Category: Restaurants & Stores

we’ve eaten dim sum twice in the past week, which is delightful, and i’ve run across a couple of new treasures that should be documented here. we didn’t take photos, sorry.
pork-n-peanut dumplings: little white rice dumplings with pork, waterchestnut and peanuts. crunchy & savory.
black sesame jelly rolls: squishy, quivery black sesame jelly in a thin sheet, rolled up into a log. perfect dessert after a bunch of fatty savories. hard to spot, tends to be on the lower shelf of the mixed dessert/savory bun cart.
shrimp & chive dumplings: more rice-wrappers, stuffed with what seems like a 50-50 mix of flat chive pieces (maybe 3/4″ long) and chopped shrimp.
donut wrapped in rice noodle: deep fried oil stick (crunchy donut) wrapped in fresh white rice noodle, then topped with cilantro & soy sauce. Even though the donut loses the crunchy, it’s still insane yummy goodness.
shrimp & lychee in a deep-fried crunchy noodle wrapper: another hard-to-find item. they’re easy to see — the yellow fried flat-noodle clumps are distinctive — but we found them enclosing the shrimp/lychee filling on visit 1, but on visit 2 the insides turned out to be crab claws, shell and all.

OK, so i think i might have a theory on why people down South tend to be fatter on average: waitresses down here just keep on topping up your glass of sweet tea. You have no damn idea how much of that sweet, sweet nectar is going down your gullet, and it’s not like you can just not drink it. It’s far too delicious for that.
And while I’m at it perhaps I can describe the delicious barbecue available at The Bar-B-Q Shop. I’m here in Memphis visiting a client, who as it turns out is rather a kindred spirit and when I asked about barbecue recommendations she said she was friends with the owner of the best place in town. Okey dokey then, let’s go!
Her husband said that the beef was better than the pork, so I went that way. They pull their brisket here rather than slice it, and it is fantastically aromatic and smoky. The sauce is sweet-based and dark, but the sweetness is not the primary note; just like in KC, it’s surprisingly complex and balanced with spices and savory notes, but this sauce is distinctly different from KC style sauce — though admittedly neighbors on the sauce spectrum.
I’m not sure if it’s a Memphis thing or just a specialty of the house, but I had to order it regardless on a half-and-half plate with my beef: bbq spaghetti. Soft thick spaghetti with barbecue sauce and barbecue meat. I ask you, what’s not to love about that?
Big thick slices of buttered Texas toast on the side (oddly enough), and slaw with bits of chopped pickle in it top things off. The drummettes are excellent, super crispy fried and with a little sprinkle of their house dry rub on for flavor. (This stuff is awesome, a southern barbecue version of Old Bay seasoning — i was dabbing it up off the plate and licking it off my finger, salty and spicy and delicious.) Everybody working there is friendly and the place is actually rather huge for a barbecue shack, i expect because it’s not really a shack so much anymore, being rather popular with Memphisians.
I have a hazy photo in my phone that i’ll try and get uploaded soon. And I have a fridge here in my hotel room, so I’m gonna eat leftovers for dinner tomorrow night, oh yeah!
nom nom nom nom nom nom

Often with the tallasiandude’s parents we go for dinner at the Mandarin Deli in Northridge. It’s pretty close to the house, it’s very mellow and low-key, and the food is really great.
Especially the cold cucumber pickle. Oh my god, it is so delicious: rough-chopped cucumber with some kind of intensely garlicky dressing and some cilantro. I can’t quite tell if there is any sugar or vinegar involved; it’s one of those pickles where it’s probably just salt but some crazy alchemy makes it into a super-savory complexity that makes me happy all the way to the end of the plate. Can’t get enough, especially in warm weather.
The shredded radish pickle is also excellent, we learned on this trip. It looks much like the daikon-thread pickle one gets as pan chan in Korean restaurants, but has a slightly different taste, almost as if it has just a whisper of fish sauce in it.
The spicy seafood chile noodle soup did turn out to be jambong, as we’d hoped. Hilariously, all the Chinese family at the table informed us that this soup is Korean, while every single Korean restaurant in Chicago that we asked for jambong told us, no, we don’t have that, it’s Chinese. This was a nice version, lots of heat in the buttery broth, but with a bit of a charred note that kept me from drinking down every drop.
The dry pork sauce noodle was delightful as always, a savory brown mess of pork and scallion and cabbage that makes those noodles into what lo mein desperately wants to be. There was also a lighter, brighter noodle with a serious chile kick and some shredded chicken, carrot and cucumber — i didn’t catch its name, but I will definitely try and find out next time so we can get some more.
The rice cakes were gummy, sadly, but came with a huge pile of perfectly crisp-cooked vegetables — cabbage, carrot, and lots of snow peas — in a stupendously savory but light sauce. There’s another savory brown dish that we always get, deliciously similar to the dry pork sauce noodle but involving more vegetables and instead of the noodles a bunch of shredded shao bing. The wonton soup is a classic of course, and I like this broth more than most. It’s darker and pepperier somehow, and gives a nice contrast to the bland dumplings.
But i think the very best thing that we ordered this trip was the tofu with thousand-year eggs. Sometimes the tofu can be bland in this dish, but this had absorbed just enough of a very flavorful soy dressing, and the edges of the cut eggs dissolved into a salty, creamy mess to add even more flavor. I love this dish anyway but this was for sure the best version I’ve ever had, and only a vague attempt at social grace kept me from licking the plate entirely clean.

On our way to the airport as we left Kansas City, we stopped for lunch at Stroud’s Fried Chicken. Just as a change of pace from all the barbecue meat, we figured we’d have a little fried meat. Heh heh heh.

Observe, please, this mess of chicken for 7, so bounteous in its largeness that it required an additional satellite plate just to contain it.

The chicken is delightful. Very crispy skin (be still my heart) and moist meat… my only complaint is that I had to salt it, but you know, that’s hardly a complaint.

Perhaps it’s done this way to balance the mashed potatoes, which were supersalty — I actually really enjoyed them, but pretty much everyone else thought they were too salty for comfort. The green beans are cooked to death, as you might expect, but they seem homemade, studded with bits of bacon, rather than canned, and they are delicious.

Every chicken meal comes with salad or soup, potatoes, beans, and cinnamon rolls. The cinnamon rolls are dessert: these things are insane, gooey warm cinnamon treats. We nibbled ’em, but were so full that we ate most of ours a few days later, warmed back up once we got to LA.

On the way to the stadium for the Red Sox/Royals game, we stopped for dinner at Arthur Bryant’s barbecue. I was very excited about this, having read Calvin Trillin’s rhapsodic odes to the joys of Mr. Bryant’s Kansas City meat cookery. Bryant’s is the ur-barbecue in Kansas City. When my brother found out I’d been to KC, his only concern was, “Please tell me you went to Arthur Bryant’s.”

This is a brick building across from a vacant lot, with cheap tile floors and formica tables, and a long line up to the counter of meat pilgrims from every walk of life. You order your meat from the first man, and your sides from the cashier; there is clearly a method to this, and we did our best to fake our way through. And brother, let me assure you that it is worth it.

These beef burnt ends are where it’s at, moist, tender, and sopped in a fantastic dark red, complex sauce that’s only just barely sweet. There is pillowy Wonder bread (the ordering window is lined with the brightly colored bags of it) underneath, turning into a savory muck as the sauce soaks in. The pulled pork is also exemplary, but I had to go for the ends.

The fries are nothing special, I wouldn’t bother on a return trip. But the slaw is excellent, chopped and well-seasoned, not sweet, and the beans are excellent as well. These beans are not as sophisticated and balanced as the ones at Jack Stack, but they are spicy-delicious and go well with the meat. The lemonade is too fake-sweet — if you want something other than beer or iced tea, I’d go instead for the sugary, bright-red cream soda, something I’ve never seen anywhere else.

We have acceptable barbecue here in Massachusetts, particularly at Blue Ribbon, which is quite near the house, but there is really nothing like eating barbecue in its native habitats, made by people who’ve been perfecting the art for generations. Yum.

This is the quintessential American summer experience: drive up to strip mall, park outside frozen-treat stand, loiter, select delicious treat, and sit crouched on the curb licking at the freezing sweet goodness, feeling the night breeze finally blow and cool you off, just a little tiny bit.

Sheridan’s version of this involves very rich softserve, ie, custard, either plain, in a smoothie or sundae, or (most popularly) turned into a concrete, which is to say mixed up with a bunch of random solid material, like say, pretzels. Or chocolate bits and peanut butter. Or berries and marshmallow cream. Sheridan’s does distinguish itself with a wide and very pleasing array of exotica that can be mushed into your vanilla or chocolate custard, and you could come up with something exciting for just about every taste.

Mine was vanilla with pretzels, so i could taste the creamy custard and get a little hit of salt while I was at it. Tallasiandude got vanilla with marshmallow cream and butterfingers, and our pal D got chocolate custard with something in that I forget, but it was really awfully good. I think next time I might do a chocolate custard with something mocha-ish involved, and possibly almonds. Nums.

Our second day in KC we intended to hit up some more barbecue for lunch, but Oklahoma Joe’s is closed on Sunday. Two cars full of hot, hungry people needed a quick plan. Sonic? YES PLEASE.
Even though my mother has a serious jones to find a Sonic (we have none in the Massachusetts area), somehow I’d missed the idea that it was a gen-u-ine drive in. No inside tables. Just a drive thru, and even better, a bunch of drive-up slots each with their own menu and ordering intercom, and a bunch of carhops to bring you your loot.

The burgers are excellent, quite fresh tasting and the bacon is very flavorful — usually you can’t even taste the bacon on a fast-food burger should you bother with it in the first place. You can have fries but no one does, because you can also have tater tots. Yahooo! And tots with melted smoked cheddar over the top, even fake-ass processed smoked cheddar, are fantastic. Onion rings, very crisp the way I likes ’em, and in a weird sweet batter that somehow totally works.

The beverage to get is the limeade — fresh limes squeezed into a cup of sugar syrup and topped off with fizzy soda water. You can get cherry or strawberry or what-have-you, but I like mine plain. It all comes with a cellophane-wrapped peppermint balanced on top of your drink, which is pretty much pointless, but completely adorable.
We didn’t brave any of the frosty ice cream treats because there was a rumor of heading to Sheridan’s Frozen Custard later in the day… more on that to come.

Our first night in Kansas City was very hot. Hell, all our nights in Kansas City were very hot, and the days were hotter. Temps near 100, heat indexes nearer to 120. But everyone has central air, or so it seems, and all was entirely well. We waded through the humidity of the lovely 1920’s Plaza open-air mall to the cool dark well-appointed confines of Jack Stack’s barbecue palace, where we enjoyed the first of much barbecue goodness and drunken shenanigans with our friends.

To mute the roar of a glass of bourbon in a weary traveler, we ordered fried mushrooms, a pile of meaty delights with a horseradish cream to dip in, and onion rings, a mighty tower of buhgiant thick rings crusted in herb-livened cornmeal batter. Freaking awesome.

And then came the meat. Bar got KC’s Best, a plate of beef burnt ends, pork ribs, and a completely insane 3-inch-tall marbled hunk of soft moist smoky short rib, plus barbecue beans that are probably the best I’ve ever had, spicy, subtle, not too sweet, and perfectly balanced in flavor.

I ordered pork burnt ends and sliced brisket, mostly to round out the samplings given what everyone else was ordering. Both were very good, the brisket a textbook specimen of Texas barbecue (albeit with a KC-style sauce, also excellent and spicier than I expected, given the molasses-y KC sauces you get up north), and the ends smoky but drier than I would like. (Mind you, the leftovers made a noble hash for brunch later in the weekend, chopped and mixed into a pile of potatoes, fried onions, and extra sauce plus some of the hot taco sauce i found in the O’s fridge. Yums.) I should have gone with the beef burnt ends, as they were the stated specialty of the house, and distinctly more awesome… or that Crown Short Rib, holy cow, drool.
And do not miss the cheesy corn bake, a ramekin of corn kernels aswim in some loose, creamy cheese sauce and a few cubes of bacon. Hubba hubba. And I have to say, the french fries are excellent here also, perfectly crisp and golden, with creamy insides — very likely double-fried, just as they should be.

But the true star of this show, I thought, was the hickory smoked prime rib that tallasiandude got. All the soft, melting fatty tenderness of prime rib, with the smoky flavors of slow-barbecued meat. Good lord, that was delicious, and something you don’t often see on a menu. Do not miss.
Our lovely hostess D recommended the carrot cake, but we were all so very full of meat that we couldn’t possibly eat any, so we got two orders to go. At breakfast the next day we found that she was entirely correct: a dark, very moist, not overly sweet spicy cake with visible carrots, topped with a perfectly sugary cream cheese icing. Exquisite.
nom nom nom nom… yay, barbecue!

For my birthday, we gathered a bunch of dear friends and booked a table for 10 in the Cafe room of No. 9 Park. The dishes listed in the Cafe’s menu seemed actually more appealing on the whole than those in the main room, and I figured a prix fixe structure might have a better chance of mitigating this group’s natural gluttony into something vaguely approaching diet-friendly. (Let’s face it, I am not going to *actually* diet at my birthday dinner.)
Whether or not we were successful in maintaining sensible restraint can perhaps be debated, but of much greater importance is the insane deliciousness of everything we were served. We arrived very early, so we ordered cocktails at the bar (I recommend the pear martini if you like sweet, and the pegu club in general). I was famished, so we ordered 6 oysters to share, and these turned out to be very briny little fellers of exceptional quality, with mignonette (my favorite) to turn them out perfectly.
The bartender mentioned that while at the bar (6 inches from our table for 10) we could order from the main room’s menu also, but not once seated — which of course meant I scrutinized that menu for any other little treasure we might need to sample. Thereby we came into possession of a plate of exquisite homemade corn agnolotti, in a creamy mustard-yellow sauce apparently made of pureed chanterelles and cream, with tiny sauteed chanterelles and chives. I have heard that the signature plum gnocchi are stupendous, and I had every intention of returning to the bar for a plate of these as post-dessert, but we ended up too full — next time. (There will *definitely* be a next time.)
The Cafe prix fixe consists of starter, main and dessert. Uncharacteristically, many of us were drawn to the same dishes, so there were lots of plates of steak tartare and gnocchi with peas and lobster, both excellent. The tartare is actually just a tiny shade better than the lovely one over at Eastern Standard, piquant with pickles and capers, and smoothed by brioche toast points and — be still my heart — truffle aioli. The gnocchi was fluffy while still being chewy, a paradox i rather enjoy, in a creamy, lightly truffled sauce with a few big chunks of lobster and a scattering of peas and button mushroom bits.
The cod and potatoes was a big winner, with bits of sweet corn and butter-foam draped over the fish and potato, and I have to say: when a kitchen can make a dish out of simple, bland ingredients like these and have it trump a plate of confit duck (delicious itself, with cauliflower puree and dreamy duck leg and rillettes), I will follow that kitchen anywhere.
The duck liver mousse is excellent, with sweet onion topping and dark toast, and had it not been so hot outdoors I probably would have ordered that myself instead of the tartare. The roasted bone marrow arrives as a massive Stonehenge of vertical marrow bones, blanketed in a forest of flat parsley leaves and capers and flake salt — also a huge hit all around.
The gorgonzola fondue of lamb and brioche is all you could hope for — a big white crock of gray-blue melty goodness surrounded by perfectly rare bits of roast lamb and brioche triangles and a tangle of pea shoot salad. Again, had it not been so humid I would have been all over this instead of the gnocchi. The roasted sea bass I didn’t actually get any of, but there were ravings of happiness from that end of the table, as there were for the orecchiette with sausage and rapini.
Dessert offered two main options, plus selections of sorbet, ice cream, and cheeses. The lemon tart with lemon sorbet was good, but i found the lemon tart to be a bit too heavy, though the lemon sorbet was extra-puckery and exactly what I wanted after the meal. The chocolate sabayon mousse arrived as a perfect cylinder, balanced next to a bit of bitter coffee gelee atop a sheet of feuilletine mixed with chocolate-hazelnut goop. But the real hit was the frozen treats: the perfect blueberry, strawberry and apricot sorbets, and the black-olive ice cream, which really did have an effect very similar to butter-crunch, as advertised.
Somehow a bottle of brachetto d’acqui materialized, gratis from the restaurant as a birthday toast, and that sealed the deal: I *heart* No. 9 Park 4-eva.
This is a top-end restaurant, make no mistake, with perfect ingredients and well-composed flavors, and with super-restrained minimalist decor that was oddly comforting and comfortable — but what made the evening so festive and satisfying (aside from the magnificent company) was the relaxed-yet-solicitous service. The bartender was instantly willing to whip up a Diet Dr. Pepper & Jack Daniels, even though F was totally kidding about wanting one. A table of 10 monopolized the middle of the room for the entire evening, and was never rushed or hassled. We were checked on and catered to, but ultimately left alone to have whatever sort of good time we liked.
I am a very lucky girl to spend my birthday around such a table surrounded by such wonderful friends.
(photos to come — they’re on someone else’s camera…)

I am in Green Bay, WI for work, and this place does not make sense to me. I started my day at 5am in a mildly infuriating hotel at O’Hare and flew directly to my client meeting, fueled only by an energy bar and black McDonald’s coffee. We broke for lunch at 1pm and by the time we got food it was much closer to 2 and I was about to pass out from the hunger. (I confess Wisconsin has pushed me pretty well off the wagon: lunch was fish and chips with excellent curry sauce and tartar sauce, while dinner was cheese soup and deep fried cheese curds, but I’m getting to that.)
Our meetings broke up at 4:30pm, and after checking a bit of email my colleague and I headed out for an exploratory walk, mostly so as to keep me awake long enough to eat dinner. We passed some lovely early and mid 20th century buildings, including the frothy 1908 courthouse and the fabulous art deco Northern Building — but not many restaurants. One Mexican spot with a patio was locked tight as a drum at 6pm. The Stein seemed rather more like a windowless old man bar. Eventually we fetched up at the spot where we’d had lunch, an Irish pub (hence the chips and curry), so we kept on going.
We passed about 6 pubs in a row, I swear I do not exaggerate: a few Irish, a few sports, a few more generic, but all labeled “pub.” Having had pub food for lunch, we pushed on. We passed a sad looking Chinese restaurant and a semi-promising Mediterranean place called, unfortunately, FetaZ. We kept going over the bridge to the other side of the bay, where we encountered two brewpubs and then an IMMENSE farmers market. We browsed the market, mourning our inability to buy the gorgeous peaches and kohlrabies and fragrant onions, and passed a decrepit Thai spot and a small Japanese of not-encouraging appearance. Oh, and a couple more pubs, one called Keggers. We also passed more restaurants that were outright closed. The only spot we’d seen pedestrians in any quantity was the market itself. Everyone else was in the Titletown Brewery — we’d stuck our heads in to check the menu, as we’d heard of this place from the clients. It was more pub food and swarming with people, so we pressed on.
By now we were growing hungry, so we headed back, hoping to see something good on the way. We didn’t, so we headed for FetaZ. Unfortunately it was a weird takeout spot with fajita pitas, greek salad and suspect gyros (Best Greek Restaurant of 2006 and 2007 awards notwithstanding), and we didn’t really dig it, so we left. Starting to be frustrated, we walked back to where we thought we’d seen some other spots, which turned out to be closed or pubs. Are you starting to see the weird?
Finally we gave up hope of a healthy dinner and headed for Al’s Hamburgers, since 1934 purveying greasy goodness to the citizens of Green Bay. Which, in solid upstanding greasy spoon tradition, closed at 7pm, the exact moment at which we arrived. Despair! Sadness! And then confusion:
What kind of city has no useful restaurants in its downtown business district?
What kind of city has its pubs outnumbering restaurants by at least 3 to 1?
What kind of city has perhaps a third of said restaurants of apparently current operation locked up tight at the dinner hour on a weekday?
We gave up and walked back across the bridge to the Titletown Brewery, which at least was much less crowded by then. (God forbid citizens be out past 7.) And you know, Wisconsin may be weird but it is well known for its cheese, so we had to try the beer-and-cheese soup (spicy and rich, basically a tarted-up welsh rarebit sauce with a few diced vegetables to support the argument that it’s a soup). And it is beyond my capacities to pass up a deep-fried cheese curd. These were excellent, very crisp and of a delicate flavor that demanded attention. Don’t mindlessly pop these, and certainly do not drown them out completely in the tomato sauce provided. I got a salad to balance the protein, with apples and pears and cranberries — it should have been good, but I didn’t really grasp that all the fruit was sauteed with onions and poured over the salad piping hot. Steaming hot apples and onions topped with salad dressing and walnuts is weird, and in kind of a bad way. I ate a few to get in the fruit, picked out the cranberries, and left the rest. Blargh.

Happy update: We went to Al’s the next day for lunch, and the burgers are great. Messy handformed patties grilled with onions right in, topped with melty processed yellow cheese, and resting on a pillowy white bun. Redemption!