Food diaries

On some amazing food had while on the road in the US - part 1

If you follow me here or on my socials, you might now by now that when I am on tour I always look for interesting food to explore.
I just arrived back home after over three weeks on the road in the US (mostly east coast) with the Silk Road Ensemble and here you can find out what I ate while being on tour. I will make a part two to this post where I explore all the different bbq’s and meats I tried while on the road.

Nashville

Had a wonderful overall experience at Husk in Nashville. This is a restaurant I had heard about from its beginnings with chef Sean Brock. It also happened to be really near our hotel on a day off, so I managed to get a reservation and went to visit with a friend.
We shared a beef tartare with crawfish xo sauce as a starter and it was spicy, crunchy and delicious. We also shared two mains, a trout with carolina gold rice, and a pork with farro, squash and kale. On both dishes we tried, the accompaniment was even better than the actual meat-fish. The Carolina gold rice that came with the trout was so tasty and almost caramely in flavour…and the squash farro was delicious and with a nice bite. Shoutout also to the kale with chimichurri. Cocktails were also very tasty, would definitely recommend!

Birmingham

While in Birmingham AL, I visited Helen restaurant for a quick lunch.
I had a beautiful grilled cobia fish with a little herb salad and some za’atar potatoes on the side. I never had this fish before and really enjoyed its firm texture and the charred flavours. Reminded me a bit of a great swordfish steak, but a bit less flaky. This was kind of a perfect lunch for me, almost Mediterranean style!

Charleston

We were recommended by several people to check out Hannibal’s kitchen, a classic local soul food spot where one can try many dishes of the Gullah Geechee tradition.
It was a beautiful day and we sat outside while enjoying Hannibal’s crab rice meal. This is very flavoursome sauteed crab claw meat with onion & peppers served over rice with extra shrimp. I always order collards when in the south, as somehow they remind me of the many bitter greens we have in southern Italy, and these ones were especially delicious.

the day of the show I went for an early lunch at another highly recommended spot called 167 raw fish bar. I had a craving for oysters and this was the spot to try some. I asked my server to pick his favorite 4 (they had at least 12 kinds in their menu). These were all incredibly delicious, but a special mention to the first one at the top of the picture, an oyster from Maine called Cadillac, it was rich, lush and almost buttery in flavour. I usually stay away from all dressings and mignonettes and I like to eat oysters pure. For me they’re like a mouthful of sea and I enjoy very much the pure salty taste of each oyster’s. I was also taught by an oyster trader to always sip the water before eating the oyster, as it is the best way to enjoy its unique maroir (like terroir for wines!).
After I had a tuna burger, which was also very good. It was not a tuna steak but an actual patty made with minced tuna and cooked very rare in a buttered brioche bun…yum!

NYC

Whenever I arrive in NYC, I get an instant craving for Japanese food. I am not sure why…it’s not that I necessarily think it’s the best food to have there (probably LA wins for me), but I know that there are many chances of eating good and properly made Japanese food, and it is something that simply does not exist where I live in Ireland.
It was a rainy miserable cold day and I needed some comfort food so I headed to Sakagura, a classic Izakaya spot hidden in the basement of an office building (not super easy to find first time around). I wasn’t feeling particularly adventurous that day, so I relied on some classics, a bowl of rice with salmon and ikura (salmon roe), some ebi (shrimp) tempura and a small bowl of hot soba (with some lovely yuzu rind).
I could literally eat this meal everyday and live happily ever after. There is something about how “clean” Japanese food is and it always makes me feel really good while being tired on the road.

That night I also visited with a friend another favorite of mine: Tonchin ramen, this time the Brooklyn spot. There we shared a tuna and uni tartare which was delightful and after that I had my classic smoked dashi ramen. This is a tonkotsu style ramen with a smokey anchovy flavour and clams…I’ve talked about this ramen before and it keeps being one of my favourites, it’s like an umami bomb!

The following day I decided I had to try some pizza while in NYC. I recently have been diagnosed with a mild milk and casein intolerance (a conversation for another day). It is not a major one but I tried to stay away from cheese as much as possible during this tour…so pizza was proving to be a challenge. I gotta say that cheese-less pizza is quite common in Italy and for example one of the most classic Neapolitan flavours is the Marinara, which doesn’t have any cheese and you certainly don’t feel the lack of it. I also find that cheese on pizza in Italy it’s in general a different concept than it is in the US. In Naples you will get some large pieces of delicious flavourful fiordilatte on your margherita, they are placed irregularly on the pizza, so that each bite is a bit different and you don’t always have it in your mouth. Cheese is spread like a thick blanket on US pizza and it’s not very flavourful, it’s almost like melted cheese is a texture more than an ingredient.
After watching a youtube video a few days before, I went to try this place called Stretch, a fancy enough pizza joint by Wylie Dufresne. After learning about his complex process for making the dough, I was curious to try it and I was also intrigued by the fact that some of his pizzas on the menu didn’t mention cheese. I soon discovered that it was not true and that all those pizzas actually had cheese, but in fairness they were also very flexible and I ended up composing my own pizza. I went for a fennel sausage, tomato sauce and mushrooms.
The crust was actually amazing, the biga and the extra long proofing makes it light and crunchy and it also has a nice cornicione (which you normally don’t see much in NY style pizza). The rest didn’t quite work for me. A pizza like this one for me would start from a bottom layer of light and fresh dressed crushed tomatoes, some pieces of sausage and tasty sauteed mushrooms in between. Here it looked like the sausage was crumbled and it was the base. The sauce was very dense and sprinkled on top like an afterthought and it was so very garlicy. The mushrooms were also nothing special and there were a ton of them. The result was that the pizza was quite dry, incredibly garlicy and not very pleasant. In fairness to them this was not an item on their menu and it’s hard to judge on something they made to accommodate me.

After that experience I decided to revert back to the Japanese vibes and hit a spot that had a Michelin bib gourmand called Nami Nori. This is basically a temaki bar, where you can get hand rolls made on the spot with fancy and slightly fusion style combinations. I started with a miso soup and then had one of their tasting sets, which I thought was pretty good value (5 temakis for 32$). They were from top to bottom tuna poke, xo scallop (the best one!), coconut shrimp, salmon serrano, cucumber black sesame. Not quite satisfied I decided to order two extra ones, ikura and cucumber and the incredibly lush and delicious Hokkaido uni. I have a soft spot for Uni, maybe a connected to childhood memories of fishing and eating them with my uncle in Sicily, but it’s another one of those flavours that to me taste like a mouthful of the sea!

The night of our last concert at BAM the catering was “Italian”…something I usually run away from 😅. So myself and a few more lactose intolerant friends (everything and I mean everything was covered in cheese!), went looking for food and bumped into the most low key dumpling and noodle place called Bites of Xi'an BK 西府小吃.
This is an unassuming and very humble spot, mostly for take away, but you can seat there and eat in plastic plates, while there is a lady making fresh dumplings in the back…my favourite kind of spot! We had a feast and everything was absolutely delicious: the pork & cabbage dumplings in clear broth, also the shrimp & pork dumplings (black ones) with spicy red oil, or the pork and chives ones (in green). We also had some delicious noodles with braised pork belly and crispy pork rougano. I never had this flaky pastry kind of bun before and it was one of the best things in the meal! We were so full we could hardly play…

Thank you for making it all the way down here with my food adventures, lookout for one more instalment coming to you soon with all the bbq’s and all the meats I tried in this tour!