I was allowed to get behind the wheel of a car in Osaka without even confirming that I know what a stop sign looks like. It’s horrifyingly easy to rent a car in Japan, and exceedingly nerve-racking getting used to driving it. We’re talking left side of the road, right-hand drive, horizontal stop lights, and continually flipping windshield wipers on in attempts to signal a turn. Seemingly every street is a one-way, and of course we have the complexity of narrow alleyways being shared by cars, bikes, and pedestrians — something that the Japanese navigate with ease and grace but is an absolute nightmare as a foreigner.

This agony was worth it to experience Wakayama Prefecture.

YUASA

After an hour and twenty minutes of white-knuckled ten and two-ing, fueled by top-tier 7-Eleven onigiri (umeboshi and kombu tsukudani; please try), I arrived in Yuasa — the birthplace of shoyu. In its Edo period heyday, there were close to 100 operating soy sauce storehouses. Today there are just four, but the damn near inebriating scent of soy sauce still insists on filling the air of Old Town Yuasa’s quiet maze of narrow, machiya-lined streets. Let’s talk recs.

Jinburo: A historical museum in an impeccably maintained old sento1 displaying an odd assortment of household items from the Meiji and Showa periods. When it was still operating as a sento, the owner lived above the baths, making for an easy commute every morning. The guide proudly showed me a cabinet that played loud music when opening the drawers, in the event that anyone snuck upstairs and tried to steal the owner’s precious goods. A pretty neat feature, even though the floorboards giving way under every step did that job just as well. Grateful for not falling through to the first floor, I continued on to view the old boiler room and make a donation to the museum in exchange for a cedar good luck charm.

Kadocho Soy Sauce Factory: Only stopped in for the merch, but the merch was premium. The staff explained how they make their soy sauce using traditional methods, and recommended a raw soy sauce with all the enzymes and micro-organisms still happily living their lives inside. Homegirl made sure to let me know that Kikkoman is not real soy sauce, too. Should you want something lighter in your luggage, grab a package of their soy powder or soy rice crackers.

Yuasa Soy Sauce Co: Take a self-guided tour of the production facility then go nuts in the gift shop. You can also play shoyu brewer and take part in an “oar insertion experience”, which I did not do. Lastly, and maybe most importantly, try the soy sauce ice cream. It’s served in a classic cone and topped with soy sauce (add more from their helpie selfie dispenser if you’re feeling freaky). The flavor is almost caramel-like, with just the right amount of salty-savory goodness.

MINABE

Continuing south on Route E42, through many a mountain tunnel and wild boar crossing sign, I reached Minabe. Minabe and its neighbor, Tanabe, are known for being Japan’s top ume producers2. The town is bolstered by the Kishu Tanabe Plum Promotion Council and programs like the Let’s Eat Pickled Plums Project. These people are crazy for plums.

Ume museum: Another gift shop to go buck wild in. The plums are shy so photography isn’t allowed but I’d estimate it at about 700 square feet of pure ume madness. They’ve got shelves and shelves of umeboshi, umeshu, ume senbei, gum, chocolates and kombu…the list goes on. My favorite purchase was a tube of ume flavored Chip Stars. Get a cone of ume ice cream at the checkout counter and eat it in the hallway while being serenaded by the Don Quijote-style repeating ume song. Oh, and maybe take a jaunt through the museum.

Ume Boys: I really wanted to go here but they were closed. Maybe next time.

Minabe Bairin: From January to March, this ume grove opens to the public, making accessible the sights and scents of their 100,000 plum trees. Sample some ume products, walk the trails, and bring appropriate footwear for scaling those slopes.

TANABE

Coasting on fumes after having eaten only ice cream and onigiri (which felt like it was consumed a lifetime prior at this point), I made it to Tanabe. Once checked into my hotel, I scarfed a tempura set then rode the rollercoaster of excitement and disappointment in Tanabe’s entertainment district.

Hotel Kii: Well-kept, affordable, and walkable to the station and its surrounding businesses. Stay in the annex to get a spacious room with more character than the main building’s business hotel vibe.

Akihei: Dependable washoku fare in a shop that feels a bit like a refined basement tiki bar. In a good way.

Ajikoji: A bustling network of alleys with what turns out to be the highest density of entertainment establishments relative to its size in the entire country. I was there on a Friday night and when I tell you I got turned away from bars and restaurants almost ten times, I mean it. I was very much looking forward to bar hopping in this no-frills, retro-feeling yokocho but it turns out that unlike America, restaurants there don’t always leave room for walk-ins. And these places were fully booked by the hard-working Tanabeans looking to drown out the week with excessive amounts of highballs and sashimi.

I ended up at a mediocre izakaya where you order on an iPad in a secluded, high-back booth, which was kind of what I needed after striking out time and time again and getting hangrier by the minute. I don’t even remember the name of the place (doesn’t matter, wasn’t great), but the ones I wanted to check out were Gin (a husband and wife operation with a homey feel), Shinbe (a seafood-forward local favorite), Goemon Ichimon ten (their tamagoyaki looks insane), Kakureya Jin (would have gone hard on their kushikatsu), Ajimi (a hole in the wall serving homestyle dishes and sashimi), and Tokkuri (family run izakaya with a constant line out the door). That night ended with a sad walk back to the hotel and lemon sours from the lobby vending machine.

This was the only doorway in Tanabe welcoming me into a place that didn’t require reservations.

Tanabe Umeshu: An umeshu bar that was unexpectedly closed during my visit but I’m sure would fill your mouth hole with incredible wine made from the region’s signature fruit.

Tanabe En+: I got ume senbei made by the local schoolchildren and it RULED. Sweet, salty, crunchy, sticky, perfect. Also in my basket were a couple locally made umeshus and some ume yakiniku sauce. I loved this place.

JA Farmers Market: An incredible display of Wakayama made and grown products that will make your mouth happy. They’ve got everything from fish to mikan to koji spores, to sugar-crusted edible mini pine cones, arranged neatly with informational signage about the farmer, fisherman, or producer. A must-stop for road trip snacks.

Sukiya: This is NOT a mom and pop shop but I ate it in Wakayama so it’s on this list. At Sukiya you get a generous gyudon set for the equivalent of one piece of paper with Abraham Lincoln’s face on it. Although tempted by the “3 kinds of thick cheese beef bowl”, I went with the classic — thinly sliced beef and onions simmered in a soy-based sauce over rice, topped with a raw egg, and served with pickles and miso soup.

YUNOMINE ONSEN

Next, I headed east into the mountains along the Kumano Kodo3, crunching on eye-wateringly bitter mini pinecones on my way to an 1,800-year-old hot spring village. Yunomine Onsen is smaller than some of the train stations in Tokyo, so the food options are limited — but there are still some tasty bites to be had.

Sansuikan Kawayu Midoriya: I have a lot to say about this place. First, do not get this hotel confused with Sansuikan Kawayu Matsuya next door. That one is straight scary, with rooms looking like they’ve been haunted, exorcised, and haunted again repeatedly for the last 50 years. At Midoriya you can stay in a Japanese-style room with a river-facing lounge space separated from the main area by a shoji screen. The tatami room’s center table (topped with tea and a black sesame cookie that’ll make your eyes go crossed before rolling back in your skull) is pushed aside at the end of the day when the staff comes by to lay out your futons. This is a traditional Japanese lodging scenario that everyone should try at least once.

The hotel sits right on the two-foot-deep Oto river, which if you’re visiting in winter, gets DAMMED AND CONVERTED INTO A HOT SPRING. I can’t think of a more thrilling body of water. It was 96 degrees when I arrived in Yunomine, so the river was in its normal state — less exciting than a thousand-person capacity hot soak, but a nice respite after pruning in the hotel’s coed hot springs nonetheless.

About those hot springs. There are a couple of them, and they’re only accessible to the hotel guests so they’re not super overrun. The hotel provides bathing yukata (nice if you didn’t bring a swimsuit but fairly uncomfortable if you, like me, don’t enjoy the feeling of wearing clothes when submerged in water) and sandals for traversing the rocky riverbed and shoreline. In addition to these hot springs, there are areas in the river where you can dig up your own hot water source and build a rock wall around yourself so it’s kind of like being in those hot tubs that are inside of rich people’s pools. Nifty, but I didn’t think it was worth the effort.

With so many hot water options it’s natural to want to try them all, so please take heed of my friendly PSA and take breaks to avoid overheating. While I was suckling the teat of the free beverage bar, a dude came into the hotel lobby, sweaty as hell, and fainted (twice) from heat exhaustion. I’ve never heard so many people gasp and synchronously say “daijoubu?” in my life. I was relieved to see him the next morning at breakfast, operating normally, with a full plate of food ready for consumption.

Okay so the breakfast. THE BREAKFAST. If you’re listening to this article I hope you enjoy the Substack voice butchering the pronunciation on the following list of buffet items. Dashimaki tamago, onsen eggs, onsen tofu (lightly set warm silken tofu topped with soy sauce and scallion), grilled salmon, mirin-dried mackerel, miso soup made with local vegetables, hot spring and ume rice porridge, sausage, bacon, many pickles, simmered hijiki, mentaiko, kinpira burdock, pickled and grated daikon, boiled whitebait, shio pan, baguette slices, lettuce, bacon, ham, corn, bean salad, potato salad, sesame dressing, French dressing, green perilla dressing, yogurt, konjac balls, fruit salad, grape juice, ume juice, orange juice, coffee, tea, and Asahi on draft for the naughty brunch-goers. After making my initial assessment pass of the offerings, salivating like a wild dog, I landed on a well-balanced plate of pickled, simmered, raw and grilled items. Round two was a second helping of onsen tofu and a bowl of rice that I glowed up into tamago kake gohan with a gorgeous onsen egg, a splash of soy sauce and a package of roasted seaweed. I walked out of that room of edible delights like a cheap grandma with a shio pan in each coat pocket and an ear-to-ear smile.

Tsubo-yu: One of the oldest hot springs in Japan. This tiny, private, stone-lined bath in a wood cabin earned itself a UNESCO World Heritage Site designation and its waters are said to have healing properties capable of curing everything from rheumatism to diabetes. As previously mentioned, I was welcomed to Yunomine with sweltering heat — not exactly the weather that begs you to jump into a hot spring. I opted to get up with the birds at dawn the next morning and be the first person in Tsubo-yu’s blue, mineral-rich, milky waters at 6am. Since my planned arrival soak was a bust, I instead walked down to…

Yuzutsu: A 194-degree public cooking basin that uses hot spring water to turn your raw eggs and vegetables into sulphuric masterpieces. Buy your goods with little packets of salt at Yumune Chaya just across the bridge. The shopkeeper is going to tell you 11 minutes on the eggs but don’t be fooled, the perfect egg exits the bath at the ten minute mark. The sweet potatoes take upwards of an hour, so…maybe walk around town a bit (the real pros will plan their Tsubo-yu time slot around this. I am not one of those pros, but you could be).

I went to a sushi restaurant close to this beautiful torii gate surrounded by rice paddies but I’m not even going to share the name because it wasn’t very good. Should I find myself in Yunomine again, I’d go whole hog on the hotel and opt into Midoriya’s dinner service.

NACHI-KATSUURA

The last stop on my road trip was the coastal town of Nachi-Katsuura, which houses the country’s top port for freshly caught tuna and a postcard-perfect shrine in the nearby mountains.

JF Katsuura Seafood Market: Go early to catch the action of their tuna auction, or go whenever to peruse offerings from the food and souvenir vendors. Just make sure not to somrk.

Foot bath: Should you want yet another opportunity to soak a body part, stop at this free foot bath and take in the view of the Kii-Katsuura Bay. And yes, it’s actually called “Foot bath” on Google maps.

Kinoshita Suisanbutsu: An approximately five-foot-wide unmanned, self-serve tuna shop operating on the honor system that nearly all Japanese people abide by without question. Different cuts of tuna are sliced up into sashimi, packaged into portions for one or two people, and labeled with the amount of yen they expect you to leave in the wall-mounted payment box.

Nachi waterfall: A 436-foot vertical drop waterfall that, unless you’re really into waterfalls, is not worth traversing the incredibly non-ADA compliant terrain in extreme heat among many others hoping to feast their eyes on the same airborne liquids.

Hiro Shrine: It’s pretty, but like the waterfall, you’re surrounded by sweaty Kumano Kodoers which kind of takes away from the serenity of the place. Take a photo, trade some yen for omikuji4 and hightail it outta there.

AN ACCIDENTAL TOUR OF MIE PREFECTURE

Several road closures sent me on detours through the mountains and little coastal towns of Mie Prefecture. Mie is known for Matsusaka wagyu beef which I WISH I had time to try, but instead I settled for the road trip fuel of Lawson’s coffee milk and cold cream bread (void of any nutritional substance but impeccable, really — a layer of dense, smooth custard on the bottom bunk of whipped, light cream inside a fluffy, not-too-sweet bread. I’ll seek it out next time I’m in Japan.)

After many more hours in the car than expected, I dropped my chariot off in Kyoto, which, if I can de-influence you without going on too big of a rant, is like Japanese-flavored Disneyland. Don’t get me wrong — I had some of my favorite meals in Kyoto, and the temples and nature are unreal. But the tourists seem to outnumber the locals, and every time I exited my hotel I had my tail between my legs, ashamed to be yet another traveler contributing to the congestion.

I really wanted to visit a kakuuchi in Nakagyo Ward (post to come on these sacred drinking sites) but after standing outside, waffling for a good five minutes, I decided it wasn’t my place to be there. These have to be some of the few remaining establishments that tourists haven’t swarmed, and am I gonna walk my white ass in there to ruin their local vibe? No. I went to a 7-Eleven and drank a One Cup sake in the parking lot instead.

Knowing at least a few Japanese phrases and basic etiquette makes a difference (the locals will mega appreciate you!); however, if you’ve made it this far and I’ve done my job correctly, maybe you’ll want to visit Wakayama instead.

If that is the case, please know that the Japanese stop sign looks like America’s yield sign.

I visited Tokyo Dome in May to watch the Yomiuri Giants play the Hanshin Tigers. There were surprises and delights at every turn, and taking in the differences between the MLB and Nippon Professional Baseball experience occupied the majority of my brain space for those 9 innings. I was planning to recap all of the interesting food that I tried, but I went too hard on a hamburg steak earlier in the day and only had room for an order of (very long) french fries at the ballpark. I’m so sorry. Let’s go through what I can say about the food, along with some other observations.

FOOD

Maybe I shouldn’t be shocked because Japanese food is Japanese food — whether you’re in a baseball stadium or not. But the amount of broth-based, raw, and eaten-with-chopsticks fare available really gasted my flabber.

I am, and I imagine you are, used to offerings of greased-up and battered food in various shades of beige. Pizza, fries, chicken fingers, soft pretzels, nachos with cheese sauce made entirely of chemicals. The stuff that requires only fingers as a utensil. I once saw a lady eating tacos out of her purse — clearly not acquired at the stadium, but beige food shoveled by a germ-ridden hand nonetheless. A rite of the American ballpark experience.

Tokyo Dome offers some finger food (see extra long fries) but the majority of it is eaten with chopsticks, and maybe a spoon. Gyudon bowls, ramen, tempura, sushi, mini hot dogs cut to look like octopus, katsu, chirashi, edamame. Bento boxes with chicken nanban (which rules), beef tongue, menchikatsu, and bulgogi. The good stuff.

They also offer an item, important enough for a feature on the jumbotron, called “Power of Teriyaki & Egg,” which is an exquisitely sauced up puck of meat topped with scrambled eggs and crammed in a bun.

BEVERAGES

We have beer guys, they have uriko — young women wearing 30-pound keg backpacks and uniforms often decked out with jewels, bows, and fake flowers. They have flawless hair and makeup, physics-defying hat placement1, and sport gleaming smiles that attempt to cover up their exhaustion from running (truly running) somewhere around 5 miles up and down the stadium steps with your frosty beer. Or sake(!!). A stark contrast to the 80-something-year-old peanut man I held my breath for at the last SF Giants game, hoping he’d be able to make it up Oracle Park’s stairs just one last time before perishing.

MASCOTS

Even mascots are a reflection of the culture. SF’s Lou Seal is proudly rotund and a little deranged. Yomiuri Giants mascots look like they’re on a diet of miso soup and the occasional pickle. They’re skinny and reserved like good little Giabbits, and it kinda bums me out.

This brings to light how much obesity plays a role in our most beloved mascots. Santa, the Michelin man, hell — even Punxsutawney Phil’s psychic weather abilities can be overshadowed2 by his luscious build. And something about it feels right. Not because 40% of Americans are obese, but because of the relatability in allowing yourself a little treat. The jolly exuberance from not being short of a good meal.

I want my mascot hip thrusting to the Black Eyed Peas while launching cheaply printed souvenirs from a t-shirt cannon. And what’s to thrust, if there’s not a hula hoop lining the inside of their coat of indulgence? Tokyo’s family of rabbits has no hula hoops. Just fabric draped over thin frames, topped with a slightly enlarged head. An atrocity as far as I’m concerned.

ATMOSPHERE & MANNERISMS

The crowd at a Japanese baseball game is fucking nuts. Here, our players have a short snippet of a walkup song before people start cheering for or heckling the batter. In Japan, the entire at-bat is characterized by a symphony of rhythmically clanking plastic bats and simultaneously chanted, individualized songs for each player. EACH PLAYER. Yoshihiro Maru has a song. Naoki Yoshikawa has a song. Shunsuke Urata has a song. And the fans know them all.

Yes, MLB fans have opportunities to sing in unison to ballpark anthems, but they often have a…specific tone.

When Steve Hogan rips “go team go” on the organ, SF fans are sure to cap off the jingle with “Dodgers suck!” (yes, even when not playing the Dodgers) just for the sake of being aggressive and territorial. Osaka? Their fight song goes like this:

“o-o-o-o Hanshin Tigers, play, play, play, play”

I’m laughing out loud as I recap this. One fanbase says I fucking hate those guys even though they’re not here, the other says just do your best.

CALLING IT A NIGHT

After feeling the immense power of teriyaki & egg and consuming many uriko-delivered Sapporos, and with throats hoarse from three hours of chanting, Japanese fans neatly pack up their items and leave the stadium completely spotless. No peanut shells, no trash, nothing. This discipline and respect for shared spaces is a part of the culture that shows up even at sporting events, whereas we’re inclined to leave mustard-soaked deli sheets draped over beer-sopped, peanut shell-bombed paper boats on the ground for someone else to deal with. Could you imagine what it would require for us American sewer rats to clean up after ourselves?

Now. There is at least one similarity between an American and Japanese baseball game, and that’s the race that happens between innings, where a select group of people run around the perimeter of the field to win some kind of prize. Where Tokyo’s got us beat, though, is that their contestants are dressed in nigiri costumes.

I know that, too. But they say hosting is supposed to be fun. Let’s go through the what-to-start-at-what-time-for-everything-to-be-ready-when-people-arrive so you can kick the stress to the curb and have a good time. The theme: Mediterranean. Which, okay yes, Mediterranean is a very general classification of food from the 22 countries that border the Mediterranean Sea. There are many good things to put in your mouth under that grouping, but we’re going primarily Middle Eastern. So maybe I should call this mid night? I dunno. Feels like a cognitive rat’s nest — you know, because, time. We’re keeping med.

Let’s have shish taouk1 and friends — caramelized onion, sautéed tomatoes, toum, pickles, zhuzhed up hummus, olives, and pita.

Med night

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS

Toum
6 garlic cloves
2 large egg whites
2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
1½ cups vegetable oil

Chicken
3 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
2 tbsp. tomato paste
1 tbsp. ground coriander
3 tbsp. vegetable oil, plus more for grill
1¼ lbs. skinless, boneless chicken thighs

The other stuff
4 pitas, warmed
1 white or yellow onion
1 pint little tomatoes (cherry, grape, sungold, whatever)
Hummus
Dill pickle spears
Olives
Olive oil
Sumac

INSTRUCTIONS

5 hours before guests arrive

Make the toum: Pulse garlic, egg whites, and lemon juice in a food processor until smooth. With the motor running, very gradually stream in half of the oil (this will help the emulsion stay together). Scrape down sides of processor and continue to process, gradually adding remaining oil, until mixture thickens and becomes light and airy (it should cling to a spoon). Season with salt.

Make the marinade: Mix lemon juice, tomato paste, coriander, ¼ cup toum, and 3 Tbsp. oil in a large bowl to combine. Transfer marinade to a large resealable plastic bag. Save remaining toum for serving.

Working one at a time, slice chicken thighs in half lengthwise and season generously with salt. Add to the marinade bag, seal, and massage marinade into chicken. Chill at least 3 hours.

Now is the appropriate time for the baseboard trance.

1½ hours before

Pull chicken from fridge and let sit at room temperature before grilling.

Slice onion and cook in a pan with a few tablespoons of oil on medium-low heat until caramelized to your liking. Take off the heat and cover with a lid — we’ll come back to these later.

While the onion is cooking, cut pickle spears into smaller batons (in half lengthwise, then in thirds). Put the pickles in their serving dish, cover, and place in fridge.

Scoop the hummus from its container into a serving bowl, using your spoon to swirl a divot in the top like they do at fancy restaurants. Cover and place in fridge.

Put your olives in their serving bowl, cover, fridge. Do the same with the remaining toum.

Sauté tomatoes with a couple tablespoons of olive oil and a pinch of salt over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until partially broken down (somewhere between 10–20 minutes). Just like the onion, take off the heat and cover.

45 minutes before

This recipe is written for cooking chicken on a grill. If grilling is a no-go for you, broil it in the oven (make sure it hits 165°F) and ignore the following 3 steps.

Prepare a grill for medium heat and oil the grate. If you’ve got crusty bits, wad up a ball of aluminum foil and run it back and forth over the grate with tongs prior to oiling — works like a charm and won’t put you in the ER like a grill brush bristle lodged in your throat could.

Thread chicken onto skewers, folding pieces back and forth accordion-style so they pile onto themselves (it should be about 3 strips per skewer).

30 minutes before

Grill chicken, turning occasionally, until browned and beginning to char in spots, 10–12 minutes.

Put skewers on a tray and into an oven set to “keep warm”.

10 minutes before

Reheat onion and tomatoes.

Warm your pita over a burner or throw in the “keep warm” oven for a few minutes until soft and pliable. Cut into quarters and plate.

Bring pickles, hummus and olives out. Give your olives a spoon and sidecar for the pits. Fill the hummus’ divot with roughly a tablespoon of olive oil and sprinkle with sumac and flaky salt. Start setting your table.

When everyone’s settled in their seats

Scoop warm onion and tomatoes into their dishes, put chicken skewers on a plate, give everything serving utensils, and make sure everyone’s got a drink (yourself included!)

Harris’ piano lounge. I’m tucked away in a corner next to the saloon door separating the staff’s quarters and the steak-lover-studded wooden bar that stretches the length of the room. Wine glasses are precariously stacked on the back bar, the carpeted lounge floor is perfectly muffling the buzz of patrons downing White Russians, and enzymes are slowly breaking down shelves of massive dry-aged beef hunks in the front window. Everything in its right place.

I look down the bar and see a man wearing a varsity jacket with “I’m loving it” embroidered above a bejeweled McDonald’s logo. This high-low juxtaposition disrupts the classic steakhouse vibe but is hilarious. I’ll allow it.

Ceaselessly fixated on the glimmer of those arches as McDonald’s man shuffles around, my friends try to explain the concept of a Super Tuscan. I’m unable to grasp it. My descent into madness has already begun, following a full afternoon in the sun at Golden Gate Park with a foolishly low water intake and the recently delivered, glorious, Harris’ martini.

My go-to is a dry gin martini with an olive, which for whatever reason, confuses a lot of people. “So a dirty martini?” Oh, no thank you, dry please. “So you want a twist then?”

My boys behind the bar here aren’t shaken by my order. They deliver a two-olive skewer soaking in liquor as nourishing as mother’s milk with a leftovers carafe surrounded by ice in the most adorable little wooden half-barrel you’ve ever seen. They want your martini cold and they want it cute. So do I.

Shrimp cocktail is delivered next. Five pieces of perfectly cooked big boy shrimp with a lettuce pile that refuses to choose between the identity of a garnish and a side, a shitty little tomato (the kind you can get year-round that lack any resemblance to an in-season one) and damn good cocktail sauce.

We migrate to our table where bread and an accompanying cube of spreadable, room temperature butter attempt to mute the effects of gin and vermouth flowing through my body (it doesn’t work.) We order two wedge salads and they hit HARD. Let me be clear that it’s a classic wedge—nothing unique to this place—but they do it right, and I’m feeling both wobbly and generous so I give it high praise.

ONE TOE IN THE RABBIT HOLE

As I take in the old school charm of the piano lounge, I find myself engrossed by their mural of iconic SF landmarks—Coit Tower, the Palace of Fine Arts, Transamerica Pyramid, and Grison’s…Chicken House…? One of these is not like the others. But it’s important enough to the owner of this steakhouse to be painted among the heavy hitters. What the fuck is or was Chicken House?

The steaks arrive. At a chain restaurant or in my own home, I’d normally opt for a New York steak with A1, but in a respectable place like this where I’m likely to be privately scoffed at and out of luck with any of Kraft Heinz’s finest in the building, I go for the steak Diane. She’s got a perfect cooked-to-questionable gradient upon slicing and wears a glossy coat of cognac and shallots. Ms. Diane shares a plate with snap peas that snap (yes, good) and a steaming baked potato.

Now my favorite part: after the food is set down another waiter comes by with a tray holding bowls of sour cream, whipped butter, horseradish, and chives. My baked potato is anointed with a spoonful of each as I grin in admiration of this tableside dressing setup. Something about the delivery—the big plop—of that trio of white condiments feels exhilarating; even rebellious. It’s the kind of feeling you have on vacation when you order a cocktail at breakfast because nothing matters and rules don’t exist there.

KNEE DEEP IN THE RABBIT HOLE

Chicken House is still on the brain. I take it to the worldwide web to find that it was in the building across the way from my outpost in the piano lounge, and is now sadly boarded up, saturated in wheatpaste, and adorned with graffiti. Reading further, the Chicken House was a sister restaurant to Grison’s Steakhouse—now Harris’. This is making sense now.

The owner of the two, Bob Grison, was a big-time SF restaurateur with more than a few local and national acknowledgements that would lead you to believe he knew what he was doing. In reading about Bob and the tasty history at the corner of Van Ness and Pacific, I come across some old Grison’s menus. BEAUTIES. “They don’t make ‘em like this anymore.”

The live music starts. A Dave Brubeck cover becomes the soundtrack to my gleeful steak and potato consumption. The cork from another bottle of red (they tell me it’s a Super Tuscan) is pulled and glasses around the table gulp up their refills. Again, everything in its right place.

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WAIST-HIGH IN THE RABBIT HOLE

The Grison’s menus are a part of an online UC Davis repository called The Amerine (Maynard) menu collection. Deeper in we go—who is Maynard Amerine?

Sniffing around in another corner of this digital library, I learn that he was a bigwig in the wine industry, and described as one of the world’s foremost authorities on the technical and cultural aspects of growing grapes and making wine.

Now, it’s unclear to me whether this dude attended all of these dinners, was a freak about collecting menus, or just had the collection named in his honor because he was a notable wine guy, but there are 76 pages of old menus in his namesake repository. I eventually find myself at page 30, and while getting lost in the sauce enjoying the design sensibilities of yesteryear, I notice that a lot of these dinners were taking place at the Bohemian Club.

In a moment of silence with myself, I look around the lounge. There are offshoots—additional rooms of tufted leather and luxury—in every corner. THIS PLACE IS HUGE, BOB. Did your chickens require this kind of square footage, too? The music stops and the 80-something-year-old pianist makes a pass at me by asking if I want to buy a life insurance policy. Dessert menus are dropped off. Yes, we get a crème brûlée.

UP TO MY SHOULDERS IN THE RABBIT HOLE

The Bohemian Club is a men’s-only, invitation-only club shrouded in mystery and headquartered on Taylor Street in the Tenderloin. It has a reputation of being a predominantly white gaggle of the richest and most politically conservative men in the United States. BARF. What are they doing in there? Just being wealthy and “important”? Don’t they do that enough out in the open with us peasants watching? I enjoy thinking about the likelihood that they have to step over human shit to get to their private building for their stuffy networking events. Or whatever takes place in there.

The last shard of brûléed crème is eaten. I go to the restroom to squeeze out1 and find a woman at the sink with about 18 inches of toilet paper trailing behind her heel. I’ve had just enough alcohol to invade her personal space by putting my hand on her shoulder, pinning the TP with my shoe and whispering “you don’t want to walk out of here with that shit.” My good deed of the day is done and it’s time to leave.

Five stops on the piss-scented 49 and we’re at Smuggler’s Cove. Do I need another drink? No. Do I get another drink? Yes. Do I enjoy it? Sure; who doesn’t like a painkiller?

The pufferfish and buoy-clad watering hole is packed to the gills (pun intended, HELLO!) with what seems like the entirety of San Francisco’s Gen Z population that has yet to give up alcohol. We get into conversation with the guy next to us who lives on a sailboat across the bay. He’s also a native Midwesterner—as confirmed by his generosity in offering to take us out halibut fishing—and has plenty to say about growing up in Iowa. Another round of nutmeg-topped tiki drinks hit the table and the former subject of warm summer nights is replaced by the downturn of a past relationship. I don’t like to carry other peoples’ emotional baggage (and damnit, I will) so I initiate the night’s wind down.

We exchange numbers in preparation for our halibut excursion, say our nice-to-meet-yous, and begin our shaky descent down the stairs when dude locks eyes with Rog from across the room and says “hey, send me a picture of your butt sometime.”

Maybe this is the kind of exchange happening between those rich tight-asses as they drink Super Tuscans in the privacy of the Bohemian Club.

Senmonten (専門店) are shops that focus exclusively on one item, allowing them to offer an exceptionally high quality product or service. For restaurants, that means offering a single dish, sourcing the best ingredients, and treating them with extreme care in their preparation and presentation.

These shops are a display of two Japanese philosophies at work: shokunin—a lifelong devotion to mastering a craft through continuous self improvement, and kodawari—finding personal satisfaction in the relentless pursuit of perfection, regardless of profit or recognition.

So you can probably already see why these places are special. And different from the majority of businesses in America. You can count on them being pretty damn good because the people running them are chasing the best product, not the most money, and if they’re offering just one thing…it better be good enough for their business to stay afloat.

Many senmonten exist in Japan, so this is by no means a comprehensive list, but let’s go through some of the ones I’d visit again and again. And again.

TOKYO

Kinryu: A snug, 7-seater ramen shop serving up tsukemen unlike anything I’ve ever had before. Their most popular dish is kelp water tsukemen—its noodles are placed in a very shallow pool of light, chilled broth and topped with thinly sliced pork (shockingly similar in appearance to roast beef) and a boiled egg whose yolk is so vibrant you might think it had a brush up against Red 40. First, you’re supposed to try a noodle on its own to appreciate its mild flavor and chewy texture. Next, try a bite with just salt (somehow so good?). Lastly, dip the noodles into the accompanying hot broth made from bonito and kelp. Should you get the special version, there will also be slippery, delicious pork and shrimp wontons bobbing in the broth. Once your noodles have been consumed, dilute any leftover broth with dashi and sip it down.

Tsukemen Enji: My number one! Order at the machine and give your tickets to the chef when you sit down. A few minutes later you’ll be making eyes at the contents of two speckled ceramic bowls: a mound of noodles with the texture and quantity of your choosing (I get a regular portion of their recommended thick, firm, germinated wheat noodles) and rich broth with bamboo shoots, pork, and a boiled egg. If you want to change up the flavor part-way through your meal you can add a splash of vinegar (it’s so good, don’t skip this step) and similar to Kinryu, there’s dashi for your post-noodle dilute-n-sip.

Fuunji: Fuunji and Enji are a lot alike, but something about Enji’s broth hits a little harder for me (apparently Fuunji serves a chicken and katsuo broth instead of the usual pork you get at Enji). That said, I am splitting hairs and Fuunji is a wonderful place to eat a bowl of tsukemen. Or regular ramen. Look for the lanterns underneath the building’s spiral staircase to find the entrance which is halfway below street level. Of course.

Ponchiken: 10/10 no notes. Serene and homey wood-paneled interior with jazz playing over the speakers. They tout “four points of pride”, which end up being more than four but are: their range of Mexican and Okinawan pork offerings, coarse breadcrumbs with low sugar & salt content so the meat can cook slowly without the breading burning, a specialty blend of frying oil resulting in a cutlet that isn’t greasy, cutting the meat in a way that creates a textured surface for deeper flavor permeation, and meticulous sourcing of their seasonings. Their lighter katsu pairs well with sake, and they offer quite a selection, celebrating rare brands from Shizuoka that grace the menu.

Friendly service, supreme tonkatsu, loved by locals and the people over at Michelin.

Uogashi Nihon-Ichi Shibuya Dogenzaka: If you insist on stepping into the madness that is Shibuya (like, Shibuya-Shibuya. Shibuya Crossing Shibuya) you might as well treat yourself to Uogashi Nihon-Ichi. You’re probably going to spend 15 minutes navigating through the train station, and you’ll probably take the wrong exit, but once you get your bearings and find yourself in the presence of the $12 Sakura set your troubles will, without a doubt, melt away. Each station (this is a standing sushi bar) comes equipped with help-yourself-style oshibori, chopsticks, ginger, soy sauce, and green tea powder—which you mix in a mug with hot water from your own personal spigot. The nigiri here is PHENOMENAL. The fish is super buttery, served at room temperature (important), and is properly formed around its mound of rice. No dense machine-molded rice hunks with cold, tough, draped fish here (I’m looking at you, Kura, you nasty little shit!!)

Michishirube: I went with the yakitori omakase and the facial warpaint-wearing chef had me eating lips, nips and hips in the name of mottainai1. No but seriously, leaving it up to him takes away the difficulty of ordering from a poorly Google-translated handwritten menu and everything I had was enjoyable, even if unfamiliar.

Michishirube clearly said “what’s a fire code?” when building out their cozy, eat-on-a-tatami-floor upstairs setup with a stupidly steep ladder so watch your ass going back down if you’ve had a few.

Kameya: Hot or cold soba for $3.50. I got the cold, which consisted of a kakiage-topped bed of noodles, and a tsuyu bath with an onsen egg and green onion cozied up inside. Staff are ancient and don’t speak English. There are maybe six seats inside so come before 11:30 or after 1:30 to avoid the line of hungry salarymen.

Tensuke: Tempura set meals in an unpretentious shop where every seat has a view of the action. And by action I mean the lively chef who has a choreographed performance anytime someone orders an egg. Apparently when he first introduced his (now signature) tempura egg it wasn’t a hot seller, so to boost sales he started doing a jig anytime someone would order it.

Dance aside, the tempura egg is not to be missed. This, along with an array of vegetables and seafood, are served fresh out of the fryer alongside a light tentsuyu with grated daikon for dipping.

NAOSHIMA

Wander Spice Curry: I had a funny experience where there was just one other customer and he was acting friendly but I couldn’t tell if he and the owner were talking shit on me or just surprised that I was there on their little island. Sadly, this would not be the last time my kindergarten-level Japanese would fail me.

Wander is a small, intimate shop with limited seating and good curry that the owner clearly takes pride in making. As a whole, Naoshima’s food options ain’t really it, but this place was pretty solid.

OSAKA

Tenpei: Teeny thin-skinned gyoza that you order by the twenty. They’re plated as a straight up sheet and one side is shatteringly crisp while the other has a chewy, mochi-like texture. Pork and chive filling? Not sure but it rules. They’re served with pickles and umeboshi, and you’re instructed to make a dipping sauce of 2 parts vinegar to 1 part soy sauce. Change that ratio if you want but probably don’t. The only other things you can order are beer and sake, but don’t count on having a leisurely drink…they’ve never outright said it but I can feel that this is an eat-and-dip setup, and they’re not interested in you lingering around. There are also some rules: you’re allowed to place an order only twice (so get your quantities squared away) and are strictly prohibited from talking on the phone. Nothing we can’t abide by but it sets the tone for the no-nonsense vibe of the place.

Tonkatsu Daiki: Daiki also has some rules: no kids, cash only. They also have incredible tonkatsu. Their pork is super soft and the breading has a light crisp that doesn’t sog out or pull away from the meat. Their interior leaves something to be desired but we look past that for the bomb katsu and friendly service, don’t we?

Hanakujira Honten: One of my favorite meals in Japan. Whether it’s 40 degrees out or 90, my ass is going to be parked in front of Hanakujira’s bubbling cauldron of oden while I happily slug down sake, daikon, and pork & cheese cabbage rolls (the cheese version is something I’ve not been able to find elsewhere, so definitely get it here). Oden is so simple that the ingredients and preparation have to be nothing short of perfect because there is NOWHERE for bad quality to hide. The only seasoning aside from the broth is a swipe of mustard that will fry your nostril hair and obliterate your sinuses, and maybe a sprinkle of shichimi. Hanakujira gets it right every time.

Kushikatsu Shichifukujin: Skewers breaded and fried to perfection in tight quarters along the Tenjinbashi shotengai. When the staff comes up to you immediately after being seated it’s because they want you to order a first drink. Should this catch you off guard, know that they’ll always have beer and sake. “Nama” will get you an icy glass of draft Japanese beer (no need to specify a brand; you get what they have) and if you order “nihonshu” you’ll be given a delicious pour of sake. I think most staff will know what you mean if you order sake—especially if you look like a gaijin—but it is the broader, all-encompassing term for alcohol whereas nihonshu is the specific Japanese term for what English speakers call sake. Get it, got it, good.

It’s customary to order a few skewers at a time and place multiple orders so that you don’t estimate wrong upfront and place a single order of much more than you can consume without hating yourself. Simply yell out “sumimasen!” while politely looking at the waitstaff and they’ll come to collect your request for the next round of fryboys.

Skewers are placed on a strainer tray in front of you one by one as they come out of the fryer. Nearby is a pan of cabbage next to a communal kushikatsu sauce. Have fun and don’t double dip.

ONOMICHI

Oyatsu-to-Yamaneko: It’s pudding. It’s the best pudding. One of their most popular sellers is setouchi lemon (a beloved local citrus) which comes with a tiny plastic bottle shaped like a fish, filled with setouchi juice. The tart juice is a nice contrast to the creamy pudding, but the pudding can absolutely stand on it’s own, too.

KYOTO

Tempura Endo: Tempura set meals served in an old building with a beautiful interior and traditional Japanese courtyard. Endo is the fanciest spot on this list, but don’t let that deter you. The chef will serve you many rounds of delicious fried Kyoto vegetables and seafood one by one, and end your meal with a kakiage rice bowl (be prepared to undo your top button). If you go in the fall you’ll likely get a skewer of fried ginkgo nuts which are, as the Japanese say, YABAI2!

Juugo: The owner of Juugo does it all. He farms his buckwheat 30 minutes outside of Kyoto, harvests it himself, and makes his 100% buckwheat noodles fresh, 7 times per day, from behind a window as you sit at the 6-person bar waiting patiently for your meal. He offers cold soba that you dip in a cup of tsuyu, scallion and finely grated daikon, as well as sobagaki, which to my knowledge is essentially the glob of buckwheat flour and water before it’s rolled, sliced and boiled to create noodles. To eat it, pull off bite-sized chunks with chopsticks and dip in either toasted buckwheat groats or daikon with a touch of shoyu (both are perfect). At the end of the meal you sip a comforting cup of soba-yu—the starchy water leftover from boiling soba noodles.

Juugo’s owner says the Japanese tell him that because he doesn’t use any wheat flour to cut the buckwheat it’s “not real soba”, so he ends up with almost exclusively international customers. The thought of him only cooking for foreigners (in one of the most touristed cities of Japan) bums me out but at least he’s able to charge accordingly. Friendly owner, entertaining experience, simple but delicious food. Reservations required.

Motsu-nabe Toraya: This one colors outside the senmonten lines a bit as it offers a handful of appetizers, but it has a single main menu item that you are expected to order, and that’s motsunabe—a stew of collagen-rich broth, offal, cabbage, chives and tofu. If you don’t like intestines you can opt for pork instead. That said, if you’ve never had it before, please please please try the original version with offal. I know innards can be a little spooky for western palates, but the flavor and texture simply do not have a suitable substitute. Toraya serves white miso motsunabe with the usual ingredients, zhuzhing it up with extra vegetables like bean sprouts and mizuna (we’re in the land of amazing produce, after all) and fried tofu with a smidge of yuzo kosho on each square.

NACHIKATSUURA

Kinoshita Suisanbutsu: “Fresh tuna direct sales store” is written above the door to their little 6-by-6-foot shop. Next to JF Katsuura fish market and within Japan’s tuna capital, this place slings some of the highest quality yet cheapest tuna around and operates on an honor system. Put your yen in the wall-mounted box, grab your pre-packaged sashimi from the cooler and find a bench along the water to eat it at. Prices range from 300-700 yen per serving.

Hot tip! There’s a free foot bath on the other side of the fish market where you can soak your tootsies and take in ocean views. I doubt they’d want you eating your tuna there, but worth a stop nonetheless.

FUKUOKA

Unagi No Eito: Set meals of perfectly cooked unagi over rice served with pickles and ochazuke. They offer a stone bowl option where the rice gets crispy on the bottom and you should most definitely opt for that. The server lights it on fire after placing it in front of you which is unnecessary but the flavor is worth the brief moment of being made a spectacle. Make a res in advance.

Ichiran: Twelve floors of SLURP. If you like Hakata style tonkotsu ramen, this is the spot to go. Place your (highly customizable) order at a ticket machine then be escorted to your own private nook where you’ll hand the tickets off to the waitstaff. They lift the bamboo curtain only to deliver your food—no words exchanged.

Following this meal I had a true emergency on platform 2 at Nakasu Station and have never been more grateful for the privacy button on a Japanese toilet. Probably a fluke; would eat at Ichiran again.

Itookashi: For a country whose businesses largely don’t open until 11am, this place has absurd hours. They open at 7am which was very cool for me as someone who had to hit the shinkansen station soon after, and also for the people who are capping off their night of drunken debauchery before crawling home during the morning commute. Japan parties.

Itookashi specializes in seafood so I got my ichiju-sansai3 on with a plate of sashimi, miso soup and two of the very few servings of vegetables I had during my time in Fukuoka.

You might have heard that the French have a stereotype of being prickly. And that Canadians are known to be extremely warm. Montréal is where these generalizations collide, and you’re dealing with a mixed bag of tonal options in any given conversation with a stranger. You never know which you’ll get, but it tends to land at one extreme—delightfully cordial or decidedly not.

I landed in Montréal on Moving Day1 and quickly slipped into a corner booth at Bar Henrietta to throw back some post-flight cocktails and small bites. I was greeted (warmly, Canadian style) with what I would soon find is the standard salutation: “bonjour-hi”. This is an invitation for you to respond in whichever language you prefer—but if you’re not fluent, and your greeter leans a little more French than Canadian (if you know what I mean) I suggest you say “hi”. People in the service industry do not have time for you to practice your French on them and will insist on speaking to you in English if you’re bumbling through masculine and feminine nouns like a kindergartener. Once you get past the anxiety that I probably just instilled in you, you’ll find that the bonjour-hi thing is a very cute cultural quirk specific to Montréal, and will likely be charmed by it for the rest of your trip. Detour over; back to the bar.

Henrietta checks all the boxes—a comprehensive and varied food menu that feels very “girl dinner” (in a good way), chilly, well-made cocktails, and vibes you can only achieve by hiring a lighting consultant—which leaves me wondering how I got in so easily. Maybe going on Moving Day is what’s up.

Bar Henrietta is in the Plateau-Mont-Royal neighborhood, alongside most of the recommendations in this guide. This is also where I stayed for the week, which turned out to be an enjoyable neighborhood with plenty going on that also provided me enough tranquility to sleep without interruption at night. Let’s start there.

LE PLATEAU-MONT-ROYAL

Wilensky’s Light Lunch: To call this place “no frills” makes it out to be fancier than it is. Sit on one of their ancient bar stools and order the Wilensky special: a $5 fried bologna sandwich served on a napkin (pickles get a waxed paper upgrade.)

Cafe Bravo: Bravo had me flirting with merch I couldn’t read, promoting brands I didn’t know. A nice stop for those interested in design…or coffee.

St-Viateur Bagel and Fairmount Bagel: There’s a longstanding debate (like, 100+ years long) about which bagel place is better and if you’re a Montréal resident I’m sure you have opinions. I didn’t form an allegiance with one over the other, but can say that they’re both bomb. They’re hand-rolled, boiled in honey water, then wood-fired. Crispy on the outside, chewy and pleasantly dense on the inside. New York can step aside with their puffy dough rings and “special water” because Montréal bagels are where it’s at.

Guillaume: A French bakery with a large selection of dependable pastries.

Drogheria Fine: There’s one thing on the menu here and it’s a Chinese takeout container brimming with red sauce and buoys of gnocchi bobbing throughout. People love it. You probably will. For me, it’s a bit too much of one thing, and eating it outside in 90-degree heat adds a layer of difficulty. Would try again under different conditions though (on a cooler day and splitting with at least 3 other people.) Should you somehow not be full after your gnocchi, go two doors down to…

Kem Coba: The smarter choice on said 90-degree day. The flavors at this ice cream shop seem to change frequently, but when I was there I got a pandan cone and it fucking ruled.

Loumi: A fast-casual halloumi-focused restaurant that is actually so good. I went here to perk up after staying at a friend’s house until 6am drinking room temperature chocolate gin with crème de menthe (his idea, not mine!!) while learning about Québécois French profanity2. This crazy Canuck was wearing trout slippers and performing party tricks (one of which involved a “decorative” knife whose blade he ran across his palm like he “always does,” leading to a bloodbath in his dining room). The sun came up as I left his house and I’m pretty sure it was that night, drinking cocktails with no ice way after my bedtime, that I earned the nickname “Fuss”. ANYWAY, the Loumi sticks (breaded halloumi batons with tahini yogurt, mint and pomegranate), fattoush salad (the usual, plus halloumi) and Loumi burger (classic burger, sub beef patty for halloumi) are all bound to give you comfort after an evening of over-indulgence and under-slumber.

Schwartz’s Deli: I didn’t make it here but the place is an institution, so I feel confident recommending it.

Patati Patata Friterie de Luxe: A late-night poutinerie serving up gravy-smothered fries and cheese curds with a distinctive olive flavor.

CHINATOWN & OLD PORT

Sans Soleil: A cocktail bar that also serves food and turns into a straight club with nightly DJs after 8pm. When you need a break, go to the back room where you can sit down with cup sake from their vending machine and be briefly reprieved from the insanity.

Bota Bota: I loved it here. It’s a historic ferry converted into a floating spa with a multitude of steam and dry saunas, pools at a variety of temperatures, cold plunge barrels, and many places to lounge. Spend a couple hours transforming into a full-body prune while marveling at Habitat 67 across the water.

SAINT-HENRI

Atwater Cocktail Club: Maximalist interior with cocktails that command attention, as demonstrated by the Mad Whale.

Elena: Top meal of the trip! I was lucky to be at a table of 6 so we were able to taste our way through quite a bit of the menu. The kale caesar salad and Dany pizza cannot be missed. Once you’re convinced that it’s the best Italian restaurant in Montréal, walk 7 minutes down the road to Librairie Saint-Henri Books and pick up their cookbook.

Arthurs Nosh Bar: We’re here for the Mcarthur: a sizeable sheet of chicken schnitzel, iceberg slaw, shallots, french dressing, skrug mayo, and pickles on perfectly toasted challah. There’s likely to be a wait, so I recommend taking in some greenery at nearby Sir-George-Étienne-Cartier Park or putzing through previously mentioned Saint-Henri Books to kill time.

SHAUGHNESSY VILLAGE

Cathay Massage Therapy & Acupuncture: Stop here for a 30-minute réflexologie des pieds to soothe your barking dogs after clocking some serious steps.

Daldongnae Korean BBQ: Yoooooo this was the best KBBQ I’ve had outside of Korea. I don’t know if I just hadn’t hit my normal quota of Asian food or if other people would be as swept away as I was, but that shit HIT. Their grills have a moat around the outside with compartments full of corn cheese, egg soufflé, garlic cloves and kimchi, cooking away and fully prepared for wheneverthehell you want to take a bite. Solid banchan, my favorite yukhoe to date, and of course incredible grilled meat. I’m deducting one point because they didn’t have perilla (um, come on) but they can afford to lose that point and still come out on top. Grab a bubble tea a couple blocks away at Yifang for one last hit of Asian flavor before returning to the lineup of restaurants that don’t use sesame oil.

OUTREMONT

Damas: Okay, I really liked Damas but that place burned a hole in my credit card. She is not cheap, however, with the tasting menu you’re guaranteed to have many delicious mouth moments. If you’re an occasional splurger, this is a good place to do your splurging.

LITTLE ITALY

Chez Tousignant: Very good poutine and hot dogs served in a retro diner environment.

Épicerie Pumpui: Only stopped in for an order of chicken wings (crispy, doused in sweet chili sauce, perfect) and some time under an AC unit, but if the wings are any indication of how tasty the rest of the menu is, I’d be very, very happy settling down here for a full meal.

I left Montréal dehydrated and sleep-deprived, clinging to life and sustained only by the remnants of all the incredible food consumed in that marathon of a week. Someone who I was on the trip with (I’ll leave their name out to retain some dignity) fared even worse, experiencing a violent bout of tummy troubles during his unexpected 3-day extension in the city due to multiple canceled flights. He blames this on the fact that we ate steak tartare nearly every day and I’m here to tell you to eat the steak tartare because this city does it RIGHT (along with many other things.)

A couple years back, when still fully submerged in the tech cesspool, I was on a project to update the design of our company Glassdoor page. I met on Zoom with someone from HR (the project stakeholder) and our Glassdoor rep to go over some super straightforward questions about working within their specs. Things like margin adjustments, text alignment—the basics.

I learned quickly that the rep and I did not have a shared vocabulary, and he asked me to screenshare, walking him through my questions accompanied by live cursor action on their site.

Now, I’m a tab queen. And the unexpected screenshare ask had me feeling like I’d been caught with my pants down, allowing full exposure of my cluttered browser habits and inviting judgment from a person who works for the company that helps put-together, qualified people find jobs (clearly, with my browser as an indication, this couldn’t be me). Was I thinking too far into things? Probably. But coming off as disorganized and chaotic felt shitty nonetheless.

I quickly pulled my tail out from between my legs and shared my screen, trying again to find common ground with the rep around the limitations of what he was asking me to provide.

Side note: Do other designers experience this? Where a vendor provides very little guidance around what they need, then looks at you like you’ve got two heads when you ask basic questions that you’d assume other companies are asking constantly because they, too, lack the guidance needed to ensure their files are compatible and visuals will show up as expected? Although baffling, I don’t mean this as a rant—I genuinely want to know if this is industry-wide or if I’m somehow absorbing all of these interactions as the sole representative of the brand design profession. It feels like the latter but I really want to be wrong.

The assumption that they care about the tab habit is one thing, but it gets worse. As I’m explaining what I’d like to do with our header image, I glance at my tabs and see a truly mortifying truncation of text.

“I’m a slut”

Absolute. Fucking. Panic. If they’re anything like I am, someone shares their whole desktop or browser and I am scanning.

The agony of not knowing whether the tab had been read (and if so, what these people made of it—and me!) had me feeling squirmy so I decided to address it head-on. I clicked the tab, revealing a pink embroidered hat that read “I’m a slut for crab rangoon” and fumbled through an explanation that Haha! This probably looked like inappropriate activity on my work computer but it’s just crab rangoon!

Silence.

Not even a courtesy laugh.

What the fuck? Who are these people? For one, they should think the hat is funny and two, please be a decent human and make this silly coincidence less painful.

Leaving the meeting disorganized, slutty, and bad at jokes, I waited for a message from HR about my NSFW online shopping blunder.

And ya know what? It never came. My wrist remains slap-free, and I’ve used it to diligently mix surimi and cream cheese in this crab rangoon recipe.

Crispy goons

Makes about 40 crab rangoon

INGREDIENTS

1 package wonton wrappers
8 oz cream cheese, softened
6 oz surimi, chopped (I promise it’s better than real crab here)
3 scallions, thinly sliced
1 tsp salt
½ tsp MSG
¼ tsp white pepper
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp sesame oil
Canola oil, for brushing
Sweet chili sauce, for serving (we’re going store-bought on this because folding 40 wontons is labor-intensive enough. You’re welcome!)

INSTRUCTIONS

Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl, making sure everything is well distributed.

Fill a small cup with water. Place a wonton wrapper on your work surface and add a heaping teaspoon of filling in the center. Dip your finger in the water bowl and run it along all four edges of the wonton. (If yours are as floury as mine, you’ll be dipping 4-6 times.) Grab the wrapper by the top and bottom flat edges, bringing together in the middle like a taco. Do the same for the sides, then pinch all four edges together at the center to seal (it’ll look like a flower). Push each wonton flap down in the same direction to form a pinwheel. Repeat with remaining filling.

Preheat your air fryer to 375°F. Using a pastry brush, apply an even layer of canola (or other neutral) oil to parchment paper or foil, then line the air fryer with it.

Brush the wontons generously with oil. The air fryer is not here to make this healthier—it’s just easier than deep frying—so don’t be skimpy with the oil application in the name of wellness. We don’t want to see any dry or floury spots on the wonton, so get in those nooks and crannies.

Arrange the wontons on the lined tray, folded side up, leaving space between them for airflow. Air fry for 1½ minutes, then carefully flip. Cook for another 1½–2 minutes, keeping a close eye so the edges don’t get torched.

Allow to cool slightly on a wire rack, then serve with sweet chili sauce.

*If you don’t have an air fryer, you can absolutely deep-fry these. I use one because deep-frying at home is a pain—but also because the textural contrast between the center and edges is really nice.

As I write this I’m three weeks out from making long-awaited physical contact with a Famichiki egg salad sandwich. As Is are being dotted and Ts are being crossed, I thought I’d share the deranged yet effective way I plan a food-centric trip. If this process resonates but feels like too much, you could definitely scale back and do a Maniac Lite™ version.

RESEARCH

First, I save SO. MUCH. SHIT. to Google Maps. Make a list just for the city or country that you’re visiting - don’t fuck around with saving to “want to go” because if you’re following my process, that list will get out of hand very, very quickly.

Make notes for each saved location. Some things I like to jot down:

• Who I heard about the place from: This comes in handy when I’m deciding between options and can choose the recommender whose taste I trust more (no offense, love you all!)

• What to order: Are there must-try local or regional specialties? Seasonal dishes? A standout menu item that people keep mentioning in reviews?

• Opening hours and busy times: I call out if they’re closed on any days of the week and if there tends to be a wait at certain times. Any notes like “usually seating available at the bar” are helpful, too.

• Procedural notes: Do they have an in-person only waitlist? Reservations that open up a month out? A menu or ticketing machine that’s labeled entirely in another language that you’d like to run a translation on before visiting? (The answer to that last one should always be yes because you don’t want to be the foreign dweeb holding up the line, and I know that!)

All of these things can be found between the business profile and reviews, yes, but having essential info in one spot is helpful when it’s time to whittle.

I save pins from a bunch of sources - Reddit, friend recommendations, searching keywords within Google Maps (hot tip: you’ll get better results if your search term is in the language of the place you’re visiting), YouTube (you know this already but take anything from the “creator” realm with a grain of big flaky salt), and lastly, country-specific review/reservation sites. An example of this would be Japan’s Tabelog.

WHITTLING DOWN

Once my map is bogged the hell down, I list out my must-haves by dish1 (that’s done in Notion, where I do the rest of my travel planning). Then, for each dish, I scroll through my saved map locations and make a list of the restaurants that stick out as top contenders. This is when I revisit a restaurant’s Google Maps page, look at reviews and photos, and make the call on my top choice [insert dish here] restaurant.

TETRIS

Next to each top choice, I’ll write down what neighborhood it’s in and if it’s closed on certain days (this is where detailed notes come in handy). Then I go back into Googs and click around to see what else I’ve pinned in the same neighborhood. From here it’s a game of Tetris—identifying what else I want to see/do/eat/explore, and how it can all fit into a day’s schedule. Once I start going through other pinned locations, I get an idea of what day I should visit that neighborhood, based on overlap in open hours among my top places of interest.

My goal is that by the end of this process I have 1-2 neighborhoods per day to visit, based on must-eats, and filled out with other interesting potential stops.

Despite all of this rigorous prep, I make sure to leave room for stopping in somewhere that looks good on a whim, or even better, trying a rec that I got from a local earlier in the trip.

What’s great about having so many pins is that if you find yourself in a neighborhood without a plan, you can quickly see what’s already been scoped out nearby. We do NOT want to waste precious time scrolling through online reviews at random restaurants trying to make a decision. And the Maniac Lite™ version that I mentioned earlier is exactly this—save a bunch in advance, then have options in whatever neighborhood you end up in.

So that’s the good stuff. Manual and time-consuming—just how I like it. And yes, Mr. GPT could probably automate a lot of this, but isn’t a good portion of the fun in travel the anticipation of what you’ll be doing?

*A note of caution: There’s a difference between Google Maps and Google’s “My Maps.” I attempted using My Maps for my first visit to Japan and loved the ability to upload and assign custom icons to each pin. You can create layers (mine were separated by restaurants, bars, shops, and a couple others) and turn them on/off for a more precise view. My restaurants layer had icons of ramen bowls, tofu, yakiniku, dango, tamagoyaki, sake, sushi, amazake (the list goes on because, as mentioned, I exhibit psychotic behavior when travel planning)—so that from a bird’s-eye view I could see what kind of food could be found where. I eventually added too many pins and My Maps irreversibly glitched out, leaving me with extremely shitty in-browser viewing only. Google doesn’t seem to put significant dollars toward My Maps support, so as much as I was loving my ultra-custom map of Japan, I’m not gonna put my eggs back in that basket and be bamboozled by them again.

jawn

/jôn/ | noun | dialect • US English

1. (chiefly in eastern Pennsylvania) used to refer to a thing, place, person, or event that one need not or cannot give a specific name to.

   “these jawns are very inexpensive”

I visited Philly with a coworker to check out a big out-of-home campaign we launched in the city. We stayed in Fishtown, which I found to be walkable and friendly, with easy access to public transit. It’s definitely trendy (working-class turned hip and artsy, you know the drill) as demonstrated by our accommodations at WM Mulherin’s Sons and the vibey interiors at Fishtown’s many shops, bars, and restaurants. I know the descriptor “trendy” can be off-putting, but I do think this neighborhood is a great home base for visitors. So let’s start there.

FISHTOWN

WM. Mulherin’s Sons: A boutique hotel that feels very Urban Outfitters. My room had wood floors, brick walls, a washer/dryer (!!) and lots of windows—which were great, but let in some train noise—so if you’re a light sleeper, this might not be the place for you. The bar downstairs has solid cocktails, but if you’re looking for something more rough around the edges, you might find yourself one block away at…

El Bar: It’s a dive bar. They can make a basic drink and if you’re lucky enough to get your name on the chalkboard, you can sip it while playing pool. The back patio is spacious—able to accommodate your group and the 3+ boxes of Papa Johns you’re getting delivered there late at night when you’re absolutely blasted.

About two blocks away was this mural I designed, which I thankfully walked up to just in time to see a dog take a piss on it :)

Kalaya: BOMB Thai food and Asian-y cocktails. Get the gui chai rice cakes, cabbage and double curry pairing. Chef Nok was featured in a Chef’s Table: Noodles episode a few months after I visited so I’m unsure what the reservation sitch is like now, but when I went it was easy peasy. Hopefully it still is!

Kismet Bagels: Went here on back-to-back mornings and got the veg sandwich. I’ve got my peepers on “the courage” and a pizza bagel for next time.

Next of Kin: I really liked this place. It’s chill and dimly lit with really good cocktails. The interior is considered, yet it feels unpretentious.

Philadelphia Record Exchange: A used record shop where I left with a good handful of cheap jazz vinyl. They have plenty of other genres, too.

Persimmon Coffee: Coffee, yes. But this tiny shop also has a handful of unique Asian-skewing teas and specialty drinks that make it a worthwhile stop.

R&D Cocktail Bar: A swanky tiki bar recommended by the owner at Mish Mish. Didn’t make it here but it’s on next visit’s list.

RITTENHOUSE SQUARE

Cleavers: The interior is shit but they make a solid cheesesteak. Get it “Whiz Wit” (caramelized onions, cheese whiz) and take that jawn to go. I strongly advise against eating this right before visiting…

The Mütter Museum: I’m generally not a museum person but this place is SO fascinating. It houses an 8-foot long colon called “The Megacolon”, 139 human skulls, and a plaster cast of twins conjoined at the chest—among a slew of other medical rarities and oddities. Again, plan your meals around this visit wisely. There’s some twisted shit in here.

A couple other neighborhood recommendations from a local: My Loup (French/Californian-ish) and Vernick Food & Drink (what I call “American parentheses new”)

SOUTH PHILLY | PASSYUNK SQUARE, BELLA VISTA, QUEEN VILLAGE

Mish Mish: Ten outta ten. We sat outside at a patio table surrounded by lush flower boxes in perfect lightweight jacket weather at golden hour, so maybe I had my rose-colored glasses on from the start—but the drinks, food, and service were all spot on. In fact, they insisted our drinks came out later than they should have (they really didn’t) and gave us some complimentary Fernet as a peace offering1. I graciously slugged back my toothpaste liquor, exchanged some nice words with the owner and moved on to the next.

Mish Mish’s menu changes frequently but two things I enjoyed that seem to be consistently available for consumption: the rums & coke cocktail and fried string cheese. It was spring when I visited, and they had a grilled salmon with caramelized coconut cream & green chili oil which was delicious when eaten as intended but I also got a little freaky and dipped the string cheese in the coconut chili oil. T’was good. Would go back, would mix-n-match.

Rita’s Italian Ice & Frozen Custard: I feel like such a chump for being in Philly and not getting a water ice. Had I Tetris-ed my schedule better, I would have gone to this institution and ordered a cherry water ice and a vanilla custard.

Yowie Shop: Well-designed ceramics, clothing, books, and more.

City Center Pretzel Co.: Cheap pretzels sold by the rack. Cash and to-go only.

Solar Myth: Mish Mish recommendation. I love a coffee-to-liquor midday switchover and could see myself spending many hours in here. Next time.

Two devastating Google Maps “open now” hiccups: Mawn (a Cambodian noodle joint) and Angelo’s Pizzeria (apparently the place to get a cheesesteak. Damnit.)

CENTER & OLD CITY

48 Record Bar: $15 cocktails and DJs spinning tasteful vinyl. Walk through Sassafras restaurant and up the back stairwell to access the bar.

Hop Sing Laundromat: While I can’t vouch for this place myself, the Mish Mish people say it’s good and if you can’t tell by now, I trust them with my life.

Something that you shouldn’t miss—and I can’t stress this enough—is Reverend Other’s 1am ass service.

IN CONCLUSION

Philadelphia is cool! Dare I say it rivals NYC in its quality of dining and happenings, but feels more grounded. It’s also just a hair over an hour by Amtrak to get to Manhattan, so if you’re Big Apple–ing, perhaps Philly gets some time on your agenda, too.

A very large asterisk before we begin:

There is no way that I’ve seen enough of any city to give a definitive guide on what you must and must not do there! What I can say is that I build these guides around a combination of diligent research and personal experience. And that they’re largely food and beverage-focused. I don’t wait in line for “viral” food, I prefer a relaxed environment over a bougie tasting menu spot, I dig a jazz bar, and if a local gives me a rec I’m writing it down every time. If that sounds like your thing LFG.

To get to the paradise that is Koh Yao Noi you must first endure the hellscape of Phuket. We (my husband Rog and friend Scott) took a 1.5 hour flight from Bangkok on a plane brimming with party bros speaking about 10 decibels louder than necessary and already blasted on white wine—and when we landed…the scene at the terminal was grim, too.

The same party boys I just described (these ones with sunburns) clacked their flip-flops past crammed baggage carousels with ads that I’m sure were meant to be enticing but, IMO, made Phuket out to be a fever dream of a coked-out Disneyland/Vegas combo with way too many waterslides.

From HKT we made our way to Bang Rong Pier where we’d have lunch at a restaurant quite literally in a canal, kept afloat by buoys, accessed only through a mangrove ruled by aggressive monkeys.

I’ll tell you we had some great curries, laab, and som tum, but the food is the most boring part about this place. There’s a hole in the floor where they pull up live crabs from the canal and cook them to order. A cat walks in and out of the kitchen as it pleases. Monkeys sit on the tables, drinking bottles of coconut milk with the staff like it’s their job to be there.

LET’S TALK RECOMMENDATIONS

After one of the more bizarre and thrilling dining experiences of recent memory, we boarded a Koh Yao Noi-bound speedboat. The company operating the boat was legit—we were able to easily book tickets online in advance, reschedule without a fee after fudging a departure pier selection, and they also arranged transit from the dock to our Airbnb in a funny converted tuk tuk-esque truck. Would recommend Phuket Tours Company.

Another rec: JJ Queen Villa & Spa. Sheeeesh this place was perfect. It’s a 3 bedroom single unit home with an infinity pool AND massage parlor in your actual front yard. The ocean is just on the other side of the road, and there are a handful of solid food and bev options within walking distance. Namely:

Sai beach bar & restaurant: We ended up at Sai for either a drink or a meal every single day. The crispy morning glory with coconut/shrimp/chile dipper, whole fish of the day with tamarind sauce, and tom yum cocktail were standouts.

Seaview roti & food: There’s no hiding what they’re up to in their name, but what it does leave out is that they have bangin’ smoothies. The passionfruit is so, so good. Stop for an oceanside smoothie and roti after your massage at JJ Queen.

Charlie Bar: A weird little dive where you can have a passable cocktail on the beach.

For establishments outside of enjoyable walking distance, do as the locals do and hop on a hog. Our JJ Queen host, Goon, hooked us up with some scooters for our stay, having them delivered to the Airbnb without instructions or license verification. Just strap on a helmet and ride. We love Goon.

SO NOW THE HOG-DISTANCE FAVORITES

We’re Choice: If they don’t sell it, you don’t need it. Fresh fruit, ice, pantry goods, beverages, ice cream, breads, and of course…gasoline. The fruit really is the move here—it’s affordable and top notch. My favorite find was custard apple: a custardy (surprise), floral, and tropical fruit with gargantuan seeds. Careful not to choke on those bad dads.

ร้านมาเรียมโรตี: A true delight. This sweet little roadside roti hut is easy to miss, so keep a close eye out as you’re driving. They close at 10am (yes, close—not open), so plan to be there early. Since Koh Yao Noi’s residents are predominantly Muslim, you’ll find tasty Thai-Muslim dishes like their roti mataba (roti stuffed with minced chicken, eggs, onion, and curry powder) among a slew of other crispy carb envelopes. I can vouch for the classic roti with condensed milk and the roti with chicken curry and fried egg. Everything is cheap and everything is good, so order as much as you can and don’t forget a Thai iced coffee!

Koh Yao Tha Ton Do Seafood: Recommended by the ladies with the magic hands at JJ Queen Spa, this is an open-air restaurant suspended over the edge of the Phang Nga Bay. We liked the shell-on shrimp with chiles and fried garlic, but honestly the menu is huge and probably filled with many gems. If you’re going to Tha Ton Do, you might as well also visit…

The Rest Calm: This cook your own khanom krok spot feels more like a bohemian meditation retreat than a food stop. It’s situated on a dock where you can watch the tide roll in while lounging on the floor with triangle-shaped bolsters. They set you up with pots of coconut milk and rice flour slurry along with a tray of miscellaneous cubed goodness (taro, corn, sweet potato) to drop into specialized cast-iron pans, creating crispy, custardy, sweet-but-not-too-sweet bite-sized desserts. The batter goes a long way, so be prepared to stay for a while as you cook through many batches.

PLACES WE DIDN’T MAKE IT TO BUT I WISH WE DID

Fresh curry paste shop: I really fucked this one up. They sell vacuum-packed curry pastes that would be thrilled to lay flat in any suitcase.

Coconut pancake ขนมบ้าบิ่น: My eyes were on the pandan coconut pancakes.

Nokkho Nok Sourdough Breakfast & Pizza: I’m generally not seeking out pizza in Thailand, but this spot has a glowing five stars on Google so they’ve got to be doing something right.

A FINAL NOTE

Koh Yao Noi is worth the schlep of getting out there. I’ve heard it referred to as “the Phuket of 30 years ago” which, using my imagination here, must have been a peaceful time before the tourism explosion. Although Koh Yao Noi is small, I was impressed by the number of restaurants, shops, and massage spots—all owned by sweet people willing to share their slice of paradise with visitors.

It really feels like you’re dropping into the daily life of locals—this isn’t a Thai-flavored resort town. People are living at a slow pace, enjoying nature, chatting with their neighbors, scooting around town, and of course eating great food. Sopping up the authentic feel of the island had me asking ”Where the fuck is everybody? This place is perfect.” And the only reasonable explanation is that it’s an IYKYK spot—and many people just don’t K yet.

It’s 64 and sunny this morning. I’m still in bed, crippled by gastrointestinal distress1 following a long-awaited trip to the Pacifica Taco Bell. I’ll be physically useless for the day, so I guess it’s as good a time as any to boil my insides under a heating pad and start a Substack.

For the seven years prior to December 2025 I was a brand designer for an in-house creative studio at a tech company. As fate would have it, we hired a new CMO and within two months he laid off our entire 14 person creative team so he could put our salaries toward hiring agencies using AI to produce soulless, sloppy creative for a once-genuine brand (a real stand-up guy.)

While I appreciate this layoff allowing me the flexibility to rot in bed until 11 am with the T-Bell blues, I do wonder what’s next. It’s my first time being unemployed since 2009 and I’ve spent the last three months trying to figure out what lights me up, what brings me down, and what percentage of both of those things I need in a career. It’s still clear as mud, but having been released from the world of KPIs and ROIs, I now have the energy to explore other avenues:

I’m diving deeper into learning the Japanese language — something I had been doing casually with a green owl who is now bolstered by much needed additional resources. Japan is, as you’ve either experienced firsthand or seen on the internet, a near-perfect2 travel destination. It’s amazing how grateful and engaged locals are when you can say more than just “hello” and “thank you” in their native language — something that has really enriched my travels there. I’m also hyper-sensitive to how Americans are viewed in the world and will jump at the opportunity to set myself apart from any clueless tourists who don’t bother educating themselves a single ounce on the culture they’re about to be steeping in. I don’t know if that makes me considerate or arrogant.

I’ve taken the first steps in starting a bitters company — my husband Rog and I acquired a handful of starter recipes from a family friend whose life had become too demanding to accommodate the business he had lovingly built. He made a crazy good product, and it was a drag to think it just…wouldn’t exist anymore. So, as a couple of designers would do, we decided we’d let the recipes live on but take the opportunity to come up with our own brand. A new name, packaging, website; the works. The stuff that we actually know how to do. As for the rest of it…a one-eyed daruma is taunting me, silently begging for me to finish the complex foundational work of this business and make a sale. Specifically to a stranger. I’ll report back on that.

I’m also trying to perfect baking milk bread, conversing with scam texters, trip planning (city guides with corresponding maps to come in future posts) and taking on freelance work to see if, just maybe, there’s more juice to be squeezed from me as a designer.

Along with the above, I’m here on Substack. I think my allergy to clickbaity influencers had kept me from going anywhere near sharing my own thoughts or recommendations in a public space (oh and the fact that I enjoy writing but am NOT a writer), but my encouraging friends and family seem to think that some people might give a rip about what’s kicking around in my brain. And for the most part that’s going to be food — restaurants worth visiting, food and beverage-centric travel guides and a recipe every once in a while. If you want to join me as I ganbarimasu3 my way through this platform, I’d love to have you. Or just subscribe for the maps. That’s cool too.

Live Más,

Sam