Food tour diaries

Eating my way down the west coast all the way to Nola

Apologies for the radio silence this week. After 3 and a half weeks on the road we hit a couple of very intense days in the studio in Lafayette LA to record a new album (you didn’t hear it from me), and I was a bit cut off from the rest of the world.

So here I am, back to report on some of the best and most interesting food I had during this crazy intense tour:

1. After seeing her dedicated episode on Netflix’s Chef’s table pizza edition, I was curious to taste Sarah Minnick’s pizza. So I headed to her restaurant Lovely’s fifty fifty in Portland OR. The place is small and super popular so there was a line outside the door even before opening time.
   I tried her pizza with house made fennel sausage, lacinato kale (Cavolo nero), Sleeping beauty (a white cheese) and rosemary.

   The dough was really good, bubbly, crunchy and lighter in consistency than I expected. I knew already from the start that the combination of ingredients was going to be a winner and I gotta say that the rosemary added a very nice touch to it. I also tried her ginger ice cream (this place opened as an ice cream shop originally!) and it was good, but I was hoping for something a little stronger tasting and less sweet (that’s probably on me for always ordering ice cream and thinking I’m getting gelato!)

2. When in Seattle I reached out to the amazing Kenji Lopez Alt (aka my favourite food author), to ask for a recommendation on where to catch some breakfast close to our venue. He immediately suggested Saint Bread, another very popular spot with a long line outside. I headed there and ordered for myself a very delicious breakfast sandwich, and also bought a couple of pastries and cookies for the bus.

   In the picture in the middle you can see their Gochudoodle cookie. Described as a Korean miso sesame cookie, it was the craziest cookie I ever tasted, it was a bit salty and spicy! I enjoyed it but Rhiannon hated it (she has a hard time with spicy food and I think she expected this to be a sweet cookie)
   Their black sesame bun was also on the salty side and a very interesting bite.

3. One of my favourite meals in this tour was a chance discovery in Ashland. I walked into Nama in the early evening to try a couple of small dishes. This is a small casual but elevated restaurant with a few counter seats and a couple of tables. Two chefs are making all the dishes in front of you Japanese style. It is in fact a Japanese type of restaurant but made with local ingredients and a more fusion approach. Pictured here (from l to r):

   Hamachi handroll, which was incredibly delicious (with crunchy tempura scraps), rockfish ceviche (sharp and tangy and amazingly beautifully presented) and cup of miso soup made with katsuobushi butter (!), which was rich, intense and heartwarming. I also had a Shrimp roll (not pictured here).
   It is not a cheap restaurant but the quality of ingredients and the skill in presentation is very high. I was having a bit of a hard day and this food really brought me back to life.

4. As the bus pulled up in San Francisco in the early morning, I realised with great pleasure that we were only a block away from a bakery I love called Jane the bakery.
   I used to go there all the time when we were playing at SF jazz as our hotel was in Japantown. I think this is my best experience with croissants in the US (I am sure there are many more amazing croissants everywhere, but it’s the best I’ve had). Everything they bake is amazing, this time around I tried this incredible and beautiful savoury pastry filled with olive paste and pistachio (3rd pic)

5. While in San Francisco we were also able to hang out with Namiko Chen and her husband Shen. They are the people behind my favourite Japanese food blog Just One Cookbook. They brought us to a dim sum feast at Palette Tea House.

   This meal was incredible, traditional dim sum but also more contemporary takes, like truffle soup dumplings, butter lobster dumplings…everything on that table tasted really really good!

6. Another great food rec came from our friend Samin Nosrat (my other favorite food author!), and it was for Sama Sama in Santa Barbara.

   Here I sat down for lunch and had some very tasty braised pork noodles with shiitake mushroom and a hot chicken bao (with cayenne honey butter). Yum!

7. Last time I was in LA I visited a new-ish pizzeria by celebrated pizza chef Chris Bianco (there’s an episode on him on the above mentioned netflix series). After meeting Chris that day he actually recommended I should go and visit his more casual spot Pane Bianco, a kind of pizza slice place where they also serve panini and other take away foods. So this time I headed there as soon as we arrived in LA and once again I was lucky enough to meet Chris and have lots of great pizza, music and Italy chats with him. He recommended I should try his NY style slice of pizza verde and also a piece of “Sicilian”spicy pizza.
   The crust on the pizza verde was amazing, crunchy, sturdy yet light and the topping was a very interesting mix of garlicky creamy spinach, caciocavallo and parmigiano. I enjoyed the flavours but one slice was probably enough for me (a bit too creamy for my taste). I loved the flavours on the Sicilian slice, spicy and tomatoey but I am not sure I understood the crust. It felt quite dense and heavy and that one slice felt like eating a whole pizza. I have little to compare it to as I have never eaten this type of American “Sicilian” pizza. I am not sure why it’s called Sicilian as it doesn’t look like anything I have eaten over there, but if any of you has a clue about where this tradition comes from, I would love to know more.

8. I had heard about Sonoratown for quite a long town, so when I discovered it was literally 4 min away from our LA venue, I had to go to try their famous Sonora style tacos and burritos. As far as I am concerned the hype is real as I enjoyed everything immensely. I tried 3 small tacos while there, cabeza (a generic word used for a stew made from parts of the animal’s head), tripa (crunchy tripes!) and carne asada (basically grilled meat). They were all delicious and the salsas were also extremely good. I also tried a little Chivichanga (picture on the right, it’s what they call a mini burrito basically). All the tortillas are flour (as it is more common in northern Mexico) and made in house. The tortillas were so good that I actually bought a bag to bring back to the bus. Rhiannon had also requested for me to bring back some of their beans and we made burritos with those two for the next few days. Speaking of burritos, I also took back to the bus a normal size burrito and enjoyed it immensely the next day. Yes to Sonoratown! Gonna be back for sure…

9. The next day we were in Tucson and had some time off, so I decided to check Boca, a fancy taco spot run by Beard award nominated chef Maria Mazon. Here they do classic and gourmet tacos with really special salsas that change everyday (see picture). The tacos were really good. I tried both corn and flour tortilla and that was probably a mistake as the corn tortilla didn’t really work for me…they fell apart as soon as I picked up the taco and I ended up having to scoop up the contents with a fork…which goes a bit beyond the concept of taco. The flour carne asada was incredibly good tho and once again, that is the taco more commonly associated with the northern regions of Mexico, so the closest to what you will find here.

10. While I was hanging out in LA with Chris Bianco and telling him about our tour, he suggested I should check out Anello while in Tucson, since it’s a pizzeria opened by one of his protégés. So I popped in quickly as it ended being quite close to our venue and tried another “Green” pizza, this time made with parsley salsa verde, pistachios and smoked mozzarella. This pizza was indeed delicious, the crust was nicely charred with a big fluffy cornicione and it was very similar to Chris’ style, crunchy and light. The parsley salsa was a nice added color flavourwise, even tho after a few slices I started growing a bit tired of it.

11. The next day off was in Austin, Texas, and after checking the map, I realized our hotel was a mere 20 minutes walk from the celebrated Franklin bbq…possibly one of the most celebrated barbecue spots ever.

    I had heard about the legendary long lines to get food ant Franklin and I was a little conflicted about giving it a try. Since I had the whole day off, I decided to give it a try. When I arrived there at about 11.30 (30 min after opening time), the line didn’t look too crazy, so I joined it. It was about 30 minutes in that I realized that it was the slowest moving line ever! At that stage I was tempted to leave, but I said to myself “it’s a once in a lifetime occasion that I am here with the time to spare, let’s just do it and see if the hype is justified”. I have never waited this long in a line for food in my entire life…it was over 2 hours by the time I got to order the food. Was is worth it?

    Well it was incredibly good, the brisket is obviously the star here and it was the best I’ve ever had by far (but I’m not an expert!), the pork was also really good and the sausages were very good too, but nothing crazy. The staff was super nice and they threw in also a rib, which I hadn’t ordered, so I would taste it (and it was delicious).

    It’s hard to answer wether it’s worth it as a big part of me thinks nothing is worth waiting two hours in line…on the other hand I really appreciate the fact that Aaron Franklin wants to keep everything small and at this quality level…since he could probably open 25 of these spots…or even just a giant one to absorb some of the traffic that comes with his fame. I am not sure I would do it again but it was definitely some of the best barbecue I have ever had and something to try once (like da Michele in Naples…similar lines!) Next time I want to try the lesser known yet amazing spots, so if you have recommendations, I will take them!

12. On our day off in Lafayette, Dirk Powell, one of the members of our band, had organized a classic Louisiana crawfish boil in his back garden.

    This was my first crawfish boil and a great fun day and hang. I find it interesting that most people from the US are a little disturbed by the whole idea of peeling seafood from its shell, as for me spending so much time by the sea in Sicily, it’s kind of the only way to eat proper fresh sea food. I kept telling everyone that in Italy, if you get a dish with peeled prawn, it means they were frozen! Fresh prawn always comes whole, even on top of pasta.

    I enjoyed the crawfish and its sweet meat, claws and heads…and ate probably hundreds of them…It’s also an amazing community activity to do with a large group of people. Rhiannon also made a few batches of her famous biscuits and everyone was happy out!

This was actually one the best tour from a culinary experience I have had in a long time. I also got to meet and hang with some of my all time food heroes: Kenji Lopez Alt, Samin Nosrat, Namiko Chen, Chris Bianco!

Let me know if you have questions in comments