May is in the books. With only 11 posts published all month, I am now well and truly into my reduced posting era. As with April, however, traffic to the site seems to show that my readers might have preferred if I’d started posting less a long time ago, you heartless bastards! Traffic numbers, for visitors and page views alike, have shown no signs of dropping off. Indeed, the last three months have been the busiest three months of the blog’s existence. I’m not quite sure why so many people have started reading the blog in its 13th year but whatever you’re here for, I hope you’ll keep coming back. I do suspect that a good chunk of the new readership is looking for travel eating tips. I say this because my restaurant and market reports from Seoul and Italy seem to be particularly popular. Let’s see what else people were looking at in May.
Here are the top 10 most viewed posts for the month:
- Eating at Mercato Centrale (Florence, June 2023)
- Kim’s (Minneapolis)
- Trattoria Monti (Rome, June 2023)
- At Namdaemun Market, Pt. 2: Eating (Seoul, March 2023)
- Tea House III (Minneapolis)
- Bukhara (Delhi, March 2022)
- Ha Tien Super Market (St. Paul)
My look at our experience eating at Florence’s Mercato Centrale was the most-read post in April and it continued in that position in May by some margin. Behind it on the list is my review of our dinner at Kim’s. It was posted only on May 28th but still rocketed all the way to #2. My review of Trattoria Monti in Rome also climbed from #7 in April to #3 in May and was joined in the top 10 by my review of Santo Palato (at #9). It would appear a number of readers may be preparing for trips to Italy in the summer. Well, I do recommend Santo Palato and Trattoria Monti highly. Likewise, my second Namdaemun Market report continued to be popular in April and was joined in May by the specific look at the market’s Kalguksu Alley.
The review of Bukhara in Delhi dropped a few spots but is still the #1 read post for the year (though it’s in danger of being overtaken by the Mercato Centrale report). My look at St. Paul’s excellent Ha Tien Market also continues to be read a lot—I do hope those market reports take a lot of new customers to the Twin Cities metro’s immigrant markets. There were no recipes in the top 10 this month but there were a couple lurking just outside (for mushoor dal and for mutton curry with yogurt). There won’t be new recipes on the blog for some more time yet; as always, I encourage you to follow me on Instagram for cooking content.
Also new to the top 10 last month was my review of Tea House in Minneapolis. My Minneapolis restaurant reports are not usually read as much as my St. Paul reports and so I’m happy to see both Minneapolis reviews for May did well. And I’m tickled as well to see my post on Imtiaz Dharker’s poem is again getting a lot of views. I assume it’s again on some university exam reading list in India.
What’s coming up in June? I have a handful of restaurant reports left to come from Seoul and New Jersey/New York. I will have those done by the middle of the month (this time I mean it). We’ll be spending a good chunk of the month in California so there might not be a whole lot of Twin Cities content (you can expect reports from Southern California and the Bay Area instead). Booze reviews will continue at the “one per week” rate. I’m really enjoying opening bottles and drinking them down steadily. I feel like I have a much better feel for each one drunk this way and part of me thinks that the 12 years of largely single pour whisky reviews preceding this may have been a bit of a sham. Don’t tell anyone.
Alright, on to the new month!