→ July 9, 2024
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Chicago eats, 2024, part one.

I’d been to Little Goat at least three times over the last ten-plus years, but had never eaten at Top Chef winner Stephanie Izzard’s flagship restaurant The Girl & the Goat … until now. I kept it pretty simple, with some advice from the bartender, ordering the sautéed green beans, the wood-fired broccoli, and a brand-new item at the time, the strawberry salmon poke. The green beans have been on the menu since the doors opened, or so I was told, and come with a fish sauce vinaigrette and a lot of cashews. The vinaigrette seemed more like an aioli, but regardless of the actual recipe it was the best part of the dish and something I’ll try to replicate at home. There were, however, too many cashews. I know that’s an odd comment, especially since I love cashews, but the ratio of beans to nuts was too low and I ended up with a lot of the cashews in the dish. The wood-fired broccoli came with a harissa dill vinaigrette that was an actual vinaigrette and a Moody Blue labneh underneath. Moody Blue is a smoked blue cheese from Wisconsin and very mild for a blue; the labneh here tasted pretty much like a labneh with a little smoke flavor, but even that could just have come from the broccoli itself, which had a nice level of char from the grill. The star of the three dishes was that ora king salmon poke, featuring maybe the best raw salmon I’ve ever had, just incredibly tender and, I hate to use the hackneyed term, buttery. The poke also had strawberries, cherry tomatoes, avocado, and chili crunch sprinkled on top. It shouldn’t work, but it does – it was perfectly balanced in every way, faintly sweet, just acidic enough, plenty of fat from the salmon and the avocado, and exactly the right amount of heat and salt from the chili crunch. They appear to do a salmon poke riff at least every summer, so you may not get the same version I did, but damn this was spectacular in every way. For a cocktail, I did their house version of an old fashioned, which was just average and came with a glass full of small ice cubes rather than one large one; I should have asked for it neat. I didn’t get dessert, as the menu was actually kind of unappealing – there was a chocolate and ginger concoction, two great tastes that do not taste great together, and a hazelnut thing, and nothing I wanted for $15 a pop. I walked across the intersection and got some gelato at BomboBar instead.

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The food at Rose Mary was rich, and in pieces it was very well executed, but both savory dishes I had were a little overdone. The radiatore cacio e pepe had too much black pepper, and way too much sauce; the pasta itself was excellent, perfectly al dente, but there were several tablespoons of sauce left on the plate once I’d eaten the pasta, and that ratio is off. There should be very little sauce left over – my rule of thumb is that there shouldn’t be any more than you can sop up with one piece of bread, and this was several times that. The duck sausage with polenta, giardiniera, and broccolini was also somewhat out of proportion – for one thing, there was too little of the non-sausage bits for the amount of meat on the plate, including a microscopic amount of broccolini; and for another, the sausage itself had too much black pepper. I actually like black pepper and use it liberally at home, but these two dishes overdid it. The meal was salvaged by the chocolate budino with coffee gelato and pizzelle crumble; I would gladly die in a vat of that gelato, which had the flavor of a perfectly made cappuccino. I was a fan of the Giant Orchid cocktail, which I’d compare to a souped-up daiquiri but with a lemon profile in place of lime.

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I’ve raved about Monteverde in the past, but this was my first visit there post-pandemic, and I’m pleased to say that it remains my favorite Italian restaurant in the country. I danced around the menu a little bit because I wanted to try so many things, and ended up with the Nduja arancini, the sicilian tuna not-quite-crudo, tortelli with sheep’s milk ricotta, and a butterscotch budino. (Yes, I ate too much.) The tuna almost-crudo was really interesting, in a good way, as it had such a broad mix of flavors from the other ingredients – salsa verde, charred olives, celery, capers, mandarin EVOO – but the flavor of the tuna still came through. I might have preferred it totally crudo, but I’ve also never been a huge fan of seared tuna anyway so that’s probably my own bias. The tortelli, like all of the pastas I’ve ever had at Monteverde, was spectacular, freshly made, perfectly al dente, with the brightness of the ricotta balanced by a mint-pistachio pesto. The budino is a can’t-miss, with whipper mascarpone and buttered pecan toffee on top.

To drink, I tried their limonini, a sort of twist on a negroni that replaces the Campari with acqua di cedro, a grappa -based liqueur that uses the peel of a specific lemon to impart a pronounced lemon flavor without the sweetness of a limoncello, along with a white vermouth instead of red; it was exactly what it promised to be, lemony and herbal and pleasantly bitter, but I switched to a traditional negroni for a second drink because I didn’t want that flavor profile with dessert.

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Obélix is indeed a character in the Astérix comics, but also a French restaurant in Chicago with a focus on my favorite protein, duck, so I had to get the duck confit salad lyonnaise, along with the just barely still in season ramp tart, which turned out to be more than enough for a meal. The confit salad came with the confit and crispy skin on top of a mixture of frisée and escarole, with a poached duck egg and duck-fat croutons. The confit meat itself was excellent, tender and flavorful without becoming tough through the reheating, but the whole salad ended up really heavy and the greens couldn’t stand up to the huge flavors of everything duck all at once. The ramp tart was just what it sounds like, with Comté cheese, but was also on the heavy side (less surprising) and I couldn’t even finish it. I did hang out for a while because I ended up in a very interesting conversation with the gentleman sitting next to me at the bar, long enough that I decided to try their house-made ice cream, but it was just okay (I got the crème brûlée flavor) I’d probably skip that given all of the other dessert options around Chicago.

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La Serre pitches itself as a Mediterranean restaurant, but come on, it’s French, the name is French, the menu is French, the décor is French. It’s a French restaurant. And it’s quite good.

They have several large mains that include various steaks (not for me) and two dishes that are for two people (including a duck dish, which made me sad), so I stuck with the smaller plates, ordering one amuse, one crudo, and one pasta dish. The crudo was tuna with osetra caviar, tomato, shallot, and yuzu, and I’m probably going to sound like a philistine but I don’t think the caviar added anything to the dish but prestige, and, as the clerical workers at my alma mater will tell you, you can’t eat prestige. The tuna itself was exceptional in every way, from freshness to texture to flavor, boosted by the acidity of the three other ingredients and something not listed that gave it a little kick – I think chili oil, but I’m just guessing. It was one of those dishes that I could have ordered twice with nothing else and been totally satisfied. For the amuse, I went with the duck profiterole, a small choux pastry with a filling of duck confit, foie gras mousse, and a sweet earthy sauce that reminded me of char siu marinade (from Cantonese BBQ pork bao). It was two bites’ worth, and delivered plenty of duck flavor, even with the foie gras a threat to overwhelm the duck confit, although I didn’t see or taste any of the duck cracklings promised on the menu.

For the pasta, I was leaning towards the gnocchi Parisienne, and my server recommended it, but it didn’t quite meet up to expectations – or to the same dish at Le Cavalier in Wilmington, which still makes the best Parisian gnocchi I’ve had. This style of gnocchi differs from traditional Italian gnocchi by skipping potatoes, instead using choux paste that’s piped into a line, cut into individual pieces, and then lightly poached. For one thing, these were very dense for Parisian gnocchi, so either they were overworked (creating gluten and removing some of the air in the mixture), or they included potato, or both. For another, they weren’t finished by frying or broiling them to add some texture to the outside; they were served in a basil pistou with “semi-dried cherry tomato” and pine nuts. The basil pistou was just a looser version of pesto with a fancy name, and the whole dish just felt a little flat. I actually enjoyed the very crusty bread they brought me dipped in the pistou more than the gnocchi. That’s not to say these were bad, but I’m holding them to a high standard because I love gnocchi, I’m Italian, and I’ve had this dish done much better.

For drinks, I had a very interesting house cocktail they call the Gold Fashioned, with a brown-butter wash, Old Forester bourbon, Lillet Rouge, and a hint of allspice. It’s less an Old Fashioned than a Manhattan-adjacent drink, as Lillet Rouge is a French aperitif wine that has much in common with sweet vermouth but is more complex. It came smoking, literally, which I always think is just showy, and which disappeared a minute after I got the drink so I didn’t get much benefit from it. The core of the drink was quite good though – I would definitely do a whiskey/Lillet Rouge drink again.

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The most recent meal on the list was at Aba, which I think one of you recommended back in April, and which I saw last week while eating at La Serre. It’s “Mediterranean” cuisine, because that’s the neutral term for it, but this is Levantine food – the cuisine of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, and so on. I kept it light this time around, ordering the muhammara; the Brussels sprouts with almonds, cashews, and honey harissa; and, at the bartender’s suggestion, the truffled salmon crudo. Muhammara is a traditional meze made from roasted red peppers, walnuts, pomegranate molasses, bread crumbs olive oil, and some kind of acid; it’s pureed or pounded into a dip, served as you might serve hummus (of which Aba has at least five varieties on the menu). Aba’s muhammara is moderately spicy, and very, very smoky (I think there was smoked paprika in it), with a chunkier consistency than you’d get if you pureed the ingredients. It comes with warm, soft flatbread, not enough because I could eat a pound of that bread at a sitting and still want more. I ate more than half of the muhammara before the spice level started to bother me a little bit, but the dish is meant to be shared, so, you know, FAFO.

The Brussels sprouts were fried, but not greasy in the least, and if anything they were a little dry; the honey was at the bottom of the bowl, which may be to keep the halved sprouts from losing their crunch but did leave the dish lacking something on the palate. The truffled salmon with fried leek, roasted garlic, and cilantro was excellent because the fish was extremely fresh, but I barely noticed the truffle flavor and really don’t know why it was necessary except so they could call it “truffled.” A plate of this same raw salmon with some EVOO and sherry vinegar would have been just as good. Let the ingredients speak!

Also, I liked their “summer Negroni” with peach. I don’t usually do drinks with fruit, but it was a hot summery night and I love both peaches and Negronis.

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I did eat at Publican when this whole adventure started in April, but I 1) don’t remember a ton of details about what I ate and 2) had a LOT to drink that night, because the bartender offered me a free shot and I’d already had two cocktails, so my memory’s a bit hazy. I remember the bread plate was huge and one of the two breads, the multi-grain one, was delicious; and that I got the swordfish, something I rarely make at home, and loved the fish itself but didn’t care especially for what came with it. Two drinks and a shot is more than I can handle, or probably ever will be able to handle, although I did get back to the hotel in one piece.

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Bonci Pizza has been lauded by chefs and food writers, but it’s just decent pizza al taglio, a Roman style of pizza that’s sold by weight or by length. The cool part about Bonci is that you can buy just a tiny sliver of something to see if you like it, and get a whole bunch of different slices for variation, but I also found nearly all of their pizzas a little too salty and a little too oily. Good place to fill up for less than $20, but not a destination for me.

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Finally, a cocktail bar recommendation: Lazy Bird, in the basement of the Hoxton hotel in Chicago, offering a very broad array of classic cocktails done right, with an extensive menu that helps you navigate through the various drinks and see how they’re connected to each other. My bartender was extremely knowledgeable, asking what spirits I preferred and whether I was open to trying a cocktail I’d never had before.

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→ October 17, 2023
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Arizona eats, 2023 edition.

Bacanora is one of the most acclaimed new restaurants in the country, landing on Bon Appetit’s list of the 50 best new restaurants of 2022, Esquire’s list of the same, and the New York Times’s list of the 50 best restaurants in the country, while it was a semifinalist for the James Beard award for best new restaurant. It’s very difficult to get a reservation, with seats opening a month in advance, but they do take walk-ins for bar seating and the patio, which is how I ended up with a spot right. I arrived just before they opened at 5 pm, which left me enough time to get to the 6:30 game in Glendale, and sat right at the bar, where I was eventually joined by another visitor from out of town who’d found the restaurant on Eater Phoenix (which does a great job covering the city’s food scene, along with the Phoenix New Times). I ordered two dishes on the bartender’s recommendations, the charred cabbage salad and the scallops elote, the latter of which is a ceviche in disguise. The cabbage salad was the best thing I ate on the entire trip and one of the best dishes I’ve had anywhere this year. There’s a wood-fired grill/hearth right there just past the end of the bar, and the cabbage (white and/or green) is indeed charred and smoky, chopped and tossed with a chiltepin vinaigrette, crema, pumpkin seeds, and crumbled tostada shells. It was tangy and spicy and very crunchy, unlike any cabbage dish I’ve ever had, so much so that I’m going to buy cabbage this week, grill it, and try to at least re-create this ‘salad’ in concept. The scallops elote did sort of pale in comparison, although the freshness of the scallops was remarkable in the seafood desert (pun intended) of Phoenix. Raw shellfish preparations are one of the few foods that make me hesitate, probably because I grew up on Long Island during a period when there were frequent health warnings about the risks of eating raw local oysters (which happened again this summer, this time after several deaths from Vibrio parahaemolyticus). These bay scallops were tender and had a faint flavor of seawater, although they were a little drowned by the flavors from the elote, grilled corn with two different types of crema, one spicy and one lime-infused, and comes with tostada sheets for scooping to add a little more salt and some more crunch. The menu, which reflects the flavors of the Sonora state in northwestern Mexico, changes very frequently, and neither of the items I had is on the permanent menu on their site, so you’re rolling the dice a little if you book ahead of time. I’m comfortable saying it’ll be worth it regardless.

Hai Noon is the latest restaurant from chef Nobuo Fukuda, a legend in Phoenix dining circles and a Beard winner for Best Chef – Southwest back in 2007, but whose namesake restaurant Nobuo at Teeter House closed in 2021 during the nadir of the pandemic. Hai Noon takes over a former dive bar’s space at the Sonder Mariposa hotel in Scottsdale, and the contrast between the setting and the delicate cuisine, which is mostly Japanese but with some French flourishes, enhances the whole experience. Chef Nobuo is known for his “sashimi spoons,” two per order, each of which is a single bite of raw fish with a few small accoutrements and a sauce, usually salmon, amberjack, or hamachi. I over-ordered, in hindsight, but I wanted to try both of the spoons with amberjack (kampachi), one with grapefruit and avocado, the other with shiso, Japanese ginger, and taro chip. I’d eat both all day long because the fish was as high a quality as any I’ve had anywhere, although I think the latter one (shiso/ginger) would get the nod as the superior one because the flavors were relatively new to me. In both spoons, however, the fish remained front and center, as it should when it’s this fresh. The cauliflower with sesame sauce also comes with okra, and the sauce was salty and very rich, with that faint peanut buttery taste I often detect with toasted sesame seeds (in a good way). The mushrooms en papillote were my least favorite of the four things I ordered, mostly because the flavors were so muted compared to the other three items that they felt a little flat, although the mushrooms themselves were excellent. It’s possible that I just couldn’t adjust my palate from the salty, umami-filled flavors of the sashimi and cauliflower to the garlic butter of the mushrooms. I also had a “Japanese old-fashioned,” which was just an old-fashioned with a little ginger syrup and black sugar (kuro sato). Nobuo is also planning to open a second restaurant in an adjacent space called Hidden Gem.

Dilla Libre Dos is, as you might infer, the second outpost from the folks behind the Dilla Libre food truck, this one located in Scottsdale not too far from the Giants’ stadium. They’re best known for their quesadillas, but as lactose is not really my friend, I went with the shrimp tacos with Tapatio crema, slaw, and pico de gallo, which were good-spicy and extremely flavorful, with lime, salt, cilantro, and other herbs between the seasoning on the shrimp and the toppings. I’d skip the rice and beans, though, which were just ordinary.

The Neighborly Public House is a high-end gastropub that might be a little overpriced for its target demographic but does serve quite credible food for the genre. I had the grilled “bbq” salmon because it was the end of the week and my stomach was starting to complain about all the heavier things I’d eaten, but other than the sauce being kind of generic, this salmon – from Iceland, which is trying to make its mark in sustainable aquaculture – was perfectly cooked, just barely to medium and still extremely tender and buttery. It’s served with a jicama slaw and a little salad of grape tomatoes with cornbread croutons, so I achieved the goal of eating something that was lighter and in theory more healthful than most of my meals this week. The menu also has several varieties of burgers, a fried shrimp platter, Maryland crab cakes (I just couldn’t), and salads, more or less what you’d expect from a gastropub, with a modest list of beer and wines. I did enjoy their take on a Manhattan, which used rye, orange bitters, and sweet vermouth infused with cacao nibs, adding a little more bitterness to what can be a too-sweet drink.

I went to Pa’La for lunch one day, and it’s changed quite a bit since I first went there back in 2018, when the place itself was smaller and so was the menu. It’s still built around wood-fired cooking, including outstanding breads, including the Tuscan flatbread known as schiacciata, which is sort of an Italian pita or naan that’s thick enough to slice in half and use as a sandwich bread. Their menu changes frequently but the boquerones (pickled white anchovies) are nearly always on it, which are bright and briny but would probably be better with a little bread rather than the crackers that come with them. I also had the albacore tuna sandwich, which comes and goes based on availability, on that schiacciata bread. It’s lightly dressed with aioli, arugula, and pickled red onions, and was big enough that I didn’t actually need the boquerones after all. The bread is the real star here, though – whatever you get, get something that brings you bread, or even a pizza if they have it. (They’re also known for grain bowls, which is what I had when I first went five years ago.) Co-owner Claudio Urcioli has a new spot out in Gilbert called Source that also uses some of his incredible breads, but I wasn’t anywhere close to it.

Provisions Coffee was the one disappointment of the trip – it’s a very trendy space, but the coffee is just fair and my drink was just lukewarm, I think because the barista just used milk they’d already steamed for someone else’s drink and allowed to cool for too long. I also got a donut from Outcast Donuts in Mesa, which uses a croissant dough (so it’s a cronut, just not by that name); the donut was good and shockingly not too heavy, but my goodness is that place trying too hard, with the decor, the names of items, all of it except the actual food.

I also hit some old favorites, including the Hillside Spot, Crêpe Bar, Matt’s Big Breakfast, the Cornish Pasty Company, Pane Bianco, and Frost Gelato, but the different schedule for the AFL this year meant I missed Cocina Chiwas, the new full-service spot from the folks behind Tacos Chiwas; and didn’t get to Pizzeria Bianco or FnB or Virtù or Noble Eatery, some of my favorites from the Valley.  

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→ August 8, 2021
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Stick to baseball, 8/8/21.

My one new post this week for subscribers to The Athletic is a long scouting notebook with my observations on players from the Nats, Rays, Orioles, and Tigers’ systems, including five former first-round picks. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

On The Keith Law Show this week, I spoke to Dr. Katy Milkman, author of the new book How to Change, about we can use psychology and knowledge of how our brains work to enact real, lasting behavior change in ourselves. You can subscribe via iTunes or Spotify. And on the Athletic Baseball Show, I got back together with my old Baseball Today partner in crime Eric Karabell (also on Spotify).

My email newsletter will return this week, and I’m going to give away a copy of a new board game (the publisher sent me two copies, so I offered to do a giveaway and they were on board, get it?) to one random subscriber.

And now, the links…

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→ March 31, 2019
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Arizona eats, 2019 edition.

The larder & the delta was in the now-closed Desoto Central Market food hall, but has since reopened in its own space and I think it’s going to be a standby for me when I’m in Phoenix and looking for something more vegetable-forward than most of the restaurants out there. The menu draws inspiration from southern cuisine, but vegetables are more front and center than meat. My friend and I got four dishes, all from the small plates sections of the menu, including the can’t-miss vegetable beignets, which are stuffed with mixed vegetables and are huge, airy, and just faintly sweet, served with green goddess foam, a black garlic-mustard topping, and some ‘vegetable ash’ that is just for show. The hamachi crudo with citrus, herb oil, and some not very spicy Fresno peppers was also superb, almost entirely because the fish itself was so fresh – citrus is a great complement to hamachi but this fish was good enough to eat with just a pinch of salt. The hoe cakes – a type of savory, unleavened pancake that traces its roots to slaves in the American South (and likely beyond) – come with a house-fermented chow chow (a type of spicy pickle, like a chutney) and a celery leaf salsa verde, which brings the same kind of contradictory sensation as the beignet: you associate the starch with sweet flavors, and here you get acidity and heat and a slightly heavy base from the density of the cakes. My least favorite dish, although it wasn’t any worse than average, was the baby beets salad, with more citrus, escarole, fennel, and almonds, which I think suffered because it has such a muted profile compared to the other dishes. The new space is small, but with quite a bit of seating on the patio and a long bar where we ended up sitting, and they do happy hour specials from 3-6 on weeknights that looks like pretty good value.

Fellow Osteria has a menu designed at least in part by Claudio Urciuoli, now running things at Pa’la and formerly of Noble Bread/Noble Eatery, with an emphasis on fresh pastas, some made in-house and some imported, as well as pizzas and a few very traditional southern Italian plates. Their charcuterie plate includes sopressata, speck (smoked prosciutto), three cheeses, basil pesto, peperonata, and flat breads, all good but I could have taken that entire bowl of peperonata and drank it like a shooter. The orecchiette di grano arso, one of the pastas they import from Italy, is a traditional Apulian pasta made from ‘burnt’ wheat that is toasted, providing a nutty, caramelized flavor, cut with some untoasted wheat so the finished product will still have enough gluten to hold together. Fellow serves theirs with a slightly spicy sausage from Schreiner’s, a local purveyor, and broccolini; even with the big flavors of the sausage, this dish is about the pasta itself, which was perfectly al dente and also had a very satisfying, deep semolina flavor that tasted more complex than regular white pasta.

Restaurant Atoyac Estilo Oaxaca has been a bit of a white whale for me since I lived there; like its previous incarnation, Tacos Atoyac, it’s a bit out of the way of my travels for work, not very close to any ballpark except maybe Maryvale, without nothing else nearby that would bring me to the area. They do very simple, no-frills, authentic Oaxacan cuisine, with superb homemade tacos. There’s a lot of red meat here, which is a minor limitation for me, but I did fine, getting three tacos, one with chicken, one with shrimp, and one with fried fish, as well as sides of rice and refried beans, which proved more than enough for me – I could have skipped the beans, but when in Rome, etc. I’d get all three again, but the shrimp was probably the least flavorful of the three (I concede that shrimp is hardly a Phoenix staple), and I was pleasantly surprised at how much flavor the chicken had, given how much that meat is an afterthought at restaurants that focus on beef. That said, if you eat cow, they have beef cooked many ways, including asada, al pastor, lengua, and more, and also offer burros and other plates beyond tacos. Atoyac’s location is a little hard to find – I drove right past it – without a ton of parking, and it’s a barebones spot, but clean, which is all I really ask of a restaurant.

The Normal is actually two separate restaurants in the Graduate Hotel in Tempe, on Apache, close to ASU’s campus, and their new menus incorporate some dishes from the couple behind Tacos Chiwas and the just-closed Roland’s (more on that below). The morning I went to their diner for breakfast, they were out of the fresh flour tortillas required for some of their dishes, and their take on chilaquiles, with a salsa rojo, had a solid flavor profile, with a little heat and a strong earthy flavor from whatever pepper (maybe a red New Mexico?) it included, but the dish needed far more of the sauce to keep it from drying out.

I didn’t get to Bri this trip, unfortunately, but that was ‘next’ on my list of places I wanted to try. I visited a few old favorites, including FnB, which is still my favorite high-end restaurant out that way; Soi 4; Noble Eatery; the Hillside Spot; and crepe bar, which now has a sweet crepe with sunflower butter, grilled figs, bananas, and coconut flakes that is delicious and so filling (that’s a lot of fiber) that the first day I ate it I didn’t need lunch. Roland’s Market closed shortly before I got to Arizona, although the location has already been converted into a new, larger outpost of Chris Bianco’s Pane Bianco, while also serving coffee and breakfast, open from 8 am till 3 pm. I also got word that Giant Coffee, one of my favorite spaces in Arizona, has switched to using beans roasted by ROC, a local roaster whose coffees are way too dark for my tastes, which is a huge disappointment, so I stuck to Cartel and crepe bar (now using Tucson’s Presto) for coffee on this trip.

 

You can find some of my previous Arizona food posts here: from March 2018,  one writeup from May 2016, from March 2016, and my 2016 Cactus League dining guide, a bit out of date but still mostly relevant.

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→ February 15, 2019
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Top 25 restaurants in Philly for 2019.

I’ve wanted to put this post together for ages, but wanted also to be sure I’d tried enough restaurants in the city for my list to make some sense. I think I’ve done that now, although there’s always more to try, and living a bit outside the city I’m at a slight disadvantage.

1. High Street on Market (Old City). My favorite spot in the city for breakfast or lunch, and they do dinner as well, although it’s the one meal I haven’t eaten there. The menus are built around their amazing, old-world breads; the breakfast Forager sandwich is to die for, and they make the best roast pork sandwich in the city. Their sister restaurant, Fork, is also on the list.

2. Suraya (Fishtown). Recently named the #1 restaurant in the city by Philly magazine, this all-day Lebanese restaurant, with a café/market in front and fine-ish dining in back, does Levantine cooking right, with classic preparations of the mezze (small starters, like hummus and muhammara) served with piping-hot pitas. There are a few non-traditional items here too, but go with a gang and stuff yourselves with a bunch of mezze.

3. Vedge (Midtown Village). A vegan restaurant to satisfy almost any omnivore; they do incredible things with vegetables so that the dishes are satisfying and visually stunning, and so you won’t think about the absence of meat. I still can’t believe the sunchoke bisque amuse bouche didn’t have dairy in it, and the toasted marshmallows in my dessert were indistinguishable from those made with egg whites.

4. Bud & Marilyn’s (Midtown Village). Marcie Tunney’s best-rated restaurant does American comfort food with upscale twists, including various fried chicken dishes and outstanding salads – I’ve recreated a fennel, brussels sprout, and green apple salad I had there in December 2017 a dozen times at home.

5. Cheu (Fishtown). I’d say “best ramen in Philly” but I haven’t had it many places. They do make great ramen, and have great cocktails. It’s near Suraya; parking is a pain on that whole stretch.

6. Hungry Pigeon (Queen Village). My birthday dinner last year was here, and we ordered a strange assortment of dishes, but everything was excellent (well, my daughter might disagree on the asparagus). They use fresh pasta from the Little Noodle Pasta Company, a spinoff of the now-closed Ela in the same neighborhood. The dessert, a ‘diner-style’ coconut cream cake, was four large portions by our standards.

7. Fork (Old City). High Street’s sister and neighbor does superb fine dining in a quieter, more upscale atmosphere, with a great wine/cocktail list.

8. Abe Fisher (Rittenhouse). I haven’t been to Zahav, Michael Solomonov’s flagship restaurant, but I’ve been here, which is still on the high end but more affordable and I think a bit more accessible. The menu is inspired by but not limited to Jewish-American cooking traditions. The gougères they serve instead of a bread basket are superb, and my daughter will tell you it’s the best Shirley Temple in the city.

9. Osteria (Fairmount). Osteria was a Marc Vetri restaurant, included in the sale of most of Vetri’s portfolio to Urban Outfitters, then purchased last year by the owners of Sampan and Double Knot. Most of their signature dishes, including house-made pastas and pizzas, are still on the menu, including the chicken liver rigatoni that my daughter once described as “it sounds gross, but it’s really good.” (She was 8.)

10. Royal Boucherie (Old City). Top Chef winner Nicholas Elmi’s second restaurant in Philly – I haven’t been to Laurel – is an “American brasserie” with a lot of French influence on the menu and a very lively bar. Their desserts are superb and they have one of the best lists of amari (potable bitters) I’ve come across.

11. Pizzeria Vetri (Arts District & Rittenhouse). I’ve only been to the original location, going many, many times since it first opened, and they do a small list of Neapolitan pizza options very well, as long as their signature rotolo, pizza dough rolled like a buche de noel with mortadella, cheese, and pistachios; as well as light, house-made soft-serve ice cream. Service here has always been excellent for a fast-casual spot.

12. Brigantessa (East Passyunk). Pizzas and house-made pastas from southern Italian peasant food traditions. They did have an issue last fall that resulted in the firing of their chef de cuisine, later than they should have, over anti-Semitic comments and mistreatment of staff.

13. Le Virtu (East Passyunk). Abruzzese cuisine – that’s east central Italy – which contains many dishes and ingredients you’d recognize as “Italian” but sometimes in different combinations. It’s a region I associate especially with mushrooms and that was indeed the pasta dish that most stood out to me when I ate there last month.

14. V Street (Rittenhouse). Vedge’s ‘vegan street food’ offshoot; the fried tofu taco with two slaws manages to deliver the satisfying crunch of a fish taco and make me forget I’m eating tofu, a food that I’ll consume but would rarely describe as memorable. I wish they were open more hours.

15. Royal Izakaya (Queen Village). An izakaya that takes its sake and shochu very seriously, with an intimidating menu of small plates to go along with the booze.

16. Amis (Washington Square). Another former Vetri outpost, amis focuses on the cuisines of Rome and the surrounding Lazio region in a quirky converted warehouse-like setting. When I went, I had two specials, both involving duck, that were superb.

17. Pizzeria Stella (Society Hill). A Stephen Starr outpost very close to I-95 and the waterfront, Stella does traditional Neapolitan-style pizzas with a few pasta and starter options and home-made gelato for dessert.

18. Barbuzzo (Midtown Village). Marcie Tunney’s flagship, still known for great pasta dishes (the ricotta gnocchi are superb), good pizzas, seasonal vegetable dishes, and that salted caramel budino.

19. Stock (Fishtown/Rittenhouse). A BYOB with two locations – I’ve only been to Fishtown – that serves the best banh mi I’ve had here, as well as southeast Asian soups and cold noodle dishes.

20. Dinic’s (Reading Terminal Market). This is where you go if you want a very classic Philly roast pork sandwich (with sharp provolone and broccoli rabe, please). They do other sandwiches I don’t eat, but why bother?

21. Poi Dog (Rittenhouse). If you want poke, this is your place. They have spam musubi too if that’s how you roll.

22. Dizengoff (Rittenhouse Square). Solomonov’s hummus outpost, with shakshuka on the weekends, will often have a line out the door. His Federal Donuts is across the street but I don’t care for their donuts and haven’t tried their Korean fried chicken.

23. Lolita (Midtown Village). Marcie Tunney’s upscale Mexican spot has great margaritas, tacos, taquizas, enchiladas, and a few fun sides like elote and maduros.

24. El Vez (Midtown Village). Stephen Starr’s straightforward Mexican spot with a large menu of guacamole options and very good if predictable American-Mexican food.

25. Farmicia (Old City). Farm-to-table food with a wide menu that I find great if you don’t know if your fellow diners are adventurous eaters, since they offer plenty of accessible options plus some quirky dishes for the more daring eaters.

I still haven’t made it to Zahav; I’ve twice had reservations and had to cancel, once for work (still mad), once because of illness. I’ve been to Double Knot, but only for happy hour, which is a different menu than dinner but still very good. I haven’t been to Laurel, Friday Saturday Sunday, Noord eetcafe, or Serpico. I can’t eat at South Philly Barbacoa, and I’m not paying what Vetri Cucina is asking.

Places I’ve tried and didn’t like: Vernick Food & Drink (they sent out a dish that was actually burned, enough that I sent it back, which I almost never do), Res Ipsa (ordered a hot sandwich that arrived cold), Sate Kampar (spicy food, but not flavorful at all).

Finally, for coffee, Re-Animator is my favorite roaster in Philly, with Elixr second. I love the Menagerie coffee shop across the street from Farmicia, where they use Dogwood espresso and a few third-wave roasters from around the country for pourovers.

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→ July 24, 2016
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Monteverde Chicago.

Fellow Top Chef fans will remember Sarah Grueneberg from season 9, where she was the runner-up to Paul Qui, who dominated the season like few other contestants have done, overshadowing her own skill set – especially when it came to fresh pastas. Chef Grueneberg left Chicago’s Spiaggia about a year ago to open her own place, Monteverde, in Chicago’s West Loop, and I finally got to try it out Friday night (and chat with Sarah herself) while in town for the Under Armour game. It could not have been any more impressive, not just for the pasta but for the quality of everything that went on every plate.

The menu is short but covers a lot of ground, from small plates to a half dozen pastas (three traditional dishes and three of their own creation) to a few substantial mains, and they accommodated me as a solo diner with some smaller portions so I could try more things. I started with the fiore di zucca, fried squash blossoms, a special right now since they’re in season and a very traditional Italian delicacy. The squash blossoms are extremely delicate and usually must be cooked within a day of their harvest; they’re stuffed with ricotta, battered, and fried, in this case with a tempura-like coating and served with a grilled vegetable relish and bright pea hummus underneath it. One was plenty – they’re so rich – but a plate typically contains three for the table. I rarely get to eat these so there was no question I was ordering it, and it met expectations largely because of the ricotta. I assume Monteverde makes their own but if not they’re using some of the best around because the texture is just perfect.

The single best dish I had on the night was the tomato salad, which is Monteverde’s riff on an insalata caprese, here using several kinds of tomatoes, some whole and some blanched and salted; apricot slices; burrata, which is mozzarella wrapped around a filling of cream that was decadent; basil; and za’atar seasoning. The tomatoes were singing – bright, sweet, just a hint of acidity, like they’d been picked an hour before. The best restaurants I’ve ever been to around the U.S. have all had one thing in common: they care about produce enough to get items like these tomatoes. And yes, the burrata was incredible, but it ended up playing second fiddle to the tomatoes.

That salad is one of the piattini or small plates on the menu, along with two other items I tried. The grilled artichoke crostini comes with fontina fonduta (fontina cheese melted with milk and/or cream and Parmiggiano Reggiano to make it into a sauce), more ricotta, a sweet Italian onion called cipolla di tropea, and shaved summer truffle. I had just one piece but the balance was perfect across the various elements because I could still appreciate the quality of the bread underneath, which had a creamy texture on the interior but the hard crust of good old-world recipes.

The other small plate I tried, specifically at Chef Sarah’s suggestion, was the fegattini calabrese, wok-fired chicken livers – yes, wok-fired – with tomato, peperoncino, corn, fava beans, shallot, and polenta ‘fries’ around the outside. Sarah said customers compare it to an upscale chicken parmesan, which fits with the tomato/chicken combination, but I also found it reminded me of the Ecuadorian dish lomo saltado, where steak is served in a stir-fried dish with French fries cooked in the same pot or skillet. It’s a true one-pot meal, with your protein, starch, and lots of vegetables within it, hearty like a winter stew, bringing richness from the livers and unexpected sweetness from the corn and the polenta.

Chicken livers with tomato, shallot, fava beans, corn, and polenta "fries" at @monteverdechi

A photo posted by Keith Law (@mrkeithlaw) on

Choosing one pasta dish at a restaurant known already for its pastas was not simple, but sitting at the bar I could see the two chefs making the pasta dishes to order, including the “twin” ravioli, where each piece contains two pockets with fillings, one with eggplant, pinenuts, and more ricotta, the other with lamb sausage, yogurt (very little), and charred onion. They’re served in a piquant red sauce with olive oil and a crushed pepper mix, although there’s just enough sauce to coat the top of the dumplings. The pasta itself remains the focus of the dish, as it’s an incredibly strong dough (they use whole eggs and egg yolks) that the pasta chefs roll out very thin for the dumplings; I’ve made pasta at home a bunch and I doubt I’ve gotten close to this kind of dough strength before, because if I rolled anything that thin it would tear. Of the two fillings, I preferred the lamb sausage and onion, which sort of gave the dish an inside-out pasta and meatballs connotation.

I tweeted some pics while I was at the restaurant and several of you said I had to try the cannoli (but to leave the gun). Monteverde makes its cannolis in-house and fills them to order with sweetened ricotta, dipping one end in dark chocolate bits and the other in bright-green Sicilian pistachios, with a painted swipe of chocolate sauce and some bitter orange bits (candied, I think) on the plate. I grew up strongly disliking cannolis, because most Italian bakeries on Long Island didn’t make their own shells, which meant they had all the texture and flavor of fried wonton strips, and used lower-quality ricotta that gave the filling a cheesy flavor rather than a sweet one. Monteverde does it all from scratch and it shows, and the part with the chocolate bits brought me back to eating straciatella (chocolate chip) gelato in my last trip to Italy in 1999.

Ricotta cannoli with pistachios on one end and dark chocolate on the other @monteverdechi

A photo posted by Keith Law (@mrkeithlaw) on

As you’d expect Monteverde has a long wine list, but I’m not much of an oenophile and went for their cocktail menu instead. They do a take on one of my all-time favorite cocktails, the negroni, using mezcal in place of the gin and Luxardo bitter in place of traditional Campari (although Luxardo and Campari are very similar, with Luxardo bringing a more bitter and less sweet profile). It was a good way to riff on a classic, preserving the essential features, with the bitter flavors out front, with a subtle change underneath I doubt I would have identified as mezcal if I hadn’t known ahead of time.

So, I had a pretty good meal at Monteverde and while I did receive some special treatment I would have said the same things about the food anyway. I can’t imagine anyone who enjoys high-quality food, let alone high-quality Italian food, walking away unsatisfied. There’s enough diversity on the menu for just about anybody (I think you could be gluten-free here pretty easily, in fact) and every dish I had was just one bright flavor after another. I’ll certainly be going back.

The rest of my trip to Chicago featured places I’ve been before; I had coffee at Intelligentsia, as I always do when I’m in Chicago, and then stopped the Tortas Frontera location at O’Hare on my rebooked flight out (my original flight on Southwest out of Midway was cancelled). Frontera is one of the best airport food options in the country, with tortas, a pressed Mexican sandwich on spongy telera bread, made to order inside of ten minutes. I tried a new option this time, the vegetarian torta with mushrooms, black beans, arugula, and goat cheese, because I had to atone for my gluttony the night before. I’ve never had a bad sandwich at Tortas Frontera but I do find their sandwiches with meat a little heavy, whereas this turned out to be just right, especially since my flight was delayed over two hours by thunderstorms and I was on the plane for close to five hours in total.

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→ March 8, 2016
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San Francisco and Los Angeles eats.

The San Francisco pizzeria del Popolo is run by Jon Darsky, who worked for a little while in player development and scouting for Cleveland and another MLB org … I forgot which one because we need to talk about how good the food was. The pizza was outstanding, both the dough – thin, not quite Neapolitan thin but close to it, with just the right bit of chew too it – and the homemade sausage that they use as a topping. The menu is simple, with about a half-dozen starters and a half-dozen or so pizza options, nothing more, which is more than enough when the pizza is this good. Jon, whom I didn’t know before that visit, sent out their Brussels sprouts starter, charred but still firm and bright green, with salva cremasco, shaved turnips, and hazelnuts; as well as the ridiculously luscious coconut-lime sorbet, since I was with Ian Miller (the bassist for Puig Destroyer and Kowloon Walled City), who is vegan. Del Popolo was on that Food & Wine pizzeria list I’ve mentioned several times and have been slowly eating my way through, and it’s one of the best I’ve hit.

Also on that list is the very highly-regarded flour + water in the Mission district, although I get the sense their pastas are better than their pizzas. I went with the margherita, feeling a bit uninspired by the other options, and what I got was just sort of average – the tomato sauce was pureed too evenly, the crust didn’t have much char or good chew, and the whole thing was a little bland. It’s a good pizza relative to most, but compared to the other places on that F&W list – Bianco, Keste, even Roberta’s which somehow missed that list – it’s just okay. The salad I got, however, was outstanding: curly endive with Meyer lemon vinaigrette, artichokes, cardoons, taggiasca olives, & fried capers. It was a big reminder that California produce is often the best produce of all.

I was famished when I got into San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon after appearing on a panel at the Stanford GSB sports analytics conference, so I went to Cotogna for a big meal rather than trying to eat light and hold on for dinner. Cotogna is fairly new and I found it on that Eater list of the 38 “most essential” (whatever) restaurants in the U.S. for 2016, a list I’ll mention a few times in this post. Cotogna does “rustic” Italian cuisine, but it’s not peasant food by any stretch – the restaurant includes a giant cast-iron, wood-fired hearth for spit-roasting meats, and a pizza oven where I presume they’re also baking their ridiculous focaccia ($4 for a giant strip of it). Their broccoli starter, which is so new it’s not on their online menu, was an out-of-this-world homage to my favorite brassica: the florets are cooked two ways and are tossed with neonata (a southern Italian condiment of small fish preserved in vinegar with garlic and chilis), then are served on a layer of bright green broccoli and parsley puree, seasoned with espelette, and topped with shaved bottarga and fried kale leaves. The chef de cuisine, Chris Marcino, was kind enough to explain the dish to me – also, he’s a Phillies fan – and said they pan-fry some of the florets and broccoli leaves, and then cook other florets and small stems in a cast-iron skillet in their pizza oven to get some caramelization. It’s ornate, but it’s like a monument to broccoli.

For the main course, I went with what I think is Cotogna’s signature pasta dish, agnolotti del plin, a classic Piemontese dish of small pockets of pasta around a filling of mixed pork, veal, and often turkey or chicken. Cotogna roasts the meats before grinding them into the filling for the paper-thing pasta, and then uses the juices from the meats to make the sauce (sugo d’arrosto, the “sauce of the roasting”) for the dish. The dish probably originated as a way to use meat scraps that weren’t enough for a full meal, but this is a plate I’d fly across the country to eat. I’m not treating Eater’s list as gospel, but they absolutely nailed it on Cotogna.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the coffee I had in San Francisco, where you can’t swing a cat around by its tail without hitting three hipsters discussing their favorite artisan roaster. I finally got to a Four Barrel location, even though I’ve been drinking their coffee on and off for years – it’s served at Giant Coffee in Phoenix, and I’ve bought beans from them online. It’s … well, it’s great coffee, really. I happen to really like their Friendo Blendo espresso mix, which varies seasonally but is usually half an East African bean (Ethiopian this time) and half a Central American (Guatemalan). I also stopped by a Sightglass shop for a cup of their Ethiopian coffee, which I found a little underwhelming just because I expected more brightness and fruit. I liked the fact that their space, right down the street from flour + water, is so bright.

–

Moving south to the LA area, I chased Guerrilla Tacos (also on that Eater 38 list) for two days before I finally caught them for a lunch that was absolutely worth the effort. The truck typically parks in front of some local coffee shops – Cognoscenti and Blacktop appear to be the current favorites, although they’ve been near a Blue Bottle location befroe – and are only open 10-2 on days they’re out. The menu changes daily, with four taco options and an agua fresca each day. The day I went the menu featured a breakfast taco with scrambled eggs, pancetta, pinto beans, and queso fresco; an ahi poke tostada with uni and scallions; and a sweet potato taco with feta, scallions, and almonds. The breakfast taco was my favorite of the three, in no small part because the flour tortilla was so good (made with lard, perhaps?), and the sweet potato taco was also superb, even though I’d never have thought to put feta with sweet potatoes. The eggs really benefited from the salt and spice in the pancetta and beans; I do love eggs in most forms but plain scrambled eggs are a little too boring. The tuna poke was more like sashimi and should have been sliced more thinly so it was easier to eat, although the quality of the fish itself was obviously very high.

Blacktop Coffee sometimes uses beans from Sightglass, but the day I was there they were using some local private roaster; their menu couldn’t be simpler as you order your espresso “black” for $3 or “white” (whatever milk-based drink you want) for $4. The coffee was good, well-balanced with good body, but should have been a little hotter. They also have a toast program, because of course they do.

I mentioned on Twitter that I had a serendipitous encounter at ink., the main restaurant of Top Chef Season 6 winner Michael Voltaggio; I was sitting at the chef’s counter when Voltaggio came out to speak to the diner next to me, which turned out to be season 7 winner Kevin Sbraga, whose namesake Philly restaurant I visited (and loved) in January. Anyway, I’ve been dying to get to ink. for a few years now, and just barely sneaked it in this trip – I was so tired I didn’t want to make the nearly hourlong drive from my hotel, but I figured I’d regret not going. I had four dishes, and three were just out of sight, stuff I couldn’t make at home and that was unlike most restaurant dishes I’ve had elsewhere. Their twist on cacio e pepe involved paper-thin vermicelli made of celery root, served over shima aji (striped jack or cocinero) sashimi with a truffle coulis, taking an Italian concept and making it over as a Japanese dish, pasta without pasta, lighter than a wheat-centric dish but more satisfying than raw fish would be by itself. Their octopus with “ink. shells” (a play on words, since the pasta is made with ink), shaved fennel, and paprika was a little more traditional but still exceptional because the octopus itself was well-cooked, meaty just up to the edge of toughness without crossing over, as masticably satisfying as red meat but lighter and almost sweet thanks to the browning on the exterior. And the dessert … the deconstructed apple pie dessert, with crumbled shortbread, apple gelee, apples, and “burnt wood” semifreddo (it had a slightly smoky flavor but if you hadn’t told me I would have said it was fior di latte) was just unreal. If you got everything in one bite, it was apple pie a la mode, but with new textures and a brighter flavor. I had one dish I didn’t care for; the radishes with togarashi-miso butter were not at all what I expected, just plain, whole radishes, served with shiso leaves to wrap them and dip them in the butter. We grow radishes in the backyard every year, so this was nothing I couldn’t do at home; I expected some kind of preparation of the radishes, at least, but the server noticed I didn’t eat much of the dish and took it off the bill without a word from me. I also had one of their house cocktails, a rye drink with cardamaro bitters, burnt orange, maple, and toasted pecan bitters that gave the whole drink the aroma of brown butter. I could drink this every night very happily.

I tried another spot on that Eater list, the Thai restaurant Night + Market Song, and was … confused, I guess. I don’t know authentic Thai food that well; I know Americanized Thai, and I think I know when something is more or less Americanized, but this menu mostly comprised foods that were new to me (not a bad thing), and somehow I ended up ordering a lot of meat. The “boxing chicken” is gai yang, a street food authentic to Bangkok that is coated in a wet rub of cilantro, sugar, garlic, pepper, and fish sauce, and then grilled until the skin is crispy. Night + Market Song’s version is all thigh meat, which is the best part of the bird anyway, and comes with papaya salad (medium or hot; medium was plenty hot for me) and sticky rice, which was served in plastic wrap and came out in a slab. You’re supposed to use your hands (fine) to roll pieces into a ball, but this slab was so tough I couldn’t make that happen. I also thought the knife work on the papaya salad was really rough – some vegetables weren’t even cut through. The pork toro, grilled fatty pig neck served with a chile-soy dip, was a good starter, salty like bacon but chewier like jowl meat, although it merely added to the sense that I was just eating way too much meat.

Jon & Vinny’s is an Italian restaurant and pizzeria, located across from their famous meatery Animal, in Fairfax, with a focus on southern Italian fare and a lot of dishes that showcase great produce. I went with a friend of mine who lives in the area, and he ordered the LA Woman pizza, essentially a margherita with burrata in lieu of the mozzarella, with a dough I’d put in between those of del Popolo and flour + water for overall taste and texture. It was the other stuff that set J&V’s apart, though: their meatballs are huge yet evenly cooked, rich but not too dense, served with enormous slabs of garlic bread in a garlicky tomato sauce with a pile of ricotta on the side of the plate. That could easily be a meal on its own, but we kept going. The salad of shaved zucchini with arugula, fennel, hazelnuts, meyer lemon vinaigrette, and a blizzard of shaved pecorino pepato, a sheep’s milk cheese with peppercorns in it, was a big pile of spring – very bright flavors, vibrant green colors, tangy and sharp with a hint of sweetness from the fennel and the nuts. The bruschetta was really about the bread; the tomatoes were certainly good, but the bread was a sponge of olive oil by the time I arrived and I was debating whether to eat it or exfoliate my face with it. (I ate it.) The fried scallions were amazing and stayed crunchy even as they cooled because of the cornmeal coating, although we overordered and didn’t expect the giant pile that arrived at the table. For dessert, because we are pigs, I got the Italian flag (rainbow) cookies, which were sublime thanks to the dark chocolate on top, although I didn’t get any real almond flavor from the sponge cake layers, while Jay got the cream-filled donut which was a tad better than your local Krispy Kreme’s version.

I also want to give props to Jason Kang over at Seoulmate, right next to Blair Field in Long Beach with a new location out in Fullerton; this wasn’t my first meal there but I don’t go to Long Beach without eating there. Seoulmate is fast-casual Korean food, both traditional dishes like bulgogi (Jason’s mentioned some of the recipes are based on family versions) and Korean tacos and burritos. Everything is top-notch, but it’s the preparation of the meats that separates Seoulmate from other Asian taco places I’ve hit; I had the pork bulgogi this time, pork belly heavily marinated in a spicy soy and ginger mixture that starts to inundate the rice underneath, served with kimchi (also spicy) and a small salad. I’ve also had the tacos, the beef bulgogi, and the bibimbap on previous visits, and can vouch that they’re all excellent, with the two bulgogis my favorites. Jason’s a reader, but I promise I wouldn’t recommend his place if I didn’t genuinely like the food.

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→ 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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→ 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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San Diego eats, 2014 edition.

I have been writing the things for Insiders, on the Justin Upton trade and the Derek Norris/Jesse Hahn trade just in the last 24 hours.

The best meal in San Diego, our annual big writers’ night out, was at Juniper & Ivy, Richard Blais’ restaurant in Little Italy and one of my favorite restaurants in the country. I arranged the dinner well ahead of time, so we had a prix-fixe menu that included some items (like the amazing mac and cheese with house-made pasta and fontina) that aren’t on the typical menu. The takeoff on the Yodel is a regular item, though, and it’s bonkers … I split one with USA Today football writer Lindsay Jones and it didn’t stand a chance. There was a second dessert, not listed on the menu, that had to be tasted to be believed: blood-orange gelée, frozen yogurt, clementine supremes, lemongrass ice cream, and shards of roasted-citrus ice. I wanted to take that gelée home, but was afraid I couldn’t get a pound of it through airport security. The staff went all-out for us, clearly, and the service was exemplary. I reviewed J&I in full in March, and have now eaten there three more times, never once walking away less than fully satisfied.

If you aren't jealous, you should be. @juniperandivy @richardblais

A photo posted by Keith Law (@mrkeithlaw) on

Bird Rock Coffee Roasters, based in La Jolla, opened a second location a month ago, right across the street from Juniper & Ivy, and it’s now the best coffee option in the city, a small-batch roaster that is also the only direct-trade outlet in San Diego. I had an espresso macchiatto there each morning, but they also offer pour-overs and Chemex brews as well.

My other dinners in San Diego came at Cucina Urbana and Prep Kitchen, both strong, with Cucina Urbana my preference among the two. A new, upscale but reasonably-priced Italian trattoria, Cucina Urbana features a deep menu of pizzas, house-made pastas, and a slew of small plates, including the daily “polenta board,” assembled tableside with a ragù spread on top of a thick smear of creamy polenta on a wooden board. My pasta dish, bucatini with tomato, guanciale, cabbage, chili pepper, and a poached egg, was a great southern-Italian comfort-food dish, satisfying in texture (al dente, with the added bite from the jowl meat and the cabbage; smooth from the egg mixing with the tomato) and flavor (obvious), with just the right portion size between the starter polenta and the fact that I wasn’t leaving without trying the chocolate donuts with hazelnut filling, which didn’t even need the passion fruit dipping sauce except maybe to cool them off enough to eat them.

Prep Kitchen was a little more hit-or-miss. The yellowtail crudo was actually a slight disappointment, with a not-subtle fishy note marking the tuna as less than perfectly fresh, and the chocolate “budino” wasn’t a budino (an Italian custard, often thickened with cornstarch as well as eggs) but a warm chocolate cake served in a mason jar, but the pumpkin bread pudding had great balance of sweet and savory flavors without turning to mush, and the porchetta (which appears to be off the menu already) was superb if slightly fattier than I’ve had elsewhere.

I grabbed lunch twice at Bottega Americano, located just east of Petco Park in a cute space that combines a little Italian market and deli counter with a sit-down restaurant. Despite the grammatical error in its name, the restaurant serves excellent sandwiches and salads and makes a legit French macaron as well. The speck (smoked prosciutto), fuyu persimmon, shallot marmellata, arugula, and goat cheese sandwich on olive bread was my favorite for flavor, although I found it tough to tear through the speck, which they need to slice more thinly before serving; the olive-oil poached tuna sandwich with yellow pepper aioli and farmer’s egg (I didn’t know farmers laid eggs, but perhaps that’s a new mutation) was much easier to eat but needed more acidity somewhere in the mix. That was a better option than Kebab House, which is outstanding if you’re looking for cheap eats near the ballpark but was much heavier and I think a little overloaded with garlic.

I am in love with the Mission for breakfast in San Diego, and ended up eating there three mornings out of four; the one variation was at the Fig Tree Cafe in Hillcrest, where I had a disappointing salmon benedict with a potato/arugula side dish that couldn’t live up to the Mission’s amazing rosemary potatoes. I know the Tractor Room gets raves for its brunches, but I wasn’t there any morning when it was open for breakfast and have to save that for a future trip.

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