Continuing along with my southern food coverage theme of late, I just discovered that White Castle is entering the food truck business and they’re doing so in Louisville, Kentucky.
It’s about time.
There are plenty boring, corporate restaurants in the food truck business (Sizzler, Wendy’s, Taco Bell) but none has the gravitas of White Castle. No less a luminary than Josh Ozersky claims that Walter Anderson, founder of White Castle, invented the hamburger; he’s wrong of course, but that does not diminish the power of the chain.
At a recent food truck festival in Las Vegas, lines to get a White Castle slider exceeded a 4 hour wait time! Sounds like some of the doofuses who queue up for brisket in Austin have migrated west.
Opening a food truck in Louisville, Birmingham or perhaps Jackson Mississippi makes a lot more sense than trying to penetrate the completely saturated market of an Austin or Orange County.
White Castle didn’t grow to become a 4oo unit strong chain by being un-savvy. This was clearly a well thought out move. Any readers in Louisville? Please report back.
100k reported souls wondered the grounds of the 2013 Memphis In May Barbecue championship only to discover that they are forbidden to sample the meats being cooked by the teams.
Get a rope.
I can't imagine a barbecue competition ... continue
IT’S THAT TIME AGAIN
This year for barbecue cooking contest week, we’re going back to April 14, 1978, and a barbecue sandwich taste-off conducted by The Commercial Appeal. The newspaper solicited reader favorites, and then ate at as ... continue
Oh to be strolling along the broad avenues of downtown Knoxville, Tennessee this weekend as the city turns into one giant, biscuit-making kitchen.
The International Biscuit Festival is back May 16-18 2013.
I knew I was in love with ... continue
This is article number 300 on the Chowpapi site. Thanks y'all.
On one of my countless trips to New Orleans, I walked out of the Amtrak station in a dither. It was sunrise, long before my beloved Casamento's ... continue
Proceeds benefit the New Orleans Musicians' Clinic and Assistance Foundation continue
In 1985 Clark Rountree opened Rountree's Hickory Pit in the Cahaba Heights neighborhood of Birmingham, Alabama. Interestingly, Cahaba Heights had historically been know as Mudtown, dubbed thusly by the Creek Indians who had called it home in the ... continue
In the great state of Alabama, there are hundreds of roadside rib joints clamoring for that country money. Some good, some bad, and some utterly majestic like Archibald's in Northport.
George Archibald puts out the finest smoked pork ... continue
Here's the menu. Hope y'all can come out celebrate Texas Independence Day with us. We'll have plenty Texas beef and ice cold Live Oak draft beer.
Scrumptious Chef Pop Up Restaurant #9 Sat March 2nd 2013
Chicken Fried Steak ... continue
I've made a few runs by John Mueller's new barbecue joint in East Austin but have yet to find a line that I have the patience to wait out. Here's a photo from opening day when the ... continue
I'm perpetually on the hunt.
Soul food is hard to come by in Austin, Texas. Yes, there are a handful of joints scattered around town, but I miss the profundity of cities like Birmingham, Jackson and New Orleans. ... continue
We toiled quietly for 8 months before Austin media caught on to the hottest food parties in town. Our Scrumptious Chef Pop Up Restaurant series blew up this morning with a feature in Austin's biggest entertainment blog: ... continue
I shot out a roll of film this past Saturday at the John Mueller Meat Co. located behind Kellee's Place at the corner of e.6th and Pedernales in East Austin. Mueller was in a talkative mood so ... continue
Brand new food truck in southeast Austin: Blue Ox Barbecue is in the courtyard of Buzz Mill Coffee, a brand new coffee house that will also be more than happy to pour you a beer or mix ... continue
Part of me came of age at a Taco Tico in the Trademark Shopping Center in Corbin, Kentucky. It was the first restaurant where I ever ate Mexican food; my training table for the nearby Lost World ... continue
I spotted this lady at the Joe's Bakery 50th Anniversary party at Fiesta Gardens in East Austin. She was whirling around and around on the dance floor til I coaxed her into stopping for a moment so ... continue
Looks like Tamale House got a hold of the Scrumptious Chef Restaurant Pop Up event poster. I wasn't going to release it for a few more days. It'll probably go viral as long lines form at the ... continue
After a long run-up, including a successful Kickstarter fundraising effort, Tom Micklethwait is open for business on Austin's East Side.
Micklethwait is the owner and the pit boss of this brand new food trailer. I expect big things ... continue
One of the first Thai restaurants I ever visited in Austin, Texas. The owner, Eddie Nimibutr is on the hotseat right now for some comments he made regarding the school shooting in Connecticut.
It will be interesting to ... continue
I haven't given up on beer and barbecue by any stretch but I've also begun exploring wine a bit as well. Here are a few wines I've been drinking lately. I concentrated on bang for your buck ... continue
Heather was from Kansas. Her daddy was a beef man. He'd worked in various parts of the beef cattle industry his whole life and he was good at what he did. One year he decided he wanted ... continue
Rifling through some old backfiles I stumbled upon this great photo of my buddy Jad and a 50lb pig we smoked in his backyard a couple years ago.
We had a few dozen people over and threw an ... continue
Ran down to LA Barbecue this morning, well before they opened, to chat with John Lewis for a minute and see how things are going in his new post as pit boss at the joint where he ... continue
The origin story of the Mai Tai cocktail has two distinct and divergent paths. Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt aka Donn Beach claims, most emphatically, that he invented the drink for his Don The Beachcomber bar in Hollywood ... continue
The Taylor, Texas barbecue dynasty: the Muellers, are back on the front pages of barbecue journals and websites across the United States this week. John Mueller, the firebrand pit boss and son of Bobby Mueller {RIP} has ... continue
New York City is the Mesopotamia of cocktail culture in that many of the great manuals have been penned here, and the lions of the bartending industry have strode through the smoke-filled venues of the city for ... continue
If ever there was the perfect moment to drive from Austin to Lafayette, Louisiana it would have been this past weekend for the big boudin cook-off. Twenty practitioners of the prairie art of boudin making met on ... continue
Demon rum. The original spirit consumed widely across North America and the Western Hemisphere. While today, bourbon is considered the quintessential liquor of the United States, it wasn't in the too far distant past that rum held ... continue
One of the nicer new bars I've seen open in Central Texas in the past 15 years. Tombstone Texas Bar and Grill is gorgeous. While I have no doubt that it will be embraced by the ... continue
Expert practitioners of conjunto, the raucous, accordion-driven music that came into being in the Texas of the 1800s, Los Texas Wranglers provided a driving backbeat to the Joe's Bakery 50th Anniversary party held at Fiesta Gardens in ... continue
Right as the most recent World Championship BBQ Goat Cook-Off In Brady Texas ends I start daydreaming about the one that will come 364 days later. I don't make it to as many smoked meat parties as ... continue
Utterly unbelievable. I've been covering the Texas barbecue scene since the early 90s and this is the biggest story to break out of the world of Texas smoked meat in eons. John Lewis, former pit boss at ... continue
I always head for the warehouse district when I'm in a new town. With thousands of hard-working men in pants covered with spackle or diesel fuel nearby, there are generally a few meat n 3's, diners, burger ... continue
When I'm not cooking, tending bar, taking pictures or writing about food and restaurants, I like to spend my free time digging through soul music archives online.
Balance.
Here are a few Tumblr accounts I especially dig. Enjoy.
http://thesoulciety.tumblr.com/
http://rootsnbluesfestival.tumblr.com/
http://groovyfunkysoul.tumblr.com/
http://fuckyeahsoulmusic.tumblr.com/
http://oldsoulmusic.tumblr.com/
http://soulmining.co.uk/
http://holysoul.tumblr.com/
http://oldschoolsoulfan89.tumblr.com/
http://classicalallure.tumblr.com/
http://arethalouisefranklin.tumblr.com/
http://marvinpentzgayejr.tumblr.com/
http://stevlandjudkinsmorris.tumblr.com/
http://fkyahdianaross.tumblr.com/
http://otisreddingftw.tumblr.com/
http://vintageblackglamour.tumblr.com/
http://simplybek.tumblr.com/
http://thecurvature.tumblr.com/
http://thesouljerk.tumblr.com
http://fuckyeahdiscofunksoulandthensome.tumblr.com/ continue
Much hand-wringing has ensued in the vegan community over this past weekend's Meatopia festival in New York City. As we all know, the party is the brainchild of Josh Ozersky, the James Beard award winning writer who ... continue
In an upset reminiscent of the great race horse Man O War losing to a 100-1 underdog, Waco Boys Cooking Team did not bring home the much coveted hospitality award at this years cabrito cook-off out in ... continue
Kevin Kelly is an authority on barbecue. He authors Kevin's BBQ Joints, a website and blog with hundreds if not thousands of barbecue restaurant reviews. To further establish his bona fides, he moved from his home on ... continue
When I began preparing for my journeys through Istanbul, I dove headfirst into thick tomes on the culture of the city.
I quickly discovered that Turkey is a secular country with topless beaches, loud heavy metal concerts, couples ... continue
I spend as much time as is feasible in New Orleans. I've developed a good network of friends and comrades in the city and there's nothing I'd rather do than leave Austin around 11pm at night, ride ... continue
Austin Texas has a large Brazilian community that explodes one weekend per year at the Palmer Event Center, when they all show up clothed as scantily as possible then proceed to spend the next few hours gyrating ... continue
On a lazy, Texas Saturday afternoon, I was in the strip mall dominated neighborhood of US 183 and Lakeline when I happened upon SPIN Modern Thai. I thought that surely in this neighborhood, modern is a euphemism ... continue
After Scrumptious Chef Pop Up #1, barbecue edition we took the lay of the land and decided to wade back into the fray with Pop Up #2. This time we're tackling soul food.
Adrian Miller, the soul food ... continue
The Old Fashioned occupies that curious ground between being a grown man's drink, it's got a serious jolt of bourbon in it, and being sweet and fruity enough to appeal to beginning drinkers or folks who typically ... continue
I have a list of things to do each time I'm fortunate enough to spend a few days in New Orleans.
Upon arrival in the city I ride my bike out to Chalmette and purchase a muffaletta at ... continue
Turf n Surf Po Boys in downtown Austin has a chef from the famous Gilmore cooking family. No, it's not Bryce Gilmore of Odd Duck Farm To Trailer and Barley Swine nor is it Jack Allen Gilmore ... continue
I've had a long love affair with well mixed cocktails.
The people who prepare them, bars stretching from rural Texas to Istanbul, and the culture that surrounds the art of the cocktail have long fascinated me.
A perfectly crafted ... continue
In 1972 in Pflugerville, Texas, Charlie Parker flung the doors open on a little roadside steak house in the middle of nowhere and prayed that business would come.
And it did. But now, 40 years later, Central Texas ... continue
The Southern Food and Beverage Museum and The New Orleans Public Library are teaming up to found the largest culinary library in the South.
Over the course of the last 2 months the New Orleans Public Library has ... continue
I spend a lot of time thinking about soul food. Growing up in Eastern Kentucky, country cooking, a cousin to the genre, was on my family's table 7 nights a week. We raised our own beef, our ... continue
Pop up restaurants are hugely popular in cities like New Orleans, San Francisco, Chicago and Portland, but Austin's largely been left out in the cold of this new phenomena.
Til now.
This Sunday, July 15th, Chef Raymond Tatum is ... continue
[caption id="attachment_2742" align="aligncenter" width="300"] picture: Jack Gilmore of Jack Allen's Kitchen[/caption]
Update October 1st 2012: Jack Allen's Kitchen's Round Rock location is now open.
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I've had a love affair with Jack Allen's Kitchen since the day they opened at ... continue
Saucy's BBQ is moving to Magazine Street from their current location in Metairie. They'll be tacking up their sign in the former Ignatius Eatery, which has shifted into the former Rue de la Course.I've been lucky and ... continue
I just got off the phone with Daniel Delaney of BrisketLab, the New York City brisket subscription service that has taken the Northeastern part of the United States by storm.
Mr. Delaney, the founder of Vendr.TV, was kind ... continue
The big, mean dog is going berserk.
I'm standing on Milton Street where the FBI raid on the house of Amado Mayo Pardo took place, and the big shepherd is trying desperately to batter down the fence of ... continue
Javelina on Rainey Street
On a recent sunny afternoon I went for a walk down beautiful and historic Rainey Street just south of downtown Austin.
I've been following the media dust up over this neighborhood for well over a ... continue
Austin, Texas is the leader in the United States food truck industry. We have more trucks than any other city. We have better trucks than any other city and we have more diversity in the foods offered ... continue
The Turks know their soup. Many restaurants open early in the morning so workers can dash in for a bowl of çorbası before they begin their daily affairs. Every restaurant, no matter how humble or grand offers ... continue
Jamie Feldmar of Food and Wine magazine was tasked with creating a list of America’s best barbecue cities. As is the case in all of these lists compiled by people who aren’t lifers {barbecue addicts who’ve given ... continue
One of the most viewed articles I've ever penned for this site was a review of Iliana de la Vega's entry into Austin's Mexican food scene with her Oaxacan cuisine trailer; El Naranjo Mobile. {http://chowpapi.com/wordpress/wordpress-2.8.6/wordpress/el-naranjo-mobile-iliana-de-la-vegas-oaxacan-kitchen/}
The chef arrived ... continue
Adrian Davila, son of family patriarch Edward, is entering the food truck business. The Eagle Ford Shale oil boom in south Texas is going to be his focus...for now.
From the Seguin Gazette “The oil field lent itself ... continue
Interesting developments in the south Austin heroin bust saga that we've been detailing for almost a week now. Amado "Mayo" Pardo, patriarch of Jovita's Cantina and thrice convicted murderer, sits behind bars accused of being an Austin ... continue
You can't walk twenty feet in Istanbul without being presented with a glorious picture taking opportunity. If you enjoy urban hiking, eating street food and shooting endless photos, then Istanbul has no peer among the world's cities.
We're ... continue
It doesn't get any more Texas than this. Legendary pit boss John Mueller, framed by the flag of the great state. Mueller had just come off twelve hours of smoking an entire steer when I took this ... continue
I had bad timing on my most recent visit to New Orleans. Rocky and Carlos, est. 1965, had just reopened from the fire that badly damaged the restaurant in February of this year, but I attempted to ... continue
Austin, Texas' Mexican restaurant community is in shock right now. Jovita's Cantina, after a 2 decade run, is at the center of a firestorm of media as their patriarch; Amado "Mayo" Pardo, was arrested along with 17 ... continue
Hamsi is the most fabled of all the fishes sold in restaurants in Istanbul. The diminutive anchovy can be bought at cafes ranging from the high end { Four Seasons} to the most downmarket you can imagine: ... continue
Mapping out my first voyage to Istanbul I quickly vectored in on Sultanahmet as the best place to stay for week 1 of a two week stay. Admittedly, this is not where you're going to have the ... continue
As the release of my guide {Istanbul Restaurants: Where The Turks Eat} on where to eat in Istanbul, prepares to come to fruition, I'm going to be posting photos taken during my research visits.
This is the ... continue
The book that's been a project for 3 years is set to come out. I'm going to start putting up lots of pictures from my research trips to Istanbul in celebration of finally, finally finishing this work.
The ... continue
Looking for a report on the affair. I could not attend so I would love to hear from someone who made it to the benefit.
http://www.scrumptiouschef.com/food/index.cfm/2012/6/11/Salt-And-Time-Steps-Into-The-Ring-With-Three-Little-PigsSpringdale-Farms-Hosts-Hog-Showdown-Benefit
All the details on the event are up on the Chronicle's website ... continue
By now we're all aware that New Orleans daily paper; The Times-Picayune, is going to a 3 day a week schedule sometime this Fall. The narrative of rebirth and rejuvenation that America's greatest city has enjoyed post-Katrina ... continue
Big news coming out of Little Rock, Arkansas. Oxford American, the bible of Deep South culture, just received a mammoth grant from ArtPlace. They're spending it wisely by opening a restaurant that will focus on southern cuisine, ... continue
Expertly mixed cocktails are now available in the Cesar Chavez barrio of East Austin. It's not been many years since that sentence would've rung out across Austin as an absurdity.
Not anymore. We've been looking forward to Kathryn ... continue
I'm all over http://www.dangerousminds.net/ on a daily basis.
It's a vast repository of coolness that sucks you in and leaves you with little recourse other than complete slavery.
It is addictive. In today's edition, the team over that way has ... continue
I used to hate Jim n Nick's barbecue when I lived in Birmingham, Alabama.
I rented an apartment a couple blocks away from one of their locations in the Forest Park neighborhood and they pumped out the smell ... continue
Let's face it: In the great state of Texas, the common hog is never going to rival the majestic steer for supremacy when it comes time to build fires and smoke meats.
Our abundance of cattle and vast ... continue
Gone but not forgotten. I always stopped in at the Yumm Factory on my way out to the big goat cook-off in Brady, Texas. While they served lots of barbecue, I always opted for one of the ... continue
When business carried me down to the Bouldin Creek neighborhood a while back I had to stop in at John Mueller Barbecue for a minute to grab some take away barbecue for the fridge at the house.
The ... continue
The Louisiana Legislature has declared Scott, Louisiana, home of the legendary Best Stop, the Boudin Capital of the world.
The prairie art of grinding and stuffing hog guts casings with pork, rice and seasoning to create boudin, has ... continue
Any food sleuths out there? I've got a hot tip for you but you're going to have to work for it. Pictured, a roaring fire upon which several animal heads were left over-night. This is a clear ... continue
Flying under the radar since the 1950s in the world of Texas barbecue is tricky business. With the advent of the modern era of food bloggers, facebookers, myspacers and twitterers, it's difficult to keep your business reserved ... continue
An icon in the world of Texas smoked meat, Cooper's Barbecue out in Mason is the mothership of all the Cooper's that are now scattered around Texas.
Consistency is the bane of all barbecue houses and Cooper's suffers ... continue
Are any words left unsaid about the re-emergence of Taylor, Texas barbecue legend John Mueller? Yes, plenty. A 50,000 word bio of the foul mouthed pit boss could easily be penned and, I predict, do huge business ... continue
I've had a long love affair with Willie's Barbecue located way out MLK in far east Austin, Texas. I first started going there back in the 90s when word on the street had it that Willie was ... continue
Railroad Barbecue is rarely brought up when the conversation turns to the best smoked meat in the Austin, Texas area, but I feel it should at least be in the discussion. Established in 1982, the old wood-floored, ... continue
![Texas Barbecue Photos: The Original Franklin Barbecue In French Place [Austin,Texas]](http://chowpapi.com/wordpress/wordpress-2.8.6/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/franklin-300x225.jpg)
Many, many fond memories of the old Franklin Barbecue food trailer in French Place. This is the location of the original smokehouse that started what was to become a national phenomena. I used to love to stroll ... continue
I'm always working on my food photography. I can take a mean picture of a pitboss or an old concrete block building but when it comes to edibles; I've got a long way to go.
But, just like ... continue
Pictured: A 10 pound-plus pork belly, hot off the smoker. I've been experimenting with making my own bacon for some time now and this is one of the pork bellies right after she'd been pulled off the ... continue
Blown away.
We ran down to Swift's Attic during their soft opening week thinking we should get in before the crowds figured out that chefs Clouser and Northcutt have some pretty diabolical plans for the Austin restaurant hierarchy.
As ... continue
I wrote several articles last year during the run up to John Mueller re-entering the world of Texas barbecue. It was the biggest news story of the year in the world of Austin, Texas smoked meat.
By the ... continue
Has the hierarchy of the Austin, Texas barbecue scene been threatened by Lance Kirkpatrick of Stiles Switch Barbecue?
It depends on who you ask. Prior to Kirkpatrick's arrival Austin's top 2 were firmly occupied by John Mueller Barbecue ... continue
I've been reading about Miller's Smokehouse up in Belton, Texas for the past few weeks from the scribes at Full Custom Gospel BBQ and Texas Barbecue Posse.
The men behind those barbecue websites were amped up about Austin, ... continue
We made a barbecue run up to Temple and Belton Texas this past weekend to sample the output at Pit Stop Barbecue and Miller's Smokehouse respectively.
These are two recent discoveries that are prime examples of why ... continue
We're getting excited over here in East Austin. The smell of smoked pig meat is about to begin wafting through the French Place neighborhood as Salty Sow, the newest restaurant from Larry Foles and Guy Villavaso of ... continue
There aren’t a lot of Northern European rib joints that could open in Austin, Texas and earn a good living.
Then there’s De Klos, the reigning king of Dutch-style pork ribs in Amsterdam.
Deep in the heart of Leidseplein, ... continue
Years ago when I first began plotting a visit to Zagreb, Croatia, I went into heavy research mode. The simple fact is this: I view a city through the prism of their approach to coffee, beer and ... continue
After 2 plus weeks on the road in parts of the world where eating Tex Mex is plainly a bad idea {the Balkans, Asia, northern Europe} I needed a fix in the worst possible way. With 300+ ... continue
Good to be home.
While I have deep love for Texas [and Alabama and Kentucky] barbecue every now and again I have to recalibrate by hitting the open road, overseas, to see how the pit bosses on the ... continue
Your manager has been yelling at you all day because his manager has been yelling at him all day. You lumber out of your office at 8:30pm, your ill-fitting suit feeling a size too large for your ... continue
I get a lot of interesting emails on this site. Readers who want to tell me about the restaurant they work in or a taqueria where they had a superb tortilla or perhaps a dive bar where ... continue