Little Savannah is offering a family-style supper each Teusday night with "neighbors, friends, and even strangers that will soon become friends."

The "Summer Community Farm Table" is being held Tuesdays through July 28. It will feature a pre-set menu each week, only $35 for four courses of family-style food (drinks, tax and gratuity not included). Why? "Because we want to bring people in Alabama closer to both their food and community."

You can see the tentative menu at www.littlesavannah.com/uploads/farmtable.pdf. Next week, for instance, they're planning a gingered carrot soup, a salad of the summer's first tomatoes and snap beans with herbed goat cheese; cold-fried chicken, rosemary potatoes, turnip greens, and blueberry cobbler. Menus are subject to change based on ingredient quality and availability.

Reservations are required so they can fix the right amount of food; littlesavannah@gmail.comor 591-1119.

On a fairly regular basis, I get e-mails from people who remember our old site, where you could view listings of restaurants by location as well as by type.

There are two ways on the current site to find restaurants in a particular area that we think are actually more valuable than the old way.

First of all, see the "search listings" link on the left-hand side of each page near the top. This is a little different from the regular search box, in that it only searches the restaurant listings. Then type in a location-related word. We try to include not only city names in the listings, but also words for sub-areas like Greystone or Edgewood.

A second option: If you're browsing in one of the type categories, you can click on the location link at the bottom of each listing. OK, you say, I know Dave's is in Homewood. What other pizza places are in Homewood? Click on the link at the bottom of the Dave's listing where it says "Birmingham Restaurants: Homewood" and it will pull up our other pizza listings in Homewood -- Devinci's and New York Pizza.

Hope this helps!

Don't let the name fool you. Petals from the Past is about more than antique rose varieties (which was the context I first heard the name, as my neighbor sang their praises). They'll demonstrate that this Saturday with their annual "Black and Blue" festival.

Jason and Shelley Powell opened Petals From the Past, a fruit farm and plant nursery, in Jemison in 1994. During this Saturday's event, which is from 9 a.m.-5 p.m., you can pick blackberries and blueberries for $5 a pint -- or you can buy them already picked for the same price.

I had a taste of those blackberries last Saturday at Pepper Place Market, and would have bought some had I not already bought a big basket of strawberries. Unlike the blackberries you typically get at the grocery store, which tend to be more tart than flavorful, these were sweet and delicious.

For $5 a person, guests get to sample blackberry and blueberry recipes prepared by Southern Sweets of Montevallo, including lemon-and-blueberry mousse cake; blackberry brownies; blackberry-and-jalapeno compote served with biscuits; triple berry cobbler made with blackberries, blueberries and raspberries; and chicken breast stuffed with apples, bacon, cranberries and blueberries.

There will also be bluegrass music, pony rides, a petting zoo and face painting.

There was a good article about the festival in yesterday's Birmingham News, which you can read online at al.com. 

The Aha Moment Tour gave Birmingham's Veranda on Highland four stars and three wows in its blog.

The aha moment is "that split second of clarity and sudden insight that instantly changes your life, and it's the basis of the Mutual of Omaha insurance company's latest advertising campaign. The "aha moment tour" features a crew of five going on the road to capture aha moments from real people across the country. The tour's Airstream was in Birmingham last week.

Executive Chef Tom Robey told the crew he has aha moments each time a guest enjoys their experience or his food enhances someone’s special moment.

While some of the crew went off for Dreamland Ribs, Katie Kirby and her colleague, Brett Rogstad, put themselves in the hands of Robey for dinner. She sang the praises of crab and Corn Beignets with pickled okra tartar sauce; Fried Green Tomatoes topped with crawfish andouille; wine-braised Pork Butt over homemade gnocchi with tomatoes, capers, olives and garlic; and Jumbo White Barbecued Shrimp with yellow grits.

Read the blog here.

Birmingham native Charles Gaines, one of the nation's premiere outdoor writers, has a love letter to his home town in the current issue of Garden & Gun. 

Of course, it's impossible to write about how great Birmingham is without talking about the restaurants. In "The Big Heart of Birmingham," Gaines notes that growing up in the city back in the '50s, "all our restaurants seemed pretty much third-world." But in 1982, he writes, "a young chef named Frank Stitt opened Highlands Bar and Grill, and the Birmingham renaissance had truly begun."

"What Stitt did with Highlands (and the three other fine restaurants he later bestowed on the city) was announce to Birminghamians with a megaphone that we were through sucking hind tit to Atlanta or anyplace else where food was concerned. ...

"There may be other cities in the South where that particular yin and yang of good living, past and present, town and country, are so enjoyably mixed as they are now in Birmingham, but I don’t know of one."

You'll also find a summary of some of Birminghams' best restaurants, bars, retailers and attractions. Read the whole article here.

Head out to Harpersville Saturday evening for the second of Morgan Creek Vineyards' "Fireworks & Music" summer concerts.

From 6-9 p.m., there will be live music, complimentary winery tours and tastings. Pack a picnic for a beautiful evening outdoors with the whole family. Food will also be available for purchase. Admission is $10.

Music is by Marc Harris, a Southern surfer with a love of rock 'n' roll. His music is a little tiki and a little twang with influences of both '60s country and surf guitar. Local artists will also be on site to display their work.

www.morgancreekwinery.com

We had our first visit to the new Dram whiskey bar in Mountain Brook Village, and it definitely won't be our last.

We enjoyed the large outdoor deck in the back, which has a cozy smoking pit where you can take your drinks. 

These are drinks for grownups, not concoctions laced with sugary liqueurs and served in oversized martini glasses you find in many bars. Most, as you might expect, are whiskey-based, but there are also cocktails made with other classic spirits -- vodka, gin, rum, even moonshine. 

We enjoyed a Blackberry Winter (pictured), with Knob Creek, blackberry puree and house sours. The Dram version of a classic Manhattan, made with cherry-infused Woodford Reserve, was quite good. A Sassafras Sazerac, featuring rye whiskey, simple syrup, bitters and the pleasing licorice-like hint in the sassafras wash was a hit. And the Classic Daiquiri, with white rum, fresh lim juice, simple syrup and a mineral water splash, was the perfect al fresco drink.

Among the beers are some regional brews from Huntsville, Nashville and Atlanta, and the wine list offers a nice selection of choices that you won't find on every other menu in town.

We were heading elsewhere for dinner, so only shared some of the duck-fat-fried French fries for a nibble. They were good, but not as good as the Belgian double-fried fries used to be at Crepes Egg-Setera and Copper Grill. The best part was the rosemary ketchup, which was delicious.

Check out some photos from Dram and its upstairs restaurant counterpart, Avo, from a fellow foodie blogger at http://www.flickr.com/photos/bhamsandwich/sets/72157615990822615/.

The Coffee Review, which a year ago gave Birmingham's own Primavera Coffee a 93 rating for its Kenya AA Estate Gituto coffee, decided to tackle Starbucks vs. McCafe.

The Coffee Review, led by editor Kenneth Davids, sampled four different hot, espresso-based beverages in two McDonald's Northern California locations offering the new McCafé menu, and the analogous four beverages at two nearby Starbucks locations: a cappuccino, caffè latte, caffè mocha (espresso, frothed milk and chocolate syrup) and caramel latte.

The quality of the products varied by the type of drink. According to Davids, who has published three books on gourmet coffee, for the cappuccinos, "We gave a slight edge to Starbucks, though some may prefer the more coffee-muted McDonald's version with its larger proportion of milk to coffee." He added that "the difference in caffè lattes was subtle, perhaps not worth fussing over for most palates, although we found the Starbucks version livelier and more nuanced."

However, when it came to flavored coffees beverages, Davids found "the superiority of the Starbucks versions of caffè mocha and caramel latte was dramatic, and significant, given consumer preference for espresso beverages involving added syrups." he noted that the Starbucks versions cost 44 to 76 cents more than those from McDonald's, leading him to conclude "It appears that at this front of the coffee war you get what you pay for, particularly when it comes to drinks that include syrups and whipped cream."

Read the full article, including comments about how he couldn't even get just a regular espresso at McDonald's, and the fact that neither actually serves a classic cappucino, at coffeereview.com.

The J. Clyde will offer  special gourmet beer dinner Saturday, May 30,  featuring Old Dominion Brewery based in Ashburn, Va.

The menu:

• Baked Brie accompanied by fresh baked French Bread, and lightly toasted Walnuts paired with Dominion Oak Barrel Stout
• Dominion Pale Ale with Black-eyed pea hummus, fresh cut vegetables, and house made pita chips
• Beach House Golden Pilsner served with our famous Sauerkraut Balls - made with Italian sausage, sauerkraut, cream cheese, and Panko bread crumbs
• Smoked Pulled Pork served with cole slaw and potato salad along with our family-recipe barbeque sauce paired with Dominion Lager
• Dominion Millennium Ale and Deep South Banana Pudding and Whipped Cream

Price is $44 plus tax and gratuity. Reservations are required and can be made until 24 hours prior to the dinner. Call 939-1312.

We were thrilled to hear that Gov. Riley signed the "Free the Hops" bill, raising the alcohol limit on beers sold in the state from 6% to 13.9%. It's taken five years, but the Alabamians for Specialty Beer group finally did it.

You can get some of those specialty, over-6-percent beers at the Third Annual Magic City Brewfest in just a couple of weeks. Enjoy 200+ beers, gourmet food and live music at Sloss Furnacec on Friday, June 5 starting at 7 p.m. and Saturday, June 6 starting at 3 p.m. Local brewery Good People Brewing Co. is brewing a Rye IPA just for this event.

More info at http://magiccitybrewfest.com/.