Meet Your Neighbor: A Taste of Port Chester w/ 34 Restaurants!

Awesome grilled wings at Coals

When we lived in Rye Brook, we’d often travel into Port Chester and check out some great restaurants like Q, Sonora, or try the countless restaurants that were serving up ceviche.  Now that we’re in Greenwich, we’re even closer to Port Chester, so we travel in quite often and have discovered one of our favorite places:  Coals.  Well, we’re excited to share the third annual A Taste of Port Chester, 2013.  This event is taking over nearly the entire downtown area of Port Chester on June 2 from noon to 3:30 pm with registration beginning at 11:30 am.

Pour at the Shore brewing up at Seaside Tavern Memorial Day weekend

America is all about the indie spirit…especially when it comes to music and beer.  And, it just so happens that Seaside Tavern and Sound Magazine are hosting a wicked good time this coming Sunday (5/26), starting at 1 pm.  Pour at the Shore will surely be one of the great highlights of your Memorial Day Weekend.  Now, you can’t exactly wear white yet, so hold off.  Very soon, but not quite yet…

Yoga, Summer Wine + Craft Beer Tastings at Bottlerocket of Westport this June

Blogging ain’t easy, yo.  While we might have plans to only go out once or twice a week, sometimes events come up, or you’re invited to a special dinner.  And, sometimes the food or event is just too good to resist.  So, to get more tone and to be able to keep up with our lifestyle (don’t you feel sorry for us?), we began Power 90 with Mr. Tony Horton.  We’re halfway through the program and will be starting P90X pretty soon. In between that time, we’ll be building up more stamina with some running, preparing us to run Warrior Dash in September.  Rawwwrrrr!  Now, we mention this because one of the toughest (but oddly most relaxing) parts of Power 90 is the part of the stretch routine when you do yoga poses such as Upward Dog, Downward Dog, Plank, Warrior, and Crescent.  It’s amazing how tone we’ve become just from “simple” yoga poses.

Chef Plum Takes Dinner Underground Again with a Saranac Beer + BBQ Dinner – Newtown, CT

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Now that we finally have that warmer weather that we dream of during the colder months in Connecticut, we can look forward to BBQ season.  For some, BBQ season never ends, though.  The tailgate warriors, the backyard chefs who won’t allow a little annoying snow to ruin their plans of cooking up some burgers on the barbie.  But, whether you’re a BBQ expert, a novice, or just a BBQ eater, you’ve probably never had a BBQ meal like the one that Chef Plum of Newtown, CT has planned out for Sunday, May 26 from 7 to 10.  He’s repurposed Butcher’s Best in Newtown as a pop up restaurant in his dining series called Dinner Underground.  Tickets are limited to just 30 people and cost $85.39 (that’s with the service fee) and you can buy them here.  So, you know how we work…this is where we explain why you need to get yourself to this event:

Barcelona hosts Memorial Day BBQ and pig roasts all summer long

Some of the tapas we sampled at Barcelona in Greenwich for the first Dishcrawl

Memorial Day and BBQs…they are inseparable like peanut butter and jelly, Batman and Robin, Lewis and Clark, Ren & Stimpy, bread and butter, and even pasta and sauce.  Perhaps they go so well together because BBQ’n brings family and friends together outside for good times, good fun, and good eats?  In essence, the grill unites people and connects us through our basic needs of friendship and food.

But, what do you do if you don’t have a grill or just want to go out and celebrate?  Easy…you head over to Barcelona Wine Bar & Restaurant in Fairfield on 5/27 from 1-9 pm.  For just $20 or $10 for kids (that’s a nice deal, btw) you’ll get a BBQ buffet that consists of sliders, kebabs, ribs, grilled veggies, salads, and their famous suckling pig.  For the beer lover, they’ll also have tastings from one of our favorite local breweries, Captain Lawrence.  They’ll have face painting for the kids (or that cool hipster) from 1:30-4:30, they’ll have outdoor games (cornhole please!), and they will even have a lemonade/popsicle/ice cream stand.  And, what’s a BBQ without live music?  Barcelona will have Rick Reyes & The Pasonfino Social Club playing from 2-6 while you chat, chew, and chill.

Step Out for Stepping Stones with Wine, Brews, and Bites

Update:  unfortunately, Step Out has been postponed.  We’ll give you more info when we get a new date.

Stepping Stones Museum for Children in Norwalk is a fun place to be, especially if you’re a kid…or a kid at heart.  They have an amazing amount of exhibits for children all the way from birth to 7 and up, they provide educational classes, they are always up to something new like Dinosaur Revolution, they have tons of events, and they are a favorite stop for schools.  Fun like this isn’t easy to provide, so that’s why Stepping Stones is holding their 8th Annual Step Out Wine & Food Tasting fundraiser.  This vital (and tasty) event is being held in partnership with our friends over at the Young Professionals Network of the Business Council of Fairfield County.  Here are all the details for you:

Sunset Dinner w/ Drinks and Bites in the Garden at Ambler Farm in Wilton

 

Around this time last year we headed up to Ambler Farm in Wilton to take part in Bull N’ Brew.  The farm was beautiful and the night was just perfect, set off by good wine, beer, and food from Super Duper Weenie.  And, just about a year later Ambler Farm is holding another event…a much anticipated annual event.

We are talking about their Annual Sunset Dinner, this year called An Evening in the Garden at Ambler Farm.  The dinner will be held on June 15th from 6-10 pm and will take place inside their new educational gardens.  Program Manager Kevin Meehan not only developed these gardens, but has also tended them carefully—he did get some help from students, though.  :)  Tickets, which are soon to go fast, go on sale 5/15.  Tickets are $95 for members or $110 for non-members.  There will be lots of cocktails, little bites of goodness, and a whole buncha live music from local musicians.  After the little “garden hour,” guests will be treated to a full four course dinner from Bistro du Soleil as the sun sets.  And, in true farm dinner fashion, Bistro du Soleil will be using a good deal of Ambler Farm’s organic produce for the meal!  The lovely people at Ambler Farm were kind enough to share the menu with us, so we’ll share it with you:

Ginger Man + Coalhouse Celebrate American Craft Beer Week

Two of our favorite spots to get brews and grub in Fairfield County have lots of fun ahead for American Craft Beer Week.  ACBW kicks off today, 5/13, and goes until 5/19.  The focus of the beer week has always been on smaller batch brews, a focus on fine details, and more of a hands-on approach to beer.  Now, it’s no coincidence that Ginger Man in Norwalk and Coalhouse Pizza in Stamford live and breathe this philosophy year round, but you know they have to step up their game (is that possible?) to celebrate American Craft Beer Week.  It’s kind of like the Super Bowl of the beer world.

Coalhouse Pizza is featuring a week of tap takeovers:

Flights at Coalhouse Pizza in Stamford CT

Monday, 5/13:  Sebago

Tuesday, 5/14:  Half Full (see a full week of special Half Full events here)

Wednesday, 5/15:  Harpoon

To do: CT vineyard and brewery bus tour with tastings from Slow Food Shoreline

How do you like your food?  Slow with a heaping of healthy local goodness?  That’s basically the mantra of Slow Food Shoreline, a chapter of the larger Slow Food USA organization.  According to the SFS site:

“Slow Food Shoreline’s mission is to promote cooking and nutritional education, with a focus on using local ingredients, to improve the health of the region. Our focus is on teaching scratch cooking using whole ingredients, with an additional focus on fresh, local, and seasonal products. We believe that teaching core cooking skills and encouraging a love of food and cooking, is the best way for participants to sustain what they’ve learned and change eating habits long term, as well as become better informed consumers. Through cooking demonstrations, tastings, cooking classes, and other food education opportunities, we’ll provide the community with the confidence, knowledge, and motivation to build healthy and delicious food habits.”

We definitely are on board with this and think a focus on “slow” cooking from scratch and on local ingredients elevate not only the taste of the food, but also is pretty zen and meditative.  If you can’t find yourself and your center by baking a batch of brownies or preparing a roast, you’re doing it wrong!

How to get your CT Beer Week Badge on Untappd

Want this fancy badge for your Untappd Collection? Yeah, we do too!

CT Beer Week is right around the corner (May 11-18th) and, as we first told you, it’s brewing with lots of great events that show off how awesome Connecticut beer can be and how we can hang with the big boys at the Rising Pint Brewfest.  Now, the sad thing about beer is that once you drink it, it’s gone.  Well, kind of.  See, it gets caught in your belly somehow, but that’s not a souvenir most want to keep around.  BUT, we’ve got the info on a nice shiny badge that you’ll want to put up in your collection and to keep.  Yes, CT Beer Week will have its own Untappd badge!  There it is right above you.  See that?  That needs to be in your brew badge collection.  Here’s how:

Just some of our 40 badges. Yeah. What u got, son?

1)  Make sure you’ve downloaded Untappd.  It’s a great way to keep track of the beer you drink, to add notes and ratings, and to add brews to your to-drink list.  You can also follow your friends and get brew advice. :)

2) Then, here’s the fun part.  You need to drink and use our favorite brew app.  Untappd’s blog post says: “Earn your special-release badge between May 11th – 18th, when you check-in any beer while at two or more of the participating venues listed here! Be sure to include your location at check-in to qualify.

Here are some of the local spots:  Bar in New Haven, Coalhouse Pizza in Stamford, Drew Drop Inn in Derby, Half Full Brewery in Stamford, J. Timothy’s in Plainville, New England Brewing Co in Woodbridge, any Plan B Burger, any SBC, Ginger Man Greenwich and Norwalk, Two Roads Brewery in Stratford.