Best Kansas City Barbecue
Kansas City is best known for its distinctive barbecue–they take it very seriously. Real smokehouses, a tomato-based sauce thickened with molasses, and featuring burnt ends as their specialty, KC is one […]
Category Archives: Contemporary Food Culture
Alinea the Best Restaurant in the U. S.?
Grant Achatz’s Alinea, located in a utterly non-descript building in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, has been at the top of best restaurant lists for the 12 years it has been […]
Wisconsin is Not Only about Cheese: Brats, Booyah, Boils and Supper Clubs
Generally, any sentence containing the words “Wisconsin” and “food” should probably contain “cheese” as well. Wisconsinites are not called “cheeseheads” for nothing. When scouring the state for what is unique […]
There’s No Such Thing as Flyover Country in Wine and Food
The term “flyover country” when referring to the Midwest has always struck me as insulting. It not only ignores the Midwest’s great natural beauty but fails to acknowledge the cultural […]
Meat, Mead and Mountain Wine in Missoula, Montana
Can wine grapes be grown in Montana? There are some hardy souls who try. Excessive cold, meaning sustained temperatures below –10 degrees, will damage the wood on all vitis vinifera […]
Boise Basque’n
Just like most wine regions, Idaho’s Snake River Valley has a growing food scene anchored by the city of Boise. They boast several highly recommended restaurants serving contemporary American cuisine, but when […]
Farm to Table in Southern Oregon
The farm to table thing has metastasized from fetish to fad to flim-flam. What began as a foodie obsession with freshness and an anti-corporate ethos has become a marketing device […]
The New Sammy’s Cowboy Bistro: Mom and Pop Excellence
We’re camped in Southern Oregon tasting wine but today the story is about food. A few minutes north of Ashland on a quiet, semi-rural highway sparsely populated with lower middle […]
Chile Obsession? Go to New Mexico
I must confess, I love Mexican food, even the cheap stuff, because there is nothing finer than rich, earthy, red chile sauce. And so, for me, traveling to New Mexico […]
Cool Climate Class: The Wine and Food of the Finger Lakes
A Raft of Riesling Cool climate wine regions are always interesting. Because they cannot rely on consistent sun and warmth to sufficiently ripen grapes, every vintage is different, theories abound […]
Roving Decanter 