fountain, a 10-foot-tall Miffy fountain, and a My Melody statue. We took so many pictures, I just couldn't resist!!! And of course, we also went to the Sanrio store in Time Square. Unfortunately I didn't find anything special this time, just a pair of Hello Kitty eggs.



And on our way back to Chinatown, we walked by Garrett Popcorn and the sweet buttery smell is totally irresistable, so we bought some to snack in the car. We also tried a couple new Chinese restaurants in Chinatown this time and had my favorite 車仔麵 (noodle cooked in a cart) and Ming's favorite seafood dinner. As usual, we also visited New Jersey Mitsuwa Marketplace at Edgewater, which was holding a Gourmet Food Fair. They had sweet potato apple pie, dorayaki (red bean paste pancake), kaisen sanshoku bento box (ikura/salmon roe, uni/sea urchin and fish over rice) and many more Japanese specalities!!! There is also the Memorial weekend special, shark fin noodle soup. Writing this makes me hungry!!!



And the last stop of our trip is SHOPPING!!!! We really didn't have that much time left, so we only went to two stores in SoHo, then head on out to the Woodbury Outlets. And according to Ming, he's finally found a store where there are better men's clothes than women's and that's Uniqlo at SoHo.

SF & Whistler Ski Trip, Vancouver

We are back on earth and we had a wonderful vacation, it was nice to visit KK and his friends. There were too many good restaurants in San Francisco and we only had three days to taste them all. Trust me, we tried our best and you'd know if you have traveled with us to Toronto before! As you can see from the photos, the weather was only so-so there but KK kept saying that it's not normal and that we must have brought the rain with us to San Francisco. We went to dim sum twice because it was too good, even better Toronto and also had Japanese for a couple of meals. And of course, we did some typical see tourist attractions such as the Ghirardelli Square and Fisherman's Wharf on San Francisco Bay, and Alcatraz "The Rock". Too bad we only looked at the Golden Gate Bridge from afar but we didn't have any more time to fit in any other activities.

After that, we flew to Canada for our ski adventure. And we must have brought the snow with us to Whistler, but then who cares if it snows 24/7, it is so beautiful there. Lucky I only had a 2 GB memory card with us, otherwise, I'd have taken too many pictures. We skied four days straight and still had covered only about 60% of the trails. There will still be plenty of trails to explore the next time when we return. The highest peek we visited was 6,900ft. It was awesome up there and we almost burnt out all of our energy to get down the mountain and we were walking like old people. On the first day, I fell pretty hard once while I was adjusting to powder snow and Teresa said I flipped over 180 degrees. In fact, one of my skis hit my head but I was lucky that I have my helmet on. Teresa fell a couple of times face-down on the third day because she was going down slope a bit too fast and lost control a bit. We had such a great time out there and would love to go back for the 2010 Olympics. That's it for this time, stay tune for our next adventure and I hope you enjoy the pictures!!!

To obtain more photos from our trip, please visit:

SF Pictures
Whistler Pictures
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