On November 1 I did not post my usual look at the months past and to come. A not insignificant part of the reason for this is that I was extremely busy and lost track of it. But it’s also true that I was feeling—and continue to feel—iffy about the traffic numbers reported by WordPress for my blog. At some point this summer my overall numbers spiked quite dramatically with a lot of traffic being reported from mainland China—which had historically not been a major source of traffic for my blog. Indeed, I’m not sure if prior to this summer mainland China had ever cracked the top 10 list of countries from which readers were coming to the blog. But for the last few months China has been #1, and that by an immense margin over the usual #1, the United States. I have no idea why this is or if this is something being noticed by all WordPress.com bloggers (I have not yet asked on the WordPress forums). But for November traffic from mainland China was almost 4x that from the United States—compare with August when traffic from the US was more than 30x that from mainland China. Do these numbers represent real traffic? I doubt it. And so I’m not going to bother telling you which the top posts in November were in terms of page-views. Let’s instead just look ahead to the last month of the year. Continue reading →

Apologies if you came here today looking for a Twin Cities restaurant report. I’d said at the end of my previous restaurant report (featuring grilled pork in Seoul) that I would have a review of a Twin Cities Mexican restaurant today. But my “Wednesdays are Twin Cities restaurant report days” rule ran into another that supersedes it: “the first of the month is when I post my look back and look ahead”. So you’ll have to wait another week. I don’t know how you’ll manage. Well, probably very easily.

September was another boffo month on the blog in terms of the visitor statistics that WordPress.com reports. I’ve never known how seriously to take these numbers; and after a month like the one just reported, I really don’t know how seriously to take them. As per the official stats, the blog had more page views in just the last 30 days than it had in the entire year of 2015 and also the entire years of 2016 and 2017. Wow, I must finally be getting the recognition I so richly deserve, I am tempted to think, but, alas, I suspect there’s something artificial about these numbers. I don’t mean that I think that WordPress is making up the numbers but that there may be some bot-related action happening. Another sign of this? All of the top 10 most-read posts in September are whisky-related, all are from long ago and most have not had any interest shown in them for years. Well, for what they’re worth, here are last month’s rankings anyway. Continue reading →

Summer is coming to an end, my new term is just a couple of weeks away, and I have all but lost complete control of all the things I am supposed to be getting done. The only thing going like a metronome is my community garden plot, which has been churning out massive harvests of tomatoes (and peppers and cucumbers) every other day since the middle of August. If you follow me on Instagram you’ve seen some of this. This has, of course, added to the to-do pile: even though I’ve given massive amounts of tomatoes away to various undeserving and ungrateful swine, I’ve spent a lot of the last two weeks making pasta sauce for the 17 months of winter that will be upon us soon in Minnesota. On the blog, I’ve tried my best to keep on top of my restaurant reports from our summer travels and I’m glad to say I’ve not fallen so very far behind. By the end of September I should have all the reports from Seoul and Kyoto done, as well as a good number from Delhi. I’ll continue to have weekly reports from the Twin Cities metro as well; and I’ll have the usual four booze review posts that’ll go up on the remaining Mondays of the month. Continue reading →

It’s been a very busy month and a half. We left for Japan towards the end of June, visiting Tokyo and Kyoto. From Japan we made our way to South Korea for a week in Seoul. From Seoul we traveled to Delhi. Finally, a little over two weeks after that, we returned to Minnesota, having literally gone all the way around the world.

In Japan we were tourists; in Seoul the missus and I were working; in Delhi we were visiting family and helping sort out a number of issues with my parents’ health. Through it all we ate quite well. I’m almost halfway through my reports from Japan; there’s a bunch from Seoul to follow as well. We didn’t eat out quite as much in Delhi but I have a few more from there as well to come. I know I say this after every trip and then fail to follow through, but I’m going to try to get these reports done as quickly as I can. What this means is that for the next few months you can probably expect four restaurant reports each week—with Twin Cities metro reports returning soon as well. You can also expect my weekly booze reviews—which were on hiatus in July—to start back up next week. Continue reading →

I can’t remember the last bottle of whisky I purchased. Over the last couple of years I’ve probably only purchased 2-3 bottles a year. I still get every release of the Laphroaig Cairdeas; if lightning strikes and I come across a bottle of Springbank 10, I get it. I used to get whichever new release I saw of the Laphroaig 10 CS, but I haven’t even looked for any of those in a couple of years. A significant part of the reason for this—and my lowered rate of reviewing—is that I am trying very hard to drink my whisky hoard down over the new few years. Another part is that unlike in the period when I purchased a lot and accumulated most of the whisky I am drinking down now, the last few years—maybe more—haven’t seemed like a good time for whisky drinkers. Prices have risen dramatically across the board; whisky with any age on it has become either scarce or too expensive or both. Indeed, I’ve lost touch with the whisky industry almost completely and barely even read any whisky blogs anymore. Of course, this means there’s a good chance that as a result I am unaware of recent/new releases that are in fact worth purchasing. If you are someone who is more in touch, and thinks there have been new things hitting the market that are worth checking out, tell me what I’ve been missing.

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. Continue reading →

I somehow didn’t notice that I’d left this post in draft status over the weekend. You’ve probably been beside yourself wondering what the most-read posts on my blog in May were and what I might be posting about in June. I understand and apologize for the pain you have experienced. But here is all that information now. I would advise reading it slowly and in pieces, not trying to take it all in at once. There’s no sense in risking further harm.

I’d reported in the previous installment of this series that both page-view and unique user counts had been down in April. Well, they picked up a little bit in May but not a lot. As to whether the drastically-lowered pace of my postings is leading to people in checking in less frequently or it’s just another symptom of the fallen world we live in, I don’t know. I can’t promise you that things will be very different in June. Well, they might be a little different towards the end of the month (see below). But first let’s see what things looked like in May. Continue reading →

After boffo numbers to close 2024 and open 2025, both page views and unique visitor counts were down in April. This is a normal pattern. I don’t claim to understand why but traffic is always lower than normal in April and November in most years. I also didn’t post as much as I was planning to in April. Not only did I not complete all my food reports from my trip to Delhi in March, I did not have a Twin Cities restaurant report last week. This is because, as I said yesterday, I have been extremely busy, not just with the regular school term but with early preparation for the second run of my Bombay-Seoul off-campus program, which will visit both cities next year. Anyway, May should be a little less frenzied on all fronts. You can expect the usual booze reviews on Mondays—in May these will all be whisky reviews—and food reports on Wednesdays (for the Twin Cities) and the weekends (for my remaining Delhi reports). As for cooking and recipes, you’ll have to continue looking to my Instagram account. Continue reading →

Well, it’s been a hectic few weeks. My last term of teaching ended on March 12 and I left for the airport an hour after my last class, headed to Delhi. I returned to Minnesota at the end of last week and have been in a fog of jet lag ever since. I’d barely adjusted to the time shift in Delhi before it was time to come back and now my body’s wires are well and truly crossed. Helpfully, my new term of teaching began yesterday. Thankfully, I’m wide awake during the day and so only slightly more addled than usual during class time. In Delhi I ate out about as much as I usually do when there on my own. Some of those meal reports have already showed up on the blog in March (Matamaal, Ping’s Bia Hoi, Shilloi, Fort City). The rest will be posted over the next few weekends. My goal is to have them all done before the end of April. Twin Cities metro restaurant reports will go up alongside these reports in April on Wednesdays as normal. And I’ll have the usual weekly booze reviews on Mondays as well. Alright, let’s see what March’s traffic patterns looked like. Continue reading →

Last month’s version of this post began by noting that January had been a record month on the blog for traffic, with all-time highs—by some margin—for both page-views and unique visitors. This was due to the sudden explosion of interest in India in the controversy over the owner of Indri, which led a lot of people via search to my review of their whisky, Trini, early last year in which I’d noted his scrubbed history/identity as the killer of Jessica Lal. That interest tapered off in February—I’ve no idea if all the outrage amounted to anything finally or if it’s business as usual for the company. I rather suspect the latter. My review of Trini was still the most-read post in February but the page-views were only about 10% of what they had been in January (which is to say, they were still quite high). I’m not sure if any of the short-term Indian visitors have stuck around—I hope at least a few will become occasional visitors. What else were people reading on the blog in February? Here is the rest of the month’s top 10, followed by a quick look ahead to March. Continue reading →

December ended with a bang on the blog, with a sudden, dramatic rise in page views. In the previous month’s look back I’d expressed some skepticism about this increased traffic, particularly as it had not been accompanied by a similar rise in unique visitors. Well, January saw a record being set for page views on the blog, with an increase of nearly 10% over December, which had been the previous record holder. But this rise in page views was accompanied by a dramatic rise in the unique visitor count, which was 56% higher than the previous high in December. This time, however, there’s no mystery about the increased traffic. Almost all of the increase came from India and had to do primarily with one post. Unusually, this post is a whisky review—for the Indri-Trini; but the reasons for the sudden uptick in interest in it had to do not with the whisky itself but with the proprietors. You see, in early January it finally became news in India that the owner and face of Indri is someone who had previously been convicted of a heinous murder. This seems to have become news belatedly because the company is making ownership moves in Scotland and the press there, unlike in India, reported on his history. As my review from a year ago had already brought up this history, it turns out it is one of the top hits for Google searches for “Indri Manu Sharma“. And so. Continue reading →

Yesterday I posted a look back at December on the blog. Here now is some navel-gazing on a larger scale: a look at traffic trends on the blog across 2024 as a whole. This is likely of interest to no one other than myself but here it is anyway. You’re welcome.

In 2023 I’d reported that 2022 had seen the highest traffic numbers in the history of the blog, up by 10% over the previous year. In 2024 I’d reported that page views in 2023 had risen by a further 33% over 2022 (with unique visitors having risen by 29%). Well, this trend accelerated even further in 2024. Page views for 2024 were up by 43% over 2023 and unique visitors rose even more sharply by 70%! For context both those raw totals were more than twice those reported for 2022. Unfortunately, WordPress.com’s stats don’t display much granularity in terms of where on the web traffic originates but my sense is most of this dramatic increase is down to people arriving on the blog via search engines. I guess I have now posted enough “content” over the years that my back pages are pulling in people. All of this has coincided, after all, with my cutting back on new posts. 2024 also saw the fewest posts made in a year in the history of the blog. As I’ve quipped before, people obviously enjoy the blog more when I don’t post. Continue reading →

Happy New Year to you all. I said yesterday at the end of my review of Christmas lunch at Grand Szechuan that today I’d be posting the look back to the past year on the blog. I’ll actually have that tomorrow. Today I have only the smaller scale look back at what was popular on the blog in December and a brief look-ahead to the first month of 2025.

Traffic in December was a bit higher than in November for most of the month; and then in the last week there was a dramatic spike in page-views that made it not only the busiest month on the blog in 2024 but the busiest month ever by quite a margin. Frankly, I’m not sure if this page-view spike was/is legit; it’s possible that WordPress.com’s stats engine stopped filtering out bot traffic that it usually separates from traffic reports. I say this because while the unique visitors count was also higher in December 2024 than in any other month in the blog’s history, this increase was not particularly remarkable—just about a hundred more visitors than in September 2024, which had been the month with the previous high. So it’s hard to square the reasonable rise in unique visitors with the far sharper rise in page views. Whatever the truth of the traffic, what were people reading on the blog in December? Continue reading →

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 →

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 →

Another month in the books and it was yet another month of high traffic on the blog, with the highest-ever totals registered for monthly page views and unique visitors. I have no idea what’s driving all this traffic. I’d like to believe that the world is finally waking up to my genius but it’s probably just a combination of some transient Google algorithm quirk and the automated WordPress.com SEO tools doing their thing. I certainly have not been doing anything differently this year. I post on the blog and add links to my Twin Cities restaurant reports to a few Facebook groups and that’s it; in fact, I’ve even stopped posting links on the blog’s own Facebook page as the site made it really difficult to do so a few months ago. And it’s not even Twin Cities restaurant reports that are driving the traffic, as you will see below. Once again, the most viewed posts of the month were travel reports from outside the US and I have not been plugging those anywhere really. Whatever the reason, the stats for 2024 as a whole are already past 2023’s numbers, with a whole quarter of the year still to go. So, what were people looking at the most in September? Continue reading →