Author Archives: My Annoying Opinions

Port Charlotte 7, 2002 (Whisky Doris)

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The third whisky review of the month is of a malt that is considerably younger than the previous two (a Strathisla 30 from G&M and a Bunnahabhain 33 from Whisky Doris). This Port Charlotte was distilled in 2002 and bottled from a single bourbon hogshead in 2010, a few months shy of its eighth birthday. The bottler again is Whisky Doris. I purchased it not too long after it was released and it has sat unopened on my shelves for almost a decade and a half for no good reason. I opened it in November and took a large sample with me to Delhi to both drink there and review. Here now are my notes.

Port Charlotte 7, 2002 (63.5%; Whisky Doris; bourbon hogshead 1171; from my own bottle)

Nose: The usual lactic notes off the top: scalded milk, parmesan rind. Big phenolic smoke too, of course, of course, along with sweeter coastal notes: shells, rotting kelp. Some apple as well. With some air some cream emerges. More cream with a few drops of water and the smoke expands as well. I think this might need a little more water as it still hits my nostrils hard. Yes, a second splash and it’s now just mellow enough: big smoke and cream still and some of the lemon from the palate emerges as well. Continue reading →

Mo Ran Gak II (Los Angeles, June ’24)

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Here finally is the long-promised/threatened final restaurant report from our trip to California in June. This was the last meal we ate out on the trip, a Korean dinner at a place I’ve reported on before: Mo Ran Gak in Garden Grove. I should explain here something that probably bugs people who know the geography of southern California well: I use the place name “Los Angeles” quite loosely in my meal reports from southern California. Garden Grove is not in Los Angeles. Nor for that matter are the cities in the South Bay (Torrance, Gardena, Long Beach etc.) or in the San Gabriel Valley (Monterey Park, Alhambra, Rosemead etc.) that I’ve previously written meal reports from. Indeed, Garden Grove is not even in LA County; it’s in Orange County (as is Costa Mesa). I just lazily bundle them all together as “Los Angeles” because in my head Greater LA is a larger agglomeration than it is in reality. Please forgive me (I do a similar kind of thing with Delhi, but that’s another story). Continue reading →

Bunnahabhain 33, 1980 (Whisky Doris)

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A day later than usual, here is the month’s second booze review. Following last week’s Strathisla 30 it is both another single malt review and another review of an older whisky. This time it’s a Bunnahabhain bottled by Whisky Doris, a 33 year old distilled in 1980 and bottled in 2013. I’ve previously reviewed a 31 yo Bunnahabhain distilled in 1980 (that one was also bottled by Whisky Doris) and a 34 yo Bunnahabhain distilled in 1980 (that one was bottled by Whisky Fair). I liked both of those but neither got me very excited. Will this one break that streak? Hopefully, it will in a positive direction. Let’s see how it goes.

Bunnahabhain 33, 1980 (45.6%; Whisky Doris; sherry butt #92; from my own bottle)

Nose: Honey, brown butter, wood glue, dried leaves, some oak extract. On the second sniff it’s quite reminiscent of some tonics I did not enjoy being forced to drink as a child—not objectionable in this case though! As it sits the organic notes recede and some toffee emerges. A few drops of water pull out more of the oak extract. Continue reading →

112 Eatery V (Minneapolis)

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Here is my second report this year on a meal at 112 Eatery. No, I have not promoted them from the “Once a Year” tier in my Twin Cities fine dining rotation; After our meal there in the summer we’d expected to next eat there again a year later. But as it happened, a combo of a friend’s birthday dinner and a mini-grad school reunion brought us back there in mid-September. Two of the friends we were eating with were in the Twin Cities for the first time and while I don’t think it had been picked for that reason, 112 Eatery is really a very good way to introduce people to the Twin Cities dining scene. It was a nice meal again, on the whole, though it is probably fair to say that we were reminiscing and laughing a little too much to be able to pay close attention to the food. Once again, 112 Eatery is the perfect restaurant for that kind of a meal: the food is good if you pay attention to it; but it’s not striving to be a temple of haute cuisine and you don’t feel out of place if your table gets a little too loud. Here’s a quick look at the meal. Continue reading →

El Sazon Tacos & More (Eagan, MN)

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This is an extremely belated review. By which I mean not that it’s being posted on a Thursday rather than my usual Tuesday for Twin Cities reports (blame my heavily jet lagged condition in Delhi) but that the place I am reporting on is fairly old news at this point. Now, I don’t mean that anyone ever looks to my restaurant reports to discover new places to eat in the Twin Cities. It’s just that the buzz around El Sazon now is not centered on their gas station-based casual food counter in Eagan—which opened in early 2022—but on the higher-end brick and mortar restaurant they opened in South Minneapolis late last year and which has received strong reviews. We’d been planning to eat at the new place ever since we got back from our travels at the end of March but I felt that we needed to first finally get out to the gas station location. Plans to do so fell through several times over the summer before the missus and I finally made it out there towards the end of October for a quick lunch. We liked the food enough to want to go back with the boys—which we finally managed to do the day before Thanksgiving. Here now is a report on both meals. Continue reading →

Strathisla 30 (Gordon & MacPhail)

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Here to kick off the month in whisky reviews is a rather old and rather good Strathisla. This 30 year old was one of those licensed bottlings by Gordon & MacPhail but I can’t get a fix on year of release. Whiskybase does not have a listing for this 750 ml bottle at 43% abv. We can cautiously assume it was released at the same time as the 700 ml bottle at 40% but there’s no release date on the listing for that bottle either. My spreadsheet tells me I acquired it in 2013 from Binny’s in Chicago but I am pretty sure it was released in the previous decade. If I’m right about that, this is distillate from the 1970s, possibly even the early-mid 1970s. That’s generally a good thing when it comes single malty whisky from Scotland and especially when it’s older Speyside whiskies bottled by Gordon & MacPhail. Anyway, if you know more about the release year etc. please do write in below. In the meantime, here are my notes taken from the fourth pour from my bottle (which I am very sorry to be separated from here in Delhi). Continue reading →

November/December 2024

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By the time this post goes up on the blog I’ll be on my way to Delhi. And as I need to hurry up and finish my packing, I’ll keep this recap/look-ahead on the brief side. Traffic on the blog for most of November followed the cooling off trend of late October before picking up steam again in the last 10 days of the month. A lot of the uptick in traffic since that point has been from readers in India. My review of Bukhara in Delhi from March 2022 seems to be driving most of that traffic, though there’s another Delhi report that’s suddenly become popular as well. Meanwhile, the numbers for the Italy reports from last summer continue to steadily cool off while my Seoul reports from this winter (and also March 2023) are holding steady. I can also tell you that very few people were interested in the mezcal reviews I posted for the last five weeks straight. The good news for you haters of smoky agave drinks is that you won’t have to read another mezcal review from me for a while: I’m out of bottles to open. I might stock up once I get back in the middle of December (if those tariffs are for real, prices will rise in 2025) but even if I do, I’ll finish my currently open bottles first. Continue reading →

Petite Leon III (Minneapolis)

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I placed Petite Leon in the “Once a Year” tier in my Twin Cities Fine Dining Rotation, along with112 Eatery, Hai Hai and Spoon and Stable. We’ve eaten at all three of those restaurants this year and so to keep up appearances it was necessary that we eat at Petite Leon as well before the year runs out. Accordingly, after a bit of reservation shuffling, we ate there this past weekend with the same friends who’d joined us for dinner there in May 2023. I think we all enjoyed this meal at least as much as we had the previous and I am glad to say it did not make me think I’d been overly generous in my estimation of them in my rankings. Though not everything we ate got us equally excited, we enjoyed every single thing we ate, as we did our cocktails; and the meal turned out to be very reasonably priced as well. Hmm maybe we should eat at Petite Leon more than once a year… Continue reading →

Real Minero, Largo

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Here’s one more mezcal to close out the month in booze reviews. This is my second review of a mezcal from Real Minero, the storied Oaxacan operation. I’ve previously reviewed a batch of their Barril, which I enjoyed very much indeed. This week I have for you a review of a batch of their Largo. Largo is a variety of wild agave, apparently also known as Tobaziche in other areas. This batch was made from agave that averaged 14 years of age at the time of harvest. It was distilled in January 2023 in Filipino-style clay pot stills. All this information is from the rear label on the bottle, by the way. The Barril’s rear label notes it was rested in glass for six months before bottling; there’s no indication of resting in glass on the label of this Largo. I’m not sure which is the normal practice for Real Minero, or for that matter for mezcal producers more broadly. If you know more about this please write in below. I can tell you that I opened this bottle last week and it jumped right to the top of my not very extensive mezcal rankings. Here now are my tasting notes. Continue reading →

El Chivo Crazy (Minneapolis)

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In the late summer when Minnesota was suddenly in the news and a lot of people who knew or little or nothing about the state were apparently feeling an urgent need to express their knowledge of stereotypes about it, I read a particularly ignorant post by some idiot on Threads to the effect that there is no good Mexican food in the Twin Cities. A lot of Americans have seemingly not updated their view of Minnesota since the release of the Coen Bros.’ Fargo. While it’s true that the state’s population is still predominantly white (roughly 77%), Minnesota’s racial diversity has been growing steadily in the last couple of decades and the Hispanic population, in particular, has grown significantly. The Twin Cities metro, as you might expect, is more diverse than the state as a whole, and as of 2022 Hispanics formed almost 7% of the population—that may not seem like much if you live in, say, California or Texas, but it stems from a >100% increase in the Hispanic population since 2000. Mexicans are the largest subgroup and indeed are the third largest ethnic group in the state (after Whites and African Americans). If you’re not from here you shouldn’t be surprised then to hear that there are a lot of Mexican (and other Hispanic) restaurants in the metro aimed at this growing population, a lot of them very good. Continue reading →

La Luna, Chino

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Mezcal November continues. Here is another release from La Luna. La Luna is based in Michoacán where members of the Perez Escot family—from which all of La Luna’s mezcaleros hail—has been making mezcal for four generations. They are a relatively recent brand but have a pretty good presence in the American market. At any rate, a lot of their expressions are available in Minnesota. I’ve previously reviewed a few of these: the Tequilana; the Manso Sahuayo; another Manso Sahuayo bottled for the Minnesota Agave Society; and an ensamble made from a mix of Tequilana, Manso Sahuayo and Cupreata. I’ve liked them all a lot. Today I have review of a bottle of Lot 50 of their Chino. Chino is apparently the name for the wild cultivar of the Cupreata maguey. As with most mezcals, there is a wealth of information on the production methods on the La Luna labels (though unlike Real Minero’s labels, La Luna’s labels dispense this information in Spanish; I like this touch). So I can tell you that the maguey is roasted in conical earthen ovens, spontaneously fermented and distilled in copper and pine stills. I don’t yet know enough about mezcal to make much of this information but perhaps it will be of interest to you. Here now are my notes on this bottle which I opened last week. Continue reading →

Kolap 2 (St. Paul, MN)

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It’s been a while since my last restaurant report from St. Paul (on lunch at Homi); and it has been even longer since my last report on a meal at Kolap. As you may know, Kolap is the Twin Cities #2 Cambodian restaurant. It’s hard to deny Cheng Heng the top spot, both because of how long they’ve been around and because of their extensive menu. Kolap’s menu is much more edited. As at Cheng Heng, there’s a fair bit on it that’s not Cambodian per se—though, as always, a lot of food in the region crosses national borders. But it’s not hard to suss out the Cambodian specialties on the menu and the friendly staff will be only to happy to assist you in any case. The Cambodian dishes are done very well and are well worth a trip. That’s what we’d thought when we ate there in 2018 and we’d planned to come back soon. We didn’t manage it in 2019 and then the pandemic intervened and we lost sight of many a restaurant. Well, I’m glad to say we finally made it back this past weekend, accompanied by friends who we eat out with regularly. Here’s how it went. Continue reading →

Real Minero Barril

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Real Minero is the name of the brand of mezcal made by the Ángeles family, who have been distilling mezcal in the town of Santa Catarina Minas in Oaxaca for more than a century now.  You can find out more about them in this report on Mezcal Reviews on a distillery tour in 2017. (Mezcal Reviews, by the way, is an essential resource for people like me who are new to mezcal.) Their mezcal is no longer officially called mezcal—the word no longer appears on their labels. This has to do with the bureaucratic headaches of the certification process: it is in fact mezcal in all but name only. The mezcal produced by the family has a very high reputation (and commands prices to match). I was lucky enough to find two bottles from a local liquor store at a significant discount last year. I’m not sure what led to that discount but I wasted no time in snapping them up. I will be reviewing both this month. First up, is a batch of the Barril, a maguey that is new to me. As per the label, the average age of the maguey used was 15 years old and it was all harvested in 2018. The mezcal itself was distilled in the second half of that year and then rested in glass for six months. I opened the bottle last week and have been enjoying it very much. Here now are my notes. Continue reading →

Mian (Costa Mesa, CA)

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Our first meal out on our trip to Southern California in June was at the location of Din Tai Fung in the fancy South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. Our penultimate meal saw us return to almost the exact location for more casual Chinese food. We ate one floor down, literally right below Din Tai Fung, at Mian. A noodle/soup specialist, as you might expect from the name, Mian is a mini-chain spun off by the proprietors of Chengdu Taste several years ago. They now have eight locations in all: five in Southern California, one in Las Vegas, one in Houston and one in Honolulu. At all of them the menu is centered on noodle and noodle soup dishes along with a short list of Sichuan snacks. Portions are generous and prices are reasonable (though maybe they feel more so when eating at the South Coast Plaza). All in all, it makes for a good family meal without having to wait very long to be seated. Continue reading →

House of Curry, 2024 (Rosemount, MN)

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House of Curry, located in Rosemount, is, as you know, the Twin Cities Metro’s premier Sri Lankan restaurant. Okay, so it’s also the Twin Cities Metro’s only Sri Lankan restaurant. But as it happens they serve very good food. We’ve always enjoyed our meals there, usually eaten in combination with an outing to the nearby movie theater. They were in our pandemic takeout rotation in 2020 (here and here) but we lost sight of them after that. I ate their food at a couple of catered events at the college over the last couple of years and kept making a note to get back there in person soon. I’m happy to say I finally managed to do so twice in the last three months. The first occasion was lunch with a friend in August, after, yes, a movie outing (Deadpool and Wolverine, if you must know). The second was dinner this past weekend with an old friend in from out of town. Here’s a quick look at both meals. Continue reading →

Gusto Historico, Tobala, Victor Ramos

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For the first booze review of the month, I have for you another mezcal. Last week I reviewed a special edition of La Luna’s Manso Sahuayo that was bottled for the Minnesota Agave Society. This week I have for you a tobala from Gusto Historico. Gusto Historico is a relatively recent brand. As far as I can make out, they are based in Oaxaca and bottle mezcals distilled by mezcaleros from the region, seemingly almost all from the town of Miahuatlan. Two of the main mezcaleros they work with are the father and son pair of Victor and Emanuel Ramos. This tobala was made by Victor Ramos. I specify this because they’ve also released a tobala distilled by Ignacio Juarez and another by Emanuel Ramos (the labels are of different colours and if that’s not enough to tell them apart, the names of the mezcaleros are on the rear labels that have lots of other detailed production info on them). I’ve liked all the (not-very many) tobalas I’ve tried so far and am looking forward to this one as well. Let’s get right to it. Continue reading →

October/November 2024

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The maximum temperature in our southern Minnesota town on Tuesday was in the low 80s; yesterday, we got light snow and this morning woke up to a frosted backyard. I want to say that fall/autumn is finally here but who knows which season we’ll have next week. Blog traffic did also cool off a bit in October (“Now, there’s a transition!“). After rising traffic all year, August and September had seen new highs hit for both page views and unique visitors. The first half of October seemed like the month was on track to top the previous two but the last 10 days or so have seen a return to the normal traffic of the first half of the year. October still recorded the third-highest traffic this year but I suspect November and December will follow the trends of the second half of the month. This because I think the increase in traffic over the summer had to do with travel/tourism. My Italy reports from last summer were particularly popular during that period. Interestingly, as the viewership numbers for those posts have been dipping, those for my Seoul reports have been steadily rising—though not to the levels of the Italy numbers. Which is another way of saying that the majority of my readers continue to come from the United States, and far more of them are likely traveling to Italy than to South Korea. Continue reading →