Far above Lake Cayuga’s waters, the Ithaca Farmer’s Market is a weekend bonanza for anyone who likes to graze or simply to look at fresh fruits and vegetables straight from farms around the Finger Lakes and beyond. It’s seasonal, of course, but year-around Ithaca has dining gems worth a visit. Since it began in the early 1970s, the Moosewood Collective has become a lodestar for vegetarians who treasure its fourteen cookbooks; and its restaurant, opened in 1973, has a full menu of meatless eats for lunch and supper. Beef eaters wept when the estimable John Thomas steakhouse closed in 2020, but there is a red-meat alternative at a different level: Glenwood Pines, which still is making its famous Pinesburger, outfitted with cheese, lettuce, tomato, and 1000 Islands dressing on Ithaca Bakery French bread. Speaking of French Bread, Ithaca may be inspiration for the French bread pizza. The concept took shape in 1960 at a food truck named Hot Truck, and it just so happens that the man who later went on to create “French Bread Pizza” at Stouffer’s was a Cornell student at the time. Hot Truck is no more, but its legendary sandwiches are sold round the clock at Shortstop Deli.
EVEN CORNELL STUDENTS with scant aptitude for languages quickly become fluent in the idiom of hot truck. Spoken mostly late at night, it is a short-order patois used to...
Is there another dish as diverse as pizza? It can be an utterly simple tomato pie – nothing but sauce on crust – or it can be a multi-meat...
