→ February 17, 2013
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Oklahoma City eats, 2013.

Oklahoma City is a fun town, especially downtown, where there are a few pockets of renewal that have spawned some local restaurants and shops worth visiting. I didn’t get to explore as much as I would have liked, since I had to head out to Norman, Yukon, and Midwest City, but found three places worth strong recommendations.

I returned to Ludivine, which was the star from my visit to OKC last year, and it was even better the second time around. It’s a farm-to-table restaurant with a pretty simple menu – a house-made charcuterie selection, four starters (including salads), four mains, and a few desserts, with everything but the seafood sourced locally. Last time I went with several small plates, but this time one of the entrees was calling me: Walnut Creek mangalitsa pork with potato gnocchi, winter greens (mostly green kale), grana padano, and pork jus with mustard seeds. The gnocchi were a little soft but that contrasted well with the thinly sliced but fully cooked pork (made from a Hungarian breed, related to wild boar, with richer, fattier meat than the common American pig) and the crunch of the curly kale leaves. The broth was the best part of the dish, with the smooth mouth-feel and umami-rich flavor of a stock, but well-balanced with the spice and saltiness of the mustard.

The dessert was even better – a white chocolate and lavender cookie, served warm at the bottom of a ramekin, topped with a chocolate-orange semifreddo, fig syrup, and cassis whipped cream. It’s hard to explain how the dessert worked together, as the whole was far more than the sum of its parts. The lead flavor was dark chocolate, but there were also hints of marshmallow, caramel, and the suggestion of lavender (which I like in tiny doses but which can make a cookie taste like perfume if it’s overdone). This represents culinary artistry to me – the ability to combine ingredients or elements so that, when tasted together, they add up to something greater and unexpected. Ludivine also has a full bar with its own mixologist(s) and had a couple of local beers on tap, including a Coop Gran Sport Porter that I found too cloying and syrupy.

Just a few doors north on Hudson Street is the roastery and cafe Elemental Coffee, a shop for serious coffee snobs, with three different roasts available for pour-overs and their own espresso blend that combines beans from Mexico and Ethiopia. My first test of coffee in any form is whether I can drink it without needing sugar to hide any bitterness or harsh notes, and both the drip and espresso blends (for drip I went with an Ecuadorian bean, their most expensive drip coffee at $3.25) passed. They also have a small selection of food items, including crepes on weekend mornings and a local yogurt/granola combination that, while a little small for breakfast, is excellent, with dried blueberries sprinkled on the plain yogurt and a cinnamon-spiced granola full of sliced almonds and pumpkin seeds. The barista I had on Sunday informed me that Nick Offerman of Parks & Rec loves both Elemental and Ludivine, further validating my selections.

East of downtown in Midwest City, I had some excellent fried chicken at a place that looked like it might need to be condemned, called Jim’s Fried Chicken. It’s nothing to look at on the outside but the chicken was perfectly fried, with a crispy crust that broke at first bite without shattering or falling off the meat. It was well-salted but not otherwise seasoned, at least not at a level I could detect. For $7, I got a drumstick, two thighs, two sides, and a drink; the fried okra was excellent and made to order while the beans-and-rice with sausage were excellent but a little on the spicy side, fine if I was only eating that but on top of fried chicken and fried okra it was a little more than I was looking for.

There isn’t much of a consensus around the best Q joint in Oklahoma City, but as far as I could tell Iron Starr BBQ was one of the contenders, although it’s a table-service restaurant with cloth napkins rather than your stereotypical (and often excellent) one-guy-and-a-smoker kind of place. The server suggested the St. Louis-style ribs and the brisket as their two best smoked meats, and the ribs were pretty special, coming right off the bone but still showing some real tooth, with a mild dry rub that wasn’t too peppery and a pronounced smoke flavor. The brisket was a little too dry and needed the sauce to compensate for that and the limited smoke ring. Iron Starr fries their okra whole rather than cutting it into bite-sized pieces, which is probably a good bit more healthful but left the okra inside slightly undercooked. The braised collard greens were, shockingly, undersalted. The square of jalapeno cornbread that came with the meal was excellent, but different in texture than you’d expect, more like a spoon bread than a crumbly southern cornbread. The “double-chocolate” bread pudding was more like a blondie with chocolate chips in it and a little melted white chocolate on top, too sweet for me to finish even halfway. I had a local beer here as well, Choc OPA (Oklahoma Pale Ale) at the server’s suggestion, but it was overwhelmingly citrusy, more like a wine cooler than a beer. I’d go back for the ribs and cornbread, and maybe to try a different protein, but would skip the brisket even though it’s quite popular.

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→ July 10, 2012
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Kansas City eats.

I posted some quick reactions to Sunday’s Futures Game a few hours after it ended. Next ESPN post will be Thursday’s top 50 prospects update.

The best Q I had on in Kansas City was the burnt ends platter at the original Oklahoma Joe’s location (that is, attached to a gas station). This absolutely lived up to its advance billing, as the meat had great smoke flavor and the characteristic tooth of real burnt ends (although not the crispy exterior I expected – I admit I’m not a big burnt ends expert, though), without being so dry that sauce was required. Smoke rings were evident throughout, not that I needed proof after tasting them. The French fries were just fair; many of you recommended them and I’m guessing it’s because of the red pepper-based seasoning rather than for the fries themselves, which weren’t as good as what you’d get at Five Guys or In-n-Out. I’d try the beans for a side next time. The insider tip is to call your order in ahead of time, but I spent most of the ~45 minutes in line chatting with the two sports nuts behind me, as well as one of you who spotted my tweet about being in line.

Next-best was Jack Stack, which is solid Q at a table-service restaurant, the most expensive Q I’ve ever eaten by a wide margin. Their signature item is a beef short rib, given some absurd marketing name (“Crown Prime Beef Rib” or whatever, it’s a freaking short rib, get over yourselves), and since that is by far my favorite cut of cow I was all in. It’s extremely well done with a lot of surface area for bark and plenty of fat (maybe too much, but that’s the cut) to keep the interior meat moist through a long, slow smoke. Their pork burnt ends were just chopped pork chunks with a little bark, really nothing special. The beans were outstanding though – sweet, smoky, salty, very slightly tangy, maybe a little too soft, although that’s the style (I like beans just a little past al dente). The seasonal vegetable was asparagus, funny because asparagus is a spring vegetable, but they did do a nice job of cooking it correctly so it wasn’t stringy or mushy. Service could not have been better, Q joint or otherwise. The total cost including iced tea and tip was $36, though.

Last Q joint was Gates, which disappointed. I may have ordered the wrong thing – more on that later – but I got no help from the kids behind the counter who seemed to have no interest in taking my order. I went with the short-end ribs, since ribs seemed to dominate the menu, but they were dry, tough, not smoky, and drowned in a vinegar-pepper sauce.

I had Sunday brunch – yes, I rolled out of bed around 9:30, thanks to the time difference – at Bluestem Cafe, which had a small line out the door before it opened at 10:30, usually a good sign. The special breakfast sandwich of the day comprised an over-easy egg on top of pulled pork with very crispy potato wedges and a small salad of mixed greens, a pretty significant amount of food for lunch and enough to hold me through the Futures Game. The pork was moist but the sauce was vinegary, so this could have been braised rather than smoked and I wouldn’t have known the difference. Everything else was clearly fresh and high quality, and they get extra points for the cute bartender.

I tried Eggtc for breakfast on Monday morning, looking for something quick but still local, although the quality just wasn’t there. The eggs on the benedict were poached too long – or poached earlier and held – so they had started to cook through, and since the greatest pleasure of eggs benedict is the sauce made by the warm but runny yolk, this was kind of a failure. The home fries had also clearly come out of a bag.

Finally, I have to thank all of you who weighed in on Q options for my weekend, including Jeff Passan of Yahoo! and Brooks Melchior of Sports by Brooks (via his Twitter feed). Brooks says my next trip to KC should include a visit for Stroud’s for fried chicken and cinnamon rolls and a second chance for Gates where I order the “beef and a half” sandwich rather than ribs.

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→ August 26, 2011
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Arizona eats, August 2011.

I made a side trip to Cave Creek en route back from Anthem on Friday specifically to try Bryan’s Black Mountain BBQ, allegedly the best Q in the Valley … and I have to say I haven’t found anything close to this good in the state. Both the pulled pork and the brisket bore modest smoke rings but were very moist with good smoke flavor, and the crispy edges of the brisket had a strong kick from the dry rub. The pork needed no sauce beyond the thin, slightly spicy, slightly acid sauce it’s served in, which didn’t mask the taste of the meat at all. The brisket did need sauce if only for some salt on the interior portions of the meat; their house sauce is sweet and smoky without any heat, although there’s a hot version available as well. A generous quarter pound of each meat – really, there had to be close to a pound of meat on the plate – plus two sides is $13.25 before tax; the sides were the lone disappointment, as the potato salad was absolutely covered in mayo and the cole slaw had green olives in it that overwhelmed everything else. But I would drive an hour just to get that smoked meat, especially with nothing close to it down our way.

bld in Chandler (Germann & Dobson, just south of the Santan Freeway) stands for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as they’re open for all three meals. (It’s unrelated to the bld in Los Angeles which I tried in 2008.) My wife and I went at lunchtime but both ordered breakfast, as that menu was much more appealing. Both portions were enormous, more than either of us could finish. I went with the short rib benedict, two halves of an English muffin each topped with a large chunk of braised short rib, a poached egg, and a red wine Hollandaise the color of black raspberry ice cream. The short rib was tender and still bore hints of the braising liquid (red wine-based) but was a little light on seasoning; the poached eggs were perfect, while the hollandaise brought some acidity and brightness to the whole dish, although I couldn’t quite convince myself that something lavender should be savory rather than sweet. The breakfast potatoes on the side were peppery but barely above room temperature. My wife ordered the “green chili pork tostada,” which is really chilaquiles with an enormous portion of braised, shredded pork shoulder, with refried beans, cotija cheese, and fried eggs on top. The pork was tangy, maybe a little too much, and I thought the ratio of meat to everything else was too high, but my wife (who ordered it without the beans) thought it was excellent. bld reminded me of the Hillside Spot, still my favorite place to eat around here, with the advantage of being much closer to the house than the Spot is even if the food isn’t quite as good.

I’ve tried two Vietnamese places in Chandler, Pho Chandler at Arizona Ave and Ocotillo (south of the Santan) and Cyclo on Chandler Blvd east of Dobson (right across from the Valley’s best gelato, Angel Sweet). I ordered roughly the same entree at both places, bún (rice vermicelli) with grilled pork and a fried egg roll, and Pho Chandler was the winner, with more flavorful meats and less fatty pieces as well as more greens underneath the noodles. Pho Chandler also has a pork short ribs appetizer that is a must-order – small pieces of pork still on the bone served in a sweet-spicy sauce with tamarind and Thai basil. The bún at Cyclo included pork and beef, and the beef could not have had less flavor if they’d boiled it without seasoning. One thing I found peculiar at both restaurants was the use of thicker noodles than I’ve had at Vietnamese restaurants elsewhere, mostly in Boston, which changes the texture of the final dish substantially. I’d also give Pho Chandler a nod over Cyclo for friendlier service.

In Scottsdale, I’ve now had lunch at Culinary Dropout, located just across Camelback from Fashion Square Mall, three times when meeting friends in from out of town or who work in the area, and it’s been a home run each time. The orecchiette with short rib meat and butter beans in a tomato sauce is bright and fresh but very filling with a late kick; I’m mildly obsessed with short ribs, by far my favorite cut of cow, and even with all of the other heavier elements in the dish the rib meat remains the clear star, accentuated by the acidity of the tomato sauce. The chicken hash with fried egg and black truffles is a rich and hearty if you’re into mushrooms, but was a little on the light side for lunch. The turkey pastrami on a pretzel roll was good but my least favorite of the three dishes, primarily because the meat is so salty and then comes on a salty roll with good yet also salty hand-cut fries on the side … I love salt and season aggressively when I cook, but this felt like a dish aimed at getting you to order another beer. (I could think of worse outcomes, though.) The place has kind of a funky gastropub look and feel, but the food is strong enough for a business lunch.

Zinburger is owned by the same restaurant group as Culinary Dropout and the eponymous dish there is so good I have now made my own version several times at home. Located across from the Ritz-Carlton in a small mall featuring a Cheesecake Factory – and really, how stupid do you have to be to go eat that garbage with Zinburger about 30-40 meters away? – Zinburger offers DIY burger options, but the version that bears the restaurant’s name is the winner: Zinfandel-braised onions, Manchego cheese, and a thin layer of mayonnaise. I’m not sure how Zinburger does their onions, but my version comes pretty close – I caramelize them in the traditional way, then deglaze the pan with wine and let the onions plump back up a little with the new liquid before serving. They also offer several types of hand-cut fries, including “double truffle fries” and sweet potato, both of which were excellent although I find sweet potato fries a little too sweet. (Sweet potato chips, on the other hand, are awesome.) I regret to inform you that I did not try any of Zinburger’s shakes.

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→ March 26, 2011
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Vegas, Phoenix, and Oklahoma eats.

New draft blog entry is up on Texas RHP Taylor Jungmann. Yesterday’s chat transcript is up. And I was on the Baseball Today podcast (link goes directly to the downloadable mp3) on Friday.

Anyway, time for another omnibus food post, since I haven’t had enough in any one spot for a blog entry.

I made two trips to Vegas this month, but focused on old favorite spots like Firefly and Lotus of Siam (try the tamarind beef – it’s plus). The one new place I tried was Mon Ami Gabi, a French restaurant in Paris Las Vegas (and in Chicago, which I believe is the original) that manages to slide in under the price point of the typical fine-dining experience on the Strip. I can only speak to one dish, the trout grenobloise ($18), which was excellent – a great piece of fish perfectly cooked if a little lightly sauced, with a big pile of sauteed haricots verts on the side. I was quite impressed by their version of the premeal bread basket, a crusty warm baguette brought to the table in a white paper bag. They’re apparently known for their steak frites ($23-ish), but I can’t pass up a good piece of fish, which is my favorite dish.

Back to Phoenix, I finally made it to Barrio Cafe on 16th, a frequent recommendation from readers that’s just located in an area I never hit. It’s upscale Mexican, somewhere between Los Sombreros and real fine dining but with clear ambitions toward the latter. The chips and bread come with a spicy, vinegared tapenade that’s more Mediterranean than Mexican and that I could have eaten all night. The guacamole is made tableside – a pointless, showy exercise that cuts off any flavor development, but salvaged somewhat by extremely high-quality ingredients, including the unusual addition of fresh pomegranate seeds. (Between those and the avocado the bowl could have made a nutritionist smile.)

For my main course, I couldn’t pass up the seared duck breast in a sweet and sour tamarind sauce, featuring two of my favorite ingredients (although I’m more of a leg man than a breast man … still talking about duck, people). The duck breast had to be at least briefly roasted after the sear as it was cooked medium rather than the standard medium-rare, but stopped short of drying out, something no sauce on the planet can save. That sauce, by the way, wouldn’t have been out of place in an Asian restaurant, neither too sweet nor too sour and with a dark, savory note underneath to keep it from becoming cloying. My colleague Matt Meyers went with the cochinita pibil, a slow-roasted pork shoulder that, judging by the empty plate in front of him, was probably something north of adequate.

I’ve been reluctant to try much sushi in Arizona given some mediocre raw-fish experiences around the Valley over the last few years; our distance from actual water and lack of real high-end restaurants downtown to support the kind of fresh-fish business you’d find in most comparably-sized cities leads to a lot of mediocre product sold as sushi to unsuspecting consumers. Otaku in Chandler (on Gilbert Road south of the 202/Santan) is promising, at least by my tempered expectations, with some highs and lows in a recent lunch visit. I placed two orders for nigiri in addition to a bento box, just to expand my sample size. The maguro was nothing special, definitely fresh but on the bland side, but the sea bass with a light ponzu sauce was well-balanced, the fresh flavor of the fish coming through* with the texture of fish that’s not just fresh but handled properly.

* I know I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating: If the sushi has a sauce on it, don’t dip it in the soy sauce. The chef has already taken care of seasoning for you.

The bento box option was a mixed bag, although I have to say it’s a lot of food for about $11-12. The server recommended the chicken with curry, more of a southeast Asian dish than Japanese, like a brown Thai curry, featuring a lot of fresh red bell pepper and white meat chicken but a little mild overall. The box comes with eight pieces of California roll featuring shredded crab and a small amount of mayonnaise, two gyoza, and a spring roll; the gyoza were the only positive of that group, as the others were just ordinary, nothing you couldn’t find at a hundred other sushi joints in the area. My main concern was the mesclun salad, with a couple of leaves that had started to go bad, just a sign that someone in the kitchen isn’t paying attention when he grabs them out of a drawer.

Re-reading that I’m probably giving you the sense that Otaku was worse than it actually is; nothing was unpleasant or badly cooked or poorly seasoned, and the fact that the raw fish was fresh is a positive. It’s at least worth another visit, which is more than I can say for most of the other sushi places I’ve tried in Arizona, but it’s not going to live up to most of the California sushi I’ve had. I’d give Otaku a preliminary grade of 50, but more like a 45 on the bento box.

I’m writing this on the plane back from Tulsa, which was as disappointing for the food as it was rewarding for the prospects. The two best spots were in Bartlesville, about 45 minutes north of Tulsa, where Dylan Bundy pitched in a high school tournament. Dink’s Barbecue on Frank Phillips Rd had good brisket and fried okra but the hot links were just weird, with a hard red casing like you’d find on a wheel of gouda and a rubbery texture inside, while the green beans were stewed into grey mushiness. Jared’s Frozen Custard on Nowata was outstanding, though, comparable to good Wisconsin frozen custard in texture and flavor – I had one of the special flavors of the day, mocha, which tasted like a light and sweet Dunkin Donuts coffee (bad flavor for hot coffee, good for ice cream), in a concrete with Oreos. Duds in Tulsa itself included breakfast at the Wild Fork, where the food was mediocre but better than the service; and Albert G’s, a well-reviewed and popular Q joint on Harvard, where I got a big serving of bone-dry brisket with absolutely zero smoke flavor. I’ll pass along a reader rec for breakfast that I never managed to hit, The Old School Bagel Factory on Peoria, which would be on my list if I ever happen to be back in Tulsa – not that unlikely, since I didn’t get Broken Arrow’s Archie Bradley this time around.

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→ February 25, 2011
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Catching up on recent eats…

‘Pomo Pizzeria*, located just north of Old Town Scottsdale in the pretentious Borgata shopping center, has been certified by the Neapolitan authority that travels the world and gives its imprimatur to pizzerias serving authentic Naples-style pizza. It lacks the cachet of Pizzeria Bianco, but has the benefit of being easier to patronize, since they’re open for lunch and take reservations, with a product that’s nearly as good as their more famous rival.

*Yes, there’s an apostrophe before the word ‘Pomo, something I have yet to decipher. The Italian word for tomatoes is pomodoro, but if the restaurant’s name derives from that word the apostrophe is on the wrong end. Perhaps the Borgata’s owners insisted on the apostrophe to ratchet up the restaurant’s elitist factor.

‘Pomo’s menu is straightforward – a few antipasti, salads, and many pizza options with an extensive list of ingredients, several of which are imported from Italy, including mozzarella di bufala and proscuitto di Parma. The oven runs up to 950 degrees, on the low end of acceptable for this kind of product, and the crust had the requisite slight char with plenty of lift to it. Neapolitan pizza doughs are very thin in the center and should still be wet when they reach the table, although they’ll tend to firm up as the pizza cools; don’t be alarmed by reviews that call it “soggy,” as that’s an application of an American standard for pizza to a completely different product. The texture is fine, while the dough’s taste is a little quiet compared to the toppings.

I went with two other writers, Nick Piecoro and Molly Knight, and somehow we all ended up with pizzas that boasted at least one pork product. I went with a bianca pizza, one of maybe a half-dozen tomato-less options on the menu, featuring mozzarella, prosciutto, and Parmiggiano-Reggiano, a combination that would be too salty and acidic if you layered any sort of cooked tomatoes underneath them. Nick and Molly both went for tomato-based pizzas featuring more charcuterie, including the diavolo, featuring a spicy salame that ‘Pomo uses in lieu of pepperoni (which is fine by me, as I find most pepperoni to be harsh).

There’s a definite focus here on fresh and authentic ingredients; the mixed greens in the salad were immaculate, the Parmiggiano-Reggiano was the real deal (not some American or Argentine knockoff), and the tomatoes come from San Marzano (although I admit I probably wouldn’t know the difference on that score). They also offer a handful of Moretti beers for about $5 apiece, including La Rossa, a red beer that’s about 8% alcohol that is outstanding but requires that I surrender my keys before ordering. Total damage for three pizzas (which run $11-16 each), a salad, a beer, and four glasses of wine was about $105 with tax but before tip, and we had probably 2/3 of a pizza left over. It wasn’t quite the transformative experience that my one meal at Pizzeria Bianco was, but it is among the best pizza experiences I’ve ever had in the United States, one I strongly recommend.

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Speaking of authentic pizza in America, in December my family and I went to Via Napoli, the new restaurant in Walt Disney World at Epcot’s Italy pavilion; we were lucky to get two reservations in our week in Orlando but I understand it’s become a tough ticket as word has spread. Via Napoli’s menu is somewhat limited, with fewer toppings available and not much in the way of salads, but more antipasto options including some expertly fried verdure fritte (fried vegetables) and prosciutto e mela (prosciutto and fresh cantaloupe). The restaurant boasts three giant wood-fired ovens and the dough is superb, with thicker crusts (perhaps to suit American palates?) but less of the trademarked char on the exterior. As with ‘Pomo, Via Napoli imports many of its key ingredients and I felt the mozzarella they used was more flavorful, perhaps because it contained a little more salt. (Cheese without salt is like water without oxygen.) The dessert menu includes real gelato and a new take on zeppole, the Italian version of fried dough; Via Napoli’s includes ricotta cheese in the mix, which you’d expect would make the end product heavier but instead creates these soft, slightly sweet pillows of dough that don’t actually need any accompaniments but oh hey you brought some dark chocolate sauce so I feel obliged to use it. Via Napoli is where I discovered La Rossa and where I discovered that a large serving of it will keep me inebriated for at least six solid hours.

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On to Los Angeles from mid-February, where I’ll start with the last meal I had, Bludso’s BBQ in Compton on Long Beach Boulevard, a real hole in the wall that focuses on takeout with an emphasis on brisket and beef ribs. The service was definitely more Texas than downtown LA, and when I asked what the specialty was the woman behind the counter insisted that I sample the brisket before ordering; it was smoky and tender and didn’t need sauce to provide flavor or moisture, although the salty-sweet-earthy sauce they use is a good complement. For takeout they package their meats in foil with a healthy dose of sauce, enough that it started to drown out the meat’s flavors, but that’s easily fixed by asking for less sauce or for the sauce on the side. The ribs were smaller than I expected but had good tooth and pulled away from the bone pretty easily. The collard greens were deep-South style, cooked low and slow with plenty of liquor included; the baked beans had become soft and mushy but had strong flavors from the meat included in them. For about $11 you can get two meats, two sides, a piece of northern-style (that is, very sweet) cornbread, and some of that white bread that people in Texas always serve with Q but that just confuses everyone else. Yes, it’s a bad area, but it’s worth seeking out.

I met my friend Jay Berger at his local favorite sushi place, Yoshi’s Sushi on Santa Monica in West Hollywood. We had nothing but nigiri, which has become my style anyway after reading The Story of Sushi last summer. About half came with a ponzu sauce, including the yellowtail and the halibut; everything was fresh and only the salmon was disappointing, although I should know by now that salmon nigiri is not very authentic – I just love salmon in any preparation. The albacore, which I usually find kind of boring, and red snapper were both among the best I’ve had of each kind of fish. However, I tried octopus for the first time and am still chewing it three weeks later. Next time I’ll stick with the raw stuff.

And I should throw another mention at Square One Dining in Hollywood, which is becoming my breakfast ritual when I’m in town for the Compton workout. Square One focuses on natural, local ingredients, and their breakfasts include some real throwback elements, like bacon rashers cut about three times as thick as you’d get at a typical diner or fresh eggs cooked to order. My only criticism is that despite using good tea, somehow it’s already overbrewed and bitter when it reaches the table, which makes me think they have pots of tea ready to go for breakfast service – thoughtful, but counterproductive.

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→ November 18, 2010
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Hillside Spot & Barrio Cantina.

Busy day today. I’ll be chatting at 1 pm EST, on the Scott Van Pelt Show on ESPN Radio at 2:05 pm EST, and on Outside the Lines on ESPN shortly after 3 pm.

My latest post at mental_floss covers the histories of eight classic board games, with another post on the history of Settlers of Catan coming later today. And my last two posts over on ESPN.com broke down the Joaquin Benoit signing and the Uggla trade and John Buck signing.

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I’ve mentioned Hillside Spot before, but let me recommend it again: If you live anywhere near the Ahwatukee region of Phoenix, or pass through it on I-10, you need to try this place, because the food is outstanding.

I’ve been for breakfast and lunch and can vouch for both meals. The “El Gallo” torta with eggs, chorizo, and avocado was tremendous, with the eggs cooked to order (they’re not that quick – that would be my only warning, but I will wait for food like this); bright, fresh avocado; just the right amount of mayo; and a fresh, soft, square roll from La Sonorense Tortilla Factory in downtown Phoenix. It’s a steal at $6. Their pancakes have earned some acclaim around here, for good reason – they’re eggy and buttery, like a thick, soft crepe, with one order more than my wife could finish even with some serious help from me. It looks like they rotate their coffees but try to offer something from a local roaster, such as one from Tempe’s Cartel Coffee Labs the day I was there.

I went back for lunch because I’d seen a pulled pork sandwich on their menu, with the pork first braised then finished over mesquite on their rotisserie grill. The pork was perfect, falling apart but with good browning on the outside, with a good background smoke flavor. It comes with a spicy cole slaw and, oddly enough, sliced fresh pear, which was a new combination for me but worked well, giving the sandwich a little bite and providing a small amount of natural sweetness to balance the acidity in the slaw. It comes on the same bread as the torta (telera bread), and the French fries, one of four side options, were hand-cut and just-fried.

Hillside Spot uses a lot of local vendors (including all of their eggs) and has that great funky cafe vibe I love to find in a local restaurant – like the Mission in San Diego or Blue Moon Cafe in Baltimore. Other than the Angel Sweet gelateria, I haven’t found anything as exciting as this place since we moved. It’s located on Warner and 48th, behind the McDonald’s, in the same strip mall where the Sunday farmer’s market is held.

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We found Hillside Spot because it was mentioned in Phoenix magazine as one of the best new restaurants of 2010. We also tried another one, Barrio Cantina, in Scottsdale on Cactus right by the Tatum mall. The food was good, but on the heavy side, not just in fat content (that doesn’t usually bother me) but in the chef’s hand, adding sauces and flavors that end up detracting from the dish. But the core ingredients were all very strong, particularly their meats.

They offer a strong selection of taco plates, all available with corn or flour tortillas or as a torta. I went with the torta – that’s a new dish for me since we moved out here, so I’m indulging – made with machaca short ribs, braised to the point of collapse, with a full, satisfying, beefy flavor. It comes with shredded, slightly wilted cabbage and a crema that was probably unnecessary with the fattiness of the short rib. The dish came with a scoop of a strange, earthy rice and corn mixture that was slightly overcooked but tasted good, a solid neutral note to give me a break from the strong flavors of the machaca.

My wife went with a carnitas enchilada that came in a small cast-iron skillet and was served with the tortillas open, so the sauce and cheese (browned slightly under a salamander) were directly on the meat. She enjoyed it, although the presentation within the skillet was a mess.

We tried one appetizer, the “mini chimis” – small chimichangas where the ratio from dough to meat is way too high. I peeled a few of them open and ate the carnitas and machaca inside, to reduce the doughiness and get away from the tangy crema sticking to the outside like wallpaper paste. Someone there really knows how to slow-cook meat; they just need to work on how they serve it.

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→ April 16, 2008
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Kentucky eats.

Food notes from about 24 hours on the ground in Kentucky…

Ramsey’s Diner is a local Lexington chain promising home-cooked meat and three meals, but it couldn’t have been more of a letdown. I went with the pot roast, which is the type of slow-cooked dish in which meat and three restaurants specialize, and chose pinto beans, fried okra, and mashed potatoes as sides. Nothing, and I mean nothing, was good. Everything except the small cornbread stick lacked salt. The pot roast was dry, tasteless, and grey, and they skipped the critical step of browning the meat before braising it. The mashed potatoes tasted cheap and thin. The okra missed the salt most sorely. And the cornbread stick was dry enough to use as a bat in the world’s smallest game of baseball. The only minor pleasure of the meal was dessert, as Ramsey’s serves pies from Missy’s, which is apparently a local pie-shop icon. I went with chocolate meringue over coconut, fearing the coconut might be sickly-sweet, and the chocolate was in fact quite sweet, but at least the custard brought a strong chocolate flavor (milk chocolate, but I’m trying to be positive here), and it was topped with a generous quantity of meringue.

For breakfast the next morning I wanted to see downtown Lexington, so I went to Tolly-Ho’s, allegedly a UK institution. The food sucked, which is all you need to know about Tolly-Ho’s. Fortunately, I was a few minutes’ drive from Spalding’s Bakery, established 1929, and was fortunate enough to walk in when a batch of glazed donuts had just come out of the fryer. One was enough, sixty cents’ worth of golden brown deliciousness, not too airy, with a real crust to its exterior. The selection is limited so I imagine it’s hit or miss, and it’s not a typical donut shop serving coffees and lattes, but that donut was worth the little drive. It’s across from the Jif peanut-butter plant (I was surprised not to see giant tanks of corn syrup on the property) on US-60.

I had a little time to kill before going to back to the Louisville airport, courtesy of a high school coach in Tennessee who decided at the last minute to skip his top pitcher’s start this week, so I drove to Louisville and went to Mark’s Feed Store for lunch. Mark’s is another local chain, but the food was better than the food at Ramsey’s. They specialize in barbecue; for $8, I got the small babyback ribs platter – I was still full of donut at that point, three hours after eating the thing – which was four ribs and two sides. The ribs had a thick bark on the outside and were basted in a mild barbecue sauce that was a little sweet, but not Tennessee-sweet, but I found the meat to be a little bit dry. To be fair, I was there after the lunch rush, and it’s possible that I ended up with meat that wasn’t fresh out of the smoker. The “smoky beans” were too sugary but had a good texture, and their green beans side comes with pulled pork mixed into it rather than bacon or ham hock. They serve burgoo, a Kentucky specialty stew that is traditionally made with some unusual meats, like squirrel, but I asked the server what was in it and she said pork and beef and other less interesting types of animal. Also, the meal came with one piece of grilled white bread. I have never quite understood the purpose of that, although I’ve seen it many times at southern Q joints. Is it just a side? Am I supposed to construct some sort of open-faced sandwich? Of all the starches in the world to serve, soft white bread was the choice? If I’m in the Say-uth and I’m having some sort of baked flour product, I want biscuits or cornbread. Or both, which, after all, is the #1 reason to visit a Cracker Barrel. White bread? Toasted on a flat-top grill? I just don’t understand.

Finally, I should mention two places at Logan Airport in Terminal A, which is the Delta terminal. There’s a Legal Seafood Test Kitchen which has some interesting dishes at double-digit dollar prices, but I didn’t see much that appealed to me. I did like what I ordered: a crab-meat club sandwich, with a generous portion of shredded crab meat (I can never remember which part of the crab that’s from, but it’s not lump meat), a couple of thick slices of bacon, and lettuce on brioche bread. There’s barely any mayonnaise on the sandwich – just enough to hold the crab meat together between the slices of bread – and it’s a good-sized portion. The other place, Lucky’s Lounge, is a culinary disaster, and there’s a nonzero chance I got a mild case of food poisoning from eating there. So you might want to skip that place.

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→ April 9, 2008
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Florida panhandle eats.

On the heels of a rainout at FSU, I had dinner at the bar at Cypress, a fine-dining restaurant in downtown Tallahassee. I decided to go tapas-style and order three starters as my meal, two of which were excellent.

I began with the salad special, local organic baby spinach with red onion, goat cheese, and candied pecans, served with a poppyseed vinaigrette and topped with duck confit. I left a few poppyseeds. The duck confit was outstanding – not that I’ve ever had bad duck confit – while the spinach leaves were very fresh and unbelievably green. All the dish lacked was a little heat, because it hit so many other dimensions of flavor, from the sweetness of the pecans to the tang/acidity of the cheese and the vinaigrette to the slight bitterness in the spinach.

The second dish was a blue crab cake tower, with two crab cakes, each sitting on a tostone, then stacked on top of each other, with a jicama-melon salsa on top and a smoked onion-jalapeño tartar sauce on the bottom. The crab cakes weren’t made from lump meat, but that would be my only real complaint, as they still had great crab flavor and a red pepper kick, which was nicely complemented by the creaminess of the sauce and the faint sweetness of the melons in the salsa. The tostones were sort of irrelevant, since it required a lot of work to cut them into manageable pieces.

The last dish was a pecan-crusted quail which turned out to be a pecan-battered quail, and it was the one disappointment of the evening. The interior of the quail was undercooked, and while I know that game is typically served medium-rare, I find quail that’s cooked less than medium to be gamey in texture and flavor. The accompaniments lacked the balance of the earlier dishes, and the smoked tomato vinaigrette and sweet pickle relish created a rather low pH for the dish as a whole.

I loved the food but was most impressed by the little things at Cypress. They make their own breads in-house every morning; my bread basket had two miniature buttermilk biscuits as well as two pieces of a fantastic sponge bread, with a perfect crust and very soft interior. Because I said it was my first time at the restaurant, I received a “gift from the kitchen,” a watermelon shooter with diced heirloom strawberries and a hint of mint in the liquid. And most impressively, even though I didn’t complain at all about the quail, the bartender, Grant, took it off of my bill because he noticed how much food I left on the dish after practically licking the previous two plates clean. It was an unnecessary step but indicative of an awareness of the importance of customer service.

• I stayed in the Fort Walton Beach area Friday night after seeing a game in Niceville and got takeout from a little Thai place in Fort Walton called Thai House. The kitchen had just closed but they were willing to make me some pad thai to go, but I’m sorry to report that it had zero taste. I was a little put off when I discovered that it had no heat; I was asked how spicy I’d like it, and I said, “Just a little bit,” after which the woman who took my order said, “Mild.” That’s not the same thing to me, and what I got was mild, not a little bit spicy.
• On the drive from Niceville to Tallahassee, there ain’t much for lunch, so I stopped at a Sonny’s BBQ, which is a chain of Q joints I’ve seen all over Florida. Don’t waste your time. Their “signature” baby-back ribs had no flavor whatsoever, while the BBQ beans were almost as blah, and the corn bread was sickeningly sweet. The only acceptable item was the fried okra, straight out of the fryer with a crispy crust made with stone-ground cornmeal.
• I hit Paschal’s in the Atlanta airport for Sunday breakfast. I ordered their chicken hash, which is more of a stew with onions and chicken stock thickened with some form of starch, although it was pretty good even if it wasn’t really a hash. The main problem was the service, as the waitress screwed up two parts of my order, and the coffee, which was what my cousins in Italy call acqua sporca – dirty water, which I could see through when I held the glass mug up to the light.

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→ November 5, 2006
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Four days in Phoenix.

The trip to Phoenix didn’t produce any story gems like the St. Louis trip did, but it definitely had its share of good eats, even if I did make a few heretical stops at chain restaurants.

I arrived too late to get to Scottsdale Stadium in time for batting practice, so I shot up Scottsdale Road to a sushi place called Sapporo that I’d been to three times before and considered one of the better sushi joints I’ve been to in the U.S. (It’s also the place where I was when I learned that Darryl Kile had been found dead in his hotel room, something that came back to me when I walked over to the spot in the restaurant where I stood when I took that phone call.) I sat at the sushi bar, figuring I wanted to eat as quickly as possible to get to the game on time, and ordered Too Much Sushiâ„¢, a problem I tend to have when eating alone at sushi restaurants. I also went for their house salad, which turned out to be a lot more ornate than the typical green salad you get in sushi places but with the same ginger dressing, which is really all that matters. The sushi was good but slightly disappointing; I thought the sake (salmon) was a little bland, and the unagi(freshwater eel) wasn’t slightly warm like it usually is. The spicy tuna rolls were very good, but could have been a bit spicier. Anyway, I was pretty sure I’d exceeded my per diem – I’m responsibly for anything I spend over that amount – on just one meal, but when I got the bill, it was $21. Turns out that everything is discounted for happy hour, making that meal the best sushi deal I’ve ever gotten. I know Tony Bourdain warns people to run away from “discount sushi,” but this particular discount is OK.

Café Carumba, a rare high-end restaurant that serves all three meals, was a major find for breakfast, and I wish I’d had a few more days there to work my way through the breakfast menu. I hate doing the eggs/sausage-or-bacon thing every day while I travel – once per trip is usually enough – but it’s hard to find an alternative. (The hotel wanted $10 for its crappy buffet; I wasn’t warm to the idea of giving them $10 for a container of yogurt and a stale pastry.) At Carumba, I did do the eggs-sausage-toast bit, since it’s my usual test dish for a breakfast spot. The sausage patties were delicious, probably house-made, lightly spiced and not too porky. The eggs were overcooked, although I have to admit that they were generous with the portions; apparently the menu’s reference to “two eggs” meant ostrich eggs. The rosemary potato wedges were a little dry, but the flavor was excellent. But what caught my eye was the yogurt-and-granola dish for $5, enough to pull me back the next morning. I don’t know where the granola came from, but it was superb, not too sweet (since the yogurt is already sweetened – I don’t need a sugar rush at 9 a.m.) and with a little cinnamon, and the bowl was topped with a sliced fresh strawberry. That, an English muffin that turned out to be free because the server forgot to bring it out with the yogurt dish, and a cup of hot tea (they serve Tazo) ran $9 with tip. Whenever I get back to Phoenix, my first breakfast stop will be at Carumba for their migas, which they make with chorizo sausage; my failure to try them stands as my major food regret of the trip. Heavy, spicy food isn’t really the ideal breakfast in my book, but this is the sort of sacrifice one has to make from time to time.

Wednesday’s lunch was a trip to Phoenix Ranch Market, something of a religious experience for people who like to cook; it’s a huge Mexican grocery store that also features a large food court. Any time I walk into an ethnic restaurant or store and find it packed with members of that ethnicity (and, therefore, not with people who look like I do), I figure I’m in the right spot. Indeed, despite the fact that the woman who took my order was so flustered by the prior customer’s inability to make up her mind that my burrito ended up an all-carnitas version instead of carnitas with rice and beans, I’m still a huge fan. That plus an enormous tamarind juice that I couldn’t finish ran $7, and I left with three Mexican cookies that cost $1 – two were just like oversized Italian butter cookies, and the third was a cocol, a sort of Mexican sweet bread (not sweetbread) flavored with anise seeds that didn’t thrill me. The food court also offered ice cream, cakes and other pastries, and plenty of other lunch options like enchiladas, tacos, etc. The carnitas, by the way, were served without any sauce (which may be traditional, but it was new to me), but had all the flavor of an excellent barbequed pulled pork.

Wednesday’s dinner and Thursday’s lunch were at chain restaurants. I was in Peoria and options were limited. We’re just going to pretend that those meals never happened.

Friday was the best eating day of the trip, which is typical, since it was also the last eating day of the trip. Breakfast was the aforementioned yogurt meal at Carumba. Lunch was an unusual plate at the Blue Adobe Grill in Mesa, less than a mile from their ballpark. The food is New Mexican cuisine (as in, from New Mexico), and the quality was extremely high. But apparently I’m not a huge fan of the red chile, at least not the varieties used in the cuisine of New Mexico. The carne adovada enchilada had a perfectly good piece of slow-roasted pork that came in an extremely bitter and somewhat spicy red adobo sauce. I’m told that this is normal. Why people would willingly eat something so bitter is beyond me; the only things that should taste that bad are medicine. The bitterness overwhelmed the spiciness and the sweetness that I think lay hidden underneath. I don’t think this is a fault of the cook; I think this is how it’s supposed to taste, and suddenly I’m not so sure that a week in Santa Fe is on my list of vacations to take. The red chile rice was better, with less bitterness but less heat, and the “shredded” beef taco (served on two soft corn tortillas with shredded cabbage) was excellent; the beef was more pulled than anything else, and it was a pleasant surprise to have a taco that wasn’t made with ground beef cooked within an inch of its life. The meal’s highlight was actually the smoky green salsa that came with warm tortilla chips to start the meal. I was tempted to take the salsa with me, but my only potential vessel was a pant pocket, and I thought the salsa might ruin my cell phone.

Friday’s dinner was my one meal with companions, Jeff Erickson of Rotowire and my occasional comrade-in-forks Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus. Looking for a quick meal between BP and the game at Phoenix Municipal Stadium, we hit Honey Bear’s BBQ, a rather, um, unassuming little building on Van Buren just west of the 202. Smoke was pouring out of the back of the building, and once I determined that the place was not on fire, I took it as a good omen. I got greedy and went for the pulled pork, baked beans, and peach cobbler, which ran about $9 including a drink. The pork was excellent, very tender with good smoky flavor, and Joe and I had an extended discussion on the sauce, eventually concluding that the cook was going for a pan-American sauce, with some vinegar (North Carolina), mustard (South Carolina), and sweet (Memphis) flavors coming through. The beans were also plus, with bits of their hot links inside; Joe had a hot link sandwich, and gave it a thumbs up. Their links are hot but not killer-hot and were extremely juicy. The cobbler was good, although the layers of dough ended up a little gummy from sitting there while I ate everything else. Jeff got the ribs and thought they were good, but not as tender as promised (they claim “You don’t need no teeth to eat our meat!”). It was an incredible find by way of Google Maps and Chowhound, and I was still full three hours later.

Next year’s goal will be a chain-free trip to Phoenix. I’m optimistic; there are a lot of good eats to be had in that town, and I think I only scratched the surface of the Mexican scene.

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