The Endless Road Trip -

by BS

The Endless Road Trip: Porklandia

Portland, Oregon may seem like the type of hippie-dippie place that knows its silken tofus from its seitan (and it is). But as I recently discovered, these hipsters also know their swine, from head to tail. Oregon is a serious pork-producing state, and Portland chefs get crazy/creative with pig parts of every variety. I ate my way through Porklandia so that you don’t have to.

At Tasty n Sons, nearly every dish, from salads to kimchi to chicken, comes with an egg on top (as god intended). It climaxes with this perfectly golden-brown, intensely crispy fried pork cutlet, served over spinach, with a soft fried egg for a crown.

The Woodsman Tavern is the first place I have ever been served a ham plate and then told the proper order in which to eat the hams, as if this was a fancy wine tasting—from most delicate to heartiest. Each one was prosciutto-thin, but with the full salty taste of a good ol’ Virginia-style baked ham.

Don’t forget the ears! At Whiskey Soda Lounge, a casual spot from acclaimed Pok Pok chef Andy Ricker, they’re stewed in 5-spice and deep-fried until crisp, served with a black vinegar dipping sauce. They’re crusty on the edges and chewy in the middle, with the texture of…well, ear.

by BS

The Endless Road Trip — San Diego’s Top 10 Eats: 10. Scrambled Eggs, Meet Rice and Beans

Obviously ES couldn’t leave San Diego without eating tacos. And by “eating tacos,” of course I mean trying every last tortilla-based product our hungry little mouths came across.

One place in particular, Las Cuatros Milpas, a hole-in-the-wall in the far-flung Barrio Logan neighborhood, came highly recommended. The line stretches out the door, the wait is 20+ minutes, and there are only five things to order. Surprisingly though, we were less-than-wowed by the tacos, which came out of the deep fryer dripping in grease. Off day? Unclear. But it didn’t matter, because most of my attention was focused on the other item we ordered—chorizo con huevos:

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by ML

The Endless Road Trip — San Diego’s Top 10 Eats: 9. The Best Drunk Bus

There are craft beer aficionado, beer purists, beer idiots, and then me…an in-between of all of them. I know the differences between pale ales, IPAs, and stouts, but normally I’m just as happy with a $2 Miller Lite.

Something I didn’t know: there are tour companies that pick you up and take you on a beer bus around various cities. Or at least this exists in San Diego. BS and I got picked up by the Brewery Tours of San Diego at 10:30am (yes, in the morning) to start a drinking adventure. First we arrived at Ballast Point and I was kind of confused, it looked like we were in an industrial park at an office building and not a place where I could get wildly drunk. I went inside anyway. Leave no stone unturned.

They had at least 20 beers on tap; many of which (if I remember correctly) were brewed one-time only. I, for the second time in my life, read the word “sculpin” on a menu; the previous night we had the fish, and today all of the beers were named after various catches. I knew we only had a limited amount of time and only so much I could drink, so BS and I went for the craziest ones:

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by BS

The Endless Road Trip — San Diego’s Top 10 Eats: 8. Endless Porker

I am normally extremely skeptical of any Mexican food that is billed as high-end, farm-table, or just generally cooked by white people. It’s not that Mexican food can’t be creative or fancy, it’s just that in my experience I have found “modern Mexican” to generally mean smaller tacos, higher prices, and less flavor than the taco trucks (and of course — the dreaded no free chips and salsa).

So of course I was hesitant when I head that San Diego’s hot taco spot of the moment is Carnitas Snack Shack, a new venture from Chef Hanis Cavinserves (red alert – chef!) that serves slow food-inspired, pork-centric American cuisine, snacks and locally sourced craft beers. But then again, I’ve never turned down any meal described as pork-centric. I’m almost embarrassed to report that this was the best taco I ate in California. Slow-cooked salmon creek farm pork carnitas are layered on fresh, hearty homemade tortillas and topped with a vividly green mound of guacamole. The crispy-on-the-edges, melty on the insides strands of pork are like a weird, amazing fusion of southern BBQ and traditional Mexican. Fine, maybe Mexican food is allowed to get inventive after all.

But that was only the begining of a pork party that would know no bounds…

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by ML

The Endless Road Trip — San Diego’s Top 10 Eats: 7. Pork, It’s What’s for Breakfast

“Part of me really has a hard time looking at someone straight in the eye after they tell me they don’t eat bacon and not laugh….”

This is what my friend told me he added to his online dating profile after meeting too many women who didn’t eat meat. I don’t know what’s worse; the fact that these women exist or that he kept meeting them. Regardless, I found a place he should probably take women on dates.

I walked into Imig’s Kitchen and Bar in the Lafayette Hotel & Swim Club expecting run-of-the-mill breakfast that you so often get in a hotel restaurant, even if it was in San Diego. I was pretty tired and haphazardly ordered the braised pork and applewood smoked bacon hash (above), which the menu told me contained the hash, plus poached eggs, chile de arbol, and hollandaise on a crispy corn tortilla. My lovely dining companion, BS, went with the breakfast sammy: grilled country bread, eggs over easy, arugula, avocado, prosciutto, oven roasted tomatoes, fontina and chive pesto:

in Bacon / Breakfast / Food Travel / Pig 4 comments

by BS

The Endless Road Trip – San Diego’s Top 10 Eats: 6. Uni Everything

We were excited enough to eat live sea urchin at the farmers’ market in San Diego, but that wasn’t the end of our uni adventures. At Sea Rocket Bistro, those salty, meat-y, rich little bites of pink flesh come served in a sea urchin shooter, submerssed in nothing else but our liquid obsession of the moment—ginger beer—plus chili flakes and lemon juice.

A seafood smorgasbord…and and even crazier sea urchin usage…after the jump.

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by ML

The Endless Road Trip — San Diego’s Top 10 Eats: 5. Live Uni

Being on the east coast, I never really eat uni. Most of my experience with the creature that is the sea urchin came from my freshman year of college, when I was a ~~slave~~ intern to a senior research project, and had to inject urchins with hydrochloric acid to make them…do something (I promptly switched my major after that semester).

On our first day in San Diego it was recommended that we try the fresh, live uni at the Little Italy Farmers Market. I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I’d sure as hell never bought seafood at a farmers market, let alone eaten it there. Regardless, I was super excited for this. Sign me up. When we spotted Poppa’s Fresh Fish stand I was immediately intimidated. These spiky animals were at least 3 times the size of the urchins from the bio lab. (I’m not sure why I just assumed they’d be the same —-I’m pretty sure my university ordered those urchins from some weird biological animal supply company).

The whole uni stand operation seemed a lot less glamorous than I had hoped. The stand smelled like a fish market (obviously, what else would it smell like?) and I became appalled at the thought of eating there. But ESers don’t back down, and I definitely wasn’t going to say no. After watching the guys behind the stand clean some urchins and shuck some oysters….we ordered. And it began.

First, they put the live urchin in this vice like contraption that cracks its hard shell in half. Then, they pour water into each half of the shell and pick out all of the gooey, brown, inedible bits (the part that freaked me out the most), that are then deposited in that metal bucket After all is said and done, they handed the thing to us (when I say “us” I mean BS, I wasn’t getting near it yet) on a styrofoam plate. It was still moving:

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