The Wedding

I've been to some pretty beautiful weddings in my life, but this one was probably my favorite. Set beside a lake in the woods, it was the perfect combination of being beautiful but not fancy. (You may have seen Chelsea Clinton's wedding on the news; it was the same afternoon as this one, about a dozen miles away.)

The bride and groom gave everyone pint glasses with Homer and Marge Simpson. We ended up with four of them, but I'm not complaining.

As an appetizer, I ate something I never have before: coconut chicken. I'm not sure I've even heard of that before. But it was fantastic, better than any coconut shrimp I have ever had.

This was the fourth wedding I have attended in the last three years at which I have also attended the rehearsal dinner. In the previous three, the rehearsal dinner was much better than the wedding dinner. This wedding reversed the trend: the rehearsal dinner was certainly good, but the wedding dinner was fantastic.

Lemon chicken is a dish I am not a big fan of. Almost every time I can remember eating it, the one thing it did not taste of is lemon. It's tasted absurdly sweet. It's been bursting so full of garlic it could have given Zankou's garlic sauce a run for the money. I once had a piece that smelled stronger of rosemary than an entire rosemary bush.

This lemon chicken was, literally, the best I have ever had. The chicken was juicy and the sauce actually tasted of lemon. It ran all over my vegetables but I did not care. If I hadn't been wearing a suit I would have tilted the plate to my face and poured the sauce into my mouth.

My other favorite part of the meal was the stuffed pork. My guess is that it was stuffed with fontina cheese, but it could have been something else.

I've already featured the picture of the wedding cake but I'm doing it again because I like it so much. It was just as tasty as it was cool.

Dallas Hot Wieners

Earlier in the week, Elizabeth's sister, Kate, had mentioned to me that Dallas Hot Wieners has great hot dogs. If there is one thing Kate knows, it's hot wieners, so I very much wanted to try the place. But the week only partly belonged to me - most of the time I was just going along with other people's schedules - so I didn't think I was going to be able to. This is not a complaint, by the way. It was a very fun week and it wasn't about me; it was about Elizabeth's other sister, Dawn, who was getting married.

However, on the day of the wedding Elizabeth was getting her hair cut uptown, just across the street from Maxwell's, so I tagged along. There was a farmers market going on, and there was a used bookstore across the street. I can happily spend anywhere between 30 minutes and 12 hours in a used bookstore.

But I was also hungry, so it came as a nice surprise when I saw one of the three Dallas Hot Wieners locations was on the same street. It was packed when I went inside. Every booth was full and there was a line of at least a half-dozen people waiting to order food to go. There was nothing not to like about this. It seemed like the exact kind of local institution that I love to visit on vacation. Even the fact that their wooden hanging sign outside read "Dallas Hot Wieners" yet the sign printed on the window read "Dallas Hot Weiners" made me happy. There is an old saying that you know a diner is good when there are multiple spellings of it advertised. (Actually, that's not an old saying; I just made it up. But I figured it would have more authority if I ascribed it.)

I took a seat at the lunch counter - what looked like the only seat available in the house - and picked up the menu. I orderd a hot dog, fries and a Coke.

"DOG!" the waitress yelled out loud, clearly audible despite the noise of the place. A man in the corner of the restaurant picked a dog out of a steamer, topped it with sauce and slid it down a line. The waitress poured my drink, picked up the hot dog and waited about thirty seconds to grab my plate of fries that had just been pulled out of the oil. I had my food about forty seconds after I ordered it.

The hot dog was fantastic, with a little mustard and onion, dense and covered in sauce. It was a very thin sauce, which normally I'm not a fan of, but unlike most thin sauces, this one had plenty of meat in it. It was ground very finely. I only had one dog but I considered getting another. I decided not to; I didn't want to be too full for the wedding.

There was an older man next to me, probably 80, and he had two dogs in front of him when I first sat down. He devoured them both and ordered another. He ate that and ordered another. I got up to leave, so I have no idea how many he ended up eating.

I got my check. It was $4.85. I'm sure that's part of the place's popularity, too: quality hot dogs at cheaper-than-fast-food prices. I paid and fought my way (through the now even-longer line) to get out the door. I'm exaggerating, of course. I didn't really have to fight, but I did have to say excuse me to at least ten people waiting for their to-go orders.

Dallas Hot Wieners was a fantastic find. Often when I encounter a place like this while traveling, I picture an outpost in Old Town Pasadena and try to imagine the lines that would form. Pommes Frites, for example, would almost certainly have long lines at night, particularly after the bars close. Dallas Hot Wieners would probably have long lines all the time. And I would often wait in one, I'm sure.

Maxwell's Pizza

I was surprised when I heard Elizabeth's sister's wedding rehearsal dinner was going to be at a place called Maxwell's Pizza. I immediately conjured up an image of all of us sitting around eating pizza, drinking pitchers of beer, maybe watching baseball on a giant TV. In other words, the greatest rehearsal dinner ever. But something about it didn't seem to jibe; I didn't think that could really be what we were doing.

It all became clear when we arrived at Maxwell's, in a part of Uptown Kingston known as the Stockade. The small inside of the restaurant looks somewhat like a pizza joint - albeit an upscale one - but the outdoor patio was quite attractive, with views of the surrounding streets and the hills in the distance. This is where our party was going to be.

I cooled down with a few pints of summer ale. Eventually I turned my attention to the appetizers. A three-section pizza had been set down at our table, so I took a slice of goat cheese and a slice of margarita. The goat cheese slice was a little on the dry side but the margarita was fantastic. The crust was dense and crackled with each bite.

Next up were the crab cakes. I love crab cakes but as years go by I realize I eat them less and less. Or, more to the point, I order them at restaurants less and less. Far too many places - even well known places - serve crab cakes stuffed with filler, where the taste of crab is barely noticeable.

These were outstanding, full of crab and fried golden brown on the outside, served with a chipotle sauce and a some grilled wedges of lime. I could've eaten a dozen of these. But that seemed like it wouldn't have been appropriate. So I only ate ten.

The bruschetta looked pretty good. But I dislike tomatoes, so I did not eat any. When the buffet line was ready I checked out what they had: eggplant parmesan, chicken marsala, roasted vegetables, and salad. There may have been a couple other things; I wasn't paying much attention as I had pretty much filled up on appetizers.

I have never been a huge fan of chicken marsala, but this was as good as any I have ever had. Often I find the taste of the marsala sauce so overpowering that I can't taste anything else. This sauce was a nice complement to the chicken. The vegetables, especially the potatoes, were very good.

Towards the end of the meal I noticed the mother of the bride (and also, obviously, Elizabeth) had been sitting by herself for quite a while, so I asked Elizabeth - who was catching up with old friends - if I should go talk to her. She said that would be very nice of me. So I did, and I had a couple more drinks... but somehow missed out on the cannoli, which everyone later raved about. Since I'd left my camera at my table, Elizabeth took a picture for me. But I didn't get to taste any.

I would gladly return to Maxwell's to try some of their other pizzas, including the "chipotle bbq pork" pizza. And finally try the cannoli.

Ship To Shore (Kingston, NY)

Elizabeth's dad wanted to get some new shoes for the wedding, so we accompanied him to an old-fashioned shoe store in Saugerties, a town whose name seemed awfully familiar to me, although I'd never been. (I still can't figure out why. Either because the house The Band lived in called "Big Pink" was in West Saugerties, or I must have heard it on Law & Order.)

On the drive back we talked about what we should do for lunch. I said I was up for anything, so when Ship To Shore was suggested, I happily agreed. The restaurant is located down by the water in a historic area of town. It was a hot day, but not nearly as hot as it had been, so we sat at a sidewalk table. Elizabeth and I ordered iced teas, her dad a water. All three were served in glasses with Yankees logos.

"Oh, come on!" I exclaimed.

"Sorry," Rick said, "but the Yankees are the best and they always will be."

I wish the Yankees hadn't won the World Series last year so I could have used the line that has served me well the last few years: "I prefer teams who have won this century."

Whatever. I still drank the iced tea. It's not like it was a Red Sox glass. That I would've refused.

The fish & chips caught my eye and I was thinking about ordering it until Elizabeth informed me she was going to get it. I knew there would be at least a few bites for me so I turned my attention to the burgers. I could not decide between the "Ship To Shore Burger," with bacon and caramelized onions or the "Blue Cheese Burger," with local bacon and blue cheese. I asked the waiter's opinion.

"Well, if you like blue cheese, the Blue Cheese Burger is really popular," he said. "But if you don't love blue cheese, you'll probably hate it."

I do love blue cheese, so I ordered that. Elizabeth ordered the fish & chips, and Rick - who, unlike us, had eaten breakfast - ordered a bowl of grilled chicken and corn chowder.

The food came out at a leisurely pace but we didn't care; it was nice to sit in the sun and look out at the river. So much of the week involved running around doing things for the wedding, it was nice to be able to sit and relax for an hour. When the food arrived it looked impressive. My burger was a thick patty topped with several strips of bacon and a mound of blue cheese. I realized what the waiter was talking about; the aroma of this blue cheese was intense. I cut the burger in half, admiring the juicy pink inside.

Even more impressive looking was Elizabeth's fish & chips. It was a big piece of cod, lightly breaded, gleaming goldenly, and topped with an amusingly large pile of shoestring fries. I knew I would be getting several bites of this.

My burger was outstanding. It's very rare that I order a burger at a restaurant because they're so easy to make at home, and most restaurants tend to overcook the meat and use inferior toppings. This burger was ideal: a little charred on the outside, juicy inside, with the fantastic flavors of high quality bacon and blue cheese. The fries were disappointing, limp pieces of potato, but I didn't care a whole lot since I had a hard enough time finishing the burger.

The fish & chips were - other than the ones I wrote about a couple months ago at The Village Idiot - the best I have had in a long time. The fish was fresh and the light breading enabled the taste of the fish to be the star of the show. The shoestring fries were much better than my fries and I ate several of them, even dipping a few into the lemon dill tartar sauce. (I tried to replicate this sauce not long after we got back home from the trip. I failed.)

Rick loved his bowl of chowder and we even got a salmon wrap to-go for Elizabeth's sister, Kate (the only person I have ever intentionally featured on this blog) which she said was great. I've already selected what I want if I ever return to Ship To Shore: lobster and shrimp spring rolls.

Of all the restaurant meals I had in New York, this is probably the one I enjoyed most. The food was very good and the location was superb. After lunch we walked a couple hundred yards along the bank of the river. I saw a boat named "Proud Mary" and PT-48, the last 77-foot PT boat surviving from World War II.