Littlemill 25, 1988 (Archives)

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I returned to whisky reviewing last week with a 2012 release from Whiskybase under their Archives label: this Caol Ila 30, 1982. Here now is a review of another Archives release, this one a little younger and bottled a couple of years later.

As I’ve noted before, the long-defunct Littlemill distillery did not have a very strong reputation—putting it mildly—when it was active. However, casks of spirit distilled there in the late 1980s and early 1990s and allowed by the vagaries of business history to mature longer than was probably ever intended quickly developed a reputation for fruity excellence when parcels began to be released by various independent bottlers in the early-mid 2010s. Whiskybase’s Archives releases of some of these casks played no small role in the rehabilitation of the distillery’s reputation after its demise. I’ve reviewed some of these before as I have some from other bottlers. Just last year I reviewed a Littlemill 24, 1989 from Archives and a Littlemill 22, 1989 from Glen Fahrn. Both were excellent, especially the 22 yo. Will this 25 yo distilled in 1988 be as good? Let’s see. Continue reading →

Foul Witch (New York, October 2025)

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Yes, I’ve posted reports before on restaurant meals eaten a long time before; this post is, however, a signal achievement for me: it’s a report on a meal eaten not just nine months ago but at a restaurant that closed eight months ago: Foul Witch in Manhattan. There is no utility whatsoever to this report. You are welcome.

You may recall that the missus and I were in New York City for a weekend last October (I’ve previously reported on two meals from that trip, at L’Industrie and Theodora). We had wanted to eat a nice Italian meal on that trip and when I’d consulted some trusted friends who live in the city, Foul Witch came up as one of the few places at the intersection of our budget, desired quality of food and drink, and the likelihood of our being able to get a reservation. And so I made that reservation after drinks with a bunch of old food forum friends at Bar Goto in the East Village, the missus and I walked a couple of blocks to meet another old friend and his partner at Foul Witch. Here’s how it went. Continue reading →

Hanilkwan (Seoul, May 2026)

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Hanilkwan, established in 1939, is one of Seoul’s oldest and most-storied restaurants. They are credited with bringing aspects of Korean royal cuisine into the mainstream and also for inventing or at least popularizing Seoul-style bulgogi—in which the thinly-sliced beef is cooked in a hot domed pan with the juices/broth pooling along the sides. Originally founded as Hwaseonok, they adopted the current name—which literally means “Korea’s Best Restaurant”—after WW2 when Japanese colonialism ended. Their original location was then destroyed during the Korean war, during which time the restaurant had relocated to Busan. After their return to Seoul they built a new location in Jongno and enjoyed a long heyday as one of the city’s premier restaurants, opening several branches. That new main location too eventually fell, to redevelopment this time, and now their main branch is located in tony Apgujeong, with a few more scattered around the city. The Gwanghwamun branch is located just a brief walk from where we were putting up and it is there that we repaired to for a nice Mother’s Day meal. Continue reading →

Dario (Minneapolis, February 2026)

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Here is this week’s Twin Cities report, only a day and a half late. I’m still working on my backlog, which means this report is of a meal eaten not recently but back at the end of February. After nearly two months, the federal government’s siege of Minnesota had finally begun to ease a little and so we decided to keep our dinner reservation at Dario.

Dario opened in the spring of 2024 to a fair bit of local attention. This ranged from a rave review from Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl in MSP Magazine to a more measured take from Jon Cheng, the Star-Tribune‘s then-restaurant critic. The two reviews are emblematic in a way of the tensions of the local media’s coverage of the Twin Cities’ food scene. One—not always generically distinguishable from a chef’s profile or a press release—promised faultless dishes in a restaurant that represents the new, the happening; the other described a number of dishes that often looked better than they tasted, but because this is Minnesota—or perhaps because of editorial intervention—still gave it a “Highly Recommended” rating. Between all that cognitive dissonance and reports of a deafeningly loud dining room, we didn’t get around to eating there till almost two years later. Here’s how it went.

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Manipuri Chak-Shang (Delhi, December 2025)

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On Sunday I posted the last of my restaurant reports from my truncated trip to Southern California in December (dim sum at the Cerritos branch of Lunasia). Here now is my last restaurant report proper from my trip to Delhi earlier that month. I say “last restaurant report proper” because I may post an odds and ends roundup at some point in the next few weeks.

This meal took me back to my favourite place to eat at in Delhi: Humayunpur, the South Delhi neighbourhood/village that has in the last decade and more become one of the major hubs of North East Indian life in Delhi. I had eaten there with a friend just a few days prior to this meal. That was an excellent Naga meal. As we were walking around after I noticed a place I didn’t remember seeing before: Manipuri Chak Shang (which literally means Manipuri restaurant or eating place). One thing led to another and I was soon eating lunch there as well. This time I was on my own. Here’s how it went. Continue reading →

Caol Ila 30, 1982 (Archives)

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Do not be alarmed: this is a whisky review. This used to be a whisky blog once, you know. That was before I began to lose interest in the whisky world (though not in drinking whisky itself) and before my whisky readership—never large—lost interest in me. The former, as I’ve noted before, had to do with a rapidly accelerating disenchantment with the state of the industry. Key drivers of this disenchantment were the drop in the quality of whisky available on the market—especially as many indies began to be squeezed out—and the simultaneous rise in prices for what would once have been considered very young whisky. I more or less stopped buying whisky several years ago now. By that I mean that I stopped buying whisky in my frenzied manner of old; I still purchase the occasional bottle of an old favourite or three. Mostly, I am now drinking down my stores of good whisky purchased in that time of frenzy at very good prices. Such, for example, is this Caol Ila 30 that was released by Whiskybase under their Archives label in 2012. How much did I pay for it then? My spreadsheet tells me it was $148. Those of you who are still active buyers of single malt whisky can tell me what kind of whisky that would get me in today’s market (I don’t even keep track of those things anymore). Alright, enough melancholy talk: let’s get to the notes! Continue reading →

Dim Sum at Lunasia, Cerritos (Los Angeles, December 2025)

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Here is my last restaurant report from my visit to Los Angeles—or more correctly, to Southern California in December. Usually, I have a lot more reports from these trips but I had to cut my stay short, leave the family and frantically return to Delhi. On Christmas morning, however, we went out for dim sum. At the end of my last dim sum report from the region I had said that on future trips we would make the trek out to the San Gabriel Valley to eat dim sum. This not because that meal—at Lunasia’s Torrance location—was bad but because it was not in the same league as at the SGV all-stars, including the Lunasia mothership in Alhambra. But on this trip we ended up anyway at another of their satellite locations, this time in Cerritos. The prospect of driving all the way to the SGV from Seal Beach and then waiting for 2+ hours for a table on Christmas did not appeal, you see. As it turned out, we still had to wait at the Cerritos location as well but at least it was for only about an hour. Continue reading →

Tosokchon Samgyetang (Seoul, May 2026)

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Here is this week’s Seoul report. It is of a meal at a restaurant we’d wanted to eat at on our longer stay in February/March 2024 but had failed to do so: Tosokchon Samgyetang. We had wanted to eat there because we are big fans of samgyetang, the stew/soup of chicken stuffed with rice, ginseng root, jujubes etc. and Tosokchon Samgyetang is a renowned purveyor of the titular dish; also, they were/are located within walking distance of the serviced apartment we put up at on these longer stays. Why then did we fail to eat there in 2024? Who knows? The important thing is that we ate there on this trip; and it did not disappoint. Herewith a quick look at the meal. Continue reading →

Pho Tempo IV (Burnsville, MN, Winter ’25/’26)

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I’d said I would have a Twin Cities restaurant report up on Wednesday and there’s still 15 minutes to go till Thursday in Minnesota. Never call me a liar again!

I’m now closing in on my Twin Cities metro area backlog from the winter. After this one, there will only be two more to go, I think. This report from Burnsville’s Pho Tempo actually encompasses two meals: one I ate by myself in November ’25 and another with the entire family and a couple of friends in February of this year. The first was eaten on the go after a quick shopping stop at Saigon Market—inside which Pho Tempo is located; the second was the reason for the trip. I clarify this in case you think I mean that Pho Tempo is a place to eat if you’re going to Saigon Market for groceries; in fact, it’s one of our favourite Vietnamese restaurants in the Twin Cities metro. Continue reading →

Draavin Canteen (Gurgaon, Dec 2025)

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Draavin Canteen opened in Lajpat Nagar in Delhi a couple of years ago under the name Dakshin Canteen and quickly made a name for their South Indian menu featuring both vegetarian and non-vegetarian food. I read a number of enticing reviews etc. of it online but never managed to make it there. In the second half of last year, however, they opened a branch in Gurgaon, which has been my home base in the Delhi NCR (National Capital Region) since late-2021. With the new location a mere 20 minutes away from my parents’ flat, finding people to go eat there together with became a much easier proposition. And so on my trip in December it was high on my list. I descended on them in a party of five for lunch a few days after arrival. My expectations were high and I’m sorry to say they weren’t quite met. Here are some details. Continue reading →

Jong Ro Shul Lung Tang (Garden Grove, Dec 2025)

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Okay, back to Los Angeles last December. Or rather, as I noted in my report on the Tustin branch of Sichuan Impression last week, back to Orange County. For that is where Garden Grove is located. I’ve noted before that Garden Grove is home to a large Korean population. It’s no Koreatown (I mean the one in Los Angeles) but it has a larger and better Korean food scene than most large American cities—certainly miles past that in the Twin Cities. We do our Korean grocery shopping there on our visits and also eat out from time to time. On this occasion, we were at Jong Ro Shul Lung Tang. Their name tells you what their specialty is: shul lung tang or sullungtang/seollungtang, the long-simmered beef bone soup. But there’s a lot else on their menu as well if that’s not all you want to eat. Continue reading →

Gossine Donghae Makguksu (Seoul, May 2026)

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Alright, let’s move over from Japan to Seoul and move a little closer in time to the present. We went from Japan to Seoul last July but this is not a report from that visit, all of which have already been posted. This is a report from the five weeks we spent in Seoul this spring on the longer trip we were there to set up last summer. We ate out a fair bit during these five weeks and I have a lot of reports to post. There were a few high-end meals in there but the majority were, by and large, in the affordable end of the spectrum. I’m going to try to get them out more or less chronologically. Here therefore is an account of eating at the first restaurant we visited on this trip, though it encompasses two meals: the first, a dinner eaten a few hours after arrival and the second, a lunch eaten a few weeks later. Continue reading →

Sichuan Impression, Tustin (Los Angeles, December 2025)

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Let’s be clear: Tustin is not part of Los Angeles. It’s not even in Los Angeles County, located instead in LA County’s conservative twin, Orange County. Ever since my mother-in-law moved to Seal Beach, Orange County has become our home base when we return to Southern California—a matter of some embarrassment to two long-term Angelenos (the missus lived there since her family arrived in the US and it’s where I spent my first 10 years in the country as well). In terms of food, however, Orange County is not a dead loss. A number of cities in the county have large Asian populations of various ethnicities, and if the Korean food is not quite as good as that in Koreatown and the Chinese not quite as good as that in the San Gabriel Valley, it’s good enough that we don’t always feel the need to drive all the way to those places to eat those cuisines. In the case of Chinese food, a number of the stalwarts have branches now in the general area. Such, for example, is Sichuan Impression. Continue reading →

Hmongtown Marketplace, Feb ’26 (St. Paul, MN)

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Here is the catch-up Twin Cities metro restaurant report for the week. It covers not a restaurant per se but a food court, at Hmongtown Marketplace in St. Paul. This meal was eaten on a weekend in early February, during ICE’s depredations in the state. Living almost an hour south of the Twin Cities, we were not affected by ICE’s actions in the way that people in Minneapolis or St. Paul were. But that’s not to say that ICE was not active in our town as well or that we were completely unaffected. We are, of course, fairly privileged people in terms of class but we are also visible minorities. While all four of us are citizens—the two of us naturalized, the boys born in Minnesota—it’s not like details like these were keeping people from being harassed or abducted or worse by agents of the federal government. We were operating therefore with a low to medium hum of worry at all times, especially for our boys as they made their way across town and back for school and other activities. We also weren’t sure if it was a good idea to keep going out for our usual weekly meals in the Cities. In the end, we chose to keep doing it—both to exercise our privilege and support immigrant restaurants and businesses that were still open, and to assert our own autonomy as citizens of colour. Continue reading →

Sushi no Musashi (Kyoto, July 2025)

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Here, finally, is my last report from our trip to Japan last summer. It’s also my last report from Kyoto and features our last meal eaten on the trip. Fittingly (?), it features not just sushi but kaitenzushi or conveyor belt sushi. This was a genre of eating the boys wanted to be sure we did before we left and we left it for the last night. I will admit that I was secretly looking forward to it as well. While conveyor belt sushi in the US is usually an iffy proposition, the baseline of quality in Japan for any kind of sushi is much higher and so the thought of going out with an excessive sushi meal was very appealing. And that is exactly what this turned out to be. Continue reading →

Dear Naga (Delhi, December 2025)

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Alas, I completely whiffed on my posting plans for the weekend. I’d said I would post the last report from our Japan trip last summer and one more from Los Angeles at the end of December but I didn’t get around to either. Like I said, the World Cup has done a real number on my ability to get most things done. I will try my best to catch up with those posts this week but in the meantime I’m going to stick with the regular rotation for the summer which has reports from Delhi or Bombay going up on Mondays. The two previous weeks began with reports on two coastal meals from Bombay in April: at Pradeep Gomantak and Sarangaa; this week I go back a few more months to my first visit to Delhi in December. The cuisine featured here is one from a completely different part of the country: Nagaland. No surprise: the meal was eaten in one of Delhi’s most prominent Northeastern enclaves, Humayunpur, at a restaurant I had not previously eaten at: Dear Naga. Here’s a quick look at it. Continue reading →

Grand Szechuan, January/June 2026

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God, the World Cup is doing a number on my mission to get four restaurants reports off my backlog every week. My report from Bombay was posted in the evening on Monday and my Twin Cities report for the week is now being posted almost two days late. The good news is it is in fact two reports for the price of one—so if you do the conversion you actually come out ahead. You’re welcome.

The two reports in question are of two meals eaten at Grand Szechuan in Bloomington. By any measure, the best Chinese restaurant in Minnesota, Grand Szechuan is our family’s favourite restaurant in the state and so it’s no surprise that one of our first meals of the year was eaten there in January and that it was also the first place went out to eat at after returning from our travels in June. Continue reading →