By Brianna Snyder, 518Life

Published 6:26 pm, Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Here’s a tipoff that you seem new to the area. When a waitress says to you: “You must be new.”

That happened to me in August when I was hanging around State Street in Schenectady. I was on a kind of mini culinary tour of this place — I haven’t gotten to spend much time here, which I learned quickly is a crying shame. State Street is so fun, with so much to do — and so much to eat. Over the past couple of years, lots of eateries have popped up here, providing dinner and drinks for the Proctor’s theater crowd: Mexican Radio, Zen, Johnny’s; and Nico’s expanded, adding a roofdeck. And there are kids who hang around here, too. Drawing with sidewalk chalk on Jay Street’s brick road.

So I decided I would do something only people armed with a meager expense account can do: I would go to Zen for an appetizer and a drink. I would go to Johnny’s for a meal. I would go to Aperitivo for dessert. I would probably take a nap in my car and then I would drive home.

Zen, 6:32 p.m.

We order drinks. My dude gets a cucumber martini, shown left, and I order a mojito from the looooong list of mojitos. Mine has a splash of champagne, left inset. His martini also tastes sort of like a mojito! We’re starving, so we ask for the Yellowtail Jalapeno and the Curry Roti. Each had a little spicy zip to it, and the yellowtail was super fresh. We clean the plates and suck at the bottoms of our glasses and bail.

Johnny’s, 7:10 p.m.

Dude asks me if Johnny’s is a chain restaurant. And because there seems to be an awful lot of stuff on the walls and because the restaurant puts out its own magazine (it’s free at the host’s stand), I wonder, too. This is the part where the waitress tells me I must be new here, because I ask her if Johnny’s is a chain. Oh, no, hon. This is part of the Mallozzi’s empire, which includes the Belvedere Hotel, Treviso, Villa Italia and more. We order fresh-cooked pasta dishes and die from the joy of it. We are dead.

Aperitivo, 7:54 p.m.

We split a Salted Caramel, difficult because we’re brimming with Shrimp Fra Diavolo and that incredible mussels and red-pepper-cream-sauce special, but it’s the perfect end note: Whipped cream, a sprinkle of chocolate cookie crumbs, gently salted caramel. We ask if the whipped cream is homemade, already knowing the answer. Of course it is.