The first honest-to-goodness Philadelphian I ever met greeted me from behind a plainly planted table at 30th St. Station. Girlfriend and I had just gotten off the bus and circled the terminal in search of assurance. Spotting the phrase “Travelers Assistance,” I approached the man, who nursed a stack of unfolded maps and a nonchalant [...]
It took me five years to get over a brick of bread that yielded thick slices of breakfast while I was an exchange student in St. Petersburg. I said goodbye to those distant morning meals when I first stepped into Brighton Bazaar. A bustling Russian supermarket wrapped around a smorgasbord of prepared foods, the Bazaar [...]
About half-an-hour up the mountain from Okawa is a house on stilts, balancing over a ravine, abandoned. A handful of rickety structures lean into the hillside nearby, the homes of old hermits who tend their own rice paddies and manage to survive without driving to the convenience mart in town. We didn’t see any people [...]
First tastes are special. But the first taste of a favorite food – the first taste of a dish that gets everything right, lighting up an appetite unknown until that bite – is irreplaceable. It’s like watching the first scene of The Wire. The experience will always be enjoyable, but the thrill of being thrown [...]
Rice is rarely this audacious. Jinro is rarely the right choice. At a modest Korean restaurant in the far reaches of Queens, the rare thrill dormant in both staples springs to life in one sizzling sitting. Containing white rice soaked in a spicy marinade, a portentous mixing bowl greets the happy diners at Flushing’s Tong [...]
It is possible to eat too much pork. One might not believe it, given the state of popular food today – especially in New York, where “pork belly” has become its own dining demographic. Enunciating one’s love for the pig was hardly a declarative act twenty years ago, when the very qualities of pork had [...]
As it turns out, Heaven on Seven is not the only restaurant in Chicago’s Downtown Loop to nest in the upper floors of an office building. During my visit to the Loop I spotted at least one other in-office restaurant serving those who’d just as soon take the elevator for a meal or a pint [...]
After six years of serious eating and four of serious blogging, I’ve been thoroughly convinced that dining chic will never be relevant to my life. One week of eating in Chicago banged a few more nails in that coffin (a relatively easy affair when the hammer is made of pork bones), but perhaps no place [...]
In varying instances of hunger and maturity, I’ve wavered on the issue of deep dish pizza. I’ve never seemed to make up my mind on what makes a good one. When I was 11, Pizza Hut‘s pan pie was valued despite (because of) its orange-slicked handshake the morning after purchase. At age 18, the sweet, [...]
This story is third in a series on Burmese food in San Francisco. When tourists come to San Francisco, they eat Chinese food in Chinatown. There’s nothing wrong with that. Chinatown is a cool place, and there’s good food there. However, it isn’t too bold to claim that the best Chinese food in the Bay [...]
