December, 2010
December 31st, 2010
Obama in Pictures
The official White House flickr page included White House Photographer Pete Souza’s favorite pictures of 2010. I think it does a great job of capturing the accomplishments, leadership and humanity of President Obama:
December 31st, 2010
Detroit, Day 2
It should surprise absolutely nobody who knows me that in a weekend trip designed around attending a sporting event, I arrived in Detroit without tickets to the game in question, the Packers at the Lions. I had no fears at all about getting tickets for less than face price and when I woke up Sunday morning, I was even more confident. See, it started snowing at some point the night before, it was still snowing, and the weather report predicted snow all day. Even though Ford Field has a roof, snow would keep people from leaving their homes. The Lions sucked, the Packers were without Aaron Rodgers, and a day full of snow meant it would be a buyer’s market.
Before the game, we had to eat. We weren’t going to top In the previous day but we had a decent line-up of eateries to get through. We started in the downtown neighborhood of Greektown at Niki’s, another Detroit style pizzeria that was hyped in Alan Richman’s GQ article. You’ll have to wait for my forthcoming review on Serious Eats or just be happy with the conclusion: good, but not great, and certainly not nearly as good as Buddy’s or Loui’s. After our pizza brunch, with time to kill before the scalpers would be sufficiently desperate, we went to the Greektown Casino to rock the nickle slots for a bit.
$2 or $3 later, we braved the snow for our walk to the stadium and it quickly became clear that we were getting into this game for $20/ticket. After a little dancing around with scalpers, we found some non-scalpers with extra tickets they were about to eat and took them off their hands for $20.
We didn’t really care where the seats were as we planned on finding seats in what we rightly suspected was going to be a stadium with plenty of empty ones, but we actually got a pair around the 20 yard line in a low row in the upper deck. We were happy enough with our seats that we stayed in them for the whole game.
The game was pretty boring. No points were scored in the first half, the Packers kicked a field goal in the third quarter and the Lions scored a touchdown midway through the fourth quarter. On the last drive of the game, the Packers threatened to score but an incomplete pass to the end zone on 4th down with seconds to go sealed the Lions first win against a division opponent since 2007.
After the game, it was still snowing and now it was really starting to stick when landing. Detroit’s budget troubles have apparently affected the city’s ability to get an adequate fleet of snow plows, but we pushed ahead and made our way to Motor City Brewing Works to have some drinks, eat some pizza and watch some late afternoon football.
Unfortunately, this was apparently the only brew pub in America without a television. So after a round of drinks and a couple of good and fairly unique pizzas (forthcoming on Slice), we headed out to find another venue where we could watch the games. Driving through the snowy streets of Detroit, it was apparent we were in a part of town that was lacking a comfortable football-watching establishment, so we got on the highway and headed towards our next suburban eating destination.
After a quick stop to watch some late afternoon football at a brew pub chain whose name I can’t remember, we arrived at Tomatoes Apizza, the fourth pizzeria we visited that Alan Richman named to America’s 25 best pizzerias and the sixth place we tried pizza at in two days in Detroit.
We started with a pepperoni pizza for a couple of reasons. First, Richman identified it as the best pepperoni he’d ever had on pizza. And second, pepperoni is clearly the king of toppings in Detroit. All three classic Detroit-style pizzerias featured pepperoni the way old school Chicago places do sausage. Ordering this pizza turned out to be a very good idea as the pepperoni, which was a little thicker cut than is typical, was delicious, fatty, crisp and chewy.
Bonus Picture
This really was an exceptional pizza all the way around. Cooked in a coal oven, the New Haven style pies are very thin but still maintained some crispness.
Cooking in a coal or wood-burning oven is clearly a major challenge. When dealing with high heat that routinely exceeds 800 degrees, it’s easy for pizza-makers to cross the line from charred to burned. On other other hand, there are people so scared of burning (or worn down by complaints from idiot customers who think any black at all means burned) that they consistently undercook the pizzas. Take a look at the picture above; that’s perfection.
I wouldn’t say we were still hungry at this point, but this pizza was so damned good that we went ahead and got a second one, this time a Magherita with buffalo mozzarella. It was missing a little something known as meat, but this was one sensational pizza.
We were well past full at that point, but on the way back to the hotel, we stopped at two more places known for putting out top quality sliders. The one above is from Bates.
And this one is from Greene’s. All sliders will appear in a post on A Hamburger Today once I’m able to figure out something interesting to say about them. They all use the same buns and use steam to make low grade beef delicious.
Anyhow, that was the end of a food-filled football trip to Detroit. Perhaps two of the most productive days ever spent in Detroit by tourists who did not set foot in a government building, a museum, or a automobile company headquarters. Good times!
Food, Sports, Travel | No Comments
December 29th, 2010
Tucker Carlson is Still a Dick
Here’s his latest attempt to make a name for himself:
And here’s the greatest thing to ever happen to Carlson: