new dog old trick

Obsessed with Sushi

I've been following a great series of posts on Noriko Takiguchi's blog about how to eat sushi correctly.  The series is up to seven posts as of this writing and is full of fascinating details about different aspects of "sushi culture".  Here in Nashville sushi (also known as bait in some parts of town) is not quite as popular or common as in California, but there are some good sushi spots.  I'm looking forward to putting into practice a few of the things I've picked up from Noriko's posts.  Even if you aren't a big sushi fan, this series is full of interesting food trivia. 

A tasty new Carnival...

She Who Will Be Obeyed!: Recipe Carnival Archives

This is cool - The Carnival of the Recipes. This is the second - just scroll down to read the first. And I love the name of the blog - She Who Will Be Obeyed. Not only recipes, but visual aids! Yum.

(thanks to Glenn at Instapundit)

Road trip report - New Orleans restaurants

On my December-long road trip I spent seven nights in New Orleans. That provided the opportunity for much feasting in one of the three or four best restaurant towns in the country. Here are some notes on some of the restaurants I grazed my way through including Commander's Palace, Uglesich's, K-Pauls, Mothers, and Mulate's...

White Castle Turkey Stuffing?

essays & effluvia: White Castle Turkey Stuffing. While I was on Barry Ritholtz's weblog reading the post that I pointed to in my prior entry, I saw an entry in the sidebar that said - White Castle Turkey Stuffing. As someone who grew up on White Castles...well, I didn't exactly grow up on them, but there was stage of my life where the open 24-hour White Castles on the east side of Indianapolis were a frequent stop at about 1 or 2 a.m. while trying to deal with the effects of one too many malt beverages. It was that or the Awful (er, sorry, Waffle) House.

And I admit to every once in a while picking up a box of six frozen White Castles from the freezer section of my local Ralphs or Gelsons. I can't get fresh ones as there are no White Castles in California. I've heard that's either due to stricter toxic waste regulations or the fact that since we've got In-N-Out we don't need no stinking White Castles.

But anyway, I just had to look. White Castle Turkey Stuffing? That's just wrong.

A blast from the past in Lileks

So I'm off to read my daily dose of Lileks - his daily bleatage was one of the first weblogs I read and it's still one of the first I read every weekday. And there, just as I was getting into The Bleat, was a blast straight back to 1979...

I gave him the tour of the house, and we were off to Nye's. Swung through downtown for a brief Glory of My Town tour, parked the car, and got to the bar just as a laughing young woman emerged from the bar, laughing, and, laughing, threw up on the sidewalk. Omigod! Whatever.

Nye's is an old Kennedy-era Polish bar with a polka band in the corner. Loud polka. After one at the bar we were met by two of the Frats, and adjourned to the dining room, where the Giant Swede and the Crazy Uke had a table. I love Nye's - even the hipsters who come to appreciate its kitsch on an ironic level give in to its charms. Irony falls flat here. Polka and vodka will do that to you.

I was last in Nye's somewhere around 1980. I was probably there three or four times between 1979 and 1980 on business trips to visit...omigod, the Strib - Lilek's erstwhile employer. I had completely forgotten our year-long consulting project for the newspaper, but I clearly remember the first time I was in Nye's. My two co-founders in our three or four month old software and consulting company were good Chicago Polish boys - one northside Polish, one southside Polish. Despite the northside/southside thing, they had somehow managed to become best friends (for a few more years, until the business turned them into snarling enemies, but that's a story for another day and requires I be plied with adult beverages) and I had fallen in with them when we all worked in the field organization at what was at that time the leading database software vendor. Remember, this is 1978/1979, so very pre-relational database, pre-Oracle and all that.

Anyway, my partners, Rip and Flay, being good Polish boys, knew about Nye's and dragged me off for my first visit to a Polish restaurant. From the description in Lilek's Bleat, it sounds like some of the same guys are still at the same tables 25 years later. I remember flying into Minneapolis airport at about 7 pm, being at the table in Nye's by 8, and leaving there after 2 am with an 8:30 am meeting coming up fast. I can't remember everything we ate that night, but I got a full sampler of Polish specialities. I do clearly remember many, many pirogi and saurkraut and pork and many bottles of (bad) Polish beer. I later introduced members of my consulting team to Nye's, but it was never quite the same...maybe an Irish guy can't plug into the Polish thing the same way two wild Polish guys from Chi-town can.

There are plenty of things about 1979 I can't remember anymore...but it's funny how so many of those early days of our start-up still stick in the memory. Good times, lots of learning, good fun...or at least now in retrospect it all, er, mostly, seems that way.