→ November 13, 2024
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NYC eats, November 2024.

My work trip to New York didn’t quite go as planned, but I did eat well. My first stop was at San Matteo, a pizzeria on the Upper East Side that I found because my mom emailed me this Italian list of the best pizzerias in the U.S. (with other lists for other regions/countries plus a global one). I don’t agree with a lot of the list – excluding Pizzeria Bianco yet including Pizzeria Pomo is inexplicable – but I’ve been to 15 and all of them are at least a 55. I’ve got my work cut out for me, though. Anyway, San Matteo looks completely ordinary, like your typical New York Italian-American restaurant, with a massive menu that only gets to pizza on the last page. I got the porcini tartufo pizza, a white pie with fresh mozzarella, porcini mushrooms, Parmiggiano Reggiano, and truffle oil, as none of the red pies was especially grabbing me, although it didn’t matter – the star of this show is the dough, one of the lightest I have ever tasted on any pizza of any style. It is Neapolitan, recognizably so at the edges and with a damp center, but this dough was as airy as a meringue. It’s not that it has giant air bubbles; the whole texture is pillowy soft, yet doesn’t lose the slight tang you get from long fermentation. The porcinis were excellent – I’m glad they used those rather than cremini, as porcini have a ‘meatier’ flavor thanks to their high concentration of glutamates – and while truffle oil is generally a big meh for me, it was definitely good quality olive oil. They also make a very solid Negroni, still among my absolute favorite cocktails. (I’m becoming a Manhattan guy, though. I think it’s age.)

So by sheer coincidence, my sister, who lives in northern Virginia, was also in Manhattan for a meetup with some friends, and she texted me the pin of her hotel … which was at the same intersection as mine. There are over 100 hotels in Manhattan, and we happened to end up at two hotels located at literally the same pair of cross streets. Anyway, we had a lovely lunch on Saturday at Aragvi, a Georgian restaurant, by which I mean the country in the Caucasus, not the American state, although both seem to have a desire to roll back civil rights. Aragvi’s menu comprises traditional Georgian classics, and I think we ended up with three of the big ones, acknowledging that I’d never had Georgian food before and actually did a little reading before we went so I might know what we were eating. We started with a plain cheese khachapuri – extremely similar to the Turkish dish peinirli if you’ve had that – which is a baked bread bowl that had three cheeses melted in the center along with an egg yolk and a small knob of butter. I only knew one of the cheeses, feta, but the combination reminded me of a mixture of mozzarella and ricotta salata, and I think it’s an enriched dough given the texture and outside color. I’d eat this every day if it wouldn’t kill me. We also got a plate of cheese khinkali, which are Georgian dumplings akin to pierogis, shaped like giant xiao long bao – sorry, I’m not even sure what to italicize any more – with what I can only describe as ricotta inside. They were fantastic but absolutely enormous and our best efforts only got us through three of them. The final dish was chicken mtsvadi, and you’re god-damned right I copied and pasted that word from their website, grilled chicken thighs with the texture of smoked meat, served with pickled cabbage and fresh onions and parsley on one bit of lavash bread and a red sauce of unknown origin. (I think it was adjika, although it was a 0 on the spice scale.) This was a welcome change from all of the cheese we’d been eating, although I wish they’d brought more lavash or other bread to make eating the meat with the toppings easier. All told, though, I am now a fan of Georgian cuisine. They do also have a list of Georgian wines, and I got a white that, like Michael Scott, I couldn’t name for you. It was medium-bodied and kind of crisp, better than the full-bodied one the server had me try that had an overwhelming green apple flavor.

Moving along rapidly … Saturday dinner with a grad school classmate (wu-hoo!) came at Abbey Tavern, which is his favorite spot in Manhattan, and they do Guinness properly – it wasn’t too cold, so I could really taste the beer. Guinness is one of the only mass-market beers I would actively choose to drink, because I think it tastes good – it is more than an alcohol delivery device. And it goes well with fish and chips, which was my order, and which was also really solid, with my only real complaints being that 1) it was way too much food and 2) they didn’t bring malt vinegar, although to be fair I didn’t ask because we were busy talking. I hadn’t seen this friend since our 20th reunion back in 2019, and I missed the 25th because it was the weekend of my daughter’s prom, and while I was super bummed to miss the reunion I made the right choice. Back to the food, I demolished the fries, and ate two of three very generous fillets of cod, super crisp and well seasoned, as well as extremely hot when they hit the table.

Sunday morning was the day of the one game I went to, so I loaded up by walking the 15 minutes to Tal’s Bagels on the east side, which was on my employer’s recent list of the best bagels in the city, of which I had been to exactly none. (Zucker’s was my favorite to this point, and might still be.) I figured I likely wouldn’t get lunch at the ballpark, so I went all out with an egg, bacon, and hash brown sandwich (no cheese) on an everything bagel. You probably only care about the bagel, and the truth is it was fuckin’ awesome. I would eat that bagel every day. This is why I love New York – you eat stuff there that makes you think the rest of your life is being frittered away on subpar food. I don’t know if this is the best bagel in New York or Manhattan or in Midtown, but I know it satisfied my innate need for a real New York bagel. Also, not to get too far afield here, but I generally don’t ‘combine’ starches – potatoes on pizza is almost as much of an abomination to me as pineapple is – yet this one absolutely worked. The crispy hash browns offered a textural contrast to the soft interior of the bagel. Win.

My last meal before leaving the city came at Empanada Mama on the west side, and the company was Joe Sheehan, whom I’ve known for twenty-plus years but hadn’t seen since before the pandemic. Joe mentioned this is a longtime favorite of his, and as you may have figured out from reading me for years or just from reading this one post, I will eat almost anything if it is somehow wrapped in dough. I tried three different varieties and my favorite was the Bombay, a wheat-flour empanada filled with curried chicken and chickpeas. The curry flavor was light, clearly there but more of a supporting player, and the chicken and beans were balanced too, which is what I wanted since I also got the very meaty Reggaeton (filled with pernil, a form of roast pork). The corn flour-based rice-and-beans missed the mark a little because of the crust – the filling was fine but the texture of the crust was off for me. I was also pretty full before I even started that one, so keep that in mind.

For coffee, I went to two longtime favorites, Culture Espresso and Blue Bottle, the latter because I think their espresso is still a pinnacle of the form, with an inherent sweetness to their beans that few others can match. (Archetype in Omaha has hit that mark too.) I was a little disappointed at Culture, where the barista spooned foam into my espresso macchiato rather than pouring it – I know that’s almost a religious debate at this point, but I think you always want pourable foam. I’ve only seen the spooned foam as standard when I was in England and Wales in 2022, but to me a macchiato means poured foam. I suppose that’s more preference than anything else. Blue Bottle nailed it, of course. I’ve truly never had a bad shot at any of their locations in any city.

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→ August 27, 2024
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Outer Banks eats.

We spent last week in the small town of Corolla, North Carolina, at the northern tip of the Outer Banks – beyond Corolla, there are houses, but the roads aren’t paved, and you may wake up to find a wild horse hanging out in your yard. It’s very quiet, which was wonderful, but also has enough amenities that we could get whatever we needed, which also meant we could cook in the house we rented or head out to eat. So while this is probably the most obscure place for which I’ve ever written up restaurants, here’s the rundown of everything we ate on the trip.

There were two restaurants I’d recommend regardless of where they were – they weren’t just Corolla good, but legitimately good. Mama Easley’s is a fried seafood place with a solid beer selection, and the seafood was superb across the board. We were down there with another family of four, so I got to try a little of everything – the fried shrimp were the best item, but everything was fried perfectly, with no excess oil anywhere. The French fries were too spicy for the kids, with something Old Bay-like but without that odd stale flavor of actual Old Bay (sorry, Marylanders, I just think it’s overrated), while the hush puppies were a hit. My wife got the grilled bay scallops, the one non-fried item we had, and they were cooked just the way I like them, which is just the hotter side of rare – I know scallops are usually just seared so that the center is still slightly translucent, but I like it pushed a touch farther than that so they’re hot through but still tender. I ate way too much fried stuff that night, and drank a local beer (I don’t remember what sort), so I didn’t exactly feel great the next morning, but I have no regrets.

Agave Roja was the other big hit, a Mexican restaurant in a strip mall (across from the Food Lion) that goes upscale from typical Mexican restaurants in that area. We ordered take-out, so we probably missed out on a little of the experience, getting four different types of tacos – fried shrimp, fried fish, carne asada, and pollo asado. I skipped the steak, but the other three were all excellent and the shrimp was not spicy despite what was supposedly a mango-habanero salsa and chipotle aioli. The fish and shrimp came on flour tortillas, while the other two came on corn; the latter should have been doubled as they fell apart almost immediately. There was a ton of flavor on all of the tacos, both in the protein and the various toppings, although I’m not sure what was listed on the menu was exactly what we got on top of each taco.

I grabbed lunch one day at Sooey’s, a barbecue spot in the same strip mall as Agave Roja, and it was perfectly average BBQ. I got a half-rack of ribs, which the host said was her favorite item on the menu, and some collard greens and fried okra, because I was in the south and I love both of those things. The ribs were smoked properly, with a visible ring and the meat coming free from the bone, and had enough flavor on their own that they didn’t need the sauce (which was not that interesting anyway). The collards were the best item of the three, while the okra needed more salt.

We tried two pizza places in Corolla, with Corolla Pizza (located at the northern edge of town) the better of the two; it’s pretty close to New York City pizza but the crust needed to be cooked just a little more, as it had zero color on the under side. Giant Slice’s pizza was cooked more, but the toppings were nowhere near the same quality and the sauce was too sweet.

For coffee, I would suggest seeking out The Kind Cup, which is in Corolla Village, the closest thing there is to a town center here, and a short walk from the lighthouse and museum. The Kind Cup roasts their own coffee to a variety of levels, with a medium-roast for their espresso; I was a little bummed that they didn’t have any light roast on drip or for sale as whole bean that particular day, as they do roast and sell some single origins. The building is also a small art gallery and craft shop, and it’s across the street from a modest, well-curated bookshop called The Island Bookstore. I also tried the coffee and gelato at Doppio, with the gelato very good (I had the dark chocolate) and the coffee darker than I like it. Our friends got a bunch of pastries from Northern Lights Bakery & Coffee; I don’t even usually like sticky buns, but theirs was outstanding. Apparently there’s a line out the door most mornings within an hour of them opening, according to the locals.

Beyond food, Flying Smiles Kites is in the same shopping center as Northern Lights, and they sell an impressive selection of board games – they had Trio, Castles of Burgundy, Scout, Carcassonne, and more beyond the games you’d find at Target. We ended up buying a kite … and, most fittingly, they also had the real-time game Kites in stock. They do ship games, too, so if you wanted to pick up Trio from a friendly local game shop, it’s here.

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→ 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.

—

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.

—

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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→ April 1, 2024
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Knoxville eats.

This was just my second trip to Knoxville, ever, since the Volunteers weren’t that relevant for a huge portion of my career, and it’s not as easy to get to some of the other SEC schools. The first time I went was a barely 24-hour trip in 2022, too short for a writeup, and the one meal I had on that trip was at a restaurant that closed last year (Olibea). So this is my first-ever Knoxville post.

Last time through, I wanted to try A Dopo Sourdough Pizza, but couldn’t make the timing work around the game, so this time I was determined to give myself two shots to go but got in after the Friday game, possibly with the last dough of the evening. It is Neopolitan-style pizza in the baking and the thickness, but the dough is different – it is noticeably tangy, clearly made from a sourdough starter rather than commercial yeast as most Neapolitan doughs are. I went with the margherita and added mushrooms, because their white pizzas all have a sauce of mascarpone & cream on them, and that’s more lactose than I really need; the tomatoes were out of sight, blasted with sweetness and just a little acidity, while the mushrooms were mixed wild mushrooms rather than just cremini. I didn’t quite finish it because the menu demanded that I save room for gelato, and I do listen to orders, at least at restaurants. The dark chocolate gelato was not dark in the least, but the texture was excellent. I probably should have ordered the pistachio instead.

Last trip, I tried Remedy, a local coffee shop that served Intelligentsia beans, so I planned to try another coffee shop this year after going for breakfast … and then I went to Paysan, a bagel/bakery window that, I realized as I pulled up, is right next to Remedy. This turned out to be a bit of serendipity, as Remedy now uses Rowan Coffee from Asheville, NC, so I got a chance to try a new roaster. Their Peru San Juan Pueblo Libre was on pour-over, with some raw cocoa and caramel notes. The Remedy space is really great – it was busy but not noisy, there’s plenty of light and seating, and it’s not as sparse as a lot of coffee shops (with no subway tiles). Paysan’s bagel was very good – it’s probably an average New York bagel, maybe a high 45, but on the non-NY scale it’s at least a 55. I actually was more disappointed in the egg on the sandwich, which was a square of scrambled egg that had no taste and a texture that was oddly homogenous. I’d just get something else on a bagel next time.

The best thing at Sweet P’s Barbecue is actually the “greens n’ things,” which is slow-cooked collard greens sauteed with black-eyed peas, carrots, celery, and bacon, although I barely saw any of that last thing. I like collard greens, and if they’re made well I love collard greens, but they almost always have a little bitterness left in them. These had none. It was all of the good of collards, without that bitter note, and because they were cooked and then sauteed they were really tender. The pork ribs were fine, with good bark and a nice salty-sweet rub, although they weren’t as tender as they should have been, and the cole slaw is vinegar-based so it’s a good complement to the meat. It’s fine as Q goes, but I wouldn’t go out of my way for it.

My least meal was downtown at Vida, a cocktail bar and Latin American restaurant, and I am afraid I just ordered the wrong things. I was debating between just getting ceviche and getting two smaller plates; I ended up with the latter because it meant more things to write about, but those smaller plates are definitely better for eating with a group because even two of them didn’t really add up to a meal. I ordered the panko-breaded shrimp and the corn croquettes, each of which was fine on its own, but it was too heavy as meal in total. The shrimp were in a combination of two sauces – a smoky adobo aioli and a sesame-sambal vinaigrette – with what they called a daikon and carrot “kim chi” that I think was just pickled with vinegar. The plus side was that it had a ton of flavor and it all worked well together, with smoky, salty, sour, and sweet elements, and if there’d been more umami from fermentation it would have been even better. It also needed more of the kim chi/slaw, but that’s part of my mistake in getting small plates rather than a more complete meal. The croquettes were extremely soft inside, tasting mostly of Manchego and the cilantro-lime crema underneath with just a hint of corn, and some ‘marinated avocado’ (I’m not even sure how that works, what on earth is absorbing the marinade here?) on top. The food was just okay, but the cocktail I tried was kickass; I asked another served who was picking up drinks next to my seat – sitting at that end of the bar can be great because you can ask servers what they like – what I should get as a rum drinker, and she said the Trinidad circuit race was her favorite. It contains two Trinidadian ingredients – Scarlet Ibis rum, a blend of column-stilled rums from 3 to 8 years old; and amaro di Angostura, a dark, potable bitter liqueur with strong notes of cinnamon and clove, a little like a fancy root beer. These are finished with passionfruit and lemon juices for the fruity Caribbean punch flavor profile, but without the cloying sweetness of more common mixers like pineapple juice or coconut or straight-up sugar in simple syrup or Grenadine. I’d really like to try Vida again and either just get the ahi ceviche or go with a group and try a bunch of smaller things. I’ll get the same drink, though.

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→ January 27, 2024
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Stick to baseball, 1/26/24.

The top 100 prospects ranking will run on The Athletic on Monday, February 5th, followed by the farm system rankings later that week, and the team top 20s start running on February 12th.

My friend and one-time colleague Chris Crawford has had a tough year, losing his mother and just last week his stepfather while a site for which he was writing & producing podcasts decided to just not pay its people. He started a GoFundMe last week to help cover the mortgage on his parents’ house.

I’ve got a newsletter about 80% written and just need to finish it up this weekend. It’s free and you can sign up here.

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→ September 4, 2023
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Baltimore, Charleston, and Indianapolis eats.

I’ve been remiss in feeding the blog with food posts, so here’s a rundown of where I ate on short trips to Baltimore, Charleston, and Indianapolis in the last six weeks.

Baltimore

Dooby’s is a coffee shop and all-day café with a real kitchen, serving traditional breakfasts and pan-Asian dishes from pork buns to street noodles to banh mi. It’s all very, very good, and the space itself is fantastic. They use Passenger coffee and both the drip and espresso offerings are solid, although I would quibble that the milk foam on the espresso was a little oversteamed. The breads they use are really spectacular, from the brioche on their breakfast sandwiches (with a bright pepper jam) to the crisp French bread on the banh mi. We spent probably six or seven hours there, eating, drinking coffee and tea, and writing. I’d probably skip the pork buns just because the pork belly was so fatty, even though I loved the glaze and the spicy mayo on it and even the buns. The breakfast sandwich was way beyond what I expected, though, with eggs made to order – and my over medium egg was indeed over medium, with a warm runny yolk that ended up all over my plate and a little on the counter because I’m a mess – and that outstanding brioche. I preferred their food and coffee to that of Baby’s on Fire in the same neighborhood; their drip coffee was underextracted and much their food is microwaved, although it’s a cool place, with some new and used vinyl on offer.

The Mount Vernon Marketplace is a fantastic food hall with a solid variety of food and drink options, although I wish they were open past 9 pm on a Friday night. Fishnet’s Baltimore Bomber sandwich is their signature item, fried white fish with lemony mayo, onions, lettuce, and cheese on a crunchy French bread roll. They fried this exceptionally well – it was deep brown and crunchy but not greasy or heavy at all, and the breading held to the fish throughout. The fish itself was fresh but had no flavor and the texture wasn’t ideal for deep frying, as it seemed to fall apart within the breading. That could have been just the particular fillet I got, though. Don’t skip the French fries, which were also exceptional; it’s rare to get fries that ungreasy, and they were salted properly. Around the corner is Slurpin’ Ramen, which does does a great shoyu broth, the shining ingredient in the ramen. The noodles were more average and didn’t have great tooth to them, but they did absorb the flavor of the broth well. The shrimp were clearly very high quality, tasting just of the sea, and the soy egg was also very well done.

We stayed at the boutique Ulysses Hotel in Mount Vernon, which has two bars of note, one inside the hotel and one attached but not owned by the hotel itself. The cocktail bar Coral Wig is the latter, located on the right side of the hotel, accessible only from the outside. They have a Filipino-influenced cocktail list that’s heavy on the rum, although their best offering is the Banana Hammock, a banana and nutmeg-themed take on a margarita. Within the hotel, Bloom is a more traditional bar with a broader assortment of liquors but less appealing house cocktails, and the very kitschy décor didn’t work as well for me as the upscale tiki vibe of Coral Wig.

Allora was the big disappointment of the trip; pitched as a Roman osteria, they’re serving pasta out of the box in sauces I could (and often do) make at home, and the gelato dessert was, in fact, Talenti brand. I saw them scoop it. No disrespect to Talenti, which makes a fine sea salt caramel, but I expect better at a fine restaurant.

Charleston

Renzo has a small menu of homemade pasta dishes and pizzas from the owners of the Faculty Lounge, with a focus on local produce and natural wines. The pasta is the real star, with a menu that’s constantly changing but that always features a couple of dishes of house-made pasta. We had a malfatti alla carbonara that was among the best dishes of that type I’ve ever had, even though it wasn’t completely traditional. The sauce was delicious but it was the pasta itself, perfectly al dente with actual flavor to it beyond the sauce; I’d try any pasta dish these folks served after eating that. We also tried a margherita pizza that was perfectly solid, closer to New York style than anything Italian; I might be underselling it a little because it doesn’t fit perfectly into a regional style. We also had a fresh tomato salad that I imagine is very seasonal, but we were clearly there at the height of tomato season.

Legend Deli is a fantastic little sandwich shop just off the campus of the College of Charleston with a menu designed by Tyler Hunt, the former sous chef at Husk. I tried the G.O.A.T., a turkey sandwich with whipped goat cheese, onion jam, arugula, and roasted red pepper mayo, but the standout ingredient was actually the crispy sourdough bread, which hit that nostalgia spot – it brought back memories of having a sandwich (usually tuna) as a kid and having the bread toasted just to that point where it was just all crunch.

For coffee, Second State seems to be the best option in town. The coffee I got, which I think was their Colombia Black Condor, was good but roasted a shade darker than I like, so I didn’t get many tasting notes other than some cocoa.

Indianapolis

The Eagle is a “food and beer hall” with an extensive menu of southern cooking and they’re known for their pressure cooker fried chicken, which did not disappoint. I went with the quarter dark, because I have actual standards, along with spoonbread with maple butter and collards as the sides. The collards were outstanding, and while the spoonbread was sweeter than I would normally like, it was a good contrast to the salty fried chicken and the salty and slightly tart collards. The chicken and one side would have been a better portion, as I only ate about half of the spoon bread and a little more of the collards, but I didn’t realize how large the sides where when I ordered. They also offer a five-cheese mac and cheese and horseradish mashed potatoes, both of which the bartender recommended, but that sounded way too heavy and I was determined to eat something green. They do also offer a solid craft beer selection, local and national.

Los Arroyos is an upscale Mexican restaurant and bar with a lot of overdone “margaritas” – seriously, that’s a simple enough drink, stop putting berries or habaneros in it – but a credible, fancier take on Mexican food. I went with ceviche after several days of heavier fare from food trucks and The Eagle, and the table shared a serving of guacamole, both of which were solid-average – better for freshness of ingredients than the recipes, with very fresh avocadoes in both dishes.

Commissary Barber & Barista is, indeed, a barbershop as well as a café and a bar, using coffee from a variety of small, third-wave roasters. I did not get a haircut, but I did get a macchiato, where the coffee part was excellent but the milk was overfoamed and spooned on rather than poured on – it’s a minor thing but I think the pourable foam offers the best texture and blends a little with the coffee itself. The barista was playing Slowdive’s Souvlaki, which is definitely worth extra points. The coffee there was better than what I had at Coat Check around the corner, where the milk was even more overdone and the coffee itself was too tangy, which is usually a function of underextraction.

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→ July 15, 2023
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Seattle eats.

I hadn’t been to Seattle in 22 years before this past weekend, and it was 25 years since I lived there for a summer. Other than a swing through Pike Place Market, I didn’t hit any old haunts like Caffe Ladro or Gelatiamo or Zeke’s Pizza on this trip, between wanting to try new places, skipping a rental car, and staying in a hotel near the convention center that wasn’t near where I lived in 1998 (the northern side of Queen Anne).

I didn’t plan to do a brief pizza tour of Seattle, but that’s how things worked out. The first stop was Delancey, a wood-fired pizzeria in Essex that does an especially thin crust, more so than traditional Neapolitan pizzas have. I had the crimini, a white pizza with that type of mushroom, thyme, fresh mozzarella, and olive oil. The flavors were spot on – I happen to love mushrooms with thyme in any dish or form – but unfortunately the pizza was slightly overcooked, and I say that as someone who likes a little char on the edges of any pizza cooked at these temperatures. They do make an excellent Manhattan, though.

The next night, I went to Café Lago on Capitol Hill because they’re renowned for handmade pastas … but on Mondays it’s $10 for their wood-fired pizzas, and who am I to argue with that? I ordered a half portion of their Caesar salad, which was solid-average, and then the salsiccia pizza, with sausage, red peppers, fontina, and mozzarella. The cuisine here is Tuscan, so the pizza isn’t Neapolitan but it’s similar, just with less dough around the edges, and the dough was about as light as I’ve ever had – I can’t believe I ate the whole thing, but I did, because the dough felt so light and the ratio of toppings to dough was perfect. The sausage was the predominant flavor on the pizza, in a good way; it wasn’t excessively salty or flavored with fennel, which I find can overwhelm a pizza. Delancey’s style is closer to my personal favorite, but Café Lago’s pizza was better. (I also had the interesting experience of hearing the song that’s been my ring tone for at least 15 years now, “Love Spreads” by the Stone Roses, on the sound system in the restaurant – the bartender told me he makes his own playlists for when he’s on duty – which led to some serious cognitive confusion.)

I could walk from the hotel to the Taylor Shellfish Oyster Bar on Capitol Hill in less than ten minutes, so I had lunch there to take a break from writing on Monday, ordering their shrimp roll and three (raw) oysters, which I asked the server to choose for me because I don’t know a damn thing about oysters. They were much larger than what I’m used to as an east coaster and the server did a hell of a job, giving me three different flavor profiles from briny to sweet. The shrimp roll has local bay shrimp, celery, shallots, pickled Fresno chiles, tossed in a light herb aioli and served on a brioche bun. The bun was the best part, which is no knock on the filling, but my god, I could eat that bread every day until I die and be happy. Shrimp salad is so hit or miss, mostly miss in my experience, but in this case the dressing was so light that I could still taste the shrimp and the chiles.

Taurus Ox also shows up on best-of lists and was another reader recommendation. It’s a Laotian restaurant with a small but fascinating menu – they’re apparently known for their burger, among other things – and I went with what seemed like a traditional choice, the Laotian pork sausage with sticky rice, chilled vegetables and jaew bong. I could tell this was expertly made and included very high-quality ingredients … but I didn’t like any of it. The predominant flavor was capsaicin, not just for its spice but for its strongly bitter flavor, couple with the bitter heat of galangal, so all I got was bitter and hot. The texture of the sausage was fantastic, but it was hard to enjoy it with all the bitter notes. I think this just wasn’t for me.

Oriental Mart is a stand in Pike Place Market, across the street from the main hall, and you can order food at the front (street-side) to eat at one of the handful of stools in the back. They only offer a handful of dishes but you can watch the chef, Ate Lila, making them if you sit in the right spot. I split my order between salmon sinigang and chicken adobo, and my only complaint was that I wanted more of both. The chicken was fall-off-the-bone tender with the deep gingery flavor of the braising liquid, while the salmon was perfectly medium when I got it, although sitting in the hot liquid of the soup it was probably going to end up overcooked if I hadn’t eaten it quickly. The broth itself was only a little tangy – I don’t know Filipino cuisine well, but I know sinigang is supposed to be sour – and I wished there were a few more vegetables in it. Okay, that’s a modest complaint.

Portage Bay Café is kind of the Seattle version of the southwest chain Snooze; they do oversized breakfast plates and big combinations. I had the mushroom benedict, which had some very fresh and maybe undercooked mushrooms, while the breakfast potatoes were well-cooked but way too salty.

Hello Robin is a cookie shop on Capitol Hill that also sells Molly Moon’s ice cream and, if you are a little bit creatively inclined, you can get them … together. I did the “open-faced” version, because I am but one small man with a tiny stomach, getting one chocolate chip cookie with “melted chocolate” ice cream, the latter of which reminded me a ton of Toscanini’s Belgian chocolate ice cream from my Massachusetts days. The cookie was really outstanding even though I probably would call it overcooked, given how browned the edges were, but it was bursting with brown sugar and butter flavor. This was my post-Taurus Ox dessert and it made up for it.

Frankie & Jo’s, right next door to Delancey, does vegan ice creams, and some of the flavors are, to be kind, batshit. Not in the sense of containing batshit, but nobody needs chaga mushrooms or maca root in their frozen non-dairy dessert product. However, if you navigate the menu carefully, there are some more sensible flavor combinations. I went with mint brownie, because I’m not a savage; it’s peppermint ice cream with dark chocolate brownie pieces and cacao nibs. They use a coconut milk base, and the texture is as good as I’ve ever had in non-dairy ice cream. There was no point where I wished I was eating the real thing, which is impressive because I love real ice cream from cow’s milk, with all the butterfat and, unfortunately, the lactose. After eating an entire pizza at Delancey, this was the dessert I needed.

I tried two coffee spots while in Seattle, both fairly old school, Victrola and Espresso Vivace. Victrola was the easier walk, so I went there twice and came home with a bag of Rwandan beans from there. They don’t do pour-over but seem to always have a single-origin on drip, as well as the usual array of espresso drinks. Vivace runs like a machine, with two lines and a barista dedicated to each, and their espresso struck a perfect balance of acidity and natural sweetness.

Finally, two people recommended Stateside, which I walked by a half-dozen times … but they’re only open Wednesday through Saturday, so I wasn’t able to try it. They do upscale Vietnamese-influenced food and I’m sorry I missed them and their partner cocktail bar Foreign National.

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→ April 5, 2023
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Arizona eats, March 2023.

Belly Kitchen & Bar’s downtown Phoenix location (they also have one in Gilbert) is easy to miss – it looks like a house and is located on a tiny lot on the southeast corner of 7th Ave & Camelback. The menu is influenced by Thai, Vietnamese, and Japanese cuisines, and the dishes are all supposed to work with the wine & cocktail menu, although I admit that usually after one cocktail I’m not ober enough to make that connection. Anyway, I ordered the bartender’s two main suggestions, the crispy spring rolls and the pan-seared king trumpet mushrooms, as well as their rum and rye old fashioned. (Two of them, as it turned out.) The mushrooms were the more interesting of the two, tossed with some small cubes of tofu and served in a black bean and Sichuan peppercorn sauce that was faintly sweet, a little spicy, and very earthy with a ton of umami from the fermented beans. The spring rolls were a very good exemplar of their type, served with large lettuce leaves, mint sprigs, and nuoc cham sauce for dipping, although it was nothing I hadn’t had before, just generally not this good. And, somewhat unfortunately for the purposes of this blog, that was all I could eat – I was full, and just left wistfully eyeing the plates my neighbors got. I really wish I’d had room for the jackfruit and mustard green fried rice in particular.

Pizzeria Virtù is the second outpost from Chef Gio Osso of Virtù Honest Craft, although he’s also now opened a third place, Piccolo Virtù, so I’m behind. The pizzeria is more than just a pizza outlet, with an assortment of fresh house-made pastas and traditional Italian plates as starters. I went with my longtime friend Bill Mitchell, whose words and photos you may have seen over at Baseball America, and we did one item from each section – their insalata with arugula, grape tomatoes, red onion, shaved Parmiggiano-Reggiano, and a lemon-olive oil dressing; the pizza with ‘nduja, a spicy sausage from the Calabria region of southern Italy; and their rigatoni with tomatoes, basil, prosciutto, and more Parmiggiano-Reggiano. The pasta was by far the best dish we got, cooked truly al dente with bright sweetness from the tomatoes and basil and exactly the right amount of salinity even with two very salty ingredients in the prosciutto and the cheese. The pizza was solid, more Neapolitan-adjacent than Neapolitan, without a ton of air in the outer ridge of the crust but saved by the high quality of the toppings. (They also misspelled ‘nduja on the menu, writing “n’duja” instead, which is only funny because it’s an Italian term.) The salad was a good salad, nothing more or less, but I’m also glad we didn’t get something heavier. I can also vouch for the amaro viale cocktail, a combination of bourbon, three different amari (potable bitters), and sweet vermouth that hits like a negroni but with the smoothness of the bourbon rather than the herbal notes of gin.

Sweet Dee’s Bakeshop is on East Stetson not too far from Old Town, focusing mostly on pastries and sweets. Their breakfast sandwich comes with a scrambled egg, bacon, avocado, and goat cheese on a croissant, and was solid to very good other than the common problem of the egg being cooked more than I like it. I usually stick to the classics when I have breakfast out there – Hillside Spot, Matt’s, Crêpe Bar, sometimes Snooze – but this was excellent for something faster when I had a morning game to hit.

Futuro Coffee has been on my to-do list for Phoenix for years now, at least going back before the pandemic, as its adherents have argued it’s the best espresso place in the Valley. They certainly do take their espresso seriously, with a single-origin option each day, and the standard options to take it with varying degrees of milk. The day I went, the single-origin was an Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, which in my experience does not play well with dairy; I asked the barista his advice and he said he thought it was best black. It’s served in a wide terra cotta cup, unlike any coffee vessel I’ve ever tried, which did keep it warm for longer than ceramic would, along with some sparkling water. Futuro is located inside the Palabra art gallery and the space is very cool, weirdly sparse and yet comfortable enough to sit and write for a while. They’ve used a number of top roasters from around the U.S. and Canada, including heart and 49th Parallel.

Fire at Will is in a relative wasteland for good food, up at Shea and Tatum, an area that’s mostly populated by chain restaurants. Their menu is eclectic, to put it mildly – I have a hard time seeing what the core idea is here, or finding any unifying theme among the dishes. I heard the folks sitting next to me ask the bartender if there were any must-try dishes on the menu, and the bartender recommended … the burger. That’s not a great sign, at least in my experience. I tried just two things given how large the portions are – the fried Brussels sprouts and the Iberico ham croquettes. The Brussels were truly outstanding, served with nuoc cham (fish sauce, lime juice, and sugar), chopped peanuts, and a little diced Asian pear; I’ve had a lot of fried Brussels sprouts but this was among the very best, as there wasn’t a single leaf that was overcooked and nothing was too undercooked to eat, while the sweet-sour sauce had the right balance to offset any lingering bitterness in the brassicas. The croquettes were also extremely well-cooked, very crispy on the outside but smooth and still soft on the interior, although I didn’t taste the ham at all, which is a colossal waste if they used real jamón iberico.

I ate one meal down in Tucson after my game at Hi Corbett Field, stopping at El Taco Rustico on N. Oracle on my back to I-10. It looks bare bones but the food is anything but – their carnitas is outstanding and the pollo asado has a ton of flavor, although it paled next to the pork since it’s just inherently less fatty. They also offer four vegetarian options (nopales, rajas con queso, eggs, or summer squash) as well as the fifteen meat or meat-containing choices for fillings. The guacamole starter is pretty generous for $8, with house-made chips, probably not something I needed but I ordered it anyway for the sake of my readers. Chef-owner Juan Almanza opened the restaurant right as the pandemic hit and kept it open with the support of the community during that first year, although now it appears that he’s built a strong following on his own.

I had two bad meals on the trip, one unsurprising and one less so. I ate at Revolu Modern Taqueria near the Peoria Sports Complex, mostly due to time constraints, and it was exactly what I expected, a chain restaurant’s facsimile of tacos, including “diablo” spiced shrimp that a toddler could eat. I also went to my longtime favorite FnB and had by far the most disappointing meal I’d ever had there, for reasons I can’t even completely explain. I’ll just note that the “smoked” salmon salad, which the server highlighted as a favorite, came with salmon so overcooked I couldn’t eat it. I’m not sure if it was smoked or poached, but it was beyond chewing. Maybe I just caught them on an off night.

The rest of my meals were at places I’d tried before, like the breakfast spots mentioned above, plus Republica Empanada, Pane Bianco (which now serves New York-style pizza on some days), Cartel Coffee, Press Coffee, Lux, Frost Gelato, and Defalco’s Italian Market. All lived up to previous standards.

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→ March 29, 2023
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Winston-Salem and Wilmington eats.

Mission Pizzeria Napoletana near downtown Winston-Salem isn’t just a pizzeria, but a full trattoria with house-made pastas and other incredible dishes made from scratch in the tiny cooking space behind their counter. My daughter was along for the ride on this trip, which meant I got to try a few extra items. We ordered the arancini starter, a special for that day that might have been the best version of this dish (balls of risotto rolled in bread crumbs and quickly deep-fried) I’ve ever had; the pizza with smoked mozzarella & tomato sauce; the rigatoni with tomato and cream; and the dessert special, zeppole, the Italian version of beignets. The pizza was outstanding – I’m pretty sure they use Bianco tomatoes, and the dough was perfectly light and airy around the edges with a thick outer crust and thin (but not wet) center. The pasta was truly al dente and the sweetness of the tomatoes shined through; I’ve come around over the course of my life on so-called ‘pink’ sauces, as just a small amount of cream is enough to bring out the sweetness of good tomatoes. The zeppole came in a paper bag filled with powdered sugar, which brought back memories of going to Italian festivals as a kid on Long Island, although the zeppole I ate at those festivals were never this soft or moist in the center. I can’t recommend this place highly enough.

Bobby Boy Bakeshop is a French boulangerie and patisserie that had a line out the door when we stopped there while driving around the Wake Forest campus’ west side. They offer some very impressive old-world breads, including $3 baguettes, and a real coffee and tea program. We just had some sweet treats – my daughter loved the coconut cake, which was very intensely flavored and actually not overly sweet – so I can’t vouch for the savory items, although they do offer a rotating sandwich of the day on their own bread.

Krankie’s is a popular breakfast spot that also roasts its own coffee beans, offering a Tanzanian peaberry the day I was there (you can’t buy it on their site) that had the slightly sweet berry notes typical of that country. My daughter and I each got breakfast sandwiches on biscuits and once again she defeated me, getting the special with chicken, pesto, and tomato, while I got the Yeti with eggs, house-made sausage, and tater tots right on the sandwich, drizzled with maple syrup. The sausage was the disappointing part, actually, as it was way overcooked, and the biscuit itself wasn’t as good as what I can make at home, but the coffee was very good if brewed a little too hot. It looks like those two places are the best options for craft coffee in Winston-Salem.

Chill Nitro is right downtown and offers ice cream made to order with the help of liquid nitrogen, offering an incredibly smooth product because the nitrogen freezes the ice cream base so quickly that the ice crystals remain very small. They also offer the option to add a shot of alcohol to your ice cream for $6, although I passed on that; alcohol also inhibits freezing but I didn’t think it would be necessary and I wasn’t interested in drinking right before the drive back to Charlotte. I had the peanut butter ice cream with peanut butter cups and a peanut butter drizzle, and it was indeed intensely peanutty with an outstanding texture.

I also went to (other) Wilmington to see Walker Jenkins last week and had one meal there, eating dinner at Savorez, a Latin American/Southern fusion place in a cute space with funky décor. (I wanted to try Seabird, but they’re closed on Tuesdays.) I went with the shrimp and grits, served with a chorizo gravy, goat cheese polenta, black beans, oven-dried tomatoes, and pea shoots. The idea of the dish was better than the execution, as the polenta itself wasn’t very hot and the chorizo gravy – which would have been great on biscuits – overpowered the flavors of just about everything else on the plate. The shrimp were actually quite good on their own, which meant deconstructing the dish was the best option.

I rolled into town earlier than I expected, so I stopped in Bespoke Coffee to sit for an hour or so, which is a very cool café/bar with a wide range of tea options (I don’t drink coffee that late in the day unless I have a migraine). I can’t say much about the booze or coffee offerings but I absolutely loved the space and would definitely end up working there often if I lived in downtown Wilmington. Well, that Wilmington, not mine.

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→ March 16, 2023
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Charlotte & Columbia eats.

Amelie’s French Bakery & Café is a Charlotte chain of … well, French bakeries and cafés, shockingly enough, and they’re really good across the board. My daughter was with me on the trip, and since we got there around 11 am, she had lunch for breakfast, going with the chicken/pesto/goat cheese sandwich, while I had an egg sandwich with bacon and mushrooms on a croissant. Mine was good, but my daughter talked about her sandwich for two straight days, saying she’d have eaten it again the next day with no hesitation. I can also recommend the chocolate éclair, the macarons (my daughter says the cotton candy and blueberry cheesecake were her favorites, while I’d suggest the café au lait and pistachio), and the key lime tart. I could do without Amelie’s kitschy décor, which reminded me way too much of the France pavilion at Epcot. This is what someone who’s never been to France might think France looks like. I’ve been to France. It’s a lot less tacky. But this is definitely French patisserie.

Milkbread is one of the buzziest new restaurants in the Queen City, but it was probably the most disappointing meal we had on the trip. We both got breakfast sandwiches on biscuits; hers was fried chicken while mine was sausage with a chilled “jammy” (barely hard-boiled) egg. None of this really worked because the biscuits fell completely apart when picked up, and in the case of my sandwich, the egg halves just kept sliding out – just slicing it would have at least solved that one issue. But I found the cold egg and hot sausage/biscuit combination offputting, and while my daughter’s sandwich was better, certainly, it needed something else besides just the chicken on it – maybe pickles, for example.

Inizio is a mini-chain of Neapolitan-style pizzerias around Charlotte where you order at a counter, making it a good option for a quick meal. They have a typical set of standard pizzas, but my daughter and I love pasta alla vodka, so we went with their monthly special, a pizza with vodka sauce, fresh mozzarella, and a drizzle of pistachio-basil pesto. It well exceeded my expectations for such a casual atmosphere – both the sauce and the pesto had big flavors, with the pink vodka sauce clearly cooked beforehand to remove some of the alcohol’s bite (I’ve had pizzas where they don’t do this, and so you get the unpleasant bitterness of the booze), while the dough was solid-average for a Neapolitan place, with good texture and some light charring but not the light airiness of the very best Neapolitan pizzas I’ve had. We split a Caesar salad which was forgettable, mostly because the dressing might as well have come from a bottle.

I met this baseball writer named Joe Pos-something who said he has a new book coming out in September for lunch at Banh Mi Brothers, right by the UNC-Charlotte campus. I am far from an expert on banh mi, and I say that in large part because I have liked just about every one of these Vietnamese sandwiches I’ve ever tried. This was a 50/55 for me, with the bread not exactly a true French bread but with a crust that crackled and shattered like it should, while the chicken and other toppings were all solid if maybe a little underseasoned. It’s a chain-restaurant wasteland out there by the university, so if you’re headed that way this is one of your best bets to do something local that’s also pretty light (at least compared to all the other options).

I tried two coffee places – Not Just Coffee and Undercurrent, both serving beans from local roaster nightswim, with the cup I tried at Undercurrent the slightly better of the two. That was a Wilder Lasso Gesha from Colombia, an anaerobic, double-washed bean grown at about 2000 feet above sea level. It had some black cherry and dark chocolate notes with a pleasant tartness that was less acidic than beans from East Africa. Not Just Coffee had a washed Finca La Planada from Costa Rica that had less pronounced flavor notes. Undercurrent had three pour-over options, while NJC only had batch brew available.

I had one meal in Columbia, South Carolina, as I drove in for the Gamecocks’ Saturday night game and then drove back to Charlotte that evening. I shouldn’t be that surprised to find interesting restaurants in big college towns, but I didn’t expect to find an authentic Korean restaurant that specializes in bibimbap right in downtown Columbia. 929 Kitchen & Bar serves Korean cuisine, including bibimbap, udon, japchae, and samgyupsal-gui (grilled pork belly), as well as Korean fried chicken in various forms. I had the bibimbap with tofu and a small selection of the fried chicken wings, opting for the non-spicy versions of both – I do like spicy foods, including kimchi, but I also understand my limits. That was probably my one mistake with the bibimbap, as I missed that heat, and the fact that the vegetables served on top were neither cooked nor pickled meant that the whole dish was bland, even with the soy-based sauce. They also serve the egg hard-boiled, rather than serving it raw and allowing the heat from the stone bowl ($1 extra) and the rice to cook it, which is a shame. The chicken wings were spectacular, though. If you do go, I recommend getting the spicy sauce with the bibimbap, or just ordering more of the fried chicken instead.

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