Fork in the Road, my column in Garden & Gun, just came out. Rocky and Carlo's in Chalmete, a working class enclave east of New Orleans, is the focus of this dispatch. The restaurant serves crazy-good baked macaroni, paved with cheddar, crowned with brown gravy. It's a hangout for refinery workers and dock hands. It should be your hangout too. 

Pig Wings: In my latest "United Tastes" column, published in the New York Times, I write about how an enterprising Michigan farmer conceived a new market for pig shanks, cut into two inch bits, and marketed as Pig Wings. Speaking of the need for a clever name, my protagonist Bob File said, “Let’s face it. Shank is not a pretty word.”

Here's that Garden and Gun article on Animal, a Los Angeles restaurant that succeeds in cooking Southern, because the chefs don't really try to cook Southern. 

The new food issue of Garden & Gun is an embaressment of riches. There's a Vanessa Gregory profile of SFA filmmaker Joe York. And a Wright Thompson dispatch from the Memphis in May BBQ contest, wherein my son Jess talks of Jello shots. 

I have four pieces in the issue. One on the LA restuarant Animal, which I'll post soon. The other three are about Charlotte, NC. Can this banking metropolis lay claim to being a food city? Here I answer maybe. Here I isolate the good stuff. Here I profile three key Charlotteans. 

There are more Bosnians in St Louis than anywhere outside Bosnia. Of the 60k-pus who now live in St. Louis, a good number are great bakers. In this United Tastes dispatch for the NYT, I explore bread baking, assimimialtion, and a sausage called cevapi. BONUS: The bread recipe was developed by Blair. 

Bern's Steakhouse, that Tamapa, Florida-based rococo palace of aged meat and marble statuary, is the subject of my latest Garden & Gun column. Get your Fork in the Road here. 

Big Green Eggs and their kin in the NYT. In this edition of United Tastes, I exmplore the culture of kamado smokers, ovoid ceramic beasts, born in Japan as rice cookers and remade in the U.S. as backyard bbq pits.

A report from Memphis in the June-July Garden & Gun, in which Andy Ticer and Mike Hudman seduce the city with various salted and fried pig parts. 

In Los Angeles, rapping about tamales and deprtation with Chingo Bling in the NYT, as part of my

United Tastes series. 

Deviled Crabs from Tampa.

Neither Cuban nor Italian, but Tampanian in the NYT, as part of my United Tastes series.