food
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Dazeday
Some unfair comparisons I’m polyamorous about college towns. Having lived in or beside Greensboro (Guilford, UNCG), Chapel Hill (UNC), Durham (Duke), Palo Alto (Stanford), Santa Barbara (UCSB), Pasadena/Los Angeles (Caltech, et. al.), Cambridge (Harvard, MIT, Tufts, et. al), New York City (NYU, Columbia, et. al.), and Bloomington (Indiana U), I’ve been spoiled by book stores… Continue reading
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A Taste of Matter
We had a party recently that required cooking an enormous number of baby back ribs. To acquire a volume of barbeque sauce sufficient to soak all the slabs, we took a run to our nearest Costco (an hour away on the south side of Indianapolis), where thee were plenty of Kinder’s and Sweet Baby Ray’s.… Continue reading
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Thursday, 26 June 2025
A history lesson. A neighbor who works in tech asked me what my new outdoor TV antenna was for. I told him it was for watching TV stations, mostly from Indianapolis, where the transmitters are about 60 miles away. “Don’t you have cable?” he asked. I said no, we only have Internet service, which for… Continue reading
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Friday, 20 June 2025
Convenient. The 50 Best Restaurants include: Six in Bangkok Five in Tokyo. Four in Paris. Four in Lima. Four in Copenhagen. Three in New York. Two in Munich. Two in London. Two in Mexico City . Two in Dubai. Two in Seoul. Two in Barcelona. One in Gardone Riviera. One in Alba. One in Singapore.… Continue reading
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Tools
And just one for New Jersey! iLoveFood says the best pizza in Indiana is Mother Bear’s here in Bloomington. Problem: it isn’t. Osteria Rago’s is better. Not that MB’s is bad. It’s good. Just not better than Osteria’s. I’m also betting there must be a better pizza than both somewhere in Indianapolis. iLoveFood also names top… Continue reading
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Mom’s breakfast
As a cook, my Swedish mother was best known for her Swedish meatballs, an indelicacy now familiar as the reward for completing the big-box retail maze called Ikea. Second-best was the limpa bread (vörtbröd) she baked every Christmas. She once won an award for that one. Maybe twice. But her most leveraged dish was the… Continue reading
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A Supply Problem
A while back, my gastroenterologist insisted that I get accustomed to eating high-fiber cereal in the morning. And so I have. It does work. He recommended Fiber One. I didn’t like it, but I put up with it until I found Trader Joe’s version, which tasted much better. Since Bloomington is more than an hour… Continue reading
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Raising a glass to @AtwatersBakery
No sooner do I publish Let’s bring the cortado / piccolo to America than I discover it has already arrived at Atwater’s in Baltimore: And here’s how it’s featured on the coffee menu: @AtwatersBakery at Belvedere Square Market was already our favorite place to grab a bite in Baltimore. (Here’s a menu.) Could be they… Continue reading
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Let’s bring the cortado / piccolo to America
There are ideal ratios of coffee and milk, if you don’t want the flavor of either to fully prevail. To me the closest to the ideal ratio is what in Spain and Peets they call a cortado, some elsewhere call a gibraltar, and Australians and Kiwis call a piccolo (short for piccolo latte). This is a… Continue reading
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Happy to have been there
That’s what many thought when they first saw the poster for Hassle House, in Durham, North Carolina, back in ’76 or so. As soon as any of the posters went up, they disappeared, becoming instant collectors’ items. At the time, all I wanted was to hire the cartoonist who did it, so he could… Continue reading
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Restaurant redux
The best Romans we ever knew were former ex-pats there: Charles and Doris Muscatine. We didn’t know them well, having met only once, for dinner in the early ’90s, at their son Jeff’s house in the Bay Area. But it turned out we were going to be in Rome at the same time, not long after that… Continue reading
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Love the knuckles but hold the bear
Typo du jour: I think what I ordered was the souris d’agneau à l’estragon (lamb testicles with estrogen). Continue reading
