Sweet corn, butter, dill pickle, tomato-peach-habanero? Has soft serve reached peak savory this fall?

Move over butter-dipped soft serve. We asked 3 restaurants to pair Olio Piro as their soft serve topping of summer ‘26.

REVIEW: Sushi By Bou, a speakeasy-style micro-omakase chain known for 12-course chef menus + dining speed, has a new experience in its arsenal. A handful of its 22 locations from Atlanta to Albany have added a monthly Tuna Cutting Experience featuring a 250 lb Bluefin tuna + sliced for a hungry crowd. Susie Davidson Powell joined the guests scraping bones with spoons + drinking sake from its head.

INTEL A new sibling for Milas + a new addition for Ziemann Hospitality with the planned opening of Bar Calvin in Stuyvesant Plaza. Coming June 2027.

EXCLUSIVE: As The Larkin HiFi closes, a veteran Albany bar team get ready to take the reins.

Nineties coffee culture is back + all the cool kids want to hang. We hit up Kha & Mel’s Coffee + Tea Room (Delaware neighborhood, Albany), Jacob Alejandro (downtown Troy) + Station Six (Center Square, Albany) with a nod to the O.G. Little Peck’s expanded weekend nighttime hours.

🫒INTEL — Station Six is open in the former Engine 6 fire house at the corner of Swan + Jefferson in downtown Albany, N.Y. We chat with owner, Mexican designer Jordan Cambron, about his cafe-bakery, cold brew + cans to go.

You want tacos. We’ve got tacos. This is THE TACO HIT LIST.

Intel: The Future Is Fusion — Chef Collabs, Third Culture Menus + Peruvian-Mexican Grand Margaritas Plans a Second Location.

The 2026 NYS Craft Beer Competition Awards Ceremony, the largest state-level craft beer competition in the US, was held March 30 at Albany Capital Center. It concluding the NYS Craft Brewers’ Conference and prepared the stage for NYS Craft Brewing Day on April 11.

Yemeni coffee shops + smoothie bars are heating up upstate.

After Ichiban Japanese + Wok N Roe Burmese, the no-frills El Guayaquileño is bringing coastal Ecuadorian flavor to Albany’s Central Ave.

Veronica Agama—Latina, mother, entrepreneur + chef—talks food trucks, the diversity of Latin cooking + moving her Viva Empanadas business upstate.
— We also have her exclusive announcement of a new third location!

Upper New Scotland Ave in Albany’s Helderberg neighborhood is quietly blooming. We review Bloom Boutique Bar & Eatery, a new all-day new American restaurant inside The Rise/Midtown Square apartment complex.

Intel: All Change Around Albany + Troy.
— Editor Susie Davidson Powell dishes out the latest industry news in March.

INTEL: Little City Luncheonette is open on New Scotland Ave in Albany with comfort specials, breakfast cocktails + two familiar young chefs. We dropped in for stacked pancakes, breakfast cocktails + matzo ball soup to get the early dish.

Cheesecake Machismo’s Lynn Beaumont + Bam Lynch talk about 23 years of cheesecake innovation, tattoos, global community + being an Albany icon.

Open 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., but breakfast cocktails + happy hour is a real thing at the brand new Little City Luncheonette in Albany, N.Y.

In Albany’s Warehouse District, Itameshi’s Bar Director Will Hoschek is inspired by rock samphire for a mermaid-inspired Vesper of the sea.

Will Hoschek, bar director of Itameshi in Albany’s Warehouse District, talks hot cocktails, kosho, ferments + why he came back to the industry he loves.