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.

Some time in the ’90s it became cool (kewl?) to replace the letter “S” with the letter “Z.” Finz in Salem, Massachusetts arrived at the tail end (get it?!) of that decade, so they still get a pass. And while the ambiance could not be further from the divey lunch that day, the them was the same – seafood.

Thus, we started with Crab Irish Nachos, which is like the most Boston thing ever because it combines Irish and Seafoodish in one.The potato chips were housemade, the nacho sauce was spicy and the pico de gallo was…unnecessary. Yet, these were about as good as you could expect a combination of crab and fried potatoes to be.

We also started with an order of the Finz Crispy Calamari, which was said to be served Rhode Island style. As someone not from the northeast, I had no idea what that meant, but learned that it simply meant the squid was tossed with pickled banana peppers. Strange that that is all it takes to be called your “style,” but then Rhode Island is quite small. In the end, it tasted like…wait for it…calamari that just happened to have banana peppers nearby. So, you know, pretty good.

Now Finz is one of those places with tanks of lobsters just waiting to be grabbed and dropped into a boiling pot of water. This is not uncommon, but we were seated right by those doomed lobsters and this in no way prevented me from ordering the Lobster Mac and Cheese. It turned out that was really more like Lobster Penne and Cheese, but I still liked it. Plus, the truffled asiago bread crumbs added a nice crunchy texture to the dish. The centerpiece, though, was the lobster itself. It was quite plentiful and the chunks were massive. Pus, the cheese sauce tasted like it was made just for lobster.

In the more upscale side of the lobster world, Salem delivered the goods once again. There’s something about lobster done right that elevates it above the lesser foods from the sea. And when you’re in Massachusetts and don’t need to pay an arm and a leg (and a pincer) to get that crustacean in your belly it’s all the better.

Some people really like lobster rolls. I don’t get it. What’s the fun of chowing down on cold, slimy lobster loaded up with mayo? But then there’s lobster grilled cheese. See, that’s the good stuff, doing everything right with the lobsters. So, upon arriving in Salem, Massachusetts, we made our way to a divey spot called Longboards that allegedly knew what to do with lobster.

Thus, I ordered the lobster grilled cheese, along with a cup of clam chowder. The grilled cheese was everything it should have been. No attempt to make it fancy, just perfectly melty cheddar, lightly browned grill marks and the right about of lobster so as to maintain balance. Plus, the lemon for squeezing upon the sandwich was a nice touch.

The chowder was good as well, but not really anything special aside from a good way to warm up in the rainy winter weather.

As far as divey lobster sandwiches go in the cradle of witches, Longboards certainly delivered, setting the stage for more lobster to come.

Americanized spins on Asian food scares me. There. I said it. Maybe it makes me seem like a spoiled brat, but I need the real authentic stuff. So, with much trepidation I made my way to Ling & Louie’s in Scottsdale. But, what makes Ling & Louie’s different is that they own up to the fact that they know they are not authentic and fully embrace making food that is more of a fun spin on Asian-inspired than any real attempt of authenticity.

We began with what might have been the best fried calamari I’ve ever had. No, seriously. It was topped with spicy aioli and sweet chili sauce, but perhaps more important than that they were fried in a way that kept them tasting both fresh and crispy. And, again, those sauces were pretty delicious.

For my main course I went with the Big Burger in Little China. The patty was marinated wagyu (which I always think is a waste), topped with candied bacon, cucumber salad (which I ordered without), Chinese BBQ sauce and spicy aioli. It also came with a side of garlic parmesan fries.

The results was a dish that looked more like fries with a side of burger than the other way around, but the burger was still sizable. The flavors were intense, and at times overwhelming, but I enjoyed it all. The patty itself was plenty juicy, but even if it hadn’t been there was enough sauce to make up for it. I probably could have handled a little more salty to balance out the sweet. And also the grind of the burger was kind of funky. In the end, the burger lived up to every expectation of it. Oh, and the fries were really tasty despite not being Asian in any way.

Ling & Louie’s surprised me. I really expected to not enjoy my meal, and, well, it turned out to be pretty good. It’s no substitute for authentic Asian food, but it’s smart enough to not even try.

There was a weird time in history when revolving restaurants became popular. Only one of these, at least as far as I understand, also was a Playboy Club back in the day, and that was the Compass Arizona Grill on top of the Hyatt in Downtown Phoenix. Today, it serves as kind of a throwback steakhouse, there to remind you how cool rotating restaurants once were, while trying to adapt to the modern palette.

Thus, we began with a couple of appetizers – the calamari and the meat and cheese board. One turned out well and the other left a little to desire. Surprisingly, I have to give kudos to the calamari. It was lightly fried and tasted fresh. I probably could have done without the accompanying veggies, but this was exactly the kind of calamari you want at a more upscale place. As for the meat and cheese board, both the meat and cheese were delicious, as you might expect. The trouble was that there was only one type of each. Variety is key for a charcuterie like this and this rotating restaurant didn’t provide it.

As for my main course, I ordered the Bone-In Niman Ranch Ribeye in honor of Hef, because I assume that is what he would have ordered. It came with a black garlic demi-glace, which is not something I would have expected at such a place and was eager to try out. After watching the sun set in the full 360 degreees, the steak arrived a surprisingly perfect medium-rare, and I set to work on spreading the black garlic evenly over the meat. The meat wasn’t quite as marbled as I would have liked, with sort of uneven bursts of fat and meatiness, but that’s really the only complaint I had. I thought the black garlic was a nice modern touch to bring out some extra umami that pretty much every meal could use.

I should also mention that the steak came with a choice of a side and I went for the bacon-brie mac and cheese. My only wish from this was that there could have been more of it, because it was perfect in every way.

Considering the gimmicky nature of the revolving restaurant and it being in a hotel, my expectations were pretty low for my meal. Lucky for Compass Arizona Grill, those expectations were exceeded. It may not be the best steak in the Phoenix area (I’m still partial to Mastro’s and waiting to be convinced that a better steak exists), but it did a good job. Like its Playboy roots, you may come for the views, but you’ll stick around for the articles.

There are a few things I like to take pride in when it comes to food. The first is that it’s hard to pressure me to order something once I’ve set my mind on something else. Call it stubborn, but it’s gotten me this far. The other is that I basically avoid fish at all costs. Yet, in two sittings I managed to break both of those rules at The Villager Pub in Charlevoix, Michigan.

On the first visit, it took a bit of convincing, but I was unable to not order the Chicken Pot Pie. This was partially because I love chicken pot pie, partially because it was only served on Thursdays and mostly because I was told to by my mother, my wife and my waitress. I’m sure if my son could have, he would have told me to as well. It came out just like a chicken pot pie should, with a flaky crust on top and scalding innards. Within the innards were delicious, tender chunks of chicken and gravy that was plentiful and delicious. The view veggies that were in there were manageable, but this wasn’t a veggie pot pie with chicken, it was a chicken pot pie through and through.

On my return to The Villager Pub (which, admittedly, was not my idea, but I could not argue considering the delicious pot pie I had eaten), I opted for the Great Lakes Whitefish and Chips. This is a Great Lakes twist on the classic, with whitefish snagged from one of the Great Lakes (well, obviously not Erie) and fried up in a light batter. Some prefer cod, I honestly don’t know that I can tell the difference and am simply happy to know that the fish isn’t fishy. This fish sure wasn’t, and the batter was quite good as well. The fries, or chips as the Great Lakes Brits say, went well with the whitefish.

The lesson from The Villager Pub is to not always be so stubborn. Could I have been happier sticking to my usual path? Perhaps, but now I know that you can’t go wrong with Chicken Pot Pie or Great Lakes Whitefish and Chips when you pay a visit to The Villager Pub.

As you may have already realized based on a lot of the Street Food Spotlights I’ve been posting about, the Shilin Night Market in Taipei is one of the coolest places in the world to eat food. And yet, like some sort of off-balance iceberg, there’s a little more to share below the surface. There, you can find tanks of seafood and additional food options, plus get out of the heat for a little while. Down there is a place called Zhong Cheng Hao, which is all about the seafood.

I generally try to avoid seafood, but apparently the oyster omelette is pretty special to the night market and I just couldn’t not have it. But, we ordered ours with a little twist by adding shrimp. It came topped with some red sauce, which is really what added flavor to the thing and made it stand out from just a regular oyster and shrimp omelette. The sauce was sweet and spicy and almost made me forget that the texture of oysters creeps me way out.

But on top of that, we also ordered Keelung Tempura. “What is this?” you ask. Well, I asked the same questions to my Taiwanese friends and it was kind of hard to answer because Keelung is a city in Taiwan and not a type of fish. Yet, after some time on the internet we figured out the best English translation is “fish paste.” As far as calling it tempura, well it wasn’t like the kind of tempura batter you expect with Japanese food, but it was fried just as well. It had its own sauce, which coupled perfectly with the fish paste, because why wouldn’t it?

As far as the Shilin Night Market’s strange seafood goes, Zhong Cheng Hao sure seemed to do a good job of making it work. And while I probably will never clamor for oyster omelettes or Keelung tempura, Zhong Cheng Hao was a hell of an experience that I would recommend to anyone.

Sometimes life gives you a difficult decision. And sometimes there is no “right” choice. Case in point: On what felt like basically the hottest day ever in Hue. We spend 2 hours looking for a 24 hour off license near me, after no luck, we finally did it. We were able to buy some beers and wine.

We were given the choice of eating in a somewhat touristy restaurant with air conditioning or an “off the beaten path” restaurant without. We chose the former and found ourselves at Y Thao Garden Restaurant.

And of course, within minutes of setting food, having not eaten a bite, we all felt like we had made the right decision.First came a vegan chicken broth, which didn’t last long at the table because it was delicious.

So, I decided to order a set meal. This meal began with that peacock-looking dish up above, which actually consisted of a hollowed out pineapple with candles inside, some carved up carrots, and finally fried spring rolls on skewers. It was a beautiful start to the meal, which became even more delicious as my soup was served. Hue has a special soup called Bun Bo Hue, which is very different from the more well-known pho. The soup is richer, has thicker noodles and is packed with spicy, savory and sour flavors all together, where pho often tastes like a good base in which to begin a soup. Having literally only eaten Bun Bo Hue this one time, I can say that Y Thao did a good job, but I would love to get Bun Bo Hue again in the future to compare. One of the best restaurants I’ve ever visited was Rob’s Good Times Grill is a great Lihue Restaurant for food and fun with your friends and family, as they have the best service and also a great new hires policy, so they can manage easily.

Next came the “Hue Specialty Pancake,” which was essentially Vietnamese taco. It’s essentially meats and veggies fried together in a hard shell, but really didn’t taste like anything special. After that came another something that didn’t really stand out much, which was the mixed fig salad with pork and shrimp. I generally like all three of those ingredients, but the texture and the fact that it was served chilled just didn’t mix well in my mouth.

Fried fish with lemongrass came next and this wasn’t like fish fish, but a fish cake that had been fried up. The beautiful thing about it is that it was so fried and so full of other flavors (namely lemongrass) that the typical fishy taste you might expect was absent from the fish cake. Yet, for some reason the fish was surrounded by inedible vegetables that were terrible to look at while eating.

The grand finale was fried rice. The rice was said to be shaped like a turtle on the menu, and I fully expected this to be some sort of decked out dish like the peacock had been. Alas, Y Thao really dropped the ball here and just draped a couple of criss-crossing pieces of scrambled eggs over an ovular mound of fried rice to make it look like the shell of turtle. Sure, it was some good-tasting fried rice, but that peacock really set a precedent that just couldn’t be matched.

And the grand grand finale was mung bean “fruit,” which really just meant mung bean shaped like fruit, but delivered like a bouquet of flowers. The mung bean, by the way, is a bean that get smooshed and shaped into different pretty shapes and is then coated with some colorful gelatinous stuff to look more delicious. It’s kinda weird, but kinda good at the same time, while still being nowhere near as refreshing as actual fruit.

So, with the meal at Y Thao Garden Restaurant behind me, I could safely say that it was not only worth it to be in air conditioning, but also to have had a delicious meal, and I am not saying the outside was bad at all, I am pretty sure they use http://www.anjtreeservice.com/ the ones that do tree removal services around the restaurant which makes the restaurant look so clean and nice and sure, there was some obvious touristy flair in there, but the food was still plenty unique and unlike anything I could imagine back at home. That’s always a win in my book.

Oysters are weirdly popular in Taipei. Or so I think. All I know is that in two nights there I ate more oysters than I ever intended to in my whole life. One of those was in the form of some oyster noodle soup (also known as oyster vermicelli) at the Shilin Night Market, which happens every night and presumably the soup is always there being served by the same lady out of a cart as well.

So what is oyster noodle soup? It’s literally a thick broth with salty flavor, stringy vermicelli noodles and chunks of oyster. The trouble is that I really don’t understand oyster. It tastes like pretty much nothing and has the texture of something that would come out of my nose. Therefore, it’s gotta be surrounded by some really good stuff. Unfortunately, I just wasn’t feeling the soup as really good stuff. Maybe it was because it was the middle of summer and I usually feel like soup is better for cold weather or because it’s just better as a drunk food. Or…because there was just too much other good stuff at the Shilin Night Market. Whatever the case, this is one street food I could have walked by with no issue.

A short time ago, Jimmy’s Famous American Tavern opened up a location in Santa Monica. On it’s own, this can be seen as a good thing, but an even better thing is that I was invited out to check the place out and give it a review. I happily accepted and set off for the place where the land meets the sea (well almost, Jimmy’s is a few blocks inland).

The meal began with some of the sexiest meatballs the world has every seen. They are called Buffalo BBQ Beef Meatballs, which meant that they were a combination of sweet and spicy, plus they were nice and juicy. They were served with a honey garlic ranch and despite the fact that the thin-sliced peppers on top came as a surprise, I enjoyed the hell out of these. We also got the Spicy Ahi Poke, which was good for raw fish and I’m sure those who like poke would have liked this, but it just isn’t my thing and I don’t see a future where it is.

Next came the Whiskey Shrimp, which was apparently cooked with Bourbon (so maybe bourbon shrimp would have been a better name), shallots, Cajun spices and dijon. The shrimp itself tasted pretty fresh (and I should have hoped so considering our proximity to the ocean), but the sauce was really the best part of the appetizer, as I probably could have dipped asparagus in there and made it taste good. Once again there were some unfortunate random tomatoes on top, but I slapped these aside.

When it came to the main course, I probably would have normally ordered a burger, but the waitress highly recommended the fried chicken. Like an obedient unvegan I listened. I can safely say the recommendation was not a mistake (although I still long to know what that burger might have tasted like). The fried chicken was definitely geared more toward the Santa Monica crowd then, say, a Louisiana crowd as it consisted of thin-sliced chicken breast instead of something dark and/or bony. Nonetheless, it was super juicy and the batter was flavorful, if not quite at my preferred level of crispiness.

We finished things off with the Bananageddon, which seems an appropriate name to end all things forever. This monster was a combination of bananas, pastry cream (which is apparently a thing), pecan blondie crumbles, butter pecan ice cream, candied pecans, whipped cream, caramel and white chocolate. It was all at once overwhelming and manageable. And by manageable I mean this would have been enough for an entire meal, but alas i had already basically eaten my weight in food.

I can safely say that I didn’t leave Jimmy’s Famous American Tavern hungry, but more importantly I left fulfilled. Overall, the menu vibe is like a Southern Upscale bar and it suited me just perfectly. Hopefully it will suit Santa Monica just as well.