antimeria

In order of intensity, a (mostly unhealthy) list of things I want to consume in Chicago:

1. the $225, 29-course “Tour” at Alinea
2. Hot Doug’s Fuck, they are closed the entire time I’ll be there.
3. New Glarus Fat Squirrel
4. Chicago-style pizza
5. anything at Kuma’s
6. Italian beef

Today, the Sun posted a list of 100 things you should eat in Baltimore. After the jump, the list, along with notes–the things I’ve done are italicized.

I should note that these are largely unedited user comments, not an original list by Elizabeth Large, the restaurant critic; as such, they are a bit of a mixed bag. I would also like to note that this was originally an actual list, but they decided to turn it into a slideshow. It’s pretty, but this post took me a lot longer to finish.
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As Caroline put it today, “For someone with…an insatiable nutty curiosity, your blog has been awfully quiet lately.” Updates on more serious topics are coming, but I’d like to start with a bleg: does anyone have any suggestions for dealing with severe, multi-day muscle pain?

Also, Ezra Klein’s revelation that even Potbelly’s vegetarian sandwich has 550 calories and 60% of your day’s saturated fat (thanks to the three kinds of cheese they put on it) was quickly followed by his Cheesecake Factory roundup. Takeaways:

• Michael Ruhlman thinks the Cheesecake Factory does, in fact, rock.
• You should never, ever, ever order mashed potatoes there (bottom of this image from Calorie Lab).
• The CF’s miso-glazed salmon weighs in at 1,673 calories, 500 more than their chicken piccata and across-the-board worse for you than their shrimp scampi, though it doesn’t come close to the 2134-calorie, 81-grams-of-saturated-fat monstrosity that is the pasta carbonara. As Ezra notes, both miso and salmon are pretty low-fat, so I’m curious as to where all that gut-busting comes from.
  

This is a pretty compelling reason to require nutrition information on restaurant menus (and though I’m no great fan of Cosi, they’re one of the few chains that does so).

Update: Caroline just linked me to this fascinating look at fast-food hamburgers (PDF). Just so you know, the average fast-food burger is 12.1% meat. I’ll let you find out what the other 87.9% is on your own.

Bo ssäm is Ssäm Bar’s most famous dish—a whole pork butt, plus kimchi and a dozen oysters, designed to be eaten wrapped in Bibb lettuce. It serves eight or nine, costs two hundred dollars, and usually requires ordering several days in advance. – NYer

Momofuku Ssäm Bar is outstanding (though I did not have the bo ssäm). More on New York and Mono to follow.

I really have meant to write about food more, but I haven’t been going out to new places that much lately or making anything really inspired. But during my Chicago visit, I ended up going to…I think it was called the Handlebar. Googling…yes, the Handlebar. Anyway, they do hipster-friendly pescetarian food, complete with Chicago scene-required PBR. I was a fan of my sandwich, although I admit that $9 is a little spendy for goat cheese, sprouts, tomato and avocado. They also do some tasty smoked Gouda mac and cheese, which everyone liked and seemed easy enough to make at home, so tonight I did some basic macaroni research and came up with the following recipe. It’s really easy, takes less than a half-hour including the time it takes to boil water, and cheap–assuming you keep your kitchen stocked with the basics, $8 buys enough supplies for about 4-6 servings. Note: Most measurements are approximate, and some are based on tweaks I decided on for next time. No picture, because it would just look like normal mac and cheese captioned “Not pictured: waves of delicious Gouda-scent.”

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