If you're keeping track at home, food trucks are about to be over. They showed up on the second season of Top Chef Masters, the current run of Next Food Network Star, and there's a whole food truck series coming on Food Network next month. So, yeah, over. Also over, it seems, are underground restaurants, which have shown up a couple of times on No Reservations but now have also show up on NFNS. I guess what I'm saying, basically, is that I'm not buying anything as trendy if it's showing up on TV with Bob Tuschman.
Meanwhile, the NYTimes (for reasons unknown) decided to do a brief write-up on the legendary Wo Hop. Which, admittedly, isn't much different from a bunch of other oldschool Cantonese joints in Chinatown. Except it's the only one featured in a Milk & Cheese comic.

we're paying cash!

I think I mentioned this already but AV Club remains my recap-of-choice for Top Chef. I love Serious Eats for most things but their recaps of TC have sucked. Yes, AV Club did get it wrong on the spilled cauliflower/broccoli replacement in Kevin's dish this week. But SE had hit a level of pointless and sustained snark in the first weeks of the season that rivaled some of AV Club's recaps of the last season of Project Runway. IOW, they pissed me off so much that I stopped reading them. Decided to give them another try this week but if the evil tone has calmed down a bit (it not longer reads like it's a sisyphean effort to watch/recap the show) but it hasn't been replaced by anything much better. And for a foodgeek site their discussion of the food is pretty lacking. Plus they seemed to Have No Idea who Patrick O'Connell was or why he and the Inn at Little Washington were important. Sure a commenter finally called them on it/corrected them. At comment 18. At least the AV Club commentariat caught the cauliflower/broccoli mistake at comment 4. So anyway, if you ask me (and you didn't but I'm telling you anyway), the SE recaps are full of fail. As they say on the internets. Which, last time I checked, is where we are.

Excellent piece by Anthony Bourdain with thoughts on Harvey Pekar. The Cleveland/Pekar/American Splendor episode of No Reservations was excellent, altho I was a bit suprised that Bourdain singled it out as his fave episode they've ever done. I have not read enough of Pekar's work over the years. I should correct that. Speaking of Bourdain, here's he is being interviewed by Jay Rayner. I've read middling reviews of Medium Raw but I'm sure I'll get around to reading it eventually. Bourdain's coming back to the area this fall, but we'll probably skip that. Altho his talk that we saw at DPAC was a lot of fun I kinda don't feel the need to see him again in another big fancy concert hall. If it was gonna be a different format or something, I'd be more interested.

Excellent article by Jay Rayner on his following a cow from farm to slaughterhouse to butcher shop to table. Will probably not convert any vegetarians. Nor was it intended to. Nor should it. But I found it thoughtful and well written. I also agree with his point that people shouldn't be forced to directly confront the "realities of meat eating." For one, I don't think people should be forced to do things, in general. Also, I think it's completely possible to understand that implications of one's carnivorous choices without having to see it in person. Animals are killed so we can eat meat. Meat does not come from plastic packages or vats or wherever. I do think it's valid to take someone's opinions about meat consumpltion less seriously if they shy away from acknowledging the basic realities. I'm not sure if that's a reasonable position but I'm still sifting through what I think.

What better way to wrap up the week than with an inspirational message from one of my culinary role models.

bort bort bort

As we get ready to roll into 4th of July weekend, let me pause to salute one of the great American cuisines, barbecue. Here's a nice slideshow from Serious Eats done at the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party earlier this year of pitmasters giving their definition of 'cue. Including Ed Mitchell from the Pit in Raleigh.
Might try to do some smoking sometime over the weekend. Tonight I just grilled some lamb burgers. Turned out okay. I think I overworked the meat a bit so the burgers weren't as fall apart as I prefer in a lamb burger. But they were still pretty juicy. Added a bit of mint, oregano and sumac to the mix but probably could've used a bit more. My goal for a lamb burger is always to try and get close to the Burger Bar in Vegas (last time we were there, sadly, they'd taken it off the menu). Not there yet so the quest continues.

Well, that was a fine weekend. Went to the farmer's market yesterday and got a nice haul (pea shoots, Italian sausage, chioggia beets, fresh mozzarella, eggplant, donut muffins, polenta bread, cherry tomatoes). Also got to see a bit of the chef challenge. Sort of a Durham Farmer's Market version of Iron Chef. They had chefs from Toast, Guglhupf and Four Square competing with the theme ingredient being squash. We didn't stay until the end (too damn hot) but based on the prep I got to see I was most interested in Four Square's offering. Okay, maybe that was cos they had a big pile o' bacon on the cutting board. In the afternoon, Sarah and I went over to Tobacco Road to watch USA v. Ghana. Our friend D. joined us. Tobacco Road was pretty cool place to watch the game. Huge crowd, lots of TVs, even someone with a vuvuzela. And the food was excellent. I had a pulled lamb pita and Sarah had a shrimp burger. Both good enough that we'd go back even if there wasn't a game we wanted to watch. D. had a Caesar salad but I didn't get a chance to ask him how it was. Later in the game (Sarah and I got there super early to make sure we'd get a table) we got a hummus and pimento cheese appetizer. Also good (altho retrospectively maybe a bit too much food in the middle of the afternoon). And they have several local beers on draught including Triangle, Sisters of the Moon and Aviator.
Too bad about the game, though. Going in, I thought USMNT had a chance against Ghana but wasn't sure they could pull off the win. And that's about what happened. All through this year's World Cup, they seemed to be giving up early goals, digging themselves a hole that they spent huge amounts of time chasing down goals.
Not surprised to see England lose to Germany this morning, altho I was surprised to see them get beat like a drum. Sorry to see Mexico go out, altho I expected that as well.
Tonight we had dinner with an old friend who I hadn't seen in (what) eight years. He was down the road in Charlotte for a family event and popped up (okay, one doesn't just pop up from Charlotte but it's a damn sight closer to Durham than RI) and we all had dinner at Watts Grocery. As usual, they didn't disappoint. New summer menu is on now and good reviews for the trout, frogmore stew, summer pasta,chilled red pepper soup, summer berry slump, lemon coconut chess pie.

Maybe going down to Savannah (5+ hours south of here) in the middle of June wasn't my most practical idea ever. But we didn't have time for a long trip. And we both really had a good time when we were there last (five years ago!! yikes, where does the time go?). And it was a nice couple of days. We'd been planning to drive out to Tybee either Monday night or Tuesday to check out a seafood place I'd read about online but ended up just leaving the car parked for the whole trip and walking around downtown. Mostly we checked out the squares and the cool architecture, watched World Cup, and ate. Food-geek highlight was definitely Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room. Old school southern cooking, served family style. We were lucky enough to end up sitting at a table with a local family. The woman sitting next to Sarah asked us if we'd been to Paula Deen's restaurant. When we told her no, her response was that Lady & Sons wasn't that good and that we'd made the right choice coming to Mrs. Wilkes'. Other tourists may not think we're locals there but at least they endorse our dining options. I have no idea if Mrs. Wilkes' is better than Lady & Sons. I can tell you that the line for L&S (as you'd expect) are much much longer. It went around 2 corners of their bldg when Sarah and I walked past on our way to MacPherson's to watch futbol yesterday morning.
If you go to Mrs. Wilkes' (and you really should). note that although they open at 11am, the line starts forming before 10am. They seat at tables of 10 and they stagger the seatings enough to give the staff and kitchen time to keep up. I think we were in the third group seated so we probably ended up waiting about an hour. I would imagine that the wait gets longer when you're waiting for people to finish eating. I wasn't sure if I'd be hungry for a big meal before noon but let me tell you, 45 or so minutes of smelling the chicken frying while waiting outside will whet the appetite for sure. I don't remember every single thing on the table but they included: cole slaw, rutabagas, dirty rice, peas and noodles, sliced pork barbecue, beef stew, greens, mac & cheese, rice & gravy, biscuits, corn muffins, creamed corn, sweet potatoes, hot potato salad, lima beans, mixed veg stew w/ okra, green beans, sweet tea. And fried chicken, of course. Blueberry cobbler or banana pudding for dessert. The only thing I've ever seen like it are the family style restaurants in Amish country in Pennsylvania.

Random thoughts on this week's Top Chef:

- Glad to see the mise en place challenge show up early in the season. I like this format better than the relay. This way the top finishers have to go thru all the steps (peel potatoes, brunoise onions, break down chickens and then cook a dish using the ingredients). Down side was with so many people competing it was hard to get a look at who was doing what.
- It may be too early to call this after one episode but it seems like the editors are playing a couple of people as this season's version of some of last season's contestants.
- Things not to say to Tom Colicchio #1: I've made this dish hundreds of times but I got it wrong tonight because I didn't have a recipe (which was a totally bizarre combo of patting-self-on-back and making excuses anyway)
- Sorry to see Crazy Dreadlocks Chef get sent home. Not because he didn't deserve to go. But because his loss will further the TC truism that desserts lose. That's too simple, I think. Bad desserts lose but bad anything loses. What I don't get is why would you (as a contestant on the show) choose to make a dessert if you're not very good at making desserts. I mean, Carla (from season 5) would often make desserts but that's cos she was good at it. If the best thing you can come up with under pressure is a napoleon (which seems to be the default choice for non-pastry chefs trying to make a dessert) AND you buy your puff pastry instead of making it well then you better not screw up anything else in the dish or you're going home.
- When Eric Ripert is telling you why your fish wasn't cooked correctly, you'd best just stand there and listen.

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