Custom burritos are boring right? They’re so 2000-something. Enchiladas, though? Maybe their time is now. After all, they’re basically just glorified mini burritos covered in sauce. Gadzooks in Arcadia is banking on that…and soups because why not? Plus, they’ve fancied the concept up by adding ceramic dishes and premium ingredients.

Thus, I began by ordering my two enchiladas with goat cheese. I wasn’t told that goat cheese would end up costing me more money, so that was annoying, but hey you only live once, right? I opted for the half and half tortillas, which are a combination of both flour and corn, then I had one stuffed with Guajillo Braised Short Ribs and the other with Green Chili Pork Shoulder. Instead of settling for just one salsa, I went Christmas-style (red and green) and then topped it all with asadero and chihuahua cheese, an over easy egg and jalapeno ranch. How’s that for toppings? This is how prodentim works.

The first thing I noticed was that the egg was cooked perfectly, allowing the yolk to spread itself amongst all of the other goods. When I bit in, I discovered two things immediately –  1) Holy cow the tortillas were amazing and 2) The goat cheese was entirely unnecessary. With all of the flavors happening in my little enchilada casserole dish, you may think that the meat would have been overpowered. Fortunately, this was not the case. I like the short ribs better than the pork shoulder, but I’m splitting hairs a bit because they were both fantastic. I’d probably opt to skip the jalapeno ranch in the future because it didn’t add enough to the mix to be worthwhile, but aside from that and the goat cheese I would happily do it all over again.

Kudos to Gadzooks for adding some delicious twists to the custom Mexican food genre of fast casual restaurants. I have no doubt that I will see more Gadzookses popping up in the future and as long as they start telling people that the goat cheese is extra, there is a bright future ahead.

State Fairs are often an afterthought. A relic of times past when most of us lived in rural areas and guessing the weight of a pumpkin was the best entertainment of the month. They offer variations on the same rides, foods and entertainment that you find at your local Memorial Day Carnival or County Fair and, I mean, how many people even go to those? But the Minnesota State Fair is so far from an afterthought that it seems to be on the minds of Minnesotans for the 50 weeks of the year in which it is not in operation. Plans are made, new foods are devised and longed after; then, just like that, it’s over again. This year, however, the Unvegan paid a visit to see how it would all stack up.

Swedish Meatball Smorgas – The Blue Barn

It’s not all about gluttony. Sometimes it’s just about doing something no one ever thought of. Like putting Swedish meatballs on a roll, pouring white gravy all over them and then topping them with lingonberry jam and dill pickles. I was smart enough to order without the pickles and it paid off in pure sweet, salty and savory deliciousness.

Mangonada Shave Ice – Minnesnowii Shave Ice

You wouldn’t think Minnesotans would be fans of shave ice since they live among it for so much of the year. Yet, the Mangonada is real and it is fascinating. Packed with mango syrup, drizzles of chamoy sauce, popping boba (for some inexplicably genius reason), spicy tajin powder and a tamarind straw (for some inexplicably strange reason). The straw was useless, but the rest of this was somehow light, refreshing, hearty and spicy at once. And with all that, it just somehow worked.

Giant Juicy Turkey Sandwich – Turkey To Go

Being a first timer, I couldn’t just go with new stuff. And, frankly, I wasn’t too excited about getting a turkey sandwich. But, my buddy told me it was well worth it and, well, it sure was. I added bacon and a sweet glaze to mine and it was unbelievably juicy for what’s generally the driest fowl of all. As I drove past many a wild turkey in the Northwoods, all I could think about was how juicy they could be in sandwich form.

Blu – Grain Belt

I love blueberries and I love beer. It makes sense that I would like a blueberry beer, right? Wrong. It seems to be that the special beers at the Minnesota State Fair are pretty much all sweet, but this took that sweetness way beyond balance and into juice territory. Good thing I had all kinds of savory and salty foods to counter that sweetness (and don’t worry, I still drank the whole damn thing).

Gizmo – Carl’s

The Gizmo is another classic, and yet it is churned out by pretty much the most nondescript cart in the whole fair. Sometimes you just know you’re good and it’s hard to go bad when you are an Italian roll filled with ground beef, Italian sausage, red sauce and a layer of melted mozzarella cheese to seal all of the goodness in.

Sweet Greek Cheese Puffs – Dino’s Gyros

Ricotta and Feta. Flaky phyllo dough. Powdered sugar. More than a drizzle of honey. I am a many who loves his sweet and salty combos and these Sweet Greek Cheese Puffs did more than satisfy that craving. It may have gotten a but too sweet toward the end when the honey congregated in the corner with the remaining puff, but these were a treat.

Zesty PB&J Sausage – Gass Station Grill

It doesn’t sound right. Nope, not at all. But if you’ve been paying attention to burger places lately, mixing peanut butter, jelly and some sort of spiciness is all the rage. It’s only natural that it made its way into a tube steak. While each bite may have been somewhat inconsistent, there is no doubt that this works. If they can get that peanut buttery and jelly-y goodness more evenly distributed, this sausage could take over the world.

Turducken Sausage – Giggles’ Campfire Grill

Not all sausages are created equal. Or is it something about the size of the sausage versus what you do with it? Regardless, the Turducken sausage didn’t just lose the battle of the sausages, it barely seemed to fight. It was too tightly packed, the grind seemed off and really all I could taste was the turkey, with maybe a touch of chicken. Perhaps in years past this may have flown, but in the world of the Zesty PB&J sausage you have to be oh so much better than this.

Passion Fruit Pilsner – Bent Paddle Brewing

Duluth is a cool city. And it sent a pretty cool beer down to the state fair. It’s not a sour per se, but does it’s best to harness the tartness of passion fruit and churns out a pretty unique pilsner that is not too sweet and not too sour. It’s not just right either, but it’s good enough to make the drinking enjoyable.

Bacon-Wrapped Pork Belly – The Hangar

You don’t go to the state fair looking to eat a balanced meal. But nowhere is that lack of balance more exemplified than in this pork on pork action on a stick. It was so unbelievably juicy, smokey and salty forcing the use of dozens of napkins lest your face runneth with juices that would later congeal into something resembling a wax museum. While this may be perfection in meat form, the critic in me did wish there was some sort of a sweet and acidic dipping sauce like apple cider vinaigrette or a cherry reduction to accompany this meaty concoction. Despite that, the universe seemed to pause in recognition of the beauty of each bite of this masterpiece.

Fried Cheese Curds – Everywhere

Some day I’d like to pull an Andrew Zimmern and try every cheese curd purveyor at the fair. Until that day, I am a satisfied man as long as the place knows to stick with the white variety of cheddar, to fry them just right amount of time to maintain the squeakiness and to only lightly batter them lest the batter overpower the cheese. It’s not the tallest order, but it’s not the easiest one to fulfill either. Plus, when you’re coming from Arizona all cheese curds are good cheese curds.

Whelp. That’s a wrap. The pilgrimage is complete. Now if only I can figure out a way to make this an annual thing…or at least get to Iowa somehow…

There are girls. There are goats. Then, there is The Girl and the Goat. It isn’t just some restaurant, but is a restaurant that still requires booking two months in advance even though it’s been around for the better part of a decade. Of course, it also happens to be in Chicago, which has a lot of people who like food. It probably doesn’t hurt that the founder and Executive Chef, Stephanie Izard, won Top Chef, went to the University of Michigan and honed her skills at the Scottsdale Culinary Institute.

It also probably doesn’t hurt that pretty much everything on the ever-changing menu looked delicious, starting with the bread. We chose the Blueberry Sourdough because summer is blueberry season. It came with blueberry jam and spring onion cream cheese. Somewhat unsurprisingly, it tasted like a giant blueberry bagel in the best possible way and the spring onion cream cheese didn’t really try to sway that opinion.

I should also mention that this was one of those shared plates places, so brace yourself for a bunch more food, starting with the Goat Empanadas. These were topped with grilled pineapple-blueberry pico, roasted poblano cream and queso fresco. I loved that the inside of the empanada was just straight goat with goatastic seasoning and the dough was flaky and strong. The toppings helped add a balance of flavor to the empanadas, but frankly I would have been nearly as happy if it was just goat and dough.

Next came the Calamari Bruschetta. Longtime readers will note that I am a self-proclaimed hater of seafood. They are correct. In fact, I usually don’t like calamari because almost every restaurant effs it up. But, if calamari is done right it can be a revelation. This calamari wasn’t quite a revelation, but it was quite good. It tasted fresh and instead of being deep fried, it was sauteed to keep the flavor intact. The bread was delicious, as was the cheese atop said bread.

The penultimate dish was completely lacking in meat, but it was still right up my alley. It was the Sweet Corn Pierogies, which was exactly what it sounds like – pierogies with sweet corn. They came with charred scallion sour cream and a sweet corn-tomato chimichurri. They tasted like, well pierogies. I liked them, but it is hard to make pierogies great outside of taking a major risk with them and this dish just didn’t take that risk. I love pierogies and these did their job, but something different would have gone a long way.

For the finale, we had the Crisp Braised Pork Shank. This seemed an oxymoron when I first read it on the menu, because braised stuff is pretty much the opposite of crispy. Yet, when it arrived with the green goddess sauce, stone fruit kimchi and naan I was in for a surprise. The exterior maintained a fantastic crisp, while the pork could just be pulled off the shank in whichever sized chunks I want with a simply tug of the fork. On its own, it was a taste to behold. Combined with the sauce, spicy peaches and soft flatbread it was like the world’s fanciest and most rewarding tacos.

Needless to say, there is a reason why The Girl and the Goat is packed night in and night out. Not every dish was like biting into enlightenment, but enough were to leave me wanting more. My only regret is that I only had one goat dish at a restaurant based around goat. Yet, I can only assume that the rest of the goat dishes were as good as everything else on the menu and that thought it what helps me sleep at night.

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.

Some BBQ places have a reputation that precedes them. Others, you just kind of drive by a bunch and decide it’s time to pay a visit. Porkopolis in Scottsdale is the latter, and I finally decided to pay that visit. I was greeted by possibly the friendliest waiter a BBQ restaurant has ever seen and the scent of smoke and meat juices.

After enlisting the assistance of the waiter, I ended up ordering the 3 Meat Platter with the baby back ribs, pulled pork and burnt ends (which is an option even though the menu doesn’t say so!) It was tough deciding between the burnt ends and the brisket, but I felt confident in my decision. I also opted for mac and cheese and mashed potatoes for my sides.

The platter was nothing short of massive, and the ingredients in the platter were also huge. And yet, somehow a couple of pickles managed to squeeze onto the plate and taint the mashed potatoes. I pushed them away, but was unquestionably disappointed to find there was one or two lurking beneath the potatoes. I tried to move on to the rest of the food and the mac and cheese really helped me through that tough time. It was cheesy, stretchy and had just the right amount of char on top.

Of the meats, the pulled pork was the best. This was weird to me because usually I simply don’t love pulled pork. However, it was juicy, smokey and flavorful. I was expecting the burnt ends to be the best, and they were quite good, but just not as delicious as they could have been. The baby back ribs were of the fall off the bone variety and I don’t care what some people say, I love that. The mashed potatoes were…mashed potatoes. No complaints, but nothing special.

I would definitely make my way back to Porkopolis for that pulled pork. I mean, it’s in the name and it makes sense. I’d switch a couple of other things around as well, but would expect that nothing would be less than “pretty good.” Porkopolis may not be a real city, but it still has all of the amenities I need.

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.

I generally try to avoid fancy restaurants. Really, they just aren’t my thing. But special occasions call for special eats, and so I found myself at Citizen Public House in Old Town Scottsdale in need of some food. And then, like a week later I found myself back there again. No joke, it was crazy.

So on round one, I kept it simple. I went with the Jucy Lucy, which is an import from Minneapolis. But there was a twist to this Jucy Lucy in that it was stuffed with Velveeta. I don’t know if this means gourmet burgers have jumped the shark because Velveeta is inherently like the bottom of the cheese food chain or if gourmet burgers are now better than ever because they can get away with such a thing. Either way, I freaking love Velveeta and I loved this burger. Plus, it’s not like you really ever pay a high price for a gourmet burger because of cheese, you buy it for the meat and everything else and this burger delivered.

On my return, I went more all out on the menu. It began with their Kilt Lifter Fondue, which I assumed was made with the Kilt Lifter Ale and was not intended to lift any kilts. This fondue was served with Asian Pears, hunks of bread and sausage slices. Probably the biggest, and really only, problem the fondue had was that it was heated up by a candle. Sure, it looked cute, but in a restaurant with a whole section open to the great outdoors, the candle failed to stay lit and keep the fondue bubbling. Bubbling or not, though, there was nothing not tasty about this fondue.

For my main course, I ordered probably the best fancy pork I’ve ever had. It was called the Gypsy Pork Shank and it was smoke and salt cured, with fingerling potatoes and Hungarian goulash. The pork was massive and it wasn’t just about the size of this pork, it was the tenderness and flavor that just basically blew me away. All I needed was a fork to take this thing apart and anytime it got a little too rich, I had the goulash to tone it down with some alternative flavor.

Between the burger and the pork shank in two trips to Citizen Public House, I had two amazing meals. It may be a fancy place, but it’s a fancy place made for an unvegan.

While Malaysia is a majority Muslim country, it’s a very mixed country as well. Thus, finding pork is not a problem and, in fact, it is one of the highlights of Sandakan. And that’s because Sandakan has a strong history with a fried pork noodle stall dating back to 1940. Of course, basically the entire city was burned down in World War II so the stall physical stall itself is a bit newer. That, however, doesn’t seem to stop the locals from coming by.

The stall is on the top floor of the market and can be found by looking for the sign that says “Since 1940: The Original Homemade Kueh Teo with Deep Fried Pork.” Outside the stall several picnic-style tables are set up and the area seems to be pretty packed throughout the morning. From what I could tell, this is by far the most popular stall in the market and there are a few people who cook and an additional few who serve.

The fried pork noodle dish is called Kueh Teow and its origins are in China because Malaysia has a very sizable Chinese population. It can come in either a dry or souped up version. I ordered the souped up version at one of the tables, then watched as one of the cooks busily chopped up the pork to drop it into the dishes as they were laid out in front of him.

When my dish arrived, it had a surprising beauty coming from a place like this. When I first bit into the pork, I was taken aback. The texture was like no pork I had ever eaten and at first I thought I was biting into gristle or bone. I couldn’t have been further off, as this was just the crispiness that is the inevitability of deep frying the stuff. After that first bite I couldn’t get enough. The noodles were of the flat and slippery variety, while the soup required some additional seasoning. This was likely on purpose, as a few different sauce options were at the table. I snagged one, squeezed it in and proceeded to love the soup from that moment on.

This stall is a must for any visitors to Sandakan. It embodies the cultural history and diversity of Malaysia and at the same time tastes really damn good. Oh, and did I mention it costs the equivalent of $1. Yes, that’s right. Just make sure you go in the morning, as this is a breakfast only situation and you don’t want to miss out.

It’s a good thing most people in LA don’t realize that the word “mian” simply means “noodle(s)” in Mandarin, or else they might just write off the restaurant Mian in San Gabriel as some sort of Noodle World or Noodle and Company knockoff. Fortunately, Mian is anything but. Like Chengdu Taste before it, Mian represents the Sichuan (or Szechuan or Szechwan) region of Chinese cuisine.

Unlike Chengdu Taste, the menu is sparse, making it much easier to decide what to order. Plus, while the interior is pretty nicely designed for San Gabriel, the prices don’t reflect any sort of pretentiousness or fanciness, with literally every dish coming in below the $9.99 price point.

I ended up ordering the Chengdu ZaJiang Noodles. This is essentially a noodle bowl (but not soup) dish filled with thin handmade noodles, a fried egg, minced pork and, for some inexplicable reason, bok choy. Each noodle dish also came with a corresponding mug with the word “soup” in both English and Chinese on it, which did have an explicable reason. The waiter explained that it was water used to boil the noodles and that some people liked to sip on it on the side while eating such noodles. It was cold, and tasted like water with a few sprinkles of sugar and starch. Not exactly my thing, but the noodles certainly were.

The ZaJiang noodles managed to surpass any expectations I may have had before getting my food. Not only was there a perfect balance of meat, egg and noodles – the spices used in my noodle bowl were impressively tart and spicy at the same time. And when I say spicy, I don’t just mean traditional heat, I also mean Sichuan numbing pepper heat, which can often be overwhelming, but was utilized perfectly in these noodles.

As far as flavors go, Mian is pretty unbeatable. As for the noodles themselves, I am generally more partial to thick noodles when they don’t reside inside of a soup, but Mian figure out how to make these work. Perhaps that is the greatest testament to how good Mian actually is. Just go, and you don’t even have to thank me later.

Ann Arbor is home to a great many restaurants. Of course, I may be a little biased and assume that they are all amazing, but when I found myself at Taste Kitchen, I was in new territory. You, back when I was a student Taste Kitchen didn’t exist. Plus, if it did it was definitely beyond my onetime student budget.

I quickly eyed the Berkshire Grilled Pork and settled on it if only one thing could change: the brussels sprouts. You see, it came with rice, an egg and nuoc cham (presumably some sort of sauce) and these were all good things. Fortunately, my waiter told me a change up was totally possible and I traded in the sprouts for fingerling potatoes. Clearly I got the better end of the deal. These are the best diet pills.

The food turned out to be fantastic. The egg was fried and runny. while the pork was perfectly tender and flavorful. A part of me kept thinking the pork would be better as steak, but this was about as close as pork had ever come to being steak. The nuoc cham was a nice sweet chili sauce that went well with literally everything on my plate and the fingerling potatoes made very good use of their newfound existence in this dish.

Taste Kitchen is a great spot and while it might not be for students on their own, it is certainly a great spot for older, more refined eaters.