Go Local With Your Cuisine: Groceries, Restaurants, and Lifestyle

www.buylocalpa.org

I found this website today and wanted to share it because it makes it easy to find fresh, local food in the Lehigh Valley. 

Support the farm-to-table movement, restaurants and retailers that offer food from within 100 miles, and most importantly, your local economy.

Sound like a lot? It's not, this site makes it easy: http://www.buylocalpa.org/lehighvalley 

The site will help you locate retailers, restaurants, farmers' markets, wineries, breweries, and the originators: farms that offer local Lehigh Valley food.

Want to learn more about the farm-to-table movement? 

http://www.farmtotableonline.org/

Question: Why eat food from within 100 miles? 

http://100milediet.org/

Answer: To be a localvore: 

http://www.thedailygreen.com/living-green/definitions/Localvores-Localtarians

And from FoodRoutes.org, how to accomplish this: 

http://www.FoodRoutes.org/howtobuylocal.jsp

Pizze, Pizze, Read All About It: Lehigh Valley Italian Restaurants

I has been a week chock-full of Italian dining and I'm not complaining. It just so happened that a few dinner plans coincided this week and we went to Italian restaurants both times.

The first was Sette Luna in Easton (see my last review), and last night we dined at Olio in Bethlehem. Filled at this point with calamari, caesar salads, and pizzas (or pizze), I'm going to take this opportunity to do a little comparison of Lehigh Valley's Italian restaurants.

The following is a scale in which I'm just going to rate what I think is worth mentioning at each of these restaurants. Considering none duck below 4/5 in any category, I stand behind recommending all of them, for different reasons. Read on.

http://www.setteluna.com/

Sette Luna: My absolute winner in the atmosphere category. 

Also some of the most innovative Italian food I've ever had.

5/5 Atmosphere. To recap my last review, which you can read in full (click here) or scroll down,
there's something comfortable and classy about the place. It appears to be a historic building of sorts: wide wood planked floors, pretty glass windows, lighting that gives the experience a golden aura. 

5/5 Food. Excellent pizza, yummy fig appetizer, interesting Tre Colore salad, but my friend's octopus salad was a bit weak. I would like to try more things on their menu. Great list of specials. Really just read my other review. Overall, as I just commented on Twitter (find me @imanihamilton), Sette Luna serves lighter fare as far as Italian is concerned and it is delicious.
http://www.setteluna.com/

http://olioristorante.com/

Olio: Very conducive to groups gathering for a good meal.

5/5 Service. An honest waitress makes all the difference and are too hard to come by. She was prompt, was incredibly helpful in answering our questions, and made some great recommendations. For example, she helped me decide if the chicken caesar salad appetizer would be sufficient for a meal (she said it definitely would, and it definitely did!). I know service was actually one of the main points of contention that deterred a lot of people from becoming regular patrons when Olio opened last spring, but I think they've tried to respond to that.

5/5 Atmosphere. Awesome decor. Wine bottles everywhere, high ceilings, vodka sauce colored walls and pretty metallic and blue-like tilings on the bars, counters, fireplace. A major plus is that Olio is also very well lit so won't put you to sleep when you finish your heavy Italian meal. This place is great for big groups too.

4/5 Food. Not earth-shattering but definitely a good meal. GREAT pre-meal bread. One of the best Chicken Caesar Salads I've had in a while. I don't necessarily do much Caesar Salad but I know a good one when it meets my criteria of having more than three ingredients: lettuce, dressing, and croutons.
Friends who ordered pizze were happy. I thought the pizzes were less inventive and ingredient-laden than Sette Luna pizze. Less inventive perhaps but similarly basic and Italian. I would have preferred more basil than came on my friend's Margherita pizza though. The veggie pizza looked fabulous: lots of fresh ingredients like mushrooms, etc. and the personal pizza is a good size that everyone took home leftovers. All of it is also very reasonably priced.
http://olioristorante.com/

http://media.lehighvalleylive.com

Mama Nina's: I probably crave the meal I get there at least once a week. 

Will schedule around beating the crowds.

5/5 Food. Probably mostly due to my two favorite items on the menu: the Garden salad which is not a cop-out like I find most restaurants' garden salads often are and the Soup di Mussels appetizer stewed in a white wine marinara sauce. Could bathe in it. I also like Mama Nina's because whoever is cooking back there is not afraid to use garlic. Lot's of it, and none of this finely minced business. I respect that.

4/5 Service, but only because it's so popular that it's often impossible to get a table without a wait. Start taking reservations! In fact, we opted for Olio because a table of six at 7pm on a Thursday at Mama Nina's is nothing short of a joke.

4/5 Atmosphere. Probably my favorite place in town for outdoor dining, I wish it were tolerable year-round. I find the inside decor to be amusing, but perfect for the wandering eye. 4/5 mostly because I don't like the interior as much as Sette Luna's or Olio's.
http://www.mamanina.com/

http://findlocal.mcall.com

Sal's: Standard. Predictable. Good.

4/5 Atmosphere. The place is too darn tiny for the number of people trying to get into it. Sal's suffers from the same problem that Mama Nina's does, the high demand for their limited seating means that I often opt out of even trying at peak hours.
Also, can't leave the place without smelling, no, reeking of Sal's. It's laughable how many people I know can sniff out someone who has been to Sal's, mostly because they've been there themselves. Don't plan on going places after Sal's unless you have the support group of others who can share your misery and awkward looks directed at the clear source of out-of-place intense Italian aromas.

My visits to Sal's have dropped off because of the presence of the three restaurants above and there's not a specific item on the menu that I'm willing to survive a 30 minute wait for, but it's still a perfect crowd-pleaser for your local Italian restaurant.

4/5 Food. Would recommend the Chicken Fantasy. For Italian food, I like it just fine. It's predictable and consistent and definitely a more classic Americanized heavier Italian meal. Sal's is not nearly as delicate and inventive as Sette Luna, for example. I can see why people love both though. It depends what you're looking for.
http://www.thelvmenus.com/restaurants.php?restaurantid=201


The end. I don't think any of this is blasphemy and I welcome any disagreement coupled with reasons to make all of these categories 5/5. Specific menu suggestions, favorite events pertaining to any of these restaurants, etc., a.k.a. excuses to return! Twist my arm.

Sette Luna- Tuscan Trattoria in Easton

The first thing to be said about Sette Luna is that it has a fantastic atmosphere. Even their website manages to convey the same degree of comfortable elegance that we found within the restaurant.

I looked up the menu after choosing it off the list of restaurants I had yet to try which I'm gleaning from my interactive map of Lehigh Valley's Favorite Restaurants (click here), compiled from submissions by Lehigh Valley's Twitter community.

Pizze Napoletane
http://www.setteluna.com

Tre Colore Salad
http://www.setteluna.com

Sette Luna is an Italian restaurant, per se, but it is by no means your typical Italian dining. We found it to be much lighter fare, more delicate than many heavy, overly filling Italian meals.

A small bowl of olives, rather than bread, was brought out to begin the meal. The appetizers we sampled from the specials, which seem to be somewhat consistent, included goat-cheese stuffed figs, the Tre Colore Salad (See above with arugula, endive, and another somewhat bitter green I can't recall, dressed in a lemon vinagrette), and the Warm Octopus Salad. All were presented beautifully and served relatively quickly, our only complaint was that the Octopus Salad was a bit fishy.

Next we tried the Pizze Napoletane Gamberetti, a Margherita pizza (sea salt, San Marzano tomatoes, basil, and fresh mozzarella) with sauteed shrimp, pesto, and lemon. Sette Luna's pizza selection is incredibly impressive and comes in a variety of three types:

• Napoletane-style with thin crusts, red sauce, and chunks of mozzarella, tomato, garlic, and basil
• Lune Pizze Al Pomodoro-with sauce and four cheeses
• Bianca-no sauce, also sometimes referred to as a white pizza

Pizze diners are also encouraged to add additional toppings from a list. 

Moral of the story: the crust was thin and perfectly crunchy and the flavors of the Pizze Napoletane Gamberetti were excellent. Despite having to to take the tails off of the roasted shrimp on the pizza, I was more than pleased. 

The cheesecake we split for dessert was also the best cheesecake I've had in years. It's apparently culled from a secret recipe, and comes crustless with a mystery cheese and Limoncello as ingredients.

Speaking of Limoncello, the drink menu at Sette Luna included a wonderful list of mixed drinks, several wines, and a large craft beer selection. I've been told to try a few craft beers I can't yet speak for, but I'll pass the recommendations along: 

• for hoppy: Southern Tier 2x IPA
• Fuller's ESB
• Domaine Due Page
• Sierra Nevada Glissade

The menu begs for several more visits. Other more typically appetizers like Calamari and Caprese are wonderful I'm sure. There are a few dining rooms, and even heat-lamps for outdoor dining in front of the restaurant, which entices me to try sitting in various locations as well. The warm lighting and beautiful rustic yet elegant atmosphere made for a great dinner with friends, we were certainly glad we made the trek to Easton.

Sogo Sushi in Easton

http://www.sogofusion.com/

Five years later and a score of dinners revolving around sushi, during my time at Lehigh I have made several trips to Bethlehem's two local sushi places: 24 East Asian Bistro and The Other Fish.

I decided last week that it was time to explore some of the Lehigh Valley's other sushi options. This decision could not have occurred at a better time.

Last Monday, I finished and published the interactive map that illustrates local Lehigh Valley residents' favorite restaurants (see post here). It was gathered by asking Twitter members for their favorite local restaurants, and from the stats of that post, I gather that list and the accompanying map has been helpful to others.

On evenings like last Friday, it was also a great resource for me. My roommate and I had been craving sushi for days and, using the map, elected to try one person's suggestion of Sogo (click for menu) in Easton.

I got an Eel Roll and the restaurant special: the Infinity Roll, created by wrapping avocado and crab meat with tuna rather than rice, and topped with roe. The presentation was beautiful, including several tasty sauces displayed in decorative rings around the rolls. Excellent.

My roommate also loved her rolls: the Monkey Roll "Shrimp tempura roll topped with avocado, three different kinds of spicy sauce" and the Fancy Spicy Tuna Roll, which is a standard spicy tuna roll with sauces.

The ingredients were fresh, there was improvisation in their presentation and the sauces that made the rolls so "fancy" and special were a nice addition. Not to mention the fact that the ambiance and interior decor of the restaurant is fantastic. It was a very enjoyable trip and it has topped my list for best sushi in the Lehigh Valley. So go!

Your Picks: Best Restaurants in the Lehigh Valley

This map is a compilation of favorite restaurants as identified by various members of the Lehigh Valley, collected on the Twitter network by me, @imanihamilton.
 
If you are interested in adding your favorites to the list, find me on Twitter or comment here-and feel free to add your menu recommendations as well!

P.S. Where people offered specific recommendations, I included this information. More additions welcome.
Also, places without links to their website/menu I found and added in the description.



Too small? View Lehigh Valley's Favorite Restaurants in a larger map, which includes the master list on the side.