• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1004 0

named Eula Otis who came to work for Clare Warn in the early days and went around to area restaurants saying, “I’m from Michigan. Would you like to try one of our chili dogs?” The state’s name clung to the hot dog topped with Warn’s sauce, which she had invented because New York–style hot dogs with mustard and sauerkraut weren’t selling well. The Michigan became a local passion—served at summertime stands, in grocery stores, and even in the cafeteria at the Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital Medical Center.

Clare and Carl’s presents its Michigans in an ineffably tender bun that is similar to the traditional northeast split-top, but is thicker at the bottom and closed at both ends, forming a trough to shore in the sloppy topping. The chili is thick with minced meat, kaleidoscopically spiced, not at all sweet, and just barely hot. It is intriguing and addictive.

There is another Clare and Carl’s in town, but the original is a wonderful vision of long-gone roadside Americana, its clapboard walls so old that they appear to have settled deep into the earth. Carhops attend customers in a broad parking lot, and there is a U-shaped counter with padded stools inside. A menu posted above the open kitchen lists Michigans first, but signs outside advertise the house specialty as Texas red hots.

Cornell Dairy Bar

At the Cornell Dairy Store, corner of Tower and Judd Falls Rds.

607–255–3272

Stocking Hall

L | $

Ithaca, NY

If you believe that food is best when it is close to the source, have a dish of ice cream or, for that matter, a glass of milk at the Cornell Dairy Bar. All the cow-sourced products served in this on-campus eatery are produced by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; even the maple syrup sold in the little grocery store upstairs comes from the Natural Resources Department, the apple cider from the Pomology Department.

The Dairy Bar is, as the name suggests, a casual joint with scattered tables inside and a few seats outdoors by the sidewalk. Although there are a limited number of other things to eat and drink, including soup from a Knorr Soup Bar and hot drinks from a cappuccino machine, it’s ice cream that stars. Step up to the counter and browse among such flavors as Kahlua Fudge (coffee flavored with a fudge swirl), Mexican Sundae (with peanuts and fudge chunks), Espresso Chunky Chip, Sticky Bunz, even Green Tea! Order a cone, cup, or sundae and carry it to a seat. This is excellent ice cream: just rich enough to fully satisfy without cloying, and without the complications you find in boutique ice creams that sell for $4 a pint in supermarket freezers.

In addition to praising the good ice cream, we must also note that the whipped cream that goes atop sundaes is superb: thick, sweet, and dairy-fresh. And finally: chocolate milk. It’s a beautiful thing, so smooth, so gently chocolaty, so perfectly juvenile.

Doug’s Fish Fry

206 West Rd.

607–753–9184

Cortland, NY

LD | $$

Fried fish sandwiches are common throughout much of upstate New York, appreciated by locals but little known by outsiders. A visit to Doug’s is convincing evidence that this is regional food to take seriously. Your choice is a sandwich, a fish dinner, or a fish onion dinner. The titles are misleading because the sandwich is in fact two or three large hunks of fried fish piled in and around a modest bun that in no way is large enough to hold even half its ingredients. Like a tenderloin from the southern Midwest, the presentation pushes the envelope of what, exactly, a sandwich is. A fish dinner adds beautiful chunky French fries to the pseudo-sandwich. A fish onion dinner means onion rings.

The fish is moist, sweet, and mild-flavored, encased in a sandy crust with just the right amount of crunch. It comes with pickly tartar sauce that is surprisingly unsweet. Sweetness comes in the form of Doug’s superb coleslaw, which is finely chopped and fetchingly spicy.

Service is eat-in-the-rough style. Place your order at the stand-up counter (from which you have an appetizing view of fish and fries coming out of the hot