I’m going to say something unpopular. Bloody Marys are the worst. Tomatoes suck, celery sucks and there’s just something weird about spicy drinks. But I must say that I am glad that Hash Kitchen has made the big bucks off of having an incredible Bloody Mary bar. Why? Because it has enabled them to expand out to Chandler for their latest Grand Opening. And because I got to snag a bunch of the meats and cheeses from the Bloody Mary bar to decorate my beer. It may be frowned upon normally, but at the Grand Opening anything goes. As expected, the bacon was the best.

Having eaten at the Scottsdale Hash Kitchen locations a couple of times, I thought I knew what to expect from the Grand Opening. Regardless, here were some of the samplings.

Herb Fried Chicken and Waffle

With thick cut bacon, fried leeks and a warm maple reduction.

Avocado Toast

Using the split-top biscuit from the benedict, this is topped with avocado, carnitas, an over easy egg, green chili salsa and more of those fried leeks.

Carnitas Hash

Read more on this beautiful stuff here.

Cannoli Donuts

The biggest surprise of the night was how incredible the darker of these donuts were. Aside from the custardy filling, these donuts tasted as close as I’ve ever had to Cider Mill donuts this side of the Mississippi and that’s basically the best compliment a donut can get.

Fruity Pebbles Cereal Shooter

Fruity Pebbles dust, loopy vodka, rumchata and milk. A sweet and creamy way to get morning booze.

In all, I didn’t need convincing that Hash Kitchen is delicious, but it was definitely great to try some new things from the menu. Chandler is a lucky place to now have its own rendition of Hash Kitchen.

No self-respecting meat blogger can go to Portland and leave without first paying a visit to Voodoo Doughnut. That’s because Voodoo Doughnut is no ordinary doughnut shop. Not content with simply making a few tasty crullers and eclairs, Voodoo Doughnut has come up with doughnuts topped with just about any ingredient that you could ever want on a doughnut, and some you might not. Think Tang, Cap’n Crunch and weird vegan things that simply seem necessary in Portland. Some are even shaped like dongs, but that’s a whole other story. In my story, the line in front of the place only took about a half an hour, which I was informed was not terrible despite that it was mid-afternoon on a Thursday.

Despite the obvious allure of the doughnuts above, there was one in particular I was attracted to, called the Bacon Maple Bar. Shaped like an eclair, this doughnut wasn’t topped with chocolate and filled with custard, but was instead topped with a maple glaze and real strips of bacon. It looked like a beauty and turned out to have a taste matching that beauty. As my first doughnut with maple and bacon (I know there are others out there), this one set a nice bar with a sweet and salty mix that only could have been improved with more bacon.

To balance things out, we also picked up a cookies and cream doughnut, which meant it was one of those normal-shaped doughnuts, but topped with a creamy glaze and chunks of Oreos. This was unquestionably a good doughnut, yet could not hope to compete with the bacon. In truth, few things can.

So would I wait longer than 30 minutes to get my hands on their Bacon Maple Bar again? In two words: probably not. Voodoo Doughnut is a must-eat, but a bit on the level of Pink’s Hotdogs in LA. I’m oh so glad I got the chance to try it out, and would eat the crap out of it with a shorter wait, but don’t need to necessarily go through the whole process again.

Da Burger Boss is part of the newer wave of food trucks and while they aren’t brand new, they’re still plenty new to me. Their schtick is naming burgers after mob terms like The Strongarm, The Collector and so on. It’s an interesting schtick that has produced some interesting-looking combinations, but the sole reason I found myself waiting for Da Boss was to partake in The Patrolman.

You see, The Patrolman is no ordinary burger. Sure, it’s filled with a half-pound patty, bacon and blue cheese dressing, but after that the burger goes in a frightening and exciting direction. First is the cran-apple reduction, which is not crazy on its own, but when you throw in the grilled glazed donut bun, things get goddamn nuts. Yes, I said a grilled glazed donut bun. I was unsure of how any degree of this would be pulled off and figure it was worth the 9 bucks to find out.

And find out I did. The first thing I wondered was how it would stay together. For starters, this wasn’t some soft, melty Krispy Kreme donut, but a thick grocery store-style breakfast sweet. It was still wildly inadequate at holding together a burger, especially when you throw the donut hole in the mix, so the make up for it the burger was wrapped in paper. Nonetheless, this was nothing less than a mess to eat.

The next thing I wondered was how I would handle the sweetness. Not only was there donut, but also fruit reduction to consider. And the truth is that the sweetness was a bit much. There was certainly a lot of savory between the bacon, patty and blue cheese, but this was not enough to counter the fruit and donut punch. My suggestion is to either swap out the glazed for old fashioned donuts or to drop the fruit. I can’t say whether either would work, but I do know that either way would be less sweet.

But who am I kidding here? Is The Patrolman really seeking out the perfect blend of burger balance? Oh dear I hope not. This burger represents America and our undying dream of gluttony and excess. In that regard, this burger is a major success. Yeah, I can get finicky with the details, but in the end, Da Burger Boss delivered a pretty good, juicy burger and topped it with an obscene bun. And I annihilated it. In other words, it was glorious.

I should also point out that Da Burger Boss in no way invented the glazed donut bun. This was something I had heard about before and Da Burger Boss is simply the first I had ever actually seen.

Another great unvegan guest blog from @RGSpiegel.

A few weeks ago, I was watching a Cubs game on WGN and, being too lazy and preoccupied with whatever the internet had to offer to change the channel after the game (presumably, the Cubs lost), a special about the best places to eat brunch in Chicago came on. Featured first on this special was Nightwood, a restaurant in the Pilsen neighborhood on the South side of Chicago that served up brunch on Sundays. Although I am not one to typically seek out special places to eat breakfast or brunch (which is really just breakfast eaten later in the day because of being too hungover to move any earlier), I knew I had to try Nightwood when I saw that they served up a special unvegan treat: the bacon butterscotch doughnut. When I saw that this creation even existed, I immediately channeled my inner Homer Simpson.

While the rest of the food featured on the special also looked delicious through the scope of Nightwood’s open kitchen, the bacon butterscotch doughnut was the dealmaker and I knew that as soon as I had access to a ride, the sweet unvegan delight would be mine. This past Sunday happened to be that special day as my uncles offered to treat me to brunch and were happy to escort me to the South side.

When we got to Nightwood, we learned that while the bacon butterscotch doughnut was a constant, the menu changes every day based on what ingredients they are supplied with by local farms. Therefore, in addition to creating what was sure to be an unvegan delicacy, Nightwood only served up meals made up of the freshest and highest quality ingredients. Like Kuma’s, there was a substantial wait that was accompanied by watching everybody else consume their beautiful-looking meals. However, this wait was only 45 minutes instead of 2.5 hours and was not accompanied by death metal, therefore making it substantially less unpleasant.

Although it was a little tough to decide what to order to complement the bacon butterscotch doughnut, one item on the ever-changing menu stood out above all others: spicy fennel sausage, 8-year aged cheddar, and an egg over easy sandwiched by an oversized biscuit. Since it was 1:00 PM when we ordered and I had not eaten yet that day, I was very excited.

The bacon butterscotch doughnut arrived first and was even better than I had expected. Served piping hot and accompanied by three (non bacon butterscotch) doughnut holes, I tasted a delicious combination of ingredients that blended together as well as any dessert I have ever had and my legs became weak from such a beautiful creation. Dunkin Donuts and Krispy Kreme have been extremely foolhardy not to have figured out a way to work bacon and butterscotch into their doughnuts.

Just as my body was starting to recover from the fusion of exquisite flavors of the doughnut, my main course arrived. Immediately shoveling the accompanying salad onto my uncle’s plate (he unfortunately does not share the unvegan lifestyle), I barreled into my sandwich, eagerly awaiting what was sure to be a brand new take on the sausage, egg, and cheese. As much as I had hyped it up in my own head, the sandwich surpassed expectations. The sausage was unlike any that I had ever eaten before and blended together incredibly with the egg, cheese, and biscuit. I am already eagerly anticipating my next visit to Nightwood’s brunch and praying that this particular sandwich is on the menu the next time I go.

Though it is neither a restaurant nor meat related in any way, the Franklin Cider Mill is certainly blogworthy for its doughnuts and complete lack of vegetables. According to their website, the mill was finished in 1837, making it pretty much older than anything west of the Mississippi. Even more amazing is the incredibly short season that the mill is open, only from Labor Day to Thanksgiving, the peak apple harvesting season in Michigan. Any sort of establishment has to be pretty incredible to sustain itself year-round while only operating for a few months and the Franklin Cider Mill is certainly no exception.

Their cider is amazing, but just one of the many apple-related delights they have. You can get caramel apples, candy apples, and even just apples on their own. It’s always worth checking out the actual apple press, which is always dripping with the scent of fermented apples, but the biggest reason I go to the Franklin Cider Mill is the donuts.

No doughnuts in the world can compare to cider mill donuts. From the moment they are given to you, the paper bag they come in has already been

stained with grease. You could easily eat a half-dozen by the time you get back to your car, but I think the American Heart Association would warn against that. The best way to get these donuts is with a few people, ensuring that they are all eaten while they’re still warm and before the grease has turned the paper bag into a clear window.

The cider mill experience distracts Michiganders from the impending Winter season and makes a great companion to watching football on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. All without the slightest hint of a vegetable.