I always enjoy finding places off the beaten track. It certainly helps if the places actually churn out good food, but sometimes being off the beaten track can somehow enhance that flavor. D’Railed in Idaho Falls is not just off the beaten track, it’s literally on the other side of the tracks. Yet, I had read some things about the food being d’licious and wanted to find out for myself.

First off, I’ll say that this place has a beautiful back patio. It’s not a place with a view, but it’s a place you want to hang out in for a long time with a beer, preferably if there’s some sort of a bonfire going on with s’mores. But I only had the beer and a menu that was only somewhat unvegan-friendly.

I did find one dish that seemed straight up my alley, but with one catch. It was called Chicken Christopher and it was a lightly fried chicken breast, a hunk of black forest ham, asparagus and Christopher sauce. I tried ordering without the asparagus and was told this was impossible because of how the Chicken Christopher was cooked and figured I could at least pick it out. I also snagged some au gratin potatoes.

Of course, I was shocked when my chicken arrived with the asparagus plainly laid upon the chicken. This was disappointing, to be sure, because this could have easily been left off, but at least it was easy to remove them. And after that was taken care of, this was one delicious dish. The sauce was creamy and had just the right amount of flavor, while the lightly fried chicken was tender and just the right amount of crispy. The hunk of black forest ham added a nice salt element to the meal. The au gratin potatoes were also delicious because it is really hard to go wrong with cheesy potatoes.

While the meal may have started off-track thanks to the asparagus incident, it would be impossible to argue that my meal was anything more than tasty. Occasionally, restaurants are off the beaten track for a reason, but D’Railed was simply there because it was the right place to make some tasty food with arbitrary rules.

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.

Goodyear is really far away when you live in Scottsdale. Like, it feels like it’s in an entirely different state. Like, when you drive there you feel like you may as well be driving to Los Angeles. So, I figured if I was going there I might as well make an afternoon of it and grab lunch as well. Thus, I found myself at Haymaker, which is like a family friendly sports bar that almost feels like a chain, but isn’t.

I was in the mood for buffalo chicken, but in sandwich form instead of loose wing form. Therefore, I ordered the Buffalo Chicken Sandwich, which was fried, smothered in buffalo sauce and squeezed between two pieces of Texas Toast, therefore bringing Buffalo and Texas together at last. It also came topped with lettuce and tomato with blue cheese on the side, but I had no interest in the lettuce and tomato.

The fried chicken was sizable, juicy and crunchy. The buffalo sauce was a very good blend of butter, spice and spicy. The side of blue cheese was, well, a side of blue cheese. So, you could say things were going pretty well. But then there was the Texas Toast, which was a mistake. I mean, it was good toast, but it was far more toast than a breaded chicken sandwich should ever need. Oh and especially when there were plenty of carby and delicious fries as well.

It was a near-hit of a sandwich that just seemed to be doomed by trying too hard. If I were to order it again, I’d go topless or bottomless, but never fully clothed.

In the past few years, airports have made some real attempts to up their food games. Some have brought in popular local restaurants, while others have commissioned celebrity chefs to bring new restaurants into the airports. Gone are the days of Chili’s 2 Go being the only option, which meant that with a whole lot of spare time at San Francisco International Airport, I was able to make my way to Union Street Gastropub to grab a beer and a sandwich.

That sandwich wasn’t just some pre-made cold cuts with limp lettuce, it was the Korean Chicken Sandwich. This sandwich was filled with deep fried chicken tossed in a sweet and spicy sauce and topped with garlic aioli. For my side I went with the garlic parmesan tots because regular fries and sweet potato fries just didn’t sound like they could compare.

As for the sandwich itself, I was pretty happy with it. I couldn’t figure out what was exactly Korean about it, but I like the combination of sweet and spicy, which the sauce did pretty well. The chicken was plenty juicy and had a decent crisp to the outside, but there just didn’t seem to be enough of it for me. Like, I get that it’s an airport and I’m going to pay a lot of money, but the dish was just begging for more chicken, and so was I.

Yet, Union Street Gastropub is a huge improvement on your typical airport food and for that I was pleased, even if it’s far from being the best sweet and spicy fried chicken sandwich I’ve ever had.

One thing that the Shilin Night Market is especially known for is giant flattened fried chicken. And there is not just one place that offers such chicken, but many. Having already had the chicken from Hot Star in Pasadena, I decided to try something else. One spot had an insane line that I simply could not handle, so I headed to Monga, a place that my friend had recommended.

Monga wasn’t served out of a cart or a stall, but a real brick and mortar hole in the wall in the market. There were a couple of options and I went with the “Anaheim” style fried chicken. It was supposed to be the spicier variety, but I was told it wouldn’t be too bad.

They were right, while there was some spice, it was not nearly something that should be called spicy or hot. It was, however, delicious and I was surprised by this. I say that, because on the outside the chicken was somewhat smooth, so there was very little crunch or crispiness to the fried up batter. The reason this was so good was because the crispiness of the batter really played second fiddle to how juicy and flavorful the chicken was. I mean it was super juicy and flavorful for a chicken breast. It was also good to know that not all of the giant flattened fried chicken was created the same, because Hot Star was definitely interested in making the batter crispy.

Really, if you get the chance, just make sure you come with some others to ensure you don’t limit yourself to just one fried chicken. Otherwise, you will be plenty happy with Monga.

I have a confession to make: I don’t understand why people love banh mis so much. Maybe it’s because they are one of the only options out there where people can eat Asian food and sandwiches at the same time. Thus, when I took a stroll over to My Banh Mi in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon), I opted for something a little different instead.

Here, different meant Deep Fried Fish Sauce Chicken Wings. Now, I love me some fish sauce, but it is also some potent stuff and I was somewhat worried about the liberties that My Banh Mi would take with these. Fortunately, they took a good route and put together some fantastic wings. The were juicy, crispy and flavorful – with that savory umami flavor being brought out by the fish sauce, but in the best way. On top of that, the dipping sauce paired well with the wings.

My Banh Mi wasn’t exactly a foray into traditional Vietnamese foods and it clearly catered to foreigners, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t know how to fry up some good wings and I was perfectly happy with that.

While there is undoubtedly a confluence of cultures in Sandakan, classic Malaysian cuisine seems a little hard to find, especially when you can only eat so much street food. San Da Gen Kopitiam offers just that. The look and feel is clean and resembles a coffee shop much more than a restaurant. Yet, on a blackboard there is a menu filled with all kinds of foods to order.

I started out by ordering the Nasi Kerabu Ayam Berempah because I really wanted to have something with blue rice, because apparently that’s what the “kerabu” means. Unfortunately, all the blue was already eaten that day, so I got the Nasi Lemak Aram Berempah instead. I had expected it to come out wrapped in a banana leaf, but instead it was more of a deconstructed nasi lemak and it was beautiful.

The egg was nicely cooked, there were peanuts, and the rice was tasty. And of course, aside from the chicken, everything else was extraneous. So let’s talk about that chicken for a minute, shall we? It may have been a little on the dry side, but it was super delicious. And, I mean, moist fried food is probably simply not the style here so my American lens is actually very accepting of the dryness. It’s a little harder to accept, though, that there just wasn’t enough of the chicken. I looked longingly at my wife’s beef dish, which seemed to have more meat to it, and no one wants to do that.

Alas, it was still a mighty delicious meal and represented a nice break from the hustle bustle of the rest of Sandakan.

You know what’s great about being Jewish? No Lent. No Ramadan. Sure, there’s been thousands of years of persecution and an annual fast or two, but nothing that compares to the longevity of the institutionalized pain of those two holidays. Worse still, sometimes Ramadan falls in the summer and you can’t even drink water. With all of these thoughts in mind, I found myself in Malaysia in the summer in the middle of Ramadan. And in Sandakan in Borneo, this meant the nightly Ramadan Market. The most impressive part about it is that observant Muslims somehow manage to walk up and down the market and order food without eating a bite of it until the sun goes down. Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait.

Some of the goodies are unique to the region, like the banana leaf-wrapped Nasi Kuning Ayam, which is essentially yellow rice with fried chicken. It’s both simple and complex at the same time.

Portable grills like this can also be found all over the market, giving the whole place a delicious smoky haze. They’re mostly used for grilling up chicken.

You can also find roti canai all around the market, which is essentially a fried flatbread. Here, it’s used more like a wrap so the vendors fill it with things like cabbage, eggs and even beef or chicken.

Amazingly, I could only find one tent that came close to resembling Middle Eastern food. They had a bunch of prepared “burgers” and a spool of chicken. However, while the cooking style was Middle Eastern, the flavors and spices of finished chicken pita I had tasted more Japanese than anything else – aside from the pita itself.

A bunch of vendors were pushing noodles in mass quantities that kind of blew my mind. There were generally a couple options to choose from and I had myself some traditional Hokkien-style, which were brown and fried. For spice, they kind of depended on whatever I added to the mix and they also had an option to add an egg, which is almost never a mistake.

But it wasn’t just about the food, stalls were showing off some pretty beautiful drinks packed with strong flavors like bubble gum, chocolate, taro and more. The bagged versions of these drinks were called ABCs and the big cupped versions were called Halo Halos, which is originally a Filipino word, but The Philippines are literally a short boat ride from Sandakan so this kind of made sense.

More than anything, there was an amazing spirit at the Ramadan Market. Smiles abounded, patience was never a concern and cleanliness really never felt like a concern. So maybe there is something to a month-long fast. It gives people an excuse to get together every night, to build up community events and to take down some tasty food and drinks.

You don’t really associate Japan with fried chicken. I mean, sure, if you’ve spent enough time in Japan or with Japanese food you have undoubtedly discovered karaage and more, but those aren’t exactly Earth-shattering compared to the fried chicken of the American South or even the fried chicken of Japan’s neighbor buddy (kind of), Korea. But Tokyo Fried Chicken in Monterey Park is doing its best to change that perception. So when it came down to choosing new restaurants or eating at old favorites before making the move to Phoenix, Tokyo Fried Chicken is where I found myself eating my last reviewable meal as a resident of Southern California (at least for now!).

As there were three of us, we decided to order the Meal for 3. This included 9 pieces of chicken, 3 sides, rice and some sort of cabbage-y thingy that I wouldn’t need to have anything to do with. For the sides we got the curry creamed corn and upgraded the other two to mac and cheese and brussels sprouts. The last of these was obviously not my idea, but I was content just to eat the other two.

We swapped out a couple of the pieces of chicken for chicken breast because one of my companions was a white meat only racist, and unfortunately this made the food take a little longer to cook. But, soon enough it was ready with the sauces on the side to go with it (Ponzu, Spicy Ponzu and a taste of the Yuzu Pepper sauce just to see what it was like, which was pretty solid). Oh, we even got gloves to eat the chicken with so we wouldn’t get our hands dirty.

Anyway, the chicken was nothing short of incredible. The breading was all sort of crispy, while having no trouble clinging to the chicken. It was just thick enough and also flavorful in all the right ways. The chicken also managed to stay perfectly juicy – even the white meat that I ate at the end because there was extra. I was a fan of the Spicy Ponzu sauce, but really you couldn’t go wrong.

As for the sides, the curry creamed corn was exactly what it sounds like. So, if you like corn and curry, this is your dish. If you are expecting something unique and different than creamed corn, this is your dish. But if you’re hoping for something life-changing as a lover of corn in curry, you may be disappointed. And as for the mac and cheese, I’m actually going to weirdly penalize it for trying too hard to be different. The flavor was unique, but it could also be described as “off.” This, of course, did not stop me from devouring every last bite of the stuff, but if I had to do it all over again I would have traded out the mac for more fried chicken.

And that was my overall feeling as I left. Tokyo Fried Chicken is simply amazing at making fried chicken. And all the while the sides are just along for the ride on the coattails of the chicken. Truth be told, that was just fine by me.

It’s not easy to go across town for breakfast or brunch. Especially if you’re like me and consider noon to be the beginning of the day on a weekend. But, I managed to pull myself out of bed for brunch downtown at a place called Artisan House. Surprisingly, it didn’t just have the kind of upscale brunch items I have grown used to, but a couple items I hadn’t seen before.

One of these was called Brioche Toad in a Hole and consisted of two eggs over easy INSIDE two slices of brioche toast. These were then topped with a truffle parmesan sauce. I knew they had to be mine, but I was told they might not quite be filling enough. Thus, I opted to split them and the Chicken and Waffles with my buddy.

Unfortunately I had failed to notice that the toads came with a mixed greens salad or I would have swapped it out. So, while it may have ruined the picture, I can safely say that it went uneaten and did not ruin the meal. My toad in the hole turned out to be really delicious, with the egg being perfectly cooked, the toast being perfectly toasty and the saucy being perfectly saucy. But, as I was not on a diet it really was not enough food.

As for the chicken and waffles, the portion was a bit off as well. Except in this case there was plenty of food, but too much of it turned out to be waffles. This meant many bites of just waffle or little bits of chicken to try to preserve the combination. From a taste perspective each component was delicious and the chicken was crispy and tender, but the balance simply could have been better.

I left Artisan House feeling like it had been a mixed bag of decent and delicious. There was nothing to truly dislike, but a couple tweaks could have gone a long way to glory.