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When a neighbor described the recently opened LILO Pizza & Bistro in the Tappan Plaza as a little piece of Manhattan, my interest was piqued. I mean, let’s face it, shoehorned in between a dusty train store and the fabulously tacky V&S Variety, the glam factor is zero. And when I learned that this is where owner Rick Pellegrino (former owner of Babbo Pizza in Piermont) “wants to make pizza sexy again,” I knew I had to go.

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Saturday night at the newly opened Oak Tree Inn. It’s just after 6:30pm and the end of Happy Hour. Carpenters are putting the finishing touches on a roof over a portion of a back deck that’s sure to be a popular spot as the weather warms. Inside, a lively crowd in the bar seems to be ignoring the men’s semi-final basketball game blaring from three large TV screens.

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EVERY Saturday extended thru June 27, 2009!
Rain or Shine!
9:00am-1:00pm
Palisades Community Center
675 Oak Tree Road, Palisades

Special Events
May 9- Mother's Day Plant Sale featuring heirloom plants from Bumps & Co.
June 13- Annual Flea & Collectible Sale

Come on, admit it, if you haven’t already checked it out, you know you’re curious about Tappan’s latest addition, the Duke Ocean Grill. Owned by Alvin Park of Manhattan’s Cafe Duke, this mega restaurant has swallowed up the former site of the Food World supermarket and is Rockland’s most ambitious eatery to date.

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The 85-foot Dutch ship Half Moon sailed up the Hudson River nearly to Albany in September 1609 in search of a northwest passage to Asia. This year New York State celebrates that voyage as well as Champlain’s 1609 discovery of the lake named after him and Fulton’s initial 1807 steamboat journey on the Hudson.

The first Pots & Pans in Palisades cookbook filled with recipes from Palisades residents was in the 1960's. Alice Gerard and Mary Tiegreen produced this 2008 edition filled with over 150 recipes.

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Piermont is sporting a hot new restaurant. The Sidewalk Bistro, which opened May 29th in the spot where the Sidewalk Café had previously been, specializes in French bistro fare. Alsace-born chef and co-owner Alain Eigenmann who for seven years was executive chef at Provence in Manhattan describes the restaurant as more brasserie than bistro with simple but elegant food. Alain has partnered with Daout Celestin; for the past eighteen years he has been maitre d’ at nearby Xaviars. Close friends, they originally met while working at Raoul’s in Nyack twenty-two years ago.

Almost 40 years after the last editon of our community cookbook, we are happy to announce the all-new Pots & Pans in Palisades!

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Believe it or not, after nearly a year of work, collecting recipes, editing and proofreading, laying out pages, gathering photographs, and finding illustrations the cookbook is finally done!

Held every Thursday, rain or shine, 8:00am-2:00pm in the municipal parking lot on Main Street in front of Riverspace, through November.

October 2: Story Hour 10:00 am
October 9: Music Together with Catherine Rubin 10:00 am
October 16: Bossy Frog Band 11:00am
October 23 & 30: Story Hour 10:00am

The last Market Day will be Wednesday, November 26, the annual day before Thanksgiving Market Day.

Opening day is Thursday, May 15, 8:00am-2:00pm in the municipal parking lot on Main Street in front of Riverspace and it will continue every Thursday, rain or shine, through November.
Children’s Hour 10:00 a.m.
Opening day- Children’s Hour at 10:00 a.m. and Bossy Frog Band at 11:00am.

Joe Printz decided to learn all he could about wine when he opened his first restaurant in Washington D.C. in 1985. In 1994 he moved to Andre Hill in Tappan with wife Pam - the family now includes seven-year-old daughter Emma and dog Dijon - and in 2002, now fortified with a sound knowledge of wine, opened The Grape D'Vine at 99 Main Street in the heart of Tappan.

Mimi's Plate

Mimi Platas’ warm smile and easy manner are enough to draw you into her tiny take-out shop in Tappan, but the food will bring you back again and again. Opened just 7 months ago, Mimi’s Plate is the outgrowth of Platas’ 25 years in the food business; 18 spent honing her catering skills at the toney East Hampton cookshop, Loaves & Fishes, the rest either managing health food stores, or creating the food for Northvale’s Organica when it expanded it’s kitchen in 2003. Platas wanted a place of her own, however, and having grown up in nearby Closter, she was drawn to historic Tappan’s 18th century scale and small town vibe. She admits she’d been eyeing her present space (the former location of The Baker’s Wife) for about 5 years, and when it became available, jumped at the chance to give it a go.

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The first edition of the cookbook "Pots and Pans in Palisades" was published in the early 1960s. Now Mary Tiegreen and Alice Gerard have come up with the idea of publishing another “Pots and Pans in Palisades.” Again, it will contain Palisadians’ favorite recipes and hopefully some illustrations contributed by them. This time the proceeds of the publication will go to the Palisades Community Center, which needs all the help we can give it. Wonderful recipes for the new Palisades cookbook have begun arriving at the desks of the two editors, Mary Tiegreen and Alice Gerard. But we still need more. Therefore the deadline for the submission of recipes has been extended indefinitely.

Anyone appreciative of delicious food and elegant surroundings probably knows of Peter Kelly; creator of three of New York State’s finest restaurants: Piermont’s Xaviar’s, and Freelance Café and Wine Bar, as well as restaurant X and Bully Boy Bar in Congers, where brother James Kelly is executive chef. (A fourth restaurant, X2O, opened across the river in Yonkers this July, and promises to be as successful as its predecessors.) Patrons of Freelance will know another Kelly brother, master host Ned, and have perhaps browsed the beautiful wares in his Piermont shop Ned Kelly and Co. One could wax rhapsodic on the taste, attention to detail, and sheer chutzpah it takes to make these ventures succeed, but what’s truly extraordinary is how much the Kellys give back to their small community—not just in the charitable sense, but also in the welcoming ease with which they run their restaurants. The service is friendly, the ambience relaxed, and the food—well, the food is consistently fantastic.

The Nyack Farmers’ Market Begins Its Eleventh Season

Thursday, May 17, 8:00 AM-2:00 PM

Spring rain, warm breezes and sunshine, bring about the beginning of our area’s growing season. On Thursday, May 17, the Nyack Farmers’ Market will open its eleventh season in its NEW location in the Municipal Parking lot on Main Street between the Riverspace Arts Center and M&T Bank. Also, the new hours will be 8:00 AM-2:00 PM.

The Simple Home: The Luxury of Enough

by Sarah Nettleton and Frank Martin

published by The Taunton Press and A.I.A

Palisades-based caterer Simon Gerard sent us this advice about brining your turkey for a perfect holiday meal.

Asparagus used to be a springtime treat — now you can get it all year round but this is still a nice recipe for this time of year.

Thanks to community support, the Nyack Farmers’ Market is pleased to begin its tenth season. On Thursday, May 18 beginning at 8:30AM the Market will open in its NEW location in the municipal parking lot on Main Street. Opening day festivities will include a Story/Craft hour at 10:00AM followed by The Bossy Frog Band performing at 11:00AM.

The excellent Village Grille restaurant in Tappan has been reviewed by the New York Times in May 2003 and again by the Journal News in March 2004 as well as by Zagat Survey.