Back to Seoul. So far I have reported on meals eaten during our week-long visit in July that centered on fried chicken, noodle soup and dumplings, naengmyeon, and the pleasures of Gwangjang Market. Here now is a report on the first of two meals centered on what in the US is one of the most iconic genres of Korean food: grilled meat. Arguably, in the US Korean bbq is mostly identified with grilled beef, with pork as a sort of handmaiden. Beef is probably in the ascendancy in Korea as well but, unlike in most American cities with established Korean communities and food scenes, there are a large number of establishments that focus on pork, and specifically on Korean pork. We happened on one of them, more or less by accident, while wandering the area around Namdaemun Market in seach of dinner: Hwapo Sikdang. Continue reading
Inja (Delhi, July 2025)
This meal represents one of the worst choices I’ve made in recent trips to Delhi. Not, I hasten to clarify, on account of the meal itself. No, the terrible decision was to make plans that needed us to drive from Gurgaon to Friends Colony on a weeknight. No one who lives in the Delhi NCR will be surprised to hear this but it took us more than two hours to get from DLF Phase 1 to Friends Colony. Total distance? 16 km or 10 miles. After this ordeal the dinner, at Inja in the Manor Hotel, would have needed to have been very good to not be disappointing. I am happy to say that it was indeed very good. Almost as happy as I am to say that the return journey took only 45 minutes. Read on for the details (on the meal, not the return journey, which was uneventful). Continue reading
All Saints (Minneapolis)
All Saints opened in North East Minneapolis just about four years ago. They received acclaim from the local press almost immediately. Cynics—not me, of course—might say that it’s hard to find a high-end restaurant in these parts that hasn’t received high acclaim from the local press. But in this case the acclaim from the press was matched by a number of regular readers of this blog who wrote in behind the scenes to recommend I eat there or to ask why I hadn’t already eaten there. The answer to that question is partly that the thing that had impressed itself on my mind from the early press was that this was a restaurant with not much meat on the menu. Now, I like my vegetables but when I go out to eat I do like to have a number of fleshly options. And so they receded from view a bit. When I looked at their website again recently I noted that the menu is described as “veg forward, meat friendly”. Perhaps this slogan has always been on the menu but I’m not sure what it means right now when 50% of the menu comprises meat dishes. Well, one of the things it means is that I made a reservation and we finally descended on them this past weekend, accompanied by a couple of friends we eat out with often. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Glengoyne 12 CS, Pre-2012 Release
Looking at my cabinet of open bottles, I noticed I did not have any younger sherried whiskies open that do not have any peat involvement. It’s not that I have anything against peated and sherried whiskies—why, some of my best friends are peated and sherried whiskies; it’s just that it’s nice to have some variety on hand. And so down I went into my whisky dungeon to see if there were any candidates for opening. There was this bottle of Glengoyne 12 CS. I remembered where I’d purchased it—Lowry Hills Liquor in Minneapolis—but not when. My spreadsheet—very assiduously updated in those days—tells me it was in 2012. I then looked for a bottle code to see if I could pin the release year down further and this is what I found etched towards the bottom of the bottle: L5109BB and below it, 3 15:46. Normally I would guess this meant it was bottled on the 109th day of 2005 at 3.46 pm but I confess I don’t really know how Glengoyne’s bottle codes worked then (or now, for that matter) and there does not seem to be any intel on that online. If you know more about it, please write in below. What I can tell you is that I don’t have so very much experience with Glengoyne; I’ve reviewed very few—the last almost exactly three years ago. But I’ve generally enjoyed what I’ve had even if I have not yet encountered one I thought to be remarkable. I can tell you that this bottle is not going to break that streak (I had purchased more than one back then and I have the score I’d assigned then, in my pre-blog days, recorded in my spreadsheet). But I’m glad to make its acquaintance again anyway. Continue reading
Mizo Diner 2 (Delhi, July 2025)
I ate at Mizo Diner for the first time in March 2024 and I had it on my list of my favourite meals of the year. I’d hoped to get back there during my solo trip to Delhi last December but it didn’t end up happening. And it didn’t happen on my solo trip this March either. But in July I finally made it back again. I don’t think it will end up on my list of best meals of 2025—there’s a bit too much competition in the casual/affordable category from our Japan trip—but it was a very good meal again. Back in 2024 the missus and I had met an old friend there. This time we took the boys along with us, being more confident a year and a half later that their palates had expanded enough for them to enjoy what for them are the more unfamiliar flavours of North East Indian food. It was a good bet: they loved it too. Herewith the details. Continue reading
Grand Szechuan, September 2025 (Bloomington, MN)
I regret to inform that till this past weekend it had somehow been almost five months since we’d last eaten at Grand Szechuan. I blame our summer travels and the fact that most of the friends we typically go there with were out of town when we got back. On the other hand, I am very happy to inform that is now only three days since our last meal at Grand Szechuan. We went back for lunch this Sunday with most of our aforementioned crew of Grand Szechuan regulars and did our usual excessive order. We got a mix of all-time favourites and dishes that we had not ordered in a while. Do I need to say that it was an excellent meal? Well, it was. Continue reading
Nene Chicken (Seoul, July 2025)
Let’s keep the Seoul reports rolling. When last seen we were eating noodle soup and dumplings at Myeondong Kyoja. Today I have for you a fried chicken report. We ate fried chicken on a few occasions on our previous, longer stay in Seoul in Feb/March of 2024. One of those meals was at an outpost of one of the major fried chicken chicken chains, Kyochon. On this trip we ate it at an outpost of another major fried chicken chain, Nene Chicken. Kyochon was founded at the start of the 1990s and Nene Chicken was founded at the end of the decade. While perhaps not quite as well-known in the US as Kyochon and some of the other major players that have set up franchises here, Nene Chicken has a very large presence in South Korea as well as in East and South East Asia (and also Australia, New Zealand and Canada). Most importantly for our needs, they had a location a couple of minutes walk from our flat in Cheongpa-dong. Continue reading
Grosperrin 1988 (Cognac)
It’s been a while since my last review of a Cognac—almost exactly five years in fact. That review was of the second of two casks bottled by Pasquet for Serious Brandy. Both those Pasquet casks contained very old brandy (from the Petite Champagne region): 57-58 years old. Today’s review is of a Cognac that seems like a sprightly youngster by comparison. Like those Pasquet casks, this Grosperrin (from the Grande Champagne region) is also a sourced Cognac. Whereas Pasquet does make their own Cognac as well, Grosperrin is strictly the Cognac version of a Scottish independent bottler—with the difference that it is their name and not that of the original producer that is on the label. I can tell you that this was distilled in 1988. I’m not sure exactly when it was bottled but I think it might be 2017—at least there’s a strip at the top that seems to say that the contents of the cask were verified in 2017. If anyone knows more about how to read this kind of thing or just knows anything about this specific cask, please write in below. The pertinent information is that the label specifies that it is from Lot Nº559 which produced 330 litres at 48.8%. That’s a lot of Cognac; is it good? Let’s find out. Continue reading
Myeongdong Kyoja (Seoul, July 2025)
My previous report from Seoul was of dinner at Nampo Myeonok. That meal was centered on naengmyeon. My report today is of a lunch at another of Seoul’s venerable restaurants. This meal was also centered on noodles and noodle soups, none of which were naengmyeon. We were at Myeongdong Kyoja, a restaurant, famous for their food and also for only having four dishes on the menu between April and October (and only three between November and March). We were there in July. There were four dishes on the menu and there were four of us there to eat, and so we got one of everything; it was the right thing to do. Continue reading
Moti Mahal (Gurgaon, July 2025)
On Tuesday I posted a brief report on lunch at one of the Gurgaon outposts of the North Indian restaurant, Daryaganj. Most of the post was in fact taken up with their battle with the more established restaurant, Moti Mahal, specifically over the ownership of the claim to have originated butter chicken and dal makhani. You can (re)read that post to catch up on the saga but the key facts are these: Moti Mahal was founded in 1947 by three partners, one of whom, K.L Gujral was long-identified with the restaurant and credited as the inventor of butter chicken. The grandson of one of the other partners, K.L Jaggi, opened Daryaganj with a partner a year after his grandfather’s death (and 27 years after he’d exited Moti Mahal) with the marketing claim that it was in fact his grandfather who’d originated butter chicken and dal makhani, thus claiming that history for his new restaurant. A court case later both restaurants are now claiming to have done so. At the M3M IFC complex in Gurgaon they’re doing so within a few hundred feet of each other and 10 days after eating at that branch of Daryaganj we went back to M3M and ate at Moti Mahal. Revisionist/competing historical claims aside, which did we like better? Read on to find out. Continue reading
Tenant XIV (Minneapolis)
We ate a very good dinner at Tenant in June before heading off on our summer travels. At the end of my report on that meal I said that we hoped to be back later in the summer to eat the current version of their tomato water course. That tomato water course—more a genre than a specific dish—is one of our two favourite culinary ways to mark the transition from late-summer to fall in Minnesota; Alma’s chilled corn soup is the other. We ate the corn soup at our dinner at Alma in August; and I’m happy to say that when we did make it back to Tenant a couple of weeks later there was indeed a tomato water dish as part of the proceedings. I’m even happier to say that both it and the menu as a whole were excellent, surpassing our previous dinner. Here are the details. Continue reading
Daryaganj (Gurgaon, July 2025)
Revisionist history has been rife in Indian politics for some time now; and so it seems only fitting that it should now also be present in the restaurant world. I am referring not to the many lies Indian restaurants put on menus about village recipes and chefs’ grandmothers but to a very specific and high profile controversy between two Delhi restaurants: Moti Mahal and Daryaganj. The name Moti Mahal may be familiar to you if you have read up on the history of North Indian restaurant food. It was founded in Daryaganj in Old Delhi in 1947 by three friends who had left Peshawar for Delhi during Partition. This is the restaurant at which the previous night’s tandoori chicken was recycled into a rich tomato gravy, thus giving birth to butter chicken (they also lay claim to dal makhani). This has been accepted history for some time now. Well, until 2019 anyway. That’s when a new restaurant named Daryaganj opened, which also claims to be the inventor of butter chicken and dal makhani. Now, you may be wondering how a restaurant that opened in 2019 can lay claim to dishes that everyone agrees another had been making since 1947. That’s where things get spicy. Read on. Continue reading
Ellenstown 12
Back when I started this blog in 2013, Ellenstown was a not uncommon sight in American liquor stores with non-standard whisky selections. In case you’re more recently arrived at the pursuit of single malt whisky, Ellenstown is not the name of a defunct distillery but a name used for two Islay whiskies brought to the US by CVI Brands, an importer from San Carlos, CA. (I’m not sure if these were released elsewhere in the world as well or if there were releases elsewhere with other age statements.) There were two of these: a 10 yo and a 12 yo. The 10 yo was said to be an Ardbeg and I recall both Ardbeg and Caol Ila being named as likely candidates for the 12 yo. Whether any of this speculation was based on actual knowledge, I don’t know; I would expect that the Ellenstown name would imply one of the distilleries closer to Port Ellen—so Ardbeg, more likely than Caol Ila, but also no reason why it couldn’t be Laphroaig (Lagavulin not being made available usually to indies). At any rate, I remember thinking it likely that the 10 yo was Ardbeg. I certainly saw it more frequently in MN and went through a couple of bottles before the blog got going. My spreadsheet tells me I also tried the 12 yo back in the day but I have no memory of it. Luckily, I did have a bottle on my shelves (along with two of the 10 yo) and so can now open it and take some proper notes. I notice now that the label says it was a single cask release. Was there more than one cask? If you still have a bottle lying around let me know if the rear label has the same barcode number as mine: 7 91774 10388 1. Okay, let’s get to it. Continue reading
Nampo Myeonok (Seoul, July 2025)
Back to Seoul. When last seen there, we were eating a casual lunch at Gwangjang Market. As I noted in that post, there is no better food in the world for hot weather than mul naengmyeon, the chilled noodle soup featuring buckwheat noodles and a delicate broth made with beef and dongchimi (radish water kimchi). Nampo Myeonok is famous for their Pyongyang-style mul naengmyeon, having been serving it in Seoul since 1972. This was high on our agenda for our first meal in Seoul on this trip (as I also noted in that Gwangjang Market post, my Seoul reports are going to go up out of sequence). We took the subway to Euljiro and made our way to the restaurant through lanes full of restaurants and people of all ages outside and inside them. This aspect of Seoul in the evenings is one of my favourite urban experiences in the world; the energy of the city (and its love of food and drink) is on full display. Continue reading
Hot Grainz III (St. Paul, MN)
We ate at Hot Grainz’s original location in the Sunrise Plaza on University Avenue for the first time early last summer, and I was ready, on the strength of that meal, to proclaim them the best Thai restaurant in the Twin Cities. Our follow-up meals there later in the summer confirmed that evaluation. We didn’t end up getting back there later last year or early this year. But that was because of the seating situation at that location: basically, it was very difficult to find a table in the tiny dining room on weekends; and coming, as we are, from 50 minutes away, takeout was not a great option either. This seemed to become an insurmountable problem when I heard earlier this year that they had moved to a takeout-only option. I hadn’t yet confirmed this for myself when I got the happy news—while we were travelling—that they had moved to a new, larger location on W. 7th Street with ample seating. We’d planned a meal there as our first lunch out after we got back but then ran into another unexpected discovery as we were about to get into the car: they’re not open for lunch on Sundays. We ended up going to Zao Bakery+Cafe instead that day (and had a very nice meal). We finally made it to the new location of Hot Grainz for lunch this past Saturday, and I can confirm that it is indeed, in our family’s opinion, the best Thai restaurant in the Twin Cities. Read on to see what we ate. Continue reading
August/September 2025
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
Chaat, Thrice (Gurgaon, December 2024, March/July 2025)
Okay, let’s jump from Seoul to Delhi but let’s keep the casual market vibe going. No, Delhi doesn’t have anything quite like Gwangjang Market but casual food in markets abounds. This report is of some casual food eaten in a market in Gurgaon (technically a separate city in a different state but part of the Delhi NCR or National Capital Region) across my three most recent trips home: in December last year, earlier this year in March and again this July. All of the meals center on chaat and all were eaten at Galleria, a popular outdoor mall in Gurgaon, some by myself and some with my nephews, who love chaat as much as I do. Continue reading
Restaurant Alma XVI, Summer 2025 (Minneapolis)
When summer in Minnesota begins to edge in the direction of fall, our thoughts begin to turn to two of our favourite restaurant dishes in the Twin Cities: the tomato water course at Tenant, and the chilled corn soup at Alma. Soon after our return from our summer travels, I pestered Alma’s executive chef, Maggie Whelan to find out when the soup would make a return to the menu. After the 20th of August, she said. And so I made a booking for Saturday, August 23 and arrived with my lawyer’s number ready to dial in case it (the soup, not my lawyer’s number*) was not in fact on the menu. I think you will agree that I would have ample grounds for a lawsuit if that were to be the case, my friendly relationship with the restaurant** be damned!. I am happy to inform therefore that there was no need for legal shenanigans: the soup was on the menu and we ate the soup; the soup was excellent but so was everything else we ate. Herewith the details. Continue reading