Cask Ale Festival a three-day NYC blast

The 4th annual Manhattan Cask Ale Festival is scheduled for Friday-Sunday at the Chelsea Brewing Co., on Pier 59 of the Chelsea Piers in Manhattan.

The event will run from noon to midnight each day. There is no admission fee. But visitors, who must show proof of legal age, can get paid samples selected from a range of about 48 cask ales available in 8- and 16-ounce servings.

The host company, which will have six of its ales available, gives this definition of cask ale:

"Unfiltered, unpasteurized beer brewed only from traditional ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide. Cask Ale is also known as 'Cask-Conditioned Beer', and 'Real Ale.' "

The organizers note that "Beers will be available while stocks last, first come first served. Note that all casks will be tapped and available from the start, except for any that are deemed to need additional settling and conditioning time."

Historic jazz club/brewpub to re-open

SCHENECTADY, NY -- They won't be serving home brew right away, but the new owners of the long-beleaguered Van Dyck restaurant plan an early June re-opening.

The historic restaurant/jazz club, which had been expanded into a microbrewery, now is owned by the McDonald family, which also owns the Stockade Inn and Pinhead Susan's restaurants and the Park Inn bar, all in the city.

The restaurant and performance space will re-open first, with brewing set to begin by late summer. The first floor restaurant/lounge area will seat 100, as will the second floor nightclub.

The late Marvin Friedman opened the restaurant at 235-237 Union Street in the city's historic Stockade section in 1947, combining his two loves -- food and jazz -- with the ambience of the neighborhood's 18th- and 19th-century structures to create a real gem that gained national stature. Some of jazz's top names performed there with regularity.

After his death in 1985, the place kept going, mostly on momentum. Finally, shabby and outdated, it closed in 1994, but bounced back in '97 as a brew pub and music venue.

The McDonalds bought it at auction for $250,000 plus $147,000 in back taxes after owner N. Peter Olsen defaulted on two loans. They then paid $70,000 for the brewing equipment and are in the process of refurbishing the property for an undisclosed amount.

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ON THE WEB
• Historic Stockade
• Say Schenectady.org
• Dowd's Guides

Rome dinner-theater troupe moving

ROME, NY -- The Chatham Theatre Company is going home.

Its current site, Beck's Grove Dinner Theater, will be closing its doors for good in April after a 25-year run.

Once it finishes its current production there, the Chatham troupe will return to The Beeches, where it began a quarter-century ago.

"Irish Folks and Follies," a two-act musical, is the swan song for Beck's Grove, running from March 17-24. Beck's is located at 4286 Oswego Road in Blossvale. Phone: (315) 336-7038.

In an announcement on its Web site, the Chatham Theatre Company said, "After a few months of clearing out our equipment from Beck's Grove and re-installing at The Beeches, we'll be back in business on November 2 with the holiday spectacular 'Christmas Fantasia'." (A scene from a past 'Fantasia' is shown above.)

The Beeches Inn & Conference Center is located on Route 26N in Rome, situated on a 52-acre campus. Phone: (315) 336-1775 or (800) 765-7251.

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ON THE WEB
• The Beeches Inn
• Dowd's Guides

In Troy, music is the food and drink of life

TROY, NY -- Restaurateur/musician Ray Wall (right) has the best of both his worlds.

The founder, with Mary Ann Stafford, of the whimsically named Jose Malone's Mexican Irish Restaurant -- a nice tequileria as well as a very good dining spot -- has just announced the establishment's Live Irish Music Schedule for the St. Patrick's Day season:

• Saturday, March 14: The Broken String Band, 8 p.m.
• Tuesday, March 17: The Broken String Band and Friends, noon to midnight.

Throughout the extended weekend, the band will be joined by guest musicians, including Highland Pipers.

Wall himself, who was a founder of the band, plays the hammered dulcimer, bodhran (Irish drum), Irish whistles, and the uilleann pipes, the Irish form of the bagpipes.

The Broken String Band, formed in the summer of 1974, has performed in concert, at folk festivals, in coffeehouses and schools, and on radio and TV throughout the northeast. The group also was a member of the New York Foundation for the Arts' artists-in-residence program.

Wall and Stafford created Jose Malone's in 2005 as part of the fascinating 400 block of River Street between the Green Island Bridge and Hedley Park Place. It is an eclectic eating and drinking neighborhood that runs the gamut of styles, from the high cuisine of the River Street Cafe to the sandwich delights of the Cafe Deli-icious, with Jose Malone's, Ryan's Wake and Brown's Brewing Co. plus the Revolution Hall performance space in between.

They oversaw the transformation of the former boutique into a tequileria with soaring dining and bar space with terra cotta-colored faux adobe walls and ceiling, dark wood trim, custom tables, and a trio of hacienda-style benches along one wall. The excellent menu offers authentic Mexican cuisine, rather than the Tex-Mex pretenders so many spots serve, as well as several Irish dishes. The bar is a haven of dozens of tequilas.

I dropped in last night for dinner and a flight of tasting-size reposados (aged about six months), priced at $12 for three different tequilas:

• Luna Azul Reposado: A 100% blue agave product, aged in oak. A nice, gentle nose with floral and vanilla notes that keep coming through in the middle range, with a quick, clean finish.

• Herradura Reposado: A mix of roses and gardenias wafts up on the nose, but the taste is more of almonds and spices, with peppery notes.

• Hussong Reposado: Chocolate and orange are the first things to come to mind in this pale amber spirit. Light oaky notes joined by vanilla work together for a rich mix that lingers on the palate.

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ON THE WEB
• Jose Malone's
• Dowd's Guides