Offbeat Eats

During our visit to the Detroit area, I was craving some Mexican food. Normally this would involve a trip down to Detroit’s Mexicantown neighborhood, but for most of the trip we were up in the northwestern Detroit suburb of Livonia. But Carol’s extended family had a favorite Mexican place nearby that they really liked, so we headed off to a strip mall on 6 mile road to visit The Taco Factory.

For the Christmas Holiday, Carol was spending her break with her brother’s family in the Detroit Metro area, and at the last minute I managed to rearrange my schedule and join them for part of the visit. Among the various holiday activities with the extended family, when I’m in Detroit I try to get together with my college friend Brian (the relatively rare example of an actual Detroit resident, versus the more usual “Detroit Metro” resident), this time for brunch. For a “brunch”, I usually like to go over to Selden Standard, but this was a bit of a last minute concept and Selden was booked solid, so instead, we decided to check out a spot Brian had enjoyed before, Cork & Gabel in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood.

I’ve gone on a rather large number of backpacking trips in Arizona over the years, and I’ve got a tradition that goes back a surprisingly long time (to the 1980s, in fact). Towards the end of every longer trip, you start to tire of backpacking food, and one of the more frequent trail conversations is food cravings for when we get back to civilization, and inevitably the exact same food item comes up: a cheese burger. Specifically, a green chile cheeseburger. It’s the perfect antidote to several days of trail food. Back in the day, this was usually the saloon at Tortilla Flats, but I haven’t been up that way for a few years (the Arizona Trail was out of commission for several years, which made Tortilla Flats a bit of an out-and-back experience not terribly close to most of the trailheads I use in the Superstitions). For some of the more recent trips, this has been Joe’s Farm Grill (which is getting ripe for a re-visit) or Fate Brewing (which between a logistically-good location, has an awesome Hatch chile lager to enjoy with your burger). So, after wrapping up our week hiking in the Grand Canyon, we decided that we needed cheeseburgers, and I know there was just the place for this in Flagstaff: Diablo Burger.

After meeting up with fellow backpackers Dan and Sarah in Phoenix, our Fitpacking trip to the Grand Canyon headed up north, stopping for dinner in Flagstaff. I’ve always enjoyed Flagstaff, between the cooler climate, the nice setting at the foot of the San Francisco peak, and the more laid back atmosphere, and look forward to trips when I can get that far north. And, in my experience, Flagstaff has always had a good dining scene, especially in the downtown area, with a lot of good restaurants and hang-out spots for nearby Northern Arizona University. But for this visit, we were aiming at a spot just a bit east of downtown on the old historic Route 66: El Tapatio.

In early December I flew out to the Phoenix area as part of a trip to go backpacking in the Grand Canyon, but had a few days before and after the trip to visit with friends and family in the Phoenix area. Like many of my Arizona trips, I met up with my friend Allyson for lunch, and this time we decided to go to Old Town Scottsdale. Old Town Scottsdale is mostly “fake Old West” and “fake Native American Trading Post” shops on the tackier-end of the scale, but there are a few gems hiding amongst the various “Trading Posts”. One of the them is The Frybread Lounge, an Indigenous-owned restaurant serving up Indigenous staples, primarily focusing on frybread.

A recent trip to various spots of interest around Newfound Lake had us passing back through Bristol, NH around dinner time. While I’ve already got some good places in Bristol that I enjoy, such as The Bristol Diner and LinCross Roast Beef, I decided that this was a good chance to check out another spot. We’ve driven past Cielito in Bristol several times (it’s across the street from The Bristol Diner), and decided that this time we’d actually have dinner there.

Right before Thanksgiving, we had an opportunity to see one of my favorite brass musicians, Trombone Shorty, play at Rutland, VT’s historic Paramount Theatre. Looking at the various dining options in the area, I noticed a relative newcomer to the Rutland dining scene, Pao Pao Latin Cuisine, on the east side of Rutland city. So we decided to check them out.