Crystal Lake Cafe - Americana Vineyards

On the way down to Ithaca to speak at Cornell's Vet school, my fiance and I stopped at Americana Winery to do some quick wine tasting and we sat down for a quick snack at their cafe, which turned into quite the meal!  The place was empty, although it was also 3:30 in the afternoon on Thursday, which isn't a happening time for any restaurant, anywhere, so we won't hold that against them.  It's a very quaint little cafe with simple white 1950s diner tables and chairs, and sunny with pots and pots of beautiful green plants and herbs in the windows.

We started with a special - steamed mussels in Americana's Pinot Gris wine with onions, tomatoes and herbs.  We didn't know that it also came with garlic bread, but oh, we were glad it did.  The mussels were tender and fresh, wonderfully flavorful from the wonderful broth, that I could have put into a mug and just sipped for an hour.  The broth was light and buttery, but rich and smooth with the crispness of the wine and the earthiness of the tomatoes creating a roundness and fullness in your mouth.  The garlic bread was crisp italian bread wonderfully toasted without being overly browned, and doused in a garlic and herb flavor - enough butter that make it super yummy and sinful, but not dripping with butter.  The bread was wonderful dipped in the broth.

From there we moved on to an appetizer of flatbread with goat cheese, roasted red peppers and asparagus.  Now, this bread wasn't what I was imaging.  I was picturing something thin and crispy, almost like a pita or tortilla, but this was more was foccacia bread - thinner, but about an inch thick and a soft dough texture.  The goat cheese was soft and creamy without that overwhelming goat cheese tang which many don't like - so don't let this component of the meal intimidate you if you aren't a "goat cheese person."  I also believe that the goat cheese was from a local goat farm.  The asparagus was tender and wonderfully grilled with those flavorful grill marks.  Now the part I wasn't a huge fan of was the roasted red peppers - and this isn't a comment on the peppers or the dish, simply a comment on the fact that I simply don't like red peppers in really any form.  This dish has really inspired me to go out and buy some good goat cheese and do something yummy with it!

Our third entree was the roasted vegetable quesedilla with  black bean mash.  This was fiance's choice, and if you knew him, you'd know just how good it must have sounded to get a meat lover such as him to be excited about a vegetarian dish.  It says even more about the dish that we both LOVED it.  The quesedilla was filled with lightly roasted sweet potato, spinach and zucchinni and lightly mashed black beans.  It was all held together with a bit of cheddar cheese.  Now, I loved how lightly they used the cheese.  The cheddar didn't overpower or coat the vegetables, but was just a light glue.  This also came to a lovely fresh salsa.  This wasn't your traditional salsa, but more of a pico de gallo, but very finely chopped, so that it had a softer consistency and was not chunky.  The other thing I was very impressed with was how the salsa wasn't wet.  It was almost like the tomatoes had been squeezed of all their excess fluid before being diced.  I'd love to know their secret.

The desserts looked great, but to be honest, we were so stuffed from lunch that we weren't ready for dessert before we left.  Instead, we picked up some fudge from the winery to eat later.  We got 2 types - a chocolate/red wine and a chocolate/raspberry.  We've only tried the chocolate wine, but it certainly is sweet and melt in your mouth succulent.  If you don't like sweet wine or grape juice, this is not the fudge for you.  It does remind me of eating chocolate and grapes together - although the grape flavor is intense.  I'm not a huge fan of a semisweet red wine, but the flavor does bring back childhood memories of manischewitz wine.

I can't wait to go back!  Bring on the wine and fantastic food - my favorite combination.