Travel
March 21st, 2011
Indianapolis 2011
For the second consecutive year, I went to Indianapolis for the Bulls game at Conseco Fieldhouse, the best basketball stadium I’ve seen since Chicago Stadium died. This time, rather than rush back after the game, I stayed overnight. There were a few benefits of that: I wasn’t exhausted when I got home, I got to explore Indy’s night life a little, and I got to eat a lot more.
First, a story about the tickets. As all three readers know, I usually prefer to buy tickets on the street outside of whatever sporting event I attend. The tickets are cheaper that way and the haggling is fun. But after my trip to Milwaukee for the Bulls game a couple weeks ago where having tickets ahead of time was relaxing, I decided to poke around on eBay and Stubhub a few weeks ago. And on the former, I found an auction that was designed for me.
A young fellow named Brandon lives in Missouri where he grew up in the same town as Tyler “Psycho T” Hansbrough, a player on the Indiana Pacers. Friday night was Tyler Hansbrough bobblhead night. Unlike most bobblehead giveaways, wherein the first certain number of fans who enter the stadium get a doll, the Pacers actually sell certain tickets with coupons to pick up a bobblhead on certain nights. Young Brandon bought tickets with plans on traveling from Springfield, Missouri to Indianapolis to see his hero play and get a bobblehead. But plans changed and Brandon would not be making the trip.
He turned to eBay where he put up an interesting listing. For a mere $5.50, Brandon would sell his two tickets, face value of about $70 after Ticketmaster fees, if the buyer would pick up the two bobbleheads and ship them to Missouri. Amazingly, the auction was up on eBay for over five full days without a buyer when I stumbled across it. The purchase was a no-brainer.
Tickets in hand, Psycho P picked me up at 8:00 AM on Friday and we headed towards Indiana. First stop breakfast at Old Fashioned Donuts. We arrived just in time as there was just one apple fritter left.
With most of the fritter and a couple of donuts behind it, we were sufficiently satiated to cross state lines and head to Indiana. Some of you may remember Psycho P from Burger Day 2.0. Given the importance of that food category to our relationship, our first stop in Indiana was at Schoop’s. I covered Schoop’s last year for A Hamburger Today. The place has won raves all over the place, but other than the milkshake, my meal there was shit. I gave it another try on Friday and was very glad I did.
Honestly, this was about as good as fast food burgers get. I did take off some of the lettuce and mayo because there was just too much for a single patty to handle, but everything else was flawless. Schoop’s is famous largely due to the cooking style: Smashed burgers! The textural benefit of the style are the crisp edges that form around the burger. Last time, there was nothing crisp about the oil-soaked patty. This time, it was cooked to perfection.
After leaving Schoop’s in Merrillville, we went ahead and finished up the boring drive to Indianapolis. Well, boring except for this sign:
There are certain places in most cities that I consider mandatory stops when I visit. I wouldn’t visit Milwaukee without going to Kopp’s, Los Angeles without going to Stan’s Donuts, or to Cincinnati without going to Graeter’s Ice Cream. In Indianapolis, my must-visit is actually a savory choice: Shapiro’s Deli.
More to come sooner enough on Serious Eats about this magnificent sandwich, but for now I will simply say this is outstanding corned beef on the best rye bread I have ever eaten. I miss it already.
Shapiro’s has been pleasing Jews in Indianapolis for over a century. I decided to honor my roots with my first can of Cel-Ray in years. For those unaware, this is a kind of pop only enjoyed by old Jewish men. And it sucks. I had two sips, and the second was only because I was really thirsty and out of water.
Shapiro’s also has a fine baked goods section and we tried a macaroon and a peanut butter whoopie pie. The latter was good but not great. The coconut macaroon was, by a wide margin, the best I’ve ever had.
After finishing up at Shapiro’s, we checked into the Embassy Suites in downtown Indianapolis. After a short rest in the room, we decided to balance out our two days of gluttony with a quick trip to the gym where I ran for the first time in months. I ran longer and faster than I planned and my foot still hurts as I write this 3 days later. Sweet.
After the gym, we quickly showered and drove over to Napolese, a relatively new pizzeria that sells Neapolitan pies. More coming on Slice next week, but they were pretty good. The flavors were very good, but undercooked crusts were a problem. We wolfed down the pizza and then headed back to the hotel to take advantage of the free drinks before the game. Note to self: when getting free booze from the Embassy Suites, choose mixed drinks over straight alcohol; they’re not using the good stuff.
We got to the stadium, picked up the bobbleheads, and headed to our seats. The first three quarters sucked. The Pacers are not very good and the Bulls played like crap. Derrick Rose took over in the fourth quarter and pretty much single-handedly brought the Bulls back from a double-digit deficit. With less than 2 seconds to go and the Bulls down 3, Rose drew a foul while shooting a 3-pointer. The man who could not make a free throw in the NCAA Championship game a few years ago showed how much he’s grown a a player when he calmly drained all three to force overtime. Unfortunately, that’s where the good times ended. The Bulls were terrible in overtime and lost the game. On the bright side, I have adopted Keith Bogans as my choice for the most counterproductive pile of steaming shit to don a Bulls uniform since Kirk Hinrich left.
After the game, we dropped off the bobbleheads and headed to Ball & Biscuit, a craft cocktail spot in downtown Indy. I counted 3 douchebags and no hipsters in the laid back bar. I don’t know booze well enough to comment intelligently, but my Pimm’s Cup and the other 2 drinks were all excellent. In each drink, the bartender took some liberties with what was printed on the menu, and every twist was successful.
On Saturday, we got up and made two decisions. First, our planned return to the gym was not going to happen. Second, even though we had two more eating stops planned on our way out of town, we would not miss out on the free breakfast at the hotel. I took two bites of my crappy omelet (Egg Beaters suck), but I did enjoy a couple of yogurts. After breakfast, we checked out and headed to the post office to ship some bobbleheads before making our way to the glorious wealthy suburb of Carmel.
It was an absolutely gorgeous day, so we didn’t mind the half hour wait at Bub’s, a burger joint in downtown Carmel. More to come on this place on A Hamburger Today, but these were some outstanding basic burgers.
Psycho P contemplates the meaning of a road trip with me
Our final stop of the trip was at Pizzology, which was Indianapolis’s first foray into a pizza scene that includes little things like caring deeply about the ingredients. The review has been written and will appear on Slice on Wednesday.
After Pizzology, the sad moment was upon us when all that was left was to drive home. The uneventful ride was highlighted with this message of truth:
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March 3rd, 2011
Milwaukeeeeeeeee
On Saturday, I headed to Milwaukee to see the Bulls take on the Bucks. And since we were making the trip, we decided to tack on a full day of eating.
I’ve been to Milwaukee about a dozen times and I’m pretty sure that every time but once I’ve stopped at Kopp’s at some point. This trip was no exception.
Kopp’s always offers four flavors: chocolate, vanilla and two flavors of the day. The three of us split a vanilla, a grasshopper fudge and a heath bar. All were delicious. The difference between custard and ice cream is pretty simple: custard is ice cream that is made with at least 10% milkfat and 1.4% egg yolk. What that basically means is that custard is necessarily creamier like gelato. Also like gelato, there is far less air in custard than in traditional ice cream. The result is a particularly rich and creamy treat. Want to see a close up?
And because we were there and we were hungry and Kopp’s butter burgers are awesome, we went ahead and split one of those too.
Because I’m so devoted to Kopp’s, I’d never once tried out another custard shop in Milwaukee even though there are a number of local favorites. I decided to take advantage of the day of eating and directed us over to Leon’s to see how it stacked up. There are plenty of Milwaukeeans who think Leon’s is better than Kopp’s. I’m here to tell you that every last one of those people are idiots. We tried the vanilla, butter pecan and raspberry.
The vanilla and butter pecan were fine, though neither was as creamy or as flavorful as Kopp’s. The raspberry was simply atrocious; it tasted like cold wax. Leon’s has no room inside and since it was cold out we ate in the car. If I had been outside, I would have spat out the raspberry. I am officially a permanent devotee of Kopp’s.
After the custard, we moved along to an old school sausage shop: Eastern European Sausage. This place, which was open for decades, closed up shop a couple of years ago, and reopened a few months later after customers kept nagging. I learned about the place on LTH and it was a cool little shop, but there’s better stuff to be had at Gene’s and Paulina right here in Chicago.
Here’s a few sausages I picked up:
The shop did have a cold cut that might not exist in Chicago:
That there is “Blood ‘n Tongue,” part blood sausage and part tongue. This one did nothing for me; I ate one slice and tossed the rest. Fortunately, like all of the food at this place, the prices were low.
It was a snowy day in Milwaukee but kitty-corner from the sausage shop was a little taco stand. We asked the people in the sausage shop and they said they’d never tried it but there was a line at the stand every day. That was all we need to hear; it was time for an unscheduled stop on our eating tour.
The taco didn’t rock my world, but it was damn good. The lady running the stand made the tortillas to order. I don’t mean she took tortillas out of a package and tossed them on the griddle. I mean she took some dough out of a bowl, pressed it, and then cooked it. It was 20 degrees out and snowing and I got a homemade tortilla cooked to order. I opted for the barbacoa and the dude there helping out had to go inside to get the meat. It was tender and flavorful, but there was no question it could have been fresher. Still, at $1.50, I was very happy I made the stop.
From there it was on to the stop I was most looking forward to: Jake’s Deli. Jake’s is a Milwaukee institution but the two times I’ve been to Milwaukee since I heard of it were both on Sunday and this Jewish deli closes on the Lord’s son’s day.
Let me cut to the chase here: This was the best corned beef I’ve ever had. This thick hand-cut mouth-watering, jaw-droppingly tender meat was just extraordinary. There’s a lean version available, but there is simply no good reason to pass on any chance to get this perfect meat.
I split the corned beef and a pastrami sandwich so I could try both. The pastrami was awesome and every bit as tender as the corned beef. I would have liked more seasoning on it, but that’s not a major complaint.
I also got to try the medium salami and was very impressed. It paled in comparison to the corned beef and pastrami because, well, it’s salami. But on the salami sandwich scale, this one knows few peers.
From Jake’s it was on to the part of the trip I played no role in planning: the Milwaukee Art Museum. It was a museum and it had art. Want to see some pictures?
That’s right boys and girls, finger paint!
This piece was dedicated to the person who thought it belonged in an art museum. Soon to be displayed is my upcoming masterpiece, which will spell out DUMBASS in a counterclockwise circle.
Okay, this one I liked. There was also a Frank Lloyd Wright special exhibit that was good. I learned that as cool as his buildings are, the ones he designed that never got built were even better.
The real highlight of the museum is the new building itself, designed by Santiago Calatrava, the man behind the never-to-be-built Spire in Chicago. You can see the exterior above. And here ‘s a picture of the inside ceiling featuring my traveling companions the Hip Hipster and Zeus.
We weren’t hungry but we had a couple of hours to kill before the game so we headed over to the Milwaukee Public Market. After some coffee and browsing, we settled in at the St. Paul Fish Company.
I had a grouper sandwich that I was very happy with. Nice crisp batter around a well cooked fresh slab of flaky fish.
We also snuck in some cheese curds from the cheese shop. Like all fried cheese, these were excellent. And after dinner, it was time for the main event of the evening.
We bought our seats a few weeks ago and got three of the cheapest in the house – $10 without Ticketmaster fees, $17 or so with them. At the time we bought them, there were a ton of empty seats and our plan was to find some unsold seats when we got there to move into. Unfortunately, a shit ton of Bulls fans decided to follow us to Milwaukee and the game was pretty much sold out. We spent the first quarter in our seats.
Thanks to my trusty binoculars, we found a sweet set of five seats to move into for the second quarter. About halfway through the quarter, some douchebag and his four kids from Chicago showed up. We were ready for that and moved into the three seats one row up. With about three minutes to go in the quarter, three more Chicago douchebags strolled into the stadium and we had to move.
We moved over a couple of sections for the rest of the half and I spotted some seats across the way pretty much at center court that were open. A lot of seats actually – pretty much two empty rows. At halftime we went over there to discover a bunch of coats on the seats – apparently some high school cross country team was sitting there so we headed back to our lovely corner for the third quarter.
Found some sweet seats on the other side of the stadium for the fourth quarter. So at the end of the night, we saw a Bulls win and got to enjoy a variety of views from the upper deck. All in all, an excellent time at the Bradley Center. The only way it could have been better is if Brian Scalabrine had gotten into the game, something that seemed likely until that midget Earl Boykins had the quarter of his life and brought the Bucks a bit too close for Scalabrine time.
And so a completely fulfilling trip to Milwaukee came to a close. Good times.
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!
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December 27th, 2010
Detroit, Day 1
I’ve been to Detroit a few times and have seen every museum there that I need to visit. Raj has no interest in museums. So when we went to Detroit for the weekend two weeks ago, we had two goals: food and football. Before going on, a special massive thanks to Raj for taking a break from his normal 95% vegetarian lifestyle and for rocking an automobile with GPS to make a spectacular two-day event possible.
Megabus was awesome once again, getting me to Detroit in just under 6 hours, which included a 20 minute break at a truck stop. A car would have been about an hour faster, but I don’t have one. And if I did, it would have cost me more than the $18 bus fare in gas money. I got to Detroit just before 3 in the afternoon on Saturday. I left my hotel at 6:30 in the morning on Monday. In the less than two days in between, I tried pizza from six different places, burgers from five (4 were sliders), bought some excellent candy in Canada where I also made my first visit to Tim Horton’s, and went to the Lions game.
Coney Islands
Raj, who drove in from Cleveland, picked me up at the bus station and we went a mile away to taste a duo of chili dogs.
Lafayette Coney Island
American Coney Island
There may well be no food that Detroiters love more than their chili dogs, which they inexplicably call Coney Islands. These things are all over the city and I don’t fully understand why. They’re not bad – all beef hot dogs in a natural casing and covered with a chili that’s typically made from beef heart – but they’re not too exciting. Perhaps it’s one of those things you need to be raised on to truly crave. The two oldest purveyors in Detroit, Lafayette Coney Island and American Coney Island, were started by two brothers, are fierce rivals, and are right next door to each other so we tried both.
There are fierce loyalists for each place amongst Detroiters. I ate half a dog from each place within three minutes of one another and I can say this: anyone who tells you there’s a major difference between the two is a goddamned liar. Oh, and anyone who tells you either place is must-stop when in Detroit is wrong. Well, they’re kind of right because any culinary tour of Detroit has to include a Coney Island for the sake of thoroughness. But anyone who says you need to try one because they’re delicious is deeply confused.
Buddy’s
The next stop was in Hamtramck to check out the original location of Buddy’s, a classic Detroit pizzeria. For those unaware, Detroit has it’s own style of pizza, one with a thick crust similar to Sicilian or sheet pan pizza, but one that is crisper thanks to some extra fat of some sort worked into the recipe.
Before getting to Buddy’s at around 4:00 in the afternoon, the hot dogs were all I’d eaten all day as I was saving myself for Detroit. I worried that my hunger was playing tricks on me when the pizza arrived because it looked absolutely sensational. It was no mirage; this pizza was outstanding.
The sauce was a little sparse for my tastes and the sausage was merely average, but everything else about the pizza was outstanding. Great crust, loads of cheese, and some extra special greasiness made it every single bit as good as it looks.
Detroit style pizzas are sold in two sizes, four squares and 8 squares. Since there were only two of us, we got the smaller size, but I think if I were to return with 4 people, I’d get two smalls rather than a large. The reason? Every single piece on the smaller pizzas are from a corner, which means they have two sides that get the extra crunch and chew that comes from touching the edge of the pan.
Loui’s
As we continued north on our way to our hotel, the sweet ass Red Roof Inn in Troy, MI ($91 for two nights, including tax!), we stopped off at Loui’s, a second famous purveyor of Detroit style pizza. Check out the awesome decor:
The place is decorated with old wine bottles, the menus look like they haven’t been updated for years, the seats are covered in sweet pleather, and on a Saturday night in the winter, the line was out the door by 5:30. Guess why?
Because the pizza is absolutely exceptional. It had all of the positives of Buddy’s and none of the negatives. There was plenty of sauce and we got pepperoni, which is much more popular in Detroit than Chicago.
It was a mess, but it was a sensational mess. The cheese is not mozzarella, but rather a secret blend that is a shade tangy. It really was a flawless pizza; and definitely one of the best I ate all year.
What really catapulted Loui’s past Buddy’s was the crust, which was chewier, crispier, and greasier than Buddy’s. Every style of pizza has one place that makes it better than anyone else and I’m convinced that for Detroit style, that place is Loui’s.
Bray’s
Detroit has a great tradition of sliders, a food that in Chicago is only available at White Castle. Understand that when I say sliders, I mean traditional thin pieces of crap beef steamed into oblivious and covered with grilled onions and served on a soft, soft roll.
Bray’s is about a block from Loui’s and with that donkey statue on the roof, there was no way I was going to miss it. Unfortunately, the statue may signify what the meat is made out of. More likely, the jackass represents any customer who goes into the place. Everything about this slider was crap. The meat and onions were overcooked and devoid of flavor and the bun was stale. Fortunately, the rest of the sliders I had in Detroit were considerably better.
Oh, Canada!
Completely full of pizza, the night still young, and only one meal remaining, Raj and I had to figure out something to do. We were both recovering from colds, so drinking was out. And as tempting as it was to lie down in the hotel, we willed ourselves out. With nothing we could think of to do in Detroit, we decided to head south (yes, south) to Canada! This idea turned out to be stupid and brilliant.
Stupid, because the line to get into Canada took us about 45 minutes, giving us just about half an hour in Windsor before we had to head back. Brilliant because, in addition to checking out Tim Horton’s (good coffee, mediocre doughnuts) and a Canadian casino, I got to indulge in some awesome candy. See, due to its membership in the Commonwealth, Canada gets access to British candies. Mass produced candy in England is substantially superior to the American equivalent. Canadians also have Macintosh, a toffee I’ve been infatuated with since I first went to summer camp in the Boundary Waters.
The Mars, which is actually much more like our Milky Way, was multiple times better than what we get here in the U.S. All of the flavors, the chocolate, the caramel and especially the nougat, are all significantly more intense and natural-tasting than what we get. Similarly, the Werther’s toffee is richer and and substantially creamier than the American version. But the biggest star of the candy portion of my adventure was the strawberry “yogurt & fruit” candy that’s also made by Storck, the company that makes Werther’s. This hard candy tastes like a bowl of fresh strawberries and cream. Next time I’m in Canada, I’ll be getting multiple bags of this stuff.
Back to the USA
Remember that 45 minute wait to get into Canada? The wait to get back to the U.S. was about two minutes. There was literally one car in front of us and there were 3 or 4 open lanes. After successfully answering the border guard’s trick questions (what state is your car registered in?), we headed to Forest Grill, the restaurant I’d been dreaming of since I first made plans to go to Detroit months ago.
Chef Brian Polcyn is on the national map thanks to his mastery of charcuterie. He is the co-author of the book, Charcuterie, although his co-author Michael Ruhlman is largely referred to as the author for reasons I don’t understand. We don’t, after all, refer to the translator of Homer as being by the translator rather than Homer. I digress. The charcuterie plate comes with three meats, selected by the chef. One of them was cured pork shoulder that was really lightly seasoned. It was exceptionally tender, but not what I was hoping for from the master. Same goes for the paprika-spiced Hungarian salami. But the pork confit, friend and served with tomato confit, was worth the price of the while platter. It was one of those things you eat and are just amazed at how good food can be.
Almost as delicious as the pork confit/tomato confit combination was the lobster, apple and pancetta risotto. I’m not even that big of a risotto fan; I almost never order it. But the combination of flavors forced me to get it and I don’t regret a thing. I ate a little over half of it that night even though I was full beyond belief, and finished it off the next morning when it was even better.
I also had pizza and a burger at Forest Grill, but you’ll have to wait for the reviews on Serious Eats to hear about them. In the meantime, here’s a preview:
One more stop
From the “are you freaking kidding me files” comes one final stop. There’d been so much talk of sliders that we had to stop at Hunter House Hamburgers, one of the best places in town, on the way back to the hotel from the restaurant. It was awesome and because it too will be part of a future Serious Eats post, I will only offer you a preview:
November 19th, 2010
Los Angeles 2010 Day 4
After the massive meal at Jitlada followed by a milkshake and donuts the night before, I could have taken Sunday off from eating. There are two major benefits to living in California. One, all sorts of readily available delicious produce. And two, sports are on TV much earlier.
After a morning that involved watching most of the Bears game, which was inexplicably a national telecast, we headed out to one of my host’s favorite places to eat sandwiches, Bay Cities Italian Deli in Santa Monica.
Mrs. G’Nice and I split two sandwiches. One was the Godmother, pictured above, came with Genoa salami, mortadella coppacola, Ham, prosciutto, and provolone, and was topped with mayo, mustard, onions, pickles, tomatoes, lettuce, Italian dressing & mild pepper. The other was a more simple soppressata with fresh mozzarella. That one also came topped with all of the accoutrements although I ate it separately on that much more simple sandwich. The bread, a chewy rustic ciabatta, was outstanding. The meats were fine but nothing exciting.
After lunch, we did some grocery shopping. I have a Costco card any my hosts don’t so we went there where they were absurdly restrained in their shopping. From there we went to Trader Joe’s. And now we were ready to go home where the hostess made dinner:
Yes, after a weekend of gluttony and feasting on some amazing food, my final meal was a salad. A good salad, mind you, but not the most filling meal. In fact, none of us were filled. So before settling in for a movie for the night, we made a quick run back to Milk.
This magnificent creation is the Strawberry Shortcake shake. It’s made with vanilla ice cream, malted milk, strawberry sorbet and buttery crunch cookie crumbles. It wasn’t quite as good as the Mikie Way Malt I had the night before, but it was very close and I was in the mood for something fruit.
And with nothing but a morning bus ride to the airport remaining, my excellent 3.5 days in Los Angeles came to an end. Next time: More food!
Major thanks go to my great hosts. Look how happy I made them:
Picture removed.
Food, Travel | 2 Comments
November 18th, 2010
Los Angeles 2010 Day 3
So up until now, I’ve left out a key detail. I was pretty freaking exhausted. I slept for five hours on Wednesday night and left my house at 6:45 Thursday morning to walk 1.5 miles to drop Fred off at the kennel before hopping on the train to the airport. In LA that night, I was up until about midnight local time running around and eating. Then on Friday, I had a ridiculously long day that included me dozing off at the Clippers game.
Greg had class Saturday mid-morning until the early afternoon so I was on my own. My plan was to get up and go to the Santa Monica Market. On my previous visit to LA, I was blown away by the Hollywood Market and Santa Monica is supposed to be even better. But my exhaustion finally won out and I didn’t wake up until 9:30 on Saturday morning. With a 1:30 lunch reservation, I would have had to spend an hour on the bus to get to Santa Monica in order to spend an hour there and then hop a bus for another hour to get to lunch. I decided to sit on my ass for a while before heading out early to walk around before Mozza.
Perhaps the best thing ever to happen to eggplant
Mozza was the third and final place I was determined to revisit while in LA (Stan’s and Bulgarini being the others). Greg Nice and his opposite-of-positive wife had no interest in going, so I took advantage of him being in class and her being at work to go with some cousins (my mother’s first cousin and his wife and daughter). We started with the Eggplant caponata was an amazing combination of flavors with so much going on that figuring guessing the ingredients would be a colossal waste of time. There’s sweet, there’s spicy, there’s herbishness, there’s savory, and there’s a whole lot of umami richness. Fortunately, the recipe is here so I now know there is sugar, cinnamon, cocoa, hot chili flakes, mint, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, pine nuts, thyme, onions, pepper, currants, tomato sauce and a whole mess of roasted eggplant. It’s too complicated for me to try at home, but it’s good enough that I can’t imagine returning to Mozza and not getting it.
As amazing as the eggplant was, I probably liked the fried squash blossoms filled with ricotta even more. I was a little worried that the delicate squash blossom would be thoroughly dominated but the batter was tempura-like in its lightness and the creamy ricotta complemented rather than overwhelmed. For a pizzeria to put this much effort into the non-pizza items is really a treat.
I love the pizza at Mozza. For those unfamiliar with the place, it’s a joint effort from the culinary minds of Mario Batali and Nancy Silverton. Everyone knows who he is but she’s actually the bigger force here. Silverton is widely known as one of the best breadsmiths on the planet and her pizza crust is a remarkably crisp and chewy piece of bread. The one problem with it is that sometimes the pizzas feel more like a bread with independent toppings rather than a unified pizza. That was how I felt about the pizza with Coach farm goat cheese, leeks, scallions, garlic and bacon. I liked it but there were leftovers.
I wouldn’t have ordered the mushroom and tallegio pizza but it was delicious. These mushrooms were packed with flavor and tangy tallegio makes for an excellent pizza cheese. I would have liked this pizza more if there were sauce on it, but it’s clear that Mozza is more geared towards white pizzas.
I tried seven pizzas on my first visit to Mozza. I tried 3 more this time. The best pizza of the bunch, by a decent margin, is this squash blossom and burrata pizza with tomato sauce. Light, rich, sweet, creamy, crisp, chewy and altogether freaking delicious. At $23, it’s the most expensive pizza in the place by $5, presumably due to the large lumps of burrata. This one was the pizza that I’d wished I’d tried last time and after a year and a half of regret, it was every bit as good as I dreamed it would be.
Going to Mozza and not getting dessert should be illegal. We got three. Pictured above was my choice, caramel gelato topped with marshmallow sauce, caramel and Spanish peanuts, all of which were on a chewy caramel wafer. I don’t know what took so long for sweet/salt desserts to catch on, but that’s a fad I really hope lasts forever. This stuff was amazing.
We also got Mozza’s most famous dessert, the butterscotch budino. This picture is actually from my visit in March 2009 but it looked and tasted the same. I said it last year and I’ll say it again: Rich and creamy do not begin to describe the succulent treat. Toss in some caramel and some sea salt and you’ve got about as good a pudding as exists. The third dessert, a simple bowl of housemade sorbet for my allergic-to-everything cousin, was also outstanding. She got chocolate and passionfruit which were merely delicious, and a scoop of coconut which was near Bulgarini quality.
After lunch I went back to the homestead to join Greg Nice where we hung out for a few hours before dinner. Tim Dog left his wife and child in Irvine and was nice enough to drive up to join us for dinner. We made it over to Jitlada around 7:40. Jitlada is a Thai restaurant that specializes in southern Thai food. It’s immensely popular and the back story as to how that came to be is pretty interesting.
There’s a dude named Erik M. who used to live in Chicago and now lives in LA. He was a frequent poster on LTH and he’s a Thai food fiend who also speaks Thai. He reported on Jitlada in 2007 on LTH and translated the menu into English. He also posted on LA’s Chowhound page. About a month later, a respected Chowhounder went and seconded Erik’s declaration that the place was amazing. A month or two after that, Jonathan Gold went and waxed eloquently about the place, solidifying its place in the LA food scene. Armed with menu suggestions from Erik M., we headed to Jitlada where we met up with another college friend. Randomly, not long after we sat down, a pair of friends of Greg’s friends sat down at the table next to us. We decided to merge, increasing our ordering power to 7.
Pork Crying Tiger
I don’t know enough about Thai food to speak particularly intelligently on what I are. What I can say is this: I have never had Thai food as close to as good as this meal. The Crying Tiger Pork is one of the restaurant’s self-proclaimed featured dishes and for good reason. The pork was a flavor explosion and the accompanying sauce brought some excellent heat.
Cooling things off and bringing some sweetness was a great coconut mango salad topped with cashew and shrimp. This one was pretty straightforward, but that didn’t make the blend of textures and flavors any less delicious.
Recommended by Erik M. and Rachael Ray was the shredded catfish salad with chilies. Neither too fishy nor too spicy, this unique crisp dish went over very well.
Apparently tumeric is all the rage in southern Thailand and this off-menu fried tumeric chicken was outstanding.
Not a big deal that the picture of the spicy beef stir-fry with lemongrass is blurry. This was the least eaten dish at the table and the only dud of the night.
This one falls under the “I don’t know what I’m talking about” category. I think this is called Jungle Noodles with chicken but the interwebs tell me Jungle Noodles are extremely spicy. This one had some heat, but it wasn’t overpowering at all. So either I have the name wrong, the restaurant dulled it down for my non-Thai table, or the internets are wrong. Who really cares? The noodle soup was good.
Among the absolute best dishes of the night/my trip/my last several months was Goong Pear, fried shrimp and fried basil with a spicy curry sauce. The extra crisp breading was so good that more than one of us picked up stray pieces of it long after the shrimp and basil were gone. What’s that? Fried basil? For reals? Yes:
Mudfish doesn’t sound like a particularly good eating treat and it turns out that it isn’t. This dense dried fish was kind of boring but the sweet and hot curry it came in was not. Filling out the bowl was some water spinach. The curry was outstanding and had me thinking out loud that I’d like to come back to Jitlada and just do a curry sampler.
When deciding between a couple of soups, I asked our server for advice. This kind woman, who somehow managed to understand my butchering of her native language as I read off most of our order from a piece of paper I’d brought with me, convinced me to try this tumeric-seasoned soup with chicken and kaffir lime leaves. She said I could get the other soups at other places but that they were the only ones with this particular soup, which is called tom kai baan tom khii-min.
Here’s my little bowl of soup without all the pesky and delicious broth in the way. As I sit here typing this and thinking about the soup I am literally salivating. Freaking fantastic.
I wouldn’t have considered getting pad see ew as it’s something I’ve had plenty of times before. This was one of the choices by the couple I didn’t know. It was a particularly good version and was absolutely loaded with seafood. I’m not sure I’d get it again but that’s only because there are so many other more interesting choices. I certainly don’t regret eating it.
These shrimp were also ordered by the people I don’t know and I’m not really sure what they were. Check out the silverware in the top of the picture to give you an idea how big the shrimp were. They were cooked perfectly and covered in a thick sauce that had more seasonings in it than I’d care to guess. Very good, but about twice as expensive as the average dish at Jitlada (most are in the $10-$12 range).
The final dish of the evening was green curry with fish balls stuffed with egg yolks. This one was very, very good but it was more unique than it was delicious. The curry was, like every other curry we sampled, excellent.
The fish part of the fish ball was kind of a tough fish meatball. I liked it and would recommend people try it, but I’m not sure I’d order it again. Jitlada’s menu is huge and on my next visit (there will be one), I’ll want to try mostly new items. The egg yolk was particularly flavorful. There are rumors that it’s a duck egg, but in my limited experience, those are bigger and darker. I suspect this is more of an MSG-enhanced egg but who knows.
We skipped dessert because we had milk shakes on the brain. I’d heard great things about the toasted pecan shake at a trendy Hollywood burger spot nearby and the plan was to stop there on the way home. But at dinner, discussion had turned to donuts and the decision was made that we should get donuts and shakes for dessert. I had nothing to do with the decision but I certainly wasn’t going to object.
We said our goodbyes to the couple we ran in to and then the original five split up to get dessert to take to Greg’s house. G’Nice, wife and Timmy went for donuts while Emily and I went to get shakes. Upon our arrival, I learned that shakes are no longer on the menu. I was ready to cry when Emily suggested Milk.
It was 10:50 and Milk closes at 11. I called and they agreed to take a phone order even though we might not make it by 11. Very cool on their part. I had no idea what they had so I just asked what their most popular shakes were and I ended up with the The MILKIE Way Malt, which is vanilla ice cream, malted milk, chocolate chips and caramel-chocolate swirl. Milk shakes should not cost $7 but this one might have been worth it.
It turns out that donuts are an ideal accompaniment for donuts. These beauties were from a place called SK’s. They weren’t on the level of Stan’s or Donut Man, but they were still very good. Really, all fresh donuts are good.
Oh, there was a celebrity sighting that day. Now, if you tell someone you ate at Mozza and Jitlada and saw a celebrity and asked the person to guess where, the are going to guess the former. But seated near us at the decidedly not fancy Thai Restaurant were the remarkably shiny Jerry O’Connnell and his wife, the woman formerly known as Rebecca Romijn-Stamos.
November 17th, 2010
Los Angeles 2010 Day 2
While I did pretty well my first day in LA, my second day put it to shame. G’Nice is a dear friend but he has two fatal flaws when it comes to being a culinary tour guide. First, the boy simply does not like food enough. And second, a decade of living and driving in LA has left him a shell of a man who wets his pants at the thought of driving on a highway.
I had a couple of places I wanted to get to that were a decent drive out of the city and there was no way G’Nice was going to drive me there. So when he had to spend Friday morning rehearsing, I turned to Li, another friend from college. She loves to eat and is married to a man who does not. She also had no work Friday, so she packed up the mini person and we headed way east to Glendora. There was absolutely no traffic at around 9:00 and after half an hour on the road, we got to Donut Man.
Pumpkin Cream Cheese
Blueberry Cream Cheese
Donut Man is known for their donuts filled with strawberries or peaches but those bad boys only use fresh fruit and those seasons are long over. The featured flavor this time of year is pumpkin which wouldn’t quite work in chunk form. The pumpkin cream cheese is good, but it’s a whole lot of sweet filling. Li and I split that one and the blueberry cream cheese one on the spot and I saved the raspberry that was identical to blueberry for later. We were all ready to go when I decided to grab a cup of coffee. When I went back to the register, I realized I’d only seen half the donuts.
Apples!
Neon Lemon
So the first two donuts were good but they left me wondering what all the fuss was about. The apple donut, on the other hand, rocked my sugar-loving world. Made in the style of the famous strawberry and peach donuts – a donut version of pita – these suckers blend a fresh apple pie-like filling with a sweet, crisp and soft donut. That thing makes me want to make the drive back to Donut Man in the summer.
The lemon donut was much, much better than it looks. It looks like a cloyingly sweet fake lemon filling. It was sweet, but it didn’t taste like something invented in a factory. My second favorite of the ones I had at Donut Man.
We were actually done eating donuts after the first two. The apple and lemon ones would not be touched until it was time for a late night snack. In the meantime, we had a date with ice cream in the near future but at Li’s suggestion we made a savory pit stop in between.
We stopped off at Shanghai Bamboo House in Monrovia for some Chinese food. The San Gabriel Valley is littered with awesome Chinese restaurants and Li picked this one. I would have loved to have feasted at this place but I still had a lot left to sample that day. We got two dishes. One, a noodle dish with taro and chicken, was merely very, very good.
But the real reason Li picked the place is because of their reputation for xiao long bao AKA soup dumplings AKA Shanghai soup dumplings. I’m no expert on these things, but if there are better ones anywhere, I want to try them. And with an order of 8 running less than $5, they were as good of a deal as they were delicious. Each doughy pouch is filled with a nice hunk of pork and a fantastic salty broth. There is also a dipping sauce provided that I highly recommend using. It’s primarily a blend of soy sauce and vinegar and adds a wonderful sweet tang.
From there it was back to dessert at the second place that was a return visit from my last trip to LA: Bulgarini Gelato.
I have tried a lot of ice cream in my day and there are many that I love. But I have never, never, never, never had ice cream as good as what’s served at Bulgarini. I went with five scoops: pistachio, almond, Florentine chocolate with sea salt, pear sorbet and goat milk with cocoa nibs. I don’t have much to say about this stuff that hasn’t been said by others. To put it succinctly, Leo Bulgarini is a master artisan who is manic about only using the best ingredients imaginable. The downside of that occurs when he is unable to procure the precise ingredients he wants. So, for example, the Italian hazelnuts he flies to Italy to buy were out of stock which meant I couldn’t have any more of his sensational hazelnut gelato on this visit. The upside is that he puts out what may well be the best ice cream anywhere.
My insatiable sweet tooth was rewarded again with a stop at Galco’s, the pop/soda pop/soda superstore. This place has more artisanal pops under one roof than anyone else. I made myself exercise some restraint and only bought 4 bottles. I tried a maple cream soda from New Hampshire, a local cola, and a huckleberry pop from Wyoming. But the one I was most excited to get was the sugar Dr. Pepper. There’s one plant in Texas that makes sugar-based Dr. Pepper. I’ve known about it for years but I can’t justify the shipping costs. I finally had it and, sadly, I wasn’t overly thrilled. Unlike Mexican Coke v. regular Coke, I couldn’t really tell a difference between this stuff and regular Dr. Pepper. I’d like to do a side-by-side taste test and will the next time I go to Galco’s.
It was not time to return to the savory so Li and I headed to Daikokuya in Little Tokyo for a legendary bowl of ramen. Noodles, an egg that marinates for a day before it’s served, bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, green onions and kurobuta pork (known in the U.S. as Berkshire pork) would be good on their own. But sweet Lord is the broth something special. Made from soy sauce and pork bones that boil for more than a day, the regular broth is a remarkably rich and delicious soup that I would like to swim in. I couldn’t resist the option of getting mine kotteri style, which means there’s an assload of extra pork fat dumped in there. Yes, I got pork soup with extra pork and I’m a better man because of it.
As a general rule babies don’t excite me until they are about 2 but Li’s 11-month-old daughter Natalia was an exception. I liked the remarkably happy baby well enough but she really won me over when she wanted to pet the sweet pit bull we passed after leaving Daikokuya. Almost as exciting around that time in the day was G’Nice announcing that he was going to come meet us.
Greg Nice wanted ice cream and Li and I were in no position to object so we headed off to Silverlake to hit the wildly popular Scoops. I wanted to limit myself to one scoop, but that’s not an option. If you order one scoop, you get two! I opted for banana-honey and blueberry (the flavors change often). Both were excellent though my appreciation was somewhat limited thanks to my trip to Bulgarini a few hours earlier. My only real criticism was that the banana pretty much dominated the honey.
It was now about 5:00 and it was time Li to go home and Greg and I to head to the Staples Center to see the Clip Show.
Let me tell you a quick story here. We headed to the stadium for a Clippers/Pistons game that wasn’t going to start until 7:30. We got there around 5:30 and discovered that the street parking wasn’t available until 6:00. G’Nice then made a decision that permanently bars him from calling me cheap. Rather than pay $7 to park, we sat in the car for a full half hour so we could park for free.
Magic!
With an hour and a half to spend, we proceeded to walk around the complex around the Staples Center. Celebrity Sighting: Neil Everett, a late night ESPN anchor who I didn’t recognize. Walking around the complex took all of ten minutes and we decided to go play some games at ESPN Zone. After some pop-a-shot, we thought we were done when some dude gave us cards that allowed unlimited games until about 7:40, right after the basketball game started. Free passes at ESPN Zone are much more fun than I would have imagined.
Also better than expected was the game I saw – an overtime battle that saw the crappy Pistons beat the crappy but young and talented Clippers. We saw Charlie Villanueva play the game of his life and future superstar Blake Griffin pull down 18 rebounds to go with his 18 points. Villanueva was a fluke but Griffin is the real deal. When his first contract is up and he signs with a team not owned by a despicable human being, he’s going to be huge. As good as the game was, for me the highlight of the night was the sports museum inside. The museum, which features highlights from some dude’s $30 million memorabilia collection, included the most impressive collection of sports cards I remember seeing (it’s possible what I saw Cooperstown in the 80s was better but I don’t remember it well).
After the game, we stopped off at a pupuseria. I had a card for the place, but I lost it so I don’t know the name. These heavy pork, bean and cheese beauties were very good and well worth the $1.50. Our late night snack was completed with some delicious leftover donuts from Donut Man.
November 16th, 2010
Los Angeles 2010 Day 1
On Thursday morning, I dropped Fred off at the kennel and headed to the airport. I cleared airport security about 20 minutes before take-off, rendering my B26 Southwest Airlines Boarding Pass moot as I was one of the last people on the plane and was stuck in a middle seat. Fortunately, that was the low point of the trip.
Greg Nice picked me up at the airport in his sweet ride and we headed towards our first stop, Randy’s Donuts, which is located close to the airport.
On my last trip to LA, written up in detail on Serious Eats, I hadn’t even considered Randy’s. There are thousands of donut shops in that town and I figured that any place known primarily for its sign was not at the top of the heap. But I’d since read that the cake donuts were particularly awesome so we made the stop.
Chocolate Raised
Sugar Raised
I’d heard that the best things to get at Randy’s were the raised donuts. For those who, like me, aren’t familiar with the term, raised donuts are made with yeast instead of baking powder. The result is a particularly light donut.
I ordered a few more donuts that weren’t raised, but they were pretty mediocre. When I say mediocre, I mean mediocre by fresh donut standards which means they were pretty damned good but not particularly special. The raised donuts, on the other hand, were soft bits of sweet baked clouds of heaven.
When we left Randy’s, it was time for lunch. We picked up Mrs. Greg Nice, who hid her joy at my arrival quite well, and headed to Umami Burger. First thing we learned at Umami: the host is a self-important dick. Second thing we learned at Umami: our server is a self-important dick. Third thing we learned at Umami: the burger is pretty freaking spectacular.
The burger is made from some rich high quality meat and topped with mushrooms, a Parmesan tuile, roasted tomato and caramelized onion. It was an amazing mixture of flavors and textures that made the pretension well worth suffering through.
While the burger was outstanding, I’ve had a number of burgers at least as good. Not a huge number, but a considerable amount. The onion rings, however, were easily among the best I have ever had.
After finishing up at Umami, it was time to go to a place I’ve been dreaming about for the last 18 months: Stan’s Donuts. I had a lot of delicious food on my last trip to Los Angeles but there were three places that absolutely blew my mind and Stan’s was one of them. The other two, Pizzeria Mozza and Bulgarini Gelato, are foods that I can only have in L.A. But donuts are easily transportable. Last May when the Bulls were set to begin a playoff series against the Cavaliers, I made a little wager with Greg Nice. If the Bulls could win more than one game, I would buy him a $20 comic book. If they could not, he would bring me $20 worth of donuts from Stan’s when he came to Chicago in August (the visit that would coincide with Burger Day 2.0).
Gregory Nice is a man with no integrity and he came to Chicago without his debt and with no guilt about not being a man of his word. On my first day in L.A. there would be no more delaying my date with Stan and we drove to Westwood for the donuts. I have to admit that I was a little nervous. Had I built these donuts up too much in my mind? Were they actually no better than other donuts I’d had since? In a word, hell fucking no. These are the best donuts I have ever had.
Blueberry Fritter
Chocolate Peanut Butter
Blueberry Buttermilk Bar
Cherry Cheese
Peanut Butter Banana
Blueberry
There are donuts out there made with much fancier ingredients that are arguably better than Stan’s. But as donut joints go, if there is a better place, I want to go there soon. There are plenty of places that, like Randy’s, do one thing particularly well. Every single style of donut at Stan’s is delicious. The fritter, the buttermilk bar, the peanut butter ones, the jelly filled ones, the fruit and cheese ones, and the regular donuts are all spectacular. Every one of them is crispy and chewy and packed with strong flavors that are certainly sweet but not sickeningly so.
It’s hard to pick a favorite of the bunch, but I think the blueberry fritter and the blueberry jelly type one (last picture) were the cream of the crop. If it weren’t so ridiculously expensive to ship these things (Stan charges around $50 in shipping fees), I’d eat these a few times a year. As it is, given Greg Nice’s staggering unwillingness to bring me any, I can only have them when I visit L.A.
For dinner we headed to Chego, an ubercool hipster quasi Korean spot that’s all the rage. The place has a pretty interesting back story. Chef Roy Choi got famous when he exploded onto the culinary scene with his Kogi Taco Trucks which featured Korean influenced tacos, a creation that could really only be born in Los Angeles. I tried to get to the taco truck on my last visit to Los Angeles, but it wasn’t where their website promised they’d be. I had no interest in chasing around a truck this time around, but I was happy to check out this new place that has gotten a whole lot of positive press.
Chego is primarily known for its rice bowls. I opted for the Chubby Pork Belly, which comes with kochujang-lacquered Berkshire pork belly, pickled watermelon radishes, water spinach, cilantro, cotija, peanuts, and a fried egg. It was an excellent mix of flavors that I really liked a lot, but I wasn’t blown away as expected.
There was a celebrity sighting at Chego. Aarti Party, the most recent Next Food Network Star, showed up. She was there the last time Greg went and she chatted with the host like they were old friends so I assume she’s a regular.
What did blow my mind at Chego were the Ooey Gooey Fries, which are french fries topped with sour cream sambal, monterey jack, cheddar and cotija cheese, chillies, cilantro, and pickled garlic. I hadn’t slept much the night before and it was after midnight in Chicago by the time I ate at Chego. And I was still pretty full from the donuts and burger I’d already eaten that day. But even in my exhausted full bellied state, these fries were pretty spectacular. Crispy, creamy, spicy, tangy and very, very rich, I couldn’t stop eating them even though I feared eating too many of them would lead to an immediate heart attack.
Coming tomorrow: Day 2 in LA
Food, Travel | 2 Comments
September 16th, 2010
Back from Denver
I spent the weekend visiting the older sister and her family.
First order of business on Saturday morning: Cupcakes:
We also went to the park. Children tire me out.
We headed out to a small pond stocked with trout. You pay a couple bucks per person to fish and then pay a lot more for the fish you catch. Catch and release is not allowed. I asked if I could do catch and release if I still paid for the fish and was told no. Check out this craziness:
I taught the boy to fish:
Fish On!
Caught
Fish Fun
Nobody wanted fish for dinner. Because of the dumbass rules, we had a fish. I would have felt guilty wasting the dead fish so I cooked it and it was good:
We also went out for some pretty delicious ice cream at Red Trolley.
Cinnamon
Bittersweet chocolate
Best thing about ice cream? It makes children sit quietly:
This is one cute child:
August 23rd, 2010
Hotlanta
Last weekend (not to be confused with this past weekend), I headed off to Atlanta. The purpose of the trip was baseball, with secondary goals of good food and exploring Atlanta. You’ve already seen some of the highlights from the food, and more are forthcoming on Slice and A Hamburger Today.
I don’t like to bash cities, but for tourists, Atlanta is kind of crap. There are two train lines, one that goes north/south and one goes east/west. If you’re not going to a place on one of the train lines, you’re stuck with buses that are not all that frequent on weekends. Making things worse, it’s not a very walkable town.
My bitching out of the way, I am happy to report that we still had a very good trip. First, Turner Field, the 32nd Major League Baseball stadium I’ve visited:
He still sucks
Overall impression: It’s a nice stadium, but nothing special about it. There’s nothing wrong with it, but other than the giant Coke bottle and the cool Chick-Fil-A ad, nothing stood out for me.
We saw two games: Friday and Saturday. Friday was a 1-0 game and Saturday was a 2-1 game. Friday’s was pretty boring for a 1-0 game as neither pitcher appeared to be all that dominant. Saturday’s game was exciting for me because I got to watch the great Theodore Roosevelt Lilly III dominate again. But if I’m going to a game in which I have no rooting interest, I want some excitement and neither of these games had any.
Atlanta, like any city has it’s share of museums. We opted for one that’s unique to that town: The World of Coca-Cola. Remarkably, thousands of people line up every day to pay $15 apiece to subject themselves to what is essentially a massive Coke advertisement.
Unquestionably, the highlight of the museum is the tasting room, where everyone has free reign to try a massive variety of Coke products from all over the world.
I have to admit, that room is pretty cool. It would be substantially better if they had fountains with Cokes from around the world so people could see the differences. Of course, the reason they’ll never do that is because everyone knows that sugar Coke is better than the corn syrup version here. Seriously, has anyone ever met someone who has had American and Mexican Coke and thought the former was better? I think such a person might not exist.
There was another museum we saw that I really wanted to go to:
Yes, that’s the National Museum of Patriotism. When I went to Cincinnati last year, I really wanted to go to the Creation Museum but my co-travelers outvoted me. Here, I’m pretty sure Nate was up for it. Sadly, the people have spoken and even in Atlanta they think the National Museum of Patriotism is a stupid idea. The museum has closed as a physical entity; it will live on as a website.
Because we didn’t feel like spending $26 each for an hour in the aquarium, the rest of our time was largely devoted to food. Saturday, we got up and went to the farmers market I mentioned in my Moto Bene review. Not mentioned in my review was the single best cup of yogurt I’ve ever eaten:
Here’s the thing about that yougurt – it could have been even better. They make a whole milk version of the flavor that would have blown my mind. At $2 a cup, it was too pricey. They sell for $2.50 at local Whole Foods and other stores. Their goal is go national, but that’s a ways away since they only use local ingredients. So, for example, for them to expand to Chicago, they would need to find a local dairy and set up a manufacturing plant here. They would call that Chicago Fresh. Hopefully they’ll make it here soon and sell the stuff for a bit less.
From the market, we got back on the Peachtree bus and headed up to the mall so Nate could do some shopping. He didn’t buy anything. Then it was back on the bus south on Peachtree to Varasano’s, this week’s Slice review. Then off to a bar before our early dinner at Holeman & Fox.
Sunday was more eating. Nate and I walked around a bit, he headed to the airport around noon and then I hooked up with an Atlantan I’d only met once before – Kate’s older brother. In three hours, we hit two burger places and a pizzeria. Holeman & Finch was one of the burgers – reviewed here. The other burger was at Farm Burger, this week’s AHT review and the pizzeria was Fritti, next week or the week after’s Slice review. All in all, a very productive afternoon.
That’s about it for Atlanta. I’m not sure that I’ll ever get back there and I’m okay with that. I wouldn’t be opposed to a return trip, but there’s not much of a point other than to see the whale sharks at the aquarium and to eat at Holeman & Finch again. Wait – those are two outstanding reasons. Maybe I’ll have a 12-hour layover there one day. That would be perfect.