pizza — Page 3

→ February 15, 2019
→ By keith

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.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: breakfast, italian cuisine, japanese cuisine, lebanese cuisine, mexican cuisine, pasta, philadelphia, pizza, ramen, rankings, vegan, vegetarian

→ February 2, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 2/2/19.

My ranking of the top 100 prospects in baseball ran this week, with four separate pieces: #1 through #50, #51 through #100, my column of fourteen more guys who just missed, and a ranking of the top 20 prospects just for impact in 2019. I also held a Klawchat on Wednesday and a Periscope video chat on Thursday.

My ranking of all 30 farm systems will run on Monday, February 4th, after which the team by team reports will run, one division per day for the following six days. I’ve written 24 of the 30 team reports so far, if you’re curious.

Many thanks to the White Sox blog SouthSideSox and writer katiesphil for this lovely review of Smart Baseball.

And now, the links…

The best thing I read this week was the New Yorker‘s profile of Nashville’s iconic Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack and current owner André Prince Jeffries. It’s a wonderful piece that touches on questions of culinary authenticity as well as the intersection of race, food, and access to money.
A close second is this Atavist story on a nearly-blind man in Texas who robbed a bank so he could get health care, a story that combines a profile of him – he also lost a foot to the effects of type 2 diabetes – and our very broken social safety net.
A woman attacked by a serial groper in DC found out he was a chef at a popular restaurant she’d visited, so she fought back by spreading word among city restaurants about his history of assaults.
Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Grimes (D) examined voting records of state employees, job applicants, and political rivals, which may have contributed to her decision not to run for Governor next year. She called the ProPublica report a “sexist smear job.”
Self-styled activist Kevin Powell nearly ruined a woman’s life over a matter of mistaken identity, running an actual smear campaign against someone who shared the same name as someone who’d send his wife a critical email. Powell, who appeared on the inaugural season of MTV’s The Real World, has faced multiple accusations of assaulting women, and lost a lawsuit in this case during which he plugged his ears with his fingers to avoid hearing the judge’s ruling, and then claimed he was being targeted because of his race.
Washington state legislators are pushing to end nonmedical exemptions to mandatory vaccination laws – as every damn state should by now – and of course anti-vaxxers are fighting back. These deniers – not skeptics, as I told the author on twitter, because skeptics want evidence, while anti-vaxxers reject evidence – are loud, so those of us on the side of science need to be louder.
Arizona is backsliding even in the face of measles outbreaks, with Republicans there introducing two bills that will reduce vaccination rates, one making it easier to opt out, one that would force medical professionals to explain vaccination “risks” to parents. (Here’s the main risk: you might be a little sore at the injection site.)
California did tighten its laws, but now many doctors are selling bogus “medical exemptions” to insane parents who’d rather break the law than protect their children from deadly diseases. This should be grounds to revoke a doctor’s license to practice medicine.
The Oregonian ran an editorial advocating eliminating nonmedical exemptions there and otherwise pushing pro-vaccination policies. If you live in any of these states, call your state rep and senator and tell them both you favor laws that end all nonmedical exemptions (religious or philosophical) for schoolchildren, and want sanctions against doctors who help parents skirt the rules.
Police failed to file charges in a 2013 rape case in Eastland, Texas, allowing the rapist to remain free so he could rape and nearly kill an 11-year-old girl. Worse: One of the officers who screwed up the original case, Frank Saylors, won election as city commissioner of Eastland in 2015.
The mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, didn’t like that the city-funded historical magazine had a piece about Henry Ford’s (well-documented) history of anti-Semitism, so he fired the longtime editor and refused to let the magazine distribute the issue. Of course, it has already backfired, with the story making national news.
I can’t imagine you missed this but Virginia Governor Ralph Northam needs to step down.
Top Chef alum Fatima Ali died of Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare bone cancer, last week.
Is there a connection between gum disease and Alzheimer’s? If you need me, I’ll be flossing my teeth.
GQ ran a guide to dating someone with serious food allergies.
A reader passed along this story of members of indie-folk band Murder by Death opening a Neapolitan pizzeria in Louisville.
The efforts of a single evangelical woman in Virginia just derailed the Equal Rights Amendment again. Of course, she’s white and highly privileged, so she can’t understand why such an amendment would be beneficial.
The EPA named a climate change denier to its advisory board. John Christy has argued for the repeal of regulations against greenhouse gas emissions because he claims (against all evidence) that their effects will be positive.
Two St. Louis cops decided to play Russian roulette with one bullet in the revolver, so of course one of them is now dead.
Also from St. Louis, the Riverfront Times details how the FBI outsmarted the violent cops who beat protesters in the wake of the acquittal of officer Jason Stockley on murder charges.
Public transport in Vienna has boomed thanks to a broad-based combination of increased geographic coverage, pricing strategies, regulations, and support from the federal level.
Mohanad Elshieky, who is in the U.S. legally, had a terrifying interaction with overzealous ICE agents, whom Greyhound allows to board its buses for these so-called “checks.”
My friend Emma Span wrote an advice column for Mother Goose characters over at Slate.
Matt Leacock, designer of Pandemic and the Forbidden cooperative game series, has a new title coming this year called Era: Medieval Age, a “roll and build” title inspired by Roll Through the Ages.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: arizona, board game news, california, climate change, kentucky, links, longreads, louisville, mass transit, metoo, nashville, pizza, top chef, vaccines, virginia

→ December 14, 2018
→ By keith

Las Vegas eats, 2018 edition.

Three days and four nights in Las Vegas did at least mean a few interesting meals in a city that is known for overpriced celebrity chef-backed restaurants on the Strip but that has a vibrant food culture once you leave the gaudy façade and head a few miles in any direction.

The best meal I had all week was at The Black Sheep, a Vietnamese-influenced spot in a strip mall (of course) in Rhodes Ranch in southwest Vegas. There was no way I wasn’t ordering the cocktail called Mr. Brownstone – once I saw it on the drink menu, it wouldn’t leave me alone – which comes with an ice cube made of brown sugar, ginger, and mint. The server heats the top of it with a kitchen torch, and then pours the bourbon into the divot the flame created. I would just counsel you to drink it fast, because I didn’t and then the drink became overly sweet at the very end.

Their duck confit was similarly calling me from the menu and was superb. It comes with Israeli couscous, cooked a little past al dente, with a mild yellow curry sauce, onions, and shaved Chinese broccoli. There was also a single flower on the dish which I realized at some point was no longer on the dish because everything tasted so good I ate the flower without realizing it. For dessert, they had two options, a chocolate tres leches cake that is always on the menu and a seasonal persimmon bread pudding; I took the former and regret nothing. The chocolate cake is served with a chocolate ‘nest’ on top, a disk of lacey dark chocolate, as well as Vietnamese coffee mousse, cocoa nibs, and a Tahitian vanilla crème anglaise. It took an award-winning effort of willpower to stop myself from finishing the entire cake.

Settebello is a VPN-certified pizzeria with two Nevada locations, one in Henderson and one in Red Rock, plus three in California and one in Salt Lake City. They import many of their key ingredients from Italy, including the flour in the dough and real prosciutto di Parma; the crust is soft with visible char on the outside, although I expected a slightly airier feel to the edges. I tried their namesake Settebello pizza, a margherita base with sausage roasted in their wood oven, pancetta, mushrooms, and pine nuts. I don’t think it needs both meats, but the sausage had a good smoky note from the oven and the pine nuts provide some crunch to contrast with the soft center of the dough.

Flock and Fowl is a fried chicken joint with a handful of not-fried-chicken items on the menu, but really, if you’re going here, it’s to eat fried chicken and drink their ‘flocktails.’ I kept it simple with the two-piece (drumstick and thigh) plate with rice, slaw, and pickles; the chicken was outstanding, perfectly crispy on the outside but tender on the inside, on the salty side but cooked so well that I was fine with the sodium hit. The spicy sambal sauce it’s served with has a nice, complex flavor if you can handle the heat, which is significant. The rice was served ‘plain’ but had a natural buttery taste to it; the slaw, on the other hand, had zero flavor at all and needed some kind of acidity. We also ordered the “boneless wings” (I know, not a thing) with a salt and Sichuan pepper (which isn’t really pepper, but does taste very much like it) crust; their flavor was perfect, not spicy but just a bit hot, while the meat on the interior was a little overcooked. I drank a Lychee’s Knees cocktail, with gin, lychee, and lemon, fruitier than I normally go for in drinks but the interplay of the lychee’s sweetness and the herbal notes in the gin worked well.

On the breakfast side, I didn’t do quite as well; all three places I tried were just okay. The Peppermill was probably the best of the three, even though its atmosphere leaves everything to be desired. Just get something with hash browns in it – that was the best thing I ate there – but skip the hot blueberry or apple muffins, which are overloaded with sugar. CraftKitchen in Henderson has an incredible menu and a well-known area chef behind it, but the crab cake benedict I got was surprisingly light on flavor; the egg was perfectly poached but the crab cake was mostly bread crumbs, and there was too much moisture in the dish for the bread to handle. PublicUs is a hipster coffee shop – no, Jakie Wohl wasn’t there – with a full menu of egg dishes and avocado toast. The sourdough waffle was quite good, definitely a unique combination of flavor and texture, but the Portuguese sausage I got on the side was lukewarm.

For coffee, Mothership in Henderson is your best bet, with house-roasted single origins available on drip or as pour-over; I got their current option from Rwanda and the roast was perfect so some of the stone fruit flavors came through in the cup. I also had coffee at PublicUs twice; their “macchiato” is not a traditional one, even though I asked the woman who took my order that specific question, so what I got had way more milk than I like, and the pour-over I got the second time came in a mug that was cold so the coffee cooled off too quickly … and the drink was $8, which might be a fair price in a decade after climate change has crushed the global coffee crop but is ridiculous right now for a bean (from Costa Rica) that isn’t that special.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: breakfast, coffee, fried chicken, las vegas, pizza, vietnamese cuisine

→ September 22, 2018
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 9/22/18.

For ESPN+ subscribers, my annual list of players I was wrong about went up on Thursday, including Matt Chapman and Harrison Bader. I also held a Klawchat this week.

Over at Ars Technica, I reviewed the new digital adaptation of the complex board game Scythe, available now on Steam. I don’t love the underlying game of Scythe but the implementation here is spectacular.

Here on the dish, I’ve set up a new index page for all my board game reviews in alphabetical order; there are 160 there now and I’ll continue to update it as I post new reviews here or on other sites. I reviewed two more games here this week: Mesozooic and Founders of Gloomhaven.

I sent out a new issue of my free email newsletter earlier this week; it’s irregular in timing and content, but hey, it’s free.

And now, the links. I do want to warn anyone who might be triggered by such stories that there are quite a few links here relating to sexual assault.

Longreads first: Molly Ringwald writes in the New Yorker about John Hughes’ problematic treatment of women in his movies, notably The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles.
The Washington Post‘s Elizabeth Bruenig has a very long, devastating read on a clearcut rape case in Texas that prosecutors dismissed as he-said/she-said, even though there was concrete evidence to support her claims, she reported right away (another #WhyIDidntReport case), and statements from her assailants that were quickly proven false. The rapists were never charged.
Mari Uyehara writes for GQ on the unending apologia for bad men.
Craig Calcaterra exposes how UNC Chapel Hill’s football stadium is named for a man who led a white supremacist massacre in 1898. The school didn’t answer his requests for comment, probably while they came up with bullshit excuses for the name.
Writer-author Joe Moran writes for the Guardian about the pleasures of ‘slow reading’, which I get, although I am still a very fast reader.
Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux operating system (and part of its name – Linux is a portmanteau of Linus and Unix, on which Linux was based), has stepped aside as head of the Linux Foundation after years of abusive behavior aimed at his colleagues.
Alyssa Leader sued Harvard over its mishandling over the sexual assault case where she was the victim and has since become an advocate for victims, especially those on campus. She responded to one of the women defending Brett Kavanaugh with a thread that dismantles that so-called defense.
Deborah Copaken was raped at Harvard in 1988. In the wake of the Kavanaugh revelations, she reached out to her attacker this week – and got an apology. Her sisters were in my college class, but I don’t know the author. (This article may contain triggers for victims of sexual assault.)
The Washington Post asked a former sex crimes prosecutor to look at the victim’s claims against Kavanaugh; the former prosecutor deems the accusations credible, and explains why, answering questions like why the victim didn’t report sooner.
Whitney McIntosh wrote for SBNation why Melisa Reidy had every right to publish her accusations against Addison Russell now, rather than right away or on anyone’s timeline but her own.
A white man in Washington is suing the state, claiming that a DNA test shows he’s (slightly) black and thus should be treated as such. For what it’s worth, one of those tests said I’m 1% Nigerian.
Minor league baseball players are exporing unionization in response to the clause in the Republicans’ (very unpopular) tax law from last year that exempted MLB and MiLB from minimum wage laws.
The Senate passed the Music Modernization Act this week, fixing the salmagundi of state copyright laws for songs written before 1972 while making it easier for artists to get paid by streaming services.
The NRA and their Russian allies on social media often copied each other’s tweets and commentary, according to this NPR article.
Arizona’s State Superintendent of schools appointed a young-earth creationist to review the state’s science education standards, and he already pushed word changes into the curriculum. The dingbat in question, Joseph Kezele, claims that there is “scientific evidence” to support creationism. Call your state reps, Arizonans.
Cornell professor Brian Wansink’s research on eating habits and obesity led the USDA to tab him to lead a $22 million program to improve school lunches. This week, JAMA announced they were retracting six of his articles, the culmination of a year-long look into Wansink’s history of p-hacking, manipulating data, and even plagiarism. Wansink resigned from Cornell effective June of 2019.
Two pieces of note for subscribers to The Athletic: Meredith Wills looks at the thicker laces on MLB baseballs, which explains much of the home run surge; and Jamey Newberg remembers the late Don Welke, who passed away this week at age 76. I knew Don from seeing him at games over the years and truly enjoyed talking to him.
Lee Zeldin, a Republican Congressman from Long Island whose seat is in jeopardy in this year’s elections, used a picture of an Estonian lighthouse in an ad that was supposed to show the Montauk lighthouse. He’s being challenged by Democrat Perry Gershon.
Deadspin’s Albert Burnenko tears apart a terrible New Yorker piece that asks, disingenuously, whether we should keep politics out of sports.
More than a dozen people who were injured by the police “kettle” action during protests and riots last year in St. Louis are suing the city over their injuries. Many of the tactics the police used have since been prohibited by a preliminary injunction.
Arizona Republican Paul Gosar is a conspiracy theory-spouting Congressman who has accused the FBI and DOJ of “treason,” so now, in a new political ad, his siblings are endorsing his opponent.
My friend Tim Grierson writes for am New York about Paul Simon’s return to New York for his final concerts.
Reason looks at the truth behind the TIME cover about teachers not getting by. It turns out that the initial TIME story omitted mention of the teacher’s base salary of $55,000.
The Atlantic looks at the chicken industry as it enters an antibiotic-free era.
Patrick Hruby writes in the Washington Post how ridiculous the NCAA’s claim that paying athletes would ruin their educations is.
Women’s March Minnesota assembled a poster of Republican politicians’ quotes on rape.
An ‘international pizza consultant’ claims that Portland, Oregon, is America’s best pizza city. I haven’t been to Portland since 1999, but I’m going to try to get there in the spring to check some of these places out.
Board games: Greater than Games opened a Kickstarter for a new game called Homebrewers.
Asmodee Digital quietly released a free-to-play (with in-app purchases) version of the abstract strategy game Onitama.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: arizona, baseball, board games, chicken, food safety, food science, links, metoo, new york, north carolina, pizza, sexual assault, stick to baseball

→ August 25, 2018
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/25/18.

I had one Insider/ESPN+ piece this week, scouting notes on Tampa wunderkind Wander Franco and some Yankees & Rangers prospects, and held a Klawchat on Thursday.

I reviewed the gladiator-themed deckbuilding game Carthage for Paste this week. That’s the last of my pre-Gen Con reviews; I believe everything I review the rest of the year will either be from games I got/saw at Gen Con or that were released afterwards.

I’m about due for a fresh edition of my free email newsletter, to which you may wish to subscribe if you enjoy my ramblings.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: ESPN’s Jackie McMullen has an excellent piece on the NBA’s progressive efforts to help players battle mental health issues, interspersed with insights from Kevin Love, Paul Pierce, and other players who’ve dealt with anxiety, depression, and panic disorder.
The Guardian looks at TripAdvisor at a crossroads, beset by fake reviews and dealing with many of the same questions of responsibility for content that affect larger tech outfits.
Ten billion dollars a year goes to ‘charities’ who aim to shape public policy, which can both alter public discussion and political votes on topics while also depriving the U.S. Treasury of tax revenue from the associated income. That’s just one revelation in Pulitzer winner Elizabeth Kolbert’s New Yorker piece on the new era of philanthropy, where the wealthy have more power than ever and often wield it through their foundations.
Radiolab looked at Facebook’s own problems with regulating hate speech in a recent podcast episode that I found very thorough – it doesn’t let Facebook off the hook, but does a solid job of explaining some of the difficulties they face in making decisions on what content to allow and what to delete.
The BBC’s The Inquiry podcast asks if we might see another AIDS pandemic as global health initiatives slow and major aid donors (notably the U.S.) reduce their funding. If our government continues its lurch towards theocracy, you can bet AIDS research and international aid for AIDS treatment will drop.
Russian trolls/bots may have been spreading vaccine denialist views on social media, although Dr. David “Orac” Gorski argues that the media coverage has overstated its prevalence.
Orac was busy this week, with another post on how the Australian edition of 60 Minutes ran a puff piece on a quack stem cell clinic. So-called stem cell therapy has become the next big thing in separating gullible or desperate patients from their money, but the science itself is unproven and very much in its infancy.
Harvard Law Professor Jack Goldsmith writes in the conservative Weekly Standard that there is sufficient grounds for impeachment, and that may lead Trump to try to fire Mueller and any other investigators working on the collusion case.
How do microscopic plastic particles end up in our food chain? Researchers have found so-called microplastics in water supplies, in beer, and even in aquatic creatures we consume, with unknown consequences for the ecosystem and our bodies.
The multi-level marketing scheme known as Herbalife has been around, and been accused of being a scam, for decades now, but somehow they always skate by. (They’re a major sponsor of the LA Galaxy soccer team, and as good an argument as you’ll see for not putting corporate sponsor names on jerseys.) A new lawsuit alleges that Herbalife’s system of paid seminars misleads attendees by promising wealth while siphoning off their money.
Uganda, one of the few African countries where baseball has a presence, may be about to descend into chaos as a popular singer turned rising opposition politician has been jailed and beaten by agents of dictator Yoweri Museveni. Protests against the detention and Museveni’s oppressive rule continue to grow.
Corruption in Louisiana: The state’s Senate President, John Alario, has twice spiked a bill legalizing ride-sharing services to help his friend, who sells insurance to cab companies. This story appeared on ProPublica two days ago; it hasn’t been picked up by any local Louisiana news outlet since.
New EPA rules, relaxing regulations on clean, beautiful coal, will lead to 1400 more deaths per year and up to 15,000 additional cases of respiratory problems, including asthma, due to the fine particulate matter emitted by coal mining and production.
Brooklyn-based pizzaiolo Paulie Gee has been talking about opening a New York-style slice shop for years now, but it appears it will finally open at Franklin & Noble this month.
N.K. Jemisin won her third straight Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Stone Sky, and her five-minute acceptance speech is well worth your time, as it’s by turns funny and inspiring.
My Twitter friend Parker Molloy wrote for the Guardian how she can’t root for the Cubs after their decision to acquire Daniel Murphy, who has expressed anti-gay views without ever retracting or revising them.
Asia Argento, a prominent victim of Harvey Weinstein’s predations, now stands accused herself of statutory rape of a 17-year-old boy; we can believe her claims on Weinstein but still hold her accountable for her own transgressions.
Kelli Ward is running for Jeff Flake’s Senate seat in Arizona on a platform of pro-Trump, white nationalist talking points; she’s even been campaigning with Weird Mike Cernovich, the conspiracy theorist who gained an audience by pushing the bullshit Pizzagate story.
Blake Fahrenthold resigned from Congress over a sexual harassment scandal that U.S. taxpayers helped clear up for him, but blames everyone except himself for his career’s demise.
Georgia’s GOP is trying to suppress the black vote in November by closing polling stations, using the Americans with Disabilities Act as its justification. Majority-black Randolph County did reverse its plans to close seven of nine polling stations after the public outcry. If you live in Georgia, make sure your elected officials know you support voting rights and oppose any attempts to suppress the vote. And voters in other areas should know this is part of a broader, national vote-suppression effort using the same flanking maneuver.
The Washington Post‘s Elizabeth Bruenig argues that it’s time to stop thinking of ‘socialism’ as a dirty word in a piece that argues largely for ‘democratic socialism,’ which is a poorly-named platform of social welfare policies that by and large doesn’t actually require socialism. Socialism has a specific historical meaning: government ownership of major means of production and distribution. It’s been tried all over the world, and it has failed, as it wipes out many of the incentives that drive human decisions in the marketplace. If you want to argue for a stronger social safety net and for policies that strive to reduce structural discrimination and inequality, that’s a debate worth having, but it’s not ‘socialism.’
The New Republic‘s Sarah Jones writes (in a piece from April) that the real campus free speech problem is on the right, not on the left, highlighting cases of punishment for views handed down by evangelical Christian colleges.
A Kansas City TV station suspended a reporter for sharing an article on white privilege on her Facebook page. The incident may also have led to her termination; a KC Star editorial argues that the station was in the wrong. The reporter’s lawsuit against KSHB is still pending.
Amazon appears to have set up a slew of astroturfing Twitter accounts to fight news coverage of poor working conditions at its warehouses.
Researchers at MIT and Harvard have developed a genome test that may help identify patients at greater risk for diabetes, heart disease, breast cancer, and a few other common, often deadly diseases.
The longstanding hypothesis on the cause of age-related cognitive decline has been neuron death and insufficient replacement of those cells to make up for the loss. New research may counter that, showing that the cause might be lost neuron plasticity, which was reversed in mice using the drug fluoxetine, better known as Prozac.
Hua Hsu writes in the New Yorker about the ‘end point’ of representation and the hit film Crazy Rich Asians, the success of which has brought the term representation (back) into the mainstream conversation. Representation matters to the people who haven’t been represented, and if that inconveniences you as someone who has never had to think twice about seeing people who look and sound like you on the big or small screens, well, tough.
Red Raven Games has a Kickstarter running for the second edition of their game The Ancient World.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: africa, arizona, charity, environment, hugo award, links, medicine, pizza, pseudoscience, representation, science fiction, social media, stick to baseball, the swamp, vaccines, voter suppression

→ August 15, 2018
→ By keith

Top 55 pizzerias in the U.S., ranked.

I’ve updated this list for the first time since the original version went up three years ago, and again, I expect this will start quite a few debates.

I adore all kinds of pizza – New York-style, Neapolitan-style (thin crust, wet center), Roman-style (also thin-crust but with a cracker-like crust), Sicilian, coal-fired, wood-fired, whatever. Except “deep dish,” which is just a bread casserole and which I actively dislike. I try to find good artisan pizzerias everywhere I travel, and I’ve hit just about all of the most highly-regarded places in Manhattan and Brooklyn too. I grew up on Long Island, eating by the slice and folding as I did so, but a couple of trips to Italy convinced me of the merits of those very thin crusts and superior toppings. We’re the beneficiaries of a huge boom in high-end pizza joints in this country, and while I haven’t tried all of the good ones, I’ve been to enough to put together a ranking of the 55 best that I’ve tried. There is, I admit, a bias to this list – I’ve tried more places in greater Phoenix than any other metro area other than New York – and I’m sure I’ll get some yelling over where I put di Fara or Paulie Gee’s, but with all of that out of the way, here’s how I rank ’em.

(I’ve removed two entries that closed since the last ranking, but if I missed another one, please put it in the comments.)

1. Pizzeria Bianco, Phoenix
2. Kesté, New York
3. Motorino, New York
4. Roberta’s, Brooklyn
5. Una Pizza Napoletana, New York (relocated from San Francisco)
6. Pizzeria Vetri/Osteria, Philadelphia
7. Frank Pepe’s, New Haven
8. del Popolo, San Francisco
9. Garage Bar, Louisville
10. Pizzeria Mozza, Los Angeles
11. Pizzeria Lola, Minneapolis
12. cibo, Phoenix
13. Lucali, Brooklyn
14. Forcella, New York
15. Pizzeria Stella, Philadelphia
16. Spacca Napoli, Chicago
17. Paulie Gee’s, Brooklyn
18. Don Antonio by Starita, New York
19. Pizzaiolo, Oakland
20. ‘Pomo, Phoenix
21. Brigantessa, Philadelphia
22. Marta, New York
23. Ribalta, New York
24. flour + water, San Francisco
25. Totonno’s, Brooklyn
26. Federal Pizza, Phoenix
27. La Piazza al Forno, Glendale, AZ
28. Via Tribunali, New York/Seatte
29. Il Cane Rosso, Dallas
30. Antico, Atlanta
31. Ravanesi, Concordville, PA
32. City House, Nashville
33. Tarry Lodge, Port Chester, New York
34. Desano, Nashville
35. Grimaldi’s, Phoenix
36. Jon & Vinny’s, Los Angeles
37. Timber Pizza, Washington, DC
38. Di Fara, Brooklyn
39. All-Purpose, Washington, DC
40. Il Bosco, Scottsdale, AZ
~~41. Co., New York~~ (closed February 2018)
42. Rubirosa, New York
43. Punch Pizza, St. Paul
44. Toro, Durham
45. Craft 64, Scottsdale, AZ
46. Harry’s Bar, Miami, FL
47. 800 Degrees, Los Angeles
48. Firestarter, Dennis, MA
49. Forno 301, Phoenix
50. Dolce Vita, Houston
51. Stella Rosa, Santa Monica
52. Grimaldi’s, Brooklyn
53. Basic, San Diego
54. Nicoletta, New York (closed as of 1/2019)
55. Taconelli, Philadelphia

There’s a long list of pizzerias I still need (okay, want, but where I’m concerned pizza is a need) to try, so they’re not on the list: Razza in Jersey City, Apizza Scholls in Portland, Area Four near Boston, 2 Amy’s in DC (temporarily closed), Menomale in DC, Sottocasa in Brooklyn, al Forno in Providence, Mani Osteria in Ann Arbor, Vero in Cleveland, Iggie’s in Baltimore, and more. It’s a good time to be a pizza lover, and unless you have to be gluten-free, how could you not love pizza?

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: pizza, rankings

→ July 18, 2018
→ By keith

DC eats, 2018 edition.

The Futures Game was more or less in my backyard this year, a shade over two hours away in Washington DC, so I drove down there on Saturday before my event at Politics & Prose (many thanks to the 120-plus of you who came to see Jay Jaffe and me speak) and then drove home on Monday morning, in time to get my daughter from camp and head to the Wilmington Blue Rocks game with her that night. That did limit the amount of time I had for culinary exploration, but I did try three new spots.

Little Pearl is the third outpost in the Rose’s Luxury empire, taking the little daytime café concept from the front of Pineapple & Pearls and spinning it out into its own location, which was buzzing on Sunday morning despite the heat and Little Pearl’s small, eclectic menu. Their daytime menu includes six “sandwiches,” including the gravlax toast, in which the cured salmon comes cubed and tossed with avocado, heirloom tomato, a little crème fraîche, capers, dill, and pepitas, on a thick slice of sourdough bread. I’m a sucker for any sort of smoked or cured salmon (or, if I’m somewhere I trust, even raw), and this was really spectacular, satisfying with the combination of fats, with just a little acidity from the tomatoes and the capers to balance it out. The salmon used for the gravlax must be of extremely high quality given how clean and bright its flavor was; sometimes curing can accentuate fishier flavors in salmon, which is an oily fish to begin with, but Little Pearl’s was bright and fresh. I also tried the potato donut, which was incredibly light and airy, benefiting from the reduction in gluten that comes from swapping out some wheat flour for potato. (It does not taste like potato, if you’re wondering.) The menu also includes spicy fried chicken, a novel twist on a burger, a few salads, gelato, and some grab-and-go items like a yogurt parfait or banana bread (which is cake, really). They use Passenger coffee from Lancaster for their coffee bar, which includes a full array of espresso options.

Tail Up Goat opened in 2016 in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of DC and has already earned a Michelin star. The menu changes often, but I believe their crispy salt cod croquettes are a regular fixture, with good reason, as they hit exactly the right note of the distinctive and, yes, salty flavor of that classic peasant food (what you might know as bacalhao in Portuguese or baccalà in Italian), whipped with potato until smooth, here served with smoked cauliflower and pickled onion. Salt cod is going to have a fishy note, but whether it’s a pleasant one depends on how it’s prepared, and here it’s prepared exceptionally so you’re almost getting the memory of that note rather than the overpowering flavor of badly prepared fish. The new potatoes with romano beans and herbs were perfectly cooked although eating them at the same time as the salt cod was probably our mistake.

The stracciatella with peaches, shallots, basil leaves, and pepitas was another highlight; the cheese, similar to the center of burrata but worked more to develop the stretchy curds that give the cheese its name, shone like a fresh ricotta, and although it’s a little early around these parts for peaches – I believe our local pick-your-own place has one variety that’s ready – these were sweet like peak-season fruit. We tried two of the pasta dishes, a spring pea agnolotti with chanterelles and roasted carrots as well as a tagliatelle with sausage and an herb pesto, with the agnolotti the better of the two, with more tooth to the dough and a higher filling/pasta ratio than you’d find with other agnolotti, which benefited the dish since the peas’ flavor is subtler than that of red meat. The tagliatelle was rolled a little thinner than I like that cut of pasta, which I think is best when you really have something to sink your teeth into, but that’s a matter of personal taste. They also make a daiquiri with Neisson Rhum Agricole, a 100 proof rum made from sugar cane rather than molasses, and Smith & Cross traditional rum, as well as lime, orange, and cardamom, but it’s really rum-forward rather than losing those flavors in citrus or sweetening agents. As for the name, it’s from a saying on the co-owner’s birthplace in the Virgin Islands: “Tail up goat, tail down sheep.”

I was fortunate enough to be invited by the Fangraphs crew to Timber Pizza on Saturday night, after Jay and I finished our signing and we’d all had beers at Comet Ping-Pong (the basement was closed for a private event, to our dismay). They call their pizza “Neapolitan-ish,” which is only accurate in that the crust is thin, but the style is really quite different – the crust’s edges aren’t puffy and charred, and the center isn’t wet – so this is somewhere more like Roman-style pizza, with a thinner, crispier crust than you’d get at a true Neapolitan joint. It’s all still good, just a matter of what you like in your pizza. I was particularly impressed by the quality of the cured meats Timber used, especially the pepperoni, something I almost never eat because I find it too salty and greasy and a source of immediate regret. Theirs was none of those things, least of all the last part, and I’d order it again, although I also loved their green pizzas with basil pesto, including the Penelope (fresh mozzarella, mushrooms, bacon, and smoked paprika) and the Green Monster (fresh mozzarella, feta, kale, and zucchini). If you’re into pizza and in DC, I do have a bit of bad news: 2 Amy’s is closed for the foreseeable future after a pipe burst in their kitchen on July 7th, flooding the place and causing substantial damage everywhere. They haven’t been able to give a projected date for a re-open.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: breakfast, coffee, pizza, washington

→ September 23, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 9/22/17.

I wrote three pieces for Insiders this week: scouting notes on Yu Darvish, more notes on Aaron Nola and some young Phillies hitters, and my annual look at players I was wrong about. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

I’m down to biweekly game reviews for Paste, so the most recent one is from last week, covering the great Days of Wonder-published title Yamataï, by the same designer who won the Spiel des Jahres (game of the year) this year for his game Kingdomino.

My book, Smart Baseball, is out and still selling well (or so I’m told); thanks to all of you who’ve already picked up a copy. And please sign up for my free email newsletter, which is back to more or less weekly at this point now that I’m not traveling for a bit.

And now, the links…

Our federal government and many state governments continue to deny that anthropogenic climate change exists, even as multiple U.S. states and territories are battered by hurricanes (possibly) made worse by warming oceans. Our military, however, has accepted climate change for over 25 years and is planning around it, given its attendant security risks and operational challenges.
The New York Times reports that a massive drop in international travel to the U.S. cost our economy $2.7 billion just in the first quarter of this year. This kind of economic contraction hits everyone, including lower-income people in the service industries that gain directly from tourism spending.
Longreads: Indy Week, a North Carolina alternative newspaper, ran a three-part investigative series this July on the environmental and quality-of-life damage wrought by industrial pig farms in that state. I reviewed Barry Estabrook’s book Pig Tales, on the rise of Big Pig, this summer; he detailed how the North Carolina state government bent over backwards to remove regulations on industrial pork producers. This is the result: The swamp you want to drain is actually full of pig feces.
The Guardian offers a long, deep look at Luxembourg’s attempt to move from tax haven to space-mining haven, courting investors who wish to privatize celestial assets like asteroids. The piece touches on many subjects, including the tiny European duchy’s odd history and questions of sovereignty.
The Verge looks at climate change, India, and the war against heat. Climate change will affect the entire planet, but heavily populated tropical countries may take the worst hit.
And my last longread of the week is on Longreads itself: a thorough look at the history, purpose, and problems with the federal Freedom of Information Act. Among other notable bits: why are fourteen federal ‘food boards,’ like the American Egg Board, now exempt from open records requests? (Because they might be breaking the law, of course.)
If you have kids, you need to ensure they get vaccinated against meningitis. A mother in England whose daughter died of meningitis type W shares her story; the girl came home from school very sick, but the telltale MenW symptoms weren’t there, and she died the next day.
Florida Power & Light has written – literally – state regulations that helped it to $1.7 billion in profits in 2016, including rules that forbid homeowners from powering their own houses with solar panels. And if the power grid goes out, you have to turn your solar panels off. In one of the sunniest states in the country, you can’t power your own goddamned house because the power company said no. I wonder if FPL is okay with candles.
The classic real-time strategy videogame series Age of Empires will return this fall with a new edition, and Ars Technica has a very long look at the history of the genre, including a lot of obscure titles I didn’t know. I loved the original AoE and AoE II but never could beat the thing on Emperor level.
Roy Moore is running for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions, and has a real chance of winning, despite a total disregard for the doctrine of the separation of church and state, and such views on people of color as referring to Native Americans and Asians as “reds and yellows”.
A similar reactionary conservative is running in Arizona against incumbent Republican Senator Jeff Flake, who was a critic of Trump prior to the election but has cheerleaded many of the President’s nominations and orders, including that of Betsy DeVos, as Flake and DeVos share an antipathy towards public education.
Meanwhile, the swamp is rank: Health & Human Services Secretary Tom Price, a member of a fringe, anti-science doctor’s group, was caught billing taxpayers for expensive charter flights when commercial routes would have saved tens of thousands of dollars. Then he got caught doing it more. Vox has an overview of how he bilked taxpayers out of $300,000 by doing so.
And it’s getting ranker: the President has nominated a lobbyist who fought regulations to keep certain chemicals out of consumer goods to lead that regulatory program in the EPA.
Oh, I’m not done: he’s also nominated unqualified campaign workers to fill science-oriented positions at the US Department of Agriculture. The USDA is often useless, but this practice might gut the little it does to help ensure a modicum of safety in our food supply, or to stop rampant pollution from food producers like the pig slaughterhouses mentioned in the longread above.
The coalition governing Iceland collapsed last week due to revelations of pardons its leaders were giving to convicted child molesters.
Tim Grierson looks at the fabricated mystique of “unplugged” concerts and albums.
A Royals fan in southern California donated a kidney to a Giants fan, and the donor told the recipient (they were friends already) with some help from the Giants and AT&T Park.
If you didn’t see this when I tweeted it last week, this story on the research grant that led to BRCA1 is absolutely remarkable and it too has a baseball connection.
Also from last weekend, Amber Tamblyn is done with men refusing to believe women, retelling the story of how James Woods tried to pick her up when she was just 16 years old.
This sounds like abuse, not love: actor Ian Somerhalder, whom I’d never heard of till Friday, threw out his wife’s birth control pills so she would get pregnant.
The rehabilitation of Sean Spicer is already well underway, according to Lauren Duca, with his Emmy appearance and tour of the talkshow circuit. Maybe we should pump the brakes, says Jay Willis at GQ.
Garrett Martin, my editor at Paste, asks Jimmy Kimmel to keep up the righteous anger and dispense with the jocular asides that detract from his very real, important message.
Gwyneth Paltrow’s Store Full of Bullshit is now selling psychic vampire repellent. At least they’ve moved on from selling things for women to stick up their vaginas.
Should a restaurant that’s been awarded 3 stars by the Michelin Guide be allowed to withdraw its entry from the critical publication? The chef-owners say they want to cook their style of food without worrying about meeting someone else’s standard or maintaining the rating.
A neo-Nazi was walking around Seattle wearing a swastika armband and screaming at people on the street; various people, some of whom identify themselves as “antifa,” used social media to spread the word and find him, after which one of the activists knocked him unconscious with one punch.
Pete Wells of the New York Times named Razza in Jersey City as New York’s best pizza, which resulted, according to my sources, in a three-hour wait this past Wednesday night.
The late John Saunders, also of ESPN, wrote in his memoir of how his abusive father turned his best day into one of his worst.
Is The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness author Nassem Taleb a racist using flawed beliefs to justify investing in the Syrian regime? There’s some background to this, including links from within that piece, that was new to me; I thought Taleb was still a darling of pop-intellectual circles since his first two books became bestsellers. (I read The Black Swan and enjoyed it.)
Some white dude on Facebook, a friend of a friend of mine, posted a meme about how blacks owned slaves in antebellum America, so stop claiming it’s all racism or some such nonsense. The thing is it’s a lot more complicated than that, as Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates wrote in a 2013 post at the Root. Even better was the other white dude who responded that “slavery ended 150 years ago. Get over it!” Easy when those weren’t your ancestors in chains, I suppose.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: climate change, environment, florida, india, links, Music, pizza, pork, racism, stick to baseball, the swamp, vaccines, video games

→ July 24, 2017
→ By keith

Oakland & San Francisco eats.

I’ll have my annual re-ranking of the top five farm systems up this week, most likely Tuesday, for Insiders.

I only had two meals on my own during my trip to the Bay Area last week to speak at Google and sign books at Books Inc. in Berkeley (which should still have signed copies available), but both were memorable additions to my ongoing U.S. pizzeria tour. Oakland’s Pizzaiolo is on that list from Food and Wine from a few years ago that continues to inform some of my travels – it’s not a perfect list but I’ve done well by it overall – but the pizza wasn’t even the best thing I ate there.

Pizzaiolo is more than a pizzeria, although those are obviously the star attraction on the menu. It’s really a locavore restaurant that also does pastas, mains, salads, and vegetable-focused sides (contorni), with outstanding, largely local ingredients the common thread among all of them. I met a friend for dinner there and we split two pizzas, a margherita with housemade Italian sausage and a pizza of sweet & hot peppers, black olives, and ricotta salata. The sausage was probably the best element of all of this; the dough itself was good, maybe a grade 55 when comparing it to other Neapolitan pizzerias I’ve tried around the country (a list that has to number around fifty now). The pepper and olive pizza was surprisingly good, less spicy than I feared it would be, more briny and salty from the combination of the olives and the ricotta salata, a pressed, salted, lightly aged cheese made from the whey of sheep’s milk left over from other cheesemaking. But the best thing I ate was actually a salad of mixed chicory leaves (especially radicchio) with figs and hazelnuts; I love radicchio in spite of its bitterness (or perhaps because of it), but this had some of the least bitter chicory leaves I’ve ever tasted, and the sweetness of the black mission figs gave the perfect contrast to just that hint of a bitter note. The menu changes daily, however, and I can see it’s not on the Pizzaiolo menu today.

Una Pizza Napoletana isn’t on that F&W list of the country’s best pizzerias, which is kind of a joke because it’s probably a top five spot for me because of the dough. I’ve never had a pizza with a crust like this – it has the texture of naan, which is an enriched dough from India (usually containing yogurt or other dairy), whereas pizza dough is typically enriched with nothing but maybe a little olive oil. The menu is very short: five different pizza options, no alterations or substitutions allowed, with a few drinks, and one extra pizza (with fresh eggs) on Saturdays. Most of the pizzas use buffalo-milk mozzarella, and only the margherita has tomato sauce. I went with the filetti, which has no sauce but uses fresh cherry tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, garlic, and fresh basil. It’s really the dough that makes this pizza – it’s a traditional, naturally-leavened dough that takes three days to make, resulting in that incomparable texture. The pizzas are on the expensive side at $25 apiece, although I think given the quality of inputs and the time required to make doughs like this, it’s a reasonable price point. You’re buying someone’s skill and time for something you’re never going to make at home.

Una Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco. To die for.

A post shared by Keith Law (@mrkeithlaw) on Jul 19, 2017 at 5:32pm PDT

My new friends at Google also sent me home with a few gifts, including a bag of coffee from Philz, which a few of you have been telling me to try for years now. I haven’t opened the bag yet (I am a bit obsessive about finishing one bag before opening the next) but will report back when I try it.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: coffee, food and wine pizza crawl, northern california, oakland, pizza, san francisco

→ June 6, 2017
→ By keith

Louisville eats.

I spent three nights in Louisville late last month for the ACC tournament, which was (mostly) held at the Bats’ AAA stadium right downtown, and I ate like a king for nearly the entire trip – to say nothing of the coffee.

Garage Bar had been on my to-do list for years, since Food and Wine posted a list of the best 48 pizzerias in the United States. (I’ve now been to 29, and one of the others closed shortly after the list was posted.) Garage Bar is, indeed, in a converted garage, and the space is very Brooklyn-hipster, but damn, that’s good pizza. The style is Neapolitan-ish, with a spongy, soft dough, but not the wet centers of true Neapolitan pizzas, although they use the classic ingredients (type 00 flour, San Marzano tomatoes) of that style and cook in a brick, wood-fired oven that hits 850 degrees. I tried the Local Mushroom pizza, a tomato-less pie that delivered just what I’d want in a mushroom pizza – big mushroom flavors complemented but not overwhelmed by the flavor of the cheese, here fromage blanc, a soft, fresh cow’s milk cheese where the fermentation is stopped fairly early in the process. I also recommend the Caesar salad, which is lightly dressed, not overly garlicky, topped with fried kale strips and two stripes of white anchovy (the good stuff).

After the last game ended on Friday, I walked over to Milkwood in downtown Louisville, mostly because I just wanted to try one of Edward Lee’s restaurants even though I wasn’t that hungry. The menu is a sort of Korean-southern fusion, but I went traditional with the vegetarian bibimbap, a Korean rice dish served in a smokin’ hot bowl that continues to cook the food at the table. Granted, I could eat plain white rice till the cows come home (and it’s a good thing I don’t because white rice is nutritionally worthless), but I killed this dish despite, as I said, not being very hungry. I even got dessert because the bartender told me the peanut butter ice cream that comes with the chess pie can’t be missed, and he was right – you can keep the pie, just give me the ice cream. (Chess pie is an acquired taste; it’s a southern custard pie that typically contains cornmeal and vinegar in the filling.)

Royals Hot Chicken has only been open for about a year and a half, offering what they call Nashville hot chicken, although their version is a little different – it’s all white meat “jumbo tenders” (each of which is a half breast halved again the long way), available at any spice level you like. I’m generally not a fan of chicken breast meat because it’s so lean and, in most cases, flavorless, but the crust at Royals’ has plenty of flavor, even on the mild setting (I like capsaicin more than it likes me). They have a long list of southern comfort-food sides, but I went with the roasted sweet potato with sorghum butter (the cashier’s rec) and the cucumber salad, both of which were excellent and didn’t make the entire meal into a heavy soporific. Speaking of which, I was surprised how little oil I had on my hands after eating the chicken, which is how it should be but rarely is.

Also in New Lou is Mayan Cafe, and I’m going to tell you up front, get the lima beans. It’s a signature item for them, and they’re damn good, and so popular that the restaurant posted the recipe. I ordered the salbutes, a regional Mexican preparation of a fried (flour) tortilla that puffs up and is topped like a cracker, with toppings that change daily; the chilaquiles; and the “chocolate on chocolate” dessert, which I was told was vegan and still can’t believe given how rich the cake was. I’d probably do something different for an entree, as the chilaquiles, while vegetarian (my goal), weren’t remarkable, but everything else I ate was.

Gralehaus was a recommendation from Stella Parks, aka BraveTart, whose first cookbook, BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts, comes out on August 15th; she lives in Lexington but gave me a short to-do food and coffee list for my trip that also included Quills (see below). Gralehaus is a bed & breakfast with a restaurant and bar that’s open to the public for all three meals, and the menu is influenced by southern comfort food but hardly limited to it (there’s a tofu banh mi on the lunch menu, for crying out loud). I couldn’t pass on the black pepper biscuit with duck sausage gravy, served with a sunny egg and and some duck cracklins; it was … decadent isn’t quite the word, but certainly rich and hearty, although the biscuit itself was on the dry side. They have an excellent coffee program, with beans from several artisanal roasters including Intelligentsia and one from right near me, La Maquina, of West Chester, PA.

Against the Grain is a brewpub attached to the Bats’ stadium, with the brewery on-site, but since it was midday I didn’t drink anything, I just ate, and the food was fine – better than ballpark food, certainly, but not on par with the other meals I ate around Louisville. I had the BBQ pork belly, which was served just as a giant slab of what was essentially bacon, and it was fine, nothing special, probably in need of a first step to tenderize the meat a little more before hitting the smoke. Get the Brussels sprouts side if you do go.

The one bad meal I had was at a place called Toast, which is just a mediocre diner that doesn’t execute particularly well and doesn’t list major ingredients in some dishes on its menu. If there’s cheese on a dish, that has to be listed, as you’d list something like nuts or shellfish. That aside, the food just wasn’t good and the service was indifferent.

Louisville has quite a thriving coffee scene, including Sunergos, a local roaster whose blend won a “best espresso in America” competition in 2014 – and it’s damn good, top five for me easily (Blue Bottle, Intelligentsia, Cartel, Four Barrel), so good I went back and bought a half-pound before leaving for the airport. Their blend is mostly Central and South American beans along with some Indonesian beans as well, and the result is noticeably sweet on its own, and there’s a cocoa undertone that I adore in coffee.

Quills was Stella Parks’ suggestion and they also do a solid espresso, not as bold or sweet as Sunergos’ but creditable, and I loved their space over in the Highlands, within walking distance of Gralehaus and Carmichael’s Bookstore; it was big, bright, and full of people working, chatting, just hanging out, the way a neighborhood coffee house should be. I also tried Press on Market, where I had a light-roast Sumatran bean as a pour-over – notable in and of itself because Indonesian beans are typically roasted until dark – and was surprised to find that the beans had some character beyond the roast. It’s a stone’s throw from the Bats’ stadium if you’re downtown.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: breakfast, coffee, food and wine pizza crawl, fried chicken, korean cuisine, louisville, pizza, southern cooking

Tags

Archives