Category: USA

February 20, 2012

Queens Love

Hi all. I’m in Dubai as we speak, watching from the 18th floor of a building as a minor sandstorm swirls around about 28 construction cranes. I haven’t yet had a chance to collect my thoughts (or all my funny pictures) on this subject of grandiose city construction.

So in the meantime, allow me to introduce you to:

Queens Love!

This fantabulous new tumblr is a great outlet for a dozen or so Queens denizens, including Our Illustrious Leader and Generator of Brilliant Food Ideas, Jeff Orlick. As you’d expect from anything about Queens, it’s mostly about food.

PS: OK, OK–here’s one funny Dubai picture.

I like to think I keep life waiting too.

September 6, 2011

Gallup Flea Market: Back Again

On my birthday, I went to Gallup, New Mexico. Not a typical place for celebration, I realize, but I’m kind of fond of how this town has developed in the last decade. There are murals everywhere, you can get handmade moccasins, the county courthouse is cool Pueblo Deco, and there are demonstration dances on the plaza in front every single night during the summer.

These dancers were from Zuni, just south of Gallup. Most of the crowd was local, or American Indians from other reservations.

Another thrill, for my vintage hotel fixation, the El Rancho is one of America’s finest examples. The desk clerk has a pompadour and a bolo tie, and the rooms are named after Hollywood stars who came to the area to film in the 1940s. I slept in James Cagney.

It’s true, I didn’t go to Gallup just for my birthday. I was also on assignment to write about the flea market that takes place every Saturday, from about 10am on, in a big gravel lot on the northwest side, just off the highway that used to be 666. I visited once before, and I was so thrilled about all the cool stuff there that I made this haul video.

What I really noticed about the flea market this time is how it reflects Gallup’s roots–and I don’t just mean its Navajo ones, as Gallup is the “Indian Capital of the World” and where everyone from the rez comes to sell crafts and stock up at Walmart. The town grew up when the railroad came through in 1881, bringing all kinds of enterprising immigrants from everywhere.

So the majority of shoppers and vendors are Navajo—grandmas in velveteen skirts alongside teenagers in giant T-shirts and calf-length denim shorts, carrying pit-bull puppies. But there are also Mexican vendors—selling tacos, handmade Navajo-style clothing in inexpensive fabrics and even sacks of green chile. In July, green chile wasn’t yet in season in NM, but it’s got to come from somewhere, right? Why not drive a truck up from south of the border, filled with chile from hotter climes?

And I saw young Arab girls in headscarves—no idea whether they were new to town, or had deep roots here. Arabs and Muslims from the Balkans came to Gallup very early on, and there’s a big mosque right on Route 66. And then there were the missionaries—still active now as they were more than a century ago, though the current vocal bunch take a particularly strange form. And as if to round out the archetypal Wild West market vibe, I even saw one stand run by very-new-to-town-looking Chinese people, selling imported tchotchkes like paper lanterns and frilly fans.

The main reason I went was to write about the food, which you just don’t see anywhere else. Here’s some “kneel-down bread”—ground-up fresh corn packed in a husk and roasted.

These are so cleverly wrapped up in corn husks, they look just like regular ears of roasted corn.

I asked the woman selling it if it was called that because you had to kneel down at a metate to grind the corn. “No,” she snapped. “That’s just what it’s called.” It reminded me of when I’d asked in Zuni why the bread was shaped that way and got similarly stonewalled. Later, I felt a little vindicated when I was eating my mutton sandwich, and the Navajo woman next to me at the table pointed to the kneel-down bread stand and said, “It’s called that because ladies used to have to kneel down to grind it on the metate…” But next time, I’ll try not to pry.

At Diamond “T” Grill, people were seated expectantly at tables before the signs are even up, waiting for lamb ribs and achii (sheep intestines around strips of fat) straight off the grill. When I asked the grillmaster if I could take a photo of his work, he cracked, “Did you set your camera to Navajo time?”

That's achii in the foreground.

There was plenty else I wished I’d eaten. Not necessarily because it looked tasty–honestly, Navajo food can seem a little Spartan, and it appears to value the sensation of sheep fat coating your mouth. But just because where else, and how else will I ever taste this stuff? It’s a portal into another world. That’s what makes the Gallup flea so special—and heck, worth a birthday trip.

Bonus birthday give-back for my copy editor friends. Slightly misguided proofreader marks from Route 66 in Gallup, on a wild Friday night:

Greater than what? You tell me.

March 26, 2010

New Mexico #4: All Aboard the Rail Runner

The wild West of yore is all about trains and cows and gunslingers and dudes in hats. Today, cattle still roam the range in New Mexico, and folks wear pistols on their hips and hats indoors. But the trains have, for the most part, gone.

Sure, there’s the venerable Super Chief, Amtrak’s service that plods across the desert, often running eight hours late by the time it hits Los Angeles (I know from personal experience), and there’s the scenic Cumbres & Toltec steam train up in Chama.

But for real getting around? People use cars, just like everywhere else in the American West.

This makes me sad, because I am a bit of a train geek. Not a mouth-breathing, clipboard-toting railfan, but someone who really enjoys a good train ride. No bickering with the navigator, no squinting at traffic signs—just pure relaxation as the scenery whisks by. I’ve ridden trains (often with my more-railfannier-than-I-but-still-not-foaming-he-would-like-me-to-assure-you husband) everywhere possible—even in Australia, which made Australians laugh.

This is all leading up to the Rail Runner, Albuquerque’s commuter train. It started service in the ABQ area in 2007, and there was talk of extending to Santa Fe. Miraculously, before I even had time to get cynical about it, the service was running, as of December 2008.

I admit, I got a little teary-eyed watching this video:

So I finally got around to riding the thing on this trip. You’d think it might not be all that exciting—it’s just an hour and a half, and it makes the same trip I’ve made at least a thousand times in my life.

But it was even better! First, just saying the words, “Let’s get the 4:13 train,” while sitting at my mom’s kitchen table outside Albuquerque, was such an amazing novelty.

Then, also, the idea of anyone in New Mexico following a real schedule—also delightfully novel.

On the train, for the first time in my life in Albuquerque, I got to peer into people’s backyards. I saw real, live hobos hunkered down by the freight tracks. (I guessed they were pros, because they didn’t wave at the train, unlike the various regular guys just sitting and drinking by the tracks.) We zipped past bizarre arrangements of industrial scrap in giant junkyards.

So Albuquerque isn’t sounding so scenic.

But after just a little bit, we were out in the back of beyond—not even a road to be seen. At this point, the train conductor advised us not to take photos, at the request of residents in the pueblo lands we were passing through. I wonder where else train passengers are banned from taking photos, and not for security reasons?

This photo was taken before the ban, I swear (and features my dad off to the right):

The whole area around the last stop in Santa Fe has been swankily redone—what used to be a vast scrubby open space by the tracks is now parkland, and there are galleries and train-station-themed coffee bars. It’s a whole new side of Santa Fe, one not cloaked in faux adobe finish, and if I’d come by car, it would seem insignificant. Getting off at the station, it seemed like the center of the world.

We walked back down the tracks to dinner, stuffed ourselves with enchiladas (at La Choza), and walked over to the plaza for dessert (at the Haagen-Dazs place, because everywhere else was closed). Just like in a regular city! (Except for the places being closed.)

On the trip up, we chatted with some great people—a younger guy who managed a band and worked on a Tennessee shortline, along with his friend, who’d never been on a train (like most New Mexicans probably, he asked, “Why does it have to follow a schedule? Why can’t it just go?”).

There was also a couple who were reading my guidebook!

The landscape of New Mexico is forever changed. Thanks, Rail Runner!

Today’s the last day for a chance to win free copies of my Santa Fe guidebook–enter here.

March 25, 2010

New Mexico Trip #3: It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Texas

I admit, I was instilled with some serious anti-Texan prejudices as a child. The flatlanders came to New Mexico to ski (“If God had meant for Texans to ski,” went one typical grumble, “He would’ve given them their own mountains”). They set up resort enclaves in Ruidoso and Red River, and decorated them with chainsaw-carved bear statues. They came to Santa Fe to swan around saying, “How kaaaay-uuuute!” about everything, and then buying it.

But since I’ve grown up, I’ve met some perfectly excellent Texans, who have much better taste, and realized my attitude was probably not productive. Besides, now New Mexicans have moved on to hating Californians.

So now when I go to southeastern New Mexico, where the state line is just a formality, it’s kind of cool—like two vacations in one.

You get your green chile (admittedly, often mixed with cream-of-mushroom soup, which gives me the heebie-jeebies), but you can also get your barbecue. I ate some beautiful brisket in Carlsbad at Danny’s BBQ—the smoke ring was lurid, and the flavor was so good I didn’t even bother with sauce. Here’s my dad’s pork, which came in a portion bigger than his head, and we had to stuff it into sandwiches the next day.

I seem to have lost my photo of that (or perhaps I never took it–the beauty is just seared in my brain), so in lieu of that, here’s the menu board at Pat’s Twin Cronnie in Portales, NM, where fad diets are not catered to:

I didn’t realize how deep the Texan strain went until this visit, when I noticed the much-fetishized Blue Bell ice cream in grocery stores in Tularosa and Artesia. I imagine the Dr. Pepper down in those parts is also fresher.

I also saw that this doughnut shop in Hobbs had kolaches on the menu:

Unfortunately, the doughnut shop was closed by the time I rolled up. Actually, maybe for the best—if the paint job outside was any indication, it was the kind of place where I wouldn’t be able to decide what to order.

Another food item I associate with Texas is pecans. But they’ve got pecan trees all around Tularosa (and yummy pistachios!). And just south of Las Cruces is Stahmann Farms, the largest privately owned pecan orchard in the United States. Take that, Texas!

This week, I’m giving away copies of my Santa Fe guidebook–go here to enter!

March 24, 2010

New Mexico Trip #2: Know Your Meat

Southern New Mexico is a little alien to me because they do weird things with their chile down there, and they engage in businesses that you don’t see that much of up north, such as oil drilling, UFO spotting and cattle ranching. I was driving around Roswell, headquarters of “alien” in southern NM, when I saw the sign: Sale Barn Cafe.

I pulled in, as it’s well known that cafes near livestock auctions are good. Or at least it seems like they should be—even though of course they are not slaughtering the cow right out back, like you imagine.

The parking lot was packed, but it didn’t occur to me there was an auction in session until after I’d wandered through the cafe, cautiously nosed into the main building itself, perused the ads for ranch horses, and then heard the buzz of activity through the swinging doors behind me.

I stepped through and found myself in a short concrete hall leading up to the front, below the rings of seats. I stood there a bit, trying to decide whether I was welcome or not. When it became clear that the place was not going to fall silent, and the entire crowd of cowboy-hatted men was not going to swivel around to stare at me, I sidled in and took a seat, all casual-like. After a while, I took a little sound recording of the auction:

Roswell Cattle Auction

And after a bit more, I started taking some photos. When I eventually moved up in the bleachers for a better vantage point, a handsome younger rancher leaned over and said, “Hey, you’re one of those animal-rights people, aren’t you?” Best pickup line ever.

I said no, I wasn’t, but I was curious about where my meat came from. He went on to explain the whole system—how these cattle weren’t being sold for slaughter, but between ranchers to round out their herds. Ranchers running short of grass were selling extra head to those whose sections were just now getting green. He clued me in to the various codes, signals and marks on the cattle—it felt a lot like learning the basics of a new sport.

He also explained, as a side note, that they used to auction horses for slaughter here, but that got banned—and as a result, now New Mexico is infested with horses that have been set loose because their owners couldn’t afford to keep them and had no other way to get rid of them. I’d always suspected there was another side to the ‘protect the wild horses’ story, but had never heard it.

As I left, I asked the rancher for his name or a card. But he politely declined. He still thought I was one of those animal-rights people after all.

I’m running a contest all this week, for free copies of my Santa Fe guidebook–enter here.

March 23, 2010

New Mexico Trip #1: Setting the Scene

Fun New Mexico fact: It snows here!

Many people mistakenly think New Mexico is warm like, say, Arizona or Texas. This leads to many panicked purchases of coats and boots upon arrival in Albuquerque. The sun does shine nearly every day, but hell yeah, man–it snows here!

Which was precisely my fear when I first arrived. Snow can fall in huge blizzards anytime up until May, and that can put a serious cramp in my carefully timed research trips. Four years ago around this time, I got caught in a tremendously awful blizzard that shut down all the interstates, and I caught a tremendously awful cold while waiting out the storm at a friend’s house.

So for this trip, I concentrated on southern New Mexico. The Chihuahuan desert spreads over a lot of the southern part of the state, and there are fewer mountains–which still means it can snow, but the risk is a lot less.

For most of the trip, I toodled around the desert lands and the open plains of “west west Texas” (as eastern NM is sometimes known). I also headed west, and popped into Silver City, tucked up in the mountains, just after the snow had melted from the worst storm they’d gotten in like 80 years.

Normally, I think of the flatter parts of southern New Mexico as a little bleak and short on scenery. But in the middle of winter, the relative warmth is welcome, and the scenery was beautiful this time of year. Tiny spots of green were just showing up, and the winter had been so wet that the earth was darker, giving a sharper contrast to all the gold-blond scrubby plains that look so monotonous in summer.

I spent one long day driving from Silver City to Roswell (304 miles, when you take the direct route–which I did not). It was like watching an eight-hour film, with the clouds scudding overhead and the vistas opening up at each mountain pass. Near the end of the day, there was a stubby rainbow, and then the clouds turned bright pink and loomed up on the horizon like the biggest cake in the world. After the sun set, lightning crackled all along the horizon.

I’m running a contest all this week, for free copies of a Santa Fe guidebook–enter here.

March 1, 2010

Reasons to Like Los Angeles, Part 3: Food

So by now, you’ve all got your March issue of Saveur, and you already know L.A. is a great food town.

They can point out all of the specifics, but the big one for me simply is: in February, you can eat beautiful fruits and vegetables. Yes, they’re eating potatoes and kale out there, just like we are on the East Coast, but they’re doing it in the sunshine, and that makes all the difference. Where we subsist on two varieties of tangerine (the only dose of color in my winter diet), they have about 46.

I had the pleasure of meeting the brains behind A Thinking Stomach, and she arrived with Meyer lemons and a bag of snap peas, like it was no big thing. Snap peas! In February! I’m crying.

In part because of this freshness, and in part because L.A. is like Queens but a million times bigger, we ate amazing food three nights in a row, without even trying.

Moles La Tia, on Cesar Chavez in East L.A., is the kind of place we just don’t have yet in New York–Oaxacan food, a little fancier than you might expect, not dirt cheap and all exceptionally good, right down to the clearly housemade salsa and the slightly funky goat cheese grated on the guacamole. Man. I totally misordered (wound up without any mole), and it was still better than most Mexican we get here. And semi-fancy Mexican–I’ve watched a ton of these places go under, just in Astoria. Breaks my heart.

The next night, we went to Soi 7, downtown, for Thai food. Having just come back from Thailand, I was starving for everything, but slightly skeptical that it would measure up. Again with the misordering–following my suggestions, we wound up with chili-basil everything. But whoa–so good. There were wee sweet scallops in the noodles, and the eggplant is something I’d want to eat for lunch every day. And because we weren’t in New York, we could sit for a full four hours at our table and talk and talk. We got about eight rounds of tea (white, with black fruits–so delicate!).

And on Sunday, I went to a Chicks with Knives dinner. I have spent the last nine years or so throwing dinner parties for fun and very occasional profit. I got a book deal out of it, but I’ve gotten precious few reciprocal dinner invitations. And I’ve never gone to someone else’s supper club. (I was just about to go to Lightbulb Oven, but then she moved to Dallas–kills me!)

So I have fresh appreciation for anyone who has ever made the trek to Sunday Night Dinner, showing up totally cold in the middle of a strange neighborhood. And I’m sorry I couldn’t provide them with the fabulous digs I enjoyed at the Chicks with Knives event. Again, we were downtown–this time in a fabu loft. And the food was fantastic–I love hollandaise on anything, but who knew it would be so delicious on fennel? And I have to start making my own butter, stat.

And I have to start rounding up some more smarty-pants friends. New Yorkers–watch your backs. You think you’re the wittiest, most intellectual folks around, but, no offense, because you don’t have to drive home, you get pretty sloppy drunk by Hour Three and start repeating your jokes.

Which is about the only point in favor of a car culture that I can think of: staying sober enough to drive home leads to far more charming conversation. If you’re not sure how to cope without the sauce, please see the Dinner Party Download.

So we come relatively full circle. And because I have no other photos in this post, here’s a random one, from the cathedral downtown:

Reasons to Like Los Angeles, Part 1: Downtown
Reasons to Like Los Angeles, Part 2: Weirdness

February 26, 2010

Reasons to Like Los Angeles, Part 2: Weirdness

Yesterday, I talked a little bit about downtown L.A. It borders on weird, because of the architecture and the schizophrenic quality of it. And everything seems weirder when the sun is blazing down–the balmy weather somehow backfires in L.A., and gives everything a slightly dystopian feel. At least to my grumpy New York eyes. But some things are stranger than others.

That honor is reserved for the Museum of Jurassic Technology. I first read about this place in 1994, in a fabulously disorienting article in Harper’s by Lawrence Weschler; it still stands out as one of the best pieces of art criticism I’ve read. (I will violate all kinds of copyright laws by posting it here, until someone tells me not to. Really, you should read it.) I’ve loved Weschler ever since, and of course hankered to visit the museum.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t recreate Weschler’s experience, of walking into the place cold–I know too much. But I was surprised at just how much the exhibits could pull me in, even though I know their conceit. I spent an hour believing/not believing, and could have spent hours more.

Last fall, I saw David Wilson speak, and he presented a couple of the newer exhibits at the museum. At the time, I fell asleep. But in the context of the museum, with Wilson fully out of the way (behind some curtain somewhere, most likely), the strange Soviet science business and the ponderous films actually all worked together, and I was properly mesmerized.

Alas, I did not have time to enjoy tea and cookies in the salon upstairs. If you go, have some for me.

We also stopped by Watts Towers, which I somehow have never seen. I thought they were bigger. The fact that they’re kind of small makes them all the odder. And I didn’t realize how intricate the metal structures were. Nor that the guy had skipped town and never came back to revisit the place, even when the city got to arguing about the towers’ fate, before he even died.

In other weirdness, I much enjoyed the fact that the counter ladies at the China Cafe in the Grand Central Market (another downtown attraction) all spoke Spanish, and that the bulk-chile-and-beans vendors all seemed to be Chinese.

While I was snapping photos, some guys chatted me up (with the flawless opening line, “Take a picture of this guy–he’s a criminal!”) and made me realize how much I miss hearing the northern Mexican accent in New York. We have Mexicans now, and some of them even live in Astoria, but even they don’t really speak with that same just-over-the-border cadence. Raul and Martin congratulated me for taking the time to slow down and talk to them, even though I was one of those fast-moving New Yorkers. Then I actually had to say, “Gotta go–I hear my mom calling!”

I’ll get into the L.A. food stuff in the next post…

Reasons to Like Los Angeles, Part 1: Downtown

February 25, 2010

Reasons to Like Los Angeles, Part 1: Downtown

My epiphany, on my most recent trip to Los Angeles: L.A. is like the Queens of California. (San Francisco is the Brooklyn, natch.) As a New Yorker, I am duty-bound to think like this–the world revolves around us!

Queens is spread out, low-rise, disconnected communities with no real center. And it’s bursting with amazing food. Also, New Yorkers hate Queens because it embodies all the horrors of suburbia that they’re trying to escape.

Likewise with Los Angeles. New Yorkers–including my very own husband–hate the place on principle. (In fact, Peter just walked up behind me and saw the title of this post and shouted, “WRONG!” But, but…we live in Queens! We love Queens!)

Humph. I had a great trip! And it was sunny! And there was amazing food!

Some things I appreciated:

Downtown:

I was born in L.A., and I didn’t even know L.A. had a downtown! I guess it wasn’t up to much till very recently, but still. I saw lots of gorgeous old buildings, like the central library, where the murals are outstanding; the Bradbury Building, where the elaborate wrought-iron interior staircases are clearly the work of a deranged mind; and Oviatt’s, likewise deranged with Deco. When Peter’s mom dropped me in front of Oviatt’s to poke around, she advised me, “Sweet-talk your way in.” I suck at sweet-talking, but I did get to poke my in the store-turned-restaurant, where they were setting up for a wedding. Holy woodwork! We also got to leaf through the happy couple’s photo album, which was pretty funny.

But, as Lars von Trier says, you have to take the good with the evil, so there’s also a whole crazy office-park part of downtown, where great slabs of concrete are connected to other slabs by skyways and secret tunnels. Which I got a brief tour of with the guys from The Dinner Party Download (an excellent podcast that I love because I can imagine a world where dinner parties are a common thing, and where people don’t spend all of dinner talking about the food). We got to walk through the Bonaventure Hotel building, which is one of those ridiculous 1970s-vision-of-the-future creations that’s all curves and atriums and external glass elevators.

Aaand, that’s about all the attention span I have for today. More L.A. attractions to come…

October 29, 2009

I Survived Book Tour!

(More pics at Flickr.)

First of all, Skank Ham. Met the auteur in St. Louis last night at our Left Bank Books event. I love the Internet.

As I’ve mentioned in posts about guidebook research trips, it’s easy to get burned out on restaurant food, on hotels (no matter how glam) and on the glamour of air travel. On the flip side, any moment of non-business-travel experience can be mind-blowingly delightful.

For instance, last night in St. Louis, I was just delighted to ride as a passenger in a car driven by people who knew their way around the city and could tell us fascinating facts about it along the way. No offense to Tamara, who was great at the wheel of our rental cars in three cities, but that’s just not the same.

And when we arrived at Third Place Books for our first Seattle gig, we were served our very own food from the cookbook–a home-cooked meal we were totally not expecting. At that point, Tamara had blown her wad early, so to speak, gorging herself on fancy, vegetable-less, high-butter-fat dinners for the first few days of the trip, so she nearly wept with gratitude.

That’s not to say we didn’t eat some sensational food. At the beginning, it was the Trip of Righted Wrongs. In Portland, I finally got to go to Pok-Pok, after missing it last visit due to its inconveniently being closed the one night we had time. Holy shit, it was delicious. I cannot wait for our January Thailand trip. Ain’t no thing like a fish-sauce-marinated chicken wing.

Also had a fine dinner at Biwa, a Japanese-y joint. Deep-fried kimchi, people. Not so different from deep-fried pickles at your local pub. And a pleasure to dine with the lovely and talented Naomi Pomeroy, who I expect is wiping the floor with her competitor at Iron Chef even as we speak.

But the real bliss of Portland is that you can walk in nearly any old place and get a great meal. The day I arrived, with only a couple of hours before our event at fab Land, I only had time to stagger down to the hotel dining room. Where I ate oysters, deviled eggs three ways and a “salad” that was one big giant roasted bear, some velvety goat cheese and some berries. It was like the whole Pacific Northwest saying, “Look at what WE got!” I found out later that the Heathman Hotel’s restaurant is generally very reputable, so this wasn’t a fluke. But still.

In Seattle, I also righted some wrongs: ate at Salumi twice (to make up for the TWO times it was closed on previous visits), and went to the Rem Koolhaas library, which I’d missed on my last visit. This time, it was unmissable, kitty-corner from my hotel. By sheer coincidence, then had dinner at newly opened Ventana with the same man who’d sold me a $30 finocchiona at Salumi at lunch. I’ve got some crazy flavored salts in my suitcase from Ventana, and a strong memory of oxtail with chard, before the dessert wines blotted everything else out–all thanks to the brilliant social engineering of Seattle Tall Poppy. (Have I mentioned–I love the Internet?)

And I had a totally blissed out morning sitting at counter and eating Swedish almond-cardamom bread, drinking very milky coffee, reading the paper and listening to Mission of Burma from the doughnut stand next to my perch. It was gray and rainy out and just perfect. The day before, I’d eaten a pork sandwich from Maximus/Minimus, a bus shaped like a pig. I was wandering around hungry, and saw a flood of people walking down the street carrying some mighty fine sandwiches. Such good fortune to find the source of the sammies on the very next corner. And just hilarious that the pig bus sells vegan stuff too. Everything you expect from Seattle, really. (Also, buskers playing Nirvana on accordions.)

After all that, I took a weekend break in Albuquerque, where unfortunately I didn’t get to eat green-chile stew at the Frontier until a few hours before my flight out, but the 48-hour trip was nonetheless worth it. Just to be home and recharge, even if there was also some book signing and a great interview with the hilarious Gwyneth Doland, formerly of the Albuquerque Alibi, and Susan Loubet, the host of the show.

Back in Phoenix, I ate at Schlotzsky’s.

….

OK. I was going to skip on to the next topic, and make it seem like Phoenix was a desolate hole. But actually, I like Schlotzsky’s for some reason, and they aren’t really here in NYC. Am I crazy to think the original-style Schlotzsky’s sandwich is some kind of riff on a muffuletta? As I was walking down the block (after nearly getting run over, because no one walks in Phoenix), I found myself actually craving the boiled black olives and the cheese that weirdly melts into the cellular bread.

For dinner, we once again got to eat our very own food, made by the crazy-enthusiastic chef at Duck & Decanter, a wine bar I wish I had around the corner from me. Tamara’s boss from the IHOP showed up, in his IHOP jacket. Awesome.

And that brings us all back to St. Louis, which I’ve had the pleasure of visiting before, but hot damn, why did no one tell me about the doughnuts?! Also, those oatmeal cookies from Dad’s. Dangalang. All my teeth could fall out and my legs would fall off from diabetes, but I think I could live happily in St. Louis.

And now, just a few hours from now (three, to be exact–just enough time to think I have plenty of time, and then manage to be late), I’m off to Word Brooklyn, basically where it all began at the beginning of the month. Tonight, though, I’m talking about the rigors of writing guidebooks. And I will certainly mention how book tour was a total cakewalk compared with my usual guidebook gig.

And after that, I’ll more closely read a job offer for yet another guidebook gig that I just received yesterday. I think I’ll take it. Am I crazy?

(More pics at Flickr.)