By Norm Dvoskin

This week, from November 1st through November 8^th 2009, more than 220 restaurants are participating in Long Island Restaurant Week. All these eateries are offering their own unique menus at $24.95 per person for a three-courses meal. The list of restaurants is impressive and includes some of the most upscale and expensive dining spots on Long Island. Long Island Restaurant Week will allow many of us to save 30 to 50% when dining at some of the finest establishments in Nassau and Suffolk Counties.

Long Islanders love food, but will we really enjoy this opportunity to sample some of the best dishes our local chefs can prepare? Many of us have become food snobs and it has become more important to say we’ve been to a certain fancy restaurant than to actually savor the food.

I’ve come up with a few guidelines that I think will help you enjoy restaurant dining not only during restaurant week but throughout the entire year.

First there’s too much talk about food and restaurants…what we ate, what we didn’t eat, what the dish looks like, what are the ingredients…  This is caused mainly by restaurant reviewers. Don’t pay any attention to what they say. They don’t know any more about food than you do. Your favorite reviewer may have written about sports before he wrote about food. His next newspaper or magazine assignment could be “Advice To The Elderly.” Food and taste are a personal preference. No one can tell you if you like something or not. Reviewers can describe the ambiance down to its last detail and use terms like “delectable, distinctive and incomparable,” but they don’t tell you how to have a good time while eating. When you’re having a good time the food tastes better.

Probably the most important thing  is to dine with people you’re comfortable with and who you like. You’ll be relaxed and this will make your food taste better. You won’t be embarrassed to order casual foods that you enjoy. It won’t matter if you’re eating boeuf bourguignon or macaroni and cheese.

At a party a few years ago, I was introduced to the headwaiter of a well-known, elegant North Shore eatery. I asked him, “What would happen if I went to his place and ordered a hamburger?”  He said, “I would politely tell you that you were in the wrong place.” How pretentious. A truly good restaurant would compromise to accommodate me and come up with something delicious.

Don’t read menus. Writing to get the words just right to make the dishes look appetizing is big business. They come up with superficial words like “tender, tangy, on a bed of,” and “topped with…”  When I go to a restaurant I’m not familiar with, I usually ask the waiter or waitress, “What’s good?” Sometimes they look surprised and say, “Everything.” Then I know that nothing is really special or the server is new and is not familiar with the menu. If they do recommend something, I usually try it and I’m seldom disappointed. An experienced waiter knows the signature dishes of the restaurant and what people order and prefer. I have a friend who, while waiting for a table, walked around to see what people were ordering.   Some of the diners may have eaten there before, he figured, and knew what the favorite dishes were.

Lastly, when a restaurant has a special kind of food in it’s name, order that food. For example, if it calls itself a steakhouse, order the steak. The same with seafood restaurants. If you go to an eatery that has the word waffle in its name, don’t order the chilly. You may be sorry.

So, if you’re planning on taking advantage of The Fourth Annual Long Island Restaurant Week, relax, enjoy and have a hearty appetite.

By Norm Dvoskin

I’m convinced that October is the best month of the year on Long Island. There are no heat waves to deal with, the hurricane season is just about over and we seldom experience northeasters. The onset of the snow season is at least a month away. The most snow ever recorded in October was one inch. That occurred on October 26, 1962, according to measurements taken at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

It’s a happy time. The leaves are starting to turn and when you get up in the morning there’s nothing to mow, rake or shovel. Numerous fairs and festivals are scheduled during October because the weather is usually dry and beautiful with plenty of sunshine and comfortable temperatures. In addition, it’s the season when families go to the local farms and spend lots of money picking unnecessary pumpkins and getting lost in corn mazes.

However, do you remember October 2005? What a month, what a mess. The Newsday Headline on October 15, 2005 read, “Lake Long Island.” That month was the wettest month on record. The gauge at Brookhaven Laboratory topped off at 22.14 inches of rain for the month. Prior to 2005, the most rain ever for October was 11.43 inches in 1955. The normal for the month is about 3.75 inches, averaged since 1949 when they started taking records. Here’s a sample of rain totals for other places across Long Island during October 2005:

Baiting Hollow 21.50″

Centerport 18.69″

Setauket 19.18″

Lindenhurst 18.79″

Runoff from the rains poured into basements, overflowed recharge basins, backed up sewers, flooded low lying areas and contaminated waterways. Animals at the ‘Long Island Game Farm’ were starting to line up in pairs. (Just kidding).

I love October. It usually gives us a treat, but sometimes we get a trick.

By Norm Dvoskin

If you look up the word ‘season’ in the dictionary, it reads, “One of four periods of the year, beginning with an equinox or a solstice.” This is just a lot of astronomy. The real beginning and end of the seasons we experience are based on an attitude or point-of-view. For example, this year (2009), the official end of summer occurred on September 22 at 5:18 PM, when the sun crossed vertically above the equator. This was the autumnal equinox and it is said that at that instant you can balance an egg on its end. Of course, the bacon strips are a lot harder. Just kidding.

As a convenience for record keeping, climatologists define the seasons by temperature. The three coldest months of the year, usually December, January and February, are categorized as winter, while June, July and August are termed summer. Doing it this way makes it easier for record keeping.

As a TV meteorologist, I have three seasons. The hurricane, snow and severe thunderstorm seasons. Most of the other meteorological elements can be dealt with without warnings, watches or advisories, and my job is usually a lot easier.

When I was a kid the four seasons were football, basketball, baseball, and vacation.

Homeowners have a different view of the seasons. For them the year is divided into segments called shoveling, seeding, mowing and raking.

On Long Island you can’t beat the seasons.

Spring is too rainy

Summer’s too hot

Fall is soon over

And Winter’s not.

By Norm Dvoskin

I received an invitation to the 60^th Reunion of the Stuyvesant High School Class of 1949.

The reunion dinner will be held at the Yale Club in New York City on November 7, 2009.

One of the problems with high school reunions is that everyone knows how old you are. So, now you know how old I am. In fact, I’m so old, when I was a kid the rainbows were only in black and white (just kidding).

Stuyvesant High School is named after Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Governor of New Netherland before the colony was transferred to England in 1664. When I attended, it was an all boys school and was located in an old, run-down building on East 15^th Street in Manhattan. In 1969 the school became coed and in 1992 a new waterfront building on the Hudson River and Chambers Street was constructed to house the school.

I’m proud to be a Stuyvesant graduate but I don’t know what I was doing there. This is a very competitive and specialized school. Its reputation for excellence in math and science is well known. Qualification for admission is by recommendation, scholastic achievement and a series of competitive entrance exams. Tuition is free.  The New York Post, on August 23, 2009, rated Stuyvesant the best high school in New York City. It is considered to be one of the best high schools in the country. I was never much of a student. My grades were about average in Junior High. But someone, I don’t know who, must have seen something and recommended me for admission.

The school is noted for its many accomplished alumni and for sending the most students to Harvard, Yale and Princeton of any public school in the United States. It has produced four Nobel Prize Winners. A few notable Stuyvesant alumni are Eric Holder, the current U. S. Attorney General, David Axelrod, Senior Advisor to President Obama and “master builder” Robert Moses. From the fields of entertainment and TV–James Cagney, Paul Reiser, Len Berman, Lucy Liu and Tim Robbins are graduates. John Tatta, former Chairman and President of Cablevision, graduated from Stuyvesant in 1938.

I haven’t been in contact with anyone from my graduating class, so how much in common could I have with this group? There are a few people I would love to see again after 60 years. It’s probably going to look like a casting call for the movie “Cocoon.” I’m signed up and looking forward to going.

By Norm Dvoskin

In professional sports, an opponent can be buried by an Avalanche, blown away by Hurricanes, destroyed by Lightning and succumb to the Heat. The fans can look at the Suns but they must be careful not to stare directly.

All told, I’ve discovered more than 40 teams in the major and minor professional leagues whose name are commonly used by meteorologists. There are six Storms, five Cyclones and four Blizzards. There have been teams called Fog, Whitecaps, Chill and Twisters. New sports franchises are born practically every year. The latest addition to the NBA is called the Oklahoma City Thunder.

There are several logical reasons for naming a team after the elements. The public can relate to the name. We’ve all experienced heat and blizzards. Most people can recall when a bolt of lightning came close to them or their home. The person who makes it to work through a blizzard often spends the next several days talking about how he or she overcame the elements. After food, weather is the most prevalent topic of conversation. But would you name a team after something you might have for lunch?

The use of weather words is fitting because they denote an indestructible and unyielding force. Something you wouldn’t want to mess with. It suggests excitement and an unknown danger that every team would be happy to be identified with and promote.

The weather is always politically correct.  Since the forces of nature are neutral, a weather named team doesn’t have to worry about offending any particular group. Witness the objections raised by Native Americans to the Redskins, Indians and Braves. You may remember some of the discord created when the New Jersey franchise of the NHL selected Devils in 1982.

Ideally a nickname should pertain to the history, geography or heritage of the hometown fans. Forty-Niners, Steelers and Rockies are excellent choices.  New York Yankees, Chicago Bears and Pittsburgh Pirates are pointless but they’ve been around forever and have become part of our culture.

After being abandoned by Art Modell, Cleveland returned to the NFL in 1999 with their time-honored name, the Browns. The original NFL team in Cleveland, the Rams moved to Los Angeles in the 40s taking their logo with them. This franchise picked up and relocated to St. Louis in 1997 leaving a vacancy in Los Angeles. A new club will appear in California eventually. I don’t know exactly when it will happen but it’s certain. If it were up to me, it would be called the Los Angeles Smog.