Offbeat Eats

(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

(Closed) After a walking trip through some fairly heavy blowing snow, we decided that we’d try to gamble and see if we could get into Hawksmoor in Seven Dials for a lunch (they were out of reservations, but sometimes I’ve gotten lucky at busy places). However, this time luck was not on my side, so we needed to find someplace else good in Seven Dials to eat. Luckily, my sister-in-law pointed us to World Food Cafe.

(Closed) One of the fine English culinary traditions I embrace is that of the Full English Breakfast (you can read my previous article on the topic). Every time I come to London, I try to accomplish two things: (a) another trip to the Regency (it’s a 5 minute walk from the flat), and (b) get a Full English someplace other than the Regency. This time, we decided to try out Canteen. Canteen’s motto (and the name of their cookbook) is “Real British Food”, and their menu reflects it, with your basic selection of roasts, fresh fish, and poultry dishes. They also serve breakfast, so we went so I could try out their Full English (which, oddly, hasn’t been on their menu long, they recently added it “because you asked for it!”).

(Closed) As anyone reading my article on Eggs Benedict from earlier this year could tell, it’s one of my favorite breakfast dishes from the savory side of things. The combination of a good toasted muffin, some sort of proper meat product, a nicely poached egg, and a well-executed tangy hollandaise makes for quite the nice breakfast. It’s also very, very hard to find such a beast in the Upper Valley. Lou’s can poach a mean egg (their “poached eggs and hash” breakfast is one of my local favorites) biut only has a Benedict as an occasional special. Four Aces had one, but it was a rather poor specimen (limp sauce, and cold ham), and in any case Four Aces is no longer with us. I’ve had an outstanding one at Wasp’s in Woodstock, but that’s outside my normal range, and not open on Saturdays. Benedicts also grace a few other menus of area places (as the occasional special, mostly), but I’m generally left underwhelmed. In an area not particularly well-populated with a lot of breakfast joints, I’m generally forced to lived without.

(Closed) The real-estate bust hit London as well as the US, and a byproduct of this was the “Pop up restaurant”. Basically a temporary restaurant, you find some cheap and available retail space (or another restaurant), set up a kitchen and a dining area, select a limited menu, and run a restaurant as a temporary endeavour, without all the overhead costs. One example of this is “The Dock” off Portobello road. The Dock started as a popup restaurant for the London Design Festival, in space used by design Tom Dixon, the concept worked well enough that it’s more-or-less permanent now.

(Closed) For our last full day in Valencia, the weather had cooled off a few degrees to be just “pleasantly warm”, so we decided it would be a good day to go check out the beach and go swimming (I had been to the beach twice before, but at night). After a few hours of swimming and relaxing on the sand, we needed a light lunch, so we decided to go walking. The southern end of Malvarossa beach is actually several blocks of restaurants all packed together (including the very nice La Pepica that I had eaten at two nights before), but we ended up instead walking out on the breakwater of the Port of Valencia, where we came across 39º27N, and decided to have a light lunch there.

(Closed) As frequent readers of my blog are aware, one of my major clients is NASA Glenn Research Center, so I travel fairly frequently to the Cleveland area. As several of my other reviews, such as Greenhouse Tavern and Wonton Gourmet indicate, Cleveland is quite the food destination, and I’ve so far only touched the tip of the iceberg (with such recommended establishments as AMP150, Lola, Lolita, B-spot, and several others remaining on my hit list for reviewing). However, most of these places (with the noticeable exception of AMP 150) are downtown or other places not easily accessible to GRC (which is by the airport, well west of downtown), so for years the question of “Where shall we go for lunch?” was typically answered with “well, thte food court at the mall isn’t too bad…” Indeed, that’s where we’ve eaten, more times than I could count.

(Closed) A few weeks ago, we found ourselves driving through Hillsborough and Peterborouh in southern NH. Looking for a snack, we had recalled that several years earlier we had passed some sort of German bakery, but couldn’t recall details. This time, armed with GPS and 3G wireless, we found the place: German John’s Bakery in Hillsborough. A modest storefront in a building shared with an ice cream parlor (which appears to be run by the same folks), it’s a cozy little bakery with a several racks of baked goods, a chalkboard listing available sausages, some shelves of German groceries, and a few tables. We opted for a few classic soft pretzels, and went outside to the tables out front.