Offbeat Eats

(Closed) Cleveland continues to be good to me on my regular visits here. On my last visit here I had an outstanding evening at Greenhouse Tavern, and learned that a substantial fraction of the culinary professionals there know and respect each other. Indeed, one of the last pieces of advice from the bartender at Greenhouse Tavern was that if I wanted some good beer and pizza, I should check out Bar Cento (where Greenhouse’s Jonathon Sawyer was chef before opening Greenhouse). Interestingly, I also got a recommendation for Bar Cento from my friend Rick in Vermont, who happens to know the new chef at Cento, Michael Nowak, from his days as a culinary student at NECI. So that was two reasons to head to Bar Cento on this trip…

(Closed) Two weeks ago, I had a free evening in Cleveland during a business trip. Coming to Cleveland after a huge bender in NYC (including Scott’s Pizza Tour), I continued the heavy eating with a trip to Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse (part of the conference) and Wonton Gourmet earlier in the day. So, while I needed dinner, I decided to go someplace light. Greenhouse Tavern has been on my list for a while, so I decided that a burger at Greenhouse was just what I needed. However, it turned into a most interesting evening (in a good way), almost as interesting as the infamous Willie Mae’s Scotch House Adventure). Why? Two different (but related) reasons…

(Closed) If there’s one thing I really like, it’s a good bagel, in particular a New York style one. Unfortunately, fewer things in life seem more certain than the exponential decay in bagel quality one experiences as you move further in distance from NYC. By the time you are barely 50 miles into Connecticut most bagels have been replaced by some sort of circular bread product that resembles a bagel only slightly in appearance, and even less in taste. It’s as if someone took a real bagel, described it in writing, and made someone re-invent it from that description. Most “bagels” leave me disappointed and wanting. And sometimes it’s rather hard to explain, since their exists a pretty big bagel gap: it seems that most people outside NYC have never actually had a good bagel (for example, seeing the gushing reviews on Yelp for one of our local bad bagel ships), don’t know what a bagel should be, and wrongly think that all bagels taste the same. On the other hand, I’ve met several people in NYC that haven’t ever had a bad bagel.

(Closed) On our recent trip to New York City, Carol and I wanted to go someplace nice but not over the top to celebrate our tenth anniversary since we started dating. A quick search of OpenTable showed that the Saturday night slots at most places were really starting to fill up, but we noticed that the Financial District location of Brasserie Les Halles had decent availability, so we decided to give it a go. Les Halles has been on my hit list for a while, mostly since I love bistro food, French-style butchering, and good fries. And, admittedly, Bourdain’s plugging of the place made me curious…

(Closed) One of my favorite breakfast item is corned beef hash. And, as I mentioned recently in my review of Bode’s, it’s one of those dishes that’s easy to do poorly, but hard to do really well. It’s also one of the food items that I get a lot of recommendations for. I’ve often had people recommend places to me for good CBH, and a majority of the time, I’m disappointed, since I usually end up with something that’s either canned CBH, or a faithfully executed homemade replica of canned CBH. So when one of my homebrewing friends gave a strong recommendation for the Gold Star Restaurant in Worcester having the “best hash ever,” I responded with some skepticism, but put it on my hit list.

(Closed) While visiting Carol’s relatives in Michigan, we decided to meet up with my college friend Ben up in Royal Oak. He recommended Cafe Habana, which is one of the older Cuban places in Royal Oak (with other locations in Ann Arbor and Traverse City). Cafe Habana has quite the nice Cuban-decorated interior, with a heavy emphasis on the chandeliers and Cuban-themed travel posted. However, the menu is less Cuban than “Latin American”, with Tacos Pastors and Beef Chimichurri alongside the Ropa Vieja and Cuban Sandwiches. Don’t get me wrong, I like Argentinian food and Mexican food, but they are both very, very different in their ingredients, flavors, and cooking techniques. Indeed, a major strike against Cafe Habana is that they’ve gone and reinforced the “Cuban food must be like Mexican food since they both speak Spanish” stereotype that I’m all too familiar with. Sorry, that’s been a long-standing gripe of mine. I’ll get off my soapbox…

(Closed) This year for Christmas, we decided to visit Carol’s relatives in Michigan, which means a long drive across VT, NY, and ON. To break up the drive, we spent the night in Buffalo, NY. While I have several places in Buffalo that I like (such as the original Ted’s Hot Dogs, or Schwabl’s), and several that I’d like to visit again (Duff’s, Anchor Bar, …), a Monday night at 11pm isn’t the best time, sice most every place is closed. So we punted and went to Denny’s, while deciding for find a good breakfast joint. Consulting my Buffalo-area contacts, two people recommended Demetri’s Family Restaurant in Buffalo as a good, cheap, Greek breakfast joint, so we went by to check it out…

(Closed) Providence is always surprising me. Anyone that has followed the Providence food scene has been aware of Farmstead (the Wayland cheese shop) and their good reputation for supplying excellent cheeses. Well, this spring the folks at Farmstead opened a small deli and sandwich shop in Downcity, one that several people were recommended that I try. So, this week, while passing through town to visit my grandpa down in Wickford, we stopped by for sandwiches…

(Closed) My recent business travels had me passing through LAX on the way to Palm Desert, so I decided it would be a good opportunity to meet up with some LA friends and check out Ercole’s for burgers, based upon its AHT writeup. Unfortunately, Ercole’s doesn’t serve burgers on Monday nights since they have a MNF special (chili dogs). Fortunately, I’ve been around Manhattan Beach several times, so I decided to wander up to Ebizo’s Skewer. I’ve actually been to Ebizo’s before, it’s modest but above-average shabu-shabu joint. However, apparently since my last visit in late 2007, Ebizo’s has decided to get into the burger business as well. That’s right, burgers.

(Closed) My current business trip brought me to Greenbelt, MD (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), which was also a good excuse to get together with some of my MD peeps for dinner. As a destination, we picked “Roy’s Place” in Gaithersburg, MD (a bit of a haul from my hotel in College Park, but I was given a ride). Roy’s is a Gaithersburg institution, a nice, dimly lit saloon featuring a long list of sandwiches. Indeed, it’s not just a long list of sandwiches. It’s a truly exhaustive list of sandwiches, with over 200 different sandwiches…