<p>If you or family stay at the Staybridge Suites hotel most conveniently located over the footbridge (over the Genesee), you may find that the room rates are sometimes insane. As in $999.99 or even even higher. That's done by the hotel because, they say, the general reservation system, which covers Holiday Inn & others, will overbook them. They put in weird rates for some weekends to get people to call the hotel directly. It sometimes means they are, in fact, sold out but not always. They will send you a confirmation email with the actual room rates. </p>
<p>BTW, if you do stay there, walk over to Boulder Coffee in the AM. Super good coffee & bagels versus highly processed, tasteless stuff.</p>
<p>D also highly recommends Boulder Coffee–she frequently walks across the bridge and has chai at the coffee shop. She says it’s just nice sometimes to get off campus and away.</p>
<p>The one in South Wedge - maybe 10 minutes by bike from UR - is also great. Huge places, reflecting the low rents you pay in Rochester. The other one has a bunch of early 1960’s tv’s and shares a patio with a wood-fired pizza place (called, I think, Napa Wood-Fired Pizza). Great coffee, the equal of Peet’s, which is saying something. They sell Balsam Bagels, which are made in Rochester - on Balsam Street. I’m in love with their spinach bagel.</p>
<p>D lived in South Wedge over the summer and ate at all the local restaurants (and critiqued them for me when I came to visit… ) She preferred the Women’s Coffee Connection (or as she called the lesbian coffee shop) over Boulder. Less expensive and more environmentally conscious. (Or maybe just closer to her house.)</p>
<p>I live in Boston where things are more expensive and much, much more crowded. The restaurant quality in Rochester is quite high and the prices, to me, are low. And you can park. To put that in perspective, if we go out in Back Bay and take the T both ways that’s $6.80 round trip for 2. </p>
<p>The odd thing to me about Rochester, the place, is that everything is actually not more than 10 minutes away. I’m used to people saying things like that - like “It’s 20 minutes into Boston” when I know that might happen once every 10 years and the rest of the time it’s more like 40 minutes." But it’s true in Rochester; it’s very easy to get around.</p>
<p>LOL! The difference one’s experience makes…</p>
<p>I live in NM and I thought the parking in Rochester was awful and inconvenient. I’m use to free off-street parking everywhere. I haven’t parallel parked in a couple of decades. </p>
<p>But I agree about the restaurants–lots of pretty good restaurants. (And about on par with what things cost here.)</p>
<p>I live between Boston University and Boston College, near Northeastern, Simmons College, Wheelock College, etc. There are perhaps 250,000 college students in the Boston area and lots of them are near me. With that plus the giant medical area a mile away, we’re so saturated with cars and people that in the early weeks of the school year it feels like an explosion. It’s a huge trial of annoyance but then I used to live in Detroit and believe me this is better.</p>
<p>Going off topic but much of inner Boston is intentionally that way. Cambridge, for example, was under a parking restriction - partly for air quality - for a decade. Brookline, where I live, has increased parking requirements for housing to make development more difficult. The traffic plan for East Cambridge, for example, is to make the entry points difficult, even congested so traffic within the area can move better. </p>
<p>Rochester has a lot of highway for the number of people in the area, something that’s fairly typical in America. You can’t build highways in densely populated areas but you can in less dense places. Boston has 600k+ people - plus more in the daytime from commuting - in a land area of about 48 square miles. Rochester has 200k+ people - plus some more in the daytime, of course - in about 36 square miles. By comparison, the vastly hollowed out city of Detroit has a population of maybe 900K - I think less - over about 140 square miles*. That’s about the same population density as Rochester though the cities aren’t comparable otherwise.</p>
<p>*That’s as big as San Francisco, Boston and Manhattan combined.</p>
<p>Any place minus its main employers would be in trouble. Boston also has money management. </p>
<p>Rochester was under the gun when Kodak starting having trouble but it has been lucky that imaging & optics - so much related to UR - is about as high tech as it gets. If you’re an executive working downtown, you can literally be home in 5-10 minutes. And because of UR, with Eastman and the art gallery and the theatres, you have tons more culture than one would expect for a city of this size.</p>
<p>Detroit’s problem can be summed up in a few points:</p>
<ul>
<li>3 largest industrial corporations in the world, not one located downtown. (Ford in Dearborn, Chrysler in Highland Park and GM in the New Center, which is miles out Woodward.)</li>
<li>3 largest industrial corporations in the world and 2 of them located their finance HQ in NYC. This meant Detroit was never a finance center and never developed really large banks.</li>
<li>Almost none of the supplier companies located downtown.</li>
</ul>
<p>We stayed at the Staybridge by Rochester in April and paid $120 night with tax, booked from their website. We walked over the footbridge so it was very convenient.</p>
<p>I’ll be there in early October, can you recommend a few good restaurants to try? It can be anywhere since nothing is farther than 10 minutes…:).</p>
<p>All you really need to do is walk along Park or Monroe Avenues–tons of good to excellent restaurants there.</p>
<p>Are you looking for something casual or more formal? And are you looking for something for Parents’ Weekend? If so, reservations are must. Everywhere is jammed.</p>
<p>I like Sinbad’s for Middle Eastern food. D likes Taco John’s for casual Mexican (and growing up in the southwest, she’s picky about her Mexican) and California Rollin’s for sushi.</p>
<p>BTW, you should stop by Cheesy Eddie’s on South Ave. The best cheesecakes around. Also carrot cake and cookies.</p>
<p>THis is exactly what I was looking for… restaurant info. We are coming to Rochester this weekend 18th ,19th for our son’s b-day. Do you know of any really good Italian restaurants? ( By the way, he’s a freshman and so far is absolutely loving it all, socially and academically.)</p>
<p>I haven’t been there myself, but D’s roomie took her to Giovanni’s. D said the food was very good. Upscale Italian–definitely not a pizza joint. (But it’s more than 10 minutes away–more like 25-30.)</p>
<p>You might want to check out some of Rochester’s restaurants on urbanspoon.</p>
<p>Food in Rochester is very good. Avoid the chains and you’ll eat well.</p>
<p>For Italian, look up Bacco’s and Cibon, both on Park. Both good. I have a thing for the cioppino at Cibon but locals like Bacco’s a lot. It’s somewhat more expensive. </p>
<p>If you want BBQ besides Dinosaur, which is excellent but the wait can be a drag, locals rightfully insist that Sticky Lips is as good. I think it has better chicken, slightly worse ribs. I love BBQ and find it totally weird that Rochester has 2 places better than anything in Boston.</p>
<p>One of my favorite places is a sandwich shop in South Wedge called Open Face. Check out Historic House Parts nearby. Not food but amazing selection of … old house parts. I like old house parts.</p>
<p>I really like Highland Park Diner, particularly the hash & their pancakes. Have never eaten non-breakfast food there. Tapas 177, which is sort of downtown, is very good, inventive and well made food. I know that Rochester groups have rented out the place for parties.</p>
<p>Can’t second Open Face. D had heard raves about from her friends so we went. And both of us were disappointed. First, they didn’t have one of the items on their menu (which I had tried to order), then the turkey I got was beyond dry and although I <em>like</em> ginger, there was so much on both the sandwich (and it was supposed to be maple!) and salad I couldn’t taste anything else. D’s sandwich was also disappointing. Too much ginger and chicken salad that was otherwise pretty bland and boring–just celery and mayo.</p>
<p>D and I went to breakfast to someplace on Monroe which had really wonderful omelets, but I can’t remember the name of it now. Tiny place. Had outside seating if that helps.</p>
<p>Our family has enjoyed Bamba Bistro and 2 Vine…make reservations. Dinosaur is of course great…but different experience for sure. For casual, any of the restaurants on Park Ave are good, we like Magnolias, Jines and Charlie’s Frog Pond… no more trips to Rochester for us however as our daughter graduated and I no longer have to travel there on business trips…</p>