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Insights, tips, and restaurant reports from CHOW editors and Chowhound.
General Topics

Why Is Street Food So Good?

The reason for street food’s greatness, says DWB, is that it is made by a vendor or chef who specializes in a single item or a single type of food for many years. This happens under intense competition from other vendors also making the same type of food, usually for “a very discerning local crowd familiar with that very dish,” says DWB. Chefs hone their skill on a single dish, and only the best survive. “Cost aside, a restaurant kitchen with non-native (relating to the food) cooks will have a difficult if not impossible task replicating true street foods,” says DWB.

exilekiss still dreams about the “down-to-earth, pure, focused street food” he had in Hong Kong, at about 75 cents an item. Or the atole de guayaba—a hot masa drink with guava—exilekiss got from “the chatty old lady at Breed Street here in East LA. I seriously still smile every time I think about that drink.”

Board Link: The Essence of Great Street Food

Edit Post / Posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

Supertaster

Trashy Breakfast Food Gets Seasonal

Trashy Breakfast Food Gets Seasonal

This week's mission: summery toaster pastries and low-cal fruity soda. READ MORE

Edit Post / Posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

General Topics

Extra-Special Vanilla

David Kahn uses a lot of vanilla beans, and he’s tried all kinds of beans and sources. By far the best, though, are the Tahitian vanilla beans from the Spice House. They’re “absolutely superior to everything else I sampled,” he says. And not better by some intangible amount: “It’s like the difference between a Cadillac and a Kia.”

Spice House Tahitian beans are “huge, plump (like the size of my little finger), super moist, and almost unbelievably fragrant and flavorful,” says David Kahn, who goes nuts for the beans’ distinct floral note. “I don’t know what sort of mutant vanilla plants they harvest these things from, but they are objectively superior to everything else I’ve tried, and I’ve tried a lot of beans.” The other vanilla bean offerings from the Spice House are good, he adds, but they’re not the outstanding treasure that the Tahitian beans are.

Board Link: In Praise of The Spice House’s Tahitian Vanilla Beans

Edit Post / Posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

General Topics

Intoxicating Spice from Tropical Fruit

The large seeds of the tropical sapote fruit can be used as a spice. It “has a very intoxicating almond-like scent,” says moh.

The pit can be grated just like nutmeg, and can be used in a similar way too. “A friend of mine used to mix sapote into her horchata,” says ipsedixit. The sapote “added a really nice dimension.”

Board Link: Sapote as spice

Edit Post / Posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

Boston

Boston’s Best Butcher?

Adrian3891 has been “unimpressed” with the meat he’s found at Boston butchers, and wants to know where to find dry-aged prime beef, heritage or naturally raised birds, and quality pork. And hounds have the answer: John Dewar & Company’s Newton location (which is also beloved by CHOW).

bakerboyz says “they furnish many of the top restaurants in Boston area. Great meats and very high prices,” while GretchenS says “they are professionals and it really shows in how they slice and package things—no lopsided steaks from Dewar’s, beautiful cryovac’ing if you want it, etc.” macadamianut describes the meat he bought there as being “like butter.”

John Dewar & Company [Newton]
753 Beacon Street, Newton
617-964-3577

Board Link: Butchers in Boston…

Edit Post / Posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

Boston

Quality Burgers Ain’t Cheap

Boston Burger Company opened last week in the Davis Square space formerly occupied by the now-defunct Antonia’s, and is serving up fab eight-ounce patties with some toppings that will be familiar to gourmet burger fans (blue cheese, bacon) as well as a few weirder ones (the “king” is topped with bacon, bananas, and peanut butter, while the “Bahama mama” conch burger features mango salsa and jerk mayo).

Boston_Otter went with two friends, who tried the Waikiki (bacon, ham, pineapple, and teriyaki), the Alpine (mushrooms in garlic-parmesan butter with Swiss), and the Bahama conch burger. “The Angus burgers were large, meaty, perfectly cooked, and well-seasoned, with a nice pile of toppings. My conch burger was nice and crispy with a tender conch interior, and the jerk mayo was excellent. Nicely crisp, warm, and tasty handmade potato chips were served on the side along with their own baked beans, which are worth getting a side of all by themselves,” says Boston_Otter.

That’s the good news. Now the bad: prices. It’s around $8 to $10 for a burger, and fries are an extra $4 to $7. Weirdest of all, subbing a veggie burger for meat costs an extra $1, a decision that’s come under much board mockery since the veggie burgers are frozen ones from a package. But Boston Burger is a sit-down place with some nice atmosphere, and the portions are generous: An order of fries can feed the whole table, and the burgers come with homemade baked beans or warm, freshly fried potato chips.

As Boston_Otter sums up, “The prices at the place aren’t crazy for the portions and quality you get, and the people running the shop obviously really care; they don’t cut corners. I’ll definitely go back.”

Boston Burger Company [Somerville]
37 Davis Square, Somerville
617-440-7360

Board Link: Boston Burger Co.

Edit Post / Posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

Boston

Beefed Up Fenway Franks

Last week’s Red Sox opening day brought a surprise for hot dog fans: the venerable Fenway frank, formerly made by a division of Sara Lee, is now made by Chelsea’s Kayem Foods Inc.

Hounds mostly agree that this is good news. mats77 says the old dog was “disgusting and bland at best,” and hotdoglover says Kayem puts out “a quality frank,” that is “much better than the Kahn’s brand.”

So how does it taste? The fact that the dog purveyors ran out of mustard on opening day seemed to arouse more passion than the taste of the new dogs. Ralphie_in_Boston says that the new franks were “a little bit better than I remember,” while chuck s calls them “not bad if you are part of a captive audience.” Ouch. But hotdog aficionado Bob MacAdoo describes the flavor as “very beefy, a touch of garlic, and some mustard seed aftertaste” and says the new dogs “really were bold compared to the dogs I recall from recent trips to Fenway, which I always thought were rather bland.”

Fenway Park [Fenway]
4 Yawkey Way, Boston
617-226-6666

Board Links: The New Fenway Frank-Anyone Tried It?
Kayem new official hot dog of Fenway

Edit Post / Posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

McNasty Down Under

Australia’s Advertiser features a McDonald’s that it speculates might be the filthiest fast food joint in the country. The brief video that accompanies the story is a Dantean voyage into the realm of the unsanitary, unsavory, and unaesthetic. The craziest aspect of the whole report: The restaurant is apparently a filthy hellhole because it’s too busy serving customers to clean itself up.

Edit Post / Posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

Bread Is Out, Matzo Is In

Passover is in full swing for observant Jews, and the New Jersey Star-Ledger has an intriguing tale of the shtar mechirat chametz, or the legal document that symbolically transfers ownership of the foods forbidden during Passover to a non-Jew. (During Passover, you’re not only supposed to not eat certain food, you’re not supposed to own it either.) So the chametz is either dumped outright or hidden in an out-of-the-way place, and a shtar mechirat chametz is signed that says legally someone else owns it.

In New Brunswick, New Jersey, it seems a fellow named Jose Mendez is the Bread King. Mendez works at a synagogue, and during this Passover season, he is the legal owner of thousands of packages of bread. He also has the legal right to eat what he owns, but, like most signatories, he generally never even sees the bread he owns. He doesn’t get paid, either: The Jews contracting with Mendez pay $18 for the privilege of legally unloading their bread, and the cash is donated to Jewish charity.

Speaking of matzo, the New York Times’ City Room blog has another fascinating Passover-related tale from some newly opened records at the American Jewish Historical Society in Manhattan, which detail the formation of the Association for the Free Distribution of Matzos to the Poor and how the association raised money to get much-needed Passover matzo into the hands of the indigent in 1858.

Image source: flickr member RonAlmog under Creative Commons

Edit Post / Posted on Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

Los Angeles Area

Best Chile Verde in Town

Chile verde is one of the homiest of Mexican dishes: pork cooked down in green tomatillo sauce. At its best, it’s spicy, zesty, and deeply porky all at once.

• Servorg recommends Teresita’s chile verde. estone888 agrees: “Teresita’s is some of the best I’ve had anywhere.”

• Neta, master of the Latino food of the eastern reaches, likes Rafael’s version.

• The best chile verde delishdonna has ever had is at Tacomiendo. mdpilam is “mildly impressed” by the version, which has good verde sauce, piquant nopales (cactus), and lovable homemade tortillas.

• David Kahn recommends two chiles verdes: the one at Mi India Bonita, and the one at Tere’s. “Both versions are well made, with obvious affection and attention to detail,” he says.

• The Talpa has an amazing chile verde, with “a pleasant, smoky kick,” says Moose.

• annagranfors recommends the chile verde at Tonny’s.

Teresita’s [East LA]
3826 E. First Street, Los Angeles
323-266-6045

Rafael’s Mexican Restaurant [San Gabriel Valley]
2226 W. Beverly Boulevard, Montebello
323-728-4880

Tacomiendo [Westside – Inland]
11462 Gateway Boulevard, Los Angeles
310-481-0804

Mi India Bonita [East LA]
4731 E. Olympic Boulevard
323-267-8505

Tere’s Mexican Grill [Mid-City]
5870 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles
323-468-9345

The Talpa [Westside – Inland]
11751 W. Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles
310-479-9884

Tonny’s [San Gabriel Valley]
843 E. Orange Grove Boulevard, Pasadena
626-797-0866

Board Link: Chile Verde

Edit Post / Posted on Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

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