Caprese salad is a simple dish. Yet the mere combination of tomato, basil and mozzarella cheese, dusted with salt and slathered in olive oil, accomplishes so much. Dressed in the colors of the Italian flag, Caprese exemplifies the fresh, ingredient-centric ethos of Italian cuisine. Like a margherita pizza without the crust and heat, Caprese is the perfect way to enjoy the downslope of summer.
It would take me multiple pages to express my love for The Avenue Cafe, a dive bar and music venue on East Michigan Avenue. I can get a 16-ounce beer for $4, test my knowledge of various topics in weekly trivia, enjoy live performances by some of my favorite local bands — often for free — and put all my loose quarters to use at the plethora of pinball machines.
“The first time I tried your dad’s salad,” my friend Terrie recalled, “my eyes popped open, my mouth was burning, and I was like, ‘What the ... ’”
During a recent midweek date night, I took my wife to Ohana Sushi and Bar, a family-owned and operated restaurant off West Saginaw Highway in Lansing.
A tree-ripened peach needs nothing but a place for the juice to drip after you begin to devour it. It’s like no other fruit, with a complex bouquet of flavors that changes from peach to peach, fine-tuned by subtle weather patterns that are different each summer.
“Always drink your best beer,” says my buddy Chad Harder. “That way, you will always be drinking your best beer.” This mantra is as close to religion as he may ever get. Its wisdom is available to all, including non-beer drinkers like myself. But as a wine drinker, I have faced similar calculations when deciding which bottle to drink, and Harder’s algorithm takes all the stress and guesswork out of that ordeal. Don’t overthink it. Drink your best stuff. Always. That’s it.
When summer’s bounty comes at you faster than you can handle, the veggies will start to pile up. That’s why we need recipes capable of incorporating the myriad produce of the garden, farmers market, generous neighbors and other sources of seasonal food.
Delicious, cheap and fast — at Pancho’s Taqueria, you don’t have to pick just two. The brick-and-mortar location on Elmwood Road was my DoorDash standby during the pandemic, and, now that the world has reopened, we’ve continued to see each other in person.
Good nutrition throughout a person’s lifespan helps prevent chronic disease, and it’s never too late to make improvements to support healthy aging.
I’ve often heard Coral Gables being written off as dated and reserved for the over-60 set by my peers. It’s a great restaurant option for seniors, winning a Top of the Town award in that category every year since the category was created, but I’m of the opinion that it’s seriously underrated as an option for diners of all ages.
Many of my favorite recipes come from the kitchens of farmer friends. There’s a pleasing elegance to farm cookery. It’s a cuisine forged by the circumstances of a land-based …
Greetings, earthlings! Area 52, a new sci-fi-themed diner, landed in Owosso last month, and it’s serving up out-of-this-world dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The restaurant …
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