May 17, 2013

A Brit’s Take on NYC: 12 Hours with Paul Robinson

SideTour friend Paul Robinson is an Englishman who moved to NYC in January 2011 to open a US office for Boardworks, a business providing interactive teaching resources for K-12 schools across the nation. The former semi-professional soccer player was previously a member of US, Australian and English soccer leagues. In his two years on this side of the pond, he’s found a few favorite haunts.

As told to SideTour:

10:00AM Get Your Engines Runnin’ Nothing better to start the day then a run over the Williamburg Bridge. It’s the city’s longest bridge at 1.6 miles and provides spectacular views of the Manhattan skyline for a small dose of early morning inspiration.

11:30AM Chow Down After working up an appetite, head to Allswell on Bedford Avenue for brunch. This place has an unassuming charm and character that welcomes all passersby. The food is fresh, simple and of very high quality, and the small bar serves great cocktails.

1:00PM Practice Your Swing Bring friends to hit some golf balls at the driving range on the Hudson River at The Golf Club at Chelsea Piers. If golf isn’t your thing, my second favorite activity is to head to the nearby batting cages. An Englishman in a batting cage is quite a sight—it’s nothing like cricket!

3:00PM Lift a Stein The open-air Standard Biergarten beneath the High Line is always packed on a Saturday afternoon with everyone enjoying pretzels and hot dogs, washing them down with super-sized pints of cold beer. Whoever lost out on the “nearest to the hole” competition at golf earlier buys the first round. There are also a couple of ping-pong tables in the beer garden for those who think they play like Forrest Gump after a couple of pints.

5:30PM Sip Off into the Sunset As daylight fades on the beer garden, the ideal place to head is just around the corner to the Sunset Saturdays party at The Dream Hotel Downtown. It caters for those looking to continue the party from the day and those looking to kick the night off early. Located on the rooftop, this party gives you the best view in the city to watch the sun go down.

8:00PM Share Some Slices After consuming a fair few drinks during the afternoon and evening, nothing sounds more perfect than a great pizza. Paulie Gee’s in Greenpoint is my favorite in NYC by a margin. The owner Paulie, with his New York charm, is in the restaurant every night, making sure his customers are enjoying the food and having a great time. He serves some unique flavor combinations, with the highlight being the “Cherry Jones Pizza,” topped with dried cherries, gorgonzola, blossom honey and prosciutto. Trust me, it surprisingly works.

Photo: Some rights reserved by gsz

10PM Hit the Roof The rooftop bar at the Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg provides the perfect setting to draw to a close a great day. Matching unparalleled views of the midtown skyline with great cocktails and a sophisticated crowd, this spot is popular with the locals and the ever-growing number of people coming from Manhattan to the neighborhood for a night out.

May 16, 2013

8 Best Breweries and Brewpubs in Philadelphia

Beer lovers, set down your pints and take a look: We have the definitive list of the best spots in Philadelphia to sip a tasty brew. Rich Wagner, a Pennsylvania beer historian and SideTour host, highlights his top picks for great beer made right where you’ll drink it.

Yards Brewery

Philadelphia’s oldest and largest production brewery, started in 1994. It’s now in its fourth location right near the Sugar House Casino. Well-known for their “Ales of the Revolution,” they produce a variety of beers including specialties made on an original three-barrel brewing system. The tasting room is open daily.

901 N. Delaware Avenue Philadelphia, PA 19123 (215-634-2600)

yardsbrewing.com

Philadelphia Brewing Company

Housed in the old Weisbrod & Hess Brewery building, Philadelphia Brewing Company has tours every Saturday from noon to 3pm, when visitors can sample their brews. Kenzinger is their popular flagship brand, but they’re also known for seasonal brews, mainly available on draught. PBC recently came out with a dry cider and has plans to expand to a variety of ciders.

2440 Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19125

philadelphiabrewing.com

Nodding Head

This brewpub is Philly’s leading award-winning brewery. Located in the shadow of City Hall, they produce a wide variety of interesting beers including “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” Weiss, a nearly extinct wheat beer style that its brewmasters brought back to life.

1516 Sansom, Second Floor, Philadelphia, PA (215-569-9525)

noddinghead.com

Triumph Brewing Company

Originating in Princeton, NJ, Philadelphia’s Triumph Brewing Company is the third of a chain of brewpubs. Located in Old City and surrounded by a plethora of beer bars, it holds its own by making top-notch ales and lagers.

117 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106 (215-625-0855)

triumphbrewing.com

Manayunk Brewery and Restaurant

It’s the city’s longest-running brewpub, established in 1997. Famous for Schuylkill Punch, the brewery is located on the river and boasts the largest outdoor patio and deck in the city. Their beers are now distributed and can be found in bars throughout the region.

4120 Main Street, Philadelphia, PA 19127 (215-482-8220)

manayunkbrewery.com

Dock Street Brewing Company

This brand dates back to 1985 and has won many awards. Currently located in an old fire station in West Philadelphia, they’re also known for their gourmet pizza. The brewmasters are always pushing the envelope to create unique and unusual beers of the highest quality.

701 S. 50th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19143 (215-726-2337)

dockstreetbeer.com

Photo: Some rights reserved by horstm22

Earth Bread Brewery

Located in Mount Airy, Earth Bread and Brewery is a family-friendly restaurant and brewpub featuring flatbreads made in a wood-fired oven. Owner Tom Baker is very interested in beers of antiquity and brews an assortment of styles, many of which are unique to his brewpub. There is also an impressive lineup of guest craft beers on tap.

earthbreadbrewery.com

Iron Hill Brewery

The location in Chestnut Hill is the seventh of a chain of highly successful brewpubs based in Delaware. Each brewery offers a core of regular beers, but each brewer gets to showcase his talents with his own creations, many of which have won awards at the Great American Beer Festival.

8400 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19118 (215-948-5600)

ironhillbrewery.com

St. Benjamin Brewing Company (Opening Soon)

The newest entry to the Philly brewery scene, St. Ben’s is slated to open in the near future and will be the fourth craft brewery to renovate an existing brewery building in Philadelphia. Housed in the old Finkenauer brewery stable building, they’ll start out as a “nano-brewery” and pub, with a brewing system on the order of three barrels.

1710 N. 5th St. Philadelphia, PA 19122

stbenjaminbrewing.com

Learn more about Philly’s fascinating beer history while you whet your whistle on Rich’s SideTour, a bar crawl of historic taverns and craft beer tasting.

May 15, 2013

Refreshing Recipe: Persian Yogurt and Cucumber Salad

Chef extraordinaire Andy Baraghani, formerly of Per Se and Chez Panisse, cooks up some of the finest cuisine in New York City—and that’s saying something. This recipe for Mahst-o-khiar, or Persian yogurt and cucumber salad, employs the flavors and traditional seasonings used in the cooking of Andy’s Persian ancestors, including dried rose petals. It’s traditionally served as a condiment alongside Persian herb and fava bean rice, but you can also have it as a snack with toasted bread, or diluted with water as a chilled summer soup.

Chef’s note: It’s best to pick up all of these ingredients at a Middle Eastern grocery: The yogurt is thinner than Greek but thicker than traditional American yogurt and not as tart, the cucumber is thinner-skinned, seedless and sweeter, and the rose petals will be hard to find anywhere else.

Persian Yogurt and Cucumber Salad

Ingredients:

3 cups Persian-style whole-fat strained plain yogurt

1 cup seedless Persian or Armenian cucumber, peeled and finely diced (English cucumber works, too)

½ cup Persian green raisins reconstituted with hot water (golden raisins work, too)

½ cup walnuts, roasted and roughly chopped 1 Tbsp. green garlic (if in season) or 2 cloves of garlic, smashed into a paste  1 tsp. dried mint

1 tsp. fresh thyme, finely chopped

1 tsp. dried rose petals, finely chopped

½ tsp. freshly ground pepper

Sea salt, to taste

For garnish:

½ tsp. dried rose, finely chopped

½ tsp. dried mint

Directions:

1. Combine yogurt, cucumber, raisins, walnuts, garlic, mint, thyme, rose petals and pepper.

2. Season with salt to taste and garnish with dried mint and crushed rose petals.

For the unparalleled experience of having a two-time Michelin-starred restaurant apprentice cook for you, sign up to Discover the Middle East with a Persian Tasting Menu.

May 14, 2013

NYC’s First Origami Studio in Brooklyn

In this high-stress city, everyone needs a hobby. If you find molding clay too messy or knitting scarves too time-consuming, you might give origami a try at Taro’s Origami Studio in Park Slope, Brooklyn’s first studio dedicated to the traditional Japanese art of paper folding.

Why Fold Paper? The art of origami, or folding paper to form a three-dimensional shape, is both relaxing and stimulating to the mind, and also pretty rewarding. And the options go way beyond cranes and cootie catchers. Paper can be transformed into fauna and flora, geometric shapes, vehicles—basically anything you can think of.

Stop By the Studio Taro’s is open for walk-ins Tuesday through Saturday from 11am to 6pm. You can sit with a book or iPad instructions and fold on your own, or ask an origami expert for advice if you get stuck. For more hands-on help, classes are offered every afternoon.

Sign Up for a SideTour Gather your crew for a private SideTour experience with Taro’s origami teacher Ben Friesen. Ben brings 25 years of expertise to the table, and will help your friends and family (ages 5 and up) get their fingers folding.

May 13, 2013

Chicken Mushrooms: Foods You Can Forage For in NYC

According to “Wildman” Steve Brill, an expert ecologist and SideTour host, there’s plenty of free food in New York City, without having to fight crowds to snag handout samples. We’ve been counting down his top 10 foods to forage for in city parks. Chicken mushrooms are the second item on his list.

Chicken mushrooms

Mature chicken mushroom

How to find it If there’s one mushroom to seek for your first foraging foray, this is it. The chicken mushroom is easy to recognize and (thankfully) has no poisonous look-alikes. It has pores on its underside, not the blade-like gills of commercial mushrooms, and it always grows on living or dead trees, logs or stumps, and never in the grass or on bare ground. When mature, it consists of flat, fan-shaped, overlapping caps 2 to 12 inches across and bright orange to salmon in color. It’s common and widespread, has a long season and can grow to be huge—Steve once found 50pounds covering a log in a NYC park.

How to eat it Because the white, light yellow or pale salmon flesh looks and tastes like chicken meat, you can use it in many dishes in place of poultry. Choose mushrooms that are young and soft—once they’ve turned dry and crumbly, they’re too old to eat. Unless your mushroom is so young and tender that it almost drips with juice, it’s better to cook it in moist dishes—like soups, stews or in rice—than to sauté it in oil.

Very young chicken mushroom

Hungry for more? While you’re on the hunt, take a look for yellow wood sorrel, and check back as we showcase Steve’s top 10 wild edibles. Or sign up for Steve’s SideTour experience. He’s also behind the definitive smartphone app for foraging: Wild Edibles (for iOS and Android).

May 10, 2013

Last-Minute Mother’s Day Gift in NYC

Kick off your Mother’s Day weekend with a fascinating SideTour this Saturday at 3pm, where you’ll Learn About the Dangerous NYC Women Who Shaped History.

For all adventurous moms and imaginative daughters, replace the chocolate on Mother’s Day (or supplement it) with girls on strike, protesters in prison, free love, votes for women and other radical causes near and dear to the hearts of liberated ladies.

A Walk Back in Time Urban historian Kathleen Hulser has made it her mission to seek out the spots where women’s history was made in NYC. Sites include the locations of demonstrations in support of the massive 20,000-women strike in 1909 against sweatshop labor, where laborers and upper-class women banded together for safer work conditions.

Dangerous Dames You’ll also hear about subversive life of Emma Goldman, whose various infractions included “inciting to riot” and illegal distribution of information about birth control, as well as inspiring her lover to attempt an assassination of an under-handed industrialist.

Sign up with your mom to join Kathleen for this ultimate celebration of dangerous women in NYC.

May 09, 2013

A Summer Hideaway on the Upper East Side

Walk Through Manhattan History at the Mount Vernon Hotel Museum and Garden

For the Upper East Siders who complain about the mess that the Second Avenue subway has brought to the neighborhood, consider this: In the early 19th century, well before subterranean travel was even a glimmer, the entire area was rolling farms and only reachable by stagecoach or steamboat. It was at that time that the Mount Vernon Hotel on East 61st Street served as a summer refuge for Manhattanites, who were concentrated below 14th street (OK, some things never change).

True story From 1826 to 1833, the bucolic retreat was advertised as “free from the noise and dust of the public roads, and fitted up and intended for only the most genteel and respectable” clientele, who could while away the hours in the ladies’ lounge or gentlemen’s tavern, or go for a dip in the refreshing waters of the East River (yes, really).

See it today The historic propertyis still an escape, to a simpler time of New York City’s past. The building and its gardens have been restored to their Victorian glory, with knowledgeable docents to walk you back in time.

Like hidden treasures? Get an inside look at another hidden Manhattan museum on this SideTour: Encounter the Spellbinding Collection of NYC’s Smallest Museum.

May 08, 2013

A Chicago Landmark That Inspired Frank Lloyd Wright

The Unique Glessner House in the Prairie Avenue Historic District

Where to see it

Find the Glessner House on Prairie Ave and 18^th St. It’s one of several grand homes on Prairie Ave built in the Gilded Age with the new money from the Industrial Revolution.

Why it’s important

Completed in 1887, the house was co-designed by architect Henry Hobson Richardson and homeowners John and Frances Glessner—an unprecedented collaboration for the time. The Romanesque, fortress-like stone exterior is quite a departure from the fussy Victorian style, and considered among the first examples of American architecture and an influence to Frank Lloyd Wright.

Insider facts

The house was wired for electricity when it was built, but the neighborhood wasn’t, so the rooms were gas-lit until the 1893 World’s Fair.

Its massive size makes the most of a lot that’s just 74 feet wide. In fact, the building is joined to the house next-door, rowhouse-style, to maximize its width.

While the house contains 17,000 square feet of living space, the rooms aren’t cavernous, per the Glessners’ request that it feel cozy.

More than half of the space was designed for service staff, with just three bedrooms for the family, two for guests and eight for servants’ quarters.

Check it out for yourself Guided tours are available Wednesday through Sunday at 1pm and 3pm.

Want more? Relive the lives of the Glessner’s contemporaries with SideTour on a tour of the Gold Coast of Lake Shore Drive, or see the mansions of the present-day elite on walk through the Kenwood neighborhood, including the Obama home.

Historic photo: Cornell University Library

May 07, 2013

Easy Recipe for Stuffed Grape Leaves

Private chef Richard Vanderplas uses the world as his teacher, picking up cooking techniques from such far-flung locales as Maui and Vienna. His recipe for traditional Greek rice dolmas (a.k.a. stuffed grape leaves) came from his time spent in Crete. It’s just a part of one of the four courses he serves on SideTour’s Mediterranean feast hosted at his TriBeCa home.

Greek Rice Dolmas

Ingredients:

1/2 jar grape leaves

2 Tbsp. olive oil

1 cup jasmine rice

2 bay leaves

2 cloves garlic, chopped

1 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar

1 cup water

2 tablespoons butter

10 leaves mint chopped

1 Tbsp. tomato paste

Chicken stock, vegetable stock or salted water

Plain Greek yogurt

Directions:

1. Unroll, separate and rinse the grape leaves, then let soak in water.

2. Heat olive oil in pan and toast rice with bay leaves until crispy.

3. Add garlic, balsamic vinegar and salt and cover with water, then bring to a boil and cook covered until all the water is absorbed and the rice is al dente.

4. After rice is cooked, add butter, mint and tomato paste, remove bay leaves and mix until combined.

5. After mixing, cook for an additional five minutes.

6. Take your grape leaf and cut off the bottom, getting rid of the stem and a little of the leaf, so that the proportion of leaf to rice is correct.

7. Place a ball of rice in the middle of the leaf near the bottom, in between the two side flaps.

8. Fold over one side of the grape leaf.

9. Fold over the other side.

10. Slowly roll the leaf up like a burrito, making it as tight as possible without breaking it.

11. The finished product.

12. Layer the grape leaves in a cooking pot, packed tightly in.

13. Cover leaves with chicken stock, vegetable stock or salted water until fully submerged. Heat over low heat until the liquid simmers (but doesn’t boil) for 15-20 minutes.

14. Strain from stock. Serve hot with a dip of cold Greek yogurt—preferably wicked of extra moisture by leaving it in the fridge overnight with paper towels touching its top surface—garnished with cayenne, and enjoy!

If you’d rather have Richard make this for you himself, be sure to check out his Mediterranean meal. If Mediterranean cuisine isn’t your bag, Richard also hosts a four-course Indian fusion dinner with SideTour.

May 06, 2013

Top 5 NYC Parks with Free Wi-Fi

Bryant Park may have the most famous free Wi-Fi, but it’s not the only green space with a technological bonus. Find free web access at these other NYC outdoor hotspots.

Thomas Jefferson Park

New York City and AT&T began offering free wireless in city parks in 2011. One of the first beneficiaries was Thomas Jefferson Park, from East 111th to 114th Streets between First Ave and the FDR.

Tip To take advantage of the connection, you’ll need to stick close to the recreation center building.

Photo by Daniel Avila, nycgovparks.org

Brooklyn Bridge Park

Catch a breeze off the water and bask in the shadow of the two bridges (Brooklyn and Manhattan) while surfing the web. The connection on the Brooklyn side of the East River is sponsored by the DUMBO Business Improvement District (BID), Two Trees Management Company and NYCwireless.

Tip You can also wander south to Piers 1 and 6 for the city-sponsored Wi-Fi connection.

Photo by Julienne Schaer from Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Facebook page

Joyce Kilmer Park

This beautiful Bronx oasis, situated between Grand Concourse and Walton Ave and East 161st and 164th Steets, was also wired for wireless by the city’s project.

Tip Snag a bench near the north playground for the strongest signal.

14th Street Park

This little patch of green between 14th and 15th Streets west of 10th Ave in Chelsea is a favorite neighborhood sunbathing spot. It’s also within the bounds of Google and the Chelsea Improvement Company’s joint initiative to offer free Wi-Fi to a sizeable swath of the neighborhood surrounding the Goog’s NYC headquarters.

Photo: chelseaimprovement.com

Astoria Park

Located a short walk west of the last stops on the N train, this green space has many highlights, including the largest public swimming pool in New York City—and city-powered Wi-Fi. Just look up from your screen long enough to take in the awesome view of the Manhattan skyline.

Tip Hang close to the track and playing fields for the best connection.

Sick of surfing?

Turn off your devices and Discover the Hidden Secrets of Central Park on a Sunset Walk with SideTour.