→ October 26, 2015
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Arizona eats, October 2015 edition.

My second and final Arizona Fall League post for this year is up for Insiders, covering Dom Smith, Clint Frazier, Jake Reed, Jason Garcia, and more.

The biggest news in Phoenix food has been the arrival of the Noble Bread Company, crafted artisan loaves of classic European breads, so good that every restaurant I tried all week that served bread bought it from Noble. (One such restaurant: the estimable FnB, still outstanding and one of the best bets in town if you want to eat a lot of vegetables and still feel like you had a real meal.) Noble now has a second spot, the Noble Eatery on McDowell, where the menu changes daily and includes two or three sandwiches, a flatbread option, and a salad. I went with their open-faced tuna salad sandwich, made with olive oil rather than mayo and including chickpeas and potatoes, served on a dark, crusty peasant loaf; with three slices and a huge portion of the tuna it was more than a meal for me, closer to two. The bread is just to die for – this ranks among the best breads I’ve ever tasted, with the texture expert bread bakers describe as “creamy” inside a crackling crust.

nocawich reopened in a new location in Tempe on College Avenue, right in the heart of ASU’s campus, this summer, with their justifiably renowned fried chicken sandwich still on the menu, as well as a giant patty melt served on good rye sandwich bread and triple-fried French fries that are out of another world entirely. On this trip I tried their breakfast, getting an oversized egg and chorizo sandwich with arugula, avocado, tomato, mayo (not much), and cheese on a sesame bagel from H&H in New York City. Everything Elliott creates there is amazing, and if I wasn’t behaving myself a little bit this week I would have grabbed one of the incredible pastries available – he has a pastry chef fly in from Portland to make them weekly. Other than nocawich I stuck to morning favorites on this trip: crêpe bar, the Hillside Spot, Matt’s Big Breakfast, Cartel Coffee Lab, and Giant Coffee.

My frequent dining partner-in-crime Nick Piecoro introduced me to a new taco/burger place in Arcadia called the Stand, where the menu is very simple: a burger, three types of tacos, hand-cut fries, and shakes. I tried all three tacos, for research purposes of course, and would recommend the short rib and chicken tacos but not the vegetable taco, which couldn’t hold the fillings in and was decidedly flat in flavor, with a lot in it (mostly quinoa and some sort of winter squash) but nothing that really popped in flavor. It needed something with umami to bring it together.

Speaking of that fifth taste, Umami in Tempe (very close to nocawich, at 7th and Mill) does ramen, and a few other things, but mostly ramen, customizable to order with five choices of broths and about a dozen or so toppings or add-ons, including chicken, roast pork, and pork belly. I went with the pork and chicken bone broth, roast pork, and a soft-cooked egg, all of which came out perfectly – the broth itself was a little salty but full of body and depth of flavor. They could probably stand to use better noodles, though; these tasted like they came right out of the package, even though more hip ramen joints in other towns have gone with fresh ramen noodles instead. The ramen, a small seaweed salad, and an iced tea ran about $13 before tip, and it was plenty of food for one.

La Piazza al Forno isn’t new – it’s been open since around the time I first moved to Arizona in 2010 – but its location in downtown Glendale, next to Cuff (one of my favorite spots on the west side), isn’t that convenient to any of the ballparks, so I hadn’t tried it till this week. Their specialty is Neapolitan-style pizzas, and they have the VPN certification that is supposed to go only to places that correctly follow the standards of Neapolitan pizza … although in my experience the VPN designation means virtually practically nothing. La Piazza’s pizzas are thin and they use top-quality ingredients, including San Marzano tomatoes and the option of using mozzarella di bufala, but the pies’ centers aren’t wet as they should be in Neapolitan pizza, and they put the basil on before baking the pizzas so it comes out very dark and loses its bright, faintly sweet flavor. Still, if you’re looking for pizza on the west side of Phoenix it’s this and Grimaldi’s and nothing else I’d recommend.

My one real disaster meal of the week was at a new modern Italian restaurant in Old Town called Evo, where the focus is on handmade pastas but not on service or even execution. The concepts for the dishes are sound, but neither item I ordered was well-constructed, and one of them came out wrong (spinach, which I can’t eat, instead of the promised escarole, an essential ingredient in the dish). The white-bean hummus with the roasted cauliflower was too thin and coarse, and didn’t add anything to the cauliflower itself, which was beautifully caramelized. The house-made orecchiette in the main course were shaped incorrectly – more like thimbles, so that the individual pieces couldn’t pick up any portions of the sauce or the other items in the dish. Even the fennel sausage in the dish was off, cut into inch-long rectangular blocks rather than broken up into smaller pieces when cooked. My meal also took forever; I don’t think my main course was fired until I reminded my server about it, a half hour after I ordered, despite the fact that the restaurant was almost empty. I would guess that EVO will be gone before I get back in March given the food and the rent at that location.

Still good: FnB, especially their socca with pickled butternut squash and cultured butter, and their salad of persimmons, pecans, pomegranates, and shaved Parmesan with mixed greens; and Welcome Chicken and Donuts, although I think the next time I go there I’ll try the chicken without any sauce at all. I tried a chocolate-glazed donut with pistachios and what I think were rose petal-flavored marshmallows; it was good but the donut tasted a little past its peak. Crêpe Bar in Tempe (Elliott and Rural) appears to be expanding, and they still bring out all kinds of little bites that the kitchen has thrown together. I can also verify that Citizen Public House still makes a mean negroni. The Revival in Tempe has closed; however, former executive chef Kelly Fletcher is now at Phoenix landmark El Chorro as chef de cuisine.

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→ August 25, 2015
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NYC eats, August 2015.

I’ve got two posts up for Insiders today, one on sustainable breakthroughs so far in 2015 and one on this weekend’s Metropolitan Classic high school tournament.

I had quite a run of food in the city (that’s New York for all you non-New Yorkers; the qualifier simply isn’t required for the rest of us, nor is capitalization) over the weekend, between a pizza pilgrimage, an artisan coffee roaster, and a restaurant crawl with the O.G. Top Chef Harold Dieterle.

Pizza first … I’ve heard for years about Paulie Gee’s, a small pizzeria in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, that’s only open in the evenings and can easily run two-hour waits. They’re considered one of the best pizza joints in the country, including a spot on that 2013 Food and Wine list that I’ve been using as a sort of travel guide. (I’ve now eaten at 25 of the 47 that are still open, including all but one of the NYC entries.) By going solo I was able to get right in and sit at the bar, which had a rather convenient reading light right by my seat. The pizza is thin-crust, cooked in an Italian-built wood-fired oven, with various preset options ranging from the traditional to the bizarre. I went with a mostly traditional option of fresh mozzarella, arugula, and prosciutto, but – and I know I won’t get a good reaction from the crowd with this – the pizza was overcooked. The edges were too charred, and there were small parts of the center of the dough that were burned underneath. I have no complaints with the toppings and it probably would have been outstanding had it come out of the oven as little as 20 seconds sooner. Fortunately for me, they’re planning to open a second location in Hampden near Baltimore, so I’ll get to try them again.

The coffee spot was Blue Bottle, a roaster based in San Francisco with a couple of outlets in the city, and that is some damn good espresso. They offer a number of varietals in pour-overs, but as I was pressed for time both mornings (and particularly desperate for caffeine on the second morning), I went with espresso, which they make with blends rather than single-origins. Their roasts are light (“third-wave”) so you can still taste the flavors of the beans.

Harold Dieterle, the winner of the first season of Top Chef, is a huge Mets fan and reader of my stuff, so we’ve been in touch for a while and trying to get together for a food crawl in Manhattan, which finally happened on Friday night. The first stop was Cata, a tapas place on the Lower East Side where the alcohol consumption began – they specialize in gin and tonics, and I got one with Fever Tree tonic and lavender – and we had a handful of small plates. I’m pretty sure this was the first time I’d had jamón iberico, the Spanish version of prosciutto made from black Iberian pigs, often fed just on acorns. It’s less salty than prosciutto and the meat has a luxurious, buttery character with a distinct nutty flavor. It’s carved to order from a leg that’s sitting on the bar counter and costs $29 for a plate. We tried a handful of other tapas, best of which were the smoked oysters, the patatas bravas (fried potatoes, but not really French fries) served with an aerated aioli, and the marinated anchovy toasts.

Danny Meyer’s restaurant empire continues to grow, as the entrepreneur best known for creating Shake Shack is behind the new place called Untitled at the Whitney Museum. Head chef Michael Anthony (not the guy from Chickenfoot, although that would be cool) has created a vegetable-focused but not vegetarian menu that changes very frequently to reflect whatever’s most in season. We had at least a half-dozen dishes, some of which were gifts from the kitchen (for Harold, not for me), and the standouts included a tomato/melon “sashimi” that highlighted the spectacular tomatoes with just a little salt and I presume olive oil; a plate of grilled pole beans with squid and toasted hazelnuts, presenting a vegetable I rarely see in a way I hadn’t tried before; nectarine “toasts,” again taking a central item from the produce section and making it the runaway star; pork fritters, opulent little balls of shredded pork shoulder just barely breaded and fried, served over a corn relish; and duck sausage with mustard sauce, which turned out to be the second-best duck dish I had on the evening. The only dish I didn’t love was one of their most famous, the smashed cucumbers with black sesame seeds and soba noodles, which ended up lost in the sea of liquid underneath it, a hazard of working with high-quality in-season cukes. The space itself is very cool, with high ceilings and long pendant lights, plus lots of glass looking out on Gansevoort. Chef Anthony came out to chat and is an incredibly nice guy who’s a fairly serious Reds fan.

The last spot, and the most decadent, was Cosme, a Mexican-inspired upscale restaurant that, according to Harold, has one of the best duck dishes in the city: Duck carnitas, a whole braised duck leg served in a cast-iron skillet with thinly sliced onions and radishes, served with blue-corn tortillas, salsa verde, chile de arbol salsa (I tried it; it’s hot), and lime wedges. The duck shreds like smoked pork shoulder, but has a softer, smoother texture, and it stays moist between the braising and the way it’s served under the browned skin. It’s more than enough to share, but it’s also a steep $59. Whether that’s worth it depends on your budget, but I will say it’s probably the best duck dish I’ve ever had in a restaurant.

We also had Chef Enrique Olvera’s now-famous dessert, a pavlova he calls “Husk Meringue with Corn Mousse,” with burned and powdered corn husks in the giant meringue, which is served cracked in half so that the corn mousse (made with mascarpone) appears to be spilling out of the center. You can see pictures of both dishes in the glowing NY Times review from February. If Olvera’s name rings a bell, he appeared as a judge in one of the Mexico City episodes of the last season of Top Chef.

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→ July 16, 2015
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Cincinnati eats.

My latest ranking of the top 50 prospects in baseball is up for Insiders, and I held a Klawchat this afternoon. Also, my latest boardgame review, of Flea Market, is up over at Paste.

I was only in Cincinnati for about 32 hours, but managed to squeeze in a fantastic meal at Sotto right downtown and to find a gem of a coffee shop in Collective Espresso a few blocks north.

Sotto was a recommendation from the unofficial mayor of Cincinnati, C. Trent Rosencrans, who obviously knows what he’s talking about and couldn’t have made a better suggestion to me – this is my kind of food. Sotto’s menu is fundamentally Italian, but with top-quality ingredients that keep most of the dishes very simple and clean, as well as immaculate execution. The menu is straightforward, with four main sections: bruschettas, salads, primi (pasta dishes), and secondi (meats/entrees). I went with three dishes, probably a little too much food for me but in total about right for an average person’s appetite, and those plus a cocktail (rum, lime, mint, bitters) ran $48 before tip. I sat at the food bar, so I ended up with a bonus dish of their garlic and olive oil bruschetta, grilled right in front of me on their giant wood-fired grill, followed by the goat cheese/honey/hazelnut bruschetta, all excellent but at heart about the bread, like a Tuscan loaf (but with salt), brushed with EVOO and lined with grill marks.

The salad was Sotto’s take on a Caesar salad, using baby kale leaves and julienned lacinato kale leaves, with house-made croutons made from local bakery Blue Oven’s bread and a garlic/Parmiggiano dressing. (I didn’t ask if they used anchovies, but the menu didn’t say so and that’s neither authentic nor particularly Italian.) The pasta dish, cappellacci with braised short rib meat inside, were unbelievably light, with the pasta wrapping on the dumplings thinner than any Italian filled pasta I’ve had, with a texture more like that of (good) wontons than typical ravioli or similar dishes. Sotto served it in a sauce of Amish butter (only some of which ended up on my shirt) and thyme, which was rich enough that I barely needed any of it on the pasta. I’m dessert would have been wonderful but I ate everything I ordered and was fit to burst by that point. This would easily have been a $70-80 meal in a larger city and everything I ate was spectacular from ingredients to execution. I can also verify, since the chef showed me, that they have this amazing immersion circulator-type device that allows them to keep pasta water constantly boiling, with one side kept limited to gluten-free pastas to avoid cross-contamination.

Collective Espresso has a few locations, at least one of which serves brunch on the weekends, but I met a friend at the tiny original shop on Woodward the morning of the Futures Game. They use Blacksmith Espresso beans from Louisville roaster Quills for their espresso, a blend of three beans from Brazil, Peru, and Colombia that produces a balanced shot with a rich texture. I also sampled one of CE’s peach scones, which was more like a cake but served its purpose well (I don’t drink coffee on an empty stomach). I also left Collective Espresso with a bag of Rwanda Inzovu beans from Deeper Roots Coffee, a local roastery; the beans are out of this world, a huge peach bomb with nutmeg and cocoa notes, and DR roasted them to what seems like the perfect color.

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→ June 27, 2015
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Saturday five, 6/27/15.

My Insider pieces this week included a post on some Red Sox prospects, including Yoan Moncada; one on the Arizona/Atlanta trade involving Touki Toussaint; and a reaction to the release of the Futures Game rosters. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

My latest boardgame review for Paste covers the reissue of the modern classic Tigris & Euphrates, designer Reiner Knizia’s best game, now back in print with better graphics and clearer rules.

My good friend Molly Knight has a book coming out on the Dodgers, The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers’ Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse, next month, and it’s so good I even gave the publisher a quote to use on the back.

And now, this week’s links…saturdayfive

  • We’re getting so much closer to vaccine sanity, as California is set to end religious and philosophical exemptions to vaccinating school-age children. The science is clear and unequivocal, and making the wrong, anti-science decision can affect hundreds of others’ lives.
  • A young widow’s heartrending letter to her late husband, who committed suicide a month ago after a long battle with depression.
  • The Moringa oleifera tree may lead to an inexpensive process for purifying drinking water in developing countries.
  • On a Tokyo coffee roasting master still roasting at age 100.
  • A former president of the American Humanist Association writes in Psychology Today that anti-intellectualism is killing America. I’m not sure I agree with the premise, nor do I think such unreason as racial hatred is “anti-intellectualism” per se, but I still found it an interesting read.
  • Roxane Gay wrote in the New York Times that she can’t forgive Dylan Roof, and why should she? Forgiveness means releasing your anger. If we forget to be angry, why would anything ever change?
  • The first segment of Thursday’s episode of BBC Outlook, on Canada’s abused aboriginal children is harrowing listening, but also makes a superb case for “truth and reconciliation” commissions to address past historical wrongs.
  • Common sense from VOX.com: People with mental illness are far more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violent crimes. Yet we don’t hear calls for greater mental health treatment options when the former is true, only the latter.
  • A recent meta-study has found that the phenolic compounds found in olive oil may help prevent neurodegenerative diseases, although it would be nice to see empirical evidence (via clinical trials) to back this up. Still, olive oil is delicious and may be really good for you.
  • The guys behind Animal and Son of a Gun have opened a pizzeria in LA, and it sounds amazing, of course.
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→ May 30, 2015
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Saturday five, 5/30/15.

This week I posted an updated ranking of the top 25 prospects in the minors and my second mock draft for 2015. I also held yet another Klawchat this week, still focusing on the draft.

And now, this week’s links… saturdayfive

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→ May 29, 2015
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Birmingham eats, 2015 edition.

I had to get up at 5 am and connect through Orlando to get to Birmingham for the Vanderbilt-Alabama game on Saturday, so once I got to my rental car I headed straight for Octane Coffee in the Homewood neighborhood, the best coffee place I’ve found in Birmingham. It’s not on par with my favorite small roasters – Intelligentsia, Four Barrel, Counter Culture, Cartel, etc. – but it’s a lighter roast of higher-quality beans than your mass-market chains offer. I hung out for a while to write a few things, including starting the mock draft post for Tuesday, and ended up chatting about SSRIs with a few med school students sitting at my table, then chatting boardgames with a young couple playing Rivals for Catan (who also suggested a newish game called The Duke to me).

I was there long enough that I ended up going next door to the Mexican/BBQ place Little Donkey for lunch. Their midday menu offers plates for $8.75 with two tacos of your choosing, most of which contain large piles of smoked meats, and one of their sides. (You can also get a burrito, a salad, or tamales instead of tacos.) I also added a grilled corn on the cob for $2, and the total was more food than I could consume because the tacos were so much larger than I expected. The pork al pastor was the better option, although I did like the smoked brisket too; the latter probably just had too much meat relative to its toppings. The chipotle slaw was perfectly flavored, with the egg in the dressing cutting some of the sharpness of the pepper, and the elote (corn) was solid-average other than (I’m nitpicking) a very uneven distribution of the paprika on the outside. They make their tortillas by hand, and it was evident as they were worth the trip all by themselves. Reader Aaron, who lives nearby, says dinner isn’t quite such good value, but I thought it was very reasonable for the size and quantity of the lunch.

While I was sitting in Octane, Alton Brown sent out a tweet to his favorite road eats from the southern portion of his national tour, and on it was Steel City Pops, which is located right next door to Octane. Serving large paletas in fruit and dairy options for $3 a pop from five (soon to be seven) area locations, Steel City has a great assortment of straightforward and clever flavor combinations that change from time to time. I went with guava, which tasted like … guava. It was good, though. I wanted to try the caramel or the coffee, but didn’t think I could handle that on top of lunch.

My last meal was a substantial disappointment, due to what I think was a process breakdown in the kitchen. Hot & Hot Fish Club is one of the top-rated restaurants in the city, winning a James Beard Award in 2012, offering a menu full of farm-to-table that reflects seasonal produce as well as any I’ve come across. The menu on Saturday was loaded with spring vegetables across the starters and mains, and I was quite optimistic after seeing the salad, with young lettuce leaves still on the head along with English peas, shaved Parmiggiano-Reggiano, and a tart dressing that might have contained anchovies (although the menu didn’t say so, and that would be an odd omission). Even the breads to start the meal, served with fresh butter and their own green salt with dried herbs, were superb, especially the soft white bread, with the crust of a sponge bread but the tender crumb of a highly enriched loaf.

Then I waited. It was somewhere between 30 and 40 minutes before my entree arrived, and that only because I finally asked my server (the bartender) for an ETA on it. He later explained that when he asked the kitchen to fire the dish, they hadn’t done so, and when it did arrive less than five minutes after he made the second request, it wasn’t right – edible, certainly, not worth sending back, but not right, either. The dish was duck breast with “crispy” duck confit served with creamy grits, a blueberry gastrique, grilled peaches, and pecans. The duck breast was almost too tough to chew or even cut; the confit thigh wasn’t crispy in any way and its meat didn’t want to come off the bone. The gastrique was absent, although there were maybe a dozen cooked blueberries in two pockets on the plate. I dislike sending food that is edible back to the kitchen; something has to be unsafe to eat or cooked beyond palatability for me to take that step. This wasn’t at that level; it was just done wrong. The bartender had the kitchen send out a small cup of their spring pea soup, pureed with fresh mint and creme fraiche, but that was – and I don’t use this word often or lightly – terrible. The peas tasted both raw and underripe, so the soup was grassy and very bitter. We grow English peas in our backyard every spring, and when ripe they are juicy and sweet and perfect right out of the pod. Sometimes we pick a pod that isn’t ready, and that was the flavor in the soup. The kitchen just had an off night.

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→ May 23, 2015
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Saturday five, 5/23/15.

My first “mock” draft for 2015 went up for Insiders on Wednesday night, although I’d already change a few things (e.g., the Red Sox’ pick). There’s also a new Insider minor league scouting roundup, with notes on Dylan Bundy, Luis Severino, Reynaldo Lopez, the Royals’ Cody Reed, and more. I held my regular Klawchat on Thursday.

Over at Paste, my latest boardgame review covers the highly anticipated Elysium, from the designer of Relic Runners. The game, which comes out on the 28th, has a great concept and theme, but I thought it was too short to let the mechanics play out.

And now, the links…

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→ May 2, 2015
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Saturday five, 5/2/15.

My annual ranking of the top 25 MLB players under 25 is up for Insiders, as is another draft blog post on Vanderbilt’s Carson Fulmer and Dansby Swanson. My weekly Klawchat transcript is up.

I also appeared on actor Nate Corddry’s Reading Aloud podcast, talking mostly about books and pizza with a little baseball chatter thrown in.

And now, the links…saturdayfive

  • English college student Ione Wells wrote a letter to her assaulter as a statement of strength for herself and other victims of sexual assault. It’s absolutely worth reading (and re-posting, since I tweeted to it on Wednesday).
  • Anything with David Simon is an auto-link for me; with Baltimore in flames earlier this week, he’s a a natural commentator, and you might say he has some thoughts on the matter. The failed War on Drugs comes up, as you would expect.
  • Hugh Acheson and Empire State South barista Dale Donchey will open a new coffee shop called Spiller Park Coffee in Atlanta’s Ponce City Market, with a projected opening date in September. They’ll use a selection from a small number of the best small/third-wave roasters in the country.
  • Nearly all economists agree free trade is good, so why are some members of Congress fighting renewal of the President’s Trade Promotion Authority? Why is Elizabeth Warren, by all accounts a fairly intelligent person, on the wrong side of the table here – along with a good chunk of her fellow Democrats?
  • The New York Times was strong this week, between that op ed and this investigative report on the deep, unspoken support for the drone program within Washington’s inner circles of power.
  • Chipotle, the most responsible of all national food chains when it comes to sourcing ingredients, will no longer serve food made with GMO ingredients. That’s too bad, as it feeds into FraudBabe-style anti-science woo-woo; GMOs are completely safe to eat and can improve crop yields, although they have negative externalities regarding pesticide use. (I still favor GMO labelling, as it’s the consumer’s right to decide what to consume, even if they want to be stupid about it.)
  • Rubella has been eradicated in the Americas. You know why? Because vaccines. It’s the third virus that infects humans to be wiped out in this hemisphere and the fourth virus in total (including rinderpest, which infected mostly cattle and buffalo).
  • NPR’s Fresh Air dedicated a show to an interview with journalist Mark Arax about California’s water wars, especially the current conflict over almond farms’ use of water.
  • A short but potent piece from Ta-Nehisi Coates on Nonviolence as Compliance in Baltimore.
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→ May 1, 2015
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Nashville eats, 2015 edition.

My annual ranking of the top 25 MLB players under 25 is up for Insiders, as is another draft blog post on Vanderbilt’s Carson Fulmer and Dansby Swanson. My weekly Klawchat transcript is up. I also appeared on actor Nate Corddry’s Reading Aloud podcast, talking mostly about books and pizza with a little baseball chatter thrown in.

Nashville has more great places to eat than I could possibly hit in one scouting trip, even if I stayed five or six nights. And new ones are constantly opening, which was my aim on my two trips there in April since several of them have become so popular either with critics or locals.

The 404 Kitchen (restaurant not found error?) was the best meal I had while in Nashville; it’s a small place, seating about 40, and the menu changes daily depending on what ingredients were available that particular day. When I was there, there was a farm egg starter that was just a yolk served on a plate of al dente farro with mixed wild mushrooms and herbs, with enough of the dark cooking liquid to form a sauce when I mixed the yolk into the grains. Farro is an ancient form of wheat that has long been eaten in southern Italy the way we might eat rice or barley, but since it’s a whole grain it’s more nutritious than white rice, and I greatly prefer its flavor to that of barley. I would have preferred the farro to be a little more cooked – this was Al Dente’s cousin, Trey Dente – but the dark, earthy, lemony sauce was superb in its balance of acid and umami. I made an improvised version of the dish over the weekend using mixed dried mushrooms, reconstituting them for the cooking liquid, and using steel cut oats (a.k.a. groats) because I couldn’t get farro.

The entree was the least successful of the three dishes, a wahoo fillet served with some spring vegetables, but lacking a little punch to spruce up the mildness of the fish itself. (My first experience with wahoo was on my honeymoon in Bermuda twenty years ago, at the White Horse Tavern. They served a fried wahoo sandwich that was so frequently confused with chicken by tourists that they had a sign up saying, “No, the fried wahoo isn’t actually chicken.”) The mixture underneath the fish included some fingerling potatoes and sunchokes, easily my favorite part of the dish. The dessert was a chocolate “budino” that was thicker than most budinos or mousses, semi-sweet with bits of almond and drunken tart cherries; I like darker chocolates but this was close, and it was rich enough that it was best shared.

Two Ten Jack is Nashville’s first izakaya/ramen house, and while I am no judge of ramen or broth at all – I’ve had real ramen maybe three times in my life – I thought the tonkotsu (pork broth) ramen at Two Ten Jack was spectacular. Tonkotsu is made from pork bones, often trotters (yep, that’s pig feet), so the flavor is meatier than any other stock or broth made from chicken or beef. It’s also thicker because the preparation of the stock involves slowly poaching some pork fat and then whisking it into the liquid to form an emulsion. Two Ten Jack’s version has a little pork floating on top as well as the noodles adn aromatics you’d expect to have, but I would gladly drink this stock by the pint. The restaurant also offers sashimi, a few other raw fish preparations (including a tuna poke that I thought needed more acidity), and yakitori skewers you can order by the stick for about $3-5 each. They also serve several cocktails built around the distilled rice spirit shochu, including one that mixes it with their own house-made tonic water.

Several of you have recommended Mas Tacos Por Favor for a while, although it’s much easier now that they have a brick and mortar location right across the street from The Pharmacy, a great burger joint that also serves amazing tater tots. Mas Tacos offers five different taco options that look like they rotate or change frequently; when I was there there were options with beef, pork, chicken, shrimp, and a vegetarian one with sweet potato. The pulled (braised) pork was the easy winner over the chicken, as the pork had the flavor of carnitas without being too heavy, while I thought the chicken was too bland and I mostly got the flavors of the toppings. You can get one elote (grilled seasoned corn on the cob with paprika and cotija cheese) for $3, which I recommend, and a small plate of maduros (fried sweet plantains), which I probably wouldn’t. They also sell aguas frescas in varying flavors, but were out of the one flavor (tamarind) I would have ordered that day.

Desano’s Pizza is a mini-chain of three locations (Nashville, Charleston, LA) serving thin-crust, wood-fired pizzas to diners at long picnic tables in a dining hall in sight of the three ovens. It’s a little above-average for this style of pizza, with the crust a little too thick underneath the toppings and the sauce definitely too garlicky for me, definitely a good spot for a group outing though.

I tried to go to Barista Parlor, the over-the-top coffee emporium on the east side of Nashville, but their espresso machine was down that morning, so I’ll have to save that for another trip. I did make it back to Crema, still the best local roaster I’ve found in Nashville, not quite at the level of direct-trade spots like Intelligentsia or Counter Culture but at the high end of the next tier.

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→ April 13, 2015
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Atlanta eats, 2015 edition.

My Atlanta trip was much better for food than it was for scouting, with a washout on Friday and one of the players I went to see drawing three walks in four times up to the plate. As for food, though, I couldn’t have done much better: I met Hugh Acheson at Empire State South; saw my friend Eli Kirshtein at his new spot, the Luminary; met a reader and diehard baseball fan, Kaleb, behind the bar at Holeman & Finch; and went to one of Bon Appetit’s Best New Restaurants of 2014, Lusca.

I went to Empire State South once for lunch and twice for breakfast and coffee; if there’s a better coffee spot in Atlanta, I’d love to hear about it, as ESS uses beans from some of the best roasters in the country, including Counter Culture and 49th Parallel. They usually have three options for coffee brewed via Chemex – barista (and coffee sommelier of sorts) Dale Donchey treated me to a pair of coffees from the same mountain in Colombia but different roasters – and they do excellent espressos. Their breakfast menu is strong, with healthful options (their house-made granola with yogurt and honey is excellent) and less healthful ones (fried chicken on a biscuit with bacon and egg and OH MY GOD), and various pastries that seem to change daily. For lunch, I had the pork belly sandwich you saw on my Instagram feed, with just the right amount of pork, balanced by a very lightly spicy salsa de arbol and what amounts to a slaw of cabbage, radish, and cilantro with “crema” (which had the texture of mayo but a thinner consistency), served on a roll that had a texture like English muffin bread. I’ve now had four meals at ESS, including breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and have never had anything but outstanding food and service.

My lunch was better than yours: pork belly sandwich at @essouth

A photo posted by Keith Law (@mrkeithlaw) on

The Luminary is Kirshtein’s new place, open less than a year, mimicking the food and feel of a French brasserie. (If Eli’s name isn’t familiar, he was a contestant on season 6 of Top Chef along with the Voltaggio brothers, and you can see him with his hand up a dead fish in Richard Blais’ Try This at Home.) It’s located in the very cool Krog Market space along with other restaurants, food stands, and shops; on Wednesday night around 9 pm the place was still buzzing. I let Eli order for me and went with four small plates rather than a main. Three were outstanding, especially the catfish brandade, which read to me like a twist on southern fish fritters that also put them to shame. A brandade usually contains a mixture of bacalhao (dried salt cod) and olive oil, whipped to an emulsion, then mixed with or served on bread or potatoes. The Luminary’s version whips the catfish into whipped potatoes, then breads it tempura-style and fries it. Where fritters tend to be dense, heavy, and greasy, these were much lighter and smoother, without any grease; if I had a complaint it’s that they held their heat too well, so the last one was still steaming when I broke into it. (Not an actual complaint.) The seared octopus with fava beans is so new it hasn’t made their online menu yet; octopus is one of the few proteins I avoid, just because bad octopus is like galvanized rubber and most octopus I’ve had has been bad octopus, but this was not at all like that. The sear from the plancha gave it a depth of flavor I haven’t had on octopus before. The gnocchi came with cheese curds and a mixture of wild local mushrooms, giving the sauce a rich, earthy flavor (disclaimer: I fucking love mushrooms) that contrasted well with the light, airy texture of the pasta. The only dish I wouldn’t call plus was the crispy pig ears, which were just a little thicker than I like them, so they had more chew and less crunch than the ears I’ve had at crudo in Phoenix or the Purple Pig in Chicago. (That’s a dish I will always, always order when I see it.) I had to forgo dessert because I was over-full by that point, and that’s without finishing the pig ears or the gnocchi plate, although the Queen Batch – a twist on a gin and tonic that adds Campari and dill – probably didn’t help matters either.

Holeman & Finch is famous for their burgers, in part because it was once a scarce item: they’d make just two dozen a night, and when they were gone, they were gone. That gimmick is over, but the burger remains a staple of the menu: two patties with a slice of cheese on each, bread and butter pickles, steamed onions, and a soft (I’m guessing milk-based) bun. In texture and flavor it is a lot like a Shake Shack burger, cooked a little more than I like, on the medium side of medium well; it held together much better than Shake Shack’s burgers do (with a better bun), and H&F’s fries are hand-cut and fried till deep golden brown, as fries should be. I don’t see what the cheese added, but I also don’t like cheese on a hamburger in general. Kaleb made an off-menu cocktail for me that he calls the Rebirth of Slick, with rum, Foro (an Italian amaro), lime juice, dry orange bitters, and a spray of rosemary essence. Full disclosure: I did not pay full price for this meal, dinner at the Luminary, or the lunch at ESS. As always, there was no quid quo pro or expectation of a positive writeup or any writeup at all.

Lusca is a weird place: There’s a raw bar and they serve sashimi, but otherwise the cuisine is modern Italian, not Japanese or Asian or even seafood-centric. The best thing I ate didn’t have any seafood at all: a braised lamb neck starter with olives, chilis, and a thick slice of grilled sourdough. The meat itself had the texture of perfectly cooked short ribs, maybe even a little more tender, and while I would call lamb my least favorite animal protein, this was superb and didn’t have that odd gamy taste that put me off lamb several years ago. For a main dish, I had their house-made cavatelli with clams, mushrooms, tiny square lardons of bacon, and shallots; the pasta was perfectly al dente, even toothsome, and the mushrooms and bacon balanced out the clams so the latter didn’t overwhelm the dish. I was also amazed at how tender the clams were as, like octopus, they are often overcooked. Dessert was a chocolate tart with a layer of salted caramel under the dark chocolate custard or pudding, with chopped pistachios on top; the flavors were there but the presentation was a little off, as the custard was so soft that it started to slide out of the thin tart crust when I broke into it.

I met up with my former colleague and frequent partner-in-food-crime Kiley McDaniel for lunch at Leon’s Full Service, a suggestion from Kaleb, in fact, and a good one at that. Located right near Cakes & Ale in Decatur, Leon’s is located in a former service station and at least some of the staff had attendant-like uniforms. The sandwich menu has two staples (a burger and a brisket sandwich) while the remainder are subject to change; I had a fantastic cornmeal-crusted trout sandwich with a cabbage slaw and a side of Brussels sprout hash (bacon, apples, and cider vinegar) on the side, while Kiley went the lamb burger and kale salad with cotija, although really it was obvious he was jealous that I out-ordered him. We split the chocolate-nutella candy bar with toasted hazelnuts and sea salt, and thank God we did because eating that whole thing might have killed me.

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