Offbeat Eats

Early in our UK trip this year, we got on the train and headed out to far Eastern outskirts of London, to a very odd destination: the Crossness Pumping Station. Now decommissioned, for almost 100 years, the Crossness was a gigantic, steam-powered… sewage pump. It’s more interesting than it sounds, since it’s primarily an example (and possibly one of the best examples) of Victorian-era engineering in all of it’s overly-adorned awesomeness. After a rather long morning of touring gigantic flywheels, steam cylinders, giant brick galleries, and entire more elaborately painted cast iron than anyone thought possible, we were more than ready for some lunch. Taking the train back towards London, it was easiest for us to stop in Greenwich, and since we spent the morning experiencing old-school English engineering, this was a good opportunity to have a good, old-school English lunch of pie and mash, stopping off at Goddard’s at Greenwich.

With a gathering of friends all descending upon London for our annual gathering of marchers for our “Death March”, we decided that it would be good to do a handful of traditional British activities, one of which was a traditional Sunday Roast. A good Sunday Roast requires a little bit of research, since it’s one of those traditions that in many ways is best experienced in someone’s home around the family dinner table, but there are still a good number of places (especially higher-end pubs) that do up a respectable Sunday Roast. After reviewing many of the options, my colleague Jeff made arrangements for our large group to go out for a Sunday Roast at Hawksmoor, the well-known London-area steak and cocktail chain.

Well, last Fall was another of my famous “Death Marches” across metropolitan areas, this time focusing on London (specifically, walking from Putney to Greenwich). But before the main even, I spent some time with family exploring some of the more interesting boroughs of London, starting with an outing to Battersea, Clapham, and Brixton. During our outing, we decided that some lunch was in order, so we stopped in for Vietnamese. It wasn’t that long ago that Vietnamese food was a bit of a niche in London, but since I wrote the review of Tay Do back in 2011, Shoreditch has basically become the Phở Mile (including Sông Quê which I visited back in 2013). But more recently, quite a few additional options have been showing up, and establishing themselves in other parts of town. One of the more notable ones is Mien Tay, a chain with locations in Battersea, Fulham, Kingsland Road, and Wood Green. We went to their Battersea location, since it was along our walk.

One of the nicer things about traveling is that it occasionally offers up an opportunity to try a cuisine that’s mostly unfamiliar to me. A business trip to DARPA headquarters in Arlington, VA gave me an opportunity to meet up with friends and try out some… Balkan cuisine. Clarendon is the third location of Ambar. Along with their other two location (one across the river in DC, the other back in Belgrade, Serbia, talk about an unusual chain distribution!).

Our last day in Kansas City was a bit of a random meander checking out some of the different sites in the city, like the excellent Jazz Museum and Negro League Baseball Museum, playing some pinball and drinking some brews at Up-Down, and getting some cocktails at TikiCat, a Tiki-themed speakeasy that’s so awesome that I’m considering writing it up despite not having had food there… But after all that, we found ourselves again looking for dinner in the midtown part of Kansas City, and when we saw that one of the options was “German food”, we decided we just had to try out Affäre.

It’s hard not to notice that over a good fraction of the United States, barbecue is having more than a little bit of a renaissance. To an existing field of old and established barbecue joints (many of which are now working on improving things to stay in the game), there’s been both a notable uptick in new barbecue spots opening in established territory (just see how many new, excellent barbecue places have shown up in and around Austin, TX, for example), and even several barbecue styles like Texas BBQ spreading far, far beyond their traditional boundaries (with respectable Texas-style places showing up as far away as New York City). So it’s interesting to come back to Kansas City, which has long been (along with Texas, Memphis, and the Carolinas) been one of the classic BBQ hubs. Into an already thoroughly saturated market (Kansas City has, easily, over 100 BBQ joints over the metro area, including such classic stalwarts as Jack Stack, L.C.’s, Arthur Bryant’s, or Joe’s), there continue to be new places opening up and trying to add their unique spin on the topic. In this case, I’m talking about Q39.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner. It’s a classic quote from most any gambling movie (to the point where most gamblers and dealers alike are sick the phrase). It’s also the classic, heck, iconic American dish. But to be honest, it’s actually pretty hard to find a good chicken dinner these days. Over the decades most of the fast-food franchise versions of it have morphed into a poor quality imitation of what they once were (don’t even think of going to KFC for a good chicken, for example, and it’s a shame, since when it is done well it is a true masterpiece of American cooking. Luckily, though, there are still a few existing places that truly know how to do a good fried chicken, and execute it without taking any shortcuts. Of the great places still around for chicken, Willie Mae’s is near the top of the list. Hollyhock Hill in Indianapolis is another. Prince’s for the Nashville “Hot Chicken” variant. And, if you find yourself in the Kansas City area, it’s a shame if you don’t make the time to go get some fried chicken at Stroud’s.

Despite the many changes in Columbia, most of my favorite spots to visit are still alive and well (Flat Branch for on of my favorite brownie sundaes anywhere and Shakespeare’s Pizza, to name two), some parts of town have seen a lot of nice development. The North Village part of town has seen a lot of recent development, such as the very excellent Logboat Brewing. Indeed, on the way to Logboat, we found a relatively new place in town (from my perspective), Cafe Berlin, and decided on our last morning in town that we’d try them for breakfast.

Our next culinary stop in Columbia was another reminder that my last major visit to Columbia was back when this was a relatively new blog, and thus some of my standard Columbia places hadn’t gotten a proper writeup. In this case, I’m talking about Ernie’s (or, to use the full name “Ernie’s Cafe and Steakhouse”), to which my first visit was well over 20 years ago. Ernie’s is a Columbia tradition, indeed, the sign proudly proclaims “Since 1934”, so even on my first visit the place was over 60 years old. In any case, it’s still a great place to get a breakfast in Columbia.

Every once in a while when doing this blog I stumble upon a real gem, finding really good food in an unusual setting. In this case, it involves going to a campground; from Columbia, you head south on Providence, follow it around as it become Highway K, and look for “Old Plank Road”. Following that for a bit, it branches and if you take Smith Hatchery Road, and eventually you come to both the Katy Trail and the Missouri river, and the Cooper’s Landing campground. Cooper’s Landing is your basic campground, albeit with a very pleasing panoramic view of the Missouri river, but aside from being a campground, the campground store is home to a small store where you can buy beer and barbecue, and, during the warmer months of the year, you can head outside to the trailer parked at the end of the building and buy food at Chim’s Thai Kitchen. Yup, Thai food at a campground. This actually isn’t my first visit to Chim’s, I’ve been here once before back in 2007, and for some odd reason that I can’t recall, I neglected to write up that visit. I’m pretty sure I also remember at one point going to another Chim’s location on Nifong back in town, but these days the campground is the only location, but I’m glad to see that, 10 years later, Chim’s is still doing some great Thai food.