Offbeat Eats

You know, we all have those food items we crave, that we always look forward to being able to have again. They aren’t always fancy. I particularly crave, amongst other things, Waffle House hashbrowns, Pepe’s Pizza, and Chicago-style Hot Italian Beef sandwiches. Alas, none of these can be had around my corner of rural New Hampshire. In the case of some items, I’ve learned to cook them myself, but for some items that’s not really possible. The Hot Italian Beef, that Chicago delight of shaved beef on a crusty Italian loaf, swimming in juice and giardinera, is one of these; the local economy even lacks the ingredients for making these. Sure, we’ve got beef. But we don’t have the right sort of crusty Italian loaves. And we certainly don’t have condiments like hot giardinera available here (although I have a healthy supply in my own cupboard, sent by a friend in Illinois). I have tried my hand at it, with reasonable results, but this was mostly like methadone; it softened the withdrawal. But, mostly, I satisfy my cravings with a stop at Gold Coast Hot Dogs on one of my many, many connecting flights through Midway, since they have a reasonably serviceable sandwich. So when the Chicago Death March was in planning, a key stop for me was one of the iconic Italian Beef stands. And, helpfully, the route that Kevin came up with delivered very nicely. Stop #3 on the Death March was on Taylor Street, at Chicago’s oldest Italian Beef stand: Al’s #1 Italian Beef.

The Chicago Death March proper started at 8am on May 5th, at the 18th Ave station on the El’s Pink Line. After a mere 30 minutes of walking (and one stop for pastries), we got to our first major food stop: Carnitas Don Pedro. The entire Pilsen neighborhood is filled with various Hispanic grocery stores and convenience stores, several of which had the pleasant smells of roasted pork coming out of them. But as we approached Carnitas Don Pedro, I could start smelling an intense roasted pork smell almost a block away. As we arrived at the fairly plain storefront of Don Pedro, it was clear, we’d arrived at the epicenter. Walking in the door, the first two things I noticed about Don Pedro is that the interior is cramped, and it’s warm. Right inside the door, it’s a fairly narrow aisle between two serving counters, one to the left with tacos and stews, and one to the right that’s purely for ordering the meat products. The latter of these is the really interesting one, since at any given moment the meat counter has a giant tray of chicharrónes, the wall behind it has an impressive array of chorizo hanging up, and the carving station in the front window a giant pile of carnitas. And when I mean giant, I mean giant, with probably 60-80 pounds of meat on it (see below)…

The night before the Chicago Death March, we continued the tradition of going out for dinner and drinks before the March. Our Chicago host, Kevin, is soon leaving Chicago for New York State, and had a number of Chicago institutions have been on his “bucket list” to finally try before he leaves. One of them was Sun Wah. A long time Chicago institute over 25 years old (although it’s only been in it’s current Uptown location for a few years, having previously been located in a small spot on Argyle Street), Sun Wah is basically your standard Cantonese-style BBQ joint (or in proper parlance, a “Siu mei” place): several different meats (chicken, pork, duck), put on a spit, glazed with a thick marinade and roasted rotissery-style for hours until fully cooked. The result is a rather pleasant combination of juicy meat (the glaze seals in most of the moisture), deep flavor, and a really crispy and yummy fried skin. They’ve also got an extensive menu of side veggies, soups, cocktails (I opted for their “MSG” cocktail, which in this case stood for “Momma-Slappin’ Giger”, a nice little cocktail loaded to the brim with ginger), rice dishes, and some fairly standard Chinese-American fare…

There are those times when you’re in a bit of a hurry. You’ve got only a limited amount of time to eat lunch before heading off to your next destination, and you can’t be spending a lot of time with an elaborate meal. This is exactly where the sandwich comes in. Sandwiches are quick. They are generally self-contained and not too messy (although I can think of some particular exceptions, like the French dip and the Italian beef). And the the world of sandwiches has a lot of options. To me, two of the best options for a quick sandwich on the fly are the Cuban sandwich (or simply, a “Cubano”), and the Vietnamese Banh Mi. In this case, I was in the mood for a Cubano. Roasted pork and ham served on a Cuban-style French roll (slightly more airy and less crusty than a traditional French baquette), with cheese and pickle, all pressed and toasted to perfection. I always like a good Cuban sandwich, although my travels don’t often take me to a place where I can indulge (a quick check of the blog shows my last review on a place featuring Cuban sandwiches was Puerto Sagua back in 2008…). But on this particular trip to Chicago, my hotel was kitty corner from one of the better-rated Cuban sandwich joints in downtown Chicago: Cafecito.

Luxbar Benedict I’ll start out with a disclaimer on this post: My meal at Luxbar was essentially free, so I’m going to be honest and say that it probably effects my review. But read on…. When I was first planning our trip to Chicago, I asked the authors of another blog I follow, Passport Delicious (who is currently based in Chicago) for some recommendations for Sunday brunch. One of the places she recommended that might be fun was Luxbar, a Near North bar known for it’s burgers, small plates, and somewhat trendy scene (and, IIRC, it’s run by the same folks as Hugo’s Frog Bar down the street, where I seem to have been at least a half dozen times as part of conferences in Chicago). It looked interesting, but then discovered that our group already had other plans for brunch at The Publican (which I’ll be reviewing in a few days), so we had to change our plans. We ended up deciding to go to Luxbar for breakfast on Friday instead. While Luxbar has been doing Sunday brunch for a awhile, they are actually fairly new to the weekday breakfast scene (more on that below). The menu is pretty much your standard breakfast fare, with omelets, pancakes, French toast, eggs Benedict, and the like. Nothing terribly fancy (aside from a few smoked salmon dishes), but they have the breakfast basics well covered. Gravlox Benedict Myself, I opted for the eggs Benedict, since it’s one of my favorite dishes when done right, and always a good way to judge a restaurant. It’s basically a simple dish, but there are a lot of ways to both mess it up, and to make something wondrous. Well, Luxbar’s Benedict was a mixed bag. They got the two most difficult components pretty much perfect: the eggs were perfectly poached and silky, with the yolks warm and runny, while the hollandaise sauce was the perfect blend of tangy and creamy. But like so many other Benedicts I’ve had, it started to fall apart after that. The meat in this Benedict was a thin, cold layer of fairly lifeless Canadian bacon that really didn’t add anything to the dish, and that actually surprised me. For a city known both historically for pork products, and more currently for several good charcuterie places, I was really expecting something better. The English muffin wasn’t much better, served cold with […]

As I mentioned before in my Blue Ginger review, I generally eschew the restaurants of celebrity chefs, since they generally seem to be busier attempting to be celebrities than being successful chefs and restauranteurs. That said, there are several prominent chefs who I think manage to run consistently good restaurants without selling themselves out, keeping the focus on the food. One of these is Rick Bayless (author of one of my most-used cookbooks), and owner of several good restaurants including Topolobampo and Frontera Grill. I really want to do Topolobampo, but since the primary purpose of our trip was meeting up with friends (for our annual Death March 20+ mile walk through a metro area), and the fact that I’ve been a bit organizationally challenged recently, we just weren’t able to work the reservations (what little effort we put into trying to score good reservations was spent on an unsuccessful waiting list slot for Alinea). So Topolobampo will have to wait for another time, and I can live vicariously through my friend Emily (who is a meticulous planner when it comes to food trips), who posted photos of her trip in 2011. But there’s a nice consolation prize here: right next door to Topolobampo is Frontera Grill, and with a modicum of effort you can generally get in without trouble; most of the seating at Frontera is reserved for walk-ins…

We love our MINI Cooper, but every once in a while something requires us to have to visit a dealer. This time, it was a warranty issue, and for various reasons we had to take it down to Mini of Peabody in Peabody, MA. However, we couldn’t really complain, it was a chance to do some shopping, test drive a nice new Mini Roadster, and find a new place to eat. Both of us were kind of craving a roast beef sandwich. And that’s a good thing, since the Boston area still has a lot of independently-owned roast beef sandwich shop (see my previous review of Billy’s, for example). This holds doubly so for the North Shore, with a dozen roast beef places within a 15 minute drive of Peabody. We ended up settling on one of the more respected ones: Nick’s Famous Roast Beef in Beverly, MA.

As I mentioned in my review of Taqueria La Guadalupana, Manchester is definitely on the upswing when it comes to Mexican food, with all sorts of good places opening up over the last few years. One of the more recent, and more delicious, ones is El Rincon Zacatecano. Located across the street from Verizon Wireless Arena, El Rincon is in a somewhat subtle storefront that used to hold several other businesses (the last two I remember were Dave’s Cosmic Subs and Hollywood Subs, and I know there were several before that). With that many turnovers, it’s one of those locations that I’m tempted to label a “cursed location”, but El Rincon has been there well over a year now, and it seems to be doing well.

(Closed) Work has me regularly traveling to Cambridge, and several times I’ve found myself passing Craigie on Main on my way too and from Toscanini’s. It’s also been my hit list for a while, since it’s a perennial entry on various Boston “Best Hamburger” lists, and it always looks like a rather inviting little bar/bistro for that neighborhood (despite the U-haul place and Tootsie Roll factory across the street). Well, I’ll be honest, I still haven’t had the burger, but it’s on my hit list. But last month we noticed that Craigie on Main also had a particularly interesting looking brunch menu, so when we had another free morning in the Boston area, we decided to head back over to Cambridge and try out their brunch. I’m rather glad we did.

(Closed) To celebrate Carol’s birthday last month, we took another trip down to Boston to enjoy some more culinary adventures. We started off with a repeat brunch visit to Sofra, where this time I did get the shakshuka, which was excellent). After a pleasant day of sightseeing, coffee drinking (I rather recommend the fairly new dwelltime in Cambridge), and shopping, we ended up in Wellesley, MA at Ming Tsai’s Blue Ginger. I’ll be honest, I’m generally not into the whole celebrity chef scene, since usually by the time a chef becomes a “celebrity”, almost by definition they are spending more time outside their kitchen than in it, and few chefs seem to be able to do that without quality suffering. But we’ve always liked nicely done East-West fusion food, and for a variety of reasons, Ming Tsai’s Blue Ginger has been on our “We should try it out” list, despite the fact that it has rather mixed reviews(on most every review site, and the Boston Globe). Well, we finally had the opportunity, so we figured it would be a good place to celebrate.