→ March 17, 2019
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Florida eats, 2019 edition.

I reached out to readers before my trip last week to the Palm Beach area and got far more suggestions than I could try in just over 48 hours there before I drove north. There were two very big hits in my opinion, the first one the unassuming Mediterranean Market and Deli in West Palm Beach, which is indeed a market of foods from the Levant that also offers wraps and platters to go (there’s no seating) at absurd prices. The shish tawook platter (chicken marinated in lemon juice and turmeric) was really too much food – more than a serving’s worth of chicken, plus large portions of rice pilau and hummus, a thin pita (closer to lavash), and a small salad like a fattoush without the bread. The chicken was superb, bright, tart, and not overcooked (also not Nimmo-cooked), and, as silly as it might sound, the rice was also just delicious. White rice can be so bleh, but this not only had flavor (prepared in broth, perhaps?) but was perfectly cooked, and had strands of vermicelli pasta as is traditional in cuisines like that of Lebanon. The hummus was probably the least interesting part of the platter in part because it was too thin.

I met a friend for dinner at Grandview Market in West Palm Beach, a food hall – get used to that term in this post – with a slew of options for dinner and desserts, so I partook of both. We each got sandwiches from El Cochinito, which of course specializes in slow-roasted pork; I got their namesake sandwich, on crusty bread with maduros and some sliced onion. It’s also too much food, and almost too inexpensive at $10. The original El Cochinito is in LA on Sunset Blvd, between Night + Market Song and Intelligentsia Coffee. For dessert, I followed my friend’s tip to get the rolled ice cream at Crema, which has an intimidating array of combinations on the menu, so I asked the guy who took my order what he’d recommend to someone who likes chocolate, coffee, and mint ice creams. He didn’t hesitate to push the Cafecito, which has ground coffee mixed right into the ice cream with a fudge swirl and some graham crackers on the site. Those were kind of superfluous – maybe that would work better if they crumbled on top – but the ice cream itself was rich and tasted like a sweetened caffe latte.

Many people recommended Leftovers, part of a trio of local restaurants run by the same family, but my meal there was disappointing for a simple and entirely preventable reason: They didn’t salt the fish. I ordered what is apparently their signature dish, the fresh fish of your choice (I went with triple tail on my server’s suggestion) coated with julienned sweet potato and then pan-fried until crispy, served over a giant kitchen-sink of a salad. The problem is that the fish wasn’t seasoned at all beneath the coating – not just undersalted, but unsalted, and you can’t recover from that mistake. It felt like such a waste of a beautiful piece of fish, and the coating itself was delicious (crispier than I would have guessed, since sweet potatoes don’t fry up as well as white potatoes do), but even with the coating and a rich key-lime garlic sauce, the fish itself was still just bland. I also tried their fried tuna and basil roll – wrapped like an egg roll and deep fried, so the tuna ends up cooked as if it had been seared – which was interesting, mostly because of the wasabi dipping sauce, because the fish itself was kind of bland despite being of high quality.

Avocado Grill was another reader recommendation and had the advantage of being very close to the Nationals/Astros’ park, where I was headed on Saturday night but didn’t have a long window for dinner. (They have two locations; this was the one in Palm Beach Gardens.) I ordered a beet salad to start and fish tacos for my entrée, and both had the same issues: very good inputs, very little flavor. The salad had no dressing on it, and the fish was underseasoned itself so it relied on the other toppings, including a lime-ginger dressing and a fruit salsa, to give it any taste. Again, as with the Leftovers meal, someone here is buying the right ingredients, but the technique here is lacking.

I had coffee both mornings I was in the area at Subculture, which you can also get at the Nationals/Astros park; the pour-over coffee was fine, but I’d skip their espresso, which I thought was overextracted. I ordered a macchiato, my preference for espresso drinks, but it was just a double shot with some overfoamed milk spooned on top, not poured in so it integrates a little with the coffee.

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I did better in Orlando, fortunately. Hunger Street Tacos was the best place I visited, even with their beef-heavy menu. I went with the chicken and chorizo taco, the hibiscus and avocado taco, and the elote street corn (shaved off the cob, so it’s better for sharing). The chicken and chorizo was the better of the two, but the hibiscus taco was certainly the most unique I’ve ever tried: the flowers are shredded and sautéed, so they look like dark red cabbage but have a profile like that of sweet red wine – not quite as sweet as a port but in that vein. Their fresh limeade is not short on the lime juice, either.

Swine and Sons is a spinoff of local stalwarts The Ravenous Pig, having taken over a nearby storefront when they first opened before moving into one of two local food halls I visited on this trip, this one inside a Meat House that’s across a large Winter Park intersection from the Pig’s location. Their focus, as you might imagine, is pig, including house-made charcuterie, but I was there early for breakfast (served all day) and got the very simple “eggs on a bun” – fried eggs, house-made bacon, and tomato jam (cheese optional) on a very good bread. The bacon was the star, as you’d hope, and this was worth more than $7 when you consider the quality and craft behind it. They also offer chilaquiles and avocado toast as breakfast options, and their weekend breakfast menu is twice as big.

Se7en Bites offers to “fill your pie hole,” if you were unclear on their concept; this food is not for the literally faint of heart. They also serve breakfast all day, and while I’m not normally a big fan of benedicts (mostly because Canadian ‘bacon’ is just bad ham), their house benedict is something else: a buttermilk garlic biscuit with a medium egg, a slice of fried green tomato, a few strips of bacon, and a peppery hollandaise sauce poured over the top … and then poured again over the top half of the biscuit. I ordered extra bacon, because we’re all going to die soon anyway so why not enjoy it. (I didn’t actually finish the biscuit, which is good but so heavy.)

Pizza Bruno does Neapolitan style pizza with some other small dishes from the wood-fired oven (including garlic knots with “too much garlic,” as if such a thing were possible), with a traditional dough and both traditional and very non-traditional (cheddar cheese? pineapple?) toppings available. I stuck with the traditional because I’m not a fucking savage, getting a margherita with mushrooms, and would put a 50 or solid-average grade on it, with the dough the best part but the pizza overall too salty, I think because they grate quite a bit of pecorino romano on it right out of the oven.

For coffee in Orlando, I went back to Foxtail in Winter Park, a favorite of mine from a few years ago, and also tried Lineage’s location in the East End Market, a wonderful food hall with a patisserie, a cheesemonger, a juice bar, a ramen place, and more. Lineage is a third-wave roaster and had a few single origins, including a Rwandan coffee from the Kigeyo washing station from near Lake Kivu. Their description promised floral and green apple notes but I tasted a warm spice in the finish, both cinnamon and clove.

Finally, for anyone headed to Walt Disney World during the Flower & Garden show, I can offer a few suggestions on the food at the kiosks this year, since I ate dinner that way one night while also doing some shopping for my daughter, niece, nephew, and some friends’ kids. The best dish I ate was from the Travel & Trellis kiosk: a farm ‘meatball’ wrap, made with Impossible lab-grown meat and served on a lentil-flour bread, which is probably not selling the carnivores among you … but I would really not have been able to tell you this was a meat alternative had I not known that going in. The chocolate pudding at the same stand was the worst thing I ate, so maybe give that a miss. The tuna tataki (Citrus Blossom) was fine, although I think I’d have liked that better raw than seared, and the duck confit with tomatoes and olives with a tiny square of polenta (Fleur de Lys) was also solid. The better choice for dessert was the warm chocolate cake with bourbon-salted caramel sauce and spiced pecans from the Smokehouse, by the USA pavilion. I didn’t care for the karaage, Japanese fried chicken, from the Hanami stand by Japan – I know what karaage is, but this didn’t match up – and never got to a few more things I wanted to try because by then I was very full.

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→ March 1, 2019
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Texas eats, 2019 edition.

Both places I hit in Houston were on Eater’s list of the 38 ‘most essential’ restaurants in the U.S. this year, which tends to be a pretty reliable list for good if occasionally overpriced restaurants. Xochi, a high-end Mexican place downtown, did not disappoint at all: I had just two dishes but it will stick with me for a very, very long time. For dinner I had the crispy duck (pato crujiente) with tomatillo avocado sauce, black beans, and chicharrones. It’s the second-best duck dish I’ve ever eaten, behind only the duck carnitas at NYC’s Cosme, and my only quibble is that there was so much duck and not quite enough of the sauces to go with it. It comes with fresh corn tortillas, and the duck really doesn’t need any additional flavor – it would be fine with just a little lime juice – but the slow cooking process did just start to rob the meat of a little moisture. But the star here was the dessert; Xochi’s dessert menu has a dessert side and a chocolate side, and you’re a damn fool if you think I even looked at the side without chocolate on it. I got the Piedras y Oro, rocks and gold, described as “chocolate tart with crocant of mixed nuts, praline and chocolate “river rocks,” gold from the Isthmus,” which doesn’t quite do it justice. The chocolate tart’s center was warm and has very little flour in it, just enough to hold it together, with a hard, dense cookie-like crust, topped with those frozen pebbles of chocolate, as well as the praline, various candied nuts, and a dark chocolate sauce. It was chocolate indulgence right into your veins. I’m not sure I have ever had a more satisfying sense of oneness with chocolate.

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Himalaya, which serves Indian and Pakistani dishes and has a few flourishes that combine those cuisines with Mexican twists (like a ‘quesadilla’ on paratha bread) also made the list, and I would say I had a mixed experience, partly because I ended up ordering the wrong thing, partly because I don’t know south Asian cuisine all that well. I liked much of what I ate, but it was enough food for more than two of me, and some of what arrived on the lunch special, which the waiter seemed very eager for me to order (probably assuming the white guy wouldn’t know most of the items on the menu, which would not be too far off the mark for me), included meats I no longer eat. The platter came with samples of three curries/similar dishes, one with chickpeas (I think aloo chana masala, with potatoes), one with chicken, and one with lamb, which I don’t eat; as well as a large naan that was leaner than any naad I’ve had before, more than a serving of rice, and a triangle of the same flatbread folded over meat and vegetables. I think it was good, but I also know what I don’t know – I rarely eat Indian or Pakistani food – and probably should have ordered something a la carte.

I tried Siphon Coffee before I headed to lunch, and the preparation of the namesake coffee is quite a show – there’s fire, and it looks like a chemistry experiment – with the resulting cup certainly balanced and smooth without losing any of the nuances of the bean. I just can’t see spending $9 for a cup of coffee other than to do it once to try it.

Moving on to Austin: Better Half Coffee & Cocktails is an all-day café in a cool space that serves coffee from Portland’s heart roasters and has traditional and unusual breakfast items, including the thing I could not possibly pass up, waffled hash browns with coffee-cream gravy and poached eggs. It was decadent, although despite being on the heavy side, it wasn’t greasy, more heavy just because all of those items are calorie-dense, and those hashbrowns were spectacularly crunchy. They were using a single-origin heart coffee even for espressos, which I especially appreciate because it shows someone took some care in selecting the coffee (some single origins are great for pour-overs and awful as espressos).

The Backspace was on that old Food and Wine list of the best pizzerias in the U.S. that I’ve been working my way through over the last five years (I’ve been to 31 of the original 48 places, although at least three have closed), and because I hit it on the early side I was there for their happy hour pricing, where their starters are half off. The roasted beets were great, the roasted cauliflower was bland. The margherita pizza used very high-quality mozzarella, although the dough was ordinary, and overall I’d say it’s on the high side of average (grade 50).

Micklethwait Craft Meats showed up on Daniel Vaughn’s invaluable guide to the ten best BBQ joints in Texas, coming in at #8, with the venerable Franklin up at #2. Since I don’t eat beef, Texas BBQ is largely lost on me, but Micklethwait’s pork ribs were excellent, sweet/salty with a strong smoke flavor and bright pink ring. Both the potato salad, which has mayo but tastes more of mustard, and the tart cole slaw were also excellent. If you do eat cow, they’re known for brisket and beef ribs too.

I also had dinner with my cousin at Cane Rosso, an outpost of the Dallas restaurant, and went with a non-traditional pizza, the “farmer’s only dot com” pie with arugula, mushrooms, and zucchini, topped with pesto but without tomato sauce. The dough here is really the standout, although everything on top was also bright and fresh (it was weird to get good zucchini in mid-February).

My Dallas eats were a bit limited by where I needed to go and the sheer sprawl of the Metroplex. I tried Ascension Coffee but found their pour-over really lacking in flavor or body; I probably should have known when I saw they talked up the ‘blueberry’ note in their Ethiopian Ardi, a note that is often considered a defect in Ethiopian beans. (If you’ve had it, you’d know why – it isn’t a pleasant blueberry flavor and it dominates the cup.) Ascension seems so focused on food that the coffee takes a back seat, which is a shame because it’s possible to do both.

The one other meal of note I had was at the Spiral Diner in Fort Worth, not far from TCU. There are three locations of the all-vegan restaurant, which looks like a ’50s diner gone hipster, and the menu comprises mostly familiar comfort-food dishes that have been veganized. I am not vegan, but like hitting good vegan/vegetarian restaurants on the road to try to keep my diet diverse; that said, Spiral’s menu was too focused on recreating certain non-vegetarian or vegan foods, without the ingenuity of places like Modern Love or Vedge/V Street. I ended up getting a Beyond Burger, which I’ve had before and do find pretty satisfying as a meat alternative (better than any veggie burger I’ve ever tried), and the vegan chipotle mayo that came with it was as good as the real thing. It was just kind of unremarkable, salvaged somewhat by the blueberry pie that also allowed me to taunt Mike Schur on Twitter.

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→ February 24, 2019
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Los Angeles eats, 2019.

The best meal I had on my brief vacation to Los Angeles was at Rosaliné, an upscale Peruvian restaurant that particularly focuses on ceviches and paellas, all of which were superb. The corvina sea bass was the milder of the two we ordered, so the flavor and freshness of the fish shone through, while the ceviche crocante, with raw (but cured) halibut and crispy calamari, tasted more of the sauce, with tart yuzu and a good but not overpowering amount of heat. I’m not a big paella fan, since I think every version I’d ever had in restaurants used cheap rice and was dominated either by tomato or saffron, but the chaufa paella here is excellent, served smoking hot in its cast-iron skillet and tossed table-side so the crispy part of the rice gets mixed in and slightly softened by the steam (so you can chew it without breaking a tooth). It comes with prawns, pancetta, and a little sausage, while their other paella is all shellfish; there isn’t a vegetarian option on the menu but I would imagine they could accommodate you with some notice. I also recommend the pan andino, a house-made bread with quinoa that is served with a rocoto pepper butter and a botoja olive spread that are both fantastic, savory and salty and perfect for spreading on warm bread. We were way too full for dessert.

I had lunch solo at the now curiously-named A.O.C., which predates the ascendance of Ben Shapiro’s favorite Congressperson. It’s a wine bar from Suzanne Goins and Carolyne Styne of Lucques and The Larder, with a small-plates menu that focuses on foods from around the Mediterranean as well as an extensive cheese list that lets you order just a single kind (which I did, trying a pacencia, a raw sheep’s milk cheese from Spain that was like a stronger, nuttier manchego, served with bread, dried fruit, and raw walnuts). For lunch I had the brussels sprouts, radicchio, and burrata sandwich on house-made focaccia, which was a delightful mess and did not skimp on the vegetables, with aged balsamic giving some sweet/tart notes to balance the slight bitterness of those two vegetables. I didn’t plan to have dessert but when I saw the butterscotch pôt de crème with fleur de sel & salted cashew cookies I couldn’t exactly say no – the cookies were good, although I think that’s the kind of cookie that needs to be consumed within a few hours of baking, while the custard was absolutely superb in texture and flavor, with that little bit of salt and big caramel and butter flavors.

Republique, like the first two restaurants I mentioned, made the Eater list of the 38 ‘most essential’ restaurants in LA for the year – I still don’t know what they mean by ‘essential’ but I do find those lists incredibly useful when traveling and rarely have a bad experience at any of their places. It’s modern French in a very cool brick building that was supposedly once owned by Charlie Chaplin, previously occupied by the Nancy Silverton-owned Campanile. Modern French probably misrepresents the food, though, as it’s more just modern global cuisine with French influences. I went with a writer friend and we grazed our way through some of the lighter dishes, skipping the meat/fish mains. The spinach cavatelli with fresh morel mushrooms was among the best pasta dishes I’ve ever had, both because the pasta was so well-made and perfectly cooked and because the morels were … well, morels, which are generally so expensive (they only grow wild, typically after forest fires, and are harvested by hand) that I rarely get to eat them. The grilled octopus salad with multiple kinds of citrus plus pistachios and a hint of chile was another standout, as was the bread with cultured butter and the smoked eel beignets (yep, just what it sounds like, and so good) with horseradish sauce. I normally don’t care for white chocolate desserts but their caramelized white chocolate sabayon with local berries was really superb – the cloying nature of regular white chocolate is dampened by the caramelization, which converts some of the sugars and brings out a broader array of flavors than the one-note sweetness of regular white chocolate.

I met up with movie critic Tim Grierson, with whom I’ve had a longrunning email dialogue but had never actually met in person, at The Henry in west Hollywood, where I had that rarest of things, a truly memorable salad, in a rather over-the-top (if on brand for that area) space. The green garden kale salad has romanesco and broccoli along with kale, brussels sprouts, green beans, snow peas, arugula, pistachios, and comes with a tahini vinaigrette that was lighter than most tahini dressings (like goddess dressing, which I do like quite a bit, but can be heavy).

Molly Knight and I had dinner at Badmaash, a favorite of hers, located on Fairfax a few doors down from Jon & Vinny’s. Badmaash has both traditional Indian dishes and some strange mashups like Chicken Tikka Poutine – fries topped with gravy and chicken tikka and cheese curds, good but definitely too heavy for me – and chili cheese naan, where the naan dough is wrapped around cheese and serranos and comes out like a stuffed pizza (but much better than that, obviously). The traditional samosa and rosemary naan were actually my favorite dishes, though, because they were so simple but well done, and since I seldom eat Indian food because there are so many things on Indian restaurant menus I can’t eat.

Stella Barra pizzeria is a solid 50 for me, which probably puts it in the lower tier of my pizzeria rankings since I tend to avoid places I hear are below-average; I thought their dough was quite good if stretched a little too thick, and don’t love that their white pizzas come with a ‘parmesan cream sauce,’ whatever that is – true white Neapolitan pizzas shouldn’t have anything like that. But the toppings on the two pizzas we tried, the sausage and fennel as well as the spinach & kale with garlic and green onions, were very high quality. I’m usually a purist when it comes to old-fashioneds, but their lavender-tinged version was surprisingly good.

I did all my coffee-ing at Verve and Andante, as well as tea in both spots as well; Verve was slightly better in both categories, especially for pour-over coffee, and they offer hojicha, my personal favorite green tea (the leaves are roasted, so the flavor is deeper and less grassy). Verve’s space was nearly always packed, while Andante had more room to chill, although one time I was in the latter’s shop near the Grove and realized I was the only person there not working on a screenplay.

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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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→ February 2, 2019
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Stick to baseball, 2/2/19.

My ranking of the top 100 prospects in baseball ran this week, with four separate pieces: #1 through #50, #51 through #100, my column of fourteen more guys who just missed, and a ranking of the top 20 prospects just for impact in 2019. I also held a Klawchat on Wednesday and a Periscope video chat on Thursday.

My ranking of all 30 farm systems will run on Monday, February 4th, after which the team by team reports will run, one division per day for the following six days. I’ve written 24 of the 30 team reports so far, if you’re curious.

Many thanks to the White Sox blog SouthSideSox and writer katiesphil for this lovely review of Smart Baseball.

And now, the links…

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→ December 14, 2018
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Las Vegas eats, 2018 edition.

Three days and four nights in Las Vegas did at least mean a few interesting meals in a city that is known for overpriced celebrity chef-backed restaurants on the Strip but that has a vibrant food culture once you leave the gaudy façade and head a few miles in any direction.

The best meal I had all week was at The Black Sheep, a Vietnamese-influenced spot in a strip mall (of course) in Rhodes Ranch in southwest Vegas. There was no way I wasn’t ordering the cocktail called Mr. Brownstone – once I saw it on the drink menu, it wouldn’t leave me alone – which comes with an ice cube made of brown sugar, ginger, and mint. The server heats the top of it with a kitchen torch, and then pours the bourbon into the divot the flame created. I would just counsel you to drink it fast, because I didn’t and then the drink became overly sweet at the very end.

Their duck confit was similarly calling me from the menu and was superb. It comes with Israeli couscous, cooked a little past al dente, with a mild yellow curry sauce, onions, and shaved Chinese broccoli. There was also a single flower on the dish which I realized at some point was no longer on the dish because everything tasted so good I ate the flower without realizing it. For dessert, they had two options, a chocolate tres leches cake that is always on the menu and a seasonal persimmon bread pudding; I took the former and regret nothing. The chocolate cake is served with a chocolate ‘nest’ on top, a disk of lacey dark chocolate, as well as Vietnamese coffee mousse, cocoa nibs, and a Tahitian vanilla crème anglaise. It took an award-winning effort of willpower to stop myself from finishing the entire cake.

Settebello is a VPN-certified pizzeria with two Nevada locations, one in Henderson and one in Red Rock, plus three in California and one in Salt Lake City. They import many of their key ingredients from Italy, including the flour in the dough and real prosciutto di Parma; the crust is soft with visible char on the outside, although I expected a slightly airier feel to the edges. I tried their namesake Settebello pizza, a margherita base with sausage roasted in their wood oven, pancetta, mushrooms, and pine nuts. I don’t think it needs both meats, but the sausage had a good smoky note from the oven and the pine nuts provide some crunch to contrast with the soft center of the dough.

Flock and Fowl is a fried chicken joint with a handful of not-fried-chicken items on the menu, but really, if you’re going here, it’s to eat fried chicken and drink their ‘flocktails.’ I kept it simple with the two-piece (drumstick and thigh) plate with rice, slaw, and pickles; the chicken was outstanding, perfectly crispy on the outside but tender on the inside, on the salty side but cooked so well that I was fine with the sodium hit. The spicy sambal sauce it’s served with has a nice, complex flavor if you can handle the heat, which is significant. The rice was served ‘plain’ but had a natural buttery taste to it; the slaw, on the other hand, had zero flavor at all and needed some kind of acidity. We also ordered the “boneless wings” (I know, not a thing) with a salt and Sichuan pepper (which isn’t really pepper, but does taste very much like it) crust; their flavor was perfect, not spicy but just a bit hot, while the meat on the interior was a little overcooked. I drank a Lychee’s Knees cocktail, with gin, lychee, and lemon, fruitier than I normally go for in drinks but the interplay of the lychee’s sweetness and the herbal notes in the gin worked well.

On the breakfast side, I didn’t do quite as well; all three places I tried were just okay. The Peppermill was probably the best of the three, even though its atmosphere leaves everything to be desired. Just get something with hash browns in it – that was the best thing I ate there – but skip the hot blueberry or apple muffins, which are overloaded with sugar. CraftKitchen in Henderson has an incredible menu and a well-known area chef behind it, but the crab cake benedict I got was surprisingly light on flavor; the egg was perfectly poached but the crab cake was mostly bread crumbs, and there was too much moisture in the dish for the bread to handle. PublicUs is a hipster coffee shop – no, Jakie Wohl wasn’t there – with a full menu of egg dishes and avocado toast. The sourdough waffle was quite good, definitely a unique combination of flavor and texture, but the Portuguese sausage I got on the side was lukewarm.

For coffee, Mothership in Henderson is your best bet, with house-roasted single origins available on drip or as pour-over; I got their current option from Rwanda and the roast was perfect so some of the stone fruit flavors came through in the cup. I also had coffee at PublicUs twice; their “macchiato” is not a traditional one, even though I asked the woman who took my order that specific question, so what I got had way more milk than I like, and the pour-over I got the second time came in a mug that was cold so the coffee cooled off too quickly … and the drink was $8, which might be a fair price in a decade after climate change has crushed the global coffee crop but is ridiculous right now for a bean (from Costa Rica) that isn’t that special.

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→ September 22, 2018
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Stick to baseball, 9/22/18.

For ESPN+ subscribers, my annual list of players I was wrong about went up on Thursday, including Matt Chapman and Harrison Bader. I also held a Klawchat this week.

Over at Ars Technica, I reviewed the new digital adaptation of the complex board game Scythe, available now on Steam. I don’t love the underlying game of Scythe but the implementation here is spectacular.

Here on the dish, I’ve set up a new index page for all my board game reviews in alphabetical order; there are 160 there now and I’ll continue to update it as I post new reviews here or on other sites. I reviewed two more games here this week: Mesozooic and Founders of Gloomhaven.

I sent out a new issue of my free email newsletter earlier this week; it’s irregular in timing and content, but hey, it’s free.

And now, the links. I do want to warn anyone who might be triggered by such stories that there are quite a few links here relating to sexual assault.

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→ August 25, 2018
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Stick to baseball, 8/25/18.

I had one Insider/ESPN+ piece this week, scouting notes on Tampa wunderkind Wander Franco and some Yankees & Rangers prospects, and held a Klawchat on Thursday.

I reviewed the gladiator-themed deckbuilding game Carthage for Paste this week. That’s the last of my pre-Gen Con reviews; I believe everything I review the rest of the year will either be from games I got/saw at Gen Con or that were released afterwards.

I’m about due for a fresh edition of my free email newsletter, to which you may wish to subscribe if you enjoy my ramblings.

And now, the links…

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→ August 15, 2018
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Top 55 pizzerias in the U.S., ranked.

I’ve updated this list for the first time since the original version went up three years ago, and again, I expect this will start quite a few debates.

I adore all kinds of pizza – New York-style, Neapolitan-style (thin crust, wet center), Roman-style (also thin-crust but with a cracker-like crust), Sicilian, coal-fired, wood-fired, whatever. Except “deep dish,” which is just a bread casserole and which I actively dislike. I try to find good artisan pizzerias everywhere I travel, and I’ve hit just about all of the most highly-regarded places in Manhattan and Brooklyn too. I grew up on Long Island, eating by the slice and folding as I did so, but a couple of trips to Italy convinced me of the merits of those very thin crusts and superior toppings. We’re the beneficiaries of a huge boom in high-end pizza joints in this country, and while I haven’t tried all of the good ones, I’ve been to enough to put together a ranking of the 55 best that I’ve tried. There is, I admit, a bias to this list – I’ve tried more places in greater Phoenix than any other metro area other than New York – and I’m sure I’ll get some yelling over where I put di Fara or Paulie Gee’s, but with all of that out of the way, here’s how I rank ’em.

(I’ve removed two entries that closed since the last ranking, but if I missed another one, please put it in the comments.)

1. Pizzeria Bianco, Phoenix
2. Kesté, New York
3. Motorino, New York
4. Roberta’s, Brooklyn
5. Una Pizza Napoletana, New York (relocated from San Francisco)
6. Pizzeria Vetri/Osteria, Philadelphia
7. Frank Pepe’s, New Haven
8. del Popolo, San Francisco
9. Garage Bar, Louisville
10. Pizzeria Mozza, Los Angeles
11. Pizzeria Lola, Minneapolis
12. cibo, Phoenix
13. Lucali, Brooklyn
14. Forcella, New York
15. Pizzeria Stella, Philadelphia
16. Spacca Napoli, Chicago
17. Paulie Gee’s, Brooklyn
18. Don Antonio by Starita, New York
19. Pizzaiolo, Oakland
20. ‘Pomo, Phoenix
21. Brigantessa, Philadelphia
22. Marta, New York
23. Ribalta, New York
24. flour + water, San Francisco
25. Totonno’s, Brooklyn
26. Federal Pizza, Phoenix
27. La Piazza al Forno, Glendale, AZ
28. Via Tribunali, New York/Seatte
29. Il Cane Rosso, Dallas
30. Antico, Atlanta
31. Ravanesi, Concordville, PA
32. City House, Nashville
33. Tarry Lodge, Port Chester, New York
34. Desano, Nashville
35. Grimaldi’s, Phoenix
36. Jon & Vinny’s, Los Angeles
37. Timber Pizza, Washington, DC
38. Di Fara, Brooklyn
39. All-Purpose, Washington, DC
40. Il Bosco, Scottsdale, AZ
41. Co., New York (closed February 2018)
42. Rubirosa, New York
43. Punch Pizza, St. Paul
44. Toro, Durham
45. Craft 64, Scottsdale, AZ
46. Harry’s Bar, Miami, FL
47. 800 Degrees, Los Angeles
48. Firestarter, Dennis, MA
49. Forno 301, Phoenix
50. Dolce Vita, Houston
51. Stella Rosa, Santa Monica
52. Grimaldi’s, Brooklyn
53. Basic, San Diego
54. Nicoletta, New York (closed as of 1/2019)
55. Taconelli, Philadelphia

There’s a long list of pizzerias I still need (okay, want, but where I’m concerned pizza is a need) to try, so they’re not on the list: Razza in Jersey City, Apizza Scholls in Portland, Area Four near Boston, 2 Amy’s in DC (temporarily closed), Menomale in DC, Sottocasa in Brooklyn, al Forno in Providence, Mani Osteria in Ann Arbor, Vero in Cleveland, Iggie’s in Baltimore, and more. It’s a good time to be a pizza lover, and unless you have to be gluten-free, how could you not love pizza?

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→ July 18, 2018
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DC eats, 2018 edition.

The Futures Game was more or less in my backyard this year, a shade over two hours away in Washington DC, so I drove down there on Saturday before my event at Politics & Prose (many thanks to the 120-plus of you who came to see Jay Jaffe and me speak) and then drove home on Monday morning, in time to get my daughter from camp and head to the Wilmington Blue Rocks game with her that night. That did limit the amount of time I had for culinary exploration, but I did try three new spots.

Little Pearl is the third outpost in the Rose’s Luxury empire, taking the little daytime café concept from the front of Pineapple & Pearls and spinning it out into its own location, which was buzzing on Sunday morning despite the heat and Little Pearl’s small, eclectic menu. Their daytime menu includes six “sandwiches,” including the gravlax toast, in which the cured salmon comes cubed and tossed with avocado, heirloom tomato, a little crème fraîche, capers, dill, and pepitas, on a thick slice of sourdough bread. I’m a sucker for any sort of smoked or cured salmon (or, if I’m somewhere I trust, even raw), and this was really spectacular, satisfying with the combination of fats, with just a little acidity from the tomatoes and the capers to balance it out. The salmon used for the gravlax must be of extremely high quality given how clean and bright its flavor was; sometimes curing can accentuate fishier flavors in salmon, which is an oily fish to begin with, but Little Pearl’s was bright and fresh. I also tried the potato donut, which was incredibly light and airy, benefiting from the reduction in gluten that comes from swapping out some wheat flour for potato. (It does not taste like potato, if you’re wondering.) The menu also includes spicy fried chicken, a novel twist on a burger, a few salads, gelato, and some grab-and-go items like a yogurt parfait or banana bread (which is cake, really). They use Passenger coffee from Lancaster for their coffee bar, which includes a full array of espresso options.

Tail Up Goat opened in 2016 in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of DC and has already earned a Michelin star. The menu changes often, but I believe their crispy salt cod croquettes are a regular fixture, with good reason, as they hit exactly the right note of the distinctive and, yes, salty flavor of that classic peasant food (what you might know as bacalhao in Portuguese or baccalà in Italian), whipped with potato until smooth, here served with smoked cauliflower and pickled onion. Salt cod is going to have a fishy note, but whether it’s a pleasant one depends on how it’s prepared, and here it’s prepared exceptionally so you’re almost getting the memory of that note rather than the overpowering flavor of badly prepared fish. The new potatoes with romano beans and herbs were perfectly cooked although eating them at the same time as the salt cod was probably our mistake.

The stracciatella with peaches, shallots, basil leaves, and pepitas was another highlight; the cheese, similar to the center of burrata but worked more to develop the stretchy curds that give the cheese its name, shone like a fresh ricotta, and although it’s a little early around these parts for peaches – I believe our local pick-your-own place has one variety that’s ready – these were sweet like peak-season fruit. We tried two of the pasta dishes, a spring pea agnolotti with chanterelles and roasted carrots as well as a tagliatelle with sausage and an herb pesto, with the agnolotti the better of the two, with more tooth to the dough and a higher filling/pasta ratio than you’d find with other agnolotti, which benefited the dish since the peas’ flavor is subtler than that of red meat. The tagliatelle was rolled a little thinner than I like that cut of pasta, which I think is best when you really have something to sink your teeth into, but that’s a matter of personal taste. They also make a daiquiri with Neisson Rhum Agricole, a 100 proof rum made from sugar cane rather than molasses, and Smith & Cross traditional rum, as well as lime, orange, and cardamom, but it’s really rum-forward rather than losing those flavors in citrus or sweetening agents. As for the name, it’s from a saying on the co-owner’s birthplace in the Virgin Islands: “Tail up goat, tail down sheep.”

I was fortunate enough to be invited by the Fangraphs crew to Timber Pizza on Saturday night, after Jay and I finished our signing and we’d all had beers at Comet Ping-Pong (the basement was closed for a private event, to our dismay). They call their pizza “Neapolitan-ish,” which is only accurate in that the crust is thin, but the style is really quite different – the crust’s edges aren’t puffy and charred, and the center isn’t wet – so this is somewhere more like Roman-style pizza, with a thinner, crispier crust than you’d get at a true Neapolitan joint. It’s all still good, just a matter of what you like in your pizza. I was particularly impressed by the quality of the cured meats Timber used, especially the pepperoni, something I almost never eat because I find it too salty and greasy and a source of immediate regret. Theirs was none of those things, least of all the last part, and I’d order it again, although I also loved their green pizzas with basil pesto, including the Penelope (fresh mozzarella, mushrooms, bacon, and smoked paprika) and the Green Monster (fresh mozzarella, feta, kale, and zucchini). If you’re into pizza and in DC, I do have a bit of bad news: 2 Amy’s is closed for the foreseeable future after a pipe burst in their kitchen on July 7th, flooding the place and causing substantial damage everywhere. They haven’t been able to give a projected date for a re-open.

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