Offbeat Eats

(Closed) After a day driving around the Detroit neighborhoods and suburbs, including Corktown, New Center, Hamtramck, and Dearborn, we decided we wanted a light meal to tide us over for dinner. One place that caught my eye was an converted White Tower burger stand in Dearborn that was simply labeled “Hamburgers”. As I’ve discussed previously, the Detroit area is filled with all sorts of converted or knockoff White Castle of White Tower locations, most of which are still serving up burgers of some kind (usually sliders), although I’ve seen a few that were turned into Greek diners as well…

(Closed) As those that know me locally can verify, I’ve often complained that there’s just not a lot of BBQ action out there around the Upper Valley. Sure, there’s “Barbecue reformulated for New England Tastes” at Big Fatty’s, but that shouldn’t count (and doesn’t, the only thing salvageable on their menu is the pulled pork). Similarly, I’ve had a gazillion recommendations for Curtis’ BBQ in Putney, but I’ll agree with PigTrip.net that it’s disappointing. And I’ll let my review of Sweet Fire BBQ in Claremont speak for itself. I’m getting used to the fact that people up here don’t really know what BBQ is, but heard about it once and decided to make up something similar. And my recent trip to Texas didn’t help, either, since it just reintroduced me to what I’ve been missing. But, I’ve always held out hope that someone around here could figure out the basics of running a smoker, so when I hear of new BBQ places, I usually still feel compelled to give them a try… So, about a year ago, up in Fairlee, VT, the owners of the Whippi Dip ice cream stand decided that on the first Saturday of the month in the good weather months of the year they’d do the BBQ thing by setting up a tent in the parking lot and making some decent BBQ…

(Closed) After an April filled with trips to Austin and San Francisco, it was time to take a break and spend a little more time exploring my local area. In this case, it meant heading down to Stonewall Farm in Keene, NH, for their annual “Dance of the Ladies”. Having been in the barn all winter, this is the first time the cows have been in the pasture all year, and they generally respond with manic bounding and “dancing”, as well as the occasional head-butting and just hanging out. It was rather a cool sight, actually, and you can check out flickr photos of the event. But afterward, we were craving a breakfast, and decided that this would be a good opportunity to cross the river and see what we could find in Brattleboro, VT. After driving about a bit, we happened across Elliot Street Cafe. Nestled into a small building that, from the presence of a large pizza oven, apparently used to be a pizza joint, Elliot is a modest little neighborhood cafe with a decent breafast menu, with a selection of burritos, omelets, biscuits, bacon, and other breakfast sandwiches and wraps…

(Closed) Checkpoint #3 on the March was the famous Ferry Building, which was also a good excuse for a Second Lunch, since the Ferry building has all sorts of wonderful little food vendors, ranging from a mushroom vendor, Prather Ranch Meats (where I bought a “Praise the Lard” t-shirt), a Rancho Gordo stand (where I bought 5 lbs of beans to bring back), beef sushi from Delica, and a wonderfully sinful strawberry cream cupcake from Miette. But my most-craved stop for this trip was Boccalone. Boccalone’s motto is “Tasty Salted Pig Parts”. Besides, who can go wrong with a motto like that…

(Closed) When discussing some of the activities around the Death March, one of the participants mentioned that he’d been craving a good burger, and was going to go make a pilgrimage to In-N-Out while in San Francisco. I responded that while I’m quite the fan of In-N-Out, there are a lot of unique burger places in San Francisco, and most of them better and more interesting than In-N-Out. Indeed, without even having to look anything up online, I easily came up with a list of 10 San Francisco burger joints worth checking out. Of the places I’ve actually been, there’s Burger Joint, Whiz Burger, Rosamunde Sausage Grill, and Pearl’s. Additionally, Burger Bar, Joe’s Cable Car, Big Mouth Burgers, Burgermeister, and Urbun Burger have been on my hit list for a while as well. Since I had met up with two other Death Marchers, Steve and Kevin, for another trip to Dynamo Donuts, that put us in the Mission, so we could easily knock off Burger Bar or Urbun Burger. We ended up deciding on Urbun…

(Closed) After a bit more roaming around the Mission with Emily, we decided that checking out Mission Cheese would be a good idea for lunch, especially since they had opened only a few weeks before. Mission Cheese is actually quite a simple concept: a neighbor restaurant space with a menu focusing on, well, cheese, as well as raclettes, light plates, and sandwiches featuring cheeses. The idea is to find some really good cheeses and make sharing plates and sandwiches that highlight them…

(Closed) My second course from the “Eastside Drivein” collection of food carts was from Bits and Druthers, a Union-Jack-painted trailer sporting a menu that was essentially fish and chips, and permutations thereof. I’m always a little bit skeptical of fish and chips joints, since my many travels (especially in England, which is pretty much the birthplace of fish and chips) have shown me that there’s generally a sort of “Fish and Chips Exclusion Principle” at work: Places that have good fish generally have lousy chips, and places that have good chips generally have lousy fish. Places that can do both well at the same time are actually quite rare…

(Closed) After a second day of driving about the Austin area sampling barbecue, and then washing down that barbecue with more Blizzards from the Lockhart, TX Dairy Queen, we again decided that, after a modest afternoon siesta, it was time to go seek out more food carts in Austin. After checking out the nice map of Austin food carts, we decided to check out some of the trailers along South Congress. So we piled into the cars and headed out. Alas, while we saw our desired street carts, the traffic was intractable due to the LoneStar Roundup Car and Custom show. So we ended up heading over the river, and then east of I-35, eventually finding what’s known as the “Eastside Drive-In” court of food carts, with eight or nine trailers all clustered around a central courtyard of tables…

(Closed) After I left Natick, I had another meeting at MIT. This time it was a morning meeting, and this time the Gods of Boston traffic were smiling on me, so I got there with surprisingly little in the way of traffic delays. As a result, I had a chance to grab breakfast, and walking around near the MIT/Kendall Square station, I happened across The Friendly Toast. The Friendly Toast is a breakfast diner, with locations in Portsmouth, NH (their original location) and Cambridge, MA (Kendall Square, just north of MIT and Draper Labs). I’ve happened across the Portsmouth location several times while visiting there, and it has remained on my chronic “I should try that place out” hit list…

(Closed) After a few days of our touring around England, my brother returned from his trip to Finland, and we decided to go out to dinner to The Gay Hussar in Soho. Around since 1953, the Gay Hussar has a long history. It’s the oldest Hungarian place in London. And for most of it’s history, it’s been a stomping ground for various liberal politicians and VIPs (indeed, at the table next to us was Labour’s Lord Borrie, talking with his colleagues about his upcoming second reading of some bill on passenger security and travelers’ rights). And the the walls of the Hussar are lined with caricatures of the various liberal VIPs that dine here (being American, I only recognized a single caricature that I could see from my seat: Jon Snow). So the place has some air of authenticity, even if it isn’t due to their culinary abilities: the place has been bringing in customers for 50 years