Forking Tasty

Texas Is All Texas

Just want to send a quick post. I have been traveling a bunch, what else is new, and I was in a hotel in Texas for breakfast before heading to work. I ordered an omelet at the omelet station. Before he was finished making my western omelet I noticed he had a waffle iron. The last homemade waffle I had was on the ship. They always made perfectly round and crispy waffles. With that in mind, I ended up ordering one. When he put it on my plate I couldn’t believe the shape. Only in Texas! Oh and yes, they go big in Texas, I could only finish southern Texas.

I wish he put the waffle on my plate so Texas was facing the right way.

Fried Chicken Breakfast

Not exactly. I just couldn’t bring myself to whack down a chicken and waffles plate at 9am on a Thursday. Although the rainy New York morning gave me a good excuse, the Bikram Yoga class planned for tonight won the short synapse battle. There could be nothing worse than trying to sweat out molasses and waffle while in standing-head-to-knee pose. What I opted for instead was more of a breakfast than the aforementioned dinner-breakie mash up. Above is the Eggs Armadillo, a poached egg on top of a buttermilk biscuit, covered in sausage gravy. It’s not exactly the morning fuel Slim Goodbody preached to me as a kid but pretty damn satisfying. It’s been a very quiet secret that I’ve been holding lunch meetings and late night snack fixes at the 50′s style tables of Hill Country Chicken for the last 5 months. So, I am no stranger to the finer, fattier side of their menu. When they announced breakfast a few months ago I instantly started looking for the opportunity to blow up the morning with some of their delights. The menu fills out well with fatty pastries, donuts and a set of sides that could outshine your main event. Take a peek and schedule a visit. I’ll most likely be at the back table holding a leg.

The Canadian’s Full English in America

I took the opportunity to write a headline that is truly global since my wife was determined to make breakfast for dinner this weekend.

For those avid readers this needs little explanation. For the new comers, my wife was born in the UK. This adequately explains her admiration for anything British, particularly bangers.

Her idea to cook a full English breakfast for dinner came immediately after I informed her of my Living Social coupon to Myers of Keswick. $10 got us $20 worth of necessary provisions at the little West Village shop. On a side note, I’m not sure you have to pay full price for anything anymore. Counter clockwise from the top…

Nuptial Nosh

As promised this post is all about the food at my wedding. Although, it is 3 months tardy. I can’t really believe how quickly the time has past. I am not exactly sure what happened but a little 48 hour mini-honeymoon in Philadelphia this weekend (stay tuned for that post soon) reminded me of what happens when my wife and I are left to plan eating a day at a time. Before we get into all this I feel compelled to give some of you a bit more context on the days events. First off, I married the Canadian. I have been coy in keeping her identity a bit secret over the years in this blog. Now that she is officially in the family you can expect some guest posts.

The Canadian, in case you have not followed the sloppy hidden path backwards to her identity, is of pure Indian decent. Her wonderful parents, my new in-laws, are from Bangalore and Mysore so her South Indian roots run deep. This has everything to do with the day starting with a traditional South Indian breakfast in the Gnesha temple in flushing Queens. The fact that we visited a year prior just to eat in the temple canteen, as did Tony Bourdain, heavily influenced our decision to have our ceremony here. Breakfast was straight from the heart of what South Indians eat daily and the preparation was…

Butter Milk Biscuits Are A Southern Favorite

Around the corner from our hotel was a breakfast place called Toast. Although breakfast is not usually a meal that I normally blog about I thought this was such an outstanding egg sandwich, even though the staff got my order wrong…. twice it was delicious. I ordered the Jumbo Breakfast Sandwich which is two eggs, melted cheese & your choice of bacon, sausage links or ham on toast or a homemade buttermilk biscuit. I asked for scrambled eggs and sausage but what I got was eggs over easy and bacon. They took it back and brought me the sandwich with sausage but the eggs were still over easy. I was starving at that point and the sandwich looked dam good the way it was so I dug in. That may have been one of the best egg sandwiches I have ever had. It was messy because of the egg yoke but the mess was well worth it….

Baked Pancakes

Each week my ship’s homeport is in San Diego. We are there pretty early in the morning and the southerner’s parents were coming to visit. We met them at their hotel, the Holiday Inn across the street from the ship. We checked in their bags to the hotel and wanted to go get some brunch. I went up to the hotel’s front desk and ask “If you were going to go to brunch what restaurant would you want to go to?” Without hesitation she said Richard Walkers.

My first X-Rated Cafe

Diabetic Blood Sugar Count
Pre-meal: 65 | Post-meal (1 hour): 106 | Insulin: 4 Units

This Blog is rated X and so is the restaurant I went to in Vancouver.

My buddy Sean Bell got off a ship in Vancouver about a week ago and has been vacationing in Vancouver ever since. Sean has been to Vancouver many times and wanted to meet up for brunch. He has been to a restaurant called The Elbow Room Café on Davie St. and loves the food there. That is all he mentioned to me was the good food, he didn’t mention the type of X-rated service we were going to get with the food…

Mile (Week)End

Memorial Day weekend in NYC is awesome. I love to stay in the city because everyone else leaves. It makes me feel like I am living in Phili or Providence or New York in 1962 (sort of). So, with the mass exodus, I took advantage and headed to a place that would normally be more crowded then a Walmart during a “Door Buster” sale. My destination was the now semi-famous, Montreal bagel and Jewish smoked meat spot, Mile End. The above bagel, with cream cheese, lox, red onion, capers and tomato, was tasty. I didn’t have any meat (one thing they are very famous for) because I arrived before noon. The line was short. I definitely need to come back and try the smoked meat to make a more complete assessment of the Mile End fare. My one wish for my next visit is that the person who takes my order acts a bit more like my friend Seth’s Grandma than a starving artist, hipster wearing an “I am more entitled than you” t-shirt.

Truck to Table

Everyone loves a surprise. Well…most people do. At the root of surprise is discovery. Most of the time is boils down to a moment. Like the moment you sip your glass of soda only to realize you grabbed someone else glass of milk. But, sometimes, when we are really lucky, that discovery unfolds with multiple moments over time. I happened upon a bustling scene yesterday morning on a quiet strip of Franklin St. in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. For a Sunday morning there was a lot of activity in what appeared to be a vacant store front. I could not help but let the moment sweep me up as the discovery unfolded before my eyes and then straight into my stomach. The above explains it all.

NOTE: I left my camera at home so this whole video had to be shot on an iPhone. Not bad. I added the pro VO to hide the crappy video quality. I sort of like the juxtaposition.

Guten Morgen, Seattle!

Flying into SEATAC airport in Seattle leaves you with few options for some early morning chow. Asking the locals came through again when I was directed to this “frozen-in-time” pancake house with a German surprise.