Despite never having tried or even heard of hushpuppies before this trip, I think I have come to know them quite well. They’re usually served as a side to something else (it can be anything in the South, from fried chicken to fish tacos), but I think they deserve their own post.

Wayside Takeout and Catering and Ole Virginia Fried Chicken
Charlottesville, VA
The first hushpuppies I ever tasted, and probably the worst, although I didn’t know that at the time. I thought they were good, but had to ask if they were traditionally eaten with ketchup, as they were a little bland. Also on the small side, only about an inch in diameter.

Clyde Cooper’s BBQ
Raleigh, NC
Unlike with the previous puppies, I could actually taste that they were made of cornmeal. They were also bigger, but not larger spheres. They were stangely extruded, in (I hate to say it) a form any three-year-old would immediately recognize. This made the surface to volume ratio a bit greater, which I think was good, despite the obvious flaws in the design.

Leon’s Fine Poultry and Oysters
Charleston, SC
Returned to round, but these were larger, about two inches in diameter instead of one. Definitely corny, though less so than Clyde Cooper’s. They also had peppers baked inside them, adding a dash of color and spice to an otherwise monochrome and occasionally bland food.

Big G’s Barbecue and Catering
Allendale, GA
These had an interesting texture. Instead of having a thin crispy shell coating a mostly mealy inside, it was a bit more permeated. The two-inch spheres seemed more like small cornmeal balls wearing an almost crystalline coat of fried fat. It was full of little air pockets, making them much flakier than any other hushpuppies I’ve tried.

I think I’ve covered all the different variations upon hushpuppies, but if I find something new, it will definitely be added.

Treylor Park in Savannah, GA has actually accomplished the spectacular feat of replacing Velvet Taco in Chicago as the best food I have eaten on this trip, and second only to Fish Sauce in Portland as my favorite restaurant.  Like VT, it puts a spin on classic foods, like wings or once again, tacos. Everything on the menu sounded so good that we intentionally ordered too much, so we could bring it back to our own trailer park for dinner. This place broke out of the bar food box so spectacularly that it deserved fireworks.

The first thing we tried was pigs in a blanket made with artisanal sausages and dipped in mustard sauce. The biscuit blanket was crispy on the outside, and soft around the meat, which was intensely flavored and delicious. The mustard was the best part in my opinion.

Pigs in a Blanket

My second favorite dish was the chicken pancake tacos. Lightly fried chicken, slathered with pepper sauce and strawberry salsa, and wrapped in a soft but stable pancake. Sweet was countered with spice, and soft by crunch, all together in the perfectly balanced food.

The sloppy joe was more normal, but even that was made with venison instead of beef. I was honestly expecting bleu cheese or something on top, but it only contained normal cheddar. But, the fried onions it came with were actually placed inside the bun, adding crunch to slop in continuation of the theme of balance.

Sloppy Joe

The PB&J chicken wings may have been the most delicious thing I have ever had the pure joy of eating. I know it sounds odd, but it came highly recommended on yelp, and being the strangest thing on a menu of weirdness I felt that it was my duty to try it. I did not regret this decision. Chicken cooked to perfection, coated in a sticky but smooth peanut butter sauce, with peach jam to dip it in. The peanut sauce was so good on its own, that I almost forgot the jelly, which would have been a travesty. The sauce was already pretty sweet, but the extra kick from the jelly pushed it into the realm of gods. I think ambrosia might actually be peanut and jelly sauce.

We literally stayed in Savannah for another day, just so we could come here again. We ordered the wings and the pancake tacos again, and they were just as fabulous as before.

Having seen the nachos last time, we decided we needed some. Instead of chips, they were made with waffle fries. I think this would have been better if they burnt them a little, adding a bit of extra crunch. Softer worked with the pancake tacos because the fried chicken supplied the crunch, but with nothing doing that job here, it felt a little soggy. They also were drizzled with a vinegar sauce. This made them a little too bitter for my taste, especially at the bottom where it pooled.

I got the Chupacabra, which I didn’t know was a burrito until it arrived. With something named after a goat-sucking cryptid, I probably should have guessed that this was a bit spicy. I didn’t particularly like it at first, and having already filled up on chicken, I ended up taking most of it back to the trailer. I discovered that it’s much better the next day, with the spices having cooled a little and leaving taste buds for the other flavors.

Chupacabra

If you’re ever within a hundred miles of Savannah, COME HERE. Come once, and then be so wowed that you have to come back again and again and again. Seriously, I cannot stress this enough. Don’t fall into quaint little tourist trap restaurants like River House where you’ll pay too much for inferiority, go across the street to Treylor Park.

We have now eaten more hot dogs, so it is time for part two!

Sabrett’s
Anywhere in New York
For perhaps the most famous hot dog ever, there isn’t a lot to say. Cheap and readily available, it’s good if you’re hungry and don’t want to spend time looking for something else. Actually fairly decent.

Jack’s Cosmic Dogs
Mt. Pleasant, SC
With names like the Blue Atomic dog or the Galactic dog, you’d expect them to be odd, and you’d be right.
My hot dog was a fairly normal chili dog, with onions and spicy mustard. I must say, the mustard was a little overwhelming, so the chili taste was less noticeable. Like many places that claim to specialize in hot dogs, the dog itself isn’t something to rave about, but this one was better than most. Also like most places, their cheese is simply over-processed cheese sauce, which we got on the Blue Galactic dog.
But what was amazing was the blue cheese coleslaw. I wish I could embed a little packet of it in this post, because I find myself lacking the words to accurately describe it. Definitely slaw, and definitely containing cheese, but beyond that there was something intangible. So if you’re ever in the Charleston area, I highly recommend going to try it.

Ben’s Chili Bowl
Washington, DC
This restaurant is also going to get a full post to itself, so look forward to that. But since I had a chili dog, it also belongs here.
The dog itself wasn’t all that impressive, just a normal dog. However, the chili it was topped with was amazing, which I will go into more detail in the full post.

We have entered the South. Well, we entered the South several months ago, but I’ve been lazy, and the the barbecue blogs (there will be several) have just now begun!

Barbecue Exchange
Gordonsville, Virginia
Great note to start the barbecue blog on. The whole place was filled and surrounded with happy pigs, including Miss Piggy, and a light-up Christmas tinsel pig. It was run by the former head-chef at some fancy country club.
Everything was amazing, but I especially loved the ribs. Crispy and flavorful on the outside, and beneath that so juicy that the meat was literally falling off the bone. The meal came with an array of sauces, from vinegar, to soooiet, to Hog Fire. I had my first piece of pork belly, which I learned is basically giant bacon.
High on my top ten best barbeque list, utterly fantastic in every way.

Sausage, Pork Belly, Brisket

Ribs

Clyde Cooper’s Barbecue
Raleigh, NC
Opened in 1938, and just having moved to a new building downtown, Cooper’s is a classic in Carolina Tidewater barbecue. Tidewater consists of meat with a vinegar sauce, for all you uneducated carnivores out there. Honestly, it isn’t one of my favorite types, too bitter. But the meat was all well cooked, with the ribs especially being crispy on the outside, but with their insides left tender and succulent.
I encountered pork skins for the first time, and at first, had no idea what they were or what to think of them. They were nicely crispy, and I was a little surprised to learn they were skins, which I was expecting to be more leathery.

Melvin’s Barbecue
Outside of Charleston, SC
For this place, I honetly have more to say about the restruant than the food. The pulled pork sandwich was good, but nothing to write home about. The order of onion rings we got consisted of one giant, fluffy ring of dough with a bit of a vegetable in it, but that wasn’t as odd as the place itself. Melvin’s was more of an upscale dining establishment than most BBQ, with carefully chosen decor and no happy pigs. The kind of place suburbanites would be comfortable going to. It was also a Christian establishment, with the ten commandments printed on the styrofoam water cups. Seriously. It was weird.

Remember to stay tuned for the next thrilling instalment of The Barbeque Blog!

The first time I ever heard about Falafel was in a Batman movie, and I had no idea what it was. Then I ate a bad, horribly dry falafel burger in the cafeteria of the Art Institute of Chicago. Imagine my surprise when I finally tried good, fresh cooked falafel from Two Apple Food Truck on the way to the Mall in Washington, DC. Its logo depicted two cubic apples, which was odd, but also beside the point.

Fresh grilled balls of chickpea that broke apart when you bit them were surrounded by tzatziki, shredded lettuce, and tomatoes, and wrapped in flatbread. The crunchiness of the lettuce and falafel shell balanced nicely with the smooth tzatziki and the chewy wrapping. I ended up with quite a bit of it on my hands, as the whole thing had a tendency to deconstruct as I ate it, because the tinfoil it was wrapped in was not big enough to go all the way around the sandwich.

As the falafel in Batman had been off a food cart, it feels appropriate that my first good falafel was too. I wish I could have eaten more than one sandwich from it, but the next day it had moved on. Sadly, that is the nature of food carts.

The cider stand on a street in Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard smelled so good, there was no way we couldn’t stop our bikes and get some. The stand was operated by the Behind the Bookstore Cafe, and served coffee, fresh mulled cider, and homemade donuts. Neither the cider nor the donuts were overly sweet, counting on rich flavors instead of sugar to make it enjoyable. Which they both succeeded admirably in doing. The donut was the softest thing I have ever had in my mouth besides cotton candy. It was salted, which really brought out the sweetness of it. Any more flavor would have been overwhelming.

The mulled cider almost was overwhelming, and it looked almost as awesome as it tasted. It had little bits of apple floating in it, that rose to the surface then cooled and sank like a delicious lava lamp. Its taste was so intense that I couldn’t finish my whole cup then, I had to save it for later. A million spices I couldn’t even begin to identify covered my palate, in every taste except umami.

The stand is going to be open until December, so if you’re in the area, and can handle rich flavors, go get some cider. Seriously, even if you don’t like cider or are on a no-sugar diet, do it anyway. It is fantastic.

I think it is well past time or a comprehensive list of hot dogs. Note: this page will either be edited, or I will make more additions for new hot dogs I eat.

Bison Dog
Wall Drug, Wall, SD
21-9-15
A hot dog made from bison meat. Nothing too spectacular. Its casing was a bit rubbery. Like the bison burger, I wouldn’t have been able to tell that it wasn’t beef if no one told me.

Chili Dog
Mory’s Deli
Chicago, IL
1-10-15It was about noon when we were going to head into the Museum of Science and Industry, and we decided that we didn’t want to eat museum cafe food, so we found Morry’s Deli. It was full of cops and construction workers, so we knew we’d be getting a good deal. I got a chili dog, and when Dad brought it to the table my reaction was “How in the world am I supposed to eat that?” It wasn’t as large as I expected, but it was piled with so much stuff that whenever I tried to pick it up it started shedding onions. It was good, and very filling.

Mac and Rings Dog
Ted’s Hot Dogs
Buffalo, NY
16-10-15
This post isn’t really going to be about the dog, which was okay, but about the onion rings. Which were fabulous. Unlike most rings you find nowadays, these were not overly processed and breaded, and actually contained real onions. Despite the fact that they made me sick the next day, they were totally worth it.

The Bulldog
Minneapolis, MN
25-9-15
For a bar specializing in hot dogs, I was kind of dissapointed. It seems like many places professing to specialize in something make it mediocrely and just load it with extra stuff, which was the case here. Mine was a chili dog with onions, and Dad’s had pulled pork and bacon on it. Neither were fantastic, nor were they terrible.

Big Daddy’s Hot Dog Cart
Copley Square, Boston, MA
23-10-15
The simplest and best hot dog so far. A grilled dog, on a grilled bun, with grilled onions. The dog had a nice snap to it when bitten, and the onions were fresh grilled, right on the cart with the dogs and rolls. The flattened bun definitely improved it. I find flattened buns infinitely superior to found ones; they have a better surface to volume ratio, and are easier to hold. There’s also just something nice about street food the restaurants can’t replicate. Watching your meal cook while joking with the vendor in the cold only makes the dog all the more delicious when you get it.

Big Daddy

More hot dog reviews are at Hot Dog Blog:  Part Two

A comprehensive list of hamburgers. I’m going to ignore fast-food. This post will probably have more parts added to it as I eat more hamburgers.
Buckaroo burger
Arthur’s, Cincinnati, OH
8-10-15
Buckaroo Burger: contains grilled onions and barbeque sauce. Bigger than my head, and I couldn’t possibly hope to eat it all. But it was so good that I tried very hard, and almost didn’t have room for dessert(more about that later). 

Bison Burger
Wall Drug, Wall, SD
21-9-15
Tasted mostly like a normal burger. If I wasn’t told that it was made of bison meat, I wouldn’t have noticed that anything was out of the ordinary.

Barbeque Burger
Benjamin’s Sandwich Shop, Pittsburgh, PA
13-10-15
Made with bacon and barbeque sauce. What could possibly be bad about it? Nothing, as long as it’s cooked well. Which it was.

Normally I won’t blog about food I didn’t like. But as Skyline Chili is the signature dish of Cincinnati, I feel it is my duty.We ordered a Chili Cheese Coney, a bowl of Chili Cheese Fries, and a Skyline 3-Way, which was spaghetti with chili and cheese on it. The dog (I would be scolded for calling it that) was bland, almost as bland as the chili. When we were served, we were shown three piles of cheese, and that’s about all I could taste. The fries were soggy, and the spaghetti slimey, and neither of them had any flavor either.

I won’t say it was bad, because that implies that there was something of substance to the meal. Go if you’re visiting, as a cultural thing it must be tried, but do not mistake it for any kind of delicacy or fine cuisine.

At Eataly in Chicago, we went to the first ever Nutella Cafe. As the name implies, it is a cafe entirely devoted to Nutella products. Crepes, creme brulee, cookies, all made or slathered with the hazelnut chocolate spread we all love.

We tried a brioche spread with Nutella, and a coconut Nutella cake. The brioche was soft and buttery, complemented nicely by the sweetness of the Nutella. The coconut cake was more intense. The Nutella seemed to be trying to overpower the coconut, and the coconut pushed back. They warred for control of your taste buds in a way that I couldn’t tell if it was good.

They’ve now opened a second Nutella Cafe in New York City, so if you see an Eataly in either city, I’d highly recommend stopping by.