Kombucha is a cultured sweet tea that is fermented using a SCOBY: a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. The lightly effervescent beverage has been around for centuries, with people drinking it for both medicinal and recreational purposes. Matthew Keefe, head chef at The Red Fern vegan restaurant, 283 Oxford Street, has been making the …

It’s easy to imagine yourself dining among ghosts in Richardson’s Canal House, a Tolkien-esque nineteenth-century inn at Bushnell’s Basin. Here, a microcosm of Rochester’s richly layered history of expansion, decline, and rebirth is served with a side of creamed spinach and bordelaise. As you sip a fine Finger Lakes wine and slice off dainty bites …

The Gershwins. Rodgers and Hammerstein. Kander and Ebb. These are just a few of the famous partnerships that made their mark on American musical theater. Well, move over George and Ira, because there is another team ready to see their names on The Great White Way.   Lindsay Warren Baker and Amanda Jacobs are two …

In the past, if anyone had ever said that I’d be at yoga four times a week, I would have said he or she was sniffing too much essential oil and incense smoke. The thought of going to a class with the impossibly fit and coiffed instructors one sees in magazines or on Instagram used …

For Zack Mikida, it was love at first sight, or rather, first visit. Now twenty-eight, he made his inaugural voyage to Mexico several years ago and fell hard for the country’s hospitality and its people. Originally from Buffalo, Mikida has been behind the stick as the bar manager of popular restaurant and cocktail bar The …

The southeast shore of Seneca Lake is known as the “banana belt” because the afternoon sun lingers through the summer on its high, steep, shaley, west-facing slopes, making the region unusually warm. Vinifera grape varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot do well here. Some, like Syrah, grow in very few other places in the Finger …