Toi on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood, Ca, is wonderful. The fried brown rice is indescribable. It’s got a psychadelic/punk rock motif and is open till 4AM everyday.
My true love and I stopped in a place called the Santa Fe Station at Lakewood and Carson in Long Beach. New Mexico style cuisine (who knew?), spicy stuff, very good food. And there is a large toy train track with several cars running overhead. Very cool effect.
Pollo Casero. It’s in a strip mall on the southwest corner of University Boulevard and Riggs Road in Prince George’s County, Maryland. I don’t know which town it’s in. College Park, Hyattsville, Lewisdale, Adelphi, and Langley Park all have a piece of University Boulevard along that stretch, so I presume it’s in one of them. In any case, the place has no atmosphere at all and nothing externally to distinguish from that whole tacky stretch of malls, gas stations, and cheap restaurants.
There’s really one thing to go there for - the roasted chicken. The chicken itself is good but not great, as are the tortillas that come with it. The sides (I usually get rice and corn) are also pretty good. But the reason that I’m mentioning this place is the salsa, which is the best that I’ve ever tasted anywhere.
Udipi Cafe, in Columbus, Ohio, serves wonderful South Indian food. Udipi is probably my favorite restaurant in Columbus.
There’s a place in a somewhat run-down-looking strip mall called The Holyland Market. This place isn’t a restaurant. It’s an import store, and not a great one, at that. But if you walk past the main room with most of the merchandise, you end up going through a narrow doorway to an unfinished room in the back. There’s a little bent over old woman who makes truly wonderful fresh pita and flatbread there. She’ll take flatbreads with savory spiced meat and pine nuts, or melted cheese, or a zaatar/olive oil spread right out of a big brick oven, put it in a bag, and hand it to you. An entire bag of fresh, warm pita was a whole of $0.75 when I last checked, and a rich and filling meat-topped flatbread was only a buck.
When my friends and I go there, we buy breads with toppings and then sit either in or on the car and eat them. Finger-lickin’ good.
For barbecue, Nick’s Catfish and Ribs, in Carlisle, Arkansas, is wonderful. So is Lefty’s, in Crossville, Tennessee.
Pepi’s Pizza (Wooster St., New Haven, CT). is home of the best pizza on the planet. Try their white clam pizza for a heavenly pie-and the original chesse pizza is the best!
Only two problems:
-access from Rt. 95 is tricky-it is easy to get lost.
-they have a big picture of Bill Clinton on the wall (taken when he visited NH)-made me want to hurl!
Surrogate Hostess was on Capitol Hill, and, sadly, is kaput. When I was in college, I lived five blocks away, and I used to go and torment my classmates by scaring them through the front window after they showed up at 4am, drunk and half-asleep, and tried to stumble through the early baking runs. Anyway, it isn’t there any more.
For a replacement breakfast alternative, go to the Scarlet Tree, in the neighborhood north of the U-District and east of Green Lake. It’s on Roosevelt at about 65th. They also do good lunches (my wife swears by the au jus), and on weekend evenings they have live jazz and blues.
Seconded. There’s a quickie-outlet place on Capitol Hill, on Broadway half a block south of Pine, but the main restaurant on Queen Anne is where it’s at. And take the admonition about garlic seriously.
For an unusual dining choice, check out Kabul in Wallingford (on 45th). Yes, it’s Afghani food, similar to but not quite like anything else I’ve ever had. They have an eggplant side dish that’s simply heavenly.
I also strongly recommend Calypso, which is an upscale Caribbean-themed outfit in Maple Leaf (corner of 80th and Roosevelt, 15 blocks north of Scarlet Tree). A huge favorite with the locals, and it isn’t someplace you’re likely to hear about from anyone else.
Similar, and my top recommendation for obscure joints in Seattle, is the Mojito Cafe, which specializes in Latin American cuisine. They’re kind of hard to find, but they’re worth it (unfortunately annoying website), because they’ll expand your perception of south-of-the-border food well past the typical Mexican burrito-n-rice-n-beans everybody else has. The avocado sauce they serve with some dishes is to die for. Plus, the rum drink from which they take their name is a specialty of the house; they’ve got tumblers lined up in the kitchen with crushed mint all ready to go, because they serve so many of them. Caveat: It’s a tiny place, and very popular with the locals, so plan on waiting for a table. But do wait. (The fact that a friend of mine is a co-owner has nothing to do with my unbridled love of the food.)
Oh, and if you’re a fan of BBQ, you have to Meet The Man, at Dixie’s. No, it’s not the best BBQ in the world; it’s just something you have to do. They have a stand in Safeco Field, but it’s not the same; you have to visit the original location in Bellevue, where the owner will come to your table, stand behind you with a steaming saucepan, and intimidate you into adding The Man to your dish. Beware! Start with a tiny amount and work up from there.
One of my favorite places to eat is actually in a mall food court.
In Southland mall, south of Detroit, there is a little polish place that serves the best cabbage rolls I’ve ever eaten. I live on the north side now, so I don’t get over there much, but I absolutely love it.
If you ever are in Ortonville, Michigan and who doesn’t want to be here? the only place for ice cream is
Cook’s Farm Dairy. Their ice cream is wonderful ( not ben and jerry’s, but I try my best to support local businesses first.)
A single scoop is the size of a pint.
A double is huge and a triple, well, let’s just say, it’s about the size of a three pro wrestlers fists stacked.
Bonus round is as you eat yourself into a sugar induced coma, you can walk out and visit the nice moo cows and see the piglets. The lines in the summer are long, but worth every fat gram.
It is a local institution and it also has a drive up window (milk and meat orders only, no scoops thru the drive thru), which just rawks.
If you are looking for the most awesome bread on this planet, **American Grill ** in Oxford, Michigan has the most incredible rosemary bread sticks.
In Seattle, I second Dixie’s - but get there early for lunch. And go with a local - you’ll get scolded if you break the house rules.
Dick’s Drive-In is a local institution. Cheap burgers and greasy fries (which should be eaten with tartar sauce). Or, try Daly’s on Lake Union - a fish & chips stand that also makes a yummy fish sandwich.
For a truly delicious (if slightly odd) experience, go to the Alki Homestead for dinner. Built in a historic old log cabin, there’s lace tablecloths, pink linen napkins, silver vases with fresh flowers on every table. And the house special… family-style fried chicken dinner. I’ve taken freinds from all over the country there, and every one has said it’s the best fried chicken they’ve ever had. Plus, the family-style is all you can eat, with salad, chicken soup, mashed potatoes & gravy, bicsuits, and whatever the vegetable of the day is. Think Sunday dinner at your Gramma’s house.
Doe’s Eat Place in Greenville,MS. Your choice of a 2lb T-bone,10oz. fillet,spaghetti or shrimp. It’s in the bad section of town,and you have to walk through the kitchen to the dining room. Eat there if you can.
In non-Seattle news, one of the best restaurants on the planet is Sticky Rice in Ithaca, NY (“Laotian and Thai food in a casual atmosphere. Vegan options cooked in separate woks. Open for dinner Tues - Sat. 329 E. State St. Ithaca, NY. 607-275-3641”). It’s run by a guy named Sisay Sisouphone and his wife. They’re from Laos. He is a genius. He’s also really friendly, enthusiastic, intelligent, and community-minded. He treats cooking like an exciting, ongoing exploration, always trying new things with old ingredients… his unfried, rice-paper-wrapper Summer Rolls are the one food I would choose to have every day for the rest of my life… his pedestrianly named “Chicken Casserole” is just unbelievable and does not even remotely resemble a casserole, let alone the baked “hot dish” Midwestern-type mushes you may have been raised with. If you are ever within a hundred miles you must go. He has some of the Thai dishes you might recognize, but a lot of stuff you probably won’t; some of it is truly different from anything I’ve ever had, but all of it is transcendental. And definitely opt for the special purple sticky rice with your order. The rice-based desserts are wonderful, especially ones with mango. We seriously considered asking them to cater our wedding in New Hampshire.
OMG, Cervaise, I knew you were cool; this clinches it. I lived on Capitol Hill for nine years, a few blocks south of Volunteer Park between 13th and 14th.
Surrogate Hostess is kaput?! Terrible! My other favorite Capitol Hill breakfast place was the late, lamented Torrey’s Eggcetera, which decamped, rumor had it, to somewhere in Wallingford, a few months before I moved away from Seattle. Where the heck are all the fabulous Capitol Hill hipsters gonna eat breakfast now? You can’t seriously be suggesting they go to the U-District! Pfft!
Mmmn, Kabul… My folks found that place shortly after it opened and we went back many times. They had some kind of fantastic mint tea, IIRC…
:eek: Heresy! There is a correct way to eat Dick’s fries, and it does not involve the slimy condiment you mention.
One accepts the order bag from the (surprisingly well-paid) Dick’s worker. One immediately reaches inside the bag, grasps the small paper sack of fries, and upends it into the larger bag, thus preserving the small sack in a nearly grease-free state, to be saved for one’s friend who is slowly papering his wall with such bags. One rips off the top half of the bag of fries (for easier reaching access), discarding the top half in a trash can. One goes over to the counter stand and shakes salt into the half-bag with from the salt shaker chained to the stand. One stuffs one’s face, fending off the greedy grabby hands of the friends one meets on one’s walk home.
Note that while Dick’s fries are greasy, they also have the vitamin-rich potato peels still attached, and are therefore good for you.
Yep, I think you are thinking of a different one, though I liked the one you’re thinking of too. Seattle has almost as many Thai places as espresso places and unfortunately even the best ones can’t always stay afloat.
Sorry, I forgot to address this in my original post. The thing about Seattle is, we don’t have a lot of history, at least in terms of cuisine. We have a few joints that have been open for decades, but most of them are dives and can’t really be recommended (e.g. the Five Spot). More frequently, stuff gets torn down, renovated, resold, reworked, and recycled. The restaurant at the top of the Space Needle, for example, has been there for 41 years, which is ancient in Seattle time.
The best previous example was the Dog House, a hilarious throwback 24-hour diner on the edge of downtown. The waitresses were surly, the food was indifferent, the decor was 40s-turning-into-50s classic vinyl booth. This is the place that makes frequent appearances in J.A. Jance’s J.P. Beaumont mysteries, by the way. It had been around forever, and was an institution, until suddenly, back in '91 or '92, they announced they were done. Business was brisk those last few weeks; I was there less than 24 hours before they closed, and I remember ordering off a xeroxed menu because all the originals had been stolen as souvenirs. A couple of the local TV stations even did live feeds to cover the closing. It reopened shortly thereafter under new ownership and a new name, but it wasn’t the same.
The thing about Seattle is, we don’t really have a tradition in terms of culture. Yeah, we’ve built airplanes for many decades, but even that is going away, and in any case that doesn’t really tell you what to expect from the restaurants. The more recent software boom means we’ve got people with money who are more interested in the latest thing than in any kind of consistency, which has meant a lot of restaurant turnover; twenty years ago, nobody had heard of Thai food, but now there’s one on every other block.
More frequently, restaurants come and go based on economic whim. Of course, that’s true anywhere, but it’s even more unstable here; you can’t count on the institutions. In addition to the Dog House mentioned above, there was a dive bar on Broadway called Ernie’s. This is a place where the regulars had their own bar stools, and they didn’t have to say a word to have their preferred drinks put in front of them. I once saw a bartender look at a guy on his stool, then come out from behind the bar and catch the guy as he started to slip backward. The timing was exquisite; the bartender was coming out before it was apparent the guy was passing out, and a well-placed hand between his shoulder blades put him back up against the bar. It was almost graceful, except that it was kind of sad, too. Anyway, the bar faded away as the neighborhood got gentrified; first it turned into an upscale bar called “Ilene’s, with Ernie Room,” and now it’s a breakfast joint, one of three “Julia’s” in the city (the other two are in Wallingford and Ballard, IIRC).
In fact, as I rack my brain, I can think of only two restaurants that have been around long enough to really reflect Seattle history: Ivar’s, which most people think of for its numerous fast-food fish-n-chips outlets but that has a pretty good “true” restaurant called (IIRC) the Captain’s Table near Gasworks Park, and the Lock Spot, which has been in Ballard absolutely forever (it’s right next to the Locks park, a must-see destination) and has decent but not great food. These are places that are about Seattle’s maritime tradition, and are worth visiting if you’re looking more for an experience of the city’s history, i.e. who we were when the city was being founded, and less for outstanding cuisine.
Aside from that, for history, you should hit the Pike Place Market. The Athenian is probably the truest historical restaurant; beyond that, mostly it’s a bunch of quick-snack booths with generic food (teriyaki-from-a-bottle, for example), not to mention high turnover (though the donut fryer has been there a while). Still, in a very general sense, the Market has been remarkably stable for decades; it’s still a functional shopping area for local merchants and residents, and has resisted out-and-out touristification like, say, Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. And maybe that’s the best sense of history you can find: Rather than a specific single restaurant with its own lengthy provenance, you would enjoy an overall environment where an unending series of scrappy entrepreneurs over the years have wedged themselves temporarily into a tiny hole to make a start to their careers, before moving on and making the space available to the next person trying to make a go of it.
You’re not going to believe this, but I’m 99% certain we know each other. In fact, I’m pretty sure we went to the same arts college.
Small world, eh?
Why, yes, yes it is, after all! A small, small world!
Do you, by any chance, type very, very quickly? If you do I think I know you too. Either yes or no, how’s it hangin’, homie?
(heh heh) For a while I thought “Cervaise” was a woman – I think I got you mixed up with kung fu lola, and wondered if you might be Allysoun IRL.
Er, the rest of you may now return from our Old Home Week to your [John Leguizamo in House of Buggin’ voice] reg-grr-lrr-ly scheduled restaurant thread[/JLiIHoB].
Oh yes, Spudnuts. There was one of those in Charlottesville, VA, as late as 1990.
In Lynchburg, Va, there is this hole in the wall all-night diner called “The Texas Inn.” The waitresses are surly and don’t get along with the cooks. You can see wealthy college punks sitting elbow to elbow with truckers. They use shorthand [“Cheese Western, a bowl with, and a glass of the James!”].
A cheese western is a hamburger with a fried egg and american cheese on top. It’s so freakin’ good after a late night at the bars.
One night a truck lost control on one of Lynchburg’s steep hills and crashed right through the Texas Inn. It closed for awhile, but eventually reopened.
It was a real a hellhole, but everyone went there. But usually only after midnight
I hope it’s still there.
I’ve eaten there more times than I can remember. Not particularly noted for its fine cuisine, however, despite the impressive surroundings. And yes, parts of the Harry Potter movies were filmed there (link), although I think the movie makers also built studio copies of sections of the Hall.
This was not the first time the Great Hall at Christ Church has been copied, however: in the USA, the University of Chicago’s Hutchinson Commons and Cornell University’s Risley Dining Room are both based on it. The original was completed in the 1520s under the auspices of Cardinal Wolsey, before he fell out of favor with Henry VIII — who subsequently refounded Wolsey’s Cardinal College under his own patronage, first with the stunningly original name of King Henry VIII College (no shrinking violet he!) and then finally in 1546 as Aedes Christi, whose English translation has traditionally been Christ Church.
Unfortunately, two of the best features of the Great Hall were left out of the Harry Potter movies IIRC – the hammerbeam roof (since the one at Hogwarts doesn’t have a visible roof) and the portrait collection, since the real-life UK royalty and Prime Ministers would not fit the HP alterniverse.
[nitpick]
It’s Christ Church, not Christ’s Church, and is never correctly referred to with the “College” suffix, even though it is one of the Colleges of Oxford University (as well as being the Cathedral of the Oxford (Anglican) Diocese).
[/nitpick]
I will bet none of you have heard of the Maid Rite Sandwich Shop in Greenville, Ohio. It’s legendary around this neck of the woods.
Krazy Jim’s Blimpy Burger in Ann Arbor, Michigan! A truly wonderful, one of a kind, pre-McDonald’s/Burger King/Wendy’s burger joint! Very tasty burgers with lots of topping choices and nice thick fries.
The Flint, Michigan area has a local burger chain called Halo Burger that is also quite good.
Also in Ann Arbor is Zingerman’s, which features very pricey, but also very very yummy deli sandwiches. They are so good that even New Yorkers are impressed. Not something most of us can afford on a regular basis, but a nice treat now and then.
Bill Grant’s Wonderburger in Chicago, way south side, on Kedzie
about half a block north of 111th Street, east side of Kedzie, has
the best burgers I’ve ever eaten.
If you like rich eastern European food, Kramarczyk’s Deli, on
Hennepin in ‘Nordeast’ Minneapolis is a taste treat…the best
Ukrainian food in Mpls…