My Favorite Food

[DJ FC]

Ok, so I've always been hot for pork. Any pork really. I love bacon; the single most overrated food right now (and is still amazing). And I love pulled pork. I love pork ribs and I love a full roast pork. I love pork butt burgers. Prosciutto and mellon - oh hell yes. Pork shoulder - hmmmmmmmmmmm tasty. And I've always held the Iberian pork near the top of the list.

Jamón ibérico - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I've spent the last few days in Madrid and, (this is actually difficult for me to say) I've finally realized that the Iberian ham is the best cut of meat IN THE WORLD. Better than pulled pork. Better than crispy bacon. Better than a fillet mignon. Better than a god damn Chateaubriand for 2. Jambon Iberico is simply perfection of meats.

I fully intend to buy an entire leg along with the wooden apparatus for mounting it and knives for slicing it for my own home (despite the fact that this means we will need to consume several pounds of the stuff in a matter of a few days).

GOD BLESS THE FUCKING SPANISH AND PORTUGESE FOR MAKING SUCH DELICIOUS FUCKING HAM.

Como cortar el jamón ibérico - YouTube

Como cortar el jamón ibérico - YouTube

[Mr. Blonde]

I Know Some of These Words - YouTube

I Know Some of These Words - YouTube

[DDTempest]

Kremlin, would you agree?

[angry pancake]

I've mentioned it before. But not sure if it was taken as a joke or not. The Museum of Ham is phenomenal there's two just off Puerta Del Sol. One is on Calle De Mayor and the other is on the corner of "Espoze y Mina" and San Geronimo right where the tapas craw starts. And one of the hams will last longer than a few days. They're salt cured for god know how longed. Just get one of those stands and a super bad ass spurligot.

Museo del Jamn

[thekremlin]

CHICAGO DIVISION:

#3: Depot
I've never eaten at Maxwell St. Depot during the day. I'm pretty ok with that. It would probably be worse than a disappointment. The prime time to go to Depot is 3 AM. It's not easy to find a driver who a) is sober, b) wants to drive a carload of drunks, and c) wants to eat Depot sober. The Depot menu is pretty standard: hot dogs, sausages, burgers, porkchop sandwiches. Everything is cooked on the same grill. Everything gets loaded with the same greasy-- really greasy-- onions. Nothing fancy, but it tastes fantastic, more so if you don't consider the agony that's coming the next day.

#6: Italian Sub, Fiore's
I actually had to look up the name of this Italian market, because I just knew it as "that place that has really good subs." My first year out of college, I was kind of suffering for lack of local good food choices. I was living in Chicago's Ukrainian Village, and sausages and peirogis lost their charm pretty quickly. It was a lucky break that I found Fiore's, which did what every deli in the world should be able to do, but most can't: pile a sub roll with half a dozen cold cuts, some giardanara (sp?) peppers, some oil. Also, it should be oversized. Nothing better than picking one up on the way home from work, and getting home and unwrapping this beautiful football of meat.

WINNER: Depot. An italian sub can be replicated. Depot cannot.

[thekremlin]

CHICAGO DIVISION:

#4 Fenway Frank
Eating at a ball game is actually trickier than you think. There are a lot of factors to consider: price of food inside vs outside park, how much of the game you miss if you go inside for food, the quality of food from the stations vs the vendors, filling up on peanuts and not having room for a sausage with onions... It's just not as trivial as you'd like. I like to go with a sausage with onions and green peppers before I get into the park. A Blue Moon or Sam Adams on the way to my seat. Another beer around the fourth or fifth inning, and some peanuts. And a Fenway Frank during the seventh inning stretch.

#5: Slayer Burger, Kuma's Corner
Kuma's Corner is really fucking awesome, but also really fucking annoying. It's on the corner of Belmont and Kedzie in Chicago, or in other words, way-the-fuck-out-of-the-way. And they don't take reservations, and there's always a wait. You deal with it. The wait can be well-spent drinking from their impressive microbrew menu, or eating mindblowing appetizers. (Their beer menu says: "Death to Miller and Budweiser... they are over-produced and inferior products that prevent passionate craftsmen from sharing their gifts with all of us.") The burgers are all named after rock, mostly hardcore bands. Megadeth. Black Sabbath. Lair of the Minotaur. My preference was the Slayer Burger. It wasn't really a burger, more like chili fries on heroin. A pile of fries topped with ground beef still in burger-ish chunks, hot cherry peppers, fried onions, cheese, and according to the menu, anger. It's barely finishable in it's size. Here is a link to the menu; even going with a dozen people, no two people would order the same burger. Kuma's Corner | Food | Harshing our melow since 2005

WINNER: Kuma's Corner. Worth the wait, and if I was in Chicago for one weekend, Sunday brunch would without a doubt be here.

[thekremlin]

CHICAGO DIVISION:

#2: Arthur Bryant's Kansas City:
There's not a lot in Kansas City. But somehow, I've made the trip three times now. My favorite of the three trips was towards the end of my senior year of college, where I had realized that, with a post-graduation job and a respectable GPA secured, I could pretty much coast, so spent a long weekend in KC to watch the Red Sox open against the Royals. It was a good weekend; the debut of Daisuke Matsuzaka (which I feel silly for once being excited about); country music karaoke; Arthur Bryant's. It's not in the best part of town, and it's not the fanciest eating. It's heavy, KC-style BBQ with thick, sweet sauce, served on a red cafeteria tray without a plate. Go with the rib tips. And fries. Framed pictures of celebrities, some recognizable, some obscure, line the walls. It's perfect. Grabbing an extra bottle of sauce on the way out is the best gift you can give anyone, ever.

#7: Guacamole, Las Palmas
I have a weakness for Mexican food. If I go to the grocery store because I want to cook dinner, without a plan, I'll inevitably end up making steak fajitas or fish tacos for dinner. I like the cheap Mexican, like Anna's Taqueria in Porter Square, or the dozens of burrito shops in Lincoln Park. I like the higher end too, Frontera in Chicago or Taquiera in London. One of my favorites, also one of my favorite places in Chicago, is Las Palmas on North Ave. First discovered it on my first day living out of the south side, when my friend helped me with a move that took an hour, and left the rest of the day free. As bad as Chicago winters are, the summers can be just as good. This was one of those days, and we got a place on the patio and got drunk on big margaritas and tequila. We had just graduated earlier in the week, and somehow this felt like the first day of being an adult. They made the guacamole on a cart, right at the side of the table, with lots of customization available, extra garlic, tomatoes, jalapenos. Las Palmas makes it near the top of restaurants I'd visit over a Chicago weekend, though it's hard to decide if it's for the guac or the margaritas.

WINNER: Arthur Bryant's. It's tough to eliminate the only representative of Mexican food on this bracket, but KC BBQ is a heavyweight.

[thekremlin]

LONDON DIVISION:

#1: Pho Bo, Hanoi
With small, irrelevant exceptions (Canada, Bahamas), landing in Vietnam was my first time outside of the US. And Hanoi is about as different from Chicago as you can get. Buildings are tall and deep, but thin to work around ancient tax laws. Children play barefoot in the street. Unfamiliar smells come from every kitchen. The best meals, though, don't even come from kitchens. Tanned and wrinkled women stir massive metal pots with wooden spoons. I sit down nearby, at a knee-high plastic table, on a shin-high plastic stool. She brings me a big bowl full of steaming soup, with soft vermicelli noodles and thin, rare beef, which cooks in the soup, and a handful of spices and herbs mixed in. On the side, to be tossed in at will, chili peppers, mint leaves, sprouts, red chili paste, brown hoi sin sauce. It's hot, and Hanoi usually is too, so pretty soon I'm sweating, but it feels clean and clear. It costs about 25 cents. It's the best meal I've ever had.

#8: Iberico and Melon, Spain
My first visit to Spain was to Ibiza, which is so different from what people mean when they talk about Spain that it shouldn't count. When they talk about Ibiza, they're talking about something else completely, and it's easy to forget that the town has beautiful white-sand beaches, dotted with sandwich shops. After a late, late night, breakfast usually takes place at one of these shops around 4 PM. The sweetness of the melon matches the richness of the thin-sliced ham, which literally melts. Whoever thought this up had a pretty nice idea.

Winner: At the risk of riling up the Ham-fans, Pho Bo changed my life. Pho Bo.

[THEINCREDIBLEdork]

I was really hoping for an upset.

[DJ FC]

If they served it with melon there's a good chance it wasn't Jamon Iberico. And definitely not Jamon Iberico de Bellota

[Dent]

Originally Posted by Mr. Blonde

Can we talk about how Kremlin ripped off his tattoo from "Chicago"?

It's the simplest way to depict it's atomic structure. Don't hate cause i'm beautiful.


Let's not make this a place to insult tattoos, gentlemen.

Mr Blonde's tattoo is definitely more bohr-ing than Kremlin's






I'll get my coat.