My parents were in town recently, and I took them up to San Francisco to see the Chihuly exhibit at the de Young Museum. Where to eat lunch before sightseeing, of course, was a key question.
We took a streetcar from the Caltrain station and hopped off in the Sunset district, which I had heard was […]

Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? At egg, a Southern-style restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, it depends on what meal you’re there for.
The place is firmly part of the laid-back hipster vibe of the new Williamsburg. Our server wore cutoff jeans and gave the impression that she just happened to find herself there, by […]

When I was in j-school in New York in the late ’90s, I heard about how Red Hook was becoming cool. On the other hand, I got the feeling it was still kind of insular — one of my classmates, a beefy guy who was doing a dual master’s degree with the school of international […]

My friend Julia has traveled around the world, but I was shocked to hear that she never really liked spicy food until she encountered the noodles in China’s Yunnan province. After a few bowls, she was sweating, but hooked. Back in New York, the specialty isn’t easy to find, which is why she was set […]

My friend Aram, a New Yorker through and through (though we grew close during the years he lived in Los Angeles), is adamant that there is no great pizza but New York pizza (nevermind that Italy place), and that in New York, there is no great pizza but Grimaldi’s. Luckily, on the evening that I […]

My friend Daveena once recounted to me a marvelous tale of an old man in a faraway land with mystical powers. He made pizzas the like of which could not be found anywhere, near or far, she said. When he passes on, she added darkly, those magical pizzas would be lost forever.
OK, so the faraway […]

“As long as you’re out here in the East Bay,” said Daveena, at whose place I was staying overnight, “you really have to go to Kopitiam for Hainan chicken rice.”
Hainan is in southern China (remember that plane incident?), but Hainanese chicken rice is part of the local culinary canon in neighboring Singapore, and also apparently […]

Last weekend I went to my first Giants game at AT&T Park, where the food may be as much of a draw as the game — its concessions were described in a recent NYT article as a leading example of upscale food in ballparks.
Wes, however, was dead set on a Sheboygan brat. He had […]

The Burmese sure love to mix things up. Seriously, at a Chowhound lunch at Mingalaba, almost every dish we ordered involved tableside mixing. It’s nice for once to have some idea of what ingredients are in an exotic and unfamiliar dish, but what’s with the national passion for blending?
Chowhound poster Moomin once wrote:
“Thoke” is […]

We arrived at my friend Carol’s eco-conscious store a bit early for her summer solstice, but very hungry. Happily, the shop is right across the street from Mustard Seed Cafe, purveyor of my favorite turkey burger of all time. I’m not even a turkey burger fanatic, but in the years that I lived in this […]