Here is the customary look back at traffic on the blog in the last month and a look ahead to the next month’s posts. June saw a significant rise over traffic in May in terms of unique visitors, but page-views, overall, stayed flat. Once again, most of the traffic was garnered by my restaurant write-ups, though a few whisky reviews also picked up a lot of views. The top 10 list of most-read posts has a bunch of the usual suspects from recent months on it but a few others got knocked off by a couple of newcomers to the rankings. In some cases there’s no mystery about the high traffic: my review of Bucheron was doubtless goosed by their Beard award win for Best New Restaurant in the country; and Semma being named the top restaurant in New York surely led a lot more people to my review of dinner there almost two years ago. (And just outside the top 10 is my review of Mingles in Seoul, who were just ranked highly in that stupid Best Restaurants of the World list.) Less easily explained is why my review of the special release Talisker 11 from 2022 or my first ranking of Indian restaurants in the Twin Cities should suddenly have shot back up the rankings. Anyway, here is the complete top 10 list.
- Bukhara (Delhi, March 2022)
- Indri-Trini, The Three Wood
- Eating at Mercato Centrale (Florence, June 2023)
- Talisker 11, Special Release 2022
- In and Around Mangwon Market (Seoul, March 2024)
- Trattoria Monti (Rome, June 2023)
- Bucheron (Minneapolis)
- A Highly Subjective Ranking of Indian Restaurants in the Twin Cities Metro Area
- At Namdaemun Market, Pt. 2: Eating (Seoul, March 2023)5
- Semma (New York, October 2023)
Okay, so that’s your look back—what can you expect to see on the blog in July? Not business as usual, that’s what. There will be no restaurant reports from the Twin Cities. Instead, there will be a lot of quick looks at meals eaten in Tokyo, Kyoto and Seoul (and maybe Delhi too)—if you can’t wait, you can check the highlights towards the top of my Insta page. There will also not be any whisky or other booze reviews this month. But that’s not to say there won’t be any booze-related posts. You can look each Monday of the month for a post that will test the extent to which I still have a whisky readership on this blog. Booze review will start back up in August.
Thanks as always to those of you who continue to send me Twin Cities restaurant intel and tips backchannel: it’s much appreciated.