Chris Felber

Public Market

by Frances Cabrera
280 North Union Street, Rochester

Tuesdays and Thursdays 6:00 a.m. — 1:00 p.m.
Saturdays 5:00 a.m. — 3:00 p.m.
Sunday 8:00 a.m. — 2:00 p.m.

Deep in the heart of downtown, a little piece of rural goodness can be found at the local farmer’s market known as the Public Market, a nearly 200 year-old Rochester tradition. Here you can find fresh fruits, vegetables, plants, and flowers delivered and sold directly by the farmers who grew them. Always a mess, always crowded, always smelling of ripe produce, the Public Market is simply a concrete slab lined with merchants’ tables all under a roof with no walls. But this nofrills atmosphere is where you’ll find the freshest produce at the cheapest prices. For a dollar, you are pretty much guaranteed to buy yourself a large serving of your favorites like apples, grapes, snap peas, squash, tomatoes, etc.

On Sundays, the flea market tables come out. If you’re really interested in getting to know Rochester’s unique character, you must stop by the Public Market on a Sunday. Linger at the tables cluttered with lamps, silverware, matchbooks, appliances, and stuff you can’t even recognize and talk to the elderly Rochester natives selling odd relics from their childhoods. Since Rochester — thanks to Kodak — has been a photo town, the flea market sellers always have old 1950s photo equipment and Brownie cameras.

And that’s not all. Pastry shops, a meat market, polish sausage and empanada stands, and more all line the marketplace. My recommendations for a Saturday early afternoon outing: Stop at Java’s for a coffee, go to the Rich Port Bakery next door for a Puerto Rican pastry, then enter the hall of fruit and vegetable tables. After ambling along and spending a little money, have lunch at the Empanada Stop on the other end of the market. Be sure to try the green sauce.

Dinosaur Bar-B-Que

by Casey Dehlinger
99 Court Street, Rochester

This biker-laden haven of all things that stick between the teeth of carnivores is an appreciated twist on the meat-obsessed calorie stuffing “American” restaurant icon. Throw in some blues and eccentric wall dressings, such as ratty boar heads (Fake? Real?) and you’ve got Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.

The wait to get in on a weekend can tax your nerves, but on a night like Thursday you’ l l only f ind your sel f tapping your feet and drumming your fingers for forty minutes or so. Br ing your favorite nonvegan conversational friend and time’ll fly like a Pterodactyl.

If you’ve ever eaten ribs at a place that boasted the “world’s greatest ribs,” you’ve tasted every restaurant’s “world’s greatest ribs.” They come on a plate you can barely wrap your arms around and the rack is so mammoth you feel like you could surf it through a tidal wave of barbeque sauce.

Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, fortunately, offers a vast variety of sauces to customize your behemoth of a meal. If Satan has a cameo on the label, you know what to expect. However, the eccentric sauce that goes by the name of Wango Tango is worth a try. Don’t let its mention of habanero peppers scare you off. Yes, habanero usually refers to the peppers that can melt the tar off your driveway — or a Canadian band — but the Wango Tango sauce is actually quite sweet, with an easily extinguishable spice. I’d go so far as to call it the boysenberry sauce of barbeque.

The Dino should probably be considered more of an attraction than a haunt. Sure, you can pick up a sandwich for barely less than ten bucks, but get something serious and you could be dishing out twenty dollars. But at a rough estimate of a calorie per penny, you’ll leave full.

Jine’s

by Casey Dehlinger
658 Park Avenue, Rochester

Throw a dart (or jart, for the more outdoorsy) along Park Avenue and if you don’t puncture or impale a pedestrian, it will probably land on a pretty decent oh-I’m-so-hip dining establishment cramped with small booths and a dozen or so outdoor tables under the majesty of the famed Rochester clouds. I may be awful at darts, but I stumbled across a little place called Jine’s that may just be worth the parking space scavenger hunt.

The food is great, but the place looks modest enough not to make you feel like the snob you may very well be if you enjoy fine dining. It’s a sort of ritzy chicken-and-pastaand- wine sort of place, so I ordered the Jine’s chicken and pasta. It’s a boneless chicken breast sautéed with sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms, artichoke hearts — and all sorts of other fancy culinary things — served over pasta with a white wine pesto sauce. $11.95 for a heap. To my ears and stomach, that sounds like ‘buy one dinner, get tomorrow’s lunch free.’ I fought hard to put a dent in my plate and just found my eyes rolling back into my head, fearful that I had loaded myself up to the trachea with the flavorful chicken and ziti noodles of this classy entrée. But if Jine’s is too crowded or on fire or incapacitated in any way, the wickedly cheap Sinbad’s is within dart-throwing distance. The great thing about Park Avenue is that if Jine’s doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, you can find over a dozen variations of delicacy and décor within a couple blocks.

California Rollin’

by Frances Cabrera
274 N. Goodman Street at The Village Gate
1000 N. River Street at The Ferry Terminal

Definitely the best place for sushi in Rochester, probably one of the best places for sushi on the East Coast, California Rollin’ is just that good. With a large selection of nigiri, maki, and tempura rolls, no fish is left out of the mix. And its eel is just divine melt-inyour mouth goodness. In addition, the roll sizes here are larger than most of the rolls at other sushi joints in the area.

The restaurant offers special weekly rolls. These rolls are the extravagant rolls one would expect to find in a high-end sushi restaurant of a large city. They usually contain ingredients like raspberry sauce. California Rollin’ also offers daily specials ranging from dollar nigiri rolls on Monday to sake night on Thursday. However, the special that really brings the crowds in is the All-You-Can-Eat-Sushi night on Wednesday. For $20, you can get round after round of a variety of sushi, chef’s choice. The catch is that you must finish one round before going on to the next.

While two locations are available, the location most popular with the RIT crowd is the Village Gate location in the city. The feel is trendy with dim lights, distressed blue booths, and a large freshwater tank in the middle of the room filled with bright, ugly fish peering at you as you eat their brethren. If you sit at the bar, though, you don’t have to look at them. No reason to feel guilty over something so delicious.

Aladdin’s Natural Eatery

by Frances Cabrera
641 Monroe Avenue, Rochester
8 Schoen Place, Pittsford

Simply known as Aladdin’s, this restaurant specializing in Mediterranean cuisine is known for its super fresh ingredients and reasonable prices.

While the city location is closer to campus, I’d recommend venturing to Pittsford on a sunny day and eating on the restaurant’s outside deck along the Erie Canal. Fresh food and fresh air are what every dormridden, Gracie’s-eating college kid needs from time to time.

As for what to order, the pitas are delicious, and they are all under four dollars! My favorite is the gyro pita. The gyro meat is tender and softly-spiced, and there’s always a lot of it. Other pitas that are offered are chicken, meat kebab, dolmades (grape leaves), and eggplant.

If you’re more in the mood for a dinner entrée, Aladdin’s serves traditional plates for $7.25. The moussaka is a great choice, and so is the spanikopita.

Aladdin’s menu also caters to vegetarians. It serves a variety of salads topped with ingredients such as marinated eggplant, goat cheese, and falafel patties, and is dressed with tahini-yogurt or pine nut dressings. The soups are also worth mentioning, ranging from the classic vegetable soups to the exotic cold soups like tzatziki (yogurt, garlic, cucumbers, and mint) and gazpacho (tomatoes, cilantro, cucumbers, and green peppers). And before you order anything else, be sure to get a plate of humos (hummus) served with warm pita pieces for the table.

Aladdin’s is a departure from the greasy food world and instead is a world filled with dancing chickpeas and eggplants. Opa!