Pittsburgh may be a great city, but it was unquestionably missing the riches of Mexican food that can be found in LA. When I told people about my new digs in Echo Park, a number of them said I had to check out Guisados, which was apparently home to amazing tacos. I took these recommendations to heart, pushed them on my family and set out to pick up a number of these tacos for us to eat.
Down on the Hermosa Beach Pier one could find a fair amount of seafood. Normally I avoid such places, but sometimes I must succumb to the desires of friends and family. In this case, I found myself at Killer Shrimp seeking the least “fishy” things on the menu.
In a back alley of Pasadena known as One Colorado sits a place called a/k/a.What it stands for the world may never know, but it does bill itself as “An American Bistro.” Now I should mention that this back alley does not correlate to hole in the wall types of food. After all, this is Pasadena, so a/k/a definitely has one foot in the upscale level.
It’s not often you get the opportunity to traverse the entire state of Utah, but when you do you should probably stop for Crown Burger. Or so I hear, but unfortunately that place doesn’t exist south of Salt Lake City. Yet through the magic of the internet I learned that Crown Burger is not the only place in Utah to serve pastrami burgers and one of the alternatives was Arctic Circle, which I found in Cedar City.
Freddy’s Frozen Custard has long had a place on my national to-eat list – relegated for a long time to bottom with the thought that I would never find such a place. Yet, as I made my way through the state of Kansas I found one such location in the town of Hays. I entered unsure of what I would find. And what I found was shockingly popular for what looked on the outside like any generic fast food spot.
On my rapid journey across the country once again, my buddy suggested stopping at Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue in the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City. Having traversed this path before, I was eager to get back to Gates, but he said this would be worth it and I deserved it because it was my birthday. Since he hails from Kansas City and knows good food I took his word.
Milford, Michigan might be out there, but it has a pretty cool main street with shops and restaurants. One such restaurant goes by the name of Palate and kind of does the gastropub thing. I had heard good things about their mac and cheese, but I wasn’t up for that as a full meal and needed to find the main course.
The Detroit area is populated with some pretty amazing Middle Eastern food. This is due, of course, to the high population of people from that region. Thus, I operate under the impression that you can’t go wrong with any place because of the big time competition. So when I stepped into Shawarma Kingdom in Birmingham, I walked in with expectations.
EDIT: As always, Conflict Kitchen continues update the menu for different countries. Rumor has it it’s currently Iranian, but likely won’t be for long.
With the advent of improved relations between the US and Cuba, Conflict Kitchen (which I wrote about back here) decided to switch from Palestinian food over to food representing that land mass 90 miles from Florida. They had done this once before, but they probably figured they wouldn’t have the opportunity again.
By now I have made it pretty clear on this blog and in life that I have no need for sushi. Thus, life in Pittsburgh was good because A) there are very few “good” sushi places and B) my wife got deeply pregnant and could not eat it or convince me to eat it. Thusly, her first meal post-child turned out to be sushi at Sushi Fuku.