Off the Map: On the Cape, Off the Menu

Stuffed Quahog -- Marshland Restaurant, Sandwich, MA

Marshland Restaurant

It seems only appropriate that Vodka should kick off the weekend of Ginger's Cape Cod wedding not with running errands, decorating the venue, or doing anything remotely helpful, but rather with stuffing her face in the name of Best Thing I Ever Ate loyalty.

Pretty Sure the Bride Would Approve

This is how Vodka and her wedding date, Whiskey Sour, wind up at Marshland Restaurant barely five minutes after crossing the bridge. 

Priorities: Eat First, Unless Cocktails Are Available. Then Drink First

We are here to consume Duff Goldman's HOMETOWN FAVORITE choice, the stuffed quahog, which despite being advertised heavily on the establishment's website, is inexplicably not on the menu. 

Not the Menu

Fearing she'll have to stage a disgruntled walkout (which would seem on-brand on the eve of Ginger's big day, to be honest), Vodka asks one of the congenial waitresses about the missing item, and she is assured that it is indeed available.

Not Available: Levers for Straightening the TV Sets

Mere minutes later, Vodka is delivered a giant clam shell piled high with... well, it just looks like breading. 

Is This a Clam or a Dinner Roll?

She douses it with a solid helping of the accompanying melted butter and digs in, finding the creation to be... bready. Like, essentially just breadcrumbs toasted among a smattering of red peppers, butter, and presumably, clams. 

Like Biting Into a Soggy Ritz Cracker

Usually, Vodka is all for a carb overload (she did once complain about crab cakes having too much crab, after all), but this ratio seems extreme. 

Perhaps Whiskey Sour Could Lend Her Some Salad for a Bit of Texture

Whiskey Sour, a New England native and resident, finds the creation more pleasing and thinks that it is decidedly of its location, thus a good dish for making a local feel like he's home. 

Home Is Where the Bar Stools Are

After Vodka drowns the entire clam in hot sauce and continues to look neutral about the whole endeavor, Whiskey Sour poses what should be an easy question:

"Do you even like clams?"

"Um, I don't know."

"Have you ever HAD clams?"

"I've had linguine with clams...."

"Oh dear."

What? Does That Not Count?

Vodka finds the best part of the stuffed quahog to be its price tag, as she can't remember the last time she procured lunch for a mere $5.66.

Bargain Basement Beet Salad

And in the end, it seems to make sense that Vodka's final meal before slinking off to Ginger's nuptials is one she finds completely mediocre.

We Are Curmudgeons, After All

What would make even more sense is if the meal came to a riotous conclusion with a biting customer service brawl, but alas, it appears that battle will have to wait for the next joint Vodka and Ginger outing, with or without Ginger's unsuspecting husband in tow. 

Marshland Restaurant's Stuffed Quahog: 3 stars

Off the Map: Tasteless in Massachusetts

Chicken Burrito -- Bueno y Sano, Northampton, MA

Bueno y Sano

To say we've been off our Best Thing I Ever Ate game recently would be the understatement of the overeating century. We've become so lackadaisical about what was once an obsessive quest that the restaurants themselves have begun sneaking up on us, whether or not we want them to.

Where Did You Come From?

This is how, while killing time on a road trip to Montreal, stumble upon the Northampton, MA, outpost of Bueno y Sano, which had (very appropriately) been featured on the ROAD TRIP episode of the program.

Hello, Northampton. We're Only Here to Drink

Dutifully, if a bit apathetically, we place our order for the chicken burrito, after some tipsy (naturally, we had already hit up a local bar) Googling to discern exactly what Marc Forgionne had recommended. 

They Do Not Seem to Care If Short People Can Read Their Menu

You're Welcome for the Lovely Interior Shots

Bourbon Goggles Made Vodka Think This Was a Scenic Picture

When we tear into the creation in the backseat of Ginger's sister's car, we find the most basic burrito possible -- one that, to tell the truth, does not look superior to Chipotle's wrapped delicacies. 

And Yes, We're Both Sitting in the Back Seat Pretending We Have a Chauffeur

We'll Be the Judge of That

Biting in does not improve the situation, as much like our earlier cocktails, the burritos have virtually no taste whatsoever.

Tad on the Skimpy Side

So, Like, It's a Burrito

Difficult to Locate Any Chicken

While we polish off the burrito, because we have nothing if not a strong sense of follow-through, we find the entire enterprise mediocre at best. 

We Believe in Finishing What We Start [Eating]

Indeed, when the bevy of snacks acquired at the back-road Vermont Circle K tickle our tastebuds more than the entree at hand, one has to wonder if Marc Forgionne is pulling into the correct pit-stops.

Much More Bueno

Bueno y Sano's Chicken Burrito: 3 stars

Food by Mail: Happy Birthday from Dixieland

Dark Chocolate Dixies -- Richardson's Candy Kitchen, Deerfield, MA

Richardson's Candy Kitchen

Ginger has started a trend.  Of course, this trend only exists between the two of us, and it has similarly only happened twice, but no matter.  We know a trend when we see one.

Namely Because We Make Up Our Own

This particular trend revolves around the fact that we have taken to bestowing each other with mail order food in honor of our birthdays.  

Whether or Not We Actually Address Each Other as "Vodka and Ginger" in Real Life is Up for Your Interpretation

After all, there are a great deal of shippable Best Thing I Ever Ate items to choose from, and what better reason is there to plunk down $30 in shipping charges than the celebration of your fellow friend in eating's life?

We Appreciate Any Food That Comes with Its Own Ice Pack

As you may recall, for Vodka's birthday (which, of note, is in the middle of the SUMMER), Ginger had an extremely festive if completely inappropriate for the season fruit cake shipped to her door.  

Also, Every Birthday Card We Give Each Other Is Some Variation of This Theme: Don't Be a Drunken Fool

Two months later, when it is time to return the favor, Vodka chooses the slightly more portable and mildly less Christmasy dark chocolate dixies from Richardson's Candy Kitchen in Deerfield, MA.

Of Note, Vodka Shipped Said Dixies to Her OWN Apartment. Control Freak for the Win

In a stroke of luck, the day said dixies arrived, Vodka had experienced a random street encounter with her self-proclaimed soulmate, Josh Groban.  Wishing to rehash this experience moment by moment, she persuades Ginger to leave the borough of Brooklyn for the promise of a tasty cocktail and ridiculous story.  "I'll bring your birthday present.  It's food," she tells Ginger, which gets Ginger off of her booze-soaked couch faster than any other phrase could have.

What Birthday Gifts Are Made Of

However, upon reflection, it seems like a rather awkward idea to haul out a box of candy in the middle of a bar, even for two people who have a rather high threshold for humiliation.  For this reason, Vodka leaves the candy box in her apartment, which we drunkenly stumble back to after a splendid "meal" of salad, soup, and French fries.  

The Folks at the Department of Health Would Really Have a Field Day with Our Eating Habits

Ginger tears open the oversized and deceivingly heavy box and discovers the mail order feast that awaits her: a box of Alex Guarnaschelli's Best Thing I Ever Ate NUTTY favorites.  Three neat rows of large chocolate candies await her, one of almonds, another of pecans, and the last of cashews.  

A Dixie in the Flesh

We bite into each of the flavors one by one, and the dixies are indeed quite pleasing.  The chocolate is perfectly bitter, and caramel gooey and sweet, and the nuts salty and crunchy.  We wouldn't go out of our way to consume these things again, but for the moment, they're making for a fairly solid birthday treat.

And Here We Have the Almonds...

...and Now the Pecans...

...and Last But Not Least, the Cashews

And then, as per usual, we turn into complete idiots.

The Combination of Booze and Sugar Tends to Have This Effect on Us

It seems Richardson's is trying to bask in the glory of Alex featuring them on the program (if they had seen some of her previous food choices, they may reconsider this acclaim), as they provide an "introductary brochure" to their dixies, asking us to enjoy them just as much as Alex did.  And this leaflet, as leaflets tend to do, ends up completely confusing us.

Read This With Some Wine Goggles On, and You'll Have a Better Idea of What We Were Dealing With

"I'm surprised you didn't order the polka-dot ones," Ginger says, pointing to the "hedgehog" dixies from the list, which (apparently, to our pea brains) come with a polka-dot decoration.  

"Ooh, I never say that," Vodka says.  "But I think the hedgehogs are chocolate-covered rice krispie treats -- and we needed to eat nuts."

"I wonder what makes them polka-dot," Ginger persists, and we both stare at the list like two illiterates, STILL not catching on as to the pattern going on within it.

Namely, that there is a color listed next to every Dixie flavor -- gold, white, brown, polka-dot....

Finally -- FINALLY -- Ginger lifts a Dixie from the box, and with a high level of discovery delight, as if she had just figured out how to split the atom, she exclaims, "Ohhhhhh they're telling us the corresponding WRAPPERS for each of the flavors."

For the Record, We Produced Empty Wrappers in Three Different Colors Before We Figured This Out

And so, to be clear, the hedgehog dixies come in a polka-dot WRAPPER.  They are not, in and of themselves, POLKA-DOT.

Really, it's a wonder we manage to function in the world at all.

Our Blood Type is Essentially Cocktails, Salt, and Stupidity

And with that, another year older but certainly no wiser, Ginger packs up her dixies and begins the long haul back to Brooklyn, content only in the knowledge that should we ever reach old age, we can't possibly end up any more senile than we already are. 

Richardson's Candy Kitchen's Dark Chocolate Dixies: 4 stars

Off the Map: Into the Woods, And Out of the Woods, And Home Before Dark

Bread and Chocolate -- Berkshire Mountain Bakery, Housatonic, MA
Berkshire Mountain Bakery

The list of things that would compel Vodka to make a journey into the mountains include... well, nothing.  So, to reword, the ONLY thing that would compel Vodka to make a journey into the mountains is a Bernadette Peters concert, which is how she finds herself winding around the hills of the Berkshires on the way to Tanglewood.

You're Welcome, Berns

So Many Trees... SO MANY TREES...

Now, the Berkshires, as we have come to understand them, is some sort of New York City/Boston institution.  People are obsessed with them.  Unfortunately, if you looked up "the opposite of Vodka's kind of thing" in the dictionary, a picture of its landscape would appear.  It is, after all, rather telling that she would one-hundred times rather vacation down the shore than within this hilly setting, being that she hates sun, sand, and swimming.  So suffice it to say that she is not exactly entering the borough of the Berkshires with an open mind.

An Open Mouth, Yes, But Not an Open Mind

However, never one to let a Best Thing I Ever Ate opportunity pass her by, Vodka and her enabling parents stop off en route to Tanglewood at the Berkshire Mountain Bakery, a place recommended by Gabriella Gershenson on the MESSY episode of the show.

The Day You Find Vodka Traipsing Through the Mountains in That Outfit Is the Day the World Ends

Clomping through the parking lot in completely inappropriate mountain attire, Vodka enters the bakery to find... no one.  Under normal circumstances, this may not have been a surprise, but being that there are no less the five cars inexplicably hovering in the parking lot, the emptiness of the place is a bit jarring.

Levain Bakery, This Is Not

Looking excessively like Two Fat Cats Bakery in Maine, Vodka approaches the completely nondescript counter and orders a bread and chocolate loaf.  The proprietor (who Vodka's mother correctly describes as being "barely alive") rings up the purchase with a completely affectless expression, clearly not a member of the Berkshires tourism bureau.

Let's Just Say We Weren't Told to "Come Again"

The bread itself is shaped like a squashed playground ball (it is apparently called a "boule") and is scattered with hearty pieces of dark Callebaut chocolate.

Freckled Bread

Cutting into the loaf at our lunch location, Vodka finds more chocolate hidden in the nooks and crannies of the bread itself (though strangely, it appears to be concentrated only on one side).

Um, Bakery Man - You Missed The Other Three-Quarters of the Loaf

At first glance, this bread and chocolate concoction proves promising.  At first taste, it joins the ranks of the Berkshires itself in Vodka's rating system.

In Other Words, It Is the Opposite of Her Kind of Thing

Indeed, the problem with this bread is that we so WANT it to be tasty.  For goodness sake, we love bread and we love chocolate, so what could possibly go wrong?

Oh, Let Us Count the Ways

Vodka determines that the main problem with this bread and chocolate is the bread itself -- dry and crumbly, it is not nearly spongey enough to integrate the chocolate well.  In contrast to a pain au chocolate, for instance, the two ingredients in this dish seem completely disparate to each other.

In This Case, If A = B and B = C, A Certainly Does NOT Equal C

In terms of taste, the bread is bland in flavor, and it has not been sweetened at all to make it more dessert-like.  Because the dark chocolate is downright bitter, the melding of the two parts is a bit of a disaster.

Let's Blame the Flavor on That Allegedly "Fresh" Mountain Water

Over the next few days, Vodka tries to improve this bread and chocolate in any way she can think of -- heating it, dousing it with sugar, spreading butter onto it -- and no alterations make her want to take even a second bite.  In the end, she is left with three-quarters of a loaf of disagreeable carbs -- one that does not seem suitable for breakfast, lunch, OR dinner -- and an even greater distaste for the place from which it came.

In Sum, EPIC FAIL

Moral of the story: go watch Bernadette Peters in Into the Woods, but don't go into the woods to see her perform.  Because even the First Lady of the American Musical Theatre cannot fully counteract the damaging effect of mountain roads, nature's bugs, and misguided baked goods.

Berkshire Mountain Bakery Bread and Chocolate: 2 stars