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Vineyard: Amazing Ca. Peaches, Great local soda

Posted by Ed Levine, September 4, 2006 at 8:28 AM

Four days of eating on Martha's Vineyard and what did I discover:

The best local soda I've ever tasted: Cape Cod Diet Cranberry Ginger Ale: Simultaneously sweet and tart, plenty of cranberry flavor, could go a little heavier on the ginger. I know about Cheerwine and the like, but are there other great local sodas most people don't know about?

A very fine Little Rock Farms blueberry pie made with wild Maine blueberries.

An excellent Mrs. Blake's Strawberry Rhubarb Pie with her usual moist and flaky crust and filling that could have been less sweet.

Fried clams from John's Fish Market in Vineyard Haven that were crunchy, clammy, and yummy. Wispy, thin onion rings that were battered to order (as were the clams. Next time up here I'm going to taste test John's and the Bite's fried clams. May the better clam win!

Pretty good bacon and fresh mozzarella pizza from the Chilmark Store. Too much regular mozzarella made for a very heavy pie. Bacon was in tiny pieces, like bacon bits.

Awful peach crumb pie from the Black Dog Bakery: It's hard to screw up peach crumb pie, but the folks at BDB managed to do it. The pie was a soupy, gloppy mess, and the peaches tasted canned.

By far the best bites of food to be had on this island are the Gold Bud Farms peaches and nectarines sold at Eden outside Vineyard Haven. These are simply as good a piece of stonefruit as you will find on this planet.

This photo of some sliced Gold Bud peaches is courtesy of a Chowhounder. Each piece is juicy and sweet with just the right amount of acidity. How good are they? We bring them as either house presents or dessert when we're invited over to dinner, and we have now become the most popular dinner guests on the island. Ron Mansfield, Goldbud's owner, will ship. Call him at 530-626-6521.

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Tags: beverages, fruit, Martha's Vineyard, pie, pizza