Long Island Calling

As most commuters will tell you, it usually takes something special to make them come into the city on a day where they don’t have to. I couldn’t agree more, which is why the something special that brought me into the city this weekend was the 3rd Annual Coffee and Tea Festival NYC, which took place at the Metropolitan Pavilion in Chelsea. (Editor’s note- Before Scott got married, he wouldn’t have been caught dead at this event. But times and tastes do change.) The cool thing was that there were many companies from the tri-state area reprezenting, including several tea/coffee places from Long Island, but we’ll get to that later.

So with further delay, the logo for the festival-

Thank you ladies!

First, here are some of the companies and products the wifey and I discovered at the festival that we liked.

Best Friends Cocoa

Straight outta of Arlington, MA comes Best Friends Cocoa, a company that specializes in, you guessed it, cocoa mix. The wifey and I tried some samples they had at the the show and we were hooked.

Pictured here at the Best Friends booth is Linda Guttman, one of the founders of the company holding a bag of her fine product. Besides the taste, the thing that drew wifey and I to the booth was the marshmallow flavored mix. I love marshmallow in my cocoa, but there is no point buying it cause’ the wifey is a vegetarian and I think they make the stuff with hooves or something. Linda’s product solves this problem because the marshy flavored mix does not have real ones in them and is also fat free. Plus for those who follow kashrut, the product is kosher. UPDATED- Best Friends is available in Long Island at the Fairway in Plainview, NY.

Real Coffee Corp.

A Long Island company! Real Coffee Corp is based out Farmingdale. As for the coffee, honestly, we didn’t try any because we were immediately drawn to samples they were giving out of this sipping chocolate that they sell:

It’s called Bellagio Sipping Chocolate and it was awesome. Thicker than chocolate milk, but not so thick that it can be used as engine lubricant. So tasty that we ended up buying some to use for fondue purposes. But don’t take my word for it…SEE THE VIDEO!

And the chocolate did turn. Kudos to Stewart Cooper and the Real Coffee guys for bringing this machine out. It was a big draw.

Harrisons & Crosfield

Yes, we did actually drink tea at the show. One of the ones we enjoyed the most was the English tea from Harrisons & Crosfield. UK company with their US office (from Chatham, NJ) at the show.

That’s Meg Schaefer, the Sales Account Manager chatting up some serious tea convo with the wifey. I wasn’t too involved in this conversation, but after trying their tea, I didn’t have to be. It was good quality, nice aroma and tasted like a fine British tea should. As for where you can get it in LI, according to H&C, this site sells the stuff, but according to Meg, she was trying to make inroads with some of the merchants in Huntington. We love Main street, so good luck Meg!

Cup for Education

Not a tea or coffee company, but instead, a non-for profit organization that has a very unique mission.

When wifey and I got educated about Cup of Education, we found out that they work to help the people of rural coffee growing communities in Central and Latin America to build schools and to give the kids of these lands the supplies needed- pencils, books and even teachers. As you can see from the picture, this organization is about helping the real people behind the coffee, and not about played out stereotypes.

Now, here are some other show observations:

Biggest Surprises of the Show (two actually)

Tavalon

I’ve heard of these guys before and had seen their tea bar on 14th street, but was never really interested. Plus, I have a finely tuned radar for hyperbole, so I am wary about any tea company that refers to itself as “the future of tea.” Nevertheless, I strolled over to their booth and was pleasantly surprised. They ended up having some nice, exotic tea mixes and the sample tea tasted like Hawaiian Punch, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Plus they were the only tea company to bring their own DJ to the event. I give them a 10 for style points on that one.

Cafe La Paz

When I think of instant coffee, there are two words that usually come to mind- Total Crap. Most instant coffee is not very good, which is why this awesome company from Mexico blew my mind with their instant grind.

All you have to do is add hot milk or water to this coffee, which is seasoned with brown sugar cane and cinnamon to make a delicious cup of cafe de olla style Mexican coffee. Don’t know where you can find it in Long Island, but it is available on eBay. We ended up buying the last bag they had left that day, so don’t even think about it…

…hate all you want, but the bag is OURS!!!

Speaking of hating, it’s time for me to address the things at the show that were disappointing.

1) Any and all of the food we tried at the show - Except for some olive oil and honey that we tried at Demeter’s Pantry, wifey and I were completely underwhelmed by the food that we sampled. Whether it be cookes, pastries or jams, it all sucked. Thankfully, Chelsea Market was nearby for lunch.

2) Tay Tea - I’ll be honest, I never even drank any of the tea they made available for sampling. Why? Because the tea leaves I smelled that they had on display all had the aroma of toothpaste. I enjoy Colgate as much as the next guy, but I don’t want to drink it. Next…

3.) No zarafina at the show- I don’t get this.

This machine (automatic tea making machine) is maybe the most innovative thing to come to the tea industry since hot water and they didn’t show up to this festival at all??? Wifey and I love the zarafina and we were shocked by it’s absence.

All in all, wifey and I had a great time and we discovered some new products at the festival that we would likely would not have found on our own back in Nassau. Speaking of which, wanted to give a shot out to another LI company at the show:

serendipiTea - Though we didn’t get the chance to spend much time at their booth, we discovered that they have recently moved to Manhasset, specifically to Northern Blvd near the train station. We promise to check it out sometime.

Until next year…

This week’s Time Out NY features the key bars one should visit (or crawl to) when in my old neighborhood, the Upper East Side. For the UES pub crawl, the bars they recommend are actually accurate, but at the same time they remind me of what I don’t miss about the area:

Faux Irish bars-

The smell of Frat -

And general douchebaggery (a coveted marketing demographic) -

However, Time Out did give props to the best bar in the neighborhood, The Auction House. Good baroque atmosphere, nice seating and they play nothing but indie music. The type of place you’d normally find in the East Village, but somehow ended up in the UES.

As for my new hood- Great Neck, Time Out would not get very far because it seems like there are exactly

bars to go to. If anyone out there knows of any in the area that are worth visiting, let me know.

Otherwise, for the double Y chromosome, Alpha male types of the UES- happy drinking!

That says it all.

So after finally taking some years to get over that whole nonsense proclaiming Philadelphia as “the sixth borough,” recently my dad forwarded me this article from his friend Jim, who lives in the Kansas City area.  Essentially it is a list of reasons why this writer moved from Brooklyn to KC, which unfortunately did not include The Royals or BBQ sauce.

That’s nice and all, but when will current and/or former NYC area journalists with some connection to some random city in the US stop trying to proclaim their shingle as “the X borough.”  Thankfully,  this writer did not make that proclamation, but there must be something in the air lately about this KC/NY borough thing for Gawker to have made a stink about it.   I know that everyone wants to hang with the cool kids, but is this the identity you want your city to be associated with?

And don’t worry, you won’t ever hear this blogger proclaim Nassau county as the “7th borough” or some  nonsense like that.   This county will never be that cool.   My evidence?
Exhibit A:

I rest my case…

Pats over the the lightning bolts 21-12. No huge surprise, but big up to the SD defense. They played well.

Now…(sighing) the Giants just beat the Pack with an overtime interception and a 47 yrd field goal. 23-20.

So it’s the Evil Empire vs. the Manning legacy.

This is proof that that there really is a Gehenna.

Now I’m really hoping that I can get some help from the BLOG-O-SPHERE on this one. Since Friday, wifey has had a cravin’ for some Hershey’s chocolate milk. Not that busta ass Nesquik with its anthropomorphic bunny mascot, but some smooth, rich and creamy Hershey’s chocolate milk.

The problem is that this stuff is really hard to find. I couldn’t find it for her on LI, couldn’t find it in Jersey either . In fact the only place I know that sells it is Gristedes in the city, and I’ll be damned If I have to go there every time she needs a fix.

If anyone has any suggestions on where I can find this product, especially in LI, please let me know. For those who don’t know about it, this is what it looks like:

..now you know!
Yo, Slick, blow..

If I write one more post about the LIRR or any NYC area public trans, I just might have to rename this “Scott’s Choo-Choo Blog” and get myself linked to 2nd Avenue Sagas. But I have to blog about this one, only cause I can’t believe I didn’t find out about this earlier.

Seems that Amtrak workers may go on strike which would effect both LIRR and NJ Transit trains coming into Penn Station every day. As this AP article states:

“Just over half of NJ Transit’s 740 weekday trains travel for all or part of their routes on lines owned by Amtrak; if Amtrak employees aren’t at work, trains can’t run on those tracks. Some 218,000 daily trips are taken on the affected lines. East of Manhattan, the vast majority — about 85,000 — of the Long Island Rail Road’s morning rush-hour passengers travel to Penn Station, where Amtrak owns the tracks and handles the dispatching. Without the use of its only Manhattan terminal, the LIRR faces the prospect of thousands of extra customers overwhelming smaller stations in Queens as they get off to transfer to the subway.”

For my LIRR homeys, here is an update on the MTA’s contingency plan in case Amtrak wokers decide to fight the power.

Yeah…um…uh..this move to LI is really working out so far…um…

UPDATE- The strike has been averted, THE STRIKE HAS BEEN AVERTED!

Praise Jebus!

So the wifey and I ended up at the famed Knitting Factory last night to be a part of a special screening of the new, long awaited 11th episode of Yacht Rock. For the uninitiated, Yacht Rock is a series of hysterical fictional films that tell the stories behind the biggest hits of the “smooth” music of the 70’s and early 80’s. The films follow the lives and careers of soft rockers such as Toto, Steely Dan, Michael McDonald and of course, Kenny Loggins.

So when the wifey and I heard that Yacht Rock mastermind, comedian J.D. Ryznar was having a special screening of a brand new episode of Yacht Rock, we set sail to Tribeca for the event. Unfortunately we didn’t see it, due to what seemed like poor planning. The club itself is three floors and we knew a band was supposed to be playing “smooth” music that night, along with the showing of the new episode and the older ones. Problem was that no one at the club could tell us the order of the events or which floor it would take place. After about an hour or so (doors opened at 8 pm) the band School of Rock started into a nice session of old school Yachtesque cover songs. The neat thing was that the band was made up of grade schoolers, just like that movie. Nice job kids!

It was then I got lucky and discovered that the band was to play at set downstairs, repeat the same set at the upstairs stage and then at 11 pm, the club would show the episodes of Yacht Rock. To make matters worse, they would be shown on little TVs above various bars on various floors. Well call me a snob, but when I hear the word “screening,” I imagine some cinema set up with a screen, not a bunch of TVs. With all of the people at the event and the limited number of screens, I knew that it would have been impossible for wifey and I to see the episodes clearly, considering we’re shortys! With that, combined with the commute back to the Island, wifey and I said “Fuck it!” and set our sail back to the north shore.

To J.D. and co - We love Yacht Rock and the work you do, but next time, have an event with a real theater and party space. I recommend Tribeca Cinemas. That would have been perfect.

Rock on!

Okay- first blog posting- where to begin? The short of it is- Born in Brooklyn (big up!), raised in South Jersey in Cherry Hill, just outside of Philadelphia (as a Dallas Cowboys fan no less, which gave me such wonderful schadenfreude during the Aikman/Smith/Irving era. Eventually ended up in NYC where I lived in variety of neighboorhoods over the years: Upper West Side, Battery Park City, a brief stint in Murray Hill and until a month ago, the Upper East Side. Now I live in Long Island.

Still debating on whether this is an upgrade or not.