→ April 10, 2009
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Sarasota eats (and links).

Links first: Today’s chat transcript. My podcast with the drunks at Drunk Jays Fans. Some intriguing-looking jalapeno cornbread with a recipe, although it includes sugar, which makes it corn cake, doesn’t it? Jerry Crasnick wrote a good piece on Adenhart that gets a little more at Adenhart as a person than as a prospect. (Seriously, stop talking about his baseball future. It’s trivial.)

Speaking of Adenhart and the chat, did anyone get what I was saying here?

J.B. (Dunmore, PA): As a father, today’s news really upset me. Three lives lost and another in the driver that is pretty much over. This may sound harsh but I really hope that young man spends a good chunk of his life behind bars.

Keith Law: They should release the other driver and give him a pass to the Angels’ clubhouse for Friday’s game. And then lock the doors.

I was suggesting that the killer (let’s not mince words – that’s what he is) would be locked in the clubhouse with Adenhart’s teammates. It doesn’t read that way to me now.

On to more mundane matters: I was in Sarasota for the last three days and ate a lot of needlessly heavy food. My go-to place from years past, an Amish restaurant called Yoder’s, wasn’t quite up to my memories of it. They’re best known for their pies, and while they do have a great variety, I had three flavors in three days and didn’t love any of them. The strawberry-rhubarb pie was packed but with about 90% rhubarb; if I wanted rhubarb pie, I would have ordered it, since that’s another option. The peach pie and blackberry pie were both filled with gooey cornstarchy liquid and not enough fruit. Their pie crusts are very good, though – tender, not really flaky, very soft and buttery.

The food is mostly comfort food. Their fried chicken is above-average, pressure-fried (the Colonel’s method!) to produce a crisp crust and fully-cooked meat in a shorter time than traditional skillet-frying, which takes about 45 minutes. Unfortunately, the meat I got was lukewarm and I had to send the thigh back. (The drumstick wasn’t much warmer, but you can’t put a fried drumstick in front of me and get it back unless you use the jaws of life.) Their roast turkey is solid-average – it peels apart like it’s been smoked but doesn’t have the slightly rubbery texture that I always associate with smoked turkey – while their smoked pulled pork was moist but kind of flavorless. The stuffing was mushy, and the green beans were grayish-green from overcooking. I did have one meal at another Amish restaurant down the street, called Mom’s, with pretty similar results.

Tropical Thai in northern Sarasota was just bad. The chicken in the chicken with green curry was barely cooked and way too soft – almost like a great steak, except that that texture is great in steak and lousy in poultry – and the sauce had clearly been thickened with some kind of starch, while the vegetables in it were also undercooked.

And one more dud before I get to the two recommendations: Dutch Valley is a diner that claims to be known for its Belgian waffles (spelled “Belgium waffles” on the sign outside, which I now know was a warning). Putting pancake batter on a Belgian waffle iron does not produce a Belgian waffle – it produces a thick, dense, doughy cake-like waffle that, if cooled to room temperature, might make a suitable mattress for a hamster.

Word of Mouth was a better bet for breakfast, at least a solid 50, although I found the food to be a little hit or miss. On the plus side, their scone of the day today was pineapple-coconut (right out of the oven) and it was incredible – slightly dry, like a good scone should be; sweet but not overly so; with bits of actual coconut inside and a crumbly texture. Their home fries are nicely browned and cooked with onions, although today’s onions were more black than brown. The Tex-Mex omelet with chorizo had absolutely no salt in the egg portion, and when I ordered eggs over medium the other day I got something about five seconds past over easy. They serve Harney & Sons teas and the service is very good, but they play awful music (John Mayer on Tuesday, Hootie & the Blowfish today). There are two locations, and I went to the on Cattlemen near Bee Ridge. It’s a solid 50.

Mi Pueblo is a local mini-chain of Mexican places serving mostly the usual fare of burritos, enchiladas, and tacos. Their tacos al carbon with steak were outstanding. The steak was soft – how often have you had steak in a taco or fajita and needed a hacksaw to chew it? Mi Pueblo’s was at the other end of the spectrum. The rice was fresh and gently seasoned, not sticky with tomato paste or sauce. The one I went to, at the corner of McIntosh and Bee Ridge, is tiny and there was a wait when I arrived on a Wednesday night after 7, so the locals seem to have caught on. Based on one dish I’d hazard a grade of 55.

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→ February 13, 2009
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Los Angeles eats.

Versailles, recommended to me by Joe Sheehan, is a local mini-chain serving authentic Cuban food and I ate at their location on Venice Blvd in Culver City. The menu is extensive, so I asked the waiter for suggestions, and without hesitating, he pointed to three. Figuring that was a good sign, I went with his pick from the list of pork dishes, lechon asado, pork shoulder marinated in a citrus-based mojo and then roasted for several hours at a low temperature. The meat should pull apart easily with a fork, which it did, and it had been largely trimmed of exterior fat. The sauce was too tart for me to just eat the pork on its own, but the buttery white rice that came with the dish was a perfect complement that cut the acidity of the meat. (I admit I followed the example of the young Cuban kid sitting next to me, who was inhaling a roast chicken dish by mixing everything together on his fork. His meal didn’t stand a chance.) The maduros were insanely good – who needs dessert when you have maduros? They are dessert – and the meal also came with a small cup of black bean soup that was a little bit thin but also not as heavy as most black bean soups I’ve had. I actually went to Versailles with an hour or so to kill before heading to LAX for my redeye and ended up in and out of the restaurant inside of a half-hour. You order, and in a few minutes, the dish is in front of you. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, though.

The rain on Sunday morning meant I could have a regular lunch before going to the MLB complex in Compton. The Waffle, on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood, was hopping at noon on Sunday, and as you might imagine, they serve … waffles. They’re Belgian-style in shape, although they’re not as light as true Belgian waffles, which are made by folding beaten egg whites into a waffle batter that contains an absurd amount of butter. These were closer to traditional waffles that had been baked on a Belgian-style waffle iron, so they were on the dense side, and the plain waffle had a subtle taste of vanilla but otherwise tasted a little plain. The “house sausage” was good, not too greasy or too spicy, just solid-average.

The issue of Los Angeles magazine in my room had an article on the area’s twenty top bakeries, which was as clear a call to action as I’ve ever seen. One of the things I dislike most about living in Boston, aside from the permafrost, is the lack of decent bakeries. Aside from a very small number of good shops in Back Bay, we don’t have good ethnic bakeries or good high-end bakeries around here. I do a lot of baking, but there’s a difference between wanting a cookie and making an entire batch. I only made it to two of the twenty shops recommended, in part because one of the options, Amandine in West L.A., is still in business but apparently never open.

La Provence Patisserie, tucked into a strip mall on the south side of West Olympic in Beverly Hills, was more style than substance. Their almond croissant was very good, flaky, not dry, with real (possibly homemade?) almond paste inside, but their big seller, their macaroons, were insanely overpriced ($2 apiece for a tiny sandwich in any of a half-dozen fluorescent colors) and tasted like sugar rather than coconut. There was a clear see-and-be-seen vibe to the place, and since I have no particular need to be seen and no desire to see, that didn’t add anything to the experience.

The Vanilla Bake Shop in Santa Monica was a better bet. They do cupcakes, and despite the name, they do a lot of chocolate cupcakes. I went with the sampler, three mini-cupcakes for $5, so I could try three flavors – mint chocolate chip, black and white, and chocolate raspberry. The first two were just chocolate cupcakes with different kinds of buttercream frosting, while the third cupcake was filled with raspberry preserves and topped with chocolate ganache and a fresh raspberry. The bottom line here is the cupcakes: moist and very dark with a strong cocoa flavor, while not too sweet. You get enough sugar in the frosting, so backing off the sweetness in the cake is the right call. They do have non-chocolate flavors, and their specific varieties depend on the day, but I didn’t see any point in wasting time on something that wasn’t chocolate.

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→ December 14, 2008
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Las Vegas eats.

I was pretty much full for four days straight in Las Vegas; I hit an In-n-Out on the way to the hotel, ended up hungry that afternoon because I had an early lunch and a late dinner, and wasn’t hungry again until I landed at Newark on Friday morning. I’d say that’s a successful trip. I’ll start with breakfast.

Breakfast

I would say that if you don’t mind dropping a little coin and getting a little fat at breakfast, you must hit Café Bouchon in the Venetian. Granted, Jeff Erickson of Rotowire and I were in the mood to try everything, so we might have ordered too much, but everything looked so damn good. The key was the $12 plate of four pastries of your choice; we went with the two pastries of the day, the baked apple croissant and the chocolate-almond croissant, and two off the menu, the lemon-currant scone and the sticky pecan roll. This came first, and I had a sugar high going before the rest of the food came, mostly because once I started eating the pastries I couldn’t stop. The apple croissant had been split the long way, topped with crumbs, and baked until the crumbs browned. The chocolate almond croissant was messy, as good chocolate desserts usually are, with dark chocolate and sliced almonds that were falling out of and off the pastry. Those were the two best pastries of the four, although the scone and sticky bun were good. The scone had a perfect balance of sweetness and lemon flavor, but the sticky bun … well, I’m not sure how you complain about a sticky bun being sticky, but there you go. For the meal, I ordered a bowl of yogurt with honey and strawberries, which was huge but otherwise unremarkable (I’m just a big yogurt eater), and the “French toast” which was more like a bread pudding, served as a ring-molded tower with sliced apples and the maple syrup already incorporated. The toast was soggy – not moist but firm, like in a bread pudding, but just plain soggy. I left most of it and went back to the pastries. Jeff ordered the sourdough waffles with bananas, about which he raved; I hate sourdough waffles and pancakes, so there was no point in filching a bite off his plate. Besides, I’d rather do that to Sheehan because he gets more annoyed it about it.

Update, 2012: I revisited Bouchon in April and had their version of chicken and waffles, roasted chicken with hunter’s sauce and a savory, ultra-crisp waffle, that, while not traditional, was probably the best chicken and waffles dish I’ve ever had.

I went to breakfast at Payard Bistro over at Caesar’s twice. The first time, I inadvertently stopped at the café outside the restaurant, thinking that was all there was; the chocolate croissant was fine, but probably made the day before, and the yogurt/granola parfait featured fresh berries but the “granola” was obviously a bar that had been broken up into pieces. The second time I actually found the restaurant, which is just a single room cordoned off from the main restaurant, and it wins huge points for the setup: It’s a circle with the cooking station in the center, so no matter where you sit, you can see something that the chef is doing. Their menu wasn’t that well tailored to me, with a lot of dishes that included cheese and/or ham (I hate American ham), so I went with the three eggs and potatoes. The eggs, scrambled, were light and fluffy, cooked just to the point of “done” and then stopped on a dime, so they weren’t runny but weren’t dry; they could have used some more seasoning, and they weren’t the best scrambled eggs I’ve ever had, but they were done perfectly, if that makes any sense. The potatoes were ridiculous: fingerlings, halved, cooked in butter until brown, with salt and some herbs. They’re called “pommes rissolet,” a typo for “rissolé,” which means browned in butter (or another animal fat) until browned, and for potatoes can also imply that they were blanched before browning. Of course, all of this wasn’t cheap – about $22, including an expensive pot of tea, before tax and tip. For the same price, you could go to Bouchon, have the four-pastry selection, yogurt, and tea, and be much more satisfied.

Dinner/lunch

The one meal for which I didn’t leave the hotel was lunch, since I didn’t think I could sacrifice that much time in the middle of the day. I went to the Bellagio’s buffet twice, having heard from several people that it was the best buffet on the Strip, and it was actually quite good. The oak-roasted salmon is addictive – perfectly cooked, with a strong, almost smoky flavor of oak. The soy-chili marinated flank steak, duck legs in peanut sauce, and large pastry selection were other highlights; the vegetables were mostly mediocre, the St. Louis ribs were a little boring, and the stir-fried bok choy was very bitter. I stayed away from the sushi bar – no way it’s good, even if it’s fresh – and took the bartender’s (good) recommendations for dessert: chocolate-raspberry mousse and the chocolate-chocolate chip cookies.

I was dying to hit Firefly, a tapas bar on Paradise just off the Strip, after hearing about it on Food Network a few years ago, and liked it enough to go twice. (For research purposes, of course.) The first trip was with Alex Speier of WEEI.com, probably a more adventurous eater than I am, which makes him a good dining partner for (wait for it) research purposes. Anyway, despite some below-average dishes, the food was, on the whole, incredible. If you go there knowing what to order, you should do extremely well, and the prices are very reasonable for the strip. I can’t think of a better way to do this than with bullet points:

  • Bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with almonds: The one dish I ordered twice. The perfect marriage of sweet, salty, smoky, and tart (from the red wine reduction). They’re like candy. Only bacon-ier.
  • Boquerones: Spanish white anchovies, served as canapés on long pieces of toast with roasted red pepper and yellow peppers. They’re nothing like the anchovies you might find on a pizza or in a tin at the supermarket; they’re fresh and soft and just a little bit salty, and since they’re fish, you can pretend that the dish constitutes health food.
  • Artichoke toasts: Same idea, but with a piece of artichoke heart sitting on a toast on a thin layer of “aïoli” (which has become a fancypants synonym for “mayonnaise”), sliced roasted red pepper, and chiffonade of basil. Again, completely fresh, and easy to inhale.
  • Crispy duck rolls with cherry hoisin: I didn’t care for these, but Alex did. The roll’s exterior was greasy, and the hoisin was too sweet/tangy and overwhelmed the flavor of the duck.
  • Pork empanada: Fried, rather than baked, which was a disappointment, because in a tapas bar I expect things to lean more towards the Spanish style. The inside was mushy, the outside was greasy, and the empanada was doused in “aïoli.” I didn’t even eat half of it.
  • Patatas bravas: Now this was a good use of aioli, both in application and in the light hand used to apply it. Small red potatoes roasted in olive oil and tossed with rosemary, finished with a little bit of a spicy mayonnaise.
  • Chicken and chorizo stuffed mushrooms: Nothing special – small creminis stuffed with a tiny amount of chorizo – if there was chicken in there, it was hidden by the sausage – and served with some sort of cheese melted to the bottom of the dish. I’m not sure what the point of the cheese was.
  • Chocolate tres leches cake: An afterthought order that was the star of the show. It’s not a traditional tres leches cake, with a cream or custard filling or some sort of frosting; instead, you get two wedges of a strong cocoa-flavored cake, doused in a mixture of what I assume is three milks (condensed, evaporated, and milk or cream), although the sauce was thinner than I expected, and I doubt it was soaked for the full three hours given the firmness of the cake. It was amazing, with the vanilla/nutmeg flavor of the sauce doing just enough to cut the potential harshness of the cocoa, everything working together to give this chocolate-eggnog flavor that defies prose description. I had to stop eating it only because I was fit to burst.

Alex and I also ventured out to Lotus of Siam, considered one of the best Thai restaurants in the country, a little further off the Strip on Sahara. Neither of us felt qualified to comment on whether it really is one of the best, but it was very good and the service was outstanding. At the server’s suggestion, we started with a Yum Nuah salad, with sliced flank steak and vegetables over mixed greens with a spicy lime-chili dressing. This was about the limit of my spice tolerance, although it was delicious, and I’m pretty sure Alex was mocking me under his breath. I ordered Khao Soi, a northern Thai dish of egg noodles, beef, red onion, and picked vegetables, served – or, more accurately, drowned – in a faintly sweet curry and coconut cream sauce. The flavors mixed well, with the intense tartness of the pickled vegetables helping to offset the sweetness of the sauce, but I could have done with a little less liquid at the bottom of the bowl. I have no idea what Alex ordered – something else I found too hot that he found a little mild. Like Firefly, Lotus was affordable, more evidence that the key to surviving Vegas financially is to eat off the Strip when you can.

I did have one bad meal, at an apparently once-renowned restaurant called Pamplemousse. The interior screamed “faded glamour” – a stupid art-school idea – and the impression was only cemented by the waiter’s comment that a certain menu item was “Mr. Sinatra’s favorite.” (I pointed out that if I were as young as I look, that comment would have meant nothing to me.) A reader had pointed me to the restaurant, raving about the duck, so I ordered it, a roast duck breast with duck confit and roasted potatoes. The owner took my order, since the waiter was nowhere to be found in the empty dining room, and we chatted about where’s from (Aix-en-Provence). Because two large parties had cancelled, the owner left the restaurant shortly after taking my order, and about ten minutes later, the waiter comes to me and asks if I had heard the specials. I said yes, but I had ordered the duck, at which point he informed me that they were out of the duck – making it clear that he knew all along that I had ordered the duck, but was playing some sort of waiter game. This started a downhill spiral; I ordered the fish special, a pan-seared escolar that had no taste and was almost certainly frozen at some point, served with a small dome of white rice that tasted like it came right out of one of those horrid boil-in-bag packages. And it took at least a half an hour from the re-order to delivery, and at that it only arrived after I asked the waiter for an ETA on the meal. The meal also started with a crudité bucket with a nice mustard vinaigrette, but some the vegetables were obviously not fresh and had been cut hours, if not a full day, prior to serving. I imagine once upon a time this was a great restaurant, but the food world has passed it by.

Last spot worth mentioning was Café Gelato in Belagio, where you can get a “small” gelato (bigger than my fist) for $4.75. I went with dulce de leche and chocolate; it was about average, a solid 50, but no better. The gelato was smooth but a little heavy and absolutely not traditional; the chocolate had a good, dark cocoa flavor but the dulce de leche was a little weak.

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→ December 5, 2008
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Dana Point eats.

I did breakfast both days at Harbor House, a diner right on PCH in Dana Point, going back on day two because day one’s meal was so good. That first meal was scrambled eggs with chorizo, home fries, and toast. The eggs/chorizo were probably the best I’ve ever had – not overwhelmingly spicy (seriously, I can only take so much heat at 8:30 a.m.), obviously made to order rather than as part of a huge batch – and the home fries were just a pinch of salt away from perfection, with no grease, plenty of crispy browned bits, and soft interiors. The second meal was pancakes, bacon, and eggs; the pancakes were solid-average, good but unremarkable in flavor and – like most pancakes – a little heavy, and while the bacon came in thick slices that could have been fried a little longer to get some crisp to them.

I had one lunch at R.J.’s in Dana Point Harbor, although they’re also open for breakfast and seem to have a local following. The turkey sandwich with feta is pretty much just that, turkey roasted in-house with lettuce, tomato, red onion, and a sprinkling of feta cheese, plus mayo if you’re so inclined (I wasn’t). The turkey was excellent, nothing like the cheap previously-sliced stuff you get in too many restaurants, and the bread (a French roll) was obviously fresh. The sandwich comes with soup or salad; you might want to try the soup, as the salad was drowned twice over in dressing. Getting into the place was kind of tricky; the best way seems to be to go westbound on Dana Point Harbor Drive and pull into the lot just past the intersection with Golden Lantern.

My other lunch was too much of a good thing, a Mexican place called Olemandi right across from the beach. The food was amazing, but the portion sizes were absolutely over the top. Their carnitas are among the best I’ve ever had, moist but with some browned ends, deeply flavored but neither too acidic nor too spicy, allowing the flavor of the meat to still take center stage. The dish comes with a small amount of very good Spanish rice, a large serving of refried beans, plus tortillas, guacamole, sour cream, and so on. All of that plus easily 3/4 pound to one pound of carnitas makes a great value for $16, but it’s also ridiculous to send that much food back when, like me, you have no place to which you can take leftovers. Oh, and the meal comes with tortilla soup, which was very rustic (just a delicious broth and tortilla strips with a little diced tomato) but sort of added to the gluttony. I can’t really complain about having too much food, but sending that quantity of food to the disposal/trash does bother me a lot.

I had one very, very bad meal on the trip, sushi at Gen Kai in Dana Point. The fish was bland, boring, slightly tough, and way too cold. I wouldn’t say it was bad in the sense of going bad, since I wouldn’t have eaten it, but it was unacceptably low quality fish. Even the green tea was a mess (way too hot – green tea should be brewed at around 160 degrees). I did make it up to myself by stopping in Seal Beach en route to the airport and having my last meal of the trip at Koi, amazing as usual and relatively quiet for a place that usually offers a wait for a seat at the sushi bar.

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→ September 30, 2008
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Milwaukee eats (+ TV, radio).

TV today: ESPNEWS, 4:10-4:30 EDT as part of the Insider segment with Jerry Crasnick.
Radio: Northsound 1380 AM, Everett, Washington, with the Fish, 5:30 pm PDT. Also, ESPN 540 Milwaukee, Wednesday, 11:15 am CDT (streaming available online).

I have to say that I underestimated Milwaukee, figuring I was headed into a culinary wasteland filled with fat people who eat brats and drink pale beer all the time. It was actually one of the best eating towns I’ve been to all year, especially in the very funky area between Brady Street and North Street west of Prospect, which is definitely where I’d live if I moved there and could stand winters cold enough to turn your testicles necrotic.

First meal might have been the best – lunch at Cempazuchi on Brady Street. It’s sort of an upscale twist on Mexican food, with a heavy dose of authentic Mexican dishes mixed in. I started with the sopa de lima, a clear soup with chicken, lime juice, and tortilla strips, and then ordered the pork “torta,” Cempazuchi’s term for an unusual sandwich on pan frances with avocado, jalapeño, and onions. Both were phenomenal. The soup had just the right balance of acid, salt, and a touch of heat, and had obviously been assembled seconds before it reached the table. The sandwich was filled with pulled pork, apparently smoked properly since it wasn’t dry and didn’t require a sauce, and came on soft bread that had been sliced and grilled. The sandwich also came with a half-hearted garden salad with sliced radishes and an indeterminate white dressing. The meal starts with two salsas, one that was “peanut-based” that had an odd texture (shocking), and another with roasted tomatoes and garlic that was too thin but had a great smoky flavor.

Saturday’s breakfast was at Beans & Barley, a combination café and natural foods store just off North Street. There was no pork on the menu, so my EMPT included chicken sausage, which was cooked to death and mostly inedible. Everything else was excellent, particularly the breakfast potatoes, new red potatoes sliced and roasted with rosemary. The café serves Rishi teas (rhymes with “chichi”), but their only black tea is Earl Grey. It comes in a big ceramic pot with a strainer inside filled with loose tea, but it was already dark and bitter the moment it reached the table, meaning that it had been brewing too long. The properly-made scrambled eggs and the amazing potatoes still make it worth a trip.

I hit up a reader suggestion for Saturday dinner, Pizza Man, across the street from Beans & Barley. That’s where I had my lone beer of the trip, an ale from New Glarus with a fruity taste and medium body; I prefer darker beers, so this probably wasn’t the best choice, but it was their only local beer on tap. For dinner, the pizzas looked like they had the proper crust but were overtopped, so I went with one of the recommended specials, wild boar ravioli in a marsala sauce. The ravioli were excellent; I’ve never had boar before, but the flavor of the ravioli was very much like bacon. The sauce, on the other hand, was bitter with a pretty clear note of alcohol, meaning that it wasn’t cooked enough. The dish came with this amazing light garlic bread, not greasy at all and perfect for absorbing sauce, if you wanted the sauce absorbed. Pizza Man also has a huge wine list, and the décor – Old World Dungeon – reminded me of a place my wife and I visited in Siena almost ten years ago, an upscale “medieval” place called Il Gallo Nero.

Milwaukee being the center of the frozen custard world, I had to make sure to hit a few spots while I was on the ground. (Frozen custard is a style of ice cream that relies on egg yolks for texture, as opposed to “Philadelphia” ice cream, which contains no eggs and uses more butterfat.) Of the three places I tried, Gilles, Leon’s, and Oscar’s, Gilles wins the overall prize for the best combination of flavor and texture. All three places had very smooth custards, and Leon’s probably was the smoothest of all but both the chocolate and vanilla were timid, particularly the chocolate. At Gilles, I went with the flavor of the day, “turtle,” which had caramel and pecans mixed in and maybe a tiny bit of fudge. The vanilla flavor still came through in the custard, and the texture was just a shade below Leon’s. Oscar’s “mud pie” – allegedly mocha custard with hot fudge and Oreo knockoff cookies – had the worst texture, just slightly icy, and the knockoff cookies weren’t very good, but the custard did have a strong chocolate flavor.

I also approve of the Milwaukee Public Market, which is a fairly small building that houses maybe a dozen merchants, from a produce stand to a real fishmonger to a spice house to a few stands selling prepared foods. If I lived in Milwaukee, I’d be there all the time. The coffee-shop in the Market, the Cedarburg Coffee Roaster, roasts at least some of its coffees right there at the stand, which was a positive sign for their espresso. A double espresso macchiato (they don’t sell singles) runs $2.75, and while the beans were obviously fresh, the espresso was underextracted, resulting in a powerfully sour shot; the most likely explanation is that the barista used more grounds than necessary for the pull. It was a waste of what I think was pretty good coffee.

I also went to The Soup & Stock Market and ordered a bowl of their chicken and dumpling soup, which included real hand-made dumplings (obviously pinched out of dough by an actual hand) and was based on their own homemade stock (available frozen for purchase if you don’t want to make your own stock at home). The soup was very good, if just a little underflavored, filled with dumplings and chicken and vegetables; the stock was a bit on the light side, but it had the great mouth-feel you only get from soup made with stock. The soup also came with a hunk of a pretty amazing dense white bread. I also bought a bottle of Haley and Annabelle’s Vanilla Root Beer, brewed by two girls aged 10 and 5, with proceeds going to their college education fund. It was at least solid-average, better than any national brand, with a dark color, deep root beer flavor, but probably a little more sugar than I’d like. It’s behind, say, Thomas Kemper’s (my gold standard), but I admit I was sucked in by the story and the cause.

The one dud meal was breakfast at Miss Katie’s Diner, an old-school greasy-spoon near Marquette’s campus. Absolutely everything was drenched in butter, and I don’t mean that in a good way. The hash browns were soggy from frying in so much grease, the toast was buttered so heavily that I could see through it, and the eggs ended up sitting in the grease that was on the plate. There were definitely better options out there for Sunday breakfast.

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→ September 9, 2008
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NYC Eats, September 2008 edition.

Those of you who track me on Twitter or Facebook know that I hit Bar Americain on Friday, after getting recommendations from several readers and even people in the business who saw my note on Mesa Grill from April. At BA, the smoked shrimp salad sandwich was very much as promised. Served on a dark Pullman loaf with watercress inside, but the salad had a rich, sweet smoky flavor (I think hickory, but I’m no expert on smoking woods). I had never had or even heard of “smoked shrimp” before, and other than an excess of dressing (mayonnaise-based, but thinned out with vinegar), the sandwich was outstanding. It’s served with real French fries – no batter or coating, just potatoes, served with a remoulade dipping sauce – and all meals come with a bread basket that includes these amazing, savory cornbread sticks with black pepper.

The one new breakfast spot was Mon Petit Café, which does indeed strive for that Parisian-café look and feel. I met BP’s Joe Sheehan for the meal, and I am pretty sure I ordered wrong: feeling the need for a big protein infusion, I went with the ol’ EMPT, scrambled with bacon and a baguette, although I ordered a croissant on the side. The bacon was ridiculously good – I could have eaten a half-pound of it, no problem – while the eggs were sort of overcooked on the inside so that some of the eggs’ liquid had leaked out. The croissant was amazing, as was the chocolate croissant that Joe Sheehan ordered (dessert for breakfast is a big thing over in France). Joe noticed on the restaurant’s Web site that they have good-quality bagged tea if you ask for it; the alternative is Lipton, which just makes dirty water. I’m giving a grade of “incomplete” here, because I need to go back and order something more appropriate.

Virgil’s BBQ was right across the street from my hotel, and though I’ve seen it fifty times I never managed to make it inside. Their pulled pork sandwich (ordered without sauce) was solid average, but not above it. The meat was extremely moist and I received plenty of burnt ends, but they apparently didn’t trim the meat at all, which meant first removing a huge portion of pork fat from my mouth, then lifting the lid performing surgery on the mound of meat to remove any other slimy bits. The meat had no clear smoke flavor or flavor from the dry rub used before smoking, but because it was smoked properly, it could rest somewhat on the laurels of the flavor that pork develops no matter what wood is used to smoke it. The side of barbecued baked beans was a waste of time, and the iced tea was too bitter. I wouldn’t mind trying their brisket, and the pork was good enough to go again since I’m usually staying in the vicinity. Incidentally, the sides that come with the sandwich are French fries or (cole slaw with potato salad). Not only is that weird (one side vs. two), but who the hell orders French fries in a BBQ joint?

Between doubleheader games on Sunday, I went to Flushing’s Chinatown and tried Sentosa, a refugee restaurant from Manhattan’s Chinatown, now on Prince Street a block away from the Main Street stop on the 7. I’ve had Malaysian food twice in my life, including this meal. I stuck to dishes that were obviously Malaysian, since the menu was sort of a pan-Asian thing with lots of Chinese or even Chinese-American options on it. The roti canai with chicken curry featured a large, thin, slightly sweet pancake that is meant to be dipped in the curry sauce. The dish got the obligatory one-pepper label for “spicy” (there were no degrees of spiciness, which is apparently a binary variable in Malay cuisine), but I’d give the coconut milk-based red curry about a one or two out of ten in terms of spiciness. The chicken was dark meat, of course, and there were two potato cubes in the tiny bowl. For an entrée, I went with nasi lemak, which I think is the most famous Malaysian dish out there, a sort of deconstructed fried rice that’s served with a giant mound of white rice that was cooked with coconut and cloves and is surrounded by accompaniments: curried chicken (more of a brown curry this time), a sweet/spicy mixture that apparently contained anchovies (whatever it was, it was very chewy), picked vegetables (mostly cabbage and carrot), sliced cucumber, a hard-boiled egg, and roasted peanuts. I mixed and matched haphazardly, skipping the hard-boiled egg entirely and trying to avoid the temptation to just eat all the rice, which was completely infused with coconut flavor. Everything but the anchovy mixture was excellent, and unlike the barbecue lunch, it didn’t push me into a meat coma afterwards.

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→ August 19, 2008
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Chicago and Ann Arbor.

Ann Sather is a small Chicago chain known, with good cause, for its cinnamon rolls. I went to the 70-year-old Ann Sather restaurant one El stop south of Wrigley Field (it’s right outside the Belmont station off the Red Line) before the Under Armour Game on Sunday for breakfast. The cinnamon rolls – two constitute a single side order – are very good, with a soft dough that’s somewhere between cake and brioche in texture. The cinnamon-sugar-butter filling was heavy on the cinnamon (good), although it tasted a bit like cheap cinnamon (not good, but, in their defense, it’s cheap). Every egg plate comes with your choice of two sides, and two cinnamon rolls constitute one side, so it’s a pretty good deal. I went with two eggs scrambled, which were prepared without the slightest adulteration from salt; the hash browns “well done” (my waitress’ suggestion), which means they have a crisp brown crust that breakfast potatoes should be required by federal law to have; and the “Swedish potato sausage.” I asked my waitress what that sausage contained and was told pork, veal, and potatoes, and that “it’s pink.” I’m thinking, okay, pork sausage usually has a pink hue to it, but what came to the table was dead pink in the center, and in my book, that’s raw. I didn’t eat them. That platter plus tea came to about $11.50 before tip.

In the mini-mall attached to the Renaissance Hotel on West Wacker is a fast food-ish place called Wow Bao which I really had to try. I’ve had authentic Chinese dumpings – both bao zi and xiao long jiao zi – in Taiwan and in the U.S., and I think they’re out of this word, particularly the latter kind. Bao zi are giant puffs of a simple yeast dough usually stuffed with a meat filling and steamed; the texture of the dough is very soft, almost pillowy. Jiao zi are smaller dumplings with a thinner dough and a higher filling-to-dough ratio; the fillings are juicier and part of the experience of eating one is getting the burst of liquid that comes with the first bite. (Think of jiao zi as a Hershey’s Kiss: the dough is the foil wrapper and the filling is the chocolate. That gives you a rough idea of the construction, at least.)

Anyway, Wow Bao serves enormous bao zi for $1.39 apiece or $7.99 for a six-pack; I tried several kinds, the barbecue pork being the best if a bit too sweet, the whole wheat with edamame being the worst with an overpowering taste of scallions, and the chicken and curry also scoring well despite perhaps a lack of authenticity. I highly approve of their homemade ginger ale, which tastes like … ginger. One big negative was a poor ratio of dough to filling, which, since the dough on most of the dumplings comprised only white flour, meant for a bit of a food coma not long after I ate.

Shifting locales, I’ve been remiss in not writing up Zingerman’s Roadhouse in Ann Arbor, Michigan, from my trip to see the Tigers and White Sox last month. The fried eggs were cooked flawlessly (over medium) while the thickly sliced bacon was excellent and also correctly cooked. The grits … well, I’m not a huge grits fan, but these were pretty good, with a fair amount of salt in them. Not as good as even mediocre polenta, of course, but good for grits. The big bonuses for me: real tea; and a small plate of donut holes for us to try, obviously just fried and out of this world, as just-fried donuts usually are. There were five of us there and the waitress was absolutely hellbent on splitting the check for us – she wouldn’t take no for an answer – but I suppose that’s better than the waitress who takes your order and disappears for an hour.

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→ August 11, 2008
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Long Beach eats, 2008 edition.

First up, some admin stuff:
* I’ll be on ESPNEWS today at 3:40 pm EDT.
* There will be a chat this week, probably on Thursday.
* I’ve got two blog entries up at the Four-Letter, one on the top prospects from the AFLAC All-American Game and another on the top guys at the Area Code Games.

To the food…

Long Beach was definitely in the house, although I ventured out to the streets of LA for a few meals. Dessert first: Frozen yogurt is all the rage in southern California, and the most popular chain is Pinkberry, so I felt almost obligated to try it so I could make fun of all of the people who consume the stuff. I was, however, unprepared for how absolutely vile the stuff is. The flavor made me feel like I was sitting inside a bottle of white vinegar, licking the sides and inhaling the fumes. Their yogurt comes in three flavors – “original” (vinegar-flavored), green tea, and coffee. It’s all nonfat, which is about the stupidest thing I’ve seen in ages, since the fat in yogurt helps coat the taste buds and mute the yogurt’s acidity. The result of removing the fat is the need to increase the sugar to balance out the acid, and that results in a major glycemic load and a very unsatisfying product. I ate the oreos I’d ordered as a topping and tossed the gunk. Something that looks that much like ice cream shouldn’t taste that much like shit.

Moving along rapidly … I decided to revisit a restaurant I’d tried back in 2006 and didn’t love, because so many readers have told me it’s the best sushi place in this part of greater LA: Koi in Seal Beach. I admit I was wrong about Koi, having complained of bland sushi. I’m guessing it’s a maturing of my taste for sushi, since I’ve gotten to experience some high-quality sushi on my travels and now understand what incredibly fresh sushi tastes and feels like in the mouth. Koi’s is absolutely on par with the freshest sushi I’ve ever had, and the flavors, while not intense, were complex and smooth. I avoided all rolls – not only are they apparently inauthentic, but I feel like they’re a way to use sauces to cover up mediocre fish, and at a place where the fish is really good, you’re just hiding the quality under salt and sugar. I ordered salmon (I recommend it without the ponzu sauce), yellowtail, yellowtail belly (special order), and three items off of the specials board: sea bass (served with salt and lemon juice, so you eat it without any soy sauce at all), bluefin toro, and Japanese red snapper. Everything was delicious, fresh, and soft as butter. On my second visit, I asked the main sushi chef, named Taka, to “surprise me.” He hit me with albacore belly with lemon juice, sea salt, and shaved ginger, which was incredibly soft but had a very slightly fishy taste that I think came not from the fish but from the combination of flavors. It was almost like the faintest taste of a grassy cheese, although I hate to use that term because it makes the fish sound spoiled, which I’m quite sure it wasn’t. Taka surprised me again with sweet shrimp nigiri, the first time I’ve ever eaten raw shellfish. I ate both pieces, because I’m not an ingrate, but had a hard time getting past the knowledge of what I was eating. (If you missed the previous discussion, I avoid raw shellfish because the risk of food-borne illness is particularly high.) I also received the shrimps’ heads, deep-fried, but found them inedible between the tough shell and the weird goo in the middle.

My other sushi experience here, at Haru Haru on the border of Long Beach and Seal Beach, was disappointing; I went there because it was close to the stadium and next to a Trader Joes, so I could eat, get some supplies, and still get back in time for the second game. I asked if there were any special nigiri/sashimi of the day, but there weren’t, and the fish I got was bland and even a little bit tough. It’s not worth the stop so close to Koi, even if Koi is a good bit more expensive.

Tiny Thai in northern Long Beach – north of the airport just off Carson St and Lakewood – served totally nondescript Thai food, although it appears to have a devoted following. I asked the waitress for suggestions; she asked if I liked spicy food and I said not really. (Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. That night, I was not in the mood.) The first thing she suggests is a stir-fry with chicken, beef, or pork in a sauce of chili peppers and basil. The second thing is garlic beef or chicken, which isn’t so much spicy but gave me visions of waking up at 3 am as a fire-breathing member of the allium family. I ordered pad see ew instead – I had an odd craving for broccoli anyway – and it was very ordinary, and the chicken had clearly been cooked in advance, as there’s no way they could have cooked it in the time between my order and its arrival at the table.

Bouchees Bistro on Long Beach Ave is sort of a gourmet food for the masses place, and I was intrigued by the $3-5 sliders they offer, which seems to be a popular option. I went with three – the jumbo lump crab cake, the angus sirloin burger with bacon and spicy aioli (I had them omit the cheese), and the seared ahi tuna with avocado – and started with a house salad with balsamic vinaigrette. The salad was the highlight because it was flawlessly dressed – not a drop too little or too much – and the ingredients (romaine lettuce, cucumber, tomato) were ridiculously fresh. Sometimes I forget how good Californians have it when it comes to produce. Of the sliders, the crab cake was the best – they did not lie about jumbo lump – and the ahi tuna was the worst, with a seared exterior that was already cool when it reached the table and made me wonder if it had been sitting at all. One turnoff: I didn’t eat all of the tomatoes in my salad because I’m not a huge fan, but ate half of them. The waitress who took my salad bowl away said, “Next time, ask to leave the tomatoes off.” I felt like I was being scolded and pointed out to her that I ate some of them, figuring I didn’t need to point out that it was my discretion whether or not I wanted to eat every last freaking bite of my food. She backed off.

I hit two breakfast spots, nothing new. The Coffee Cup is my new favorite spot; I had chorizo and eggs, the combo ($6 for two eggs, two slices of bacon or links of sausage, and two pancakes), and the EMPT with their own honey apple sausage. Everything was good; the sausage was delicious although the casing got a little bit tough in the cooking. I appreciate that they didn’t charge me for the hot water for my tea – I brought my own bags, and some places will charge even if I don’t use their crappy Lipton bags. (The Coffee Cup uses Pickwick, a slightly better food-service option than Lipton but still not great.) The blueberry pancakes (50¢ extra for the berries) were good but had a strong taste of cinnamon that might turn some folks off. Their breakfast potatoes – big chunky home fries – are outstanding, but they do burn the occasional piece. I also love the whole wheat bread they use for toast, and they’re not stingy with the butter.

I had one morning where I stopped at the Long Beach Café because the Coffee Cup was out of my way and I regretted it. The food wasn’t half as good, the “biscuit” was a sorry excuse for a baked good of that name, the eggs were overcooked, and so on.

Two recs from Los Angeles: I met dak and Junior from Fire Joe Morgan at BLD, the name of which is an acronym for the three meals they serve. We were there for dinner, and started with a plate of meats and cheeses that we asked the server (clearly a budding actress) to choose for us, with only the guidance that we disliked particularly pungent cheeses. She did pretty well by all accounts; I wanted no part of the camembert, but the sheep’s milk cheese (I think it was called Midnight Moon) was like a young pecorino romano, the speck (smoked prosciutto) was outstanding, and the spiced marcona almonds, quince paste, and slices of black mission figs on the side were all addictive. For an entrée, I went with the seared cod with spicy avocado cream sauce and sliced fingerling potatoes, all of which was impeccably fresh but disappointingly low-impact in flavor. The dish was just missing its mojo. The two writers paid for dinner for some inexplicable reason, so when dak comes to Massachusetts later this summer, I’m going to reciprocate and take him to McDonald’s. (Ken Tremendous big-leagued me and said he was too busy to show.) Anyway, both dak and Junior liked what they ordered, so I’d call it a hit all around, and even if I didn’t love my dinner I can appreciate the freshness of the ingredients.

Over on S Figueroa north of USC, La Taquiza is my kind of Mexican place: small and authentic, but user-friendly for the non-native. I went with the carnitas tacos – carnitas was the special of the day – and a watermelon agua fresca, which was my reason for going in the first place, as it was mentioned in the LA Times article to which I linked about a month ago. The carnitas were delicious, although the tacos were just fresh tortillas (I watched a woman making them as I waited in line) and meat, with a modest salsa bar available. The agua fresca was good, but not up to Phoenix Ranch Market standards, with a pretty strong lemon flavor but plenty of sweetness to balance it. It was like a watermelon lemonade, shaded a little more towards the watermelon. I’m underselling the place, though – I’d go back and probably be a little more specific on the order.

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→ June 15, 2008
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Birmingham and Jacksonville eats.

I hate doing food writeups four weeks after the fact, but I’ll do the best I can off of my memory.

I had two pretty good finds in Birmingham. One was an accidental find, a local outpost of a growing barbecue chain – yes, a chain – called Jim and Nick’s. It looks as if they started in Alabama, so at least I was close to the First Location. First meal I had there was a pulled pork sandwich, possibly the second-best pulled pork I’ve ever had (sorry, still loyal to Eli’s in Dunedin, FL). The pork was perfectly smoked, moist, with a clear but not overwhelming smoke flavor (sorry – again – but I’m not good enough to tell you the type of wood). My number-one criterion for pulled pork is how much sauce it needs to be edible. Zero is the ideal figure. On a scale of zero to ten, Eli’s pulled pork gets a zero, and Jim and Nick’s gets a one. For a side, I went with the baked beans, which had good flavor but about four times as much black pepper as they needed.

My second meal was a bit disappointing – a big green salad with pulled pork on it. I think the problem was that I got it to go, so the pork continued to cook in its little plastic container, and ended up a little dry by the time I got it on to my salad. Serves me right for thinking healthy.

The other solid find was breakfast at Bogue’s, a slightly run-down local joint that does traditional southern breakfasts and meat-and-three lunches. They’re known for their “sweet rolls,” which are pecan rolls without the pecans, or maybe cinnamon rolls without the cinnamon: a sweet brioche-like dough wrapped around and drizzled with a sugar-butter combination. They are, oddly enough, rather sweet, so while they’re delicious, the one I ate made for a weird lead-in to a savory meal. My eggs-bacon-biscuits breakfast was solid-average, maybe one grade above for the biscuits (good texture, not buttery enough in flavor).

Moving along to Jacksonville, I was only there for one meal, and decided to hit a downtown spot called Chew that seemed to promise an upscale take on comfort food. I ordered the duck confit, which had obviously been roasted to try to flavor and crisp the exterior, but in the process dried out the meat. The one hit of the meal, for me, was the cassoulet of white beans, thickly-sliced bits of bacon, onions, and shaved fennel. I’d write more, but their website is down today, their phone number just rings and rings, and given how sparse the crowd was on a Saturday night, I’m wondering if they’re still in business.

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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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