Some photos from a recent 7,500-kilometre road trip from Calgary down through Nevada and California and back by a circuitous route through Washington and southern B.C.
A passing storm near Logan, Utah
A slightly used mattress for my Walmart campout
Josh Clark is putting high-end ingredients into most affordable sandwiches at The Goodwich, in Las Vegas
You may think you’ve eaten a great BLT or two in your time. But you obviously haven’t met Josh Clark, co-owner of *The Goodwich. From an 8-by-12-foot cart in colourful downtown Las Vegas (i.e. not The Strip), he dispenses a BLT&G (the “g” is for cheddar grits) that’s the best bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich I’ve ever sunk my teeth into.
The primary reason is Josh’s obsession with his bacon. It starts with a slab of pork belly that’s brined and slow-roasted/smoked and then sliced and crisped at the last minute on the blacktop. Oh, and all the drippings from the bacon makin’ are added to the sandwich for an extra hit of bliss. The remaining ingredients are equally well thought out, including fresh, flavour-filled tomatoes and grilled bread from local Bon Breads.
You won’t find a better BLT than this one and certainly not for $7
A relaxed, friendly guy who greets his customers at the front of his cart, Josh has years of experience as a chef in some high-end Vegas restaurants. The premise behind the new sandwich shop (with co-owner Jake Leslie) is this: You should be able to take everything in, say, a high-falutin, high-priced meal, slap it between two pieces of bread and charge the change in a customer’s pocket. What a concept!
Thus you can get a “simple” heirloom tomato, aioli and smoked salt sammy for a ridiculous $3 and work all the way up to $9 for a pork butt and belly combo. Even a lowly egg salad ($5) is transformed into something fabulous by the addition of pickled onion, chorizo and chip bits. It’s all about ingenuity, exacting standards over the smallest details and execution.
“The idea,” says Josh, “is to exceed expectations.” Mission accomplished.
The colourful Las Vegas downtown area is home to Goodwich and Viva Las Arepas
Note: Goodwich is in space owned by Viva Las Arepas, a block away and one of my top overall road-trip food picks of 2013. Owner Felix Arellano is hoping to soon expand that fabulous eatery to another Las Vegas location or two.
The Goodwich
1516 South Las Vegas Boulevard, Suite A, Las Vegas
Tuesday to Sunday 11 am-10 pm, except 4 pm closing Sunday. Closed Monday
Jen Castle and a photographer friend at her Hell’s Backbone Grill in Boulder, Utah. It’s my “middle of nowhere” food pick for 2013
Best Food Trucks
As if there’s any surprise, both my choices are in the mecca of Portland, Oregon, which boasts some 700 food “carts”, meaning they’re stationary. My overall winner is Wolf & Bear’s, which transforms the often throat-catching falafel into a wrap of silky beauty with hummus, caramelized onion and grilled eggplant. (Guess this one could also make my vegetarian list).
Fantastic felafel at Wolf & Bear’s food cart in Portland, Oregon
Honourable Mention: In the “how the hell does this combination work?” category, The Egg Carton takes fried egg, strawberry jam, cheddar, bacon and spicy mustard and sandwiches it between two thick, custardy slices of French toast to create something that could easily make my Best Breakfast list.
French toast/egg sandwich at Egg Carton in Portland. You know you want one
Best Microbrewery
Again, many contenders, but how can you beat the story of a microbrewery whose products can pretty much only be found, at least locally, in liquor stores because of the higher alcohol content? I’m talking about that drinking hotspot of Utah, of course, where Epic Brewing is overcoming the odds and turning out a great line of rich, complex ales and lagers.
You’ll likely have to visit a Utah state liquor store to buy the excellent, higher-test beers produced by Epic Brewing of Salt Lake City
Best Happy Hours
Happy hour is the route to some great deals at often more upscale places. The big bowl of chunky guacamole and first-rate salty chips goes down nicely with a discount margarita at Phoenix’s elegant Gallo Blanco Cafe & Bar, which offers happy hours an unusual seven days a week.
Great happy hour guac and chips at Gallo Blanco Cafe & Bar in Phoenix
If you’re thinking $2.75 is no Mexican street-food bargain for tacos, head to San Diego’s South Beach Bar & Grille, where my happy hour mahi mahi and wahoo fillings are nearly the size of filets.
The fish tacos at South Beach Bar & Grille, in San Diego, are nearly the size of filets
Best Mexican
I spent a lot of time in 2013 in the southern U.S., so I ate my fair share of Mexican, authentic or not.
Tacos: Taqueria Pico de Gallo is a no-frills stucco taco shop in Tucson, Arizona that churns out excellent Mexican street food, like my fine fish and lengua (tongue) tacos, for a grand total of $3.75.
Fabulous fish and lengua (tongue) tacos for a total $3.75 at Tucson’s Taqueria Pico de Gallo
Chilaquiles: I have trouble pronouncing it but no problem devouring the steaming dish of toasted tortilla strips, scrambled eggs, red and green chile sauce and melted cheese at MartAnne’s Cafe, in Flagstaff, Arizona.
The ultimate chilaquiles breakfast at MartAnne’s Cafe in Flagstaff, Arizona
Enchiladas: The chicken-and-cheese filled tortillas at Santa Fe’s The Shed are great, as is the posole topping, but what blows me away is the best red chile sauce I’ve had in a busy week of New Mexican dining.
I went for the stacked enchiladas at The Shed, in Santa Fe, but it was the red chile that blew me away
Best Middle of Nowhere Dining
The drive on Highway 12 through outstanding sandstone country to Boulder, Utah is half the journey, but dining at world-class Hell’s Backbone Grill certainly completes the experience.
World-class cuisine at Hell’s Backbone Grill in the middle-of-sandstone nowhere Boulder, Utah
Honourable Mention: Okay, it’s right beside the I-15 in southern Idaho, but you can’t tell me Malad City is in the middle of somewhere. Just take the turnoff and pull up to Spero’s House of Barbecue, where half a dozen barbecues are slow cooking ribs, pulled pork and chicken.
Pull up to a half dozen outdoor grills at Spero’s House of Barbecue in Malad City, Idaho
Miscellaneous
I created this category just so I could squeeze in elegant Seasons of Durango in Durango, Colorado, which serves me a fabulous lunch of fall-off-the-bone-tender Hoisin pork ribs.
Ribs and waffle fries add up to an outstanding, affordable lunch at Seasons of Durango in Durango, Colorado
Honourable Mention: The revelation at Crepes of Brittany, in Monterey, California, is the buckwheat galettes, slowly cooked till the crepe is a little crispy and the inner ingredients hot.
Crepes of Brittany co-owner Thierry Crocquet starts cooking my buckwheat galette
Best Food Experiences
The most memorable road-trip experiences combine great food and wonderful interactions with the people that own or run the places.
I can’t tell you the name or the hours, and the little old Mexican lady with a hairnet that runs out from a nearby house to serve me doesn’t speak English. I just pull off the I-15 at Hamer, Idaho, and find the taco stand that serves me three great tacos for just $5.
The smile says it all at this little taco stand in Hamer, Idaho
The Venezuelan fare is excellent at Viva Las Arepas, mercifully off the Las Vegas strip. But what puts things way over the top is owner Felix Arellano cooking me a couple of mesquite-fired arepas, then hauling me next door to his gelato shop and then up the street to his taco truck.
Viva Las Arepas owner Felix Arellano delivers arepas to my table
They’re not kidding when they say the crab is fresh at Kelly’s Brighton Marina near Rockaway Beach, Oregon. A woman in rubber boots pulls a live one from a water bucket and cleans, cooks and delivers it in a tin to my picnic table, where I excavate the butteriest, freshest crab I’ve ever eaten.
Will this crab suffice, I’m asked at colourful Kelly’s Brighton Marina near Rockaway Beach, Oregon
…Time to dig in
The floors are concrete, the lighting dim, the overall ambience dingy. But the century-old Grand Central Market, in downtown Los Angeles, is dripping with character and a great place to people watch and sample just about any ethnic cuisine you can think of.
You can’t create the kind of atmosphere that’s built up over a century at Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles.
Best Meal of 2013
626 on Rood in Grand Junction, Colorado hits every detail of what makes a meal memorable. Décor? How about wine glasses turned into chandeliers, water served from repurposed wine bottles or a bathroom decked out with cloth towels and olive oil hand lotion. Complimentary appetizer? How about a fresh French baguette slathered in house-made herb butter? And the blow-me-away highlight—an apple-wood-smoked duck club sandwich, with pepper bacon, Napa cabbage and roasted garlic mayo, all squeezed between two delightful slices of challah bread. All for the ridiculously cheap lunch price of $12. Descriptive words fail me. Just look at the picture. Then get in your car.
This duck club, at 626 on Rood, may be the best sandwich I’ve ever had. Just look and weep
Honourable Mention: My best experience combined with outstanding food is at San Diego’s Alforon, where co-owner Samia Salameh’s sits down at my table for a chat. And then the other-worldly, from-scratch Lebanese fare—chicken pita pies to falafel to Turkish coffee, much of it unordered—keeps arriving. This is what makes 25,000 kilometres of driving in 2013 worthwhile.
Wouldn’t you drive all the way down the west coast to visit lovely Samia Salameh, co-owner of Alforon in San Diego?
… which is matched by a chicken tawook flatbread that’s out of this world
Even the hard-working cooks have fun at Pete’s Breakfast House in Ventura, California
What happens when you hit a couple of hundred independent diners, cafes, coffeehouses, bakeries and breweries in the western U.S./Canada in one year? An ambulance ride to emergency? Fortunately, no. Instead, I got to discover some great places to eat and drink, run by some seriously committed, wonderful people. Here are the best of 2013, in two parts.
Best Breakfasts
My best 2013 breakfast is the day’s locovore omelette at Chow in Bend, Oregon. Perfectly prepared, it features chicken-apple sausage, caramelized onions and local chanterelle mushrooms and cheese. What puts it over the top is the choice of three bottles of house-made sauce of varying intensity, so good I buy two bottles to go.
My best 2013 breakfast is the locovore omelette at lovely Chow in Bend, Oregon
Pancakes: The pancake sandwich—bacon atop buttermilk blueberry cakes and, underneath, two over-easy eggs—at Pete’s Breakfast House in Ventura, California. Great vibe ups the ante.
Delicious blueberry pancakes over eggs at Pete’s Breakfast House in Ventura, California
Breakfast Sandwich: Sometimes, all you want for breakfast is an egg or two between two slices of a bready product. But at Tweets Cafe in tiny Edison, Washington, the breakfast sandwich is a work of art, with a mini salad on top, a slice of melon bursting with flavour and perfectly cooked eggs and ham atop a home-baked biscuit.
The breakfast sandwich in the hands of an artist at Tweet’s Cafe in Edison, Washington
Off the Radar: How about a breakfast burrito of smoked turkey, avocado, egg whites and a hash patty, chased by an invigorating iced drink of protein powder, espresso, peanut butter, banana and chocolate? It’s all on the healthy menu at D’Lish Drive Thru in Scottsdale, Arizona, along with a free dose of off-the-wall friendliness.
This excellent AZ Burro is one of many creative, healthy breakfast choices at D’Lish Drive-Thru in Scottsdale, Arizona
Best Coffee
In a year when I visit the coffee meccas of Seattle and Portland, it’s a roaster/coffeehouse in little Lethbridge, Alberta that serves my two best cups of coffee, one by Chemex, the other by Aeropress. Cupper’s Coffee & Tea‘s slightly darker roasts are so good, I’ve been ordering their shipped beans instead of just roasting my own.
Cupper’s owner Al Anctil and the sophisticated roaster he helped build in Lethbridge, Alberta
Honourable Mentions: The espresso at Portland hole-in-the-wall Spella Caffee holds my tongue in a lingering, smoky embrace. My best coffee experiences are in Seattle’s also tiny Moore Coffee Shop—where I sink into a leather chair and savour a fine Americano served with a square of complimentary chocolate—and the funky vibe of Lux Central in Phoenix. I also have to include Nobrow Coffee Werks, in the coffee mecca of Salt Lake City (just joking) for the most sophisticated brewing machine, the Steampunk, I’ve ever seen.
Joe Evans and the very latest in custom-brewed coffee at Nobrow Coffee Works; I’d say this is high brow
Best Bakery/Café Santa Fe’s Clafoutis has a full-fledged menu, but it’s the ethereal croissants, brioche and baguettes, along with great coffee, that bring me back for more at this elegant, oh-so-French café.
A stack of baguettes amidst all the creative elements at Clafoutis in Santa Fe, New Mexico
Honourable Mentions: Last year’s pick, La Baguette, in Revelstoke, B.C., keeps knocking it out of the park with things as simple but outstanding as Healthy Bread, its take on toast. San Francisco’s famed Tartine Bakery & Cafe lives up to the hype with brioche bread pudding and gorgeous gougère.
Gorgeously gooey gougere at Tartine Bakery & Cafe in San Francisco
Best Sandwich The sandwich is a road-trip lunch staple, but it’s rarely raised to an art form like the Oxacan— shredded mole chicken, avocado, goat cheese and apple, served on lovely seed-crusted ciabatta—that I’m served at the fantastic Curious Kumquat, way out in Silver City, New Mexico.
This shredded mole chicken sandwich makes the drive to Silver City, New Mexico well worthwhile
Honourable Mentions: My steak sandwich at Longview Steakhouse, in the ranch country of Longview, Alberta, is really a huge, superb strip loin on an overwhelmed single piece of bread, though the latter does soak up all the juices. In the heavyweight sandwich battle, my mortadella with all the fixings at Compagno’s Delicatessen, in Monterey Bay, California, reaches a sleep-inducing draw with the turkey-bacon monster at Sandwich Spot, in Palm Springs, California.
I gave half of this monster, fab $8 creation from the Sandwich Spot to a passing street person in Palm Springs, California. Kept us both fed for a day
Best Burger
A tie: Bobcat Bite has left its character-filled old adobe building and morphed into Santa Fe Bite, but it’s still pumping out its signature green chile cheeseburgers. Diablo Burger sources its natural, lean meats from open-range ranches near Flagstaff, Arizona. Both places offer their thick patties medium-rare.
This fantastic, medium-rare green chile cheeseburger, at Santa Fe Bite, is at least three inches thick
Honourable Mentions: In the Asian fusion category, my fine wagyu burger at Bachi Burger in Las Vegas is edged by the Loco Moco—a Kobe patty over rice and Japanese mushrooms and topped with a sunny-side egg—at Carino Bistro in Calgary, Alberta.
Who needs a bun when you can have a Kobe patty atop rice and Japanese mushrooms at Carino Bistro in Calgary, Alberta?
Best Vegetarian
Yes, I probably eat more burgers than salads on the road, but I’m by no means averse to vegetarian or even vegan so long as it’s tasty. It’s no surprise that in the running capital of Eugene, Oregon, healthy folks head to Morning Glory Cafe for tofu scrambles, black-bean burgers or my baked squash mounded with chanterelle mushrooms, brown rice and goat feta.
This baked squash mounded with goodies makes for a healthy lunch at Morning Glory Cafe in Eugene, Oregon
Best Pizza
Among the many contenders, my top pick is Pizzeria Seven Twelve, in Orem, Utah, where the focus is on fresh and simple but creative ingredients like hand-pulled mozzarella, house-made sausage, roasted fennel and a thin, bubbly crust with a nice tangy flavour from the sourdough starter.
Simple, house-made ingredients make this sausage and fennel pie a standout at Pizzeria Seven Twelve in Orem, Utah
Honourable Mention: At neighbourhood pub The Flying Goat, in Spokane, Washington, my Kiernan pie is layered with Italian sausage, heavy cream, an over-medium egg and some truffle-oil tossed arugula.
Italian sausage, heavy cream and truffle-oil tossed arugula add up to a winner at The Flying Goat in Spokane, Washington
Best Salad
Salt Lake City’s gorgeous Finca creates a work-of-art beet salad, with a velvety house ricotta base, a ring of beet chunks and a middle tower of argula topped by macerated strawberries and toasted almonds.
This arranged beet salad, at Finca, is almost too pretty to eat… almost
Viva Las Arepas owner Felix Arellano delivers arepas to my table
About a five-minute drive from the glitzy Las Vegas strip is *Viva Las Arepas (love that name), a bright corner joint in a decidedly more downbeat part of the city. Perfect. It’s a chance to delve into some fine Venezuelan food at bargain prices. Owner Felix Arellano is leaning over the mesquite-fired grill, cooking chicken and beef, much of it destined for the popular $5 arepas, a South American staple. But I go for a cachapa, filled with only melted mozza so I can focus on the excellent texture of this corn bread.
At this point, Felix sees me taking notes, comes over and says my cachapa isn’t the same as a cornmeal arepa. “Here, I’ll make you one, half stuffed with beef and half with shredded chicken, so you can see what a real arepa tastes like.” Both halves are delicious, especially splashed with some house-made hot sauce. Indeed, everything here is made from scratch. It’s a lot of work, but that’s what makes hands-on restaurants like these standouts.
Half-beef, half-chicken arepas. Outstanding!
Next time, I’ll get more adventurous and order the fried pork rinds and yucca root. Don’t think you’ll find that in any casino eatery.
Note: Felix is a partner in an excellent new gelato shop next door (Art of Flavors Gelato) and has a hot dog/taco shop truck down the street. It could be the start of a new Las Vegas strip.
Viva Las Arepas
1616 South Las Vegas Blvd Ste 120
Daily 10 am-10 pm, except midnight Friday and Saturday
Marathon Mouth 