FoodieBuddha.com

Every March, prognosticators, sports fanatics, and seemingly every other person with even the faintest interest in the NCAA basketball tournament fills out a bracket. People will use everything from video game simulations to mascot battles (think: Balki Bartokomous) to help them master the bracket. I, however, have a better way of picking the winner. I decided to pick the NCAA Basketball Champion based on which school’s area offers the best food. Flawless logic if you ask me.

Continue reading on UrbanSpoon // picture of the Korean fried chicken from Café Soho in Philadelphia

Part 1: How A Michelin Chef Ended Up At My Table

My path to full fledged food addict has been somewhat subversive.  By that I mean that during my earliest years, I rarely took note of food’s impact on my being.  Yet many of my earliest memories revolve around food.  I remember standing on my mom’s kitchen stool making chopped liver with her (stop saying gross, Jew..ish people love it).  I recall staying at my grandfather’s house in Mass. and running around with lobster claws on my hands (back when my little digits could fit inside).  I certainly remember the day I took tinfoil packed scrambled eggs into school for lunch (at my own insistence … I’m a stubborn little bastard).

Hell, before I can even remember, food was a huge part of my life.  Case in point: I peaked early when I wrestled a gallon jug of OJ up three flights of stairs and proceeded to dump the contents all over my sister.  She was obviously being a big stinking doo doo head.  I don’t remember that … at all! (But it sounds familiar … right sis?).  Probably the crowning achievement of my life and it’s been all downhill ever since.

So it seems that now is as good of a time as any to tell a story that is really important to me, even if the conceptualization of why it’s important has evolved over the years.  It was the night I cooked for a Michelin starred chef.  Yeah … seriously … HOW THE FUCK did that happen?  Let me tell you.

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Even though this website is just a little online food journal, I try to publish blog posts regularly.  Thanks to a handful of blog tools, I’m able to publish content pretty efficiently.  These various software programs have become invaluable assets in my daily life, so I think it’s about time I wrote a guide on how to blog like a pro.

Regardless of whether or not I’m writing some opus about a restaurant or a quick little news blurb or even just posting some funny video, I use most, if not all, of these tools when creating a story.  What’s particularly amazing about these blog tools is that they are all free.  Perhaps even more amazing is that I have yet to find a significantly superior paid alternative for any of these programs.

Oh, a few quick notes before we get into the details.  These are all desktop programs, so for you lovers of all things online, well – you’re gonna have to get over that and install these on your computer.  Also, while a couple of these are platform agnostic (aka – you can find them for Linux, Mac, & or PC), the important ones are Windows based tools.

However, if you happen to have a Mac, you may want to look into something like Parallels ($80 – website) or VirtualBox (Free – website), which will allow you to run windows programs inside of the Mac OS.  For you Linux nerds, I suspect that you already know about WineHQ (website), but just in case, that’s the Linux alternative to VB and Parallels.

And with that, on with the list …

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Sweet Thanksgiving moments have been marginalized by media entanglements and free market politics.  So it’s extremely compelling to find moments of thanks derived from type of honesty you find in young children.

A very lovely lady just emailed me this and it just so happens to she had one of those moments for me.  It needs to be disseminated.

I will be making Thanksgiving this year. My mom said absolutely no turkey. I said… but- !! She said … no one eats turkey and enjoys it…. * sad face with tears welling …I look up and say… I do… it reminds me of my childhood

When read something that just makes you stop, when you see a child’s honesty in a statement of truth, when you watch a mother’s warmth emerge out of a daughter, AND when that quote happens to be about food … well … you just have something special.  That my friends, will make my Thanksgiving, truly awesome.

While perusing my community message board this past morning, I stumbled across this particular exchange.  Is it something y’all are dying to read?  Probably not – in fact, this may be a complete and total waste of time.  But it’s Friday, so let’s have a little fun.

Basically, this is a cautionary tale of late night drinking, fast food runs, and what happens when best intentions go to all hell.  Thankfully, it was a far less sordid tale then the story behind that little driving mishap pictured here.  After I secured permission to post this, I did change some identifiable details.  The rest is as it was written.

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It’s been eons since I’ve doled out any stars (which are about to look like Buddha statues pretty soon anyway *wink*).  There are a myriad of reasons why I haven’t rated any place recently but I’ll spare you the reasons why that happens to be the case.  The point is – the system right now doesn’t suit me or this food journal.

I’m not necessarily going to abandon the whole thing (explained here), but I’ve decided to get rid of at least one, if not all, of the currently used categories.  I’ll probably re-work Food, Vibe, & Service … but at the very least, Overall is getting kicked to the curb.  In its place is a yet to be named category and ultimately the one that will end up being the most important.

The new category is actually based on time/distance.  By that I mean, how far should someone be willing to travel to sample a particular restaurant’s wares.  I’m still not sure if it will be mileage defined, time defined, or some combination of the two.  While I work through it, I’d gladly welcome reader input as to how you might divvy up the category.  Do you guys and gals define your dining options by distance or travel time or some combination of the two?  I’m leaning towards something like 5 min drive / 20 mile drive / Get on a Plane.

I’m baaaaaack.  After five cities, six stops, roughly 25 days, about 87 restaurants, and approximately 3,500 food photos, I snuck back into Atlanta early Wednesday morning.  My head is spinning.  My stomach is at capacity.  My movements are lethargic.  But most importantly, my mind is full of culinary experiences and friendly encounters that will last until I’m worm fodder.

I am still trying to wrap my brain around about what to do with all these notes, pictures, and anecdotes.  I visited some of the most elite restaurants in the country and some of the most mundane of places … often times with surprising results.  I made one of the most unintentional visits to a place sure to end up on my Muff & Buff Tour and found my way to more than a few eating landmarks.

I’ll put out something … probably a series of posts … but I’m just not sure exactly how to go about tackling this mountain of receipts, menus, and illicitly acquired tokens.  For now, I’ll provide you with an approximate list of the 87 restaurants I am positive I found my way to.

So that’s three cities and approximately 45 restaurants in 10 days (and no I don’t eat breakfast).  I’ve got three more stops (SEA>POR>SEA) and another 13 days before my feet touch down in Jaw-juh.  In the meantime, enjoy this Hokkaido scallop with caviar and bell pepper courtesy of Urasawa.  Okay, back to my not so regularly scheduled vacation.

I was recently poking around the web when, for no reason in particular, I ended up on the website for Elmyr, a Tex-Mex cantina in Little Five Points.  Even if you’ve never set foot inside of Elmyr, its address in Atlanta’s definitive alternative neighborhood should tell you something.  For those a bit less traveled, L5P is a ruffian’s wet dream.  While I don’t find the neighborhood particularly unsafe, it is a place where the tattooed, the tie-dyed, and the street performer come together to form a homogeneous mixed pot, defined as “one” in much the same way you’d consider a small bowl of potpourri.

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The farther down this road I go, the more and more I realize how important the education process is.  As such, I’ve added a new page.  It’s called Lessons In Food.  It’s ridiculously thin right now, but I promise it will get some serious love moving forward.  I’m not entirely sure where the format will end up, but rest assured, the information on their will serve as a collective of good information to help you along this path to knowledge.

The early idea is to simply keep it as a repository of articles good articles.  Agreement with the subject matter isn’t a concern.  I am much more focused on things that are interesting, move your mind, and offer a reasonably definable sense of logic.  It’ll probably end up including that, and a whole lot more!  And of course, if you do happen to know of something good to read or watch, let me know (@FoodieBuddha is a good way!)