→ February 24, 2014
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Staunton and Charlottesville, Virginia.

My draft blog post on Jeff Hoffman is up for Insiders, as is a short reaction to Baltimore signing Nelson Cruz. Look for another draft blog post, on UVA hitters, on Tuesday.

Esquire ran a piece last week that profiled a new, tiny restaurant called the Shack, located in the Virginia mountain hamlet of Staunton (pronounced like Giancarlo’s surname), while also somehow praising the writer for finding this hidden gem. That link’s serendipitous appearance in my Twitter feed came a few days before my scheduled trip to Charlottesville, itself a wonderful food town, but just 45 minutes away from Staunton – a bit of fortuitous timing I couldn’t pass up.

And the Shack is indeed a fantastic experience, both for food and for value: $40 for a prix-fixe menu, only available on Friday and Saturday nights, that comprises three courses (one choice each among three starters, three entrees, and two desserts) with huge flavors and a great focus on produce. I’m not sure how much of what I ate was local, given the time of year, but much of it was at least seasonally appropriate, and the deftness of the execution was remarkable.

The first course was my favorite of the night: sweetbread-filled tortelloni with beech mushrooms, basil leaves, and a Meyer lemon paste (possibly from confit) underneath, with the pasta itself made fresh in the back. Cooked perfectly al dente, the tortelloni had an ideal dough/filling ratio, and the mushrooms brought a huge earthy note to the dish that seemed to increase the potency of the minced sweetbread inside the dumplings. (I concede I am a sucker for any pasta dish made with good mushrooms.) The lemon underneath the pasta was hidden, requiring a little extra effort to get it into each bite, but the balance of sweet, sour, salty, and umami flavors was spot on – and never during the meal did I have a thought of “this needs salt.”

My entree was a seared trout with cured trout roe, brussels sprouts, and parsnip puree. The trout itself tasted unbelievably fresh – I don’t know if it’s even the right time of year for it, but the fish tasted as if it had just been caught – and this was the best trout skin I’ve ever eaten; even at home I often just skip it because of the work required to make it this well. Imagine the texture of a potato chip, so thin it’s nearly translucent, taken right out of the fryer, and you have a sense of how the skin tasted. I’m quibbling here, but the dish tended a shade too much toward the sweet side because of all of the natural sugar in the parsnips, and I’d have liked a little more of the finger lime vinaigrette to balance it – but I only noticed it because everything else was so perfectly done. (Finger limes are new to me, a citrus plant native to Australia and only recently commercialized and grown in the United States.)

The dessert was described in the most basic terms on the menu: “apples + bananas + vanilla wafers + terragon [sic],” but as the other option was full of hazelnuts, one of my least favorite flavors in the culinary catalog, I chose the fruit dish with no idea what I might get. What I got was sparse but bursting with flavor, centered around beautifully browned chunks of banana, with crumbled vanilla wafers underneath like a deconstructed pie crust. It lacked something to bind all of the elements together – a little crême fraîche, perhaps, or some honeyed labneh – but the flavors on the plate were beautiful.

The Shack is waiting on its beer/wine license, which should arrive by early March, and seating will likely remain limited – the tiny space seats about 32 people, all in tables for four, so while I had a table to myself for a while, the server asked me if I’d mind sharing with a couple who had just arrived. I said yes, of course, and ended up having a long conversation with the couple, a bit closer to my parents’ age, about Staunton, food, and places we’d traveled. I had just seen Alton Brown’s Edible Inevitable tour, during which he expounds on the role of food as a shared experience – the act of eating is what brings us to the table, together, to break bread. I would never have met that couple or had that conversation without word of The Shack’s amazing food spreading to the point that it reached me and made me want to make the trip. The food alone was worth it – $40 for that kind of quality, both in execution and in inputs, is a screaming bargain – but the experience as a whole was one-of-a-kind.

* Of course, leaving Charlottesville for dinner limited my dining time in that town to just the next morning’s breakfast and a stop for coffee. Breakfast at the Blue Moon Diner was fine, nothing remarkable other than bad service (I sat at the counter, where two servers were more interested in doing things like organizing the vinyl records for the turntable). Coffee at Shenandoah Joe’s, a reader suggestion, was much better: they offer pour-overs with a few dozen options, all roasted in-house, although the folks at the register didn’t seem to know much about which beans were the freshest. (Older beans tend to lose some of their brighter notes, like acidity, something I just learned very recently.) I had their Guatemalan El Tambor offering in a pour-over, only offered in 16 oz size for about $2.50, and other than lacking some acidity it was a great cup, with deep roasted cocoa nib and rum/molasses notes.

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→ October 14, 2013
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Arizona eats, October 2013 edition.

My first Arizona Fall League update went up on Thursday afternoon. The next one will go up on Monday morning … that is, a few hours from now.

I had a bittersweet experience in Arizona last week, my first extended trip there since we moved out of the state in June. The pleasure in seeing Fall League games, catching up with some friends, and visiting old haunts couldn’t surpass the feeling that all of that – plus the spectacular weather – was no longer mine, that the drive south on the 101 was no longer to my house, that winter was waiting for me on the other side of the trip. (I define winter as “not summer.”) I did manage to distract myself by hitting four new restaurants while I was on the ground there, at least.

Crêpe Bar in Tempe is the new brick-and-mortar place from the chef behind Truckin’ Good Food, and you know they’re serious about food when you see they use coffee from heart roasters in Portland, Oregon. Turns out they have a real barista who pulls a damn good shot of espresso, and the drip coffee earned raves from my friend Sam. Crêpe Bar also offers cold-brewed coffee, which they prep daily and allow to steep for about 24 hours, as well as V60 and Aeropress pour-overs, so it’s worth going if only for the coffee. As for the crepes, I’ll just point out that I had a crêpe with vanilla custard, strawberries, toasted slivered almonds, and some 55% Valrhona chocolate, and you’ll just be jealous.

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Located in the Bespoke Inn in Old Town Scottsdale, a mere 12-minute walk from Scottsdale Stadium, Virtu Honest Craft just made Esquire‘s list of the 18 best new restaurants in the country, and it might be the best restaurant in the state of Arizona now – something I wouldn’t say lightly, having tried and loved crudo, Citizen Public House, Pizzeria Bianco, cibo, and others. Virtu’s food was just a slight cut above its competitors, offering inventive plates that played with flavors and textures in clever ways with visually appealing presentations. Kiley McDaniel met me for dinner, but was a little late, so I ordered one of the happy hour crostini options, with piquillo pepper jam and manchego cheese, a great twist on the ordinary fig jam or quince paste crostini concept that brought a hint of spice and less straight sugar to the bite. Then the gluttony began in earnest: the chef sent out a large antipasto plate with three cheeses, truffled salami, Sicilian olives, and marcona almonds, as well as honey to pair with the blue cheese. That was free (I think all the early tables got one), but came out after we’d ordered two starters and two entrees, so things got out of hand quickly. The chef’s snack starter is almost a meal in itself: A pile of hand-cut French fries tossed with sausage, mozzarella curd, and what I think was a sweetened balsamic reduction, topped with an over easy egg. We also went with the item that the Phoenix New Times’ Chow Bella blog highlighted, the grilled asparagus with duck egg, bacon candy, peppered feta, and foie gras hollandaise. The chef’s snack was comfort food, hearty, salty, fatty, and of course a little heavy, while the asparagus plate was like brunch for dinner, bright colors leading to brighter flavors if you could manipulate everything into one bite, which wasn’t always easy.

For the mains, I went with the smoked duck, which came on a smashed plantain with small grilled chunks of foie gras and pomegranate arils. Kiley ordered the seared scallops, served on a pumpkin/onion mash with a white chocolate beurre blanc. I think we both preferred the scallop dish, which was better executed across the board, with perfectly-cooked sea scallops paired beautifully with the fall flavors of the squash and onion; my only comment here is that the dish needed a finish of acid, even something as simple as lemon juice (although I imagine a place like Virtu would instead go with a yuzu foam or a champagne vinegar gelée). The duck itself was cooked nicely but smoking duck does rob you of the glory of crispy duck skin, and the plantain mash had been cooked a second time on a griddle to provide that crispness, a process that made it too crunchy and even charred the edges a little bit. The proteins seem to be standard here but the sides change at least every few weeks depending on what’s in season; I’d recommend whatever they’re doing with scallops and would trust in the chef beyond that.

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Otro Cafe is the newest spot from Doug Robson, the Mexican-born (really) chef behind the menus at Gallo Blanco and the Hillside Spot. Otro’s menu is simple – a few taco items, a few tortas with the same meats you’ll find on the taco menu, a few Mexican street-food starters, and a full bar. Kiley joined me for this meal as well, so we split the elote callejero – roasted corn on the cob with paprika, cotija cheese, and a little mayonnaise, which the server will shave off the cob for you tableside. I also ordered the small guacamole because Kiley is a misanthropic devil-worshipper who hates avocadoes. Both were superb, just simple and fresh items with big flavors thanks to the tomatillos in the guacamole or the salty-tangy burst from the cotija in the corn. For tacos, we each ordered the same trio (tacos range from $2.50 to $3.50 apiece) – the pork “al pastor,” the carne asada, and the grilled marinated shrimp, all of which were excellent. The carne asada was my favorite, even though I’m generally not a big steak eater; Otro uses seasoned grilled ribeye, chopped and topped with lettuce, an aji (chili pepper) aioli, cilantro, and guacamole. The shrimp was second, marinated in achiote and topped with red and white cabbage, chili pepper, and more guacamole, all outstanding although the shrimp ended up in the background beneath the spice and acid of the cabbage/chili slaw. The pork al pastor was still good, served with salsa verde, a little pineapple, and more cilantro, although I missed the better bite of the steak and, well, that was the only taco without guacamole and it was going to suffer by comparison. Otro also offers a number of small side dishes, including two rotating options from local farms/CSAs, for just $4-5. Some items are $1 off at happy hour so the two of us got out of there for under $30 combined and had probably consumed too much food.

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The Gladly is the new venture from the group behind Citizen Public House, focused a little more on cocktails and small plates and less on the mains that made CPH our favorite spot for an elegant dinner out. The Gladly’s chicken liver pate starter, where the liver is blended with pistachio nuts, was by far the best item I had, and while I’m not sure eating a half-cup of the stuff at one sitting was the wisest nutritional move for me, that is what I did because it was too good to pass up (especially with whole-grain mustard and pickled onions to add to the crostini). The Brussels sprouts starter might be a meal for a vegetarian, as it’s served on a plate of creamy white-corn polenta; I prefer Brussels sprouts a little more cooked than this, as they were still too bitter at the center and hard to cut, but the combination of the sprouts and the grits was excellent. The one dish I didn’t love was the duck ramen – five-spice duck “ham” served in a giant bowl of miso broth with ramen and pea greens. The broth itself was a little bland, light on salt but also lacking any clearly defined flavor, and while I love duck prosciutto, its flavor was muted after sitting in the hot miso broth for a while. I’d love to give the Gladly a second shot, preferably when I can indulge in the drink menu, but also to try some of the other small plates like the paprika-cured pork belly, or the pigstrami sandwich, which turns my favorite starter at CPH into a smoked pork butt sandwich with a Brussels sprout sauerkraut as the slaw.

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As for repeat visits, I had breakfast at the Hillside Spot three times and everything was just as I left it, from the chilaquiles to the pancakes to the chocolate chip cookies, so good job there. I also went back to Matt’s Big Breakfast which remained top-notch and swung by Giant Coffee (owned by Matt) and had a great espresso there. Saigon Kitchen in Surprise was a little disappointing, but only in that the bun with chicken I ordered came with these giant pieces of lettuce that got in the way of the noodles and other vegetables that were sort of buried at the bottom. I did have the hilarious experience of watching the seventy-odd woman next to me send back a bowl of pho (soup) that was hot enough for me to see the steam from a meter away because she claimed it wasn’t hot enough.

Some places I wanted to try but didn’t have time to visit: the Welcome Diner, La Piazza Locale, and Bink’s Cafe, all in Phoenix proper, and Altitude Coffee Lab in Scottsdale. There’s always spring training, I guess…

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→ August 20, 2013
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Los Angeles, Long Beach, San Diego eats.

I had a column up from earlier today looking at which organizations are deepest at each position; there’s a lot of Pittsburgh on there. This week’s Behind the Dish podcast features my conversation with Padres VP and former Mets scouting director Chad McDonald.

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I went to Salt’s Cure with a friend during the Area Code Games, just on the recommendation of a reader who thought it was my kind of place – a spot-on suggestion, since restaurants with small menus that change daily are very much up my alley. We started with their cheese plate, featuring a trio of California cheeses, one each from cow’s, goat’s, and sheep’s milks, as well as a little apricot jam and some grilled bread. As expected, I liked the goat and sheep options but didn’t love the cow’s – a function of my palate, not the cheeses themselves. I intended to eat something light that night but couldn’t pass up the braised pork shoulder over creamy grits with caramelized onions, a meal that photographed poorly but that was perfectly cooked, with the (cheese-less) grits a good balance to the fatty/salty meat and the sweet/tart flavors from the onions. We also ordered the very simple raw kale salad on the side, which was only the second-best kale salad I had that week. My friend got the lamb sirloin with romanos beans and romesco, all of which he raved about – I didn’t try it as I’m just not a huge fan of lamb. For dessert, we had these multi-layered chocolate custards that were rich and dark and not too sweet … I can’t even remember what the other layers were. This was a huge find, just a fantastic locally-focused place with amazing food.

My second swing to Umami burger, first since February of 2010, was just as good as the last time out – their original burger is an umami-bomb, and now they offer ice cream sandwiches that are also pretty spectacular.

I discovered Caulfield’s in January when Bobby Flay tweeted that it was the “best new restaurant in LA,” which seemed like sufficient reason to check the place out. It’s located in the Thompson Hotel in Beverly Hills, but isn’t your ordinary hotel restaurant, with an inventive, seasonally-informed menu that has lots of lighter dishes that don’t sacrifice flavor. I ordered a starter, the albacore tuna and sockeye salmon poke, and a salad, a kale salad with almonds, hard-boiled eggs, bacon, and anchovy dressing. The poke was solid, although the wasabi-ginger-soy dressing overwhelmed the fish a little bit, especially the albacore tuna which doesn’t have a pronounced enough flavor to survive that much salt and heat. The salad, however, was among the best I’ve ever had: thin ribbons of kale perfectly dressed with an umami-heavy dressing (think Caesar dressing, but without the parmiggiano-reggiano), with added texture from the almonds and the smoky boost from the bacon. It was absolutely perfect, and that’s before I consider its high content of antioxidants and omega-3 fatty acids.

Over in Long Beach, there isn’t a whole lot to recommend. I went to Koi in Seal Beach for sushi, as I do every year, although I admit it’s a little weird to park across from the hair salon where eight people were killed in 2011. The fish at Koi is outstanding, with a specials board always up showing what’s fresh, and many of the nigiri options come with the sauce of the sushi-ya’s choice.

As for new spots, Lord Windsor Roasters is a new-ish third-wave (meaning lighter roasts) coffee roastery and cafe on 3rd, about ten minutes’ drive from Blair Field. They roast their coffees in the back of the store, with three options available for pourovers each day I was there, as well as their own blend for espresso drinks. The pourover was a little weak by my standards, without much body, as if the grind was a little too coarse, but I loved their espresso for flavor and texture.

I can also recommend Thiptara, a Thai restaurant on PCH right by Blair Field, which has the standard Thai dishes but also has some more regional items, like the yellow pumpkin curry with chicken that I had as an entree. The sauce includes a roasted chili paste as well as the spices you’d expect to find in Thai yellow curry, with a coconut milk base, but it’s the chunks of al dente pumpkin that set the dish apart, bringing sweetness to balance the salty and spicy notes of the sauce. I also had the green papaya salad, with carrot, cherry tomatoes, and string beans in a garlic-chili-lime dressing, which was just mildly spicy. The salad had great color and crunch and everything was obviously very fresh.

The trip to San Diego was a little less successful. Breakfast at the Mission was amazing, as always. Cafe 222 was a mess, the second time I’ve been disappointed there – and thus the last. I drove up the coast a little to visit Bird Rock coffee roasters, where I got a decent espresso (although too small to be the double I’d ordered) and was shocked to see an option for Chemex coffee using geisha beans (which are the world’s most expensive) that cost $9 for a cup.

Dinner at Craft and Commerce was a mixed bag. I had a good salad to start, with citrus supremes, avocado, and sliced jicama, although the fried goat cheese came in ping pong ball-sized chunks that were at room temperature when that should be served warm. They were also out of their signature dessert item, warm beignets with chocolate-bourbon sauce, even though it’s not a yeast dough and could be made to order if need be.

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→ July 17, 2013
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New York eats, July 2013.

The best meal I had on the weekend wasn’t the signature meal (or the most expensive), but was from the Food and Wine list of the country’s best pizzerias, which I’m working my way through as travel allows. Ribalta, located near Union Square in the space formerly occupied by Piola, is one of the newest restaurants on the list, and is known for a style of pizza called pizza in pala, where a very high-hydration dough is prepared on a long wooden paddle and cooked directly on the floor of the oven, producing maximum oven spring and a very crunchy exterior, similar to pain a l’ancienne. Ribalta cooks theirs twice, which I assume means once without the toppings and then again with toppings, although they didn’t specify – and, in an odd detail, they don’t use wood- or coal-fired ovens, but use gas and electric. But the results, especially on the pizza in pala, are superb – you get subtle hints of the caramelization of the sugars that have started to appear in the dough around the exterior crust, and it’s strong enough to support a healthy (but not excessive) load of toppings, such as the pancetta and porcini mushrooms on the pizza we ordered. The traditional pizza napoletana we ordered, the “DOC” (a margherita by another name), wasn’t as crispy or strong, and the crust didn’t have as much air in it, but the tomatoes were incredibly bright and fresh and the buffalo mozzarella was creamy and smooth (but there wasn’t quite enough of it). The brussels sprouts starter with, of course, pancetta (i.e., bacon) and pecorino romano was solid-average, but could have used a little more color on the halved sprouts. It’s all about the pizza in pala, people.

Sunday night after the Futures Game, I went to Momofuku Ssäm Bar with a slew of other writers and a few folks from outside the business for a group dinner where we all got the prix fixe bossam menu, built mostly around pork. I was completely fired up to try a David Chang restaurant for the first time, but may have created the unfortunate situation where I was disappointed with a 65 because I expected an 80. Some dishes on the prix fixe menu were amazing – the bark on the giant roast Niman Ranch pork shoulder, served with lettuce for making wraps, was among the best things I have ever eaten, caramelized and crunchy with no off notes that would come from overcooking it – while others were just solid, and the dessert, a cake made of pancakes layered together with raspberry jam as a filling and served with bacon and melted black pepper butter, was disappointing, far too dense and heavy to be edible after such a huge meal. (Or after any meal – pancakes do not keep well at all, and served cold, they have the texture of a used tire.) The pork belly buns, riffing on the Chinese baozi but serving them in the style of a Venezuelan arepa, were superb if a bit messy, and the striped bass sashimi with spicy candied kumquats was bright and fresh with a great balance of acid and heat. It’s an excellent culinary experience, just not a Hall of Fame meal.

On the recommendation of reader Stan, who works in the business, I stopped by a Stumptown coffee shop on Monday morning to get an espresso and some whole beans to bring home. Their roasts are relatively light, not quite as light as Intelligentsia’s (where they don’t even heat the beans, they just show them pictures of warm places) but light enough that you taste the bean first and the roast a distant second. That produced an espresso with a lot of vibrant, fruity notes like tart cherry and blackberry, but with a little bitterness underneath that always reminds me of cocoa. Their beans are quite expensive, again in relative terms, but you’re paying for quality as well as sourcing, as most of their offerings are single-estate, and the results so far have been solid even on my cheap Gaggia machine.

I actually didn’t get to Shake Shack before the Futures Game, but for a great reason – so many of you came out to say hi to me that, by the time we were done, it was just 20 minutes till first pitch. So I took the recommendation of several readers and tried Blue Smoke, whose Carolina pulled pork sandwich turned out to be excellent, in part because it’s about as Carolina as molasses (that is, there’s little or no vinegar flavor). The meat was actually smoked, and came without sauce, so you could see and taste that the pork had actually been smoked rather than braised or boiled or God knows what else they do to make “pulled pork” at most ballparks.

The final stop (actually the first, chronologically) on my New York trip was actually in Port Chester, NY, where I visited Tarry Lodge, a Mario Batali/Lidia Bastianich endeavor that includes an Italian market as well as a pizzeria with a full menu of pastas and entrees, yet another entry on that Food and Wine list. I tried the pizza with prosciutto and arugula, maybe my favorite toppings for an authentic Italian-style pizza, but overall found it just good, not great, with a crust that had a little char on the exterior but was overall very soft. The toppings resulted in an overly salty pizza, although I get that anything with prosciutto will end up salty – this was just too far in that direction. Port Chester’s main drag is cute, and there seem to be a lot of good restaurants there, but it’s far enough off the highway (factoring in traffic and parking) that it’s not an ideal stopping point, especially with Tarry Lodge’s pizza grading out as a 55.

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→ May 7, 2013
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More Phoenix eats + recent reads.

I’ll be on Baseball Tonight on ESPN this evening (Tuesday) at 9:30 ET/6:30 Arizona time. I’ve also got a new Insider column up about a conversation I had with Brandon Belt about his swing. Today’s Behind the Dish podcast features Baseball-Reference founder Sean Forman talking WAR, defense, R-level, and more.

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First up, some local food notes.

Tanzy calls itself a “Mediterranean” restaurant, but it’s just upscale Italian-influenced food, done very well at slightly elevated prices because of its location in the Kierland area of Scottsdale. It’s in the same shopping complex on the east side of Scottsdale Road that houses Press Coffee, True Food Kitchen, and yet another location of Grimaldi’s Pizza, across from the Kierland Commons mall itself.

I took the girls there for dinner on Thursday, knowing it would be our last chance for a family meal for a week because of games and travel, and we went a little overboard, getting a good bit more food than required. We started with one of their antipasto platters, this one including fresh mozzarella that is pulled for you tableside and seasoned with your choice of four different salts. The mozzarella itself was fine, probably best because it was warm, but it was probably the least interesting thing on the platter, which also included basil pesto (nut-free!), olive tapenade, dried figs, tomatoes marinated in garlic and olive oil, strawberries, and crusty pieces of country bread. This became my daughter’s dinner, since she’s never met a fresh mozzarella dish she didn’t love, and her only complaint was that the tomatoes were too spicy because of the raw garlic.

My wife ordered two starters as her dinner, an eggplant/mozzarella/tomato stack that she loved and that I didn’t try because I don’t love eggplant, and the fried brussels sprouts, an enormous serving of the brassicas lightly breaded (tempura-like), drizzled with a mustardy aioli and served with a sweet and sour dipping sauce. I went with the risotto, which wasn’t risotto at all, lacking any of the creamy sauce that makes that dish so distinctive (formed from the blending of stock with starch granules that separate from the rice during the slow cooking process).

Where Tanzy excelled was in desserts and cocktails. My daughter picked the white chocolate Chambourd crème brulee – the child has a sophisticated palate, which should cause absolute hell for any future suitors – and it was absurdly good, with a perfect texture beneath the sugar-glass shell. For a drink, I tried their “spice and ice,” made with five-year aged Barbados rum, mango puree, and their own ginger-habanero syrup, with a seven-spice mixture on the rim of the glass. It was odd to drink something so bright and sweet (almost too much so) only to have it bite back at the finish.

I’d go back there, ordering a little differently, but I think I could do much better for my dollar even just within Scottsdale – Citizen Public House and Searsucker both offer superior food at comparable or lower price points. Tanzy does have a more reasonably-priced lunch menu with sandwich options that might be a better way to experience their food.

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Essence Bakery in Tempe popped on my radar recently because local foodies have praised their croissants and macarons, the latter of which is a small obsession of mine. (I can’t quite get them right, although my last batch was close, just a touch too moist inside so they couldn’t hold up when filled.) I met a friend at Essence, which is on University just east of Hardy (right near ASU), for breakfast over the weekend and was very impressed by the quality of their ingredients – even if you just want your basic EMPT* breakfast, this is one of the best options in the area.

* Eggs, meat, potatoes, toast – the breakfast of champions.

Eggs are eggs as long as they’re fresh and cooked correctly, which these were. Essence has its own variety of breakfast sausage, and the potatoes on the plate aren’t generic hash browns or “breakfast potatoes” (whatever the funk that is), but come as a mashed potato cake, like a knish but softer inside. The toast options include sliced, toasted baguette, which comes with a little bit of what I assume was homemade jam. There isn’t a ton of seating, but I didn’t have to wait to get a table; if people realize how good this place is, though, I could see that becoming a problem.

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I don’t believe I ever mentioned Giant Coffee in downtown Phoenix, run by Matt of Matt’s Big Breakfast, yet another high-end coffee roaster and bar along the lines of Press or Cartel. It’s been long enough since I went to Giant that I can’t tell you what variety of beans I tried, but I sampled their espresso and their pour-over and would recommend both if you’re serious about coffee.

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Shifting gears to books, the last book I read, Ian Stewart’s In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed the World, was a dud. I enjoy math/science books, even if they get a little technical, but Stewart’s book made the mistake of trying to cover more ground in a short pop-science book than the subject matter permitted. He’d present an equation, give very little about its origins or derivations, and then throw it out there and jump right into applications and subsequent developments. The writing was dry and there was none of the narrative structure you’d get from a longer exposition on the development of one specific formula or equation or proof.

Before that, I read another of Richard Stark’s Parker novels, Plunder Squad, sent to me by the folks at the University of Chicago Press. (It’s just $4 on the Kindle.) That’s the fourth Parker novel I’ve read now, and there’s definitely a sameness to them – Parker gets involved in a heist, something goes wrong, and there’s a good amount of violence and amoral behavior involved in extricating himself – but Stark’s writing is so sharp and his definition of the Parker character so precise that the familiarity doesn’t bore or bother me. It’s odd to compare Stark’s hard-boiled crime writing to P.G. Wodehouse’s upper-class comedies of manners, but they share that attribute – they could almost recycle plots without losing readers, because of the quality of their prose and the way they crafted and developed characters. Als

Next up for books: I’m almost through D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers and also have Dan Koeppel’s Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World in my suitcase.

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→ March 17, 2013
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Minneapolis eats.

A few months ago, Food and Wine issued me a fairly direct and obvious challenge. Oh, they might have published it for everyone, but let’s be clear here – this one was aimed directly between my eyes, and no one else’s. They were mocking me, in a way, for calling myself a devotee of artisanal pizza, when, of the 48 pizzerias on their list of the best pizzerias in the United States, I had only visited TWO: Pizzeria Mozza in LA and Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix. Food and Wine, I hereby accept your challenge.

The list, which I’ve reproduced in a Google spreadsheet if you want to play along at home, is quite seriously East Coast biased, with fully one third of the pizzerias located in New York City as well as one in its suburbs, while no other metropolitan area has more than five (San Francisco has four, with two more in Oakland and Larkspur). As it turns out, two of the restaurants on the list are located in Minneapolis/St. Paul, the mini-chain Punch Pizza, serving Neapolitan-style pizzas, and the slightly less traditional Pizzeria Lola, which diverges from the classic formulation in both crust and toppings. Both are strong, but even though I’m a traditionalist when it comes to pizza, Lola’s product is better.

Punch’s model is very simple – rather than offering table service, Punch has customers order at the counter and delivers the pizzas to the table in short order thanks to the quick cooking times. They offer a large number of red (with tomato sauce) and white (take a wild guess) varieties, and also allow you to build your own, as well as offering ways to customize by adding an extra drizzle of EVOO or swapping out regular mozzarella for buffalo-milk mozzarella (do this, you probably find dumber uses of $3 a dozen times every day). The centers of the pizzas are “wet,” which is traditional in Naples (Napoli, hence “Neapolitan”) but which I think most Americans find weird and offputting. You will probably eat the center of the pizza with a knife and fork, and even as a dedicated folder of pizza slices, I am okay with this.

Punch’s crust is very thin at the center, light and puffy at the edges, with a healthy char on the exterior but not underneath (which is correct). I went with the “Rugula,” with prosciutto crudo and arugula on the basic tomato/mozzarella pizza, and while the flavors were strong across the board, the fact that the prosciutto is added post-oven meant that the pizza cooled off very quickly after reaching the table, probably by the time I’d reached the second half of it. My friend Will went for a sausage and pepper variety that had a good kick to it from cracked red pepper, not enough to call it spicy but just enough for a little surprise as you eat it. I also noticed his stayed warm longer than mine did, so maybe giving the prosciutto 30 seconds in that hot oven would have solved the problem (plus it starts to render the fat just a little bit, which is awesome). I’d call this a 55.

Pizzeria Lola, on the other hand, is a solid 65 for me. Their crust is also thin, and is even thinner around the edges than at more traditional places like Punch or Bianco, so it’s not as high or as soft. But the balance of flavors was better, even on my oh-so-not-traditional Korean BBQ pizza, with mozzarella, short ribs, sesame seeds, a sweet soy glaze, and arugula. (I really like arugula.) These slices were strong enough in the center to hold them up and fold them – I assume they also use reduced-moisture mozzarella or they press some of the water out of the fresh stuff to avoid the wet centers. I would tell you how my friend Evon’s pepperoni and caramelized onion pizza was, but he is incredibly selfish and greedy and also reads this blog which is the best part of the whole story. The caramelized onions were legit, though, deep amber, sweet, and tasting strongly of the wine they used for deglazing them. They offer chocolate chip cookies for dessert, mostly cooked beforehand, then reheated until gooey at the edge of the pizza oven, and, if you want, you can get two of them with a goblet of their own vanilla soft-serve ice cream for $5 and I strongly recommend that you do this and get some extra napkins. I also tried a beer called a Surly Furious, which sounds like the name of a bad comedian from New Zealand, which was medium in color and had a strongly nutty flavor, a little like cashew brittle. Evon also took me to his favorite pub in the neighborhood, George and the Dragon, for more beer (although their menu looked like it’s worth trying), where I tried Steel Toe Dissent, a “dark American ale” that was as dark as a porter, with heavy coffee notes, but lighter in body than most porters and stouts.

I had one other meal while in Minneapolis, a return visit to Hell’s Kitchen, which I’d visited on my last visit to the Twin Cities back in 2006. I am pleased to report that the corn meal waffle is still on the menu and is still amazing, as is the house-made maple-bison sausage. They no longer serve loose-leaf teas in cast-iron pots, though. I know there are other breakfast places in Minneapolis but I could eat that waffle every morning for a year and not get tired of it. I also had an espresso from Dunn Brothers, which was a little sharp for me – not acidic or bitter, more like spicy, enough that I added a pinch of sugar, something I rarely do with the best espresso (Intelligentsia, Press, Superstition, etc.). I did want to try the People’s Organic Cafe’s coffee, but their downtown location is closed on the weekends.

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→ February 17, 2013
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Oklahoma City eats, 2013.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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→ November 30, 2012
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Hawai’i eats.

I’ve got posts up for Insiders on the Hanson-Walden trade and the Span-Meyer trade, and did a Klawchat yesterday as well.

I’d never set foot in Hawai’i before our vacation there last week, so we spent a lot of time getting oriented and didn’t really start nailing the culinary tourism until the fourth or fifth day there, after which point I found a bunch of spots worth recommending. I’ll get to the food in a moment, but first some quick thoughts on touring Kauai and Oahu in general:

* Kauai was gorgeous; we spent five days there at the Marriott Beach Club in Lihue (everything was via Rewards Points), which has a great pool, including a kiddie pool with a slide, and a beach on a large, calm lagoon. The rooms were nothing special at all, and the food all over the hotel was overpriced. The biggest lesson for us was that it was worthwhile to rent a car at least for a day or two – we drove to Waimea Canyon, also called the Grand Canyon of the Pacific; and Kalalau Point, which overlooks the Napali coast and the northwest shore of the island. The car also allowed us to tour the Kauai Coffee plantation, visit the Koloa Rum Company (and buy a bottle of their dark – pricey at $30, but smooth with a bright vanilla finish), and do a little more shopping.

* The big shocker on Oahu was the traffic – I can see why there’s a local push for a light-rail line into the western suburbs, because traffic on I-H1 (an “interstate” highway) is pretty brutal, and there seemed to be no enforcement of HOV lane restrictions. We stayed out at Ko Olina, so the car was a necessity, and also drove to Sea Life Park so my wife could swim with a dolphin, which was a longtime wish of hers. I can understand people who skip Oahu entirely and fly straight to Maui or Kauai, though – the scenic parts of Oahu are a hike from Honolulu.

I’ve got two food spots to recommend on Oahu, plus one that’s great if you’re up for the price. The Whole Ox Deli isn’t actually a deli but is more of a lunch counter with picnic tables, and reminded me in many ways of our favorite Arizona haunt, The Hillside Spot, for the focus on sourcing local ingredients and making everything from scratch. The Whole Ox got its start via Kickstarter, which raised funds for a smoker that they use to smoke pork shoulder for their pulled pork sandwich, although I ended up getting the porchetta sandwich with cracklins, mustardy mayo, and caramelized fennel, everything in perfect balance on a soft baguette. The fried potatoes are like grown-up french fires, skin-on red potatoes halved or quartered, either steamed or parboiled (I assume) and then fried till brown and crispy all over. This was absolutely worth fighting our way into downtown Honolulu to visit.

So was Downtown Coffee, which is located in the Fort Street Mall, a tiny shop run by a husband-and-wife team who roast their coffees every Saturday and sell a handful of artisan pastries including a matcha torte with bamboo charcoal crust that defied any expectation I’d had – it’s sweet but subtle, without the bitter grassy taste I associate with matcha. As for the coffee, I had a cup of their downtown blend and liked it enough to buy a 7 ounce bag of their beans to try at home as espresso, as well as a smaller bag of their lighter Maui Mokka peaberry roast, on the owner’s suggestion. He was kind enough to spend about 10-15 minutes walking me through all their roasts, showing me samples of five different ones to discuss their qualities for espresso, and even gave me a sample of another drip coffee for comparison’s sake. I’ve already finished off the Maui Mokka, which produced a very smooth shot with a strong crema, a little less assertively acidic than the lighter African roasts I’ve gotten from Intelligentsia.

The one pricey meal we had on Oahu was the result of me being a company man and visiting Disney’s Aulani resort to try their dinner buffet at Makahiki. The resort is gorgeous inside, reminiscent in style of Disney’s Polynesian Resort but more updated with more open space inside. I generally avoid buffets, with two exceptions – Las Vegas and Disney, where the quality is higher and the turnover is faster. Makahiki’s buffet was very broad, with a raw fish table that included poke, sashimi, and oysters on the half-shell; cooked shellfish, including red snow crab legs; a wide selection of meat and vegetable dishes, including Hawaiian purple sweet potatoes both steamed and fried tempura-style; and a dessert table that had molten chocolate cakes that were more molten than cake, making it a great dipping sauce for the fresh berries on the next table. For a buffet, it was great. It also runs $46 per adult and $21 per child, so even with my employee discount we still dropped over $100, including two drinks and tip. They did have a full selection of local beers from Kona, including the Big Wave Golden Ale which had a very pronounced citrus flavor and virtually no bitterness.

Moving over to Kauai, the best meal option at the Marriott is the overpriced Duke’s, which earns raves for a salad bar that is really just a nice salad bar. Their fish was very fresh, and I liked their basmati rice pilaf, but the “hula pie” dessert is incredibly overrated, probably more famous for its size than its taste. We fared much better heading across Rice St to the Feral Pig, a fairly new spot with no ambience but amazing food, including house-smoked bacon and pulled pork and a solid selection of local beers as well. They hand-cut their French fries and incorporate pork belly into a number of dishes, including two specials I ordered – the potstickers, made by hand and fried just until hot through without drying the pork out, and the special burger with half Kauai-raised beef and half pork belly as well as bacon on top. I asked how they cured the bacon, and the owner said he used a recipe from one of Michael Ruhlman’s books, although they don’t use sodium nitrite, so the bacon is grey rather than pink and has a porkier flavor. Everything was excellent and it was about half of what we’d pay for inferior food at the hotel.

Lappert’s is a local ice cream chain with four locations on Kauai and two on other islands. Try the Kauai Pie, Kona coffee ice cream with fudge swirl, coconut flakes, and macadamia nuts. I never tried another flavor because why bother. Next to the Lappert’s in Hanapepe is a new-ish looking taco stand called Paco’s Tacos, which makes outstanding carnitas, slow-cooked but crispy on the outside, probably deep-fried once it’s done cooking but so, so good. The only disappointment was the guacamole, made fresh but lacking salt and acid for me. It’s a good one-two combo if you remember to save room for ice cream.

I had an interesting twist on poke at the Hanalei Dolphin restaurant in Hanalei, down towards Poipu, near a shop my wife wanted to visit. Two kinds of raw fish (one was ahi) and some cooked prawns were tossed in a coconut-lemongrass sauce that threatened to overpower the fish but never quite got there, served over a bed of mixed greens with some root-vegetable chips on the side (taro and purple sweet potato, I think) if you’d rather not use a fork. I only had poke three times on the trip, never at a truly local spot like a good fish market, so I can only say that this had the best overall flavor but I can’t speak to its authenticity.

My final recommendation is the Saturday morning farmers’ market at Kauai Community College, right near Lihue and next door to the Koloa Rum Company. The fresh fruit there was out of sight – large, juicy starfruits with orange flesh and a subtle sweet-citrus flavor; papayas with reddish-orange flesh that were also bursting with sugar; plus huge jackfruits, apple bananas, pineapple, and more than we could hope to try. We did buy some butterscotch roasted macadamia nuts from the Kauai Nut Roasters and jams from Monkeypod, but had to pass on the desserts offered by one vendor whose name I can’t find – she had a lilikoi (passion fruit) custard that was absolutely incredible but would have spoiled in the car since we were headed out to the Canyon.

One more note – several readers recommended a noodle shop called Hamura Saimin in downtown Lihue, but after talking to several locals, I passed. Every person I asked said the shop uses too much MSG in their broth, and that the place isn’t very clean, which is about the one non-food-related variable that I care about when deciding where to eat. I also read a few reviews that mentioned the use of a Spam knockoff in some of their soups, and I won’t touch that stuff, even if it is a local tradition. Meat doesn’t come from cans.

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→ November 6, 2012
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Umamicatessen & Intelligentsia Coffee.

The offseason buyer’s guides continue with today’s post on the outfield market and yesterday’s on middle infielders. Wednesday’s will cover starting pitchers.

Umamicatessen is the latest creation of Adam Fleischman, the man behind Umami Burger (which I reviewed in February 2010), folding a burger joint into a restaurant with a larger menu that also includes salads, starters, Jewish deli sandwiches (mostly featuring pastrami), artisan hams (including prosciuttos and two types of jamon serrano), various cooked pig dishes created by Top Chef Master Chris Cosentino, and doughnuts made to order. It’s over the top by design, and while some of the more decadent items were too rich for more than a few bites, every item we tried – I went with D-backs beat writer Nick Piecoro – was outstanding.

I focused on the Pigg menu, by Cosentino, ordering pork cracklins ($5) with smoked paprika, sage, and cayenne, as well as the Texas Toast, topped with an obscene quantity of barbecued pig’s tail and a small amount of vinegary cole slaw. The cracklins, one of three lard-fried items on the menu along with crispy pig ears and French fries topped with ham and “brainaise,” were highly addictive, with the crunchy, airy texture of puffed rice but the unmistakable tangy-salty flavor of pork skin. If they had a flaw, it’s that it would be too easy to eat the entire cardboard cone full of them without realizing just how much you were eating (including the sheer quantity of fat).

The Texas Toast ($11) is an enormous plate of food, giant chunks of pig tail that looked a lot like an oversized short rib, fattier on the inside than that cut of cow, and with a slightly tough skin that needed knifework where a short rib can be eaten with a fork (teeth optional). The flavor of the sauce itself was the star item on the plate, elevating the smokiness of the tail with red pepper, cumin, brown sugar, and dark flavors that reminded me of coffee or aged whiskey. Every part of the dish worked together, but the pig’s tail itself was a fair amount of work to eat and I’m sure I left some bits of meat in the middle because I was trying to perform liposuction with a steak knife.

The roasted baby carrots ($4) were a huge bargain considering the quality of the carrots – actual baby carrots, not giant factory-farmed carrots cut and tumbled to look like baby carrots – and the care in their preparation, leaving them ready to eat right up to the half-inch of green extending from the carrot-tops, as well as the smoky red harissa sauce beneath them. The beet salad featured yellow beets (I presume roasted and peeled) with truffled ricotta, wild arugula, and smoked almonds rested primarily on the flavor of the cheese, which was thicker than most ricotta, more like a soft goat cheese, with enough tang to balance the earthy truffle flavor and the pepper notes of the arugula – but the beet was a little lost in the mix, even though overall the salad was excellent.

We ordered two donuts, the tres leches cake donut ($4) and the yeast-raised beignets (two small ones for $4), with the tres leches the clear winner for both of us. The donut itself probably stood on its own, but the combination of milks, caramel, and cinnamon-topped whipped cream turned it into the best coffee cake you’ve ever had in your life. The beignets were a little dry throughout, although the burnt sugar-coffee-chicory dipping sauce was a clever nod to New Orleans-style coffee (and, to be honest, had a lot more flavor).

The draft beer selection included about eight or nine options, running the gamut from IPAs to the Deschutes porter I chose. Nick went with the Bourbon Pig, bacon-washed bourbon with sugar and bitters, topped with a few thin slices of crispy pig’s ear. He described it as “smoky but not too strong. Basically it was wildly dangerous and amazing.”

Speaking of LA, I owe a shout-out to Intelligentsia Coffee, where I had an espresso back in September and got a little free coffee as a gift from a reader. I do love coffee but find most espressos are too harsh to drink without either milk or sugar – and sometimes both. Intelligentsia is one of the very few that uses beans fresh enough and high enough quality that I can drink the resulting espresso straight, with their Black Cat producing a beautiful, viscous shot with bright fruity notes (stop laughing) and a little oak, but none of the bitterness from older beans or much darker roasts. They started in Chicago, with four locations there and now three more in greater L.A., along with roasting operations in both places, and an emphasis on a personalized coffee experience in the store, where you get a barista with his/her own station who takes your order (and offers guidance) and makes your drink. It’s expensive relative to the big chain espresso spots, but you are paying for quality of inputs and the expertise of your barista. I’d rather pay more for that than spend 30% less on battery acid in a demi-tasse.

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→ March 30, 2012
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Citizen Public House + more Scottsdale eats.

Citizen Public House in Scottsdale was on Phoenix magazine’s list of the 23 best new restaurants of 2011; this was my seventh so far, although two of the ones I’d visited previously have since closed. This dinner was the best meal I’ve had at any Arizona restaurant other than Pizzeria Bianco, a fine dining-meets-gastropub menu that’s heavy on bacon fat and other comfort-food staples.

We started with the pork belly pastrami ($12), probably their best-known dish, a small portion of melt-in-your-mouth pork belly with an exterior bark served over browned rye spaetzle with a Brussels sprout slaw and a whole-grain mustard vinaigrette. The meat is tender, the fat smooth and warm, and the zing of the mustard helped balance the richness of the meat. It was difficult to get all of the ingredients in one bite, but the hint of sweetness in the spice rub married well with the acidity of the vinaigrette and the faint bitterness of the cabbage. The bacon-fat popcorn ($5) is as you’d imagine – freshly-popped popcorn tossed in bacon fat with crispy pieces of bacon mixed in; there was a lot of fat at the bottom of the bowl but the popcorn itself wasn’t greasy.

The seared sea scallops ($24) over creamy grits were probably a bit past medium-rare but the sear was perfect and brought out the scallops’ inherent sweetness; they’re not my favorite kind of shellfish (that would be crab), but since this is another signature dish I felt compelled to try it, and actually liked the grits – more like the softest polenta imaginable, but made with white corn grits and whole corn rather than yellow cornmeal, creamy but not overly cheesy to the point where they might overshadow the scallops. The dish was topped with more crispy bacon bits, which are always welcome, and there was a superfluous Coca-Cola gastrique around the edges of the plate. My friend got the fair-trade short rib ($28), cut flanken-style, braised and browned (my preferred style) with a dried cherry sauce (barely necessary) and served over mashed parsnips

The chocolate pecan bars were a little sweet for me, with the texture of fudge and a salted caramel sauce on top, but if you like fudgy brownies this would likely be right up your alley, and the chicory ice cream that comes with it does give an earthy component to balance out the sticky-sweet flavor and texture of the bars. The beer selection only includes one local beer on draft (Four Peaks’ hefeweizen, which isn’t even one of their top two brews); the cocktail menu is heavy on old-school ingredients like gin and rye but in more contemporary concotions.

* Scratch Pastries on Indian School supposedly has the best macarons in town, but after one look at them – wide and flat, as if they’d spread badly in the oven – I decided to stick with a sandwich, which was on some of the best bread I’ve had out here. The smoked duck breast sandwich comes with walnuts, mixed greens, and olive oil, which sounded like it might be too simple but instead keeps the duck – smoky and tender but not fatty – at center stage. The sandwich came with a side salad for $8, an absolute steal given the quality of the ingredients, making it all the more horrifying that someone might choose one of the million fast-food options in that area to save a buck or two (if that).

* Echo Coffee is between Old Town and Papago Park (where the A’s minor league complex is, as well as the Phoenix Zoo) and rivals Cartel Coffee Lab for the best drip coffee in town. Echo grinds the beans to order, sitting them in a cone filter and pouring just-boiled water over the top, so it brews as you watch. Yes, it’s a $2 cup of coffee, but this is what real coffee tastes like, full of subtle notes that are lost when the coffee is overroasted (I’m looking at you, Peet’s) or blended to eliminate any kind of character (the very definition of Starbucks’ Pike Place blend). It’s too far from the house for me to go there just for a cup of coffee, but it’s good enough that I would reroute myself to go by there if I was otherwise headed into Phoenix or Scottsdale.

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