Passport – A Craft Beer & Culinary World Tour

I heard about this for the first time on Facebook…don’t know why I’ve not heard of it last year, as we are members of Strawbery Banke Museum.  Don’t know why this was never announced in the member newsletter.  But that’s okay, we know about it now, tickets have been bought.

Passport is an event that will be held on the grounds of Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth, NH, on September 25.  It will feature fine craft beers from New Hampshire and other parts of New England, paired with foods from some of Portsmouth’s best restaurants.  Please watch the video below to get an idea of what to expect.

If you can’t see the video here, try going to the Passport website and see it there.  Seeing this video definitely makes me all the more excited to go.  It’s clearly not a mob scene, as those Phantom Gourmet Food Festivals are, and you get more than a little teeny-tiny cup sized portion, also a hallmark of the Phantom Gourmet festivals!  The grounds of Strawbery Banke are gorgeous, and the weather should be lovely at the end of September.  It’s certainly a lot more fun than attending an SEM Chicago event, and certainly nicer than that Phantom Gourmet crap!

We decided to splurge and get the VIP tickets, which include a special reception with the brewmasters, and tastings of beer and food not included in the regular event.  And a VIP goodie bag, too!  VIP tickets are $85 per person and are very limited.  If you don’t want to spend that much, general admission tickets, to the regular event only, are $45 until August 15; after that they’ll be $60.

The VIP reception goes from 4-5PM, the regular event runs from 5-9PM.  All proceeds go to benefit Strawbery Banke and New Hampshire Public Television; both excellent causes and well worth supporting.  For more information and to buy tickets, go HERE.

Cheers!

Yarmouth Clam Festival

Looking for something cool to do this weekend?  Why not take a trip up to Yarmouth, Maine, and enjoy the annual Yarmouth Clam Festival.  This takes place from Friday, July 16 through Sunday, July 18.  In addition to great food, there will also be live music, arts & craft shows, horse & wagon rides, trolley tours, and much more.  See the website for details.

And of course, there is the traditional Clam Festival parade on Friday night.  This event is so popular that people are already setting up their lawn chairs to reserve the best place to sit.

Admission to the Festival is free, and proceeds from parking and your purchases at various booths will go to support local community stuff.

So don’t spend another boring weekend at the computer, researching stuff like treatment for adult acne and the like. We’re supposed to get a halfway decent weekend, so come on out and have fun!

Jerry Remy’s Sports Bar & Grill

This restaurant opened to great hype – if you live in New England and have never heard of Jerry Remy’s, you must be living under a rock or something.  Or at least spending all of your internet time reading and/or writing diet pill reviews.

Located on Boylston Street near Fenway Park, this restaurant is indeed owned by legendary Red Sox TV announcer Jerry Remy.  And on days when the Sox aren’t playing, you just may see him in the restaurant.

We had been wanting to try this place, but wanted to wait until all of the opening hype had died down a bit.  Even so, we knew it would be busy and crowded whenever a Red Sox game is going on.

Then I heard that Jerry would be hosting his annual All-Star Party at his restaurant, in past years, it has been held inside Fenway Park.  We decided to go, as this would give us a good way to check the place out for the first time, without having to wait a zillion years for a table or seats at the bar.

This is a really nice place.  The focal point of it are the “Screen Monsters”, two ginormous TVs that hang over the bar.  One of these TVs alone is bigger than our bed, that’s how big they are.  There are also smaller TVs all around the place, so that no matter where you sit, you will be able to see the game.  They even have TVs in the restrooms so you won’t miss a play – the ladies room has three TVs in it.

Since our ticket for the event included a buffet, we did not look at or order off the regular menu.  But if the offerings on the buffet are anything like the regular menu food, you’re in for a treat, it was excellent.  Note:  they do NOT have a buffet all the time, this was just for this special event.  Buffet offerings included pulled pork sliders, beef sliders, St. Louis style ribs, assorted styles of wings, assorted quesadillas, a tuna platter (with FRESH tuna cooked rare, not the canned stuff), and assorted vegetables and salads.

If you enjoy good beer, this is a great place, as they have many fine selections in bottles and on tap.  Most of the craft brews on tap are from local breweries, but they have some from other places, as well.

Jerry has an interesting marketing plan that I’ve never seen before.  For $500, you can purchase a “season pass”, to either all Red Sox home games, or all away games.  The home game plan is currently sold out for this year.  The season pass not only bumps you to the front of a line and guarantees you a table with no waiting, but also comes with a $25 food credit and a free beer, ON EACH VISIT.  A lot of people  dissed this idea, saying it was a rip-off.  But think about it – if you have Red Sox season tickets and come to all the games, and eat at Remy’s before the games, that’s a lot of free beers and twenty-five dollarses!  It will pay for itself after just 25 visits!  They also have other packages for other Boston sports.

You do not have to sign up for this to eat at the restaurant, of course.  And it’s really only worth it if you are a die-hard who goes to Fenway a lot.  So it’s not something I would sign up for.  But the fact that many people have, prove that the idea is a success.

We liked the place and will definitely be back.

Save with HHonors Points!

It does pay to be loyal to one chain or another.  Mike and I often stay at the Hilton Garden Inn in Manchester, NH, because we go to a lot of Fisher Cats games.  And we’ll likely be staying there a LOT more next year, because we are getting season tickets.

So I decided to sign up for the HHonors Rewards Program.  Why not, we stay at this place enough, why not earn some points to use for free future stays?

It’s a cool program, you can also choose to earn airline miles, as well as room stay points.  Or, if you are like me and don’t fly, you can earn HHonors Points and HHonors Points, earning 150% points in lieu of airline miles.  Not too shabby.

A cool thing they do is offer Point-Stretcher periods…these are only in selected hotels at selected times, but if it happens to be where and when you want to travel, you can make out very well.  You can get a free room for 40% less points than normal.  This worked out very well for us – we are planning to go to Manchester, NH in November for the New Hampshire Brewers Festival.  Naturally, we have to stay at a hotel nearby, as we don’t want to be driving all the way home drunk!  Rather than staying at the Radisson, where the beer fest is taking place, I checked and saw  that the weekend of the beer fest was a Point-Stretcher period at the Hilton Garden Inn.  So I booked with them…the room will be free, and they also have a free shuttle van that will take us to the Radisson and back, we stayed there for last year’s fest and used it.  Even so, it’s still a reasonable walk.

The points can be earned and spent at the entire Hilton Family of hotels.  When we visited Mystic Seaport, and I had a choice of hotels, I chose the Hampton Inn in Mystic, because I could earn some HHonors points for staying there.  Sadly, they are not a Point-Stretcher hotel, but the Hampton Inn in Sturbridge is.  And they have Point-Stretcher periods every weekend in December, right when Old Sturbridge Village has their Christmas programs.  Yay!  Another free hotel stay!  Yeah, we’ve been normally staying at the Super 8, which is closer to the Village and also walking distance to the Piccadilly Pub.  Nothing wrong with it, but who am I to turn down FREE?  I did sign up for the Wyndham Rewards thingy through Super 8, but we don’t stay at any of their properties enough to ever maintain membership or qualify for any freebies.  So why bother?

The Hilton properties are nice – the Hampton Inns are a small step down from the Hilton Garden Inns, mostly in that most rooms do not have refrigerators.  But we have a portable mini-fridge, so that is not a problem.  Still, they have a lot of amenties, such as cable TV, free internet, free breakfast, and a well stocked bathroom.  No acne treatment gel, if you need that, as I do, you gotta bring your own. But they have shampoos, conditioners, nice soaps, lotions, and more.

I’m so glad I signed up for this!  We’ll be enjoying many freebies now!

Learn Your Beer!

I know it’s only July, and both the Maine and New Hampshire Brewers Festivals are months away.  But it’s not too soon to order your tickets to either or both of these great events.  In fact, the sooner, the better, as they always sell out.  It’s usually best to get your tickets sometime during the summer, so you won’t be disappointed.

I actually pre-ordered our tickets to thew Maine fest at last year’s Maine fest.  Haven’t gotten my tix yet, but no doubt they will mail them out in plenty of time.  I think this year we might go to the Dinner With The Brewers event the night before the actual festival.  This will be held at the Portland Clarion Hotel on Friday, November 5.  I think we were planning to come up on Friday, anyway, and stay over for two nights at the Inn at St. John.  We would be going to the afternoon session of the festival on Saturday, November 6.  This weekend usually coincides with single game tickets for the Portland Sea Dogs going on sale.  From the Inn at St. John, we have to walk right past the ticket office at Hadlock Field to get to the Portland Expo, where the beer festival takes place.

The New Hampshire festival will be held the following weekend at the Manchester Radisson Hotel.  As with the Maine festival, there will be a Dinner With The Brewers on Friday, November 12, followed by two tasting sessions on Saturday.  I don’t think we’ll be going to the dinner for this one, because I don’t think Mike can take two Fridays off in a row.  I think we will just go to the evening session of the festival on Saturday, stay overnight, and go home the next day.  But that could change, it’s still a long ways off.

Although they will be offering special package deals which include lodging at the Radisson, I don’t think we’ll be taking advantage of that this year.  Since we always stay at the Hilton Garden Inn when we’re up for Fisher Cats game weekends, I’ve accumulated a boatload of HHonors points.  I got an email from them about “Point-Stretcher” periods, where I could redeem points for 40% less than usual at certain hotels and certain times.  I checked, and the Manchester HGI is not only included, but so is the weekend of the beer festival.  So that’s where we’ll be staying…you can’t get any better than FREE!  The HGI also has a free shuttle for guests, and last year, they were more than happy to take us to the Radisson…much appreciated since it was raining that night!

This will be the second year of the NH festival.  At this one, they have various beer tasting seminars, in addition to the regular tasting booths.  They promise to have even more of these this year than they did last year…but I wouldn’t look for anything too weird, such as the best face creams to use with your favorite beer. But they did have an interesting beer & chocolate pairing seminar, which was cool. Many people would not think about pairing beer and chocolate, but it definitely can be done, with very tasty results!

November will be here before we know it, so the time to start making plans is now!