My wife and I are in Alexandria Bay, N.Y., this week, a little town on the St. Lawrence River. It's part of a little mission to see parts of the area we grew up in but never spent time in.
In every shop along the way, we've found River Rat cheese from Clayton, the next town downriver, and Corghan bologna. "We should just take these home for dinner," I joked to my wife. "Send crackers," I'd implored friends on my Facebook page.
Had we done that, we actually would have had dinner. Here's the story from Day 1:
Around 8:40 -- just after we watched the sun set over the St. Lawrence River -- we stopped at Coleman's Dockside, a Southern barbecue joint and, for my money, probably the only restaurant here that I would truly like here. "We're going to eat every meal here," I told my wife.
The patio was half-full. The restaurant was empty. Three waitresses chatted a few feet away. And we were still waiting. After 5 minutes, I asked my wife how long we're really supposed to wait.
Finally, a waitress came over. We were seated on stools at a tall table on the patio, where we waited, and waited and waited. Other customers came in and were offered drinks, got their drinks, had their orders taken and even got ashtrays. We just waited.
So after 10 minutes at the table, we left the menu of sliced brisket and pulled pork shepherd's pie behind and headed for Brass Tacks, a pub and restaurant that our fellow guests, also from Jersey, had recommended.
"We're serving from our late-night menu," we were told. "Only cold sandwiches and fryer food." We checked our watches. It was just 9. And the streets were still semi-busy.
We were going to stick with club sandwiches, but then the staff started turning out lights and started to move into closing mode. So we apologized and left, as did the other folks who'd just arrived.
What were our other options? Pizza?
Turns out, they all close around 9, too.
So we had ice cream sundaes and called it a night.
hmm and I recall a while back that Elisa Ung was trying to go to A Mano in Ridgewood at 8 pm and it was already closed for the night --- people couldn't believe it. Get further outside of the metro area and it is even more commonplace.
Posted by: Amanda | Jul 07, 2009 at 02:05 PM