The Bitten Word

Our Menu Collection

About five years ago -- around the same time we started this blog -- we also started collecting menus.

We were visiting some great restaurants, and we really wanted to remember the meals. So we got in the habit of asking for a copy of the menu before leaving the restaurant. That turned into habit, and since then, we've amassed quite a stack of menus representing memorable meals.

We went digging for something in the menu stack the other day, and got lost browsing through the dishes and thinking about the food, remembering either what we ate, or who we were with. We thought you might like to see some of the menus and hear the stories. 

Here are a few of our favorites.

 

 

momofuku noodle bar - New York City - February 14, 2010

A few years ago, we somehow ended up in New York City on Valentine's Day -- with no dinner reservation and no plans. We decided to use the opportunity to make our first visit to momofuku noodle bar, and had an excelelnt time slurping ramen and diving into those legendary steamed pork buns. A Valentine's to remember. 

 

 

 

Hundred Acres - New York City - June 20, 2009 

We had been to see the most amazing production of Our Town at an Off-Broadway theater in the West Village, and we made a late dinner reservation at Hundred Acres in SoHo. It was one of those absolutely perfect nights -- we loved the food and it was an incredibly romantic meal. There was even a near-marriage proposal (but that ultimately happened several months later). And all thanks to Thornton Wilder. 

 

 

Our Favorite Meals and Restaurants in San Francisco

We love living in our nation's capital, but it's a fairly transient city. We frequently get asked, "Are you staying in DC? Moving away?"

We plan to stay put. Over the decade that we've been here, the city has just gotten better and better. We've made close friends, the city itself just keeps getting more beautiful and the food and restaurants improve every year. 

All that said, if we were going to move, it would likely be to San Francisco (or maybe, if we suddenly feel the need to drive a lot, Los Angeles). Is there anywhere better to eat than in San Francisco? Perhaps New York, but that's a debate for another time.

 

 

It had been a few years since we visited San Fran, but Zach recently had a work trip scheduled out there, and Clay tagged along. So we spent a long weekend wandering around the city's various neighborhoods, meeting up with friends for coffee and drinks, and desperately trying to work up enough of an appetite to justify our next meal. 

Here are our favorite meals, dishes and experience: 

Pizzas and Pastas at Flour + Water in the Mission.

This was one of our favorite meals of the trip. We went with our friends Mark & Michelle, showed up early expecting to have to wait a long time, but were immediately seated. We ordered a two pizzas, a pasta, and two "secondi." Everything we ate at Flour + Water was out of this world. 

24 Hours on Tangier Island

Earlier this summer, Spenser Magazine sent us on a little excursion with an assignment: Go to Tangier Island, Va., to write about the heritage and crabbing traditions on the tiny island in the Chesapeake Bay. We'd been wanting to visit Tangier for a long time, so saying yes was a no-brainer. We packed up and made the four-hour drive down to Crisfield, Md., where we caught the U.S. mail boat to the island. 

From the moment we stepped on that mail boat, we knew we were heading to a unique place. Tangier is a minuscule dot of land in the middle of the bay, a tight-knit, workaday community of about 450 people who either fish for crabs or support the men who do. The only way to access the island is by private plane or one of the infrequent ferries from the mainland.

Standing on the deck of that slightly beaten-up mail boat, we found ourselves surrounded by piles of all the stuff you can't buy on the island, bound for Tangier residents -- crates of groceries marked with family names, dog food, garden stones, Gatorade, potting soil and paint. (Tangier has only one tiny general store.)

With us on the boat were a few residents who had gone over to the mainland to shop. Naturally, we eavesdropped. Not because of what they were talking about, which was the shrinking population of Tangier, and how they had watched school classes of 20 shrink to 10 or fewer (this year's high school graduating class was made up of three students). No, the reason we were listening in was because of the women's accents. Thanks to Tangier's extreme isolation, the residents' accents are unique from anywhere else in the world. They're unlike any we've ever heard -- sort of a honking blend of Irish and coastal Southern U.S. If you want to hear for yourself, you can sample them in this video, from a documentary about American dialects. 

To hear about all about the island, and to read about experience out on the water with Tangier's mayor, James "Ooker" Eskridge, check out our story in Spenser. You'll learn about what it takes to fish for soft shell crabs, and about Tangier's fascinating history, as well as its threatened, uncertain future. 

As a bonus to the article, we want to share a few of the photos we snapped while on Tangier, to give you a sense of what it's like to visit there.

And of course we want to show you what we ate. 

More Photos from New Orleans + A Message for Email Subscribers

Before we get to the rest of our New Orleans scrapbook, a bit of housekeeping for those of you who receive the blog via email: Our email delivery service stopped working a week ago, so you've missed a few posts. We think it's back up and running as of today (fingers crossed). Come visit the blog to read all about the posts you've missed, including Fluffy Diner-Style Omelets, Chicken and Walnut Stew, Our Five Favorite Meals in New Orleans, and New England Style Baked Beans. 

And now, to photos! 

Five Restaurants You Need to Visit in New Orleans

Sitting at the cafe tables on a warm, breezy afternoon in the middle of January, you find yourself not much caring if Cafe Du Monde is a tourist trap or not.

Nestled at the base of the French Quarter, and the first stop in every New Orleans guidebook on the planet, the cafe is undoubtedly filled with tourists. But we were happy to be among them. The coffee is dark, the beignets are sweet, and the powdered sugar is literally flying through the air. Everyone -- and everything -- in the cafe seems to have a fine dusting of sweetness. It's a beautiful place to watch the world pass by.  

We had the opportunity to spend four nights in New Orleans back in January, and we've been meaning to tell you about our trip ever since. Zach was traveling there to write a story for his day job, and Clay decided to tag along. We both used it as an excuse to eat up all the Louisiana we could handle. 

We thought you might enjoy hearing about some of our dining adventures. Our meals skewed a little more upscale-foodie-New-Orleans as opposed to, you know, cajun/crawfish/jambalaya/po' boy/divey/Abita-in-a-shack-in-the-bayou. But if you want recommendations for those kinds of places, we can give them to you. 

Our list is also not jackets-for-dinner/Commander's Palace/jazz-with-potted-palms/old-school-places-you'd-probably-go-with-your-parents. But we can recommend places for that, too. (And ours is also not hurricanes/Pat O'Briens/Mardi-Gras-beads. If you want recommendations for that, well, we can't really help you.)

But here are are a few meals we had and loved. Word of warning: You're going to want to schedule a trip to New Orleans this year. 

1 Video and 10 Photos to Wrap Up Our Trip to China

This photo? This is what we would call a chopstick fail.

We were having lunch in Beijing, at a place we had randomly picked while walking down the street, and we were in the midst of a massive dumpling craving. So we went in and ordered several kinds of dumplings, plus these beef noodles. As you can see, our attempt to split it between bowls didn't go so well. The staff of this restaurant thought it was hilarious and not so discreetly kept coming by the table so they could see (and laugh). 

At this point, our trip to China at Thanksgiving seems a lifetime away. But as we think more about the trip and look at our photos, we just can't help ourselves! Here's one last post about our trip. 

We told you about our favorite dishes, the wacky food, and gave a tour of a Chinese market. This last set of photos features things we thought were fun, or that you might be interested in seeing.

Let's start with a video.