Commerce & Entrepreneurship

Long Island restaurants grapple with ingredient shortages and price spikes Newsday

When Hurricane Ida devastated Louisiana in late August, Mara and David Levi of Mara’s Homemade couldn’t get gator sausage, Gulf oysters and a few Cajun-food items for their Syosset restaurant — but it was almost a minor nuisance compared to the web of shortages they’ve grappled with over the last year.

Italian restaurant Orto pivots to creative takeout menu Newsday

Mondays are chef Eric Lomando’s day off. So when dine-in service was suspended at restaurants to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus — the decision handed down March 16 — Lomando was not working inside his Miller Place restaurant, Orto. Nevertheless, the gears were turning.

The spirits that move them: A new wave of artisans is distilling Vermont’s landscape Seven Days

The invisible but pungent vapors that swirl through the Caledonia Spirits & Winery distillery in Hardwick are most intense in the loft, where clear alcohol spins through a glass coil and drips into a jar.

Black Market Maple: As its value rises, maple syrup is becoming a black-market commodity Seven Days

It’s dinnertime inside a Québec restaurant about a half hour north of the Vermont border. A waitress asks her customers if they’ve hit any sugar shacks earlier in the day.

Slow meat: Will dry-cured meats be the next great Vermont food wave? Seven Days, 2012

The warren of shiny, steel-gray rooms in the Mad River Food Hub doesn’t look like the center of a revolution. Architectural plans are taped to the walls, the rooms are bare, and fluorescent lights dangle from the ceiling at odd angles.

The little brand that could: Vermont’s food cachet is coming of age Seven Days, 2012 

Wrapped in waxy, white paper, a round of Lillé Coulommiers from Vermont Farmstead Cheese Company sort of resembles a doorstop. Peel back the paper and slice into the tangy rind, though, and it’s clear why the stuff comes in such large wheels.

Unnatural selection: A Vermont bill seeks to label genetically modified foods Seven Days

The label on your corn oil or cereal or tortilla chips reads “pure, 100 percent natural” or “all natural” — but what does that mean? According to federal rules, not much.

New wine country: Insieme Wines opens far from the East End Newsday

It is the first Monday of the new year, and the afternoon is growing blustery and arctic. Inside a former CrossFit studio far from the East End, winemaker Massimo DeVellis pours some tempranillo into a glass and slides it across the tasting bar.

Invisible web: Provisions International brings the world to the Green Mountains Seven Days

Sometimes the streets of White River Junction can seem forgotten in time. The town is far quieter than it was a century ago, when dozens of trains rumbled through every day carrying people and goods across New England.

Turning seconds into firsts: Putney’s Gleanery turns surplus food into first-rate meals Seven Days

It’s just after 3:00 on a Thursday afternoon, and inside the Gleanery’s sunny kitchen, Ismail Samad scoops out the warm insides of roasted potatoes and tosses them in a silver bowl. As he does so, what look like tiny pebbles fall from the skins.

All about location? The changing culinary fortunes of Burlington’s 156 St. Paul Street Seven Days

The turn-of-the-century bricklayers who erected Burlington’s 156 St. Paul Street probably didn’t foresee the draw of pan-seared halibut or Neapolitan pizza. Yet, since it went up in 1899….