the road | the food | a new direction
We’ve encountered a style of hamburger cookery in the Midwest that we rarely see in the East. Many of these places use fresh, coarsely ground beef and smoosh it down hard on the cooktop, resulting in a thin, irregularly formed patty with crisp edges and the chaw of real beef which hasn’t been pulverized to a pulpy paste. The Kansas City chain Winstead’s makes such a burger. Continue reading
Phillips Grocery in Oxford is a branch of the original in Holly Springs. The one in Holly Springs is a can’t miss stop. This one, while not really a grocery, or even a former grocery, is a genuinely old wooden house south of town, converted into something reminiscent of the Holly Springs original, in an impressionistic sort of way. There are some picnic tables out on the front porch, and they can be a very pleasant place to spend some time munching on first-class hamburgers. Continue reading
Tripoli Bakery is a decades-old Italian/American bakery in the old Italian section of Lawrence. Most Northeast industrial cities have such a neighborhood, in varying stages of transition, and there’s usually a bakery or two that remain open. Some of these bakeries maintain the old traditions while others have seen better days. Tripoli is one of the good ones. Continue reading
Maine means lobster for many of us, but Maine is also a great place to try all manner of seafood, including the fine smoked versions turned out by Grindstone Neck. Located on the picturesque Schoodic Peninsula, Grindstone is not a restaurant, but a seafood smokehouse, owned by a local restaurateur/innkeeper. There’s a retail store on the premises, but you’ll have to take your purchases elsewhere to enjoy them. Continue reading
When we travel, we are tourists. We willingly accept that label, because it’s a simple fact. But like many tourists, we don’t always want to be around too many of our own kind. Myran’s Maison de Manger (Myran’s Eating House), in Arnaudville, is just the place for those times when you want to be the only outsider in the joint. It’s a local restaurant (not a “Cajun” restaurant) that tries to appeal to local tastes. Continue reading
Our mini-cheesesteak tour of Philadelphia brought us to American Sardine Bar. Now we understood that the Sardine is by no means a cheesesteak joint – it’s an anti-hipster/hipster pub with a reputation for quirky quality bar food. Nonetheless we’d read that they served a mean cheesesteak done Pittsburgh-style with fries and slaw on the steak, and we felt like a beer, so here we were. And, of course, there was no cheesesteak on the blackboard menu. Continue reading
If you plan to spend some time strolling around Brockville in southeastern Ontario (a terrific idea), make sure you also plan to be on West Water Street around lunchtime, for it is here you will find Don’s Fish & Chips, a traditional take-out only chip shop. Continue reading
We visit the somewhat decrepit Montgomery Cinemas pretty often because it’s the only place less than an hour’s drive from home that shows independent and foreign films. It’s not that we never noticed Ya Ya Noodles, in the same shopping center as the theater, before. It’s just that virtually every Chinese restaurant we’ve been to in central New Jersey seems to have been stamped out by a single Take-Out Chinese Factory. The food sent forth from these places ranges from dismal to just decent enough for delivery. We don’t remember what exactly finally brought us through Ya Ya’s front doors but we are surprisingly glad we did so. Continue reading
We’re always on the lookout for good barbecue when we travel, due in part to our residence in the barbecue-deprived Northeast (and partly because we simply love all kinds of barbecue). The often Southern-seeming Midwest state of Indiana is a good place to look. For instance, in Lafayette we found good barbecue at the South Street Smoke House, located by the railroad tracks, on the main drag heading east out of the city. Continue reading
We’ve been posting here at LeftAtTheFork.net lately about the disappearing kosher deli, but let us not forget that many of the same forces that are hitting old-fashioned Jewish cuisine hard — assimilation of the customer base, dying off of the generation that embraced these restaurants, modern health-consciousness, the younger generation’s rejection of the previous generation’s ways — are having a similar effect on the old-style African-American cuisine known as soul food. The situation isn’t as dire but, as the Chicago Sun-Times documented in a 2011 story, soul food restaurants have been closing rapidly in Chicago. Continue reading
Do you really love catfish? Do you enjoy working for your dinner? If so, Whitey’s Fish Camp is the place to try fried catfish that have not been farm-raised. These beauties are caught wild, then fried up whole (but headless and skinless), and brought to you until you tell your waitress to stop. Continue reading
Across much of the US, roast beef sandwiches are The People’s Choice; regardless of the local specialties, you’re likely to see some kind of roast beef sandwich on the menus, and tables, of bars and casual eateries. People love ’em. So do we. Sometimes served cold, often served hot with gravy, the meat is generally thinly sliced, and the sandwiches, satisfying as they may be, generally have a commercial quality to them; they don’t often resemble home cooking. Continue reading
As we take our first bites out of our good cheesesteaks from Campo’s we are reminded once again of one of our basic street food tenets. For hoagies, subs, heroes, or whatever you want to call the torpedo-shaped cold cut sandwiches, we want the best bread available, with good chew and well-developed flavor. For hot torpedo sandwiches like cheesesteaks, veal parm heroes, or roast pork rabe, we prefer the bread to be less assertive. Continue reading
We love the way the Pacific Northwest treats breakfast as more than a grab-a-bite afterthought. Some real consideration is given to the first meal of the day, and our “breakfast tour” of Portland turned up a number of winners, from the old-time hash-house Fuller’s to the hash specialists at the energized Bijou. Add to that the comfortable, laid-back ambiance of the J & M Cafe, a restaurant with a counterculture spirit. Continue reading
There’s not a lot of variables in a Philadelphia cheesesteak. In its classic configuration there’s a roll, meat, cheese, onions, and garnishes. While there’s some play in each of the five variables there’s really not much a cheesesteak joint can do to clearly stand out from the crowd, despite what most writers on the subject would have you believe. Some are better than others, sure, but we find that the day-to-day and month-to-month variation from the same joint is greater than the variation between joints. Which means your favorite today might not be your favorite if you compare tomorrow, or next month. So don’t get too bent out of shape seeking out the one place that someone claimed makes the best. Go to any of the dozen or so places frequently named and you’ll likely enjoy the results. Continue reading
If you spend a significant amount of time in Buffalo, it doesn’t take long to notice the large number of candy and ice cream shops scattered about the region. Buffalonians evidently have a penchant for eating sweets, and that’s good news for LAFers. Continue reading
What brought us to Pho Tan was not the pho but the banh mi which were recently touted in a local publication as the “perfect sandwich” that will “change your life.” Our lives remain as they were but the sandwich has all the right flavors, and would make a pleasant appetizer to a bowl of pho. The problem is the almost comical paucity of filling. We haven’t seen sandwiches this under-filled since our days in ’70s London. The banh mi is only $4, and perhaps what else could you expect at the price? Continue reading
What, you think a little thing like the Delaware River is enough to confine all the great cheesesteaks to the City of Brotherly Love? Hardly! Good ones can be found east of the river and, as in Philadelphia, you’ll encounter plenty of mediocre, or worse, cheesesteaks, too. But what’s the point of Left at the Fork if we can’t provide a little assistance in directing you to a steak worth your time? One such place is Chick’s Deli, a sandwiches-only joint in Cherry Hill since 1957. Continue reading
First off, let us state up front that we are not vegans, nor have we ever been vegans (save for a seemingly endless five-day macrobiotic episode decades ago). So why do we recommend a vegan version of one of America’s naughtiest foods? More to the point, in our minds: why is there a vegan version of donuts? Are there really that many people who crave fried, sugared dough but avoid them because of the use of animal products? There must be, because here is Ronald’s Donuts of Las Vegas, maker of vegan donuts that put to shame those turned out by the big donut chains. Continue reading
We were faced with a tricky proposition: a bunch of us would be spending the day in Chelsea (a neighborhood in Manhattan) and wanted somewhere to hang out and get something to eat around 7:30 p.m. Oh, did we mention it was Valentine’s Day? Not only is that holiday the ultimate amateur night for diners (special menus geared toward those who dine out once a year), but every table at every restaurant that could even remotely be considered romantic had been booked weeks in advance. We had to find the sort of place that no couple in their right minds would even consider visiting on the most romantic evening of the year. And so we did. Continue reading
© 2024 Left at the Fork
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑