Oh, the Places I'll Go: Maximus/Minimus

People have asked me if my experiment--my focus on eating non-processed foods, sourced as locally as possible, while paying special attention to the way my meat was raised--has prevented me from eating outside the home.

I love going out to eat. I enjoy lingering over food, drink, and conversation. And I love being inspired by the menus at restaurants, their inspired pairings of ingredients, their creative cooking methods, their attention to the smallest details.

Give that up? I certainly don't want to lose all that. Luckily, more and more restaurants are willing to talk about the sources of their ingredients. In my "Oh, the Places I'll Go" series, I'll talk about those restaurants, from the established to the new, from the three course dinner to the quick bite on the street.

And that's where we're starting today: Maximus Minimus, the pig truck that sits at Second and Pine during the week, and makes its way to Occidental and Royal Brougham before Mariners games.

Max Min serves two sandwiches: pork and veggie.
With two sauces: maximus (spicy) and minimus (sweet)
And two coleslaws: max or min, same deal, spicy or sweet
And a choice of drink: ginger lemonade or hibiscus nectar.

Their pork is locally sourced and antibiotic free. The sammies come on a whole wheat roll. They look small, but with that whole wheat bun and the piling of the meat, one is certainly enough to suffice as dinner.

Gracefullypunk recommends the minimus pork, with "hurt", which, contrary to the naming of maximus, is how you truly make your sammie spicy. The maximus slaw, with chipotle, is quite tasty, and the ginger lemonade a perfect finisher.


GYM and I didn't even go to the game tonight--just walked my parents to Safeco for the excuse of stopping at the pig:

Eating Seattle: The Market and Coffee

Well...this didn't post three days ago...

My friend Amanda visited last weekend, which meant caffination, ferry rides, hockey and time sampling the wonders of Pike Place Market. Because she arrived at 4pm, when I'd already been awake for twelve hours, our first stop was Ladro, a Seattle coffee shop featuring fair trade beans and one of the best coffee drinks I've ever tasted. I can't remember the name of the drink, but it was a combination of mocha and orange peel, and it was delicious. I find most fancy coffees way too sweet, but this was a recommendation of the barista and it was perfect--the only mocha I've had that has not been too milk-chocolately sweet. I highly recommend Cafe Ladro, both for their beverages and their fair trade commitment.

After an adventure at my first hockey game, where we saw the Seattle Thunderbirds beat up on the Everett Silvertippies, which included a near-heart attack when the midnight bus to Seattle started to pull away without us, we were moving a bit slow in the morning. Being the loving person that I am (read: the person always starving in the morning), I went foraging for croissants, and found delicious ones at Le Panier, which also appears to have about twenty other types of bread and sweet pastries I'd like to sample. The plain croissants were heavenly with butter and plenty of flakiness. I didn't hear much about the pain au chocolats, but they disappeared quickly so I'll assume they were quite tasty, also.
After coffee and croissants, Amanda and I ventured down to the market and reveled in its choices. The street opposite Pike Place is packed with tiny shops containing food from nearly every region of the world. I'm sure that the market shops will pop back into my reviews with great frequency, but for now I'll focus on one: Jack's Fish Spot. This shop is located next to the wrought iron staircase and appears to be a typical fishmonger, although slightly less exciting as on this side of the street they don't throw the fish. But if you walk around to the side, you find counters and simple menu. Have the halibut and chips--they are the best I've had yet, especially the chips. We watched a sack of potatoes arrive from across the way, and everything was freshly fried.

As Amanda said, I would marry in a few seconds the man that salted those chips. It didn't hurt that the boy taking the orders and the one frying up the chips were quite adorable. All in all, a great place for fresh fish and chips--I just wish they made their own tartar sauce rather than including a packet of Kraft.

We're Something, But We're Starving

Let's celebrate the humble pig, the eater of scraps, another of our fellow mammals that has the audacity to sweat. Pigs are the reason that I was never able to be a true vegetarian and pork products remain the only meat that I savor. This is why my trip to Cochon, back in late fall, remains one of my favorite restaurant experiences in New Orleans. And now the New York Times has recognized it as one of the top ten new restaurants outside New York (snobs).

Cochon won a James Beard award in 2007 for Best Chef: South. In New Orleans, if you claim to know your food and celebrate it like so many of us do, you best know that the James Beard awards are the Oscars of the food world, and you also better know that it's Donald Link that's the chef at Cochon, and that he's also the chef at Herbsaint. These are just things that you need to know to proclaim your foodiness in NOLA.

We're proud in this city, rightly so, of the amazing food that can be found almost anywhere, at almost any price. It makes it hard to eat anywhere else. For instance, during Mardi Gras I stumbled upon a homemade sign pointing me to Jazzy Po'boys, at a new location. I turned the car and ended up with the best roast beef po'boy of my life, all the while chatting with the chef and owner. I can have absolutely delicious red beans and rice, or mac and cheese, for about $2 in the cafeteria of Tulane Hospital--a cafeteria! In a hospital! It makes it difficult to visit other places and be faced with the choice between a McDonalds and a Taco Bell for lunch.

So thanks, NYT, for acknowledging this. Cochon is one of the most delicious places in a city with too many places to try. We may disappoint vegetarians but we're people who maintain lists of "restaurants to try", who keep the reservation numbers in our cellphones, who find it hard to narrow down the list of restaurants to take visitors. Food is part of the history here, food is part of our rebuilding effort, and food is our way of life.

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