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Plum Blossom in Troy: A Feast for the Eyes
You’ll Remember the Experience, But Probably Not the Meal We all have a lot of food memories from the pandemic – taking up baking after binging episodes of the Great British Baking Show, indulging in comfort foods to ease depression, and experimenting in the kitchen to fill those endless hours; my favorite food memory is a spicy mouth-numbing dish of string beans in a Szechuan sauce from Plum Blossom in Troy. It was the pandemic so of course it was take-out and it wasn’t until recently that I dined in-house at Plum Blossom. Located at 685 Hoosick Road, the green-neon-lit stand-alone building is easy to overlook on a busy road…
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Paper Moon Keeps Troy Weird and Well-Read
Local DJ Josh Gruft Opens Subculture and Art Magazine Store and Event Space in Downtown Troy In 2015 when I revealed to my family and friends that I was quitting my PR executive job and going into the used book industry, my news was met with admiration and excitement but behind those smiles was lurking a wee bit of pity too. “Poor girl. Does she not realize people don’t read any more? No one buys books. Bless her heart.” And those concerns were legitimate and valid – the publishing world is constantly in crisis, monthly magazines struggle to stay relevant in a 24/7 new-cycle world, and people can find whatever…
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Chable Yucatan: The luxury resort that rehabilitated a historic hacienda—and rebuilt an ecosystem
Inside a chalk-white, seashell-shaped structure, I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of waves and the rise and fall of a man’s voice intoning a traditional Maya blessing. What he said was a mystery, but mine was not to question; mine was to relax, something the American obsession with productivity, and Northeastern sense of impatience, has made me exceedingly bad at. I’d come to Chablé Yucatán, about 30 minutes outside Mérida in northeastern Mexico, for the ultimate test of my ability to let go. “The new luxury is space, nature, sustainability, and wellness,” Sales Director Oscar Quijano told me of the immersive resort. Chablé Yucatán’s commitment to personal…
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The best Mediterranean restaurant you’ve never heard of is in the basement of an Albany bank
Follow me into the gray corporate depths of the NBT bank in search of Bon Appetit Cafe in Albany. A few weeks ago, I was in the checkout line at Trader Joe’s on Wolf Road in Albany when my stomach growled loudly enough for the cashier to hear it—and chuckle. “Know any good places nearby to eat?” I asked. He pointed across the street to the homely six-story brown brick building that squats over a parking lot on the other side of the street. “Walk over there, into the basement, and go all the way to the back,” the cashier instructed me (ominously? Did I imagine ominously?).…
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Book Review: Maude by Donna Mabry
Maude, a novelized biography of the Donna Mabry’s paternal grandmother, is neither beautifully written or groundbreaking. But it is a memorable page turner about the captivating story of a girl forced into adulthood during a tumultuous period in time – the beginning of the 20th century through to the 60s. It’s not a fine piece of literature because flowing descriptions and self soliloquies are not the language of Maude, who became a wife and mother before turning 15, but what it lacks in style, it makes up for with feeling. Written by her granddaughter Donna, who is featured in the later years of Maude’s life, the story shows the hardship…
