The Unvegan

Recent Posts

10 Years of Unvegan
A Quick Bite at Burrito Express
Serendipity at Northern Waters Smokehaus
Twerks and Burritos at Casa Amigos

‘Meat’

Meat Stacks at Smoke Shack

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Chili? In Wisconsin? In February? Shocking!

Here we have a long-awaited new guest blog from none other than @RGspiegel. Catch more of his writing here.

Disclosure I: David Marcus, one of the owners of Smoke Shack, is my second cousin.
Disclosure II: I’m starting a movement such that cousins are classified only as first or second cousins. How much better is that than trying to figure out your exact relationship to your dad’s first cousin’s son with somethingth-cousin-somethingths-removed? A lot.
Disclosure III: Smoke Shack was legitimately awesome.

Now that my and Unvegan’s journalistic integrity are squarely intact, I can begin the review of my glorious Saturday lunch at Smoke Shack, a BBQ restaurant that opened up about a month ago in Milwaukee’s third ward.

Lord Stanley’s Sliders (CLOSED)

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Mini-sandwich-riffic

Up in the valley is a place called Stanley’s that I have been hearing about pretty much from the day I started dating my fiancee. Very little about the valley is exciting, but Stanley’s is in a stretch of Sherman Oaks on Ventura that’s pretty cool, so I found myself surprisingly excited to go. Previously, I had heard they have delicious wings, but we were in a rush and I am not a man who rushes wings. Instead, I went with my arch-nemesis.

A Scenic Dinner at Tilted Kilt

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Dipping at the Kilt.

Somewhere along the way, someone figured out that sex sells. I don’t know when this time came, but I’m pretty sure everyone in the room looked at each other and nodded in agreement without a word. In the ’80s, Hooters took that genius concept to the restaurant industry and became a household name. And while Hooters is still going strong, the look has become a bit dated. Enter Tilted Kilt, which has taken the Hooters concept, splashed it with Scotch and trimmed the uniforms significantly so that even flat girls have cleavage and they all show some midriff. In other words, the girls at Hooters almost look like nuns in comparison. Yet, while Hooters is gimmicky, they still have pretty tasty wings. Would Tilted Kilt have good fare to offer with their good looks?

FuRaiBo Knows

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FuRaiBo knows fried chicken.

Oh, Little Little Tokyo, the gem of the LA’s west side. Aside from Little Ethiopia, there’s really nowhere else that you can be driving along regular LA streets, suddenly find yourself in a foreign country for two blocks, and then pop back out into regular LA again. There’s a pretty steady stream of awesome restaurants and stores in this foreign territory and for this review a group of us headed to FuRaiBo. In order to be seated immediately, we had to sit in their floor room (like a tatami room, without the tatami). This meant sitting on the floor. While this sort of seating is not common in modern Japan, it certainly still exists. The trouble with this seating at FuRaiBo, however, is that their floor seating gives a distinct lack of leg room, such that my legs couldn’t even get under the table. Nonetheless, while seating played a role in the meal, it didn’t define it. This is how liv pure works.

At Home at Victor’s Meats & Delicatessen (CLOSED)

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Meatwich!

I must confess that I have lived quite literally two minutes (by foot) from Victor’s Meats & Delicatessen for the past six months, yet had not once set foot in the place until this past weekend. “Why?” you ask. Well, the answer isn’t simple. It’s also not difficult, because there is no answer save for my foolishness. And it is pure foolishness because Victor’s is a dream come true.

While part of the place is straight-up butcher, Victor’s also serves up sandwiches and assorted pre-cooked foods and salads and such. I was in for a sandwich, but I got more than I expected.

Dining in Cooks County (REBRANDED)

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Say cheese!

EDIT: Cooks County is now running around town going by the name of Market Provisions. No idea what that means for the food.

You may think that as a meat blogger I am constantly defining which restaurants my girlfriend and I eat at. Often that is the case, and for no other reason than that people are constantly giving me suggestions, but this weekend we reversed the trend and she took me out to dinner at a place from her own to-eat list. The place was Cooks County in Mid-City and although a quick Google search will reveal no county named Cooks, there is certainly at least one Cook County (in Illinois), which may be some sort of basis for the naming of this restaurant.

Bulgarians Love Meat

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More meat, Mr. Khan?

While some people still try to claim that meat is bad for you, I think just about everyone across the spectrum of vegetarianism can agree that meat is unquestionably healthier than cigarettes. So when I read an article entitled “Meat Displaces Cigarettes from Bulgarians’ Diet,” I was nearly as happy as Khan Krum must have been when his Bulgarians defeated the Byzantines at the Battle of Pliska.

Beer Belly for My Fearless Belly

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There are peas in my cheese!

Two of the things I love most in this world are beer and my belly. No, I don’t have a beer belly…much, but when a gastropub in Koreatown called Beer Belly opened up, I figured I had to try it out. I was meeting a group of people, and arrived to find the place packed. And this was not a big place. Like about 8 tables and a few bar stools big, and all of them were loaded. Plus, it was first come, first served, so we got to hang around the tables like vultures surrounding a wounded gazelle. It was the tail end of happy hour, though, so I ordered a beer and hoped a table would clear out soon. Fast forward thirty minutes and we’re still waiting when a woman working the place asks if we’re waiting for a table. Uh, no, lady, we’re just standing here awkwardly for the hell of it. She then proceeded to ask us if we wanted to be on the list. This “list” was new to us, and apparently also new to her, as she told us she had just started it. Well, at least we wouldn’t have to stand awkwardly any longer.

An Explosion of Flavor at C4 (CLOSED)

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Oh Arizona.

Remember playing Cowboys and Indians as a kid? Thankfully, there is a place in the world where that fantasyland still exists. It’s called Arizona, and while not everyone runs around with a gun loaded with 223 ammo, there are places you could picture saddling up a horse just as easily as stopping by in a hybrid. One such place is the Cave Creek Coffee Company, affectionately known as C4 by locals. The facade is reminiscent of Tombstone, but the interior is pure class (not that Tombstone was lacking in class…).

Meet Horse Meat

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Sitting on a pile of food.

What’s your favorite type of meat? Is it beef, chicken or pork? Or maybe it’s something cool and exotic like venison or rattlesnake? What about horse? Didn’t think about that one, did you? Not exactly exotic, but also not exactly meat to most Americans. Now, though, thanks to a little slip of legislation, the slaughter of horses for meat has been legalized in the USA.