The Phoenicia Diner Cookbook: Dishes and Dispatches from the Catskill Mountains

Opened in 1962 alongside NY Route 28 through the Catskill Mountains, The Phoenicia Diner spent the first fifty or so years of years of its life as a purely local restaurant.

However, since owner Mike Cioffi took over in 2011 (and  later brought chef Chris Bradley on board), it has become a destination, offering a funky blend of contemporary American food that highlights local ingredients but keeps the "diner" part of its name firmly in mind. It's enough to keep packing people in.

As at any self-respecting diner, there are plenty of breakfast dishes: eggs just about any way you like them, but also breakfast tacos, smoked trout on a bagel, and kimchi-infused shrimp and grits. Local nettles show up in a potato and nettle soup. California meets Carolina in a pimento cheese patty melt.

And you can supercharge your BLT by switching out the bacon for house-cured pork belly. There's no other place quite like this.

Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.