This isn’t the kind of burger that you idly think, “Oh, I think I’d like a burger today”. You go to Old Chicago, when that happens. No, this is the kind of burger that you wake up needing. Notice I didn’t say ‘wanting’. This is the kind of burger where a good first impression really dictates the meal, so once you’ve resolved to eat it you call in sick at work, pull down the shades, play some sexy music and spend two hours washing, shaving (paying particular attention to the bikini line, just in case things go really well), primping and dressing, while intermittently standing in front of a mirror to practice your smile, devilish eyebrow arch and cutest laugh. This is the kind of burger where you steal its mailbox key while it’s in the bathroom, so you have an excuse to call it before noon the next day pretending to have found it, so you can see it again after work – preferably at your place, with an open bottle of tequila, latex ready to go, three flavors of lube, the trapeze just how you like it… Oops, I took it too far.
First there was the matter of the clam chowder. This can’t be right, but strangely I can’t recall ever eating clam chowder before. If I did, it obviously wasn’t memorable. This wasn’t especially pulse-quickening either, for that matter, but after a little added zip of black ground pepper it was a very decent starter. For some reason, it seemed to get more flavorful as I got nearer the bottom of the bowl, though I’m also one of those people who shows “flu symptoms” after getting a flu shot, so there’s that to consider.
My companion’s “Field Greens, Tomatoes, Fresh Herbs” was, for starters, very pretty and generously portioned. The tangy dressing did its thing, the gorgonzola was “to die for” and the cherry tomatoes were very fresh. If you’ve read my last two Restaurant Week posts, it’ll come as no surprise to hear that I didn’t bother tasting this.
My companion’s “Seared Citrus Glazed Salmon” was a homerun. The fillet was about as massive as I’ve ever seen in a fine dining setting and the citrus sauce not only jazzed up the fish brilliantly, but also gave a bit of help to the otherwise ho-hum steamed asparagus and the excellently crisp beans. My companion reported that the salmon tasted relatively light for being one giant helping of protein, but evidently not light enough for her to finish it all. With her dignity in jeopardy, being ever the gentleman, I threw myself over the remainder of the salmon and once again saved the world.
Despite saying otherwise on the Restaurant Week web site, there was no dessert included with the lunch menu. Not that either of us had the room, but I had my little heart set on the Flourless Chocolate Espresso Cake. Thanks a lot Obama.
I’m awarding this lunch four “Oh Gods” out of five.
These gripes aside, I almost destroyed my T2 vertebra during the violent double-takes I executed while absorbing their Restaurant Week menu, an eye-pooping, profusion of Pavlovian saliva triggers that emphatically put everyone else’s Restaurant Week menus to shame.
Arriving at 7pm, I was relieved that we’d made reservations last week. The front room was packed. Indeed, if you decide, upon reading this bit of half-assed piece of food commentary, that you too would like to enjoy Buddha’s gift to Restaurant Week, you might already be effed. Though, allegedly, the back room wasn’t totally packed, so if you phone them right now, you may be able to squeeze in after 8:30pm.
I started with the “Steak Tartare Capers, onions, parsley, cornichon, egg yolk and croutons”. This was a safety order for me, as I have yet to have a steak tartare that I didn’t like (even that quivering pile of embryonic mass that I was served in BraÅŸov, Romania this summer, that kept my lower intestines dancing for three days). Though I must say I’ve had better (most notably at a downtown Minneapolis joint that rhymes with ’112 Peatery’), this was a valiant effort. What I’m assuming was the pulpified capers, cuz there’s no way it was the cornichon, had a bit of a kick that was not altogether unpleasant, but it definitely messed with the, or covered for the lack of, richness and decadent raw beef tang that I’m accustomed to. Of course those four slivers of crouton that that came with the plate was about 8 slivers too few, but I made up for it by applying for a bread advance from the basket that arrived when we first sat down which got me through those lean times.
I tasted a thumbnail’s worth of my companion’s “Beet and Roasted Fennel Salad Dijon vinaigrette”, which was all I needed to remind me for the 57th time that beets taste like ca-ca no matter what you say and I ain’t listening. La la la!!!
My companion’s “Lamb Shank Potato Puree, mirepoix, gremolata and lamb demi” looked awfully pretty, with those pearl onions, the demi and the ‘miraculous granola’ (roughly translated). I scooped up a bit of the lamb after it literally fell of the bone and it was indeed tasty and my companion reported that it was both heroically non-greasy and, I quote, “umgh, umgh!”. So there you go.
We both opted for the “Chocolate flourless cake with berry coulis and whipped cream” for dessert, which was succulent, had a great personality and I had a really good time and all, but just between you and me, I was thinking about that super hot and slutty, batshit crazy mocha parfait from Cosmos the whole time.
I’m not gonna lie to you. Cosmos was a last second substitute. Initially, I had foolishly intended to start Restaurant Week off privately, with the sure thing that is the Signature Cheeseburger at The Capital Grille. I had this exquisite plan to sneak in this meal on a Sunday afternoon to start the week off right and rekindle a dangerous addiction that I barely eluded last winter, which would have ended in my certain financial ruin. Having been home from Italy for five months, where limited serving hours demands that every restaurant meal be judiciously planned, it never occurred to me that anyone in the US would be batshit crazy enough to close up for Sunday lunch. Alas, The Capital Grille proved me wrong and, after some heavy sighs bookending short, expletive-laced commentary about the continued lack of any evidence of a higher power, I poured through the Restaurant Week list and settled, not unhappily, on the Cosmos dinner.
Being that we’d made old people dinner reservations (6:00pm), my companion (attractively attired) and I (cargo pants, Old Navy t-shirt, three year old hiking shoes, messenger bag) were among the first in the door and therefore enjoyed doting and charming service despite my appearance. An amuse-bouche was promptly delivered, a “duck prosciutto” sprinkled with various unidentifiable garnishes that were nevertheless delightful.
Our first portions were both of the high caliber of presentation where you feel like a vandal simply by eating them. The already lengthy description of my scallops didn’t include several other little flourishes and artistically dribbled sauces that, when combined correctly, were an outstanding balance of taste and texture, though, eaten alone, the scallops themselves felt like they could have been jazzed up a smidge. My companion chose the Arugula, Port Wine Vinaigrette, Flexible Blue Cheese, Bartlett Pears, Candied Pecans, which I did not try, as it looked far too healthy, but I gathered from her approving nods that the grocery list of ingredients achieved a pleasant effect.
The wait in between courses wasn’t long, but it was long enough to relish in the spontaneous delivery of an “lime-aged shooter with fruit punch explosion”. It looked like a mini-raw egg in a shot glass. It tasted like being shot in the face with a Kool-Aid paintball.
My beef tenderloin (medium rare) was appropriately pink and textured. Mixing up the dainty bites that I indulgently carved (my companion finished eating a full 10 minutes before me) alternately with the asparagus, potato gratin, and lavishly truffle-bathed shoestring potatoes gave each bite a very different and always pleasing sensation. I don’t get nearly enough beef in my diet these days, so it’s possible that the mere presence of beef alone was making my eyes cross. Or perhaps I need to change my contact lenses.
Though I only had a small bite of my companion’s puffed wild rice encrusted ahi tuna medallions, after several bites of my much stronger beef, I had trouble appreciating what I understood to be an equally well prepared dish. Also, fearing gluttony, and possibly spreading the Swine Flu that I’d just exposed myself to an hour earlier, I didn’t scoop up any of the squid dumpling or the bed of wakame seaweed (whatever that is, it looked like spinach) that accompanied.
The mocha parfait was one of those chocolate lovers’ joy rides, replete with death-defying richness and about a cup of coffee’s worth of caffeine (which is why I’m writing this now and not tomorrow morning). I didn’t say it at the table, but my companion’s festival of white Crème Fraiche Panna Cotta Poached Pears, Herbs Meringue looked both less attractive (something about meringue has always underwhelmed me) and less likely to appear in a decidedly unwholesome dream sometime in the near future.
Hello and welcome back to all seven of you who still have me in your blog feed. I apologize for the six month absence, but a combination of too much work and too much of not being in Minneapolis necessitated this unannounced hiatus. Now that my every waking moment is no longer consumed by Tuscan city maps and Romanian bus schedules, I’m tentatively bringing back the Minneapolis love until such a time when someone out there finally decides to grant me a book deal (publishers, I have a proposal with an ankle-breaking hook and three sample chapters ready to go – call me) and TV show hosting gig, because, despite my occasional claims on Twitter, I ain’t getting any cuter over here.
In the meantime, finances are going to be a smidge tight, requiring me to be very creative about writing off every conceivable expense, namely the ThisIsWhyILoveMinneapolis.com domain name renewal that I just paid for and the roughly $300-400 worth of food that I plan to eat during Restaurant Week.
Awww yeeeeaaah, Restaurant Week starts tomorrow and if you haven’t already done so, you need to get on the horn right now to lock in your dinner reservations and probably most lunch reservations, depending on the venue. This is only my second Restaurant Week since moving back to the US. Last year it hit while I was in the final agonizing, editing stages of a guidebook gig that kept me out of direct sunlight for much of August and September, so I wasn’t able to take full advantage of the occasion. Not so this year. Firstly, I’ve got the Romania guidebook manuscript I’m currently finalizing so utterly tamed that it’s roasting my coffee and cleaning my grout. More importantly, I’m still obnoxiously spoiled by the month-long, culinary head-butt I enjoyed earlier this year in Tuscany. Opportunities to eat so many fair-priced, excellent meals in such quick succession don’t come around often enough and should therefore be prioritized like angioplasty or Natalie Portman’s birthday or what have you.
Despite the very real danger of exposing myself as a ‘foodiot’, I’m going to do my best to ‘cover’ this experience with recaps and, yes, Blackberry photos of all my meals as well as any other noteworthy information, like the flirting skills of my servers and how to steal sips of your companion’s wine while they’re in the bathroom.
As I’ve already confessed, I am not a trained food… anything. However, I have the unrivaled advantage of having eaten well over a thousand restaurant meals in 40 countries in the past six years. Furthermore, there’s the not so small matter of my singular physical response to food, an effect akin to (I’m told) certain intravenous drugs or having a primary erogenous zone dipped into a just-baked apple pie. Harnessing this unique aptitude, I will do my very best to transcribe these feelings into hastily written, short reviews or, failing that, lift quotes from the people around me and make them my own by adding metaphorical superlatives and ‘that’s what she said’ jokes.
Using my very limited skills and resources, I have slapped together a montage of photos from my recently completed Lonely Planet Tuscany research trip. As a general nod to posterity (and those considering my internship offer), I’ve chosen to irresponsibly romanticize the trip by leaving out pictures of me limping, being lost, rained on and falling asleep at dinner between the primo and secondo. Enjoy.
I resisted Happy Hour at McCormick & Schmick’s long and hard. I stood firm even after Alexis dutifully informed me that they had a ridiculously cheap appetizer menu, including a hamburger and fries platter for an implausible $1.95. Why did I do this? Because sometimes I’m a surly closed-minded, reverse-elitist, curmudgeon, that’s why. I’d developed an unfounded image in my head that M&S was a snooty chain, with desperate mahogany and faux English pub style pomp that appealed to rotund, self-important, business douchebags talking at great length about cigars, gambling, the titties on their waitress and the bear guns they’re gonna bring on their fly fishing trips to Montana. Sticking to my surly, closed-minded, reverse-elitist, curmudgeon guns, even in the face of reliable supporting evidence, I would not relent.
Finally, for want of a Happy Hour joint that was connected to the Skyway and could seat us in less than 40 minutes, unlike the now dismissed Vincent, my companion and I reluctantly walked into the 800 Nicollet Mall location of McCormick & Schmick’s and the second I laid eyes on my burger, I knew I’d be coming back soon. Indeed, I’ve been there about once a week ever since.
I resolved to sample as much on the HH menu as possible, even the appetizers priced at a ruinous $4.95, but by my third visit I realized that about 80% of the menu was in constant flux. Trying to taste everything was gonna be like trying to finish a bottle of beer at a Mexican wedding – you can get close, but then you look away for a split second and someone swoops in and replaces it with a full bottle.
There’s been some definite highs and lows on the menu. The Cajun Burger with fries ($1.95!) – more of a full meal than an appetizer and the plate that kicked off my torrid love affair with M&S – is surprisingly thick and tasty, especially considering what you’d be served for the same price at McDonald’s. I also loved the Mahi Mahi Cakes with Thai peanut sauce ($1.95!!), which, though quite small, unloads a wonderfully sharp, seasoned flavor that you wouldn’t want to eat too much of anyway. The subtler Salmon Cakes with apples and fried leeks (Yes! $1.95!!!) don’t make the saliva glands work as hard, but eaten first, you’ll never notice. The Smoked Salmon Crostinis with dill cream cheese ($3.95) and the Salmon Skewers with peanut sauce and stir fried vegetables ($4.95) are more memorable, as was the Seafood Newburg ($4.95), a lovely pile of shrimp and bay scallops over rice with a lobster cream sauce.
Unfortunately, there’s some doosies on the menu too. Avoid the Bay Shrimp Cocktail, with a paradoxically uninspired, drowned, messy appearance that got even worse inside the mouth. Same goes for the House Made Potato Chips with bacon and blue cheese sauce that looked and tasted like something kids would make for themselves after getting home from latchkey.
The Fish and Chips ($4.95) seemed rather plain compared to most of the rest of the menu and the Blackened Chicken Quesadilla ($3.95) was certainly tasty, but not overly striking. Meanwhile, the Chipotle Pork Tostadas ($1.95!!!!) defied all expectations from price and appearance, wowing and satisfying so thoroughly that we ordered a second plate 15 minutes later.
If your Happy Hour goals start and end at drink specials, then you should keep on walking down to Brothers or something similar. Presumably to compensate for the practically free, extraordinary food specials, the happy hour prices on beer and wine by the glass barely inspire a lip twitch, much less joy. Get too reckless with the drink orders and you might as well have ordered a meal off the standard menu in the adjacent restaurant.
And yes, McCormick and Schmick’s draws a certain number of the clientele depicted above – guys that behave in a manner and volume suggesting that they own the joint and won’t move their fat asses out of the way even after you say ‘excuse me’ three times – but there’s an equal number of people who in all probability hate these characters as much as I do and are simply there for the amazing food deals and a careful glass or two of wine, before retiring back to their condos to lock the doors, pull down the shades and get a serious drink on.
It’s MONDO Jugglefest time again! Can you believe it’s been 20 years already? Remember the first MONDO? The catchphrase “The biggest juggling festival in the upper Midwest between Groundhog’s Day and Valentine’s Day” lured a whopping 80 people on short notice for the one-day event. Buddha, 1990 was a great year. I could finally juggle five clubs, I thought I’d be listening to The Art of Noise until my death and I had that bitchin’ ponytail. Good times.
Well, apart from my hair style, MONDO has aged gracefully. About 600 people showed up to the three day event last year and the Saturday night public show, the MONDO Spectacular, routinely sells out. As always, the festival is being held at Concordia College’s monstrous Gangelhoff Center, just off Hamlin Avenue in St Paul. This massive field house, with the bouncy rubber floor that weaponizes virtually every dropped club, is where all the workshops, demonstrations, prop vending and games will occur. There are few things in life that can stun the brainstem like walking into a room where several hundred people are deftly throwing and catching (and dropping and bending overing and picking upping) thousands of objects simultaneously. When you factor in the army of unicyclists wizzing around and the yoyoing and poi spinning you’d be crazy to miss out on this singular event. That’s right, crazy! You don’t want to be crazy, do you? Crazy is so 2000-2008.
If you don’t juggle (or unicycle or yo-yo), this is the place to learn. Formal and informal coaching persists throughout the festival. I can teach anyone between the ages of six and 75 to juggle in less than 30 minutes. That’s right, in thirty minutes you can be just a little bit more like me and who doesn’t want that?
And ladies, juggling is perennially a lonely guy affair. Typically, the guy to girl ratio at a juggling festival is like 25 to one. If you’ve ever wanted to be in a safe, fun environment, where you can develop your dexterity and have your pick of literally hundreds of guys vying for your attention, this is the place.
For the most part juggling is wholesome, safe and non-hurty. That said, here’s a little sample of the edgier stuff, where smashed fingers and body blows are verily guaranteed, both for the jugglers and the people standing within 20 feet of the jugglers. [Those using blog readers will have to watch the video here.]
The deets: 20th Annual MONDO Jugglefest
Gym passes, good for all three days, are $7 at the door. All attendees will be required to sign a waiver before admittance to the festival.
Tickets for the Spectacular (7pm, Saturday February 21st) are $12 for adults, $10 for children under 12.
Festival Hours:
Friday Feb. 20th: 5:00pm – Midnight
Saturday Feb 21st: 9:00am to 2:00am
(Note: the Gym will be closed during the Spectacular show, roughly from 5pm until the end of the show around 10pm)
Sunday Feb 22nd: 10:00am to 5:00pm
I’ve already written at length about why the Skyway is one of downtown Minneapolis’ greatest assets and I wrote that before I even lived in a Skyway connected building. I have since spent half a winter in a euphoric, Skyway-enhanced Shangri La and the reverence I once had for the Skyway lifestyle has now fiftipled (a word meaning ‘an increase by a factor of 50′ that I made up just now).
Remember that stretch of shitty-ass weather we endured a few weeks ago? You wanna know how many times I went outside during that period? Zero. At one point, I went five full days without putting on a jacket. I can’t remember the last time I was so happy (in January).
In any case, I think I’ve already made my Skyway Love feelings pretty clear, so what I’d like to do now is post a short primer for people who are entering the Skyway for the first time or have just been too dimwitted to figure out the obvious after years of walking through Buddha’s gift to inclement weather avoidance. An etiquette primer, if you will. Just a bit of me giving back to the community like I have selflessly done so many times in the past. And away we go…
•   Never, ever stand in the middle of the Skyway for any reason. If downtown is a human body, then the Skyway system is its arteries. Now what happens when an artery gets blocked? Say, by some doofus standing in the middle of a junction, trying to figure out how to get to Macy’s? Well, ideally, I sweep the doofus’ legs with my Target bag and kick-roll them into a corner where they can reflect on their doofus ways. So let’s review: If you have to stop walking, move to the side. Need to answer your cell phone? Move to the side. Wanna say something really important to a passing colleague? Move to the side! Just reunited with your twin after being separated at birth 40 years ago? MOVE TO THE BLOODY SIDE!!!
•   Ladies, it’s your prerogative if you decide to leave the house in ridiculous shoes that have heels that force you to walk in tiny, six inch strides, but if you’re going to move that slow on purpose, you need to stay to the right. And walk in single file – no more of this three and four abreast BS – so people who have lives and/or are carrying 30 lbs in booze and groceries can get by your merry band of the deliberately handicapped.
•   Just because you don’t have nerve endings in your shoulder bag does not excuse you from banging it into me.
•   Crazy people, ya’ll have to stop talking to me.
•   Drunk people, the Skyway isn’t your private lounge. If you’re too wasted to keep moving, and it’s too cold outside for you, go hang out at the library like everyone else.
•   Simultaneously eating and walking through the Skyway makes you walk too slow and will potentially muss up someone else’s clothes when you lose control of the 24 ounce beverage you have cradled in your elbow. So, from this point forward, simultaneous eating and walking in the Skyway is banned. Because I said so, that’s why.
•   Just because you’re cops does not give you guys license to swagger reaaaalllly slow, shoulder to shoulder. Have you ever tried looking behind you while you do that? All those people piled up back there? They’re not there because they’re admiring the tight, sinewy, spring-loaded cop asses that got you sent to Skyway Patrol in the first place. Pick up the pace or yield to passing traffic.
•   If you’re going through a manual door and there’s someone one beat behind you, hold the door for them. If you let the door slam shut on that person, there’s an even chance that the person will catch up to you at the next door and then won’t it be awkward when they accidentally roundhouse kick you in the throat?
Thank you for reading and strictly adhering to these simple rules. Anyone else wanting to add sage words of Skyway behavioral wisdom, please leave a comment. But mostly, just stay out of my way.
Let’s tackle this in reverse order. There’s a good reason that, like many other locals, I love Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl (DMG), seen at right disguised as a poorly disguised food critic. The fact that she’s palpably awesome notwithstanding, genuinely talented food writers are disturbingly uncommon. DMG is to food writing as Lebron James is to basketball. She can single-handedly turn a mediocre team into championship contenders by merely walking into the locker room.
Then came the July 2008 issue of Minnesota Monthly and the “Definitive, Ultimate, Be-All, End-All, List of the Greatest Burgers in Minnesota.” I was out of the country at the time and due to even more travel and dangerous amounts of time spent alone and feverishly writing in my condo since then, I only just got my hands on this copy last week.
To be perfectly frank, I was initially disappointed and suspicious of the list when I saw that the Jucy Lucys at Matt’s Bar had been rated Number One. I’m going to edge out onto an unpopular limb here and voice my opinion that the burgers served at Matt’s are the most over-hyped, underwhelming, physically dangerous and all around nasty non-fast food burgers I’ve ever had. I’ve eaten them twice. The first time I scalded myself so bad that I couldn’t taste the burger, or anything else for the next 48 hours. The second time I became physically ill later that day. I’m not saying that the burger caused the physical illness, I’m just saying that the two events happened in such quick succession that I now have association trauma with regard to Matt’s burgers.
More than anything I was struck both times as to how unattractive and ho-hum they were after all the psychotic, reverent, babbling build-up I’d endured. As such, I’m convinced that the whole Matt’s Jucy Lucy phenomenon is due to the blind, mindless acquiescence of countless rubes and the practical joke stylings of a few knowing conspirators, including it pains me to point out, our own DMG.
That said, I read the remainder of the article anyway and was more than a little taken with a few of the runners-up. In particular, the Signature Cheeseburger with Truffle Fries served at the Capital Grille. Despite Minnesota Monthly’s apparently serious “Burger Inherent Awesomeness Quotientâ„¢” (a messy equation that includes non-taste factors, like ambiance and ‘ultra-Minnesotanness’ of the venue) burying this bit of burger perfection in the #7 position, DMG called it ‘stupendous’ and ‘thunderously beefy’. I can’t help it – I get excited when any foodstuff is affixed with a Force of Nature superlative.
Gaining momentum, DMG launched into one of her signature, exuberant cascades of delirious metaphors (“lush as a berry,” “profound as an exceptional Barolo”). I’m thinking, no way is it that good. And being the consummate writer that she is, DMG followed immediately with “Could it seriously be that good? Yes.” Oooeeeoooeee!
As always, I was easily won over by DMG’s playful and eerily intuitive copy and duly trekked through the Skyway two days later to the Capital Grille’s dinning room for lunch. Sadly, the witness that accompanied me doesn’t eat beef or truffle products, so the pressure was on for me, the travel writer whose primary expertise is in the culinary wasteland of Romania, to make a credible and thoughtful judgment. I came to the following conclusion: stupendous and thunderously beefy (travel and food writing is also overrun with plagiarizers).
Seriously, this cheeseburger was precisely what I imagine my first burger, after months in a non-burger-appreciative-part-of-the-world, should look like. Thick, juicy and ready for major magazine photography. Moreover, by merely looking at this burger, even a Food Dummy like myself can tell that there are no unnatural, mystery, non-food-foodstuffs in there. And get a load of DMG’s description: “The grass-fed beef is from Thousand Hills Cattle Company in southern Minnesota, ground-up with a certain amount of bacon from Fischer Farms in Waseca. The meat is mixed with Walla Walla or Vidalia onions, grilled, and served on a housemade brioche bun”. Even without the words “Dear Penthouse Forum”, that’s about all I need read to kick off a spontaneous, redistribution of blood.
But that’s not all. In between bites of this handheld, edible piece of foreplay, you supplement the already depraved release of endorphins with “French fries, graced with truffle-oil and gran padano cheese.” That I had no idea what gran padano cheese was before that moment didn’t lessen the impact of those words and the final product was no less stimulating.
Cumulatively, I’ve lived and traveled in Italy for nearly a year. I’m ashamed to admit during that time I became a little spoiled over the availability and affordability of things like shallots and truffle products. Having been back in Minnesota for well over a year now, and bringing in the kind of subsistence income that travel writers earn (if they’re lucky), I now regret not eating an entire bowl of shallots, fresh vegetables, mozzarella and prosciutto swathed in truffle oil every single, privileged, Buddha-blessed damn day I was there. Now the mere whiff of truffles causes a dopamine spike that stuns my brainstem. You can literally hear the ‘beeeeuuuoooo’ as all my brain functions cease like a failed power coupling on the Starship Enterprise.
My natural impulse was to take the wax paper that held my truffle fries and rub it all over my face and hair and then not bathe for a week so as to enjoy the maximum effect of the fumes, but my level-headed companion pointed out that people around us might construe this behavior as “screwball”. My counter-offer of simply secreting the paper in my pants pocket was frowned upon as well. This is why I usually eat alone.
Needless to say, it was the best burger-based meal I’ve had in years and probably in the top three of all time. In fact I went back for seconds not even 48 hours later. It’s only been 24 hours since then and I’m already shopping for medication that will stem the tide of these cravings. As long as the pills cost less than $14 a serving (before tax and tip), I come out ahead.
And Dara, I realize that you probably have 57 devout friends that accompany you on your various restaurant visits, and I further admit to knowing precious little about food in general, but I think after reading the above you’ll agree that I have a singular physical response to food that transcends so-called ‘expertise’ and therefore makes me eminently qualified as an illiterate food taster guy that you need at your table for observation purposes alone. Call me.
I’ve started mentally composing three different posts for this blog in the past few days (I’m pretty much constantly editing in my head by the way, no matter what else is going on around me, a sick compulsion that I blame for my insomnia, absentmindedness and at least one failed relationship), but have abandoned each post as they all deteriorated into frothing rants against a certain senatorial campaign and their lying and cheating and thieving and baffling desire to actually make the world a worse place while they chase personal gains and burden the rest of us with their pathetic Napoleon Complexes, all of which they’ll most certainly regret on their deathbeds and are probably causing various antecedents to spin in their graves as we speak, but I digress…
Instead, I’d like to publicly thank Maryn M., Lori B., Bryan M., and Skullateral Damage, who answered my pleas for donations of various items for my impending visit to Burma. Anyone that’s had the staggering free time to read even part of one of my Burma travelogues mentioned below will know that traveling there is at once a fascinating and moving experience. I’m very excited to go back and be a little better prepared this time.
With that, I’m afraid I’ll be mostly off the grid, at least on this blog, through the end of the holidays. I may be posting a bit over at KillingBatteries.com while I’m on the road, but it’ll be trivial at best. Between pacifying various vacation-related indulgences and the little (Thailand) to no (Burma) internet access I’m expecting to encounter, there’s really not going to be much opportunity for filing substantial reports from the road.
Please check back here after the holidays when I hope to return to my whimsical-as-usual posting schedule. Thanks for reading.
It’s 
Let’s tackle this in reverse order. There’s a good reason that, like many other locals, I love