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? Continue reading →

Just another month of summer before things get underway for the new school year. I’ve been cooking up a storm at home since we got back from California at the end of June. Those of you who follow me on Instagram have seen some of that (the rest of you should follow me on Instagram—what’s wrong with you?). All that cooking—and, okay, some other commitments as well—has meant I’ve not been able to make as much headway as I would have liked on my backlog of travel meal reports. If it can be believed, I still have one report to go from Seoul in February/March and one more to go from New York in May—to say nothing of a whole bunch from Northern and Southern California. Well, I hope to have the Seoul and New York reports in the bag by this weekend (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) and most of the California reports done by the end of August. Don’t complain: at least my booze reviews have been published on schedule. Okay, enough about my unreliable posting: what were people reading on the blog in July? Continue reading →

Summer is well and truly here in Southern Minnesota, as is some down time after a peripatetic and rather exhausting first six months of the year. January, February and March found us in Bombay, Seoul and then Delhi. In May I made a trip to New York and New Jersey. And we just got back from two and a half weeks in California. But now we have no plans to go anywhere for a while. I’ll be spending most of my time for the next few months either in my community garden plot or at my desk finishing up a writing project I’ve been working on for a while (more on this at a later date). Of course, I’ll also be cooking and we’ll be eating out regularly in the Twin Cities metro. Reports from the latter will show up on the blog; to track the cooking you’ll have to follow me on Instagram. In July I hope to finally finish up with my mealreports from Seoul (three to go) and New York (one to go), and to make good headway on the reports from our recent time in California. But first let’s see what was popular on the blog in June. Continue reading →

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. Continue reading →

Now that I have made changes to my posting activity on the blog, I may as well also change the nature of my month-opening posts. Unlike in the past, I will no longer have long lists of potential whisky reviews for you to help me narrow down to 10-12. The whisky/booze reviews will be what they will be, based on what catches my fancy when I’m down in the whisky lair looking for a new bottle to open. So if you’re still interested in my whisky reviews, each week’s review will be a surprise. What I’m going to do instead, going forward, in these first-of-the-month posts is give you a glimpse at what was popular, or at least what was read a lot in the previous month on the blog. In other words, a look at my navel. In this particular case, April 2024 was, in terms of both page views and unique visitors, the busiest month in the blog’s history. Almost 21,000 unique visitors loaded almost 100,000 pages (yes, yes, I know, these aren’t particularly impressive numbers in the abstract). What were they looking at? Continue reading →

I’ve quipped before that April 1 is the day every year that comedy goes to whisky blogs to die. Now, I don’t really read whisky blogs anymore but I assume this is still true. And so I must assure you that while this post is being made on April 1, it is not by any means an April Fools post. You might think that the lack of humour in it might already be a tip-off in that direction but see above about whisky blogs and comedy. The question, of course, that many of my original readers have asked and answered for themselves in the last five or six years is whether this is still a whisky blog. When I started the blog, just over 11 years ago, there was no possibility of confusion on this point. Whisky content was pretty much all there was for a while. Then restaurant reviews began to creep in, followed by recipes, and eventually by food commentary. The whisky focus got increasingly diluted even though the whisky content didn’t actually get reduced. I’ve been posting three whisky/booze reviews a week pretty steadily for most of the last decade. Most of my whisky readership, however, has evaporated in the last few years, with only a few die-hards still checking in regularly. Now I’m about to give them even less reason to do so. Continue reading →

We’re now into the third month of our extended time away from home. We’ll be in Seoul for another couple of weeks and then in Delhi for a bit before returning to Minnesota before the end of March. The blog will have hit its 11th anniversary just a few days before we get back. There will be some changes to the blog in its 12th year, which I’ll announce at the start of April. For March, however, things will proceed as they have for several years now: three booze reviews a week and a food post or two. Well, the food posts will show up more frequently than usual, as I’m trying my best to get done with my Bombay reports (three more to go) and then catch up with my Seoul/Korea reports (running a little further away from me every day). I’ll probably wait till I’m done with all of those before starting on any reports on the inevitable Delhi eating out—so those will probably not show up on the blog till April. As for the booze reviews, I cannot offer you the usual choice this month. I’ve not been reviewing anything while on this trip, and now I’m at the end of my banked reviews. So all I can tell you is what you can expect this month. Continue reading →

Is it February already? We’ve been in Bombay for almost exactly a month and it’s flown by in a flurry of activities and outings. We’ve been eating well, both at home and out. I’ve been walking down to the fish market at Sassoon Dock every couple of days and we’ve been cooking various fish and seafood at home. We’ve also been eating out 2-4 times a week, either at program meals or by ourselves. The meal reports began to show up on the blog in January but I quickly fell behind. I’ve posted five so far: Soam, Shri Datta Boarding, Delux Kerala, Lagan Nu Bhonu at RTI, Highway Gomantak. But I have another seven or eight reports waiting in the wings. What I’ve not had is much time to write anything up. Hell, I haven’t even had time in the last three days to post anything to my Instagram! With one more week in Bombay and some more eating out to go, I’ll be well behind by the time we leave for Seoul in a week. But I do hope to get caught up over the next few weeks so that I don’t then fall too far behind with the inevitable Seoul food reports. Continue reading →

Yesterday, I posted my customary look ahead to the month to come on the blog. Here now is a look back at the past year.

I reported last year that 2022 saw the highest traffic to date on the blog, up by 10% from the previous year. Well, 2023 bested 2022 by some margin. Page views were up by 33% over 2022 and, more importantly, the number of unique visitors rose sharply as well: by 29%. This is as gratifying as it is mystifying. Mystifying because I see this as a very niche and minor corner of the internet; gratifying because, well, because even a miserable bastard like me does appreciate having an audience. Where exactly did that audience come from last year and what did they mostly read? Don’t be impatient: I’m about to tell you. Continue reading →

Well, it’s 2024. I’ll have a look back at 2023 on the blog soon. I don’t have a look ahead to the whole year today, only to the first month. We are off to Bombay in a few hours and will be there through the first week of February before then heading to Seoul for another extended period. I’ll have some adjustments to announce when I get back (which will be right after the blog’s 11th anniversary) but for now it’s going to be business as usual on the blog. As I said in December’s iteration of this post, I had been assiduously at work in the last couple of months of 2023 on banking enough booze reviews to take me through the entire period of my absence from my shelves. So you can continue to expect three booze reviews a month and at least one food report. The major departure is that in January almost all those food reports will be Bombay-centered. Continue reading →

Well, 2023 is almost in the books. Even with a month to go, it’s been a banner year for traffic on the blog, in terms of both page views and visitors—but I’ll say more about all that in my year-end post at the end of the month. Before that, here is one last look ahead to a month in 2023. This is a transitional month in some ways as I’m off to first Bombay and then Seoul at the very start of 2024, and won’t be back till the end of March. I’m not taking any samples with me for review while I’m traveling. This means all whisky/booze reviews for the first three months of the year have to be completed before I go. That sounds like a lot, but I’ve been steadily building up a back log since mid-September and already have enough reviews done to take me through the first week of February. The rest should be done before the middle of December. What this means is that for the next three months I can offer you a steadily shrinking list of themed options to choose from. By the time March 1 rolls around, there’ll only be four themed weeks left and there won’t be a choice then. So make the most of it while you can. Continue reading →

October was a very busy month on the blog. By which I mean not that I did very much posting than I usually do but that traffic was up considerably. More people stopped by than in any month since January. The most popular post by page views (it may not be by gnashing of teeth) was my list of my favourite Twin Cities restaurant dishes. Food dominated the rest of the top 10 read posts as well, with five restaurants (Pho Tempo, Bukhara, 112 Eatery, Trattoria Monti, Bar La Grassa), a grocery store (Ha Tien), a recipe (for beans) and my original ranking of Indian restaurants in the Twin Cities metro in the list. The lone non-food entry was not a whisky review but a post about a poem (I guess this poem is on an exam list again somewhere in India). Just outside the top 10 was my post about Loch Lomond’s loose grasp of history—and just beyond that was the first booze review to make a showing: the Darroze 50. I won’t be surprised if the review of the 2023 Laphroaig Cairdeas, published at the end of October, makes it onto the November list. Continue reading →

Whoops—I forgot to hit “publish” on this! I apologize for ruining your weekend—I imagine you spent all day, Sunday wondering if I was going to be posting anything on the blog this month and weeping uncontrollably at the thought that I might not. Don’t worry, I am. And here’s what you can expect.

On the booze front, odds are good that there will be very little whisky reviewed this month, and quite possible no single malt whisky. I’m going to start off with a week of brandy and then move to a week of mezcal (and there might be another week of mezcal before the month is out—possibly even a third!). Having finished a number of open bottles recently, I will be opening a few bottles of single malt from my stores this month but I’m more likely to post reviews of a few very old single grain whiskies. If there are any single malt reviews it’ll probably be a themed week of wine cask Edradours. If this prospect entices or revolts you, let me know in the comments. Continue reading →

After most of the summer away, I have been back at home in Minnesota for almost two weeks now. I’m still not back on track on my usual routines, however, and this has been showing on the blog as well with the uncertain posting schedules of the summer still persisting. Even this standard monthly look ahead post is almost half a day late. I had to root around in my sample stashes for a good while to make sure I had enough to review. Good news: I just about do. And I even have one week of reviews done from before I left for the summer (I ended up reviewing more Irish whiskeys in August than I’d expected I would and so there’s a small surplus). By the end of my next week I should be back in my usual tasting/reviewing groove (I haven’t taken notes on anything since I got back) and so you can expect the usual three whisky/booze reviews per week. Restaurant reports will be a mix of Italy, Ireland and the Twin Cities. I’m going to try to accelerate the pace of posting those reports so as to become completely current by the end of September. Oh yes, cooking/recipe posts: those will still be on hiatus on the blog (probably through at least the end of the year); if you’re interested though, I’m once again posting cooking Reels on Instagram. Continue reading →

In August I will review some whiskies distilled and matured in Scotland and Ireland. That’s as specific as I can get on that front. This month I am not asking you to help me choose what to review as I don’t really have much of a plan beyond the highlands whiskies on the docket for this week. I do have some single malt reviews on the bench but I had hoped to review more Irish whiskies while in Dublin and am still hoping I might have the time and opportunity to do. The former is in shorter supply than the latter. The excellent Celtic Whiskey Shop certainly has enough miniatures of Irish whiskies I have never tasted (or in many cases, heard of) to keep me going all month. But the program I am directing here is running me ragged and most evenings I am too tired to drink whiskey, leave alone review it. Let’s see how it goes. Continue reading →

Greetings from Tuscany, where it has been alternating rain and sun for the last couple of days. No, there is no need to feel sorry for me. We have been touristing and eating with a vengeance for the last two weeks and will continue to do so for just over another week. Then we’ll head to Dublin where I will be directing the second half of one of the college’s summer programs. On the blog, however, the geography and the weather never change. Here it remains the land of three whisky reviews and at least one restaurant report per week. Now, I will say that I was hoping to get out more quick Italy restaurant reports out during the trip (as I did with Attilio last week) but the internet has not exactly been high speed since we left Rome. I can tell you what the likely whisky roadmap is—and you can help me choose four out of six possible themed options—and you’ll just have to wait and see on the restaurant front. I don’t know how you’re going to get through this period of uncertainty but somehow you’re going to have to find a way. Continue reading →

Summer is here. With a bit of a vengeance in southern Minnesota: it’s been pretty hot here this past week (my readers in North India should stop rolling their eyes). I’m looking forward to the break but it won’t be as long as usual this year. That’s because we’ll be spending six weeks of it in Dublin and Belfast in the second half of the summer, where I’ll be leading an off-campus program. But before that we’ll get to do some traveling of our own elsewhere in Europe: we’re off to Italy for a few weeks in the third week of June (we’ll go from there to Ireland). A busy summer of travel, and most of it spent outside the US, means there won’t be very much Twin Cities-centered restaurant reviewing in the months ahead. There will, of course, be restaurant reports from Italy and Ireland instead (and I realize now that I never did get around to posting my restaurant reports from my exploratory trip to Ireland last July). I’m not quite sure what will happen with the whisky reviews. I have enough reviews already in the bag to take me through the end of the month and into July. As to whether I’ll have time before leaving to bank reviews for the rest of the summer as well, I don’t know. It’s possible that in late July and August you’ll get a bunch of Irish whiskey reviews from Ireland. Continue reading →