Stick to baseball, 1/16/22.

Still working on the prospect rankings – I started the actual writing this week, after several weeks of prep – which will run starting January 31st at the Athletic. I appreciate your patience. My podcast and my Paste reviews will return this week.

And now, the links…

Puerto Rico eats.

I had a lot of mediocre food in Puerto Rico this time around, which was disappointing, as I would have generally said I like that cuisine, but did manage to sneak in a couple of good meals before we headed home on Sunday night. Most of the good eats are in San Juan proper, in the Viejo San Juan, Santurce, and Miramar neighborhoods in particular, while we stayed at a hotel near the airport for the conference my wife was attending, so that limited our options a bit.

Jungle Bird was by far the best place I ate on the trip, which is funny because it’s more of a kitschy tiki bar than restaurant. Their “crack eggplant” lives up to the name, though – the eggplant is dried and I assume quickly pan-fried, then doused in a mildly spicy sambal sauce with slivered almonds. It is addictive, and messy, and I think it’s the best eggplant dish I’ve ever had. Usually the texture of aubergines throws me off, and the seeds can be rather bitter if it’s not cooked correctly, but this dish had none of those issues; whatever they’re doing to the berry, it gives it a toothy, chewy texture closer to that of grilled meats. The coconut and corn fritters with queso fresco (pictured here) were sweet, balanced by the spicy and slightly tangy sauce and the salt from the cheese. The kimchi fried rice was a giant plate of exactly what it sounds like, with the kimchi well-integrated into the dish, so that it was present but not overpowering, boosted by a generous helping of peanuts and some fried chicken thighs (an add-on). That was actually the spiciest of the three dishes we tried. Everything was fantastic, although I actually thought the cocktails were on the weaker side for tiki drinks, which tend to hide a lot of rum – especially the Zombie, which contains some 151-proof rum – behind fruit juices.

I didn’t expect to find Neapolitan-style pizza in San Juan, but I stumbled on Verace while walking around the Isla Verde area outside our hotel. It’s located in a boutique hotel just off the main drag, but caught my eye for the actual wood-fired pizza oven on its patio. I ordered the prosciutto and arugula pizza, which had some other name, and got exactly what I expected: fresh mozzarella, prosciutto di Parma, and a modest serving of arugula on top, with crushed tomatoes rather than sauce (and certainly not sweetened like so many sauces). Everything on top of the pizza was superb. The one knock I have on Verace is that they didn’t cook their pizzas at anywhere near 800 degrees – the patio oven wasn’t even lit, so I’m not sure how they were cooking the pizzas that day – so there was no charring on the outside or underneath, and the outer crust didn’t have any crispness. The flavors were great, including that of the dough itself, and they were using good-quality ingredients for the toppings. I am just a little skeptical about the veracity of their claims to be Neapolitan-style.

Breakfast options were scant, but if you’re on Isla Verde, at the eastern end of that main road with all the hotels is a bakery called Las Canarias that does a credible job with fresh breakfast sandwiches, made to order, along with pancakes and waffles – the closest I saw to an “American” breakfast outside of hotel restaurants. (I’m aware Puerto Rico is American, too.) I had an egg and bacon sandwich on a crusty baguette, less airy than French bread but crunchy and sturdy enough for the fillings, which were a little saltier than I’d like – but I’ll take that over undersalted eggs. It was more than I could finish, too.

A friend introduced me to Gustos Coffee on my last trip to Puerto Rico, and I was dying to get back there both to drink their coffee and buy some local beans to bring home; Puerto Rico has a small coffee-growing industry, but the beans generally don’t leave the island. Gustos has a large, gorgeous new café in the Miramar neighborhood of San Juan, offering a full array of coffee drinks and beans of varying roasts as well as some breakfast and lunch items. They do offer pour-overs, which the day I was there was made with a blend that included Puerto Rican and Central American beans. I might just take drip coffee if I went again, as they use the same beans in that, and in the espresso drinks as well. They had several options for locally grown beans for sale, roasted either medium or dark (they don’t do light roasts – my recollection is that they felt it wouldn’t sell), picking the ones grown at the highest altitudes. I’ll update this post when I try them.

If you can’t make it to any of their locations – they also have one at the airport that is open quite late – there’s a tiny coffee stand inside the Verdanza hotel, right by Verace, called Espresso Lab that is more than adequate. They know how to pull a shot correctly, and that’s all they do – they don’t offer drip coffee, just an Americano if that’s your speed – although their milk game isn’t as strong.

The airport also has one of Metropol’s eight locations on the island (there’s a ninth in Miami), and you’re not going to do much better with airport food. It’s mostly Puerto Rican food with some Cuban dishes included, and their specialty, a stuffed Cornish game hen with maduros (fried sweet plantains), was actually great, even for something that was obviously not made to order, given how fast we were served. The menu has a lot of options, although it is heavily weighted towards meat eaters. They offer the Cuban rice dish arroz congri (black beans and rice, cooked together) and the Puerto Rican arroz mamposteao (rice with stewed red beans) as side options, or as individual small plates, and I’d be happy with a big bowl of either of those.

We had a full afternoon before the flight back to Philly, so we took a day trip to Charco Frio, a series of small waterfalls in the same rainforest as the famed El Yunque (which required more time than we had). It’s a lengthy hike, 15-20 minutes, along a muddy trail, so I recommend bringing water shoes if you go there. On the way back, we visited Luquillo, a gorgeous beach on a small peninsula the north shore that faces west, so the water is calmer than it is at the hotel beaches in Isla Verde and San Juan. Towards the southern end of the beach is a long series of food stalls offering all manner of food – mostly Puerto Rican foods like alcapurrias (corn meal stuffed with meats or fish or cheese), bacalaitos (breaded and fried dried salt cod), and surullitos (fried corn and cheese sticks), all of which we tried. It’s all greasy and mostly good and I think best served with a cold beer. And a lot of napkins.

Nashville eats, 2021 edition.

 I went to Nashville to see Kumar Rocker and Jack Leiter, but only saw the former as the latter was scratched with little explanation. I did eat extremely well for just spending one night and getting four meals in that enclave of sanity, however.

Folk is a new artisanal pizzeria and Italian restaurant from the folks behind Rolf & Daughters, a pasta-focused restaurant that might be my single favorite dinner spot in the city. Folk’s pizza is Neapolitan-adjacent – high heat, blistered crust, but not with the wet centers or very puffy edges of true Neapolitan pizzas. The menu does have many other things on it, including vegetable dishes and some proteins, but I just went for the pizza. I had the margherita, which was good if a bit salty, a grade 55 pizza, with the quality of the toppings very evident; and a starter of Cantabrian anchovies with lemon, mint, and olive oil, which was fine but which I didn’t think benefited from the mint. The best thing I had at Folk was actually a cocktail: the Everyday People, with gin, Amaro Montenegro, dry vermouth, and Maraschino liqueur. That and the pizza would have been perfect.

I had dinner before the Friday game at the Hattie B’s location right near Vandy’s campus. I’d never had Nashville hot chicken before this, because while I like some spicy foods, I don’t like any food that is so spicy I can’t taste anything else, and too much chile pepper has never really agreed with me. I felt like this was something I had to at least try once, especially given the number of times in Nashville and the fact that my hotel was, quite literally, across the street. I got the medium – they have no spice, mild, medium, and I think three levels of insanity beyond that – and it was exactly right for me. More and I would not have enjoyed the experience on any level; less and I would have regretted wimping out. This is excellent fried chicken, perfectly crispy outside with the cayenne in the coating, still juicy inside, and with more than just pure heat for flavor. I got collard greens, because I always get collard greens; and the potato salad, because I figured that would be an appropriate counter to the heat. The collards were great, but I also really just love slow-cooked collard greens, and the potatoes served their purpose. This is about the chicken, though. And yeah, I know Prince’s is probably the original, but it wasn’t right across the street from my hotel.

I had lunch before the Saturday game from Thai Esane, which Eater tabbed as one of the best restaurants in Nashville right now, but I have to admit I was a little disappointed. I got pad see ew, since I wanted something I could reasonably eat in the car, but the dish was flat and – I know this is a weird complaint – there were a lot of carrots involved. I think of pad see ew as a pretty specific dish – noodles, egg, a protein, and some sort of green brassica like broccoli. Maybe I just chose poorly.

I have a real soft spot for Fido, right on Broadway near Vandy’s campus, which has been my go-to breakfast spot in Nashville for probably a decade now. I’m glad to see they’re still open, and were busy on Saturday morning, although I just popped in to get a bagel sandwich to go. I also hit Barista Parlor, one of my two favorite coffee spots in Nashville along with Crema, with Kaci, one of my editors at the Athletic, and we ended up visiting two different locations in search of outdoor seating. I know people who find BP too hipster for them, and I probably should be one of them, but I love their coffee and could sit in any of their locations for hours and be quite content.

Stick to baseball, 11/16/19.

I wrote this week, but nothing has been published quite yet. Some of it will be in bookstores on April 21st of next year, though, as I work on the first edit for The Inside Game, my new book combining baseball decisions and cognitive psychology. I also am tentatively scheduled to appear at Washington, DC’s, Politics & Prose on April 24th, with other events likely in that first week. If you’re with a bookstore and interested in arranging an event, feel free to reach out to me in the comments and I’ll connect you with my publicist.

And now, the links…

Stick to baseball, 9/28/19.

My one piece for ESPN+ subscribers this week had my six postseason player award ballots, all hypothetical as I didn’t have any vote this year. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday and another Periscope video chat on Tuesday.

At Paste, I reviewed Silver and Gold, a tremendous new flip-and-write game from the designer of Gizmos and Bärenpark, where players fill in polyomino shapes on their own cards, trying to complete as many cards as possible while racking up various bonuses. It’s due out in late October.

My second book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, is now available for pre-order on all the usual sites. The release date is April 21, 2020.

You can also get more updates from my free email newsletter; the next edition will go out some time this week, before I head to Arizona for an abbreviated trip to the Fall League.

And now, the links…

Portland eats.

I had less than a day in Portland this past weekend, but it was my first visit to the city in 20 years, so I had a little catching up to do, and very little time in which to do it.

I had two particular food targets for my weird trip through Portland – I was headed to Corvallis to see Oregon State play, and thus had small parts of two days in Portland after I flew in Friday morning and before I flew out Saturday evening – in Apizza Scholls and the ice cream parlor Salt & Straw. Apizza Schools has come recommended to me for years, by industry people, by baking teacher and cookbook author Peter Reinhart (whose The Bread Baker’s Apprentice is still my go-to source for making any kind of artisan bread), and by many readers. It was a little different from what I expected, but still very good, a solid 55 on the 20-80 scale.

Apizza Scholls’ pizza splits the difference between Neapolitan pizzas, cooked fast at around 900 degrees with a very airy crust that has some charring at the exterior, and both New York and New Haven styles, so their pizzas’ crusts are more evenly browned without charring, and have a hard crunch without the softer bread-like interior of Neapolitan crusts. Most of their menu combinations contain meat, and I was looking to avoid that, so I went with their “plain” pie (which still has sauce and fresh mozzarella) and added mushrooms and arugula, which meant a huge portion of the latter. The center of the pie wasn’t wet as in Neapolitan styles, but the crust was thinner than New York slice, closer to New Haven, while the toppings as a whole were correctly seasoned. I appreciated that, for lunch at least (only served on weekends), they offered an 11″ option for one person.

Salt & Straw now has locations in a few other cities – I know it’s in LA – but I’d never been to any of them before this trip. They’re legendary for the quality of their product and for the way the servers outright encourage you to sample all the flavors you want; I think I tried five before settling on one of their two most popular flavors, Almond Brittle with Salted Ganache, and one of their special flavors at the moment, Wild-Foraged Berry Slab Pie. The surprising part was the the ice cream itself wasn’t heavy or dense – more like a semifreddo in texture than super-premium ice cream. The flavors were absurd; actually everything I sampled was excellent, although the Chocolate Gooey Brownie wasn’t really my thing, since brownie bits get too dense and chewy in ice cream.

Canard was one of two places recommended to me by Jeff Kraus, the chef-owner of Tempe’s Crepe Bar (which you should all try when you go to that area of Arizona), and was open for lunch on Friday, allowing me to hit an extra spot before going to Powell’s Books, which was a bucket-list item for me. (It exceeded expectations by a few orders of magnitude.) They had a placard out from suggesting the “duck stack,” and if you’ve read this blog before you’re aware of my affinity for the meat of the Anatidae. This dish was a bit different, though: it’s a small stack of pancakes topped with some grilled onions, a rich duck gravy, and a duck egg cooked roughly over-medium. The gravy has ground duck – I’m almost certain this was only white meat – with a little bacon, some reduced duck stock, a little brown sugar, and a lot of salt and pepper. It was delicious, but I don’t think I would have known that was duck if I hadn’t ordered it. The flavors I associate with duck were muted enough in the gravy that this could have been any other lean poultry. It was expertly made, just not quite what I expected.

Eem was Jeff’s second recommendation, a cocktail bar and restaurant with Thai-influenced dishes, including a handful of curries and many small plates. I asked my server for a few recommendations without red meat, and ended up with the roasted beet salad and the stir-fry with mushrooms, long beans, cashews, and one of the most convincing meat alternatives I’ve ever tasted. The beet salad was good, as they were cooked properly and came with puffed rice that gave the dish some needed textural contrast, but that stir-fry, which came with a rich, deep brown sauce that was some sort of umami bomb, salty and complex and a little sweet, was superb. The meat alternative was soy, but it was much firmer than any tofu product I’ve ever tried; it seemed to be compressed and braided to mimic the texture of chicken breast prepared in the same method. I arrived at 5 pm, right when they opened, and there was a line already there; I got one of the last open seats at the bar and by 5:10 the host was telling parties of two there’d be a 35-40 minute wait.

I tried two Portland coffee places, which seemed like a better way to experience the city than getting a tattoo and a man-bun. (In truth, I did see far too many men with man-buns, clutching their yoga mats. It was a bit too on the nose, really.) Coava Coffee was recommended by writer Matthew Kory, recently of The Athletic. Coava uses Chemex for pour-overs; the Guatemalan Finca las Terrazas I tried had a great semi-sweet chocolate note with very low acidity. I was already familiar with heart roasters, having had their coffees at several other shops around the country, including Crepe Bar (which now uses local roaster Presto) and midtown Manhattan’s Culture Espresso. Heart offers a single-origin espresso in addition to their Stereo blend, so I tried that, just for something different; the Kenya Kiachu AB beans they used were fruity but not citric so it had good body without that lemon-drop flavor you can get from a lot of Kenyan or Ethiopian beans when made as espresso.

Townshend Tea Company has a huge menu of loose-leaf teas, steeped to order and with a CBD infusion available for another $2. I skipped the weed and just went with a hojicha, my favorite green tea because it’s roasted, usually made from leaves harvested after the first two flushes. The roasting removes the grassier notes in some green teas, and also reduces its caffeine content, although for reasons I’ve never understood I don’t get the same caffeine hit from any kind of tea that I get from coffee. 

Florida eats, 2019 edition.

I reached out to readers before my trip last week to the Palm Beach area and got far more suggestions than I could try in just over 48 hours there before I drove north. There were two very big hits in my opinion, the first one the unassuming Mediterranean Market and Deli in West Palm Beach, which is indeed a market of foods from the Levant that also offers wraps and platters to go (there’s no seating) at absurd prices. The shish tawook platter (chicken marinated in lemon juice and turmeric) was really too much food – more than a serving’s worth of chicken, plus large portions of rice pilau and hummus, a thin pita (closer to lavash), and a small salad like a fattoush without the bread. The chicken was superb, bright, tart, and not overcooked (also not Nimmo-cooked), and, as silly as it might sound, the rice was also just delicious. White rice can be so bleh, but this not only had flavor (prepared in broth, perhaps?) but was perfectly cooked, and had strands of vermicelli pasta as is traditional in cuisines like that of Lebanon. The hummus was probably the least interesting part of the platter in part because it was too thin.

I met a friend for dinner at Grandview Market in West Palm Beach, a food hall – get used to that term in this post – with a slew of options for dinner and desserts, so I partook of both. We each got sandwiches from El Cochinito, which of course specializes in slow-roasted pork; I got their namesake sandwich, on crusty bread with maduros and some sliced onion. It’s also too much food, and almost too inexpensive at $10. The original El Cochinito is in LA on Sunset Blvd, between Night + Market Song and Intelligentsia Coffee. For dessert, I followed my friend’s tip to get the rolled ice cream at Crema, which has an intimidating array of combinations on the menu, so I asked the guy who took my order what he’d recommend to someone who likes chocolate, coffee, and mint ice creams. He didn’t hesitate to push the Cafecito, which has ground coffee mixed right into the ice cream with a fudge swirl and some graham crackers on the site. Those were kind of superfluous – maybe that would work better if they crumbled on top – but the ice cream itself was rich and tasted like a sweetened caffe latte.

Many people recommended Leftovers, part of a trio of local restaurants run by the same family, but my meal there was disappointing for a simple and entirely preventable reason: They didn’t salt the fish. I ordered what is apparently their signature dish, the fresh fish of your choice (I went with triple tail on my server’s suggestion) coated with julienned sweet potato and then pan-fried until crispy, served over a giant kitchen-sink of a salad. The problem is that the fish wasn’t seasoned at all beneath the coating – not just undersalted, but unsalted, and you can’t recover from that mistake. It felt like such a waste of a beautiful piece of fish, and the coating itself was delicious (crispier than I would have guessed, since sweet potatoes don’t fry up as well as white potatoes do), but even with the coating and a rich key-lime garlic sauce, the fish itself was still just bland. I also tried their fried tuna and basil roll – wrapped like an egg roll and deep fried, so the tuna ends up cooked as if it had been seared – which was interesting, mostly because of the wasabi dipping sauce, because the fish itself was kind of bland despite being of high quality.

Avocado Grill was another reader recommendation and had the advantage of being very close to the Nationals/Astros’ park, where I was headed on Saturday night but didn’t have a long window for dinner. (They have two locations; this was the one in Palm Beach Gardens.) I ordered a beet salad to start and fish tacos for my entrée, and both had the same issues: very good inputs, very little flavor. The salad had no dressing on it, and the fish was underseasoned itself so it relied on the other toppings, including a lime-ginger dressing and a fruit salsa, to give it any taste. Again, as with the Leftovers meal, someone here is buying the right ingredients, but the technique here is lacking.

I had coffee both mornings I was in the area at Subculture, which you can also get at the Nationals/Astros park; the pour-over coffee was fine, but I’d skip their espresso, which I thought was overextracted. I ordered a macchiato, my preference for espresso drinks, but it was just a double shot with some overfoamed milk spooned on top, not poured in so it integrates a little with the coffee.

I did better in Orlando, fortunately. Hunger Street Tacos was the best place I visited, even with their beef-heavy menu. I went with the chicken and chorizo taco, the hibiscus and avocado taco, and the elote street corn (shaved off the cob, so it’s better for sharing). The chicken and chorizo was the better of the two, but the hibiscus taco was certainly the most unique I’ve ever tried: the flowers are shredded and sautéed, so they look like dark red cabbage but have a profile like that of sweet red wine – not quite as sweet as a port but in that vein. Their fresh limeade is not short on the lime juice, either.

Swine and Sons is a spinoff of local stalwarts The Ravenous Pig, having taken over a nearby storefront when they first opened before moving into one of two local food halls I visited on this trip, this one inside a Meat House that’s across a large Winter Park intersection from the Pig’s location. Their focus, as you might imagine, is pig, including house-made charcuterie, but I was there early for breakfast (served all day) and got the very simple “eggs on a bun” – fried eggs, house-made bacon, and tomato jam (cheese optional) on a very good bread. The bacon was the star, as you’d hope, and this was worth more than $7 when you consider the quality and craft behind it. They also offer chilaquiles and avocado toast as breakfast options, and their weekend breakfast menu is twice as big.

Se7en Bites offers to “fill your pie hole,” if you were unclear on their concept; this food is not for the literally faint of heart. They also serve breakfast all day, and while I’m not normally a big fan of benedicts (mostly because Canadian ‘bacon’ is just bad ham), their house benedict is something else: a buttermilk garlic biscuit with a medium egg, a slice of fried green tomato, a few strips of bacon, and a peppery hollandaise sauce poured over the top … and then poured again over the top half of the biscuit. I ordered extra bacon, because we’re all going to die soon anyway so why not enjoy it. (I didn’t actually finish the biscuit, which is good but so heavy.)

Pizza Bruno does Neapolitan style pizza with some other small dishes from the wood-fired oven (including garlic knots with “too much garlic,” as if such a thing were possible), with a traditional dough and both traditional and very non-traditional (cheddar cheese? pineapple?) toppings available. I stuck with the traditional because I’m not a fucking savage, getting a margherita with mushrooms, and would put a 50 or solid-average grade on it, with the dough the best part but the pizza overall too salty, I think because they grate quite a bit of pecorino romano on it right out of the oven.

For coffee in Orlando, I went back to Foxtail in Winter Park, a favorite of mine from a few years ago, and also tried Lineage’s location in the East End Market, a wonderful food hall with a patisserie, a cheesemonger, a juice bar, a ramen place, and more. Lineage is a third-wave roaster and had a few single origins, including a Rwandan coffee from the Kigeyo washing station from near Lake Kivu. Their description promised floral and green apple notes but I tasted a warm spice in the finish, both cinnamon and clove.

Finally, for anyone headed to Walt Disney World during the Flower & Garden show, I can offer a few suggestions on the food at the kiosks this year, since I ate dinner that way one night while also doing some shopping for my daughter, niece, nephew, and some friends’ kids. The best dish I ate was from the Travel & Trellis kiosk: a farm ‘meatball’ wrap, made with Impossible lab-grown meat and served on a lentil-flour bread, which is probably not selling the carnivores among you … but I would really not have been able to tell you this was a meat alternative had I not known that going in. The chocolate pudding at the same stand was the worst thing I ate, so maybe give that a miss. The tuna tataki (Citrus Blossom) was fine, although I think I’d have liked that better raw than seared, and the duck confit with tomatoes and olives with a tiny square of polenta (Fleur de Lys) was also solid. The better choice for dessert was the warm chocolate cake with bourbon-salted caramel sauce and spiced pecans from the Smokehouse, by the USA pavilion. I didn’t care for the karaage, Japanese fried chicken, from the Hanami stand by Japan – I know what karaage is, but this didn’t match up – and never got to a few more things I wanted to try because by then I was very full.

Texas eats, 2019 edition.

Both places I hit in Houston were on Eater’s list of the 38 ‘most essential’ restaurants in the U.S. this year, which tends to be a pretty reliable list for good if occasionally overpriced restaurants. Xochi, a high-end Mexican place downtown, did not disappoint at all: I had just two dishes but it will stick with me for a very, very long time. For dinner I had the crispy duck (pato crujiente) with tomatillo avocado sauce, black beans, and chicharrones. It’s the second-best duck dish I’ve ever eaten, behind only the duck carnitas at NYC’s Cosme, and my only quibble is that there was so much duck and not quite enough of the sauces to go with it. It comes with fresh corn tortillas, and the duck really doesn’t need any additional flavor – it would be fine with just a little lime juice – but the slow cooking process did just start to rob the meat of a little moisture. But the star here was the dessert; Xochi’s dessert menu has a dessert side and a chocolate side, and you’re a damn fool if you think I even looked at the side without chocolate on it. I got the Piedras y Oro, rocks and gold, described as “chocolate tart with crocant of mixed nuts, praline and chocolate “river rocks,” gold from the Isthmus,” which doesn’t quite do it justice. The chocolate tart’s center was warm and has very little flour in it, just enough to hold it together, with a hard, dense cookie-like crust, topped with those frozen pebbles of chocolate, as well as the praline, various candied nuts, and a dark chocolate sauce. It was chocolate indulgence right into your veins. I’m not sure I have ever had a more satisfying sense of oneness with chocolate.

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Himalaya, which serves Indian and Pakistani dishes and has a few flourishes that combine those cuisines with Mexican twists (like a ‘quesadilla’ on paratha bread) also made the list, and I would say I had a mixed experience, partly because I ended up ordering the wrong thing, partly because I don’t know south Asian cuisine all that well. I liked much of what I ate, but it was enough food for more than two of me, and some of what arrived on the lunch special, which the waiter seemed very eager for me to order (probably assuming the white guy wouldn’t know most of the items on the menu, which would not be too far off the mark for me), included meats I no longer eat. The platter came with samples of three curries/similar dishes, one with chickpeas (I think aloo chana masala, with potatoes), one with chicken, and one with lamb, which I don’t eat; as well as a large naan that was leaner than any naad I’ve had before, more than a serving of rice, and a triangle of the same flatbread folded over meat and vegetables. I think it was good, but I also know what I don’t know – I rarely eat Indian or Pakistani food – and probably should have ordered something a la carte.

I tried Siphon Coffee before I headed to lunch, and the preparation of the namesake coffee is quite a show – there’s fire, and it looks like a chemistry experiment – with the resulting cup certainly balanced and smooth without losing any of the nuances of the bean. I just can’t see spending $9 for a cup of coffee other than to do it once to try it.

Moving on to Austin: Better Half Coffee & Cocktails is an all-day café in a cool space that serves coffee from Portland’s heart roasters and has traditional and unusual breakfast items, including the thing I could not possibly pass up, waffled hash browns with coffee-cream gravy and poached eggs. It was decadent, although despite being on the heavy side, it wasn’t greasy, more heavy just because all of those items are calorie-dense, and those hashbrowns were spectacularly crunchy. They were using a single-origin heart coffee even for espressos, which I especially appreciate because it shows someone took some care in selecting the coffee (some single origins are great for pour-overs and awful as espressos).

The Backspace was on that old Food and Wine list of the best pizzerias in the U.S. that I’ve been working my way through over the last five years (I’ve been to 31 of the original 48 places, although at least three have closed), and because I hit it on the early side I was there for their happy hour pricing, where their starters are half off. The roasted beets were great, the roasted cauliflower was bland. The margherita pizza used very high-quality mozzarella, although the dough was ordinary, and overall I’d say it’s on the high side of average (grade 50).

Micklethwait Craft Meats showed up on Daniel Vaughn’s invaluable guide to the ten best BBQ joints in Texas, coming in at #8, with the venerable Franklin up at #2. Since I don’t eat beef, Texas BBQ is largely lost on me, but Micklethwait’s pork ribs were excellent, sweet/salty with a strong smoke flavor and bright pink ring. Both the potato salad, which has mayo but tastes more of mustard, and the tart cole slaw were also excellent. If you do eat cow, they’re known for brisket and beef ribs too.

I also had dinner with my cousin at Cane Rosso, an outpost of the Dallas restaurant, and went with a non-traditional pizza, the “farmer’s only dot com” pie with arugula, mushrooms, and zucchini, topped with pesto but without tomato sauce. The dough here is really the standout, although everything on top was also bright and fresh (it was weird to get good zucchini in mid-February).

My Dallas eats were a bit limited by where I needed to go and the sheer sprawl of the Metroplex. I tried Ascension Coffee but found their pour-over really lacking in flavor or body; I probably should have known when I saw they talked up the ‘blueberry’ note in their Ethiopian Ardi, a note that is often considered a defect in Ethiopian beans. (If you’ve had it, you’d know why – it isn’t a pleasant blueberry flavor and it dominates the cup.) Ascension seems so focused on food that the coffee takes a back seat, which is a shame because it’s possible to do both.

The one other meal of note I had was at the Spiral Diner in Fort Worth, not far from TCU. There are three locations of the all-vegan restaurant, which looks like a ’50s diner gone hipster, and the menu comprises mostly familiar comfort-food dishes that have been veganized. I am not vegan, but like hitting good vegan/vegetarian restaurants on the road to try to keep my diet diverse; that said, Spiral’s menu was too focused on recreating certain non-vegetarian or vegan foods, without the ingenuity of places like Modern Love or Vedge/V Street. I ended up getting a Beyond Burger, which I’ve had before and do find pretty satisfying as a meat alternative (better than any veggie burger I’ve ever tried), and the vegan chipotle mayo that came with it was as good as the real thing. It was just kind of unremarkable, salvaged somewhat by the blueberry pie that also allowed me to taunt Mike Schur on Twitter.

Los Angeles eats, 2019.

The best meal I had on my brief vacation to Los Angeles was at Rosaliné, an upscale Peruvian restaurant that particularly focuses on ceviches and paellas, all of which were superb. The corvina sea bass was the milder of the two we ordered, so the flavor and freshness of the fish shone through, while the ceviche crocante, with raw (but cured) halibut and crispy calamari, tasted more of the sauce, with tart yuzu and a good but not overpowering amount of heat. I’m not a big paella fan, since I think every version I’d ever had in restaurants used cheap rice and was dominated either by tomato or saffron, but the chaufa paella here is excellent, served smoking hot in its cast-iron skillet and tossed table-side so the crispy part of the rice gets mixed in and slightly softened by the steam (so you can chew it without breaking a tooth). It comes with prawns, pancetta, and a little sausage, while their other paella is all shellfish; there isn’t a vegetarian option on the menu but I would imagine they could accommodate you with some notice. I also recommend the pan andino, a house-made bread with quinoa that is served with a rocoto pepper butter and a botoja olive spread that are both fantastic, savory and salty and perfect for spreading on warm bread. We were way too full for dessert.

I had lunch solo at the now curiously-named A.O.C., which predates the ascendance of Ben Shapiro’s favorite Congressperson. It’s a wine bar from Suzanne Goins and Carolyne Styne of Lucques and The Larder, with a small-plates menu that focuses on foods from around the Mediterranean as well as an extensive cheese list that lets you order just a single kind (which I did, trying a pacencia, a raw sheep’s milk cheese from Spain that was like a stronger, nuttier manchego, served with bread, dried fruit, and raw walnuts). For lunch I had the brussels sprouts, radicchio, and burrata sandwich on house-made focaccia, which was a delightful mess and did not skimp on the vegetables, with aged balsamic giving some sweet/tart notes to balance the slight bitterness of those two vegetables. I didn’t plan to have dessert but when I saw the butterscotch pôt de crème with fleur de sel & salted cashew cookies I couldn’t exactly say no – the cookies were good, although I think that’s the kind of cookie that needs to be consumed within a few hours of baking, while the custard was absolutely superb in texture and flavor, with that little bit of salt and big caramel and butter flavors.

Republique, like the first two restaurants I mentioned, made the Eater list of the 38 ‘most essential’ restaurants in LA for the year – I still don’t know what they mean by ‘essential’ but I do find those lists incredibly useful when traveling and rarely have a bad experience at any of their places. It’s modern French in a very cool brick building that was supposedly once owned by Charlie Chaplin, previously occupied by the Nancy Silverton-owned Campanile. Modern French probably misrepresents the food, though, as it’s more just modern global cuisine with French influences. I went with a writer friend and we grazed our way through some of the lighter dishes, skipping the meat/fish mains. The spinach cavatelli with fresh morel mushrooms was among the best pasta dishes I’ve ever had, both because the pasta was so well-made and perfectly cooked and because the morels were … well, morels, which are generally so expensive (they only grow wild, typically after forest fires, and are harvested by hand) that I rarely get to eat them. The grilled octopus salad with multiple kinds of citrus plus pistachios and a hint of chile was another standout, as was the bread with cultured butter and the smoked eel beignets (yep, just what it sounds like, and so good) with horseradish sauce. I normally don’t care for white chocolate desserts but their caramelized white chocolate sabayon with local berries was really superb – the cloying nature of regular white chocolate is dampened by the caramelization, which converts some of the sugars and brings out a broader array of flavors than the one-note sweetness of regular white chocolate.

I met up with movie critic Tim Grierson, with whom I’ve had a longrunning email dialogue but had never actually met in person, at The Henry in west Hollywood, where I had that rarest of things, a truly memorable salad, in a rather over-the-top (if on brand for that area) space. The green garden kale salad has romanesco and broccoli along with kale, brussels sprouts, green beans, snow peas, arugula, pistachios, and comes with a tahini vinaigrette that was lighter than most tahini dressings (like goddess dressing, which I do like quite a bit, but can be heavy).

Molly Knight and I had dinner at Badmaash, a favorite of hers, located on Fairfax a few doors down from Jon & Vinny’s. Badmaash has both traditional Indian dishes and some strange mashups like Chicken Tikka Poutine – fries topped with gravy and chicken tikka and cheese curds, good but definitely too heavy for me – and chili cheese naan, where the naan dough is wrapped around cheese and serranos and comes out like a stuffed pizza (but much better than that, obviously). The traditional samosa and rosemary naan were actually my favorite dishes, though, because they were so simple but well done, and since I seldom eat Indian food because there are so many things on Indian restaurant menus I can’t eat.

Stella Barra pizzeria is a solid 50 for me, which probably puts it in the lower tier of my pizzeria rankings since I tend to avoid places I hear are below-average; I thought their dough was quite good if stretched a little too thick, and don’t love that their white pizzas come with a ‘parmesan cream sauce,’ whatever that is – true white Neapolitan pizzas shouldn’t have anything like that. But the toppings on the two pizzas we tried, the sausage and fennel as well as the spinach & kale with garlic and green onions, were very high quality. I’m usually a purist when it comes to old-fashioneds, but their lavender-tinged version was surprisingly good.

I did all my coffee-ing at Verve and Andante, as well as tea in both spots as well; Verve was slightly better in both categories, especially for pour-over coffee, and they offer hojicha, my personal favorite green tea (the leaves are roasted, so the flavor is deeper and less grassy). Verve’s space was nearly always packed, while Andante had more room to chill, although one time I was in the latter’s shop near the Grove and realized I was the only person there not working on a screenplay.

Top 25 restaurants in Philly for 2019.

I’ve wanted to put this post together for ages, but wanted also to be sure I’d tried enough restaurants in the city for my list to make some sense. I think I’ve done that now, although there’s always more to try, and living a bit outside the city I’m at a slight disadvantage.

1. High Street on Market (Old City). My favorite spot in the city for breakfast or lunch, and they do dinner as well, although it’s the one meal I haven’t eaten there. The menus are built around their amazing, old-world breads; the breakfast Forager sandwich is to die for, and they make the best roast pork sandwich in the city. Their sister restaurant, Fork, is also on the list.

2. Suraya (Fishtown). Recently named the #1 restaurant in the city by Philly magazine, this all-day Lebanese restaurant, with a café/market in front and fine-ish dining in back, does Levantine cooking right, with classic preparations of the mezze (small starters, like hummus and muhammara) served with piping-hot pitas. There are a few non-traditional items here too, but go with a gang and stuff yourselves with a bunch of mezze.

3. Vedge (Midtown Village). A vegan restaurant to satisfy almost any omnivore; they do incredible things with vegetables so that the dishes are satisfying and visually stunning, and so you won’t think about the absence of meat. I still can’t believe the sunchoke bisque amuse bouche didn’t have dairy in it, and the toasted marshmallows in my dessert were indistinguishable from those made with egg whites.

4. Bud & Marilyn’s (Midtown Village). Marcie Tunney’s best-rated restaurant does American comfort food with upscale twists, including various fried chicken dishes and outstanding salads – I’ve recreated a fennel, brussels sprout, and green apple salad I had there in December 2017 a dozen times at home.

5. Cheu (Fishtown). I’d say “best ramen in Philly” but I haven’t had it many places. They do make great ramen, and have great cocktails. It’s near Suraya; parking is a pain on that whole stretch.

6. Hungry Pigeon (Queen Village). My birthday dinner last year was here, and we ordered a strange assortment of dishes, but everything was excellent (well, my daughter might disagree on the asparagus). They use fresh pasta from the Little Noodle Pasta Company, a spinoff of the now-closed Ela in the same neighborhood. The dessert, a ‘diner-style’ coconut cream cake, was four large portions by our standards.

7. Fork (Old City). High Street’s sister and neighbor does superb fine dining in a quieter, more upscale atmosphere, with a great wine/cocktail list.

8. Abe Fisher (Rittenhouse). I haven’t been to Zahav, Michael Solomonov’s flagship restaurant, but I’ve been here, which is still on the high end but more affordable and I think a bit more accessible. The menu is inspired by but not limited to Jewish-American cooking traditions. The gougères they serve instead of a bread basket are superb, and my daughter will tell you it’s the best Shirley Temple in the city.

9. Osteria (Fairmount). Osteria was a Marc Vetri restaurant, included in the sale of most of Vetri’s portfolio to Urban Outfitters, then purchased last year by the owners of Sampan and Double Knot. Most of their signature dishes, including house-made pastas and pizzas, are still on the menu, including the chicken liver rigatoni that my daughter once described as “it sounds gross, but it’s really good.” (She was 8.)

10. Royal Boucherie (Old City). Top Chef winner Nicholas Elmi’s second restaurant in Philly – I haven’t been to Laurel – is an “American brasserie” with a lot of French influence on the menu and a very lively bar. Their desserts are superb and they have one of the best lists of amari (potable bitters) I’ve come across.

11. Pizzeria Vetri (Arts District & Rittenhouse). I’ve only been to the original location, going many, many times since it first opened, and they do a small list of Neapolitan pizza options very well, as long as their signature rotolo, pizza dough rolled like a buche de noel with mortadella, cheese, and pistachios; as well as light, house-made soft-serve ice cream. Service here has always been excellent for a fast-casual spot.

12. Brigantessa (East Passyunk). Pizzas and house-made pastas from southern Italian peasant food traditions. They did have an issue last fall that resulted in the firing of their chef de cuisine, later than they should have, over anti-Semitic comments and mistreatment of staff.

13. Le Virtu (East Passyunk). Abruzzese cuisine – that’s east central Italy – which contains many dishes and ingredients you’d recognize as “Italian” but sometimes in different combinations. It’s a region I associate especially with mushrooms and that was indeed the pasta dish that most stood out to me when I ate there last month.

14. V Street (Rittenhouse). Vedge’s ‘vegan street food’ offshoot; the fried tofu taco with two slaws manages to deliver the satisfying crunch of a fish taco and make me forget I’m eating tofu, a food that I’ll consume but would rarely describe as memorable. I wish they were open more hours.

15. Royal Izakaya (Queen Village). An izakaya that takes its sake and shochu very seriously, with an intimidating menu of small plates to go along with the booze.

16. Amis (Washington Square). Another former Vetri outpost, amis focuses on the cuisines of Rome and the surrounding Lazio region in a quirky converted warehouse-like setting. When I went, I had two specials, both involving duck, that were superb.

17. Pizzeria Stella (Society Hill). A Stephen Starr outpost very close to I-95 and the waterfront, Stella does traditional Neapolitan-style pizzas with a few pasta and starter options and home-made gelato for dessert.

18. Barbuzzo (Midtown Village). Marcie Tunney’s flagship, still known for great pasta dishes (the ricotta gnocchi are superb), good pizzas, seasonal vegetable dishes, and that salted caramel budino.

19. Stock (Fishtown/Rittenhouse). A BYOB with two locations – I’ve only been to Fishtown – that serves the best banh mi I’ve had here, as well as southeast Asian soups and cold noodle dishes.

20. Dinic’s (Reading Terminal Market). This is where you go if you want a very classic Philly roast pork sandwich (with sharp provolone and broccoli rabe, please). They do other sandwiches I don’t eat, but why bother?

21. Poi Dog (Rittenhouse). If you want poke, this is your place. They have spam musubi too if that’s how you roll.

22. Dizengoff (Rittenhouse Square). Solomonov’s hummus outpost, with shakshuka on the weekends, will often have a line out the door. His Federal Donuts is across the street but I don’t care for their donuts and haven’t tried their Korean fried chicken.

23. Lolita (Midtown Village). Marcie Tunney’s upscale Mexican spot has great margaritas, tacos, taquizas, enchiladas, and a few fun sides like elote and maduros.

24. El Vez (Midtown Village). Stephen Starr’s straightforward Mexican spot with a large menu of guacamole options and very good if predictable American-Mexican food.

25. Farmicia (Old City). Farm-to-table food with a wide menu that I find great if you don’t know if your fellow diners are adventurous eaters, since they offer plenty of accessible options plus some quirky dishes for the more daring eaters.

I still haven’t made it to Zahav; I’ve twice had reservations and had to cancel, once for work (still mad), once because of illness. I’ve been to Double Knot, but only for happy hour, which is a different menu than dinner but still very good. I haven’t been to Laurel, Friday Saturday Sunday, Noord eetcafe, or Serpico. I can’t eat at South Philly Barbacoa, and I’m not paying what Vetri Cucina is asking.

Places I’ve tried and didn’t like: Vernick Food & Drink (they sent out a dish that was actually burned, enough that I sent it back, which I almost never do), Res Ipsa (ordered a hot sandwich that arrived cold), Sate Kampar (spicy food, but not flavorful at all).

Finally, for coffee, Re-Animator is my favorite roaster in Philly, with Elixr second. I love the Menagerie coffee shop across the street from Farmicia, where they use Dogwood espresso and a few third-wave roasters from around the country for pourovers.