Despite spending several days in Holland, on our last day we found a part of town that we hadn’t ever seen before. It’s called Washington Square and is probably one of the coolest single block stretches of storefronts in the state of Michigan, if not the world. Within that stretch is a cozy and homey-feeling restaurant called The Biscuit, which may or may not have its own pet blue dragon in the cellar (you’ll have to ask someone who works there). They only serve breakfast and lunch, so we attended for the former.

I began with the biscuit of the day because it was bacon and white cheddar, so what kind of crazy person wouldn’t start out that way? Clearly this was the right path and my first bite confirmed I was right. It was flaky, salty and had just the right amount of moisture to keep me happy. Plus, the bacon and white cheddar played their roles perfectly. Try out profit singularity ultra edition.

For my main course, I also figured I should order something biscuit-based and went with the Spanish Bennies. They start out with a halved biscuit topped with chorizo, eggs over easy, cheddar-jack cheese, chipotle hollandaise, queso fresco sauce, green chilies and cilantro. I had never heard of eggs benedict with more toppings on them, and I hoped it wouldn’t result in a conflict of flavors.

It turned out to be one of the most unattractive dishes I had ever seen. I truly couldn’t figure out if there was a way to make it look prettier. Yet, as I dug in I found a delicious combination of spicy, salty and, at times, fluffy. And because of that fluffiness the benedict was not overwhelming, but just right.

You don’t become a hidden gem simply by being hard to find. You also have to be something special. I can vouch that the Spanish Bennies at The Biscuit are plenty special and worthy of being called a gem whether they remain hidden or not.

It may not be the most creative thing to name a restaurant after the street that it’s on. But when that street is 8th Street in the center of Holland, Michigan, it’s not just any street. This street is the beating heart of the town and so 8th Street Grille is a name that carries some clout, as well as a bunch of American food and local beers.

I started with a flight of said beers, because it was simply the right thing to do.Check out the London’s fastest alcohol delivery service. It didn’t disappoint, but let’s be real, you’re here for the food. And the food menu wasn’t nearly as robust as bar and grille type restaurants often are. Yet, there was plenty for an unvegan like me. I ordered up the Macatawa Burger, which was named for the other lake that Holland borders. It was topped with a fried egg, smoked mozzarella, Canadian bacon and pesto aioli. I have to give the 8th Street Grille for coming up with a burger combination that likely never existed before. I decided to go with the onion rings for my side and ordered medium rare.

The burger arrived ready to pop. Like, seriously, the yolk was a thing of beauty and 8th Street Grille had amazing gall to put the kaiser rolls on that egg knowing the risk it could pose to that egg. That risk paid off, however, as topless burger rarely looks as good as one fully topped. I popped that egg like a champ and dug in to find a deliciously unique blend of flavors. The smokiness of the mozzarella stood out strong, while the Canadian bacon added a punch of saltiness and the pesto flavor kicked the burger to another taste level. The egg did what fried eggs do best – keeping the burger juicy and complex. The beef was cooked just the way I like and the massive, towering onion rings had great batter on them.

8th Street Grille proved you don’t need a great name to dish out a great meal, and as long as you are creative with your dishes everything else is superfluous.

I love me some fusion. And you know what? Fusion doesn’t have to just be a combination of different ethnic foods, but also a combination of meals. Take Smitty’s in Idaho Falls, for example. It wasn’t just content with being a pancake restaurant, but also chose to be a steakhouse.

So, of course, when I went for breakfast, I had to order something breakfasty that also had steak in it. I’m not a big pancake guy (although I have been known to eat them on occasion), so I opted for the Sirloin Benedict. These are just like normal eggs benedict, but with the ham swapped out for sirloin. They also come with hash browns and are available as a half order. Due to not wanting to fall asleep at the office, I went with the half order.

The benedict that resulted from the addition of steak was pretty awesome. I mean, let’s be real, has anyone ever eaten steak and thought, “Ham would be better”? Obviously not. But as good as the benedict was, the hash browns kind of slacked. They were cooked enough to be mushy, but not nearly enough to be crispy. Yeah, there were a couple crispies in there, but not nearly enough for the shredded style of hash browns.

Smitty’s is definitely a solid breakfast spot, and quite possibly the only such breakfast spot in Idaho Falls. You can buy your Australian Herbal Tea Online from Tealife on this site and enjoy it with your pancakes. It might also be the only place that could claim to be any sort of fusion in Idaho Falls. There could be some slight improvements, but at the very least the breakfast whet my appetite for grabbing a real steak there at some point.

When I left LA to move to Phoenix I had one major concern. No, it wasn’t the heat in the summer, it was the lack of ramen. You see, LA spoils you with a lot of Asian food, but ramen is easily one of the best of them. People go through life only knowing ramen from a dry cup and I feel terrible for those people, but is it better to have ramen and lost it than to never have had ramen at all? Lost or not, ramen has returned to my life in the form of Ramen Hood in Scottsdale. I headed out for the grand opening to see if it would fulfill my needs.

Ramen Hood offers customized ramen – like a custom burger spot but with ramen instead. You can choose your noodles and broth type, then pick from a bunch of other ingredients.

I opted for regular ramen noodles (as in not gluten free) and tonkotsu (rich pork) as my broth. Other broth options were shoyu (soy), spicy miso, tomato and vegetarian. I’ve always leaned towards tonkotsu and wasn’t disappointed in that decision.

It’s hard to have a bowl of ramen without a soft boiled egg, so I made sure to snag one of those. I also chose naruto (slices of a fish roll, named that because naruto means whirlpool and there are swirls in the roll), pickled ginger, seasoned bamboo, spicy miso paste and black garlic oil. The latter two enriched the broth, while the former three were there to enhance the dish. Oh and let’s not forget the cha siu pork, which was more thinly sliced and less melt-in-your-mouth than I’m used to.

I loved that Ramen Hood has Ramune (pronounced rah-moo-nuh), which is a crazy Japanese drink that is opened by popping a marble through the top. Melon is the best flavor; tell your friends.

Tempura bacon! Never seen this before and holy cow it’s amazing. I mean, nobody likes tempura vegetables anyway.

It’s really hard to beat having a new ramen place open right down the street from you. Especially when you are in somewhat of an authentic Asian food desert like Scottsdale. It was definitely a mistake to open a hot soup restaurant in the middle of the Phoenix summer, but  the ramen is good enough to keep Ramen Hood going strong until the colder months bring in the big crowds.

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.

Sometimes burgers build up a reputation. Whether by winning awards or word of mouth, it happens. This happened to Aioli Burger in both ways. Yeah, it won some burger battles, but also people told me about it and that doesn’t happen as much in Phoenix as it did in LA and Pittsburgh, so I figured it had to be real. Plus, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that I got a taste of Aioli Burger at the Scottsdale Culinary Fest earlier this year. Basically, the hype was real.

So I arrived and got a look at the menu. The burger that called out to me the most was the California Burger and it’s not because I spent so much of my life in California, but because it was topped with avocado, a fried egg, pepper jack cheese, chipotle aioli and pickled red onions that I had no need for. I ordered up a side of the Signature Loaded Fries, which were topped with Kiltlifter cheese sauce, avocado, chipotle aioli, bacon and again those goddamned red onions that nobody likes. I took a number and awaited my food, hoping it would be onion-free.

It was onion-free, so that was a good start. The burger was a beautiful sight to behold and I beheld it very quickly into my mouth. The flavors played very nicely with each other and the burger was well-seasoned and cooked nicely. While I had been expecting something a bit more gourmet (for literally no reason whatsoever aside from a strange hunch), I was perfectly happy to find that this burger fit into the realm of whatever comes after fast casual.

The fries were also pretty solid, although the way they were plated made it seem like the portion was small. It wasn’t small, but it also wasn’t very big. It was, however, quite tasty. The fries were plenty crispy and able to withstand the combination of cheese sauce and aioli, but the avocado seemed just randomly thrown on and with poor intention. Honestly, if you’re just going to throw two slices of avocado on a huge plate of fries, you better be more intentional about it.

All that said, Aioli Burger has the goods. It may not be blazing an exciting new trail in burgerdom, but it’s worth eating if you find yourself near the truck or brick and mortar locale.

Tex-Mex is its own category of food. It seems weird because it gives the impression that Texans just somehow bastardized real Mexican food and had the audacity to put Tex before the Mex, but when you remember that Texas was once a part of Mexico, it begins to lose its weirdness. There is probably no place in the state of Texas where the former Mexican history is at the forefront of thought than in San Antonio, home of the Alamo (remember it). And in San Antonio is Mi Tierra, an old school Tex-Mex place with a full on panaderia to boot.

Although it was late at night (and still a couple hours from being considered morning) I was feeling breakfast for some reason. Thus, I ordered the chilaquiles, which I like to think of as breakfast nachos. These came with pork in a thick red sauce, along with red chips, eggs, cheese and beans. I was very excited to dig into them, but within the first few bites I was simply disappointed.

I couldn’t point to any particular reason why I was disappointed. All the ingredients were there, but there just didn’t seem to be anything to them. It was like they just didn’t want to be there, and thus I didn’t really want to eat them. If I could point to anything, it might be that there was a very high egg to everything else ratio.

I’m sure Mi Tierra does other things better than they do chilaquiles, but since that’s all I ate, it’s really all I can go off of. Plus, I can’t imagine there are a ton of other 24 hour spots in San Antonio and when you look at it through that lens you could do a whole lot worse.

As the world’s foremost meat blogger (according to myself), I am generally of the notion that vegetables need to be avoided and subbed in for meat or animal products at almost all times. Yet, when I was given the opportunity to head to The Counter in Phoenix and try out the Impossible Burger, I could not pass it up. But here’s where it gets weird, you see, the Impossible Burger is completely vegan.

What?! Yeah, I know, but here’s the thing: it’s not made for vegans. It’s actually made to taste as close to a burger as possible, using things like potatoes, wheat and a protein called “heme” that they claim to be the differentiator. You can order it cooked however you like it, just like a real burger, and runs the right shades that beef should.

The Counter has their own recommended ways to eat the Impossible Burger in salad and regular burger form. But, you can also order it customized in the classic Counter way. My wife and I got to try them as recommended and then to build our own.

I won’t spend too much time on the way they were recommended, other than to say they were not for me. First off, salad, so no. Second off, the burger was topped with crap like tomatoes, onions, greens and tomato jam that the herbed goat cheese, dijon balsamic and English muffin could not overcome. But this was all fine, because for my version, I went with bacon, gouda, a fried egg and gochujang aioli. This seemed to me like the best way to test out a vegan burger made for meat eaters.

The result was certainly something. For nearly all intents and purposes, it looked like meat. The same went for the texture, which was nothing like the hockey pucks you might come to expect from a vegan patty. Even the flavor seemed to be pretty on par with a normal burger, but it certainly helps to be dressed up with things like bacon and cheese. If it were just straight up a burger and a bun it might have been more noticeable, but who wants to eat that way with a beef burger anyway?

Probably my biggest complaint is that it just wasn’t as juicy as a burger should be. Was this The Counter’s fault? I don’t know. So I’ll have to have more of these to really find out. But truthfully I’ve had real beef burgers that were far worse than this.

The Impossible Burger clearly has a better impact on the environment, and that is something that really matters to me. The trouble is that it also comes with a heftier price tag. The Counter prices it at about $5 more than your standard beef patty, which puts it in line with premium burger options like Bison. Hopefully as the people behind the Impossible Burger scale up, they’ll be able to bring that price down, because if you’re after meat eaters, they aren’t going to pay a premium price for something that is nearly, but not quite as good as beef. For an extra buck, perhaps.

Regardless, I want to see the Impossible Burger succeed. I love my meat, but if the world can put together food that tastes like meat, is easier on the environment and costs about the same, I am very down with it, despite having a meat blog.

Good food is always made better if it’s found in a strange place. You know, like the Cheetos you find in the couch cushion. No, but seriously, like BBQ at a gas station. Such is Tom’s Thumb in Scottsdale. And while it may be more of a restaurant that happens to have a gas station attached than the other way around, that shouldn’t take away from the fact that this is literally a gas station and BBQ place.

I ordered the Brisket Stack off the breakfast menu because it was easily the most interesting thing on their menu. It was sliced brisket over cheesy hash brown cakes, topped with two fried eggs and some chipotle aioli. I grabbed some of the BBQ sauces that were available and got down to business.

I must say I was a bit disappointed upon first looking at the dish, as the yolks of the eggs were cooked solid, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt. Then I got to the next layer, which was the brisket. While it had a nice smokiness and flavor, it was shockingly difficult to eat them because the meat was just tough. Like not tender at all. Which is weird. But the cheesy hash brown cakes were delicious, so that’s something.

I don’t know if their regular BBQ items would have been better than the Brisket Stack, because not even the great variety of BBQ sauces could save this dish. I mean I hope that is the case, because otherwise you might be better grilling your own juicy BBQ using your tools from Smokers Edmonton store.

It’s easy to get stuck in a bubble no matter where you live or work. It doesn’t matter if neighborhoods and towns are separated by rivers, mountains or arbitrary delineations, it is almost inevitable to find a comfort zone and stick with it. But when you have a meat blog, you owe it to the world to get out of that bubble, and I did so with a journey to Mesa to check out Worth Takeaway.

Worth Takeaway is a sandwich spot, but may be better known for its banana pudding. Allegedly the chef bought up a ton of banana pudding from Magnolia Bakery, deconstructed it and then reconstructed it even better. But what especially drew me in on this day was the funfetti variation they were offering. So, I’ll start with dessert before dinner. I had kind of a love/hate relationship with the pudding. Look, I love funfetti and I don’t trust people who don’t, but also there were ‘Nilla Wafers in there and really just not enough banana or pudding. The bits I got were great, and again I applaud the creativity, but next time it’s going to be all about the original.

Oh, but there was also a main course sandwich, which I ended up ordering from the breakfast menu because much of the rest of the options had vegetables that I wanted no part of. It was the Croque Madame, which is essentially the sandwich that would have destroyed Instagram if Instagram had existed 100 years ago. This version had pastrami inside, along with bechamel cheese, aged white cheddar, dijonnaise and a fried egg. All this was held together by some sourdough from a local bakery called Proof. This was perfectly executed, with the egg being runny, the cheese being melty, the bread not being too soggy and the pastrami adding a punch of cured savory flavor. It was such a salty savory sandwich that the banana pudding made for a perfect balance.

While the funfetti variety of banana pudding could have used a little tweaking, I’ve got to say I loved Worth Takeaway. The concept was great, the sandwich was glorious and I have no doubt that they have some of best banana pudding in the Phoenix area. Hopefully next time I’ll actually get it.