It’s good to be back home now, but not completely. My wife and I just spent a few days in the great state of Maine, specifically in the Kennebunkport area. No, we didn’t dine with the Bush family, but we did drive by George Sr’s compound. The town was gorgeous, and nearby Goose Rocks beach provided some great sunrise photos.

I never thought about Maine and food much, but there are a few things that I will always connect with Maine now… The most obvious is, of course, lobstah! Along with lobstah, and, yes, I’m going to spell it that way throughout this blog entry, is the Lobstah Roll, a sandwich I quickly came to love. Also, Maine produces more blueberries than any other state.  Note:  I was corrected!  Maine produces more WILD blueberries than any other state!

The first question I’ve been asked is - Why would you go to Maine in April??? And that’s easy to answer… I like cooler weather, and the season is just getting under way, so the crowds weren’t there yet. Why choose Kennebunkport? It’s not because George Sr. thinks it’s great; it really got decided because the hotel I found was offering a weekend of ballroom dancing lessons along with 2 nights in Kennebunkport. It turns out that more weddings are done at the Nonantum than any other place in Maine.

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I’ve been talking about Pittsburgh for a couple of weeks now, since our weekend trip there. It really is a great city, I think. A lot of people think of it as soot covered and dirty, but that’s the old Pittsburgh, pre-early 80’s.

I’ll warn you now: there are lots of photos in this post!

The city has a lot to offer for a long weekend trip. The airport isn’t far out of town, so it’s a quick ride into the city. When you do enter the city, especially at night, you can’t help but be wowed by the skyline when you come out of the tunnel. The Southside has trendy and local shops and restaurants, and Station Square has a great collection of shops and restaurants along with a view of downtown and access to the Incline. Shadyside at one point had more mansions per area than anywhere else in the country. Next to Shadyside is Carnegie-Mellon, perennially one of the top schools in the country; it’s also a great place to catch a show as their drama and music theater departments are rated at or near the top in the country. And next to CMU is Schenley Park, home of Phipps Conservatory, which is right across the street from Carnegie Institute, a great art and natural history museum. Fox Chapel has neighborhoods that hearken to an almost fantasy world of family life that many of us only wish we’d had growing up.

Then there’s my single favorite Pittsburgh destination, the Strip District. This area has a long history, including being a shantytown during the depression and housing a foundry that produced 15% of the Union army’s artillery in the Civil War. Today, shops, lofts and restaurants line primarily Penn Avenue along the Allegheny River north of downtown. Some of the shops like Wholey’s and Pennsylvania Macaroni still carry the feel of the old produce yards that made up the area, while other shops are much trendier.

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I’m still on the Pittsburgh trip. I really do enjoy going there, and not just for food, but Pittsburgh has some of the best food around, especially considering the size of the city. How many cities have a doneness of steak named after them? I’ve heard of NY Strip, but that’s just a cut of meat. Pittsburgh rare has a specific meaning to doneness… Anyone know what it is? Pittsburgh Rare is also the appropriate name of a steakhouse in the city, and a very good one, from what I’m told.

From the title of this entry, you can probably guess that my second favorite fries are found in Pittsburgh, and you’d guess right. What are my favorite? The Paris Las Vegas Casino & Hotel, which I’ve probably talked about before, has a great restaurant called Mon Ami Gabi, which is also found in the Chicago area and Bethesda, MD. They have great steaks, and all are served with frites (French for fries, I guess). The steaks are good (I had the Roquefort steak). The view in Vegas is my favorite, if it’s after dark, because the Bellagio Fountain is directly across the street, and an outside table gives the best view around. But these fries are by far the best I’ve had. I’d go just for the fries. They’re long, thinner one way than the other, and perfectly done.

To have the fries, I have to go much further than Pittsburgh, and if I’m in Chicago, I’m more likely going to Gibson’s or Weber than a French restaurant. I don’t really like Vegas all that much, so I’m not going to be there often. So that leaves a pretty good second place french fry, from none other than the Original Hot Dog Shop in Oakland.

The place isn’t clean, ever. It is known by many as the “Dirty O”, or just the “O”, but the “dirty” part comes from the Health Department’s numerous closings of the O over the years. Most customers don’t seem to mind, and I’ve never let it stop me from going.

As you can see from the photo, there’s a spot for hundreds of pounds of potatoes in the back at the O. This isn’t for show; they go through potatoes like mad. There’s a reason for that… They’re great fries!

Their secret isn’t even a secret. First, they’re a good sized cut, not too big so that the fry is all ‘inside’, not to thin so that the fries are hard and get cold fast. They’re just right (as Goldilocks would say, though I can’t see her finding a table that’s just right… they all need to be cleaned most likely!). Secondly, the fries are double fried.

Yep, double fried, the way fries are supposed to be done. The way McDonald’s should do their fries. The way cooking shows (even Alton Brown) say to do fries. The result is a crunchy exterior with a nice, potato-y interior, and not a lot of grease. I would be willing to bet that, pound for pound, these fries have significantly less fat than McDonald’s, and way more flavor. That crunchy outside is just soooo good!

I guess health consciousness finally got to the O, and the large and extra large sizes aren’t offered anymore. I could be wrong since my wife ordered the fries, but the medium looks to be about double a McDonald’s large, at least. With a side of cheese, these are cheese fries to be envied by the lesser fries in the world.

And that brings out what is one of the things I like about Pittsburgh… A lot of the food is just honest, blue collar food that anyone can like, but there are places like the O that take pride in making this food really well. Not everything has to be fancy all the time, but there’s no reason not to make it the best, or second best in this case.

I personally think that foodies that have not been to Pittsburgh are missing out on some incredible stuff, from blue collar traditions to better imported foods than you can find in most other cities, especially at the prices you can get them in Pittsburgh.

My mom remarried when I was 11, to a man that was raised in Pittsburgh. Growing up, I wasn’t into the city much at all, though I didn’t turn down the food we got when we went there! Little did I realize how the place was becoming a part of me. Each time I go back, a couple of things happen. One is that memories come back to life. The Strip District changes here and there, but it remains the Strip District still. The city skyline still is a surprise when coming through the tunnels north into town at night. The first person still turns left when lights change, and people going the other way let them.

The other thing that happens is I make new memories. My wife and I enjoy going to the Strip District, and each trip is a bit different. We buy some of the same stuff to keep our pantry going at home, but we also try something different. We stay at different places, see parts of the area we haven’t seen before, or revisit areas we liked. This trip, we went to Phipps Conservatory, and they had an incredible Chihuly display. We also went to Fox Chapel to drive around, which is just a gorgeous town north of the city.

This last trip also brought a flat tire on I70, east of Cambridge, which meant we fought with AAA on the phone and ended up changing the tire with the help of Trooper Cunningham, at 11:30 PM, driving into the hotel on one of those weird spares. Unfortunately, we had to deal with getting new tires there, but we got a great deal on new ones, and we got to see yet another part of the area we’d not seen before, and I beat my wife at a video hunting game while we waited. We also fought with the VZ Navigator, Michelle, the voice on my phone that gives me directions. She wasn’t keeping up well, and I got kind of ticked off that she left me high and dry a couple of times when I needed directions.

One of the cool things about Pittsburgh is that the city seems very eastern US, but the people are more midwestern in attitude. The city used to be mostly blue collar, but that changed starting in the 80’s. The people keep the same feel as before, though, so it ends up being a very down-to-earth city. It’s very much a city of traditions more than one of trendiness.

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Back in April, my wife and I went on a quick trip to NYC, and I happened to have photographed about every piece of food that I ate!

One place we found we loved on a previous trip was Carnegie Deli in Times Square.  Not only do they have great pastrami sandwiches, but they also have incredible cheesecake.  In fact, I have half of one in my freezer right now, a gift from my sister, Heather.

But recently, Bobby Flay did a Throwdown with Junior’s in Brooklyn on cheesecake… Bobby won that one, but Junior’s put up a new cheesecake called Devil’s Food Cheesecake.  It’s basically a devil’s food cake with a layer of cheesecake in the middle of the whole thing. 

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Earlier this month, my wife and I decided to make our way to Pittsburgh for a weekend.  It’s only about a 4 hour drive, and it’s just a nice city.  I went to school there in the 80’s, and had step-family there in the 70-s and 80s, so I have some history with the city and enjoy going back when I can.

Pittsburgh is also the largest inland port in the country.  What this means is that I can get great prices on imported foods!  The area along Penn and Liberty, close to the Allegheny River is called the Strip District.  And, no, no strippers.  But there are lots of shops and restaurants, and it’s open early.  My favorite 2 places there are Parma Meats, where they make their own Italian meats, and Pennsylvania Macaroni, where they have a huge selection of cheeses as well as lots of Italian imports.  Good stuff at both places, and both are now online.

I’ve written about Pittsburgh in the past, so this isn’t anything new, though I got more photos this time!  My favorite 2 places to eat in Pittsburgh are Vincent’s Pizza in Forest Hills and The Original Hot Dog Shop in Oakland.  Of course, I made it to each of these again.

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I was recently contacted by Hanna of the American Table Culinary Tours about their September 2007 tour of Memphis Barbecue. 

I corresponded with Hanna about the American Table Culinary Tours is a nonprofit company that wants to promote culinary history.  Their goal is to work with culinary students for internships and to simply promote cooking history.

So if you’re up for what looks to be an incredible weekend of barbecue, look into the tour of West Tennessee.  Here are some particulars:

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