Cafe Adam

Cafe Adam is a small, 42-seat restaurant in Great Barrington, NY founded by a Johnson & Wales grad.

We visited this locavore destination in the Berkshires and were quite impressed. Most of the dishes are made with locally sourced products.

For appetizers, we had thin fried strips of parsnips which looked like long, dry blades of golden brown grass.  Delicious and addicting.  Too bad we couldn’t take some home; they were so light and fragile.  Their soft shell crab, served with avocado and tabouleh, is now one of our favorite renditions.

Our main courses consisted of a New England-style boullabaisse, made with  haddock, wild shrimp, scallop, squid, and mussels – all sourced from neighboring towns and states.  The saffron aioli was (thankfully) not very garlicky but instead more delicately flavored than the classic Marseille version.  I especially liked the tiny squid rings and plump scallops.

Other notable dishes were steak frites with an unusual ketchup and green garlic-cognac butter, and a mushroom pie with Spanish goat cheese.  We tried their local ale, which was average at best.

I think we could go back to Cafe Adam.

My Favorite Brazilian Restaurant in New York

It’s been a while since we’ve had good Brazilian fare. Marita and I enjoyed some traditional dishes at pretty good Brazilian restaurants when we visited Rio many years ago -  so the bar has been set quite high.

We recently visited Circus Restaurant in midtown Manhattan and we were thoroughly impressed.  It’s now definitely our favorite Brazilian in New York.

Marita started with a corn soup with fried collard greens which lent a pleasant bitter taste that blended very well with the sweet corn.  My own appetizers consisted of a trio of pastelzinhos; I especially liked the one stuffed with cheese.

For my main course,  I had red snapper that was crispy on top and moist inside, placed on a bed of mashed potatoes, which reminded me a bit of Eric Ripert’s cooking.   Apparently, Ripert is a friend of the owner.  Of course, I had the obligatory caipirinha. Marita had a perfectly breaded milanesa with vegetables.

The staff – particularly maitre d’ Vasco and waiter Leo were very attentive and friendly which made the meal all the more enjoyable.  Vasco is Portuguese and Leo Brazilian so they know about cachacas, feijoada and moqueca and the many other Brazilian and Portuguese standards as well as more unusual dishes.  Leo was kind enough to give us some mango -flavored cachacas, a perfect way to top the meal.

I asked them where we could get some acaraje and they both admitted that it’s difficult to get this traditional Bahian treat in New York.  You have to wait for Brazil day and wait in endless lines to get them.  But they promised to look into adding it to their regular menu – a great excuse to go back to this wonderful Brazilian restaurant.