Eating out during our visit to the Finger Lakes was an extremely frustrating experience. August goes to bed around 7, 8 at the latest, so dinner out wasn't really an option (I also feel weird about taking him to a nice place for dinner). I had picked out a few restaurants, most of them at wineries, but found out that during the off season most of them don't serve lunch, and many of them aren't open early in the week, which was when we were there. Most of the time I found this out in advance, but we had one very frustrating day where we showed up and the place was closed, so we ended up at Denny's.

I did have a few good meals, even if it wasn't fine dining.

Market Street in Corning was destroyed by flooding a couple decades back and was rebuilt as a nice, pedestrian-friendly shopping district. I can't help but feel it caters mainly to those who work for the glass company Corning, which has offices nearby; it almost felt like it was part of a Corning "campus," especially since most of the shops were closed on Sunday and it was really a ghost town. But we managed to find a good pizza place that was open and seemed to attract lots of locals. We also went to Old World Cafe for lunch one day and topped off the meal with some Purity ice cream, which is a "crunchy" (in a Moosewood sort of way) Ithaca brand. I tried the pumpkin, which seemed a little crumbly, but Todd's over-the-top combo of all sorts of nuts and caramel and fudge was creamy and good (I think pumpkin ice cream just tends to be a little bit crumbly, I guess because a lot of the cream is replaced with the squash).

In Skaneateles (which is the place to stay if you like upper-scale touristy little lakefront villages) we had a memorable meal at Doug's Fish Fry, where they get fish from Boston 5 times a week and have placards on their posted menu that say when the different seafood came in. Also fantastic soft-serve custard, which we ate in a fresh peach sundae. I gave August a little bit of the creamy, mild fish, which he didn't seem to mind. It has a fantastic thick crust that almost seems to seal the fish in and steam it.

In Rochester we tracked down the original Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, and though I haven't been to the NY one I am sure they haven't been able to reproduce the "genuine honkey-tonk" vibe of the place. First, it's in Rochester, which overall seems to be an armpit of a city (we could've missed the beautiful areas of the city, but if so they're hiding them pretty well). It's right next to a river, which it has views of, but it's a skanky looking, spider infested river. One of the waitresses came over to coo at August and said, "Are you flirting with the hot Dino girls?" So I had to have a beer and some ribs, which were really good, with decent coleslaw and dirty corn. Todd had a gumbo side that was fantastic, rich and gumbo-ey. It made me wonder what that gumbo flavor is. Is it a dark roux? What is file? Is that in there? Because a couple days later he had gumbo at Doug's that was basically minestrone with shrimp and okra. I wasn't impressed by Todd's brisket and pulled pork, but I gather from the menu that the chicken's the thing there. Key lime pie was good, but sweet potato was teeth-achingly sweet.