Now that Tasty New England has had a bit of a start, we’ve added to our Blog Roll.  Just scroll down a bit and you’ll see a collection of some of our favorite food-related links.  Some are devoted to cooking, like the fun recipes over at Baking Bites, and the down home cookin’ of The Pioneer Woman.  Others are more eating-out oriented, like what you’ll find over at The Roadfood Digest, or The Girl Who Ate Everything.  As we come along more sites we like we’ll continue to add more.  Yay!

Vecchitto Italian Ice is an unassuming place and probably very easy to miss if you don’t know it’s there.  The store is located deep within the jumble of bridges, on-ramps, and off-ramps that is the bottleneck of traffic known as Route 9 in Middletown, CT, but if you’re passing through you will not want to miss it.

The inside is pretty much bare-bones, just a counter full of very delicious, powerfully flavored Italian Ice.  This is my favorite, Almond.  The picture was taken beneath one of the red neon lights so the color is off.  The true color sans neon is a pale grey/tan, in other words, the most unnapetizing looking color in the world.  But the taste is wonderful, the almond flavor is striking in its intensity, but also very sweet, and very, very cold.  I love the little paper cups it comes in, too, as once you get to the bottom you can just squeeze the melting ice up to get the last bits.  Other flavors are consistently excellent.

This is the cherry flavor which was probably my least favorite but still very good.  The fruitiness just wasn’t as strong as the other ones we tried but it may have just been due to the other ones being so overwhelmingly strong.  In a good way.  We also tried the watermelon which was excellent, and my second favorite was probably the banana.  We passed up the traditional lemon this time around but if my memory is right the lemon is also very, very good, and much more intense than the usual watered-down stuff you typically find at the fairs and carts which are so popular in New England.

Vecchitto is by far my favorite place for Italian Ice in New England that I’ve tried so far.  Middletown, CT is a great town for good eating and Vecchitto makes for a sweet ending after a day in town or if you’re just passing through.

Lyman Orchards is more than just a farm, it’s a bona fide agritainment destination in Connecticut.  And it’s pretty, of course.

That’s the deck next to the Apple Barrel, Lyman’s market.  There’s plenty of seating for outdoor eating as well as a walk-up for hot dogs, burgers, and other grilled eats.  But our main interest was inside the Apple Barrel itself.

Basically, it’s a big round building filled pastries, produce, specialty food items and free samples.  We here at Tasty New England like free samples, indeed, and we picked up some chunks of half sour pickles, apple pie, cheddar cheese, fruit spreads, pasta sauce, and kettle corn.  However, these were the winner:

Mmm.  Doghnut.  These were the classic New England apple cider variety, and they were the best of the pastries we tried.  They were soft and tender, and just barely sweet enough, without being cloying or too greasy.

The produce we picked up was of excellent quality, too.  Blueberries were sweet and flavorful, apples were crisp and we even bought some nice ripe peaches which can be difficult to find in regular grocery stores.  For the apples they even mark which varieties were grown on-site and they even give out charts showing what types are available at different times of the year.  Even though it’s a little out of the way for regular shopping for most folks, Lyman Orchards does make for a nice Saturday afternoon, and if you stock up like we did you can enjoy your haul for many days after.

If you want more pics of the places we’ve been, check out the stuff we’re adding on Flickr.  Don’t forget to add us as a contact, too.

After our trip at Bub’s we were on the prowl for something sweet, and being so close to Vermont, and the ice cream stand at The Chelsea Royal Diner, we knew what we wanted.

That, in case you don’t know, is one of the plainest yet best flavors in all of ice cream-dom.  Sweet Cream is just that, pure dairy-fat flavor, like vanilla except without the vanilla.  With any extra stuff going on and just the right amount of sweetness, the taste of the cream is explosive, more buttery and concentrated than any other ice cream I’ve had.  Of course, if you MUST, this stuff makes an excellent base for other flavors.

But let’s not go crazy.  The sweet cream swirled with raspberries was wonderful.  I’m one to think that sometimes raspberries can be a bit fussy and overrated.  They spoil quickly, are expensive, and even when you can get your hands on some affordable ones they can be really sour with not enough sweet berry flavor.  Don’t get me wrong, I like raspberries, but they’re generally not at the top of the berry heap for me.  Really though, whatever the folks are doing here, they’re doing it right.  The raspberries are just tangy enough, with loads of raspberry flavor which is surrounded by the sweet cream.  The fat in the ice cream makes the berries sing even more, and the large waffle cone surrounding it all kept all the meltiness in check, long enough for everything to be savored slowly.

This is the sort of ice cream stop which is worth going out of your way for.

Nestled into a roadside just north of UMASS in Sunderland, MA is an eatery you might not expect to exist, or, at the least, you might not expect to be this good.

The first clue that Bub’s BBQ is good eating is the unassuming exterior.  Much of the outside seems thrown together, ramshackle, even, with a big red and white tent out front for al fresco dining and some diversions for those needing entertainment, including a basketball hoop and what looked like a few holes of home-crafted mini golf.  What’s best, the entire places is covered in a cloud of woodsy-odored smoke, but we’ll get to that later.

Charm even extends to what is on your table before you get your chow.

That’s two rolls of paper towels to serve as napkins, S+P shakers, ketchup, hot sauce, and a box of well-worn Trivial Pursuit cards in case you want to know if your dining partners can convert feet to fathoms.

But enough with the ambiance.  We showed up at Bub’s in the middle of the afternoon and had eaten little all day.  We were starving, but Bub’s takes care of that immediately right after you step in and order your main dish.

You see, after ordering your BBQ goodness you grab a plate, turn around, and start hoarding side dishes from the included Hot and Cold Bar.  There’s a lot of options, some good, some bad, a couple straight up awesome.

To get an idea of just a few, baked beans were good and slightly smoky, dirty rice was passable but a bit plain for my taste, the sweet potatoes were creamy with a nice hint of orange, and the beets were beets.  However, for my money the highlights are three of the cold salads.  The coleslaw is a bit over-dressed and on the gloppy side but it’s made with what tastes like real, hand-cut cabbage and big chunks of what I think were dill pickles.  The pasta salad also tasted very fresh and homemade, with big fat chunks of fresh basil.  However, it’s all topped by this -

That’s pasta on the left, tater salad on the right, and in the middle, corn.  Corn salad-y stuff.  It’s always the first thing I go for at Bub’s and often the last thing I go for, too.  Mixed in with the sweet corn are black eyed peas, celery, red peppers, and onions, lightly dressed, and then hit with a good amount of cilantro.  It tastes light and crunchy and verdant from the dark green cilantro, and makes for a good contrast for the main event which is anything but light and crunchy and verdant.

The brisket (shown here, blurry, and without the bun it usually comes on) was fine, but probably not Bub’s strongest dish.  The beef was tender but most of the flavor came from the tangy sauce it was smothered in.  More beefiness, more fattiness, and more smokiness would make this more satisfying but there’s so much else to chose from on the menu, the just OK beef brisket isn’t too much of a disappointment.

The pulled pork was better where the brisket left us wanting.  The smoky flavors were more intense, the pork was overall moist and unctuous, and the whole thing wasn’t inundated with the sauce.  However, the pulled pork at Bub’s is not where the pig reaches its most glorious potential.

That would be the ribs.

This is where pork fat, salt, smoke, tang, and gristle come together at Bub’s, and they were remarkable by any standards, not just Yankee standards.  The meat was perfect, not over-cooked and falling off the bone but just firm, and released with just enough pull from the bone.  Each bite was different, some full of pork fat and juiciness, others with a mixture of char and meat, and then others that were chewy and crunchy from the last-minute grilling the ribs get before going to plate.

Bub’s also has a fun selection of desserts, including an excellent deep fried Twinkie but we had already stuffed ourselves silly by the time the rack of ribs was gone, and we already had other plans for dessert further up the road.  Our last course of the day comes up in our next post, stay tuned!

So the 4th of July weekend pretty much alternated between downpours of rain, and somewhat-hot temperatures and enough humidity to make everything sticky and lazy feeling outside.  Not exactly festive.  The solution!

For us, it was heading over to Rita’s in South Windsor, CT, admittedly, with a Buy-2-Get-1-Free coupon in hand.  Will we be willing to return for another visit, sans coupon?

Based on the Peach Italian Ice alone, yes.  Smoother than a snow cone, thicker than a Slurpee or an Icee, yet softer than straight up sorbet, my hope was that the flavor would be intense and super-fruity, more peach-like than any peach in nature.  This was pretty close to perfect.  The peach flavor tasted very accurate and clear, yet also very sweet and strong.  Each spoonful ended with flowery, almost perfume-y notes which ended up tasting a bit artificial, my only complaint.  Rita’s allows layer and mixing of flavors, this cup of peach had blueberry on the bottom which was good, but paled in comparison to the peach on top.

The Banana Strawberry was creamier than the peach, but not at all heavy and still refreshing.  Unfortunately the label on the freezer said it had chunks of banana in there and while I did get a few, I wanted MORE.  When ordering it had me thinking of the Hawaiian Blizzard at Dairy Queen, and my favorite part of that is the chunks of cold, dense, chewy banana mixed in with the soft-serve.  If only this was a bit more chunky it would have been right up there with the peach for me.

Others on the Tasty New England team ventured into mixtures I dared-not-tread.  I’m into ice cream, and I’m into Italian Ice, but when multiple textures and flavors start getting into the mix I freak out a little.  However, everybody reported that theirs was tasty and the soft-serve seemed quite typical and appropriately smooth and creamy.  It’s not anyone’s fault, it’s just when I take a bit of something with vanilla and chocolate and peach and blackberry in the same cup my eyes just kinda glaze over and I can’t process anything.

We’ll be back at Rita’s in South Windsor, as it’s a nice short trip for us out to the whole Manchester/South Windsor/Buckland area, the ice is yummy, and they do have benches outside for people watching.  Not a bad way to get out of the house on a sticky summer evening.

Just down the street from The Country Diner is Smyth’s (prounounced just like Smith’s…we think), an unassuming looking ice cream stop with a big selection of scoops, cones, sundaes and shakes.  Smyth’s is a great little oasis within the maze of strip malls, big box stores, and chain eateries that make up a lot of Enfield just east of I-91.

Our first choice was a cup of Chocolate Peanut Butter ($2.75) from the hard ice cream menu.  It was just the right combination of cold, creamy, and from the peanut butter, dense and almost chewy in mouth feel.  The chocolate taste was bold and not overpowered by the peanut butter.

The Strawberry Shortcake Sundae ($4.25) was huge, especially considering the price.  OK, so that’s not really anything like “shortcake” in there, it’s four of those little sponge cake rounds you get at the produce section of the grocery store, but still, there is something to be said for the delights of sponge cake soaking up all the liquid from a mound of juicy, sloppy, macerated strawberries.  The nuts added a nice textural contrast to the mound of soft-serve inside and you can never go wrong with the old-school maraschino cherry on top.

Smyth’s may not be unique or fancy enough to go far out of your way, but if you’re in town or find yourself traveling on I-91 between Hartford and Springfield, it is definately worth a pit stop.

The Country Diner in Enfield, CT is a welcoming space, with a long lunch counter just inside the front door, and local workers happily munching on sandwiches and breakfast fare all day.  Service is always attentive and sometimes full of personality.  On our most recent visit our waitress asked us the requisite “Hi, and how are you today?”  We replied with out Fine-how-are-you’s?  and her response was “Eh…you know how it is” after which she smiled back at us broadly.

Food always comes quickly, and the Italian Wrap ($7.95) was no exception.  The wrap included onions, red peppers, and cheese, all bundled up with what can only be described as an obscene amount of thin sliced meats including salami and ham.

The Pastrami Mommy ($7.95) was also tasty.  A bit like a pastrami Reuben, the Pastrami Mommy came with cheese and grilled onions on grilled heavily-flecked rye bread.

The Meatloaf Madness ($7.95) was not at all what I was expecting but still tasty.  Instead of a firm, solid slice of meatloaf on the sandwich it was more of a patty, somewhat soft in texture, but flavorful.  It was almost like halfway between a Sloppy Joe and a hash, with the toasted bun and lettuce and tomato lending texture and body.  All sandwiches came with pretty typical coleslaw and fresh-cut, house-made fries which are excellent but need salt.

The Country Diner in Enfield is solid all around for it’s great food, pleasant, folksy atmosphere, and attentive service, and is a great place to duck into for breakfast or lunch.  The wide variety of items on the menu will keep us coming back.