Shuang Hur, September 2026 (St. Paul, MN)

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I know I’d said post this week’s Twin Cities report on Wednesday, as usual—what can I say, things got a little complicated/busy midweek. Anyway, Friday is the new Wednesday and here it is: a look not at a restaurant meal, but at an Asian grocery store. Specifically, it’s a look at Shuang Hur’s flagship location on University Avenue in St. Paul.

This is my second report on this location of Shuang Hur. It was one of the very first stores I reported on when I began to feature Twin Cities immigrant groceries on the blog. That was back in mid-2018. Back then we shopped at Shuang Hur quite often, stopping in particularly for whole fish and greens. As our awareness of the larger Twin Cities’ Asian grocery scene grew, our custom got spread around a fair bit, and so it was after a gap of some years that we returned to Shuang Hur in September. Continue reading →

A Badaga Feast at the Riverside Retreat (Coonoor, April 2026)

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The first thing you learn when you begin to explore the cuisines of India’s heterogeneous regions is how little you know about Indian food. This is true even if you already know that you know very little about Indian food: you discover that you know even less than you thought you did. The other thing you learn is how relatively meaningless the terms we use to describe Indian regions are. Going from talking about “Indian” cuisine to talking about “North Indian” or “South Indian” or “North East Indian” cuisines is progress but barely begins to scratch the surface. Drilling down from South Indian to Tamil, for example, may seem like a great deal of granularity but, again, the foods of different Tamil communities, sliced by religion, caste, tribe, sub-region etc. can differ widely from each other. I knew all this, so you might think me very well informed. And so I am happy to tell you that in April I ate an extensive meal featuring the food of a community from the Nilgiris in western Tamil Nadu that I had not even heard of before: the Badagas. I am even happier to tell you that this was one of the very best meals I have eaten all year, whether in India, South Korea, Japan or the United States. Continue reading →

Clynelish 16, 1997 (The Whisky Agency)

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It’s been a long time since I last reviewed a Clynelish. That was my review of the 10 yo that was part of the Diageo’s Special Release lineup in 2023. It’s not been quite as long since my review of a whisky from the Whisky Agency, the renowned German independent bottler who were all the rage when this whisky was released back in 2013. I reviewed one of their Laphroaigs last year. That one was released around the same time as this—in 2012 or 2013. With hindsight, that period was the last burst of the last years of the golden age of whisky (from the middle-class customer’s point of view): very good whisky from the years of over-production was available from a number of distilleries for reasonable prices, especially from the independents, who had their pick of excellent casks. If you were getting a whisky from a cask bottled by indies such as the Whisky Agency or Malts of Scotland, you could be fairly confident that it would be very good. Now, I have no idea what the indie scene is like, as I’ve stopped following the whisky scene completely, and barely buy anything as I try to drink my stash down before my nose/tastebuds deteriorate or I die. On that happy note, let’s get to my notes on this sherry cask Clynelish. Continue reading →

The Categorical Eat Pham II (Delhi, August 2026)

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During the two weeks I spent in Delhi/Gurgaon at the end of July and beginning of August, I ate out seven times. I’ve previously reported on my meals at Chak Khum, Farmer’s Kitchen, Ikk Panjab, The Fusion Naga, Matamaal, and Hosa. Here now is a look at the last of the seven meal, eaten, like three of the others, in Humayunpur. As the few people who follow my Delhi restaurant reports know, the North East enclave of Humayunpur in South Delhi is my favourite place to eat at in the entire National Capital Region (Delhi/Gurgaon/Noida). I particularly love the food of Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram—all of which I know largely or only through restaurants in Humayunpur—and I am yet to eat at more than a small percentage of all the restaurants there. This is the only reason for my having gone back to so few of these restaurants for a second meal. I’m yet to have a bad meal there and so I am incentivized to keep trying new places. Today’s report, however, is of a restaurant I’ve written about before. The Categorical Eat Pham is one of the oldest Manipuri restaurants in Humayunpur—if not the oldest—and it was one of the first restaurants in Humayunpur that we ate at back in 2020. If not for the fact that other Manipuri restaurants have since opened up in the neighbourhood—both Chak Khum and Chak-Shang are just a hop, skip and jump away—I would have been happy just going back there over and over. And so I was very happy to meet some old friends for lunch there the day before my return to Minnesota. Continue reading →

Hwapo Sikdang II (Seoul, May 2026)

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We first ate at Hwapo Sikdang on our trip to Seoul in the summer of 2025. That was an unplanned meal. We’d walked to Namdaemun Market with the aim of eating dinner there, only to discover it was closed due to renovations. Casting around for a place to eat nearby we’d walked down an alley opposite the market and happened on Hwapo Sikdang, a barbecue restaurant specializing in pork. As luck would have it, our desperation meal turned out to be a very good one. So much so that on our longer stay this past May our boys insisted on eating there again rather than trying a new place. Did we regret it? No, we did not. Continue reading →

Animales, Summer 2026 (Minneapolis)

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I’m supposed to post my Twin Cities reports on Wednesdays and it’s still Wednesday, dammit. This week’s report covers not a single meal but two meals eaten a month and a half apart at the same restaurant: Animales. Those who follow the Twin Cities food scene closely know that Animales started out as a food truck, winning acclaim over the next few years for their barbecue. The chef-owner, Jon Wipfli is a veteran of the Twin Cities fine dining scene. After some years cooking in New York, he spent time in the kitchens at Meritage and The Bachelor Farmer. He then had a stint at Famous Dave’s before launching the aforementioned food truck. And then in October 2025 Animales opened as a restaurant in the Harrison neighbourhood, just west of Downtown Minneapolis. The restaurant is a far cry from a food truck. It’s massive, with a lot of seating, indoors and out; a huge play area for kids; and a dining room with a stage that features live music by local bands. After a lunch in early-July and dinner in late-August I can confirm that it is a great space to gather, especially for families. Is the barbecue great as well? Well, at the risk of angering the local populace, I think I would say it falls more than a bit short of greatness on that front. Read on for details. Continue reading →

Hosa (Gurgaon, July 2026)

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Just two more reports to go from my trip to Delhi/Gurgaon in July/August. I’ve so far posted reports on three lunches eaten in Humayunpur: featuring Manipuri food at Chak Khum and Naga food at Farmer’s Kitchen and The Fusion Naga. I’ve also posted reports on two dinners eaten in Gurgaon: featuring Punjabi Food at Ikk Panjab and Kashmiri food at Matamaal. We’ll stay in Gurgaon for the penultimate report. This one features pan-South Indian food at Hosa, located in the swanky One Horizon Center. This is the Gurgaon branch of a very popular and highly regarded restaurant of the same name in Goa—and I believe they have since opened a branch in Hyderabad as well. The reports I’ve seen of the mothership have been promising—I think they might also be listed on a recent list of the alleged best restaurants in India, for what that’s worth. And so I was interested in checking them out. Here’s what I made of my dinner. Continue reading →

Blending Yoichi

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This month’s whisky reviews have all been of the three “recipe” malts sold in Yoichi’s distillery shop—you can read these reviews here, here and here. These malts, all of which I quite enjoyed—are used in the making of Nikka’s blends. It’s been interesting to taste them on their own but, of course, there was no way this series was not going to end with my making a few blends of my own. Keep in mind that while my vattings of the three still result in single malt whisky (100% malt whisky from the same distillery), Nikka blends these with grain whisky to produce their blended whiskies. In other words, I am at no risk of accidentally reverse engineering one of Nikka’s blends. And, of course, I did not purchase the corresponding three bottle set from Nikka’s other malt distillery, Miyagikyo. Though I suppose Yoichi’s current NAS single malt whisky probably is a vatting of at least these three components, diluted down to 45%. So maybe my fooling around is not entirely of a different kind from the distillery’s own activity? Anyway, I have three experiments for you below. The first comprises equal parts of the Woody & Vanillic, Peaty & Salty and Sherry & Sweet. The other two emphasize either the Sherry & Sweet or the Peaty & Salty. Continue reading →

Matamaal V (Gurgaon, August 2026)

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We first ate at Matamaal, the premier Kashmiri restaurant in the Delhi NCR (National Capital Region), back in January 2023. This was when there was but the one location, in the City Court Mall in Sikanderpur/Gurgaon. We liked that meal so much that for a while I/we ate there on every subsequent trip (in March 2024 and in December 2024 and March 2025). As I said in my last report on a meal at Matamaal, I’m not sure when their branches—in Delhi and Noida in the NCR and also in Pune—opened. I’ve heard some mixed reports of the Noida location but I’ve still not been to it or any of the others. I think they might be franchisee-run, not operated by the owners of the original—this because the restaurant’s website seems to invite franchise partners. I can tell you though that the food at the original is still as good as it was on our first visit in 2023. This judgment is brought to you from a dinner eaten there this past August. Here’s a quick look at it. Continue reading →

At Soondae Town in Sillim-dong (Seoul, May 2026)

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We are a family of soondae fans, the rest of us having acquired the taste for it from the missus. The classic sliced soondae with salt and spicy fish sauce is our favourite way to eat it (in Seoul we particularly recommend the version of this at Gwanghwamun Gukbap). But we like it in all its forms. And so when we heard that the neighbourhood of Sillim-dong has a place called Soondae Town, a building filled with vendors who specialize not just in soondae, but particularly in soondae bokkeum, or stir-fried soondae, we knew we had to eat there. We had a packed five weeks on our program in Seoul, however, and Sillim-dong is a bit of a haul from where we were putting up. And so, it wasn’t until the very end that we managed to finally make it to Soondae Town. The boys didn’t make it with us to this meal but we did take two soondae-loving students along with us. Here’s how the meal went. Continue reading →

Godavari, Fall 2026 (Eden Prairie, MN)

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A number of my readers have written in over the past few years to ask if I’m ever going to update my Twin Cities South Asian Restaurant Rankings, the first version of which I’d posted in 2020, followed by updates in 2021 and 2022. The answer, unfortunately, is that I’m not likely to do anytime soon. The reason for that is not a lowered opinion of the Twin Cities South Asian restaurant scene in the intervening years. I’d begun the rankings precisely because that scene had improved so much in the years leading into the pandemic, with the opening of more and more restaurants aimed at Indian diners in the suburbs; and I have no reason to believe that quality has dipped since 2022. It’s just that since 2022 I have begun to go back to Delhi (and elsewhere in India) several times a year—and will be doing so for the foreseeable future. Between all the eating out while I’m there and the mostly Indian cooking I do when I’m home, going out to eat at Indian restaurants more than occasionally in Minnesota is not really a priority. But I have been eating at Godavari—the restaurant that was atop my rankings in 2020, 2021 and 2022—once every year, as I have an annual appointment down the road from them in Eden Prairie. Last year I was there on a Friday and ate from their rather large weekend lunch buffet. This year I was there mid-week. There is no buffet offered Monday through Thursday but you can on those days get their lunch thali. I was very happy to do so—here’s a quick look at it. Continue reading →

Yoichi “Sherry & Sweet”

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Here is the third of the three NAS Yoichi malts that I purchased at the distillery. Together with the previously reviewed Woody & Vanillic and the Peaty & Salty, this Sherry & Sweet is one of three forms of Yoichi’s distillate that are used in Nikka’s blends. I rather liked the other two despite their lack of age and am curious to see what I make of this one. Let’s get right to it.

Yoichi “Sherry & Sweet” (55%; from my own bottle)

Nose: There’s some young oak but there’s also a lot of raisiny sherry. On the second sniff there’s some pencil lead and some dried apricot and some orange peel. A few drops of water push the oak and pencil lead back and pull out notes of toffee and cream.

Palate: Comes in with the raisins and the dried apricot and orange peel leading the way; a bit of tannic bite as I swallow. Very approachable at full strength; rich texture. More citrus with water and the tannic note disappears. Continue reading →

The Fusion Naga (Delhi, August 2026)

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I said I’d have a review of a South Indian restaurant in Gurgaon this weekend but instead let’s go back to Humayunpur for another Naga meal. I was last seen there eating a thali at Farmer’s Kitchen. That was an excellent, if unplanned meal—by which I mean, that I’d gone with a plan to eat at a Manipuri place that turned out to be experiencing some monsoon-related problems (read: rain coming through the roof). This meal at The Fusion Naga was planned and was also excellent. This is basically the situation when you eat in a restaurant in Humayunpur: you have to try very hard to have a bad meal. Continue reading →

Myeondong Sejong Ganjang Gejang (Seoul, June 2026)

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I am beginning to approach the end of my reports from our time in Seoul this spring. By which I mean that I think I now have less than 10 reports to go. Who knows, maybe I’ll even be able to get them all done before the end of the month. Oh, who am I kidding? Anyway, here’s a quick look at a lunch we ate in early-June, just a few days before our stay came to an end. It features one of our very favourite Korean delicacies: ganjang gejang or soy-marinated crab. We’d been talking about eating it at a famous old ganjang gejang place in Anguk but somehow never got around to it. With time and opportunities running out, we ended up just visiting a place in Myeongdong that we were near for other reasons toward the end of the trip. Here’s how it went. Continue reading →

Demi III (Minneapolis)

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Demi opened in Minneapolis in 2019. We ate there for the first time, not too long after, in January 2020. That meal didn’t blow us away but we liked it enough to say that we might make it an annual indulgence. But then some stuff happened in the world and we didn’t go out to eat very much for the next two years. When we did start going out to eat again they’d fallen off our radar a little bit. And so we didn’t get back there till the fall of 2022. Our response to that meal was similar to our response to the first: everything looked exquisite, a number of dishes were very good to excellent, but the whole didn’t quite add up to the sum of the parts. We left that meal thinking we’d be back two years later. Instead, it’s been four (almost exactly four, as it turns out). Did the third time finally deliver a meal that blew us away? Read on to find out. Continue reading →

Ikk Panjab (Gurgaon, July 2026)

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Ikk Panjab first opened in Rajouri Garden, a major Punjabi enclave in West Delhi, in 2018. Since then a number of shiny branches have opened all over the Delhi NCR (National Capital Region) as well as in Chandigarh. I have been vaguely intrigued for some time by their proffer—the food of undivided Punjab—but not enough to ever make the trek from Gurgaon to Delhi. However, a location opened last year in Golf Avenue 42, an incredibly garish commercial complex not too far from my parents’ place in Gurgaon. And so on this most recent trip, I descended on it with my nephews, both of whom are aficionados of Punjabi food. Here’s how it went. Continue reading →

Yoichi “Peaty & Salty”

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I’ve previously reviewed a whisky from Yoichi called “Peaty & Salty” but this is not a re-review or a review of another iteration of that one. Or maybe it is a review of another iteration. That previous review was of a 12 yo “Peaty & Salty” from what Nikka then called their Key Malts—the component malts that were used to compose their blends. Stocks of aged whisky in Japan dropped dramatically after that and age statements disappeared from almost all official distillery releases (Yoichi’s classic 15 yo is yet to be revived). As to whether the current Yoichi component malts being sold at the distillery (which is where I acquired a set of three this past June) is otherwise made just as the 12 yo used to be, I don’t know. And, of course, I do not know how old this current release is. I can say that I rather liked the current NAS “Woody & Vanillic” (which I reviewed last week). And having liked the 12 yo incarnation of “Peaty & Salty” a lot back in 2019 (my review is here), I have high hopes for this one as well. Let’s see if they’re repaid in kind. Continue reading →