Baltimore, Charleston, and Indianapolis eats.

I’ve been remiss in feeding the blog with food posts, so here’s a rundown of where I ate on short trips to Baltimore, Charleston, and Indianapolis in the last six weeks.

Baltimore

Dooby’s is a coffee shop and all-day café with a real kitchen, serving traditional breakfasts and pan-Asian dishes from pork buns to street noodles to banh mi. It’s all very, very good, and the space itself is fantastic. They use Passenger coffee and both the drip and espresso offerings are solid, although I would quibble that the milk foam on the espresso was a little oversteamed. The breads they use are really spectacular, from the brioche on their breakfast sandwiches (with a bright pepper jam) to the crisp French bread on the banh mi. We spent probably six or seven hours there, eating, drinking coffee and tea, and writing. I’d probably skip the pork buns just because the pork belly was so fatty, even though I loved the glaze and the spicy mayo on it and even the buns. The breakfast sandwich was way beyond what I expected, though, with eggs made to order – and my over medium egg was indeed over medium, with a warm runny yolk that ended up all over my plate and a little on the counter because I’m a mess – and that outstanding brioche. I preferred their food and coffee to that of Baby’s on Fire in the same neighborhood; their drip coffee was underextracted and much their food is microwaved, although it’s a cool place, with some new and used vinyl on offer.

The Mount Vernon Marketplace is a fantastic food hall with a solid variety of food and drink options, although I wish they were open past 9 pm on a Friday night. Fishnet’s Baltimore Bomber sandwich is their signature item, fried white fish with lemony mayo, onions, lettuce, and cheese on a crunchy French bread roll. They fried this exceptionally well – it was deep brown and crunchy but not greasy or heavy at all, and the breading held to the fish throughout. The fish itself was fresh but had no flavor and the texture wasn’t ideal for deep frying, as it seemed to fall apart within the breading. That could have been just the particular fillet I got, though. Don’t skip the French fries, which were also exceptional; it’s rare to get fries that ungreasy, and they were salted properly. Around the corner is Slurpin’ Ramen, which does does a great shoyu broth, the shining ingredient in the ramen. The noodles were more average and didn’t have great tooth to them, but they did absorb the flavor of the broth well. The shrimp were clearly very high quality, tasting just of the sea, and the soy egg was also very well done.

We stayed at the boutique Ulysses Hotel in Mount Vernon, which has two bars of note, one inside the hotel and one attached but not owned by the hotel itself. The cocktail bar Coral Wig is the latter, located on the right side of the hotel, accessible only from the outside. They have a Filipino-influenced cocktail list that’s heavy on the rum, although their best offering is the Banana Hammock, a banana and nutmeg-themed take on a margarita. Within the hotel, Bloom is a more traditional bar with a broader assortment of liquors but less appealing house cocktails, and the very kitschy décor didn’t work as well for me as the upscale tiki vibe of Coral Wig.

Allora was the big disappointment of the trip; pitched as a Roman osteria, they’re serving pasta out of the box in sauces I could (and often do) make at home, and the gelato dessert was, in fact, Talenti brand. I saw them scoop it. No disrespect to Talenti, which makes a fine sea salt caramel, but I expect better at a fine restaurant.

Charleston

Renzo has a small menu of homemade pasta dishes and pizzas from the owners of the Faculty Lounge, with a focus on local produce and natural wines. The pasta is the real star, with a menu that’s constantly changing but that always features a couple of dishes of house-made pasta. We had a malfatti alla carbonara that was among the best dishes of that type I’ve ever had, even though it wasn’t completely traditional. The sauce was delicious but it was the pasta itself, perfectly al dente with actual flavor to it beyond the sauce; I’d try any pasta dish these folks served after eating that. We also tried a margherita pizza that was perfectly solid, closer to New York style than anything Italian; I might be underselling it a little because it doesn’t fit perfectly into a regional style. We also had a fresh tomato salad that I imagine is very seasonal, but we were clearly there at the height of tomato season.

Legend Deli is a fantastic little sandwich shop just off the campus of the College of Charleston with a menu designed by Tyler Hunt, the former sous chef at Husk. I tried the G.O.A.T., a turkey sandwich with whipped goat cheese, onion jam, arugula, and roasted red pepper mayo, but the standout ingredient was actually the crispy sourdough bread, which hit that nostalgia spot – it brought back memories of having a sandwich (usually tuna) as a kid and having the bread toasted just to that point where it was just all crunch.

For coffee, Second State seems to be the best option in town. The coffee I got, which I think was their Colombia Black Condor, was good but roasted a shade darker than I like, so I didn’t get many tasting notes other than some cocoa.

Indianapolis

The Eagle is a “food and beer hall” with an extensive menu of southern cooking and they’re known for their pressure cooker fried chicken, which did not disappoint. I went with the quarter dark, because I have actual standards, along with spoonbread with maple butter and collards as the sides. The collards were outstanding, and while the spoonbread was sweeter than I would normally like, it was a good contrast to the salty fried chicken and the salty and slightly tart collards. The chicken and one side would have been a better portion, as I only ate about half of the spoon bread and a little more of the collards, but I didn’t realize how large the sides where when I ordered. They also offer a five-cheese mac and cheese and horseradish mashed potatoes, both of which the bartender recommended, but that sounded way too heavy and I was determined to eat something green. They do also offer a solid craft beer selection, local and national.

Los Arroyos is an upscale Mexican restaurant and bar with a lot of overdone “margaritas” – seriously, that’s a simple enough drink, stop putting berries or habaneros in it – but a credible, fancier take on Mexican food. I went with ceviche after several days of heavier fare from food trucks and The Eagle, and the table shared a serving of guacamole, both of which were solid-average – better for freshness of ingredients than the recipes, with very fresh avocadoes in both dishes.

Commissary Barber & Barista is, indeed, a barbershop as well as a café and a bar, using coffee from a variety of small, third-wave roasters. I did not get a haircut, but I did get a macchiato, where the coffee part was excellent but the milk was overfoamed and spooned on rather than poured on – it’s a minor thing but I think the pourable foam offers the best texture and blends a little with the coffee itself. The barista was playing Slowdive’s Souvlaki, which is definitely worth extra points. The coffee there was better than what I had at Coat Check around the corner, where the milk was even more overdone and the coffee itself was too tangy, which is usually a function of underextraction.

Seattle eats.

I hadn’t been to Seattle in 22 years before this past weekend, and it was 25 years since I lived there for a summer. Other than a swing through Pike Place Market, I didn’t hit any old haunts like Caffe Ladro or Gelatiamo or Zeke’s Pizza on this trip, between wanting to try new places, skipping a rental car, and staying in a hotel near the convention center that wasn’t near where I lived in 1998 (the northern side of Queen Anne).

I didn’t plan to do a brief pizza tour of Seattle, but that’s how things worked out. The first stop was Delancey, a wood-fired pizzeria in Essex that does an especially thin crust, more so than traditional Neapolitan pizzas have. I had the crimini, a white pizza with that type of mushroom, thyme, fresh mozzarella, and olive oil. The flavors were spot on – I happen to love mushrooms with thyme in any dish or form – but unfortunately the pizza was slightly overcooked, and I say that as someone who likes a little char on the edges of any pizza cooked at these temperatures. They do make an excellent Manhattan, though.

The next night, I went to Café Lago on Capitol Hill because they’re renowned for handmade pastas … but on Mondays it’s $10 for their wood-fired pizzas, and who am I to argue with that? I ordered a half portion of their Caesar salad, which was solid-average, and then the salsiccia pizza, with sausage, red peppers, fontina, and mozzarella. The cuisine here is Tuscan, so the pizza isn’t Neapolitan but it’s similar, just with less dough around the edges, and the dough was about as light as I’ve ever had – I can’t believe I ate the whole thing, but I did, because the dough felt so light and the ratio of toppings to dough was perfect. The sausage was the predominant flavor on the pizza, in a good way; it wasn’t excessively salty or flavored with fennel, which I find can overwhelm a pizza. Delancey’s style is closer to my personal favorite, but Café Lago’s pizza was better. (I also had the interesting experience of hearing the song that’s been my ring tone for at least 15 years now, “Love Spreads” by the Stone Roses, on the sound system in the restaurant – the bartender told me he makes his own playlists for when he’s on duty – which led to some serious cognitive confusion.)

I could walk from the hotel to the Taylor Shellfish Oyster Bar on Capitol Hill in less than ten minutes, so I had lunch there to take a break from writing on Monday, ordering their shrimp roll and three (raw) oysters, which I asked the server to choose for me because I don’t know a damn thing about oysters. They were much larger than what I’m used to as an east coaster and the server did a hell of a job, giving me three different flavor profiles from briny to sweet. The shrimp roll has local bay shrimp, celery, shallots, pickled Fresno chiles, tossed in a light herb aioli and served on a brioche bun. The bun was the best part, which is no knock on the filling, but my god, I could eat that bread every day until I die and be happy. Shrimp salad is so hit or miss, mostly miss in my experience, but in this case the dressing was so light that I could still taste the shrimp and the chiles.

Taurus Ox also shows up on best-of lists and was another reader recommendation. It’s a Laotian restaurant with a small but fascinating menu – they’re apparently known for their burger, among other things – and I went with what seemed like a traditional choice, the Laotian pork sausage with sticky rice, chilled vegetables and jaew bong. I could tell this was expertly made and included very high-quality ingredients … but I didn’t like any of it. The predominant flavor was capsaicin, not just for its spice but for its strongly bitter flavor, couple with the bitter heat of galangal, so all I got was bitter and hot. The texture of the sausage was fantastic, but it was hard to enjoy it with all the bitter notes. I think this just wasn’t for me.

Oriental Mart is a stand in Pike Place Market, across the street from the main hall, and you can order food at the front (street-side) to eat at one of the handful of stools in the back. They only offer a handful of dishes but you can watch the chef, Ate Lila, making them if you sit in the right spot. I split my order between salmon sinigang and chicken adobo, and my only complaint was that I wanted more of both. The chicken was fall-off-the-bone tender with the deep gingery flavor of the braising liquid, while the salmon was perfectly medium when I got it, although sitting in the hot liquid of the soup it was probably going to end up overcooked if I hadn’t eaten it quickly. The broth itself was only a little tangy – I don’t know Filipino cuisine well, but I know sinigang is supposed to be sour – and I wished there were a few more vegetables in it. Okay, that’s a modest complaint.

Portage Bay Café is kind of the Seattle version of the southwest chain Snooze; they do oversized breakfast plates and big combinations. I had the mushroom benedict, which had some very fresh and maybe undercooked mushrooms, while the breakfast potatoes were well-cooked but way too salty.

Hello Robin is a cookie shop on Capitol Hill that also sells Molly Moon’s ice cream and, if you are a little bit creatively inclined, you can get them … together. I did the “open-faced” version, because I am but one small man with a tiny stomach, getting one chocolate chip cookie with “melted chocolate” ice cream, the latter of which reminded me a ton of Toscanini’s Belgian chocolate ice cream from my Massachusetts days. The cookie was really outstanding even though I probably would call it overcooked, given how browned the edges were, but it was bursting with brown sugar and butter flavor. This was my post-Taurus Ox dessert and it made up for it.

Frankie & Jo’s, right next door to Delancey, does vegan ice creams, and some of the flavors are, to be kind, batshit. Not in the sense of containing batshit, but nobody needs chaga mushrooms or maca root in their frozen non-dairy dessert product. However, if you navigate the menu carefully, there are some more sensible flavor combinations. I went with mint brownie, because I’m not a savage; it’s peppermint ice cream with dark chocolate brownie pieces and cacao nibs. They use a coconut milk base, and the texture is as good as I’ve ever had in non-dairy ice cream. There was no point where I wished I was eating the real thing, which is impressive because I love real ice cream from cow’s milk, with all the butterfat and, unfortunately, the lactose. After eating an entire pizza at Delancey, this was the dessert I needed.

I tried two coffee spots while in Seattle, both fairly old school, Victrola and Espresso Vivace. Victrola was the easier walk, so I went there twice and came home with a bag of Rwandan beans from there. They don’t do pour-over but seem to always have a single-origin on drip, as well as the usual array of espresso drinks. Vivace runs like a machine, with two lines and a barista dedicated to each, and their espresso struck a perfect balance of acidity and natural sweetness.

Finally, two people recommended Stateside, which I walked by a half-dozen times … but they’re only open Wednesday through Saturday, so I wasn’t able to try it. They do upscale Vietnamese-influenced food and I’m sorry I missed them and their partner cocktail bar Foreign National.

Arizona eats, March 2023.

Belly Kitchen & Bar’s downtown Phoenix location (they also have one in Gilbert) is easy to miss – it looks like a house and is located on a tiny lot on the southeast corner of 7th Ave & Camelback. The menu is influenced by Thai, Vietnamese, and Japanese cuisines, and the dishes are all supposed to work with the wine & cocktail menu, although I admit that usually after one cocktail I’m not ober enough to make that connection. Anyway, I ordered the bartender’s two main suggestions, the crispy spring rolls and the pan-seared king trumpet mushrooms, as well as their rum and rye old fashioned. (Two of them, as it turned out.) The mushrooms were the more interesting of the two, tossed with some small cubes of tofu and served in a black bean and Sichuan peppercorn sauce that was faintly sweet, a little spicy, and very earthy with a ton of umami from the fermented beans. The spring rolls were a very good exemplar of their type, served with large lettuce leaves, mint sprigs, and nuoc cham sauce for dipping, although it was nothing I hadn’t had before, just generally not this good. And, somewhat unfortunately for the purposes of this blog, that was all I could eat – I was full, and just left wistfully eyeing the plates my neighbors got. I really wish I’d had room for the jackfruit and mustard green fried rice in particular.

Pizzeria Virtù is the second outpost from Chef Gio Osso of Virtù Honest Craft, although he’s also now opened a third place, Piccolo Virtù, so I’m behind. The pizzeria is more than just a pizza outlet, with an assortment of fresh house-made pastas and traditional Italian plates as starters. I went with my longtime friend Bill Mitchell, whose words and photos you may have seen over at Baseball America, and we did one item from each section – their insalata with arugula, grape tomatoes, red onion, shaved Parmiggiano-Reggiano, and a lemon-olive oil dressing; the pizza with ‘nduja, a spicy sausage from the Calabria region of southern Italy; and their rigatoni with tomatoes, basil, prosciutto, and more Parmiggiano-Reggiano. The pasta was by far the best dish we got, cooked truly al dente with bright sweetness from the tomatoes and basil and exactly the right amount of salinity even with two very salty ingredients in the prosciutto and the cheese. The pizza was solid, more Neapolitan-adjacent than Neapolitan, without a ton of air in the outer ridge of the crust but saved by the high quality of the toppings. (They also misspelled ‘nduja on the menu, writing “n’duja” instead, which is only funny because it’s an Italian term.) The salad was a good salad, nothing more or less, but I’m also glad we didn’t get something heavier. I can also vouch for the amaro viale cocktail, a combination of bourbon, three different amari (potable bitters), and sweet vermouth that hits like a negroni but with the smoothness of the bourbon rather than the herbal notes of gin.

Sweet Dee’s Bakeshop is on East Stetson not too far from Old Town, focusing mostly on pastries and sweets. Their breakfast sandwich comes with a scrambled egg, bacon, avocado, and goat cheese on a croissant, and was solid to very good other than the common problem of the egg being cooked more than I like it. I usually stick to the classics when I have breakfast out there – Hillside Spot, Matt’s, Crêpe Bar, sometimes Snooze – but this was excellent for something faster when I had a morning game to hit.

Futuro Coffee has been on my to-do list for Phoenix for years now, at least going back before the pandemic, as its adherents have argued it’s the best espresso place in the Valley. They certainly do take their espresso seriously, with a single-origin option each day, and the standard options to take it with varying degrees of milk. The day I went, the single-origin was an Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, which in my experience does not play well with dairy; I asked the barista his advice and he said he thought it was best black. It’s served in a wide terra cotta cup, unlike any coffee vessel I’ve ever tried, which did keep it warm for longer than ceramic would, along with some sparkling water. Futuro is located inside the Palabra art gallery and the space is very cool, weirdly sparse and yet comfortable enough to sit and write for a while. They’ve used a number of top roasters from around the U.S. and Canada, including heart and 49th Parallel.

Fire at Will is in a relative wasteland for good food, up at Shea and Tatum, an area that’s mostly populated by chain restaurants. Their menu is eclectic, to put it mildly – I have a hard time seeing what the core idea is here, or finding any unifying theme among the dishes. I heard the folks sitting next to me ask the bartender if there were any must-try dishes on the menu, and the bartender recommended … the burger. That’s not a great sign, at least in my experience. I tried just two things given how large the portions are – the fried Brussels sprouts and the Iberico ham croquettes. The Brussels were truly outstanding, served with nuoc cham (fish sauce, lime juice, and sugar), chopped peanuts, and a little diced Asian pear; I’ve had a lot of fried Brussels sprouts but this was among the very best, as there wasn’t a single leaf that was overcooked and nothing was too undercooked to eat, while the sweet-sour sauce had the right balance to offset any lingering bitterness in the brassicas. The croquettes were also extremely well-cooked, very crispy on the outside but smooth and still soft on the interior, although I didn’t taste the ham at all, which is a colossal waste if they used real jamón iberico.

I ate one meal down in Tucson after my game at Hi Corbett Field, stopping at El Taco Rustico on N. Oracle on my back to I-10. It looks bare bones but the food is anything but – their carnitas is outstanding and the pollo asado has a ton of flavor, although it paled next to the pork since it’s just inherently less fatty. They also offer four vegetarian options (nopales, rajas con queso, eggs, or summer squash) as well as the fifteen meat or meat-containing choices for fillings. The guacamole starter is pretty generous for $8, with house-made chips, probably not something I needed but I ordered it anyway for the sake of my readers. Chef-owner Juan Almanza opened the restaurant right as the pandemic hit and kept it open with the support of the community during that first year, although now it appears that he’s built a strong following on his own.

I had two bad meals on the trip, one unsurprising and one less so. I ate at Revolu Modern Taqueria near the Peoria Sports Complex, mostly due to time constraints, and it was exactly what I expected, a chain restaurant’s facsimile of tacos, including “diablo” spiced shrimp that a toddler could eat. I also went to my longtime favorite FnB and had by far the most disappointing meal I’d ever had there, for reasons I can’t even completely explain. I’ll just note that the “smoked” salmon salad, which the server highlighted as a favorite, came with salmon so overcooked I couldn’t eat it. I’m not sure if it was smoked or poached, but it was beyond chewing. Maybe I just caught them on an off night.

The rest of my meals were at places I’d tried before, like the breakfast spots mentioned above, plus Republica Empanada, Pane Bianco (which now serves New York-style pizza on some days), Cartel Coffee, Press Coffee, Lux, Frost Gelato, and Defalco’s Italian Market. All lived up to previous standards.

Winston-Salem and Wilmington eats.

Mission Pizzeria Napoletana near downtown Winston-Salem isn’t just a pizzeria, but a full trattoria with house-made pastas and other incredible dishes made from scratch in the tiny cooking space behind their counter. My daughter was along for the ride on this trip, which meant I got to try a few extra items. We ordered the arancini starter, a special for that day that might have been the best version of this dish (balls of risotto rolled in bread crumbs and quickly deep-fried) I’ve ever had; the pizza with smoked mozzarella & tomato sauce; the rigatoni with tomato and cream; and the dessert special, zeppole, the Italian version of beignets. The pizza was outstanding – I’m pretty sure they use Bianco tomatoes, and the dough was perfectly light and airy around the edges with a thick outer crust and thin (but not wet) center. The pasta was truly al dente and the sweetness of the tomatoes shined through; I’ve come around over the course of my life on so-called ‘pink’ sauces, as just a small amount of cream is enough to bring out the sweetness of good tomatoes. The zeppole came in a paper bag filled with powdered sugar, which brought back memories of going to Italian festivals as a kid on Long Island, although the zeppole I ate at those festivals were never this soft or moist in the center. I can’t recommend this place highly enough.

Bobby Boy Bakeshop is a French boulangerie and patisserie that had a line out the door when we stopped there while driving around the Wake Forest campus’ west side. They offer some very impressive old-world breads, including $3 baguettes, and a real coffee and tea program. We just had some sweet treats – my daughter loved the coconut cake, which was very intensely flavored and actually not overly sweet – so I can’t vouch for the savory items, although they do offer a rotating sandwich of the day on their own bread.

Krankie’s is a popular breakfast spot that also roasts its own coffee beans, offering a Tanzanian peaberry the day I was there (you can’t buy it on their site) that had the slightly sweet berry notes typical of that country. My daughter and I each got breakfast sandwiches on biscuits and once again she defeated me, getting the special with chicken, pesto, and tomato, while I got the Yeti with eggs, house-made sausage, and tater tots right on the sandwich, drizzled with maple syrup. The sausage was the disappointing part, actually, as it was way overcooked, and the biscuit itself wasn’t as good as what I can make at home, but the coffee was very good if brewed a little too hot. It looks like those two places are the best options for craft coffee in Winston-Salem.

Chill Nitro is right downtown and offers ice cream made to order with the help of liquid nitrogen, offering an incredibly smooth product because the nitrogen freezes the ice cream base so quickly that the ice crystals remain very small. They also offer the option to add a shot of alcohol to your ice cream for $6, although I passed on that; alcohol also inhibits freezing but I didn’t think it would be necessary and I wasn’t interested in drinking right before the drive back to Charlotte. I had the peanut butter ice cream with peanut butter cups and a peanut butter drizzle, and it was indeed intensely peanutty with an outstanding texture.

I also went to (other) Wilmington to see Walker Jenkins last week and had one meal there, eating dinner at Savorez, a Latin American/Southern fusion place in a cute space with funky décor. (I wanted to try Seabird, but they’re closed on Tuesdays.) I went with the shrimp and grits, served with a chorizo gravy, goat cheese polenta, black beans, oven-dried tomatoes, and pea shoots. The idea of the dish was better than the execution, as the polenta itself wasn’t very hot and the chorizo gravy – which would have been great on biscuits – overpowered the flavors of just about everything else on the plate. The shrimp were actually quite good on their own, which meant deconstructing the dish was the best option.

I rolled into town earlier than I expected, so I stopped in Bespoke Coffee to sit for an hour or so, which is a very cool café/bar with a wide range of tea options (I don’t drink coffee that late in the day unless I have a migraine). I can’t say much about the booze or coffee offerings but I absolutely loved the space and would definitely end up working there often if I lived in downtown Wilmington. Well, that Wilmington, not mine.

Charlotte & Columbia eats.

Amelie’s French Bakery & Café is a Charlotte chain of … well, French bakeries and cafés, shockingly enough, and they’re really good across the board. My daughter was with me on the trip, and since we got there around 11 am, she had lunch for breakfast, going with the chicken/pesto/goat cheese sandwich, while I had an egg sandwich with bacon and mushrooms on a croissant. Mine was good, but my daughter talked about her sandwich for two straight days, saying she’d have eaten it again the next day with no hesitation. I can also recommend the chocolate éclair, the macarons (my daughter says the cotton candy and blueberry cheesecake were her favorites, while I’d suggest the café au lait and pistachio), and the key lime tart. I could do without Amelie’s kitschy décor, which reminded me way too much of the France pavilion at Epcot. This is what someone who’s never been to France might think France looks like. I’ve been to France. It’s a lot less tacky. But this is definitely French patisserie.

Milkbread is one of the buzziest new restaurants in the Queen City, but it was probably the most disappointing meal we had on the trip. We both got breakfast sandwiches on biscuits; hers was fried chicken while mine was sausage with a chilled “jammy” (barely hard-boiled) egg. None of this really worked because the biscuits fell completely apart when picked up, and in the case of my sandwich, the egg halves just kept sliding out – just slicing it would have at least solved that one issue. But I found the cold egg and hot sausage/biscuit combination offputting, and while my daughter’s sandwich was better, certainly, it needed something else besides just the chicken on it – maybe pickles, for example.

Inizio is a mini-chain of Neapolitan-style pizzerias around Charlotte where you order at a counter, making it a good option for a quick meal. They have a typical set of standard pizzas, but my daughter and I love pasta alla vodka, so we went with their monthly special, a pizza with vodka sauce, fresh mozzarella, and a drizzle of pistachio-basil pesto. It well exceeded my expectations for such a casual atmosphere – both the sauce and the pesto had big flavors, with the pink vodka sauce clearly cooked beforehand to remove some of the alcohol’s bite (I’ve had pizzas where they don’t do this, and so you get the unpleasant bitterness of the booze), while the dough was solid-average for a Neapolitan place, with good texture and some light charring but not the light airiness of the very best Neapolitan pizzas I’ve had. We split a Caesar salad which was forgettable, mostly because the dressing might as well have come from a bottle.

I met this baseball writer named Joe Pos-something who said he has a new book coming out in September for lunch at Banh Mi Brothers, right by the UNC-Charlotte campus. I am far from an expert on banh mi, and I say that in large part because I have liked just about every one of these Vietnamese sandwiches I’ve ever tried. This was a 50/55 for me, with the bread not exactly a true French bread but with a crust that crackled and shattered like it should, while the chicken and other toppings were all solid if maybe a little underseasoned. It’s a chain-restaurant wasteland out there by the university, so if you’re headed that way this is one of your best bets to do something local that’s also pretty light (at least compared to all the other options).

I tried two coffee places – Not Just Coffee and Undercurrent, both serving beans from local roaster nightswim, with the cup I tried at Undercurrent the slightly better of the two. That was a Wilder Lasso Gesha from Colombia, an anaerobic, double-washed bean grown at about 2000 feet above sea level. It had some black cherry and dark chocolate notes with a pleasant tartness that was less acidic than beans from East Africa. Not Just Coffee had a washed Finca La Planada from Costa Rica that had less pronounced flavor notes. Undercurrent had three pour-over options, while NJC only had batch brew available.

I had one meal in Columbia, South Carolina, as I drove in for the Gamecocks’ Saturday night game and then drove back to Charlotte that evening. I shouldn’t be that surprised to find interesting restaurants in big college towns, but I didn’t expect to find an authentic Korean restaurant that specializes in bibimbap right in downtown Columbia. 929 Kitchen & Bar serves Korean cuisine, including bibimbap, udon, japchae, and samgyupsal-gui (grilled pork belly), as well as Korean fried chicken in various forms. I had the bibimbap with tofu and a small selection of the fried chicken wings, opting for the non-spicy versions of both – I do like spicy foods, including kimchi, but I also understand my limits. That was probably my one mistake with the bibimbap, as I missed that heat, and the fact that the vegetables served on top were neither cooked nor pickled meant that the whole dish was bland, even with the soy-based sauce. They also serve the egg hard-boiled, rather than serving it raw and allowing the heat from the stone bowl ($1 extra) and the rice to cook it, which is a shame. The chicken wings were spectacular, though. If you do go, I recommend getting the spicy sauce with the bibimbap, or just ordering more of the fried chicken instead.

Minneapolis eats, 2023 edition.

I spent the weekend in Minneapolis at the Cambria College Classic to scout potential first-round picks Jacob Gonzalez (Mississippi), Matt Shaw (Maryland), Enrique Bradfield, Jr. (Vanderbilt), and Hunter Owen (Vanderbilt), along with the enigmatic right-hander George Klassen, who was bounced from Minnesota’s rotation after two starts where he averaged two walks per inning, but hit 99 in a relief appearance on Saturday night. Anyway, that’s a different post. This is a roundup of what I ate.

I met friends for dinner at Tullibee, a fine-dining restaurant in the Hewing Hotel right downtown, which was certainly the meal of the trip. We shared a few small plates and then I got one main, which was the only dish that wasn’t excellent. The caraway potato rolls come warm, with butter soft enough to drink (I don’t recommend this), although the presentation in a wooden box with a sliding glass lid is a bit silly. If I’m going to pay for bread, this is the quality I expect. The kale & date salad with almonds, celery, midnight moon (a Dutch goat cheese), and an orange vinaigrette was a solid take on the rather played-out kale salad, although I confess I still like kale salad quite a bit and find it very satisfying for something that’s extremely healthful. Midnight moon is one of my favorite cheeses, so that didn’t hurt. The wood-fired carrots with a scallion labneh beneath and a brown butter-sage finish were probably the best thing I tasted there, with that perfect taste of the fire to contrast with the sweet earthiness of the rainbow carrots. The one slight disappointment was the cassoulet, which I love because it contains duck confit, and if I see duck confit on a menu, I’m getting it. I don’t care what else is on the menu, just take it, I’m getting the duck confit please and thank you. Unfortunately, it was a little overcooked – since that’s cooked ahead of time (that’s what the confit process is, poaching the duck legs in duck fat for up to 24 hours at a very low temperature, so overcooking is more or less impossible), I assume they heated it too much or for too long to serve it. I also thought the sausage, which came whole, was too salty. I ordered their house Negroni, which replaces the Campari with the French herbal liqueur P31, so the drink is the color of mouthwash. It’s less sweet and less overtly bitter than a traditional Negroni, so while I wouldn’t say I like it better than the classic, it worked on its own merits.

My other dinner on the trip was at Billy Sushi, which is a very trendy restaurant that hides some very good quality fish under the veneer of what is basically tourist sushi – bizarre rolls with too many ingredients, wacky starters, and, in this case, way more Wagyu beef than any sushi restaurant should have on its menu. (They have at least two items that come with raw Wagyu that’s torched right before serving. It’s very showy.) The red snapper was probably the best of the six types of nigiri we tried, impeccably fresh and tasting of the ocean, while the bluefin tuna was about as soft as the butter in that bread dish at Tullibee. (I don’t typically order bluefin, since it’s being fished out of existence, but it came in the combination plate we ordered.) Of the non-nigiri food we tried, the shrimp po’ boI, which is actually just diced shrimp breaded, quickly fried, and tossed with masago, plum sauce, and a Thai chili aioli, was the best item, as the shrimp is just barely cooked, which is the opposite of what I associate with fried shrimp at just about any place you get it. The dish was perfectly spiced for me, with the occasional big hit of chili to remind you it’s there. The hot si-fu salad, which is cold but is supposed to be spicy, was perfectly fine but not spicy, and I’d rather try something else from the extensive menu – or just get more raw fish.

Vivír is an all-day bakery, market, and café attached to Centro in northeast Minneapolis, serving Mexican and Mexican-inspired dishes for all three meals. I got the chilaquiles verde, which is one of my favorite breakfast dishes to get anywhere, and their version comes with tortilla chips that have softened slightly from the spicy salsa verde, along with shredded chicken, radishes, queso fresco, and tangy crema. I would have gone lighter on the crema, which overpowered the other flavors in the dish, since the fat in it tends to mute the effects of chili peppers on the palate (which I assume is why it’s there). I’d love to go back and try several other things on the menu – they have duck carnitas tacos on the lunch menu, and as stated above, I can’t pass that up.

Farmers Kitchen and Bar was my lunch stop on Friday, walkable from U.S. Bank Stadium and next to where the Mill City Farmers Market is held on Saturday. Their fried walleye sandwich, called “The Shore Lunch,” was incredibly light for a fried anything, with the fish still flaky and moist. The sandwich comes with tomato, cucumbers, tartar sauce, and pickles on the side, while the menu said the roll was ciabatta but I think it was different the day I went, as I thought it was brioche or some similar enriched bread. It’s an all-day café that does breakfast and weekend brunch as well as a full coffee bar.

Speaking of coffee, I tried Spyhouse, one of the two main third-wave roasters in the Twin Cities, since I’d already been to Dogwood before. Spyhouse has seven cafés, one in Rochester and the others in Minneapolis or St. Paul, and I went to two of them – the one in the Emery Hotel downtown and the one in Northeast Minneapolis on Broadway. The first one is charmless because of the hotel, but the second has the vibe I want in a bustling coffee shop, with plenty of space to work and hang out. I tried their Gisheke drip coffee from Rwanda and the Finca Monteblanco from Colómbia, buying a bag of the latter to bring home; I liked both but the Gisheke was so hot when I got it that I missed out on some of the typical characteristics of Rwandan beans (they often taste of stone fruit, with light acidity that’s less than Ethiopian/Kenyan). The Finca Monteblanco is very smooth with some chocolate and caramel notes, enough so that I’ll run it through the espresso machine too at some point.

I did revisit two places I’d been to on previous trips. I first ate at Hell’s Kitchen in July of 2006 and have been back at least twice since then, and it’s still excellent, although when I went on Friday they were struggling with service despite very few customers. (I assume they’re short-staffed, like most places, but on this morning there seemed to be plenty of people on the floor.) I got what I always get, the regular waffle with coarse cornmeal mixed into the batter, and the maple pork/bison sausage, and while I concede it would be rather hard for any dish to hold up to memories from nine years earlier, the waffle came pretty close. Due to some confusion in the kitchen, I got to try the lemon-ricotta waffle as well, but I think I just don’t like that flavor combination – there was nothing wrong with it, and I know most people love lemon-ricotta breakfast dishes. I also went to do a little writing at Patisserie 46, about 15 minutes south of downtown, to work for a bit, and that place hasn’t changed a bit – it’s a real French patisserie and boulangerie, and since I was one of the very last customers as they closed, they gave me (and a few other lucky guests) a free baguette they would otherwise have had to toss.

Dallas eats, 2023 edition.

My trip to Dallas didn’t involve many meals worth discussing, since I was mostly at the ballpark in Arlington (and ate stadium food, something I very seldom do, for good reason). Most of my food journeys involved coffee, as it turned out, with two very good spots near my hotel in downtown Dallas.

Stupid Good Coffee actually lives up to its name, serving beans roasted by nearby third-wave roaster Oak Cliff Coffee, with the drip coffee I had on Friday their Honduras El Puente (according to what I could see, at least). They also do a lot of ridiculous, sugared-up drinks that mask the coffee itself, but they’re at least using the right beans to start with. It’s a small shop in a small shopping area inside an office building next to the Renaissance on Elm St., but with just one employee on Friday – I know it’s hard to find staff now – the service was slow.

Weekend is another tiny shop, this one tucked into the Joule boutique hotel, serving coffee from Counter Culture – in this case, another Honduran offering from El Puente, so quite likely beans from the same wholesale lots. Weekend does pour-overs, which is the better option as their drip coffee is actually brewed too hot, while they also have espresso drinks and some small food options, including some prefab breakfast tacos and real croissants. Every hotel needs a café like this one.

I had two meals of note on the trip. One was at Angela’s Café, an all-day diner in the Bluffview neighborhood that serves Mexican-American cuisine. I went there for breakfast with my alter ego, who just happened to order exactly the same thing I did – chorizo and eggs with hashbrowns. It’s a simple dish but one of my favorites, and not something I ever see on menus up where I live. Angela’s’ version was excellent, although I’m also willing to accept that the eggs in this are always cooked more than I like, and their hashbrowns were perfect other than that they needed more salt (but I almost always think that, don’t I?).

The other was a quick bite between games from Flying Fish, a local chain serving Cajun-influenced seafood dishes. Their shrimp po’ boy was … fine, nothing special. The shrimp definitely weren’t as fresh as they could have been, but I would have also consumed an entire bag of the hush puppies that came with it. I wouldn’t go out of my way to eat at a Flying Fish, but it’s certainly better than eating anything in that ballpark.

I did get what I thought was pretty solid Mexican-American food from a place called Fernando’s, close to Angela’s, as some friends ordered dinner from there before they all came with me to the Saturday night TCU-Arkansas blowout, but my friends said there’s much better Mexican-American food to be had in the area and this was just the closest option. Of course now I’m going to leave more time on the next trip to make sure we eat at one of these better places.

Los Angeles eats, 2022 edition.

I’ll start with the two remarkable meals I had in Los Angeles, starting with Pizzeria Sei, which has already received quite a bit of good press for their incredible “Tokyo-style Neapolitan” pizzas. I had the funghi, with fior di latte, several types of mushrooms, entire cloves of garlic, pecorino, oregano, and thyme. This might be in the top five of pizzas I’ve ever had, from the ingredients to that incredible, airy dough, perfectly baked, just a little charred on the edges and spotted on the underside. I did take the garlic cloves off before eating it, because I am a 49-year-old man who will sweat garlic out of my pores for two days if I eat all that, but the garlic/thyme flavor combination is one of my favorites to have with mushrooms – and those were exceptionally high quality, with cremini, shiitake, and I’m pretty sure porcini on there. I would eat any pizza these folks make given how good the dough is.

Sushi-Tama was my splurge meal for the trip, which I think I earned after we got through ten rounds. It’s one of those sushi places where the fish arrives daily on planes from Japan (and, as my server informed me, elsewhere around the world) and where the staff all pronounces everything as if they’re native speakers. I stuck to nigiri and a mozuku seaweed salad, which was itself unlike any other seaweed salad I’d ever had. It wasn’t bright green and vaguely briny, but dark olive (I’ve had that before) and extremely vinegary. Enough about the seaweed, though … the fish was comparable to the best I’ve ever had. I would especially recommend the kinme dai, golden eye snapper served with a little lime zest and salt. Its slightly higher oil content gave it more flavor than the madai, true snapper that was one of the daily specials. I also tried the nogoduro, fresh sea perch that they serve lightly seared, a new fish to me; the anago, salt-water eel; and the medium-fatty tuna, which the server actually recommended even over the much more expensive, fattier tuna cut. Twelve pieces of nigiri plus the seaweed salad was under $100, which I think is a bargain by L.A. standards.

Tacos Baja was my first meal after landing, Enseneda-style tacos, burritos, and other dishes mostly revolving around fried shrimp and fish. I kept it simple, getting two fish tacos with beans and rice. The fish was baja-style (of course), very crispy with a beer batter, served with a giant amount of shredded cabbage, salsa, and white sauce. There was so much stuff on the taco I could barely fold the thing, but the important part is that the fish was good and perfectly fried so it stayed moist in the center. I probably should have skipped the rice and beans and tried another taco. They have three locations, one in LA proper and two in Whittier.

Ronan on West Melrose is a pizzeria with a bunch of small plates and three other mains on the menu, although I was just there for the pizza. Ronan’s dough is actually lighter and fluffier than Sei’s, or really any Neapolitan place I have tried – enough that I’m not sure you’d even call it Neapolitan any more, although it’s still great, just too airy for that style. I had the Sweet Cheeks – guanciale, ricotta forte, and black pepper honey. It was sort of a salt-and-pepper bomb, although that was good after I’d been out at the Futures Game for several hours. The dough was the real star, though. I felt like I just had delicious salty bread for dinner. With a little bacon. It turns out that the owner of Pizzeria Sei previously worked at Ronan, although I think he’s surpassed his former employers.

Angry Egret Dinette is set back in a courtyard off Broadway in the Old Chinatown neighborhood of Los Angeles, so it’s not visible from the road, which meant I drove past it twice before just parking and walking to find it. This Beard-nominated spot has a large patio seating area and a take-out window, offering breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with inside seating available at some point in the past but perhaps not currently. I went with their shrimp po’boy, fried shrimp (and a lot of them) with cabbage slaw, salsa negra, pico de gallo, and avocado. Salsa negra is made from chiles mecos, a type of chipotle pepper, which is itself a dried and smoked jalapeño; mecos are ripened for a longer period, giving them a deeper red color, and then smoked for a longer period as well. To make salsa negra, you fry the chiles mecos in oil for several minutes until they turn dark brown, and then add garlic, salt, sugar, at the very least, with some recipes calling for vinegar, cumin, other spices, even soy sauce. Whatever Angry Egret uses, my Italian-American palate was not ready for that heat – this was very spicy, delicious, but whoa boy that was hot. The shrimp were quite fresh and fried just enough to cook them, still tender throughout. I liked this combination of flavors but I can’t pretend I tasted everything with my face on fire.

One breakfast spot to recommend – Aroma Tea & Coffee, which offers a smoked salmon “stack,” their take on a benedict that replaces that awful Canadian ham product with smoked salmon and replaces the English muffin with a crispy potato pancake. I’ve had this combination before, including over at Square One in LA, and I’ll never not order this if I see it on a menu. The salmon here was solid, which is the main differentiator – if that’s not up to par, the whole dish fails.

I did try two coffee places recommended by a friend in the specialty coffee business. Kumquat, over in Highland Park, brings in specialty coffees from small roasters all over the country, and focuses on espresso rather than brewed coffee, although they do offer a drip coffee each day. They do a daily blend for their regular espresso and a single-origin espresso that changes daily. I love the space, but there’s no indoor seating at the moment, just a shaded patio. They also offer some baked goods; I enjoyed the blueberry cornmeal scone, which was nice and crumbly and not too sweet, so it didn’t overpower the coffee. Go Get Em Tiger has multiple locations and a sizable food menu, although I just had a drip coffee, their Ethiopia Yukro, a tart, fruity coffee that’s less citrusy than beans from other Ethiopian regions that I’ve tried. They don’t have wifi, if you’re curious, which did matter as I was trying to work on draft recaps by that point, although I still recommend the coffee.

Arkansas eats.

I visited my 50th state this past weekend, checking Arkansas off the list, reaching a goal of hitting all fifty before I myself turned 50. (The last ten, in reverse order: Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Hawai’i, Kansas, Oklahoma, Alabama, New Mexico, Nevada, Louisiana.) I was in northwest Arkansas to see the Razorbacks host Vanderbilt, and have to say I was quite impressed by the depth of the food scene, the amazing Crystal Bridges art museum, and a much more progressive culture than I anticipated.

As for food, getting to Onyx Coffee was also a major goal for me whenever I got to northwest Arkansas; they’re a nationally renowned third-wave roaster whose beans I first tried in Louisville at Gralehaus. I went twice to the Bentonville location on the main square, which is also how we stumbled into the wonderful farmer’s market there on Saturday morning. Onyx does all the coffee drinks you could want, from pour-overs of single origins (they had one for $14 that I did not try) and espresso drinks to things with coffee and lavender that I simply can not abide. The coffee is amazing, though.

After Friday’s game, I went to Dickson Street and tried Los Bobos Taqueria, a late night (6 pm to 3 am) place that makes street tacos with 8-10 different filling options. I went with the shrimp and chicken, both of which were excellent, although I’d take the shrimp (which came with its own sauce) over the chicken (which was fine, but the meat was a little drier). Other options include al pastor, chorizo, cochinita, and veggie. They also have about ten sauces/salsas available on the counter, including a peanut-based one that had a hell of a kick at the end. They don’t have a working phone number but they are open.

Saturday, I ate at the Razorbacks’ ballpark, where Wright’s BBQ provides the food at the first base concession. Wright’s only opened its doors in October of 2017 after Jordan Wright, a former Tyson Foods employee, tasted Salt Lick BBQ in Austin and went on a whole barbecue tour of the state so he could open his own place back home. I always assume concession places like this lose something compared to the restaurant’s own site, but I can at least tell you the pulled pork at the ballpark didn’t even need any sauce – it was still moist enough (despite being smoked elsewhere and transported to the stadium) and had enough flavor on its own that I skipped the sauce entirely. I’m nobody’s BBQ expert but that’s a bellwether for me.

Pressroom is right next to Onyx in downtown Bentonville, offering lunch and dinner as well as brunch on the weekends. I had the chicken “sammy,” blackened chicken on a Hawai’ian bun with pickles, slaw, and mayo. They make the buns in house, and it was actually the best part of the sandwich – I thought it was brioche, even though Hawaiian buns have quite a bit less fat than their French cousins.

Some quick hits: Ozark Mountain Bagel is across the square from Onyx/Pressroom, and while nobody’s confusing this with the actual New York item, their bagels are pretty good, better than what you’d get at any chain … Susan’s “Internationally Famous” Restaurant in Springdale clearly has its devoted local following but it was pretty ordinary, and the biscuits were truly nothing special … Vault is a cocktail bar near the university campus with a very extensive bourbon collection and menu of classic cocktails and extremely ornate house cocktails with things like torched rosemary and acidulated oligosaccharide. It’s a cool spot but I was insufficiently cool to try one of their more complicated house cocktails, instead going old-school with a New York Sour.

This is Your Mind on Plants.

Michael Pollan made a name for himself, or perhaps a bigger name, for his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which came off like such an attack on our modern diets that he wrote a brief companion book called In Defense of Food. In defense of Pollan, however, his writing goes well beyond those two books or that subject; he can be a gifted writer on many matters of food and food science, and is not the scold that Omnivore’s Dilemma might lead you to believe that he is. Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation is a history of food and food science, and an explanation of how we used fire and heat to change the way we ate, in turn changing the trajectory of our species. His most recent book, a collection of two previously published essays plus a third, is called This is Your Mind on Plants, and covers three psychoactive compounds or chemicals produced by the plant world: opium, caffeine, and mescaline.

By far, my favorite part of this book was the portion on caffeine, which was originally released as an Audible original and excerpted by The Guardian as part of its longread series a few months ago. Pollan was a caffeine addict, like the overwhelming majority of Americans, and as part of his research into the chemical’s effects on our brains and our lives, chose to give it up completely before gradually reintroducing it into his life. He spoke to Dr. Matthew Walker, author of How We Sleep, who is a scold, at least on this topic, and among other things claims that caffeine’s half-life is around 6 hours, so a quarter of the caffeine you consumed in a cup of joe at 9 am is still in your system at 9 pm. (Estimates of its actual half-life vary, but it may be closer to 5 hours, which would push up that latter time to 7 pm.) Caffeine in the afternoon, which we often consume to combat our bodies’ evolved tendency towards biphasic sleep, is especially harmful; the iced coffee you have at 2 pm would still leave more than a quarter of its caffeine in your system at 11 pm, a typical bedtime for adults who have kids or at least have to work in the morning.

Most people understand on some level that caffeine can harm your sleep quantity and quality, but Pollan also points out how much we depend on caffeine each day for simple alertness, to feel like we think clearly, to clear the fog of sleep – or, of course, the fog of caffeine withdrawal. There is even research showing that caffeine can help certain types of recall and improve our reaction times in certain physical tasks, although viewers of Good Eats know that caffeine may make you work faster, but it doesn’t make you work smarter. Pollan gives a breezy history of caffeine and its two major delivery systems (tea and coffee), including descriptions of their ties to colonialism, exploitation of native peoples, and slavery, before bringing us back to the narrative of his caffeine withdrawal and reintroduction.

The opium essay appeared in slightly redacted form in Harper’s in the late 1990s, and is less about what the drugs derived from opium do than Pollan’s own misadventures in growing poppies in his own garden, only to discover that he may be violating federal law by doing so. Opium is a latex taken from the seed capsules of the Papaver somniferum plant, although Pollan claims that there are other poppies that can produce some of the same compounds, just in smaller quantities. The drugs we associate with poppies are opiates, alkaloids found within the latex, including morphine and codeine; or derivative products, such as heroin (made through acetylation of morphine) or oxycodone (synthesized from thebaine in the latex). You can consume the raw latex, which is supposed to be unspeakably bitter, and will cause nervous system depression. Pollan didn’t end up doing that, although he certainly thought about it, and wrote about thinking about it, and expunged a few pages until releasing the full article here. He describes the conversations from the time around what it was safe to write, while his editor at the time, John R. MacArthur, has disputed Pollan’s version of events. Anyway, Pollan drank some opium tea, and said it tasted awful but felt nice.

Then there’s mescaline, which, of these three drugs, has the unusual characteristic of offering very little downside to the user. Its use is highly restricted, because Drugs Are Bad! even though there’s a small body of evidence that mescaline, derived from a cactus that grows in the American southwest, and psilocybin, produced by several hundred species of fungi mostly in the Psilocybe genus, may help people with severe depression or anxiety. The majority of Pollan’s essay here revolves around mescaline’s somewhat recent history of use in religious ceremonies among certain indigenous American tribes, the ridiculous laws around its use, and environmental and cultural concerns around it. He eventually tries some as well, and has what sounds like a very pleasant experience of heightened awareness with mild hallucinations, not something that might fit the stereotype of a trip. I have never tried either of these psychotropics, and Pollan’s narrative made me slightly more curious about them.

Pollan the anti-scold is an insightful, conversational writer who is unafraid to educate his readers but never loses sight of the need to entertain at the same time. There might be a bit too much of him in the opium section – the idea of DEA agents bashing down his door because he had two poppies in his garden might come across as paranoid – but despite his first-person writing in the remaining two sections, he takes care not to let his persona take over. His thoughtfulness in describing the mescaline ceremony he witnesses, for example, does him credit; he’s just trying to get high, so to speak, not to appropriate anyone’s culture. It’s a short book, compiling some pieces you may have read before, but an enjoyable diversion, and one more tiny brick in the wall for drug decriminalization.

Next up: Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai, because Mike Schur told me to read it.