Well, summer is almost done (this is the kind of searing observation you come to me for). The kids and the missus start their fall terms this week. Classes at my college start in two weeks but the prep work goes into overdrive now. I also have a lot of work to do to finish up something else that I hope to be able to announce soon. What will that mean for the blog? Nothing really. You can still expect one booze review per week, one Twin Cities restaurant report per week and at least one more restaurant report from our summer travels till I get caught up (there are still four reports from Northern California and three more from Southern California left to come). Cooking will continue to appear on my Instagram. And hopefully regular readers will continue to show up to read my posts. A large number of you did so through the summer. Blog traffic was very high in June and July and then August saw new highs set for both page views (100,000+) and unique visitors (almost 24,000). I realize these are piddling numbers by the standards of really popular sites but they’re far higher than I ever expected. I still remember how excited I was back in April 2013 when I once had 50 visitors in a day. But enough cloying sentiment! What were all these/you visitors reading?
Here are the top 10 most viewed posts for the month:
- Eating at Mercato Centrale (Florence, June 2023)
- Bukhara (Delhi, March 2022)
- Mandalay Kitchen (St. Paul, MN)
- Ha Tien Super Market (St. Paul)
- The Twin Cities Fine Dining Rotation
- Trattoria Monti (Rome, June 2023)
- Blueberry-Plum Jam
- Grand Szechuan, Summer 2024 (Bloomington, MN)
- Hot Grainz II (St. Paul, MN)
There are five newcomers to this month’s list. Three of them are posts made in August: the accounts of our visits over the summer to both Grand Szechuan in Bloomington and Hot Grainz in St. Paul, and my sort-of ranking of the Twin Cities’ fine dining restaurants by the likely frequency of our visits. The two other newcomers to the list are more unexpected. My report on St. Paul’s Burmese restaurant, Mandalay Kitchen was posted at the end of last year. It got read more this August than in any month preceding. This is because someone posted a link to it on r/TwinCities. I hope any new readers that have come to the blog from that direction will stick around. However, I have no explanation for why my recipe for Blueberry-Plum jam, first posted in 2015, has seen more views in August than in any month preceding, and as a result more views in 2024 than in any year in the preceding decade. If anyone knows where the link got posted, please do let me know (and I hope it’s not as part of an article denouncing crappy jam recipes).
I was also glad to see my report on Mangwon Market in Seoul joining Mercato Centrale, Bukhara, Ha Tien Market and Trattoria Monti as mainstays on the top 10 list. I really enjoyed visiting that market in March and it makes me very happy to think that I might be convincing a few more visitors to go check it out.
You will have noticed that there are no booze reviews again on the top 10 list this month. As it happens my review of the new Lagavulin 11, Offerman Edition finished just outside the top 10 and my review of the Indri-Trini was just a little behind it. Will there be any reviews in September that will actually crack the list. Maybe I should see if the new Laphroaig Cairdeas is out yet in Minnesota. There will not be a booze review tomorrow though as there are five Mondays in September and I am not opening five new bottles.
What’s coming on the restaurant front from the Twin Cities? Reports from Homi in St. Paul and Andale Taqueria in Richfield. Maybe a report on House of Curry in Rosemount. From the high-end a report on our dinner at Alma just last evening. All of these are meals already eaten. Does that mean we won’t eat out in September. No. But beyond a scheduled return to Oro at the end of the month there’s nothing planned. Let’s see how it goes. In the meantime, I welcome suggestions of places to check out that I’ve not previously reported on.
Oh yes, I also wanted to say that I have a recipe included in Rancho Gordo’s new cookbook, The Bean Book, out very soon from Ten Speed Press. Get yourself a copy from your local bookstore.