Usually whenever I’m in an unfamiliar town or city I like to check out the restaurants and bars that come recommended by locals or other travelers.  I didn’t really have too much to go by when I found myself in Albuquerque last week, so I was quite excited to see a place like The Library Bar and Grill in a town that seemed so unexciting.  This Library has a huge façade on the building made up of giant spines of books with alternate titles that poke fun at some of the classics.  The outside of the building led me to believe that it was a place where people who had a passion for all things literary liked to congregate.  Or at the very least it gave me the impression that since it was so near the University of New Mexico’s downtown campus, it would be full of college students and academics.  My assumptions were quite inaccurate after I entered the building, looking for a run of the mill lunch- a burger and some fries perhaps, with a beer or two to wash it down.

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La SaletteI never thought that Portuguese food would be so delicious.  Sure I’ve experienced plenty of French delights and Spanish food is quite readily available if you know where to look.  But Portuguese, in a place like Sonoma, can only mean one thing: greatness.  La Salette definitely delivered and gave my girlfriend and myself a dinner to remember.

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Mandolin CafeI’m not a real big fan of glorified coffee shop restaurants, which I assumed The Mandolin Café was, but I was taken aback by the variety of great food and beverages that they had to offer after a visit last week for lunch.  The place looked a little crowded but after a couple of minutes waiting in line and a short conversation with one of the employees lingering outside cleaning the windows, we decided to stop in to see just how this café had been growing since the last time I had been there.

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Kisaku SushiEvery time I have sushi I end up comparing it the Sushi Zone in San Francisco, the place where I fell in love with sushi.  But that was quite a few years ago and I decided I needed to find a new place to use as a base line when comparing sushi restaurants.  My friends and I recently took a trip to the Wallingford district of Seattle and found ourselves seated inside Kisaku, ready to devour some seafood and enjoy a couple of beers.

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Genie's Classic Eggs BenedictGenie’s is one of those places that a friend recommends yet you don’t really give too much thought to.  Perhaps this lack of thought was due to the unexciting, dull description my friend painted of the place, but I was more than pleasantly surprised after I visited the place for breakfast one morning.

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Pok Pok ThaiWhen I think of Thai food I usually think of pad thai or pad see ew.  After a visit to Pok Pok I was pleasantly surprised that the old expectations of what a Thai restaurant experience is or can be were shattered.  Pok Pok is one of the most unique and enjoyable restaurants I’ve ever been to bar none.  Fro the simple touches like palm leaves in the water and ample outdoor seating to the more complex additions like fusion menu items and traditional rice dishes, this Portland restaurant truly redefined what a Thai restaurant is and should be.

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Voodoo DoughnutVoodoo Doughnuts is the kind of place that you would expect to exist in a city like Portland, Oregon.  It’s a doughnut shop with character, and it has a real cult following in the Pacific Northwest.  The sell all kinds of doughnuts, some of which have names that cannot be published on this website.  The real ingenuity occurred when someone decided to put breakfast cereal on top of a glazed doughnut, or thick-sliced bacon on a maple bar.  The latter is a real treat, and if you get the chance, I highly recommend that you try it.  Id’ liken it to eating pancakes with maple syrup, and stuffing some bacon into your already full mouth as you chew all of these ingredients together at the same time.  Sounds gross- taste amazing.  Just don’t ask for the nutritional facts.

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A southern-style Sazerac

Let me just preface this post by telling you I adore New Orleans. I love the food, the atmosphere, cold beer, icy Hurricanes in plastic cups, and the music. I love the tawdry, bead-bedecked, 24-hour street party that is the French Quarter. There's just no place quite like it, anywhere else.

But I live in the northwest corner of the U.S.—almost as far from New Orleans as you can physically get, and still be in the continental United States. I haven't been back in a couple of years, now, so I often find myself longing for café au lait and beignets, gumbo, fried oyster po'boys. As hot as the Pacific Northwest has been, this week, I've found myself more and more thinking of super-heated, muggy afternoons in dim barrooms, nursing frosted mugs of Abita beer under a slow ceiling fan.

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antipasto

Il Fornaio is a restaurant chain featuring fresh bread baked on the premises, pizza, pasta, and Italian food. I've been to a number in Southern California, and last week, I tried the Il Fornaio on Pine Street in Seattle. I like Il Fornaio; the food is reliably good, and they tend to have very high quality desserts. I tend to have to be careful about the foccacio and olive oil they serve to nibble on while you peruse the menu; it's fresh and very very good, and it would be very easy to eat too much. I've gone with a small group of friends several times; it's fun to order several of Il Fornaio's fresh-made hand-tossed thin crust pizza, baked in a stone oven, and share.

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In this crazy mixed up world in which we live, there are but a few constants. Bad Chinese food. Those little yappy dogs. Australians. And, of course, wherever you might roam, from Montpellier to Machu Picchu, you will find faux Irish bars. Some are good, some are bad, and some (shudder) serve chilled Guinness.

One thing I’ve always wondered about, however, is why there are not more English style pubs? The short answer might be that no-one likes poor service, rude patrons and warm beer. But that, I feel, is a somewhat myopic view of what a pub can be. I lived for a while in the south west of England, and whilst I’m not going to attempt to convince you of the merits of drinking beer at around room temperature (here’s a clue, though; it makes it taste nicer), I became very fond of a quiet pub on a Sunday afternoon, no gaudy neon, juke box quietly ticking over in the corner; hey, I even got to like the crappy food.

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