→ February 15, 2010
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Hollywood eats.

My first draft column of 2010 is up today, a breakdown of Saturday’s showcase at the MLB Urban Youth Academy in LA, featuring just about every top senior in SoCal this year. (One guy was missing, and I’m working on finding out why.) There’s also a clip of my ESPNEWS hit today, talking Victor Martinez (my most boring answer of the day, of course). And I’ll be on ESPN Radio’s Baseball Tonight in the 10 pm EST hour tonight.

To the eats:

First meal was at Umami Burger in Hollywood, which turned out to be within walking distance of my hotel, which made me feel rather stupid for driving there and rocking the GPS to go a whopping 0.4 miles or so. Anyway, it’s a good burger, made from the relatively unknown cut of cow called flap meat, which has a strong beefy flavor and responds well to quick searing (so I don’t think you want to go past medium on your burger here). Where they shine is in the toppings, a mix of grilled and roasted vegetables designed, in theory, to hit that “fifth taste” of umami; I know I spotted caramelized onions, some kind of roasted tomato, and a little cracker made from grated, griddled Parmiggiano cheese, served on a Portuguese (and therefore slightly sweet) roll. I strongly recommend the burger, but skip the fries and try the thick-battered onion rings, with a crunchy crust that shatters on impact.

Sticking with Hollywood, I went to Ike Sushi at Hollywood and Gower, buried in a corner strip mall, which turned out to be a great find. The fish was fresh – I’m not sure how a sushi place in LA would stay open if they didn’t use the freshest fish – and other than the salmon, just barely laced with a little ponzu and some finely minced scallion, it was all served straight-up, including some of the best yellowtail I’ve ever had (Ike also had yellowtail belly, or toro, a good find although it was a little tougher than what I get at Koi in Seal Beach) and very strong maguro. Six or seven orders of fish, including tip, was under $40. They’re apparently known for their rolls and combinations, if that’s more to your tastes, but when I’m in California I want the real deal.

Breakfast the next morning was at Square One Dining, a recommendation from dak of FireJoeMorgan fame. They specialize in local & organic ingredients, and the menu incorporates a lot of fresh vegetables in their omelettes and baked egg dishes. The basil and asparagus omelette with goat cheese and squash was fresh all over, but a little light on flavor – it needed salt, but also could have used some oomph from a spice or a bitter vegetable. The thyme-roasted potatoes were golden and crispy and tasted a little more fried than roasted, not that there’s anything wrong with that, and they had an excellent tea selection, with large bags of either whole leaves or something close to it.

I also went back to the Culver City location of Versailles, a small local chain of Cuban restaurants, which I hit last year as well. I mention it here to recommend it again (the lechon asado is excellent, and the service is fast – I was in and out inside of 20 minutes after sitting at the counter) and to torment Joe Sheehan, who recommended it to me in the first place.

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→ January 17, 2010
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Yeast-raised Belgian Waffles.

I’ve mentioned before that the problem with “Belgian waffles” as currently served by most American restaurants that offer them is that they are only “Belgian” in shape – it’s a regular waffle batter poured into an iron with deeper ridges, creating a dense, greasy, cakey waffle that bears no resemblance to the lighter, crispier waffles that earn the Belgian moniker. I’ve even seen recipes in reputable cookbooks that make no allowance for the different shape of Belgian waffle irons and assume that your straight-up chemically-leavened waffle batter will do the trick. Of course, it won’t.

It’s not clear to me whether there is a single waffle style that qualifies as an authentic Belgian waffle, but everything I’ve read points to the inclusion of one of two methods of introducing lightness into the final batter: yeast or an egg white foam. This recipe, adapted from The 1997 Joy of Cooking, uses both to create a waffle with a light texture and crispy exterior and that brings the virtue of on-the-fly extensibility.

A quick note on equipment: The model I have, from Hamilton Beach, has been discontinued – I got it four or five years ago for $10 on clearance. It has a 7-inch diameter and nonstick grids; they’re not removable, which does make cleanup tricky, but for ten bucks I wasn’t going to be picky. The heat setting runs from 1 to 5, and I found somewhere between 3 and 4 was perfect for this recipe. If you decide to buy a Belgian waffle iron, look for nonstick grids and a variable temperature setting; I vote for a circular grid since it’s easier to spread batter on a circle than on adjacent squares. Always preheat your iron before the first waffle, and after removing each waffle close the lid and allow it to come back up to temperature.

3 cups milk, warmed to 105-110 degrees
3 eggs, separated
11 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled to lukewarm
1 Tbsp vegetable oil*
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour*
2 1/4 tsp instant yeast*
a pinch of cream of tartar

1. Whisk the egg yolks, butter, oil, and 1/2 cup of the milk together in a bowl.
2. Whisk in the sugar, salt, and extract.
3. In another bowl, stir the yeast into the two flours.
4. Alternate adding the flour mixture and the remaining milk (3 installments of flour, interspersed with two installments of milk), whisking thoroughly to combine each addition.
5. In yet a third bowl, beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar until you achieve soft peaks. Fold the foam into the master batter. Seal with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature for about an hour, until roughly doubled, although any healthy rise will suffice.
6. Preheat your waffle iron about 45 minutes after you finished making the batter.
7. Stir the batter to deflate it, then pour enough batter to make one waffle on to the hot iron’s grid. For my 7″ iron, it took about 3/4 cup of batter; Joy says about 1/2 cup, which probably assumes a 6″ grid. Use an offset spatula or heat-proof silicone spatula to spread the batter quickly to the edges, then close the iron and cook until the steaming starts to subside and the waffle is golden brown; this took about two and a half minutes on my iron. Serve immediately; hold in a 200 degree oven; or cool on wire racks before freezing.

* Notes:

  • The vegetable oil will help keep the waffles from drying out. It’s a tiny sacrifice of flavor for greater shelf life.
  • I’m sure this recipe will work fine if you use 4 cups of AP flour, but I like whole wheat flour for both its flavor and nutritional benefit. Not that these waffles would qualify as health food. Pastry flour is lower in protein than regular whole wheat flour and is usually ground more finely.
  • Instant yeast is infinitely superior to the crap they sell in packets as “active dry” or “rapid-rise” yeast. Instant yeast lasts longer – I’ve taken instant yeast that was in the fridge for over two years and baked successfully with it. It doesn’t require you to bloom it separately in liquid. And it uses less packaging than other kinds. Whole Foods sells a brick of the stuff for $5, so if you use yeast even a dozen times a year it’ll save you money. Just dump the contents of the bag into an airtight container and stick it in your refrigerator.
  • If you decide at any point you want to add something to the batter – nuts, berries, dried coconut, chocolate chips (I’d grease the hell out of the iron before that one, though), even crumbled bacon – you can just drop it into the master bowl or even into one waffle’s worth of batter, stir quickly, and pour. Unlike a chemically-leavened batter, this one bounces back quite well from agitation and the resulting waffle won’t be heavier or denser for the intrusion.
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→ December 11, 2009
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Indianapolis eats.

Indianapolis seems like a perfectly nice place to visit in the spring or summer, but its potential as a “walking city” (even though downtown is pretty heavy on the chain restaurants) was nonexistent the last two days, with temperatures of 20 F or below and winds from 20-40 mph or more. I rented a car, so I wasn’t limited to Subway and Rock Bottom, and was fortunate to have a cheat sheet of restaurants from reader Aaron G., who is responsible for sending me to every place in this writeup except for the barbecue joint GT South’s (which was recommended by at least one of you before the trip).

Taste Café is about twenty minutes outside the center of Indianapolis in a neighborhood called Broad Ripple, about as far as I ventured from downtown on the trip, and if it had been closer I probably would have gone every morning for breakfast. Their waffles looked amazing, but my visit to Taste was to serve as breakfast and lunch so I chose something more likely to get me through to dinner (which it did), an egg and bacon sandwich on Pullman bread with basil aioli. The eggs were over an inch thick, and I ended up doing a little culinary surgery to keep the sandwich from falling apart, while the basil aioli gave a sweet background note that balanced out the salty, smoky bacon. The bread – well, it’s hard to screw up Pullman bread, and this was very soft but strong enough to hold the contents together. The dish came with breakfast potatoes which were swimming in olive oil. Taste offers a solid selection of loose teas and a lot of seating for a breakfast/lunch café.

Hoaglin To Go Café does, in fact, offer seating and table service, despite the name, although they seem to do a thriving take-out service. Their breakfast menu focuses on egg dishes like omelets and quiches, but the standout item here is their potato gratin dish called pommes anna, sliced potatoes cooked through but still al dente with gruyere as the accent but not so much that the gratin fell apart. The omelet of the day (called their “Big O,” aren’t they clever) contained sausage, mushrooms, and artichokes, but it came as a simple omelet folded over those ingredients, rather than having them cooked in the omelet with the eggs as the binder. They also use high-quality sandwich bread.

Café Patachou is a local mini-chain that has a location within “walking distance*” of my hotel and the Marriott. The menu is a little less adventurous and inspired than those of the previous two places, although it offers plenty of options and the food quality is fine. I finally gave in and had a waffle, which was properly cooked with a crispy exterior but was very dense inside, and came with a slightly sad little fruit cup that I hope would be better when fruit is actually in season in Indiana. They have a wide selection of bagged teas from a company called Revolution.

*“Walking distance” is, of course, only applicable at certain times of year. I did walk to the café from my hotel, all of four blocks, and couldn’t feel my ears, the end of my nose, or my fingers (despite my gloves) by the time I got to the restaurant, and had to catch my breath when I got inside. I’d like to think Minor League Baseball has learned its lesson about putting the winter meetings** in cold-weather sites, but I doubt it.

**If Minor League Baseball organized the offseason meetings for the NHL, they’d rotate between Phoenix, Miami, and Houston.

Siam Square is a new Thai restaurant just outside downtown on the northwest-bound side of Virginia with a menu that reaches into other Asian cuisines but offers a number of standard and, according to my dinner partner Alex Speier (of WEEI.com fame), authentic Thai dishes. The vegetarian spring rolls contained fresh julienned vegetables instead of the sad, limp, cabbage-like slop they normally contain, and the rolls were about as non-greasy as spring rolls can get. The sweet sauce that usually accompanies them was kicked up about three notches with red chile pepper, so the sauce was complex instead of cloying. Their “siam ginger” stir fry was full of strips of ginger like strands of spaghetti squash, a vague hint of sweetness (palm sugar?), and fresh vegetables that still had all their texture and crunch even through cooking. The menu actually labels many dishes as “Mild not available,” although I tasted Alex’s pad pem and didn’t find it very spicy, which says something since I find almost everything with chile pepper in it to be spicy. The restaurant offers a bonus in a highly attractive blonde (and not Thai) server named Erin who probably justifies a visit to Siam Square all by herself.

Harry & Izzy’s is the casual restaurant next door to and associated with the century-old steakhouse St. Elmo’s, although the exteriors couldn’t be more different, with St. Elmo’s looking tired while Harry & Izzy’s looks new and inviting. What appears to be their signature sandwich, thinly sliced prime rib au jus with fresh horseradish sauce on focaccia, is outstanding, with meat that melts in your mouth and is tender and moist enough that the jus is truly optional. It comes with hand-cut fries on the side for $15 (that’s the lunch price), the same as I paid for just a steak sandwich at Lobel’s stand at Yankee Stadium for an inferior product.

GT South’s came in a recommendation from one of you (I apologize for forgetting who sent it) and also showed up online as a highly-regarded Q joint, so I trekked it out with Alex again to their location right off I-70. They have the standard array of smoked meats except for sausage, and allow you to add four ribs to any platter for about $5. Both the ribs and pulled pork were solid-average, good texture and strong smoky flavor, although the pulled pork was only lukewarm when it hit the table. Their turnip greens were oversalted, but the cornbread muffin that comes with the dish is money, with a perfect crust and a hint of tang from buttermilk. Alex went for the brisket and crushed it, which I’ll consider an endorsement.

Yats is a hole in the wall – in fact, you get your food from the kitchen through a hole in the wall that separates it from the dining room. Yats serves Cajun food, and they believe presentation is a waste of time, with most dishes comprising a stew or soup slopped over a bed of white rice. The menu is limited on Mondays, the day I went, but the hunter’s stew – andouille sausage, three beans, and tomatoes – was hearty, filling, not too salty, just a little too spicy so that the taste of the beans lost the battle. It’s a good place to eat when you want to be full for hours, and the meal and drink cost under $8.

The one disappointment of the trip was, unfortunately, one of the best-known and best-reviewed places, as well as a strong recommendation from Aaron G. and from Will Carroll, a small artisanal food shop and sandwich counter called Goose the Market. The store – part salumeria, part gelateria, part wine/beer shop, part fancy packaged food vendor – is certainly a foodie’s paradise, with high-end, small-batch, local goods mixed with somewhat rare or obscure imported items (like 00 flour, something I rarely see anywhere around Boston, or very good olive oils). The salumeria has many expected meat items and some unexpected ones like salmon pastrami, and the staff behind the counter are friendly and helpful. Even the cold drink case held a few surprises, like root beer and cream soda from Goose Island Brewery in Chicago. The disappointment came in the sandwich I ordered, the Batali, with a mix of Italian meats and cheeses on an outstanding pain a l’ancienne baguette with a hard, toothy crust. Unfortunately, the sandwich is piled with so many toppings that the meat and cheese are completely lost under the mayonnaise, pickled onions, and sliced jalapeños that I have no idea how good or flavorful the star ingredients actually were. I wish I’d had another day to try it again and order the same sandwich without the nonsense. It’s maybe a five to seven minute drive from downtown, straight north up Meridian from Monument Circle.

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→ October 8, 2009
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Washington DC eats.

Chat today at 1 pm EDT. Baseball Tonight on ESPN Radio at 10:27 pm EDT (if your local affiliate isn’t carrying the late game).

All right, I’ve been promising this for two weeks but playoff writing took precedence. I had two full days in DC plus a half-day, which turned into five different restaurants plus what I ate at the ballpark. All of these places but one are in the McPherson Square/Farragut area.

Breakfast both mornings was at Teaism, a tea salon that serves a full breakfast with a limited menu, although it was diverse enough for me. The best item – besides the tea, which is loose-leaf and served in ceramic pots – is the ginger scones, crumbly and faintly sweet with chunks of crystallized ginger in the scone and castor sugar on top. Two of those plus the cilantro scrambled eggs – cilantro and diced green bell pepper in eggs, little light on the salt and probably cooked 30 seconds past perfect – was more than enough food, since the egg platter comes with a small fruit salad and triangles of grilled whole-wheat naan. I also tried the tea-cured salmon, which had great flavor (a little sweet, a little savory, like a cup of a mild Indian black tea with a half teaspoon of sugar) and was obviously very fresh (they say they do the curing themselves) but had a chewier texture than good smoked salmon. Teaism’s only real drawback is that it’s not cheap, running $15+ each day including tip.

Worst meal of the trip, by far, was at Kaz Sushi Bistro, an overpriced Japanese restaurant where the focus is definitely not on the food. The fish itself was completely tasteless; the seaweed salad came with a mayonnaise-based dressing; everything was overpriced; and the two people serving as hosts were rude to each other and to at least one group of customers.

Casa Blanca is a small Peruvian (or Peruvian-plus) place on Vermont Ave that is an anti-Kaz in that the focus is on the food and definitely not on the decor or ambience. I ordered chicharrones (fried chunks of pork shoulder) with fried yucca, which was, of course, a bit on the heavy side but crispy and salty with a little bit of a peppery kick. Their homemade tamarind juice is good, a little too sweet for me but given the tangy taste of tamarind, I imagine this is how most people prefer the drink. They apparently also make great empanadas, although those appeared to be for takeout customers and weren’t on the menu. Service is a bit indifferent, and remained so even when I ordered in Spanish. Cash only.

I left the area once for lunch and headed over to Eastern Market to try Market Lunch, where folks apparently line up in great numbers on weekend mornings for pancakes. I had read that Market Lunch had one of the top crab cake sandwiches in the city, and their fries are hand-cut, which sold me. The crab cake was above-average, mostly crab, all lump, lightly seasoned so that the primary taste is of the crab meat, but the crab cake itself wasn’t fresh or even hot, just lukewarm, as if it had been sitting for five minutes. I understand they’re trying to keep people moving, but crab cakes should, at worst, be kept hot if they have to be held at all. The fries were on the greasy side. I suppose if you work in the area and need something fast, this is a great option, but I’m not sure it was worth the Metro* trip.

*Seriously, another city with a crappy subway system. Philly’s system is cash-only and is filthier than Rome’s. Washington’s takes credit cards, but the cost of your ride depends on exactly where you’re boarding and exiting, instead of the single-price system used, oh, everywhere else in the country. And is there a reason the stations are all so dark? You could grow white asparagus down there.

As for Nationals Park, it’s nice, clean, big, and kind of boring. It has forced character, not actual charm. And I’m sorry, you don’t get to put up posters of great players who didn’t play for your franchise – you can take the Senators’ history, by all means, but Honus Wagner is not yours. They get big props for Teddy’s Q stand out in right field. They smoke the meat right there, in a smoker that’s at the edge of the tent, and both items I had were solid. The pulled pork sandwich wasn’t too dry and only needed a little sauce for flavor, while the beef (short) rib was perfectly smoked with plenty of well-browned edges. I’m not sure what’s in the beef rub, but it’s sweet without any heat – a little pepper would balance out the sweetness well. Two quibbles: At $14, the rib should come with something on the side, even the tiny cole slaw that comes with the sandwich; and it seems odd that you have to go to another stand to get a starch like French fries. The Nats also get props for the kosher-food cart across the aisle from the Q. The knish was excellent, smoking hot (not just made, but they had the sense to keep it hot), and the three people working at the cart are animals – everything moved quickly, and when the line started to build up, they moved faster. I saw a little gelato stand up the first base line and wanted to try it, but I was so full from the Q each night that I never had the chance.

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→ September 11, 2009
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Milwaukee eats, 2009.

I was on Mike and Mike this morning and apparently made Scott Feldman a left-hander. Good times. The moral of this story, since I was thinking about Feldman’s cutter as a weapon against lefties, is not to think when talking on the radio. I did 90-minute chat and believe I got everyone’s handedness right, so there’s that.

Joe Posnanski mentions me in his new column for Sports Illustrated, which means I’ll probably hear from a whole new group of people from my childhood who had no idea I was a sportswriter.

I didn’t do much new in Milwaukee from my last trip, revisiting Cempazuchi (and ordering the same stuff) and Beans & Barley (going for the whole wheat pancakes, which were very good but very wheaty). I finally visited Kopp’s for frozen custard, and it was very good, particularly the texture, which was probably an 80 on the 20-80 scale – you’re not likely to find smoother custard on the planet. Their chocolate isn’t very chocolatey, but the only place I hit last year that had a strong chocolate custard had the worst texture.

I had breakfast at Hotch-a-Do, across the street from Beans & Barley, a really funky, very local place that unfortunately only opens at 9 am. The blueberry and banana pancakes were a little rich and mildly flavored but generally good, although I’d probably give something else on the menu a shot next time around. They do serve Alterra coffee, which I tried the next day at the Alterra stand at the Milwaukee airport. I’ve largely given up drip coffee, but Matthew Leach at mlb.com swears by Alterra, and he didn’t lie – that is some Damn Fine Coffee, dark but not overroasted, with plenty of character of the bean (Nicaraguan, mildly acidic but well-rounded with good body), and brewed at the right strength.

Matthew and I also had dinner at Elsa’s on the Park after I found out that Sobelman’s was closed for dinner on Labor Day (but open in the afternoon … that makes, well, no sense). He raved about his burger, but mine was cooked enough to serve as a coaster despite the fact that I ordered it medium. They also lose points for having no beer on tap and almost nothing local, but I did enjoy a Chicago beer, Goose Island Matilda, a “strong Belgian pale ale” that was a rich amber with great body and a pronounced note of good-quality honey.

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→ September 5, 2009
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Philadelphia eats.

Before I get to Philly, a few of you have asked about the restaurant where my cousin is the pastry chef. It’s called City Limits Diner, and there are two locations, one on the edge of White Plains near Yonkers, the other in Stamford, Connecticut. My cousin is the pastry chef and her husband is the executive chef. I wouldn’t bring it up if I didn’t genuinely like the food. If you do go, make sure you have dessert, and tell your server that Tracy’s cousin Keith sent you (not that it will get you anything, but it’ll score me some points).

I ate all of my non-ballpark meals in Philly at Reading Terminal Market, an eating paradise on Filbert between 11th and 12th streets, right across from the Market East train station. I could have stayed a week and still had places there I wanted to try.

For breakfast, I hit the Dutch Eating Place – Dutch as in Pennsylvania Dutch, a community responsible for at least ten of the stands around the market. They’re best known for their blueberry pancakes, which were solid average or a bit above, and for their cured meats, which were a mixed bag – the pork sausage was meaty and peppery and the portion was beyond generous, but the turkey bacon was gamey and greasy. I also tried their “apple” french toast, which as far as I can tell, was just some whole or multi-grain sandwich bread, dipped in egg batter, fried, and topped with too much cheap cinnamon, with no evidence whatsoever of apples. The pancakes were worth a trip, though. Cash only, cost $10 including tea and tip both days.

DiNic’s serves hot Italian sandwiches in just a few varieties, but everyone recommended the roast pork, thinly sliced, served on fresh crusty Italian bread, with just a few possible toppings – sharp provolone, roasted peppers (sweet or hot), broccoli rabe, or spinach. I went with the rabe and sweet peppers. The sandwich was about a foot long, so I barely got halfway through it, and the inside of the bread was soaked with the juice of the pork (that’s a good thing). For about $8 it’s a bargain and was the best thing I ate on the trip.

Delilah’s Soul Food had some of the best fried chicken I’ve ever eaten. Even though the chicken was more warm than hot when I got it, the crust was still crispy, not greasy, and was well seasoned with salt and pepper without having too much of either. For $8.50 or so you get chicken, cornbread (the sweet kind, unfortunately), and one side; I chose collard greens and got a big bowl that I got maybe halfway through and then poured the juice at the bottom over the cornbread. It’s one of the few places in RTM with table service.

The Famous Fourth Street Cookie Company had a long line around lunch time on my first trip there; the cookies are constantly coming out of the oven, so you can get something hot at that hour, although I found that at room temperature a few hours later, they were just average cookies. They’re a good four inches or so in diameter and cost about $2 apiece. The “double chocolate chip” is just a chocolate chip cookie with a lot of chips, and the chocolate chip with pecans didn’t skimp on the nuts.

I grabbed a pumpkin muffin from Le Bus Bakery for the flight home; it was a bit greasy, staining the paper bag, but it didn’t have the usual pumpkin muffin flavor of stale pumpkin pie spice mix, and it wasn’t overly sweet. There was a faint spicy note, almost like cardamom, but otherwise the pumpkin was allowed to take its place at the center of the muffin.

Leaving RTM, La Colombe is a small cafe best known for its coffee-roasting operation, as they apparently supply many of the best restaurants in town. I found their espresso to be far too watery with no body, but it did have a defined flavor, with strong notes of cocoa beans and a pleasant acidity. My guess is that the beans were from Africa, although I’m no expert on varietals since I always use blends to make espresso at home.

I learned about Capogiro Gelato a few years ago on the short-lived Food Network show, The Hungry Detective, a good concept dressed up with a few too many gimmicks but with plenty of emphasis on the actual food. They have at least one more location now, at 13th and Walnut, very close to my hotel and the RTM. The gelato is very expensive – a medium, roughly 3/4 cup of gelato, cost $6.15 with tax – but outstanding quality. I got three flavors, figuring that was almost an obligation to my readers: dark chocolate, coconut, and toasted almond. The almond was a waste, as the gelato itself had almost no flavor; it comes with toasted slivered almonds, but the flavor needs to be in the gelato, not on it. The coconut was ultra-smooth with a strong, clean coconut flavor. The dark chocolate stole the show, probably the darkest, richest chocolate ice cream I’ve ever had, with a thick consistency more like cocoa pudding ice cream than a typical chocolate gelato; a medium cup of that might be overkill, but I’m willing to risk it.

I didn’t eat at any concessions at CBP, but it’s worth mentioning that the press box food was, by press box food standards, impressive. The worst part of eating while traveling is how hard it is to eat fruits and vegetables while sticking to quick, inexpensive places, and the CBP press box had cups of fresh fruit, a basic salad mix that wasn’t brown or wilted or dried out, and a few vegetable side dishes each night. I know this isn’t of much use to the majority of you, but I wanted to give credit to the Phillies for doing a nice job.

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→ September 2, 2009
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Yankee Stadium eats.

I’ll be on ESPN 710 in LA at 1:12 pm PDT today, and on Mike & Mike tomorrow morning at 9:25 am EDT. I posted a piece on five interesting prospects recalled on Tuesday. I also appeared on AllNight on ESPN Radio last night.

I am not impressed by the food at Yankee Stadium. You build a $1 billion ballpark in the greatest eating city in the country – at taxpayer expense, of course – and you put in Johnny Rockets and Nathan’s and Famiglia Pizza? There’s virtually nothing local. The breadth of cuisines represented in the city where you can find food from any country where they eat food is dismal. And I only found one item there there I’d actually recommend*, the steamed dumplings at the noodle bar in the third base food court. They were superb, not heavy, not over-gingered (I like ginger, but a lot of restaurants go a little berserk in the dumplings), and steamed perfectly. You get four for $6, which wasn’t quite enough for lunch, but two servings would have been overkill.

*Okay, I lied, they have Carvel, which, for those of you outside the northeast, is frozen custard that rivals anything I’ve had in Wisconsin. It’s overpriced, and you can get it just as easily outside the Stadium, but yes, I had some, and you probably should too.

I went to the Lobel’s stand for a $15 steak sandwich, which seems to be the consensus “best food item in Yankee Stadium.” I don’t really have a problem with paying $15 for good beef; beef is expensive, and it should be, because cheap beef is nasty to eat, bad for the environment, and really bad for the cows*. But this sandwich was boring as hell – the steak had absolutely no flavor of its own, it was drowned in some undefined sauce, and, worst of all, it was tough. I’m no aficionado of steak, but one thing I know is that good steak should not be tough. Either it wasn’t cooked right, or it wasn’t carved right, not that I could tell under the tsunami of brown stuff on top.

* Okay, beef production in general is bad for cows. Just go with it.

That’s the good and the bad; here’s the ugly. Zeppole are the Italian version of fried dough – thick blobs of yeast-raised dough deep-fried until crispy on the outside but soft and chewy on the inside, and then doused with powdered sugar. If you grew up in New York and ever went to an Italian feast, you probably love them as I do. What they serve at Yankee Stadium and call zeppole should get the concessions people arrested. They’re tiny, tasteless, and, worst of all, fried before the game. It’s a ballpark. You have deep fryers at full blast all around the place. You can’t fry a few zeppole to order? If they’re not going to do it right, they should just take it off the menu entirely.

I did have one meal in Manhattan on this trip, breakfast at Good Enough to Eat at 83rd and Amsterdam, recommended by a few readers, including a couple of NYC sportswriters. I asked the girl behind the bar what I should get, and she suggested the four-grain blueberry pancakes, which sounded good since 1) I like pancakes 2) I like blueberries 3) “four grain” makes it sound all healthy-like. They were fine, nothing special, and including a few stray blackberries, which I’m assuming was an accident rather than a gift from a Keith Law fanboy in the kitchen. The pancakes themselves had a faint cardboard-y taste of whole wheat – common, but avoidable – and they were a little overdone and dry, and probably shouldn’t have left the kitchen like that, although it takes a lot more to get me to send a dish back and waste the food.

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→ August 24, 2009
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Denver eats.

There’s a short blog entry on Troy Tulowitzki’s surge from Saturday night on my ESPN blog, with another just filed this morning.

I’ll be on ESPNEWS today at 2 and 2:30 pm EDT and possibly on 710 AM in Los Angeles around 12:40 pm PDT.

Denver rocks. What a great downtown – I probably walked six or seven miles in the three days, hopped the free shuttle on 16th a few times, and had a few good meals. I love downtown ballparks where there’s an actual downtown around the park, and Coors Field has a lot going on in the area. (The presence of many clubs nearby meant quite a bit of postgame eye candy walking the other way up Blake Street, a nice bonus.)

I got four different breakfast suggestions from readers but only one was really walkable from the hotel (I didn’t rent a car) – Snooze, on Larimer, very close to the stadium. Three of you recommended it and I can see why, as their food is very fresh and they make some excellent, funky pancakes.

I went twice, and the pancakes are clearly the main attraction. The first day, I got the ginger-peach pancakes, which had diced local peaches and crystallized ginger in the batter and a topping of streusel (just a little) and ginger butter. The second day, I went with eggs, chorizo sausage, hashbrowns, plus one whole wheat-blueberry pancake with sunflower seeds, maple syrup, and blueberry butter. Both types of pancakes had a great, light texture, with lots of big air pockets and a complex flavor. The whole wheat ones were either from a mild sourdough batter or made with buttermilk, probably the latter. The peaches, unfortunately, weren’t fully ripe and ended up bitter after cooking, but I imagine on a better day they’re pretty outstanding. They also do a pancake of the day; Sunday’s had white chocolate chips in the batter, which sounded too much like dessert to me.

My first meal at Snooze came with a bit of entertainment. I was seated in one of the five chairs at the counter, and the seat to my right opened up, at which point a woman asked me if anyone was sitting there and I told her no. She proceeded to sit there to make a call on her cell phone but didn’t actually order anything, so after five minutes or so, the host told her she couldn’t sit there. A little while later, she sat down to eat in the chair to my left, and before she’d finished the process of sitting she asked me which pancakes I had gotten. It was downhill from there:

Me: The ginger-peach pancakes.

Her: What kind of peaches are they?

Me: (reaching over, opening her menu, and pointing to the entry for the ginger-peach pancakes.) It’s all right there.

Her: Yeah, but I want to know what kind of peaches they are.

Me: I don’t know. Why don’t you check the menu?

Her: But are they canned peaches?

Me: I don’t know.

Her: I just want to know if they’re canned peaches.

Me: Ma’am, I did not actually make the pancakes. I’m only eating them. Perhaps you should ask someone who works here?

Her: How could you be in such a bad mood? It’s too early to be in a bad mood.

Oh, it gets better. She had already ordered breakfast to go, but then, just as it was coming out, she decided to sit at the counter and made them take the pancakes she ordered out of the portable container and put them on a plate, which seemed petty and wasteful. Then she ordered a sampler of two or three other kinds of pancakes – like I said, these are huge – and tried the one she originally ordered, the whole-wheat blueberry pancakes, which come with maple syrup already on them. And that set her off again.

Her: Why does it come with the syrup already on the pancakes?

Server: That’s how we serve that pancake here, ma’am.

Her: But the pancakes get soaked. The syrup makes it too sweet. You know that maple syrup is mostly sugar!

Server: Ma’am, it says on the menu that it comes with maple syrup on it. [To be fair, the menu wasn’t explicit about this.]

Her: You should never serve it on the pancakes already. You should serve it on the side.

Server: Well, that’s how we do it … here.

When I went back on Sunday and sat at the counter, the server (a different one), asked if I’d been there before, and I said yes, the previous morning, and I was sitting next to a crazy woman. At which point he said, “Oh, you must have been sitting in that same chair, and she was there (pointing to her seat).” Apparently, she’s a regular, and she’s always batty.

That day-two server actually tried to coax me out of my EMP + a pancake order, saying, “You can get three eggs anywhere. I think what you really need is a benedict,” and he’s right in that they do have a half-dozen options of eggs and hollandaise. I’m not a big hollandaise guy anyway – I respect any chef willing to make it because it’s time-consuming and finicky, but I find it extremely heavy – and Snooze’s hollandaises all contained either cream cheese (which I don’t care for) or smoked cheddar (which I despise), so while a few of those options looked great (like the one with smoked pork), I didn’t see the point of getting a benedict-hold-the-hollandaise. He was right, though – the eggs etc. were on the boring side and the hashbrowns were undercooked, with nowhere near enough crispy brown parts.

When I went to Long Beach earlier this month, I had sushi at Koi over in Seal Beach and sat at the sushi bar. A guy sat down next to me and clearly had been there a few times, so I asked if he was a regular, and he said he had been for years but had since moved to Denver. So we chatted for a while, and I told him I was there on business, I was a sportswriter, loved food, etc., and he said, “Wait, what’s your name?” Turns out he’s not a reader, but a friend of his is, so I pointed Gabe (the guy I was sitting next to) here and asked him to shoot me a note with some Denver food rec’s. He suggested Sushi Sasa, which turned out to be one of the best sushi places I have ever been to. It was a solid 20-minute walk from the hotel, but I got a spectacular view of the river as I crossed over the bridge to get to Platte St, and the food was well worth it.

Sushi Sasa is kind of trendy-looking inside and they do plenty of gussied-up rolls and overwrought appetizers, but if you go there for nigiri or sashimi, the fish is amazingly fresh, easily rivaling that of good West Coast or NYC joints. Sasa’s daily specials menu mentioned that two of the fish had been flown in from some specific market in Japan that day, and they make their own unagi (barbecued fresh-water eel), which I’m told (by some of you, I believe) is unusual, as most places buy it already cooked and just reheat it for service. The maguro tuna was the best I’ve ever tasted and the salmon was close. The seaweed salad was a bit of a rip at $8 and came with some very fresh but unnecessary vegetables on top (e.g., one asparagus spear, cut into 2″ lengths), but it was interesting to see three different kinds of seaweed instead of the standard one, including a burgundy variety I’ve never had before that was slightly bitter and didn’t have the tooth of the more typical, green-and-clear kind. (Sorry, I’m not up on my seaweed terminology.) Even the green tea was good.

(By the way, I’m a piker in the kitchen compared to Gabe, who chronicles some of his cooking exploits on his blog, including making his own duck prosciutto.)

My one other stop was a minor indulgence, as I am a bit of a sucker for local fast-food burger joints and saw one called Good Times across the street from my hotel. It’s not Five Guys or In-n-Out, with a bigger menu and fries that aren’t hand-cut, but for a fast-food option it was two or three steps above the McDonald’s/BK class of “only if I’m desperate and even then I’ll think twice” establishments. The toppings at Good Times were also very fresh – bright green lettuce that still crunched, thick slices of juicy and faintly sweet tomatoes – and the beef (100% all natural Coleman … do I even want to know what 80% natural beef has as its other 20%?) was better than the bland, generic fast-food burgers forced down our throa… Sorry again, CSPI just hacked my blog, but I’m back. It’s a solid fast-food burger. The fries are coated, which I don’t really like, but they’re seasoned and not over-salted; skip the “wild sauce,” which is just barbecue sauce mixed with mayonnaise and is the color of terra cotta. Good Times also serves frozen custard, which I tried the night before, although they only do two flavors a day, vanilla and a special flavor, which was strawberry on Saturday. The vanilla had a good custard texture, and the mild flavor was nothing a little hot fudge couldn’t fix.

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→ May 25, 2009
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Birmingham eats, 2009.

Before I get to the eats:

* ESPNEWS hit coming up in a few minutes here at 3:40 pm EDT. It’s via phone.
* I filed a revised top 100 last week but it was never posted. A revised revised top 100 will go up on the draft blog tomorrow.
* Erik over at FutureRedbirds has a long and well-researched post on drafting prep pitchers in the first round. I don’t agree with his conclusions – among other reasons, I think his dataset is too old – but it is well worth your time.
* Liza Minnelli might be the next lead singer of Queen.

I only hit two new spots this trip, in part because I wanted to go back to two places where I ate last year (Jim n Nick’s and Bogues), and in part because I only ate one meal after breakfast on each of the two days of the tournament. There’s a Publix right up the road from Regions Park where I could grab yogurt and fruit to tide me over, and really, a pulled pork sandwich at Jim n Nick’s with a side of collard greens was enough to keep me full for hours.

I tried two new restaurants for breakfast. The better of the two is Edgar’s, a bakery that I guess only recently added a full breakfast menu, with everything made to order. I went with the usual EMPT, and oddly enough, the T wasn’t so hot but the EMP parts were excellent; the breakfast potatoes were small red potatoes, parboiled, then sauteed with onions and herbs (rosemary and thyme, I think), and, for once, they actually had enough salt on them. The biscuit was inedible; it was more of a biscuit-cake than a soft, Southern-style biscuit, so I bought a blueberry scone for the road. The scone was solid-average, which is weird given how bad the biscuit was, since the difference between a biscuit and a scone is minimal. They had a wide selection of cakes, cupcakes, cookies, and muffins, with two or three varieties of scones and a few other baked goods, while the breakfast menu includes breadier fare like French toast. They get bonus points for some seriously high-end bagged tea.

Klingler’s is a German bakery with a breakfast menu that is heavier on the, um, heavier fare. I went with the pecan waffle, because I find waffles very hard to resist; it tasted of pecans and a little bit of butter, but it was still on the heavy side for a Belgian-style waffle. (Belgian waffles should be light and airy with a crisp exterior and usually contain whipped egg whites to provide that lift.) The side sausage was a smoked bratwurst, split in half and grilled, kind of spicy and savory for a breakfast sausage. It was adequate but unremarkable, and I’d rather drive the extra five minutes or so each way to eat at Edgar’s.

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→ May 8, 2009
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Sacramento, Oakland, Palo Alto eats.

Klawchat is tentatively scheduled for 1 pm EDT Friday. I’ll also be on the Herd around 1:40 pm, which will be taped.

I bounced around northern California a little last week and found a few spots worth highlighting. The find of the trip was Bakesale Betty in the Telegraph/Temecula District of Oakland, a recommendation from a scout who shall remain nameless but whose culinary credibility went through the roof, because BB is a 70. They’re known for their fried chicken sandwich, which includes a large portion of perfectly fried chicken breast, about half the thickness of a whole breast, spicy, crispy, and not really greasy. It’s served with a big dose of a cabbage-based slaw in a mild vinaigrette and served on a slightly dense white mini-baguette. I told the cute girl taking my order that “I was told I need to order a fried chicken sandwich and a lemon ice,” but they were out of lemon ice. That may be why I got the to-die-for just-out-of-the-oven molasses spice cookie for free, although I prefer to believe that it was my stunning good looks and winning smile that sealed the deal. Sandwich + bottled Tejana iced tea were about $8.50. Srsly.

I also had two hits in Sacramento, one dinner, one breakfast. Dinner was at Kathmandu Kitchen, a Nepali restaurant on Broadway in the middle of a sort of ethnic restaurant row, two or three doors down from an Ethiopian place called Queen of Sheba that has a good reputation. At Kathmandu, I tried the vegetable sampler, which was, surprisingly, enough food to fill me despite the absence of meat. The platter comes with two samosas, five momos (a steamed dumpling with a thick doughy wrapper), dal (lentil soup), bhat (as far as I could tell, just white basmati rice), naan, green beans with a little chili pepper, and five different sauces/chutneys – one with mint, one with tomatoes, one with tamarind, one that was sweet like a fruit preserve, and one that was yogurt-based. The samosas, momos, and green beans were all intensely flavored, although the momos were too heavily flavored, with a fragrant (cardamom?) note that I didn’t like. The dal was thinner than what I’ve had at Indian restaurants, but I don’t know if this is authentic to Nepali cuisine. The naan was a little dry, but I don’t know if there’s a white bread product on the planet that I don’t like. The only real failure was the chai, which I found undrinkable, but again, may be suffering from a lack of acquaintance with authentic Nepali cuisine. Solid 50, leaning towards 55 for good service.

Breakfast – twice – was at Cafe Bernardo, a funky upscale bar/restaurant that does fancy breakfasts right but charges pedestrian prices. I tried the Belgian waffle, with a pecan butter that I could eat by the pound; the amaretto French toast, with very high-quality bread and toasted (slightly overtoasted) almonds, and a portion that exceeded my gastric capacity; and the chicken apple sausage, split in half and grilled, not dry and just a little spicy. Order tea and for $2.75 you’ll get a pot with loose leaves and at least four cups’ worth of tea in it. Street parking abounds but there are meters. It was just about full on Saturday morning at around 9 am, but half full the day before at around 8:30. It’s a 50/55 as well.

One bad meal in Sacramento came at New Canton, also on Broadway, a very popular dim sum restaurant. I had four dishes; two were good, two were hot, and if you did the Venn diagram on those the intersection would be the null set. I gave up for fear that dish #5 would be the one that poisoned me.

I was in Palo Alto for the Wheeler/Storen matchup and ate two meals there. The Counter is an upscale burger bar on California Avenue with a build-your-own shtick similar to that of Blu Burger in Phoenix, although the Counter uses Angus beef instead of American Kobe. It’s apparently a nationwide chain, although I didn’t know it at the time and have never seen one before. The ingredient quality was good, and the portions of toppings were generous (I’m going from memory but I believe I had their soft herbed goat cheese, sauteed mushrooms, roasted red peppers, mixed baby greens, and grilled onions), so much so that half of them slid off the burger as I ate. The problem was that I ordered the burger medium, which they say is their default option, and got one that was well-done. I mentioned this to the bartender, who called the manager over, who took one look at the burger and told me it was on the house. She mentioned that it was “two in a row” for the kitchen, so someone got in a little hot water that day. I might not have said anything, but the burger was pretty dry from the overcooking. I’ll give them some benefit of the doubt because the ingredients were good and the manager was hopping mad about the issue, so at least they take it seriously.

So, spending less than expected on lunch, I decided to go a little upscale for dinner and hit a fancy Cuban place on California, La Bodeguita del Medio for dinner, which was a dud. I ordered masitas, which is usually a dish of marinated pork shoulder chunks that have been slowly braised until tender; the chefs at La Bodeguita apparently feel that trimming the fat off the meat is for sissies, and the meat appears to have been cooked too quickly at too high a temperature, resulting in meat that fell apart but was dry. The meat and caramelized onions were sitting on the rice and black beans, which ended up swimming in sauce. I had asked the waiter how spicy the dish was, and he said “mild,” which was an outright lie. And the place isn’t cheap. I guess it’s a 40 – really, you want to find someplace better, but in a dire emergency it’s playable, like if your star restaurant is closed for 50 days for using a banned substance.

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