Italian fare cooked in wood-fired ovens is the focus at Fortina (17 Maple Ave, Armonk 914-273-0900; fortinapizza.com), a 130-seat restaurant with Chopped winner Christian Petroni in the kitchen. The imaginative pizza menu ($11-$21) includes such pies as fiorella (squash blossom, burrata, anchovy); Italian cheesesteak (onion confit, provolone, mozzarella, bresaola); funghi (roasted mushrooms, talleggio, bone marrow); and chicken polpette (chicken liver and heart, provolone, cippolini, tomato). A prime dry-aged rib-eye Fiorentina-style and wood-fired paccheri pasta with baby veal meatballs in a béchamel sauce are other dishes to try. Fortina serves lunch Monday to Friday, dinner every day, and brunch on Sunday. Petroni is a co-owner at Cooked & Co. in Scarsdale
The owners of Casa Rina in Thornwood and The Goldfish Oyster Bar in Ossining have opened The Stone Manor @ 101 (101 Saw Mill River Rd, Hawthorne 914-703-4112; thestonemanor101.com) in the space that once housed Tino’s Villa Italian Steak House. On the menu at the 120-seat Mediterranean steakhouse: a 22-oz rib-eye, 14-oz twin veal chops, a 20-oz prime rib, grilled swordfish, maple-glazed wild salmon, and a short-rib burger. All cuts are Black Angus Certified and come with a choice of five sauces. Lunch is served Monday to Friday and dinner every day
Certified Sake Sommelier Chizuko Niikawa-Helton will be pouring Hakkaisan Junmai Ginjo, unpasteurized sunflower yeast Amabuki, and a Nanbu Bijin plum sake at Castle Hotel & Spa’s (400 Benedict Ave, Tarrytown 914-631-3646; castlehotelandspa.com) Poolside Grotto Sake Party Thursday, August 15, from 7 to 9 pm. Chef Marc Lippman’s menu of fried oysters with sriracha and oshinko, Peking duck spring rolls, and soft-shell crab sliders with ginger aioli complement the sake and assorted sake cocktails. Reservations are required and the cost is $68
Tarrytown resident Debra Holstein launched The 4:00 Cookie (4oclockcookie.com) this past March to provide a sweet yet relatively healthy alternative to combat the afternoon sugar craving. “Something diabolic happens around 3 or 4 pm and many people, but especially women, crave something sweet.” Holstein says the treats people typically turn to are made with white sugar—the consumption of which often results in a sugar-rush crash-and-burn. The 4oclockcookie, produced in a Mamaroneck commercial kitchen, instead uses low-glycemic coconut flour sugar plus whole-wheat flour, oats, flax, and dried fruits and nuts ($2.50-$3 per cookie). Among the six flavors: cherry, dark chocolate, and hazelnut; fig, dark chocolate, and coconut; wild blueberry almond; cranberry trail mix; chocolate cherry; and chocolate macadamia crunch. Visit the website for the 16 Westchester locations that sell the cookies // The Wine Cellar of Rye Brook (Rye Ridge Shopping Center, 122 S Ridge St, Rye Brook no phone as of press time) will open by end of summer; approximately 70 percent of the boutique wine shop’s bottles are from established vineyards while the remaining 30 percent originate from low-yielding, small-batch, and lesser-known producers
The first Tim Hortons (timhortons.com), a Canadian-based coffee-and-donut chain with more than 3,000 locations in Canada and 600 in the US, is scheduled to open in the White Plains Metro-North station.
