AYCJ 2 -- day 2 -- pic of the day

all you can jet 2 - day 2 - hamilton, ON

(my current 'net connection is too flaky to bring in more pix ... i'll publish with many more later)


my accomplice and i both slept solidly, but that's not saying much when you consider the flight east was less than four hours and combined we'd had less than five hours of sleep the night before. there's gonna be a hard burn on this day, for sure.

walking into JFK felt like old home week.  having traversed through this terminal several times last year, i felt like the sheriff returning to once dangerous town that i managed to put down so many years ago.

there was just enough time between flights to set up a rental car for buffalo.  our plan is to drive around lake ontario for the next few days.  my accomplice is familiar with the “thousand islands” in this area and our ultimate plan is to visit them. i like the occasional long drive and i'm looking forward to it.

the flight over is again uneventful and we pick up our car in the buffalo airport.  although we ask for an economy, we're given a new and spotless mercury milan … i've never driven one of these before, but i like it very much.  the handling is responsive without being overly tight – the ride smooth as glass. the seats are cool two-tone leather with overt stitching.

first order of business is food.  buffalo has a few claims to fame in the food world – we plan on having them all – but the one i'm most curious about will be the starter of this leg: beef on weck.  for those of you who don't speak english (i'm in bogota as i type this, so these kinds of phrases are overly funny to me right now), “beef” means roast beef and “weck” is a caraway seed pinwheel bun. and if you're hunting for beef on weck, probably the best place to go is a joint known as “bar bill.”

the handy GPS whisks us quickly to hollywood parking spot and we're lucky enough to get the last table just before the lunch rush.

i order a beef on weck.  my accomplice doesn't like caraway seeds and opts instead for bar bill's version of buffalo wings.



the sandwich is fine, but even with au jus and horseradish, it doesn't really jump out and grab you. not that it's bad -and i'm certainly glad we made the effort to eat it- but if i lived in buffalo, this wouldn't be one to the things i eat very often … if at all.

the wings, on the other hand are interesting.  the menu said “italian” spices, but i hadn't read that … when my accomplice said, “what's this taste? it's familiar ...” i knew it immediately – the wings had been marinated in italian salad dressing. several years ago i used to regularly eat halibut that i'd marinated in paul newman's salad dressing and the taste here was similar. let's face it, by default buffalo wings are fairly crappy food … the woman who invented them was asked to come up with food on a moment's notice and instead of putting chicken wings in her stock pot, she served 'em to unsuspecting customers.

having said all that, i liked them very much … i thought they were better than the beef on weck. and everything got washed down with birch beer on tap – so you know things can't be that bad.

the combo of lunch and very little sleep started to put us down almost immediately … we used the GPS to drive to a nearby park -which actually was a farm museum- and slept in their parking lot for more than an hour.

we're in striking distance of niagra falls, so niagra falls it is. both my accomplice and i had been there before – we both had loved it – and i was looking forward to doing the once-again touristy thing of riding the “maid of the mist.” i mean, come on, you get to ride a boat into the bottom of a waterfall – much closer than what you think is safe – what's not to like?

we had to tool around niagra falls, ON a bit before we got a super-great parking place on the street. a quick walk down and we managed to snag two places on the penultimate boat of the day. as before, it was thrilling and very wet … my arms and face got drenched, it was way fun.

using our AAA map, we drove the scenic route to niagra-by-the-lake and got a view from the point.

not knowing how far we might go, we hadn't set up a room in advance so we called ahead to motel 6 to book a spot and went to a restaurant that was highly rated in the AAA guidebook for the area: treadwell. they're the kind of place with a lot of wood, a few candles and breathless descriptions of how pure their ingredients are.

at about US$50 an entree, it was more than we were expecting and we weren't that hungry, but rather than dive back out into the ontario night, we decided to go ahead and order. i got lake ontario perch on fettuccine; my accomplice ordered two starters – prosciutto with arugula and a cheese similar to marscapone, and gnocci with local wild mushrooms.

as a lagniappe, we were served shots of cold ginger and carrot soup, which was exquisite.

my fettuccine had been advertised as having truffle oil, but what i wasn't expecting were sliced black truffles the size of the palm of my hand. the truffles were so big, in fact, that at first i thought they were taro root. the perch was fair, the truffled pasta, amazing. the bread served on the side was stunning caraway-poppyseed and staggering zucchini (and i HATE zucchini bread), accompanied with local cold pressed canola oil and raspberry-infused balsamic vinegar.

the food was astounding. one of the best meals i've ever had in my life. strangely the very best thing on the table may well have been the bread.

in fact the meal was so good that we went ahead and ordered dessert anyway. they mentioned homemade ice cream and this well could be a place where their touch could be amazing.

we had molten chocolate cake with raspberry sorbet. to check things out a bit more we also an ice cream duo of vanilla and lemon curd along with a scoop of blackberry sorbet.

the sorbets stood up and had very interesting flavor palettes – long, lingering tastes as flavors as they melted on your tongue. the cake was a chocolate so deep as dark that it actually held a bit of gritty bitterness.

the vanilla was good, but not as good as a place like this should be. great vanilla should make you laugh, cry and want to have sex at the same time.

to my tongue, though, the stand-up winner was lemon curd. a little sweet, just a tang of sour, and a cold-cream smoothness.

all in all, a great, great meal. and a good finish to what feels like the first “true” full day of all you can jet.

quote of the moment

"you got any deer out there? my dad will go out and shoot 'em if you
want."

-- 30-something white bartender, talking to a patron; E aurora, NY

AYCJ 2 -- day 2 AM