Now that I have made changes to my posting activity on the blog, I may as well also change the nature of my month-opening posts. Unlike in the past, I will no longer have long lists of potential whisky reviews for you to help me narrow down to 10-12. The whisky/booze reviews will be what they will be, based on what catches my fancy when I’m down in the whisky lair looking for a new bottle to open. So if you’re still interested in my whisky reviews, each week’s review will be a surprise. What I’m going to do instead, going forward, in these first-of-the-month posts is give you a glimpse at what was popular, or at least what was read a lot in the previous month on the blog. In other words, a look at my navel. In this particular case, April 2024 was, in terms of both page views and unique visitors, the busiest month in the blog’s history. Almost 21,000 unique visitors loaded almost 100,000 pages (yes, yes, I know, these aren’t particularly impressive numbers in the abstract). What were they looking at?

Here are the top 10 most viewed posts for the month:

1. Eating at Mercato Centrale (Florence, June 2023)
2. Bukhara (Delhi, March 2022)
3. Masoor/Mushoor Dal Variations
4. Homshuk + Bodega 42 (Apple Valley, MN)
5. At Namdaemun Market, Pt. 2: Eating (Seoul, March 2023)
6. Grand Szechuan, March 2024 (Bloomington, MN)
7. Trattoria Monti (Rome, June 2023)
8. Ha Tien Super Market (St. Paul)
9. Oro (Minneapolis)
10. Thai Cafe, April 2024 (St. Paul, MN)

No surprise that these are all food-related posts. The first whisky post doesn’t show up till #30 and that’s not a whisky review either: it’s my post about Loch Lomond’s loose approach to its history. The first whisky review comes in at #33 (the Indri Trini) and the only other booze post to crack the top 40 is my perennially read report on Glendronach’s “single cask” shenanigans.

Of the posts in the top 10, I’m both surprised and pleased to see two reports from our Italy trip last summer and one from Seoul from March 2023 still doing so well. I have to admit that when I post my trip reports I’m not always sure if there is much of an audience for them and so this is gratifying. That Bukhara review was my most-read post of 2023 and it’s currently in the top spot for 2024 as well. I guess a lot of people remain very interested in eating there. The masoor/mushoor dal recipes post got a lot of traffic again because Rancho Gordo linked to it from the product page for their red split lentils (now a regular offering).

Of the four Twin Cities restaurant reports it’s no shocker to see the Grand Szechuan and Thai Cafe reports do so well—the Bloomington Facebook groups are always interested in my Bloomington reviews and ditto for the Twin Cities East Metro group and reviews of restaurants in the core East metro. The Oro review picked up a lot of views after the restaurant got a Beard nomination for Best New Restaurant—I’m rooting for them. The big surprise is that the report on Homshuk and Bodega 42 shot all the way up to #4 for the month despite having been posted on April 28, and despite being located in Apple Valley. I do hope all this interest in the businesses has resulted in more traffic for them as well.

So, what’s coming on the food front in May? I have 6-8 reports to come from Seoul/Busan and hope to get those out by the middle of the month. This weekend we’re back to Alma for a work-related dinner. We’ll be eating their new menu and I might report on it. I’ll be in New Jersey/New York City for a few days in the middle of the month and will doubtless have a few reports from that brief trips as well—I’m excited to be going back to Foxface Natural with friends. I’ll probably eat some more Gujarati food in New Jersey as well, but not at Kathiyawadi Kitchen this time. Back in the Twin Cities we are scheduled to finally eat at Kim’s the week after I get back from New York (they’re taking reservations now). Beyond that I’m not sure where else we’ll be eating in the Twin Cities yet. Let’s see how it goes.