Good Sandwich at Jave Cafe

Java Cafe

56 Sihanouk Blvd,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Java Cafe, a combination art gallery and cafe along Sihanouk Boulevard in Phnom Penh, is a bit of an institution. It's been using the art and chick-food combination successfully for eleven years, and is one of the most recognizable and oft-utilized meet up spots in town.



Walking into the place on a rainy evening, it was difficult for me to believe that I was not in Northern California. Jazz on the speakers, contemporary art on the walls, funky yet tasteful furniture, twee table settings, organic smoothie selection - is this some sort of perverse dream? No, just Java. My boyfriend remains skeptical but I'm glad to have Java. Also, they make good sandwiches.


Like this ham, mushroom, and mozzarella "pizza" panini on herb foccacia, served with home-made potato chips and garden salad. Anything meant to simulate pizza that is not actually pizza fills me with suspicion and revulsion, but this was delicious. Lots of oozy, melting cheese, and a nice, authentically pizza-like flavor. The availability of good bread in Phnom Penh amazes me even now. I should also add that home-made potato chips are always a good idea.

My boyfriend ordered pancakes, which he deemed good. They're not the French style pancakes, which are actually crepes and should be labeled as such on the menu to avoid insurrection, or at least complaints. Java also has a pretty good chicken kebab salad with beetroot and yogurt sauce - sounds weird, is actually excellent. I've heard baked goods are hit and miss, but they make a good cup of coffee.

And you can look at nice contemporary Cambodian art on the walls while listening to Mingus and pretend for a bit that you're living a more sophisticated lifestyle then the one you actually lead (featuring: daily grinds, motorbike accidents, persistent tropical parasites) which is sometimes what you need.

Return to Cochon Butcher: Bacon BLTs Basically Best Thing Ever

Cochon Butcher
930 Tchoupitoulas, New Orleans LA
70130 504-588-PORK

I have to say, this trip to New Orleans was less of an exploratory venture and more of a Greatest Hits Parade. I was more interested in eating things I knew were good and that had occupied my mind over the past year, and less interested in the dark art of "experimentation." I knew Cochon Butcher was good, I wanted a delicious sandwich, and my boyfriend and I were meeting my parents for lunch. Done and done and done. Also, I was in dire need of a mimosa.

Cochon Butcher is beloved NOLA chef's Donald Link and Stephen Stryjewski’s venture into the sammich shop and artisan meat genre, and it is has been pretty strikingly successful in the couple of years it's been open.

This is probably because 1. it's good, and 2. the prices are reasonable and 3. it's casual, order up at the front dining, which New Orleans doesn't have enough of.

Once you get past the hipsterish vibe and clientele (but NOLA hipsters are a lot easy to swallow then the regular kind), it's likely to be one of your favorite places to eat in town. There's also pick-up-yourself catering (they did a fabulous job for my graduation party last year) and a full assortment of cured meats, made in house. It's the South's riff on an old-world butcher shop, and it is good.

The menu revolves around a standard complement of sandwiches, boucherie sampler plates, a bunch of small-plate specials and some other random stuff they put on the board when they come up with it, as well as some side-dishes. There's also a full complement of alcoholic beverages - I mean, this is New Orleans - and some very interesting beers if you're into that sort of thing. We got mimosas. I love mimosas.



I had the pressed bacon and collard green BLT. A scandalously good sandwich, like the best grilled cheese ever, with big-thick bacon and lots of oozing, delicious Swiss cheese and some softly cooked collards to add a little bit of bite to the entire affair. I could eat this everyday.



My mom and my boyfriend both went for the North Carolina style pulled pork sandwich which my father, a Real Live North Carolina Boy deemed to be authentic - had a vinegar sauce on it and pickles and some coleslaw and a large soft bun, following protocol. Obviously slow-cooked for a long time. No bullshit involving cheese. Nicely done.



And then we ordered a muffaletta, as one does in NOLA, and it was also enormous, as they are supposed to be. I was never a huge muff (teehee) fan, mostly because they're too damn thick to get into my mouth, but this was a nice effort - I like how they get the bread a little toasted before slapping the entire affair together.



They also had boudin - Lousiana's beloved and somewhat curious sausage composed of rice and pork and spices - served with pickles and mustards, and it's some awfully tasty stuff. Something about the starchiness of the rice really works. They also had the relatively un-attractively named "beanie weanie" special - okay, did anyone else grow up with an intrinsic, horrified revulsion of beanie weanies? - but in this case, it was just red beans and andouille cooked together in a smoky barbeque sauce, and it was good. I just found it sort of hard to get over the name.

They didn't have them this time - damn it to hell - but the bacon praline they sell here occasionally is the most obscene thing I've ever put into my mouth. Interpret that as you'd like. Seriously, it's like watching an X-rated movie with really questionable morality, eating this thing. You're really enjoying it but you feel awful at the same time. You have to try this, just to say you did.

South Beach Grill: Boca Grande is Hell on Earth

South Beach Bar and Grille
777 Gulf Boulevard
(941) 964-0765
Boca Grande, Florida

Ah, Boca Grande. It's a little island about two hours or so north of Tampa, and it is absolutely beautiful, the kind of place that gets slapped on tourist brochures - or would, if the people who own property on the island weren't clever enough (or well-heeled enough) to keep it off the beaten track. My grandparent's owned a condo here when I was a little kid in Florida, and I went there yearly every year until I was about 11 or so.

They sold it when my aunt and my cousin's moved away from Florida, but family members still come back here - my mom has been coming here since she was a kid, as well. For my cousin's graduation, we came back once again. A home-coming of sorts. It's funny how me and my two cousins remembered almost every inch of even the drive - the mangrove stands, the little podunk towns you drive through, the massive, yellow Sunshine Skyway bridge, the tragically now-closed Dairy Queen with the barbeque sandwiches - and then crossing the tollbridge to get to the island.

No color manipulation needed. God, it's nice.

The island is all white sand and beautiful sunsets and one large lighthouse, and people riding golfcarts, except not many people, because they really do manage to keep the riff-raff out. We had rented a very large and lovely vacation home and a bunch of us arrived to hang out and eat tamales and wander around.

Not that I really appreciated it, this go-round - you see, I was flying to New Orleans the next day to see my boyfriend, who I had gotten back with over the Internet (sort of) over the course of a couple months, and now he was moving to Phnom Penh.

And we were pretty certain we were going to still like each other, but how could we be certain? It was terrifying. I believe I spent about half the day at Boca Grande hiding under a blanket on a couch, squinting to read my new Kindle, but not really reading, more just being trapped in a haze of existential, relationship-and-future-of-your-life based terror. The timing in other words was a bit off, but it's not your fault, Boca Grande.

(My boyfriend is moving to Phnom Penh in less then a month. I had nothing to worry about. But you never know that before.)

Awful place.

Oh yes, this is a food blog. I did eat one meal "out" on Boca Grande, which was at the South Beach Bar and Grille (with the obnoxious e). It's right on the beach and serves slightly fancified Florida beach shack fare. Think lots of grouper, fried seafood, pastrami sandwiches for the NY transplants, salads of various kinds, seafood chowder, hamburgers, and other seafood-themed stuff. It's expensive as hell, but food on Boca is expensive.

Curiously enough, despite the awesome location, the food is really, really good. (Just don't try parking there then hitting the beach, apparently, judging from Tripadvisor. Seriously. They don't like that.)

What is it with me and grouper? To me, it's like the madeline of the fish world, the protein that takes me back to childhood. My dad used to fry grouper at the beach all the time when I was a kid - some of my earliest food memories involve getting grouper sandwiches after preschool with my mom at this colorfully decorated restaurant in Tampa.

Whenever I'm in Florida, I eat prodigious quantities of the stuff. This was an excellent grouper sandwich, a good specimen of the genre: Plenty of fish, lots of mayo, lettuce and tomato, keep er' simple. I prefer my grouper sandwiches fried - doesn't obstruct the flavor profile - but some would beg to differ. Liked the coleslaw fine. I'm on a coleslaw kick lately. $15. Can be done reuben style. I almost went for it but decided that would either be perverse or awesome, and I didn't feel like wasting my one shot in 2011 for a grouper sandwich.

Must add that the fried grouper fingers were also very good, as determined by myself and my cousin. My mother was also very pleased with her seafood chowder, which was thick, Boston-ish, and absolutely terrible for you, as it should have been. We hung out for a bit and watched people on the beach. I worried about my boyfriend and worried about sun protection - oh god, what if I get a cold sore? - and worried about the universe and my job and probably individual atoms if I got right down to it.

I'm not very good at beaches.

Franciale: Good God I Love Cuban Sandwiches

Franciale
5635 Memorial Hwy
Tampa, FL
813-249-7227



My earliest food memory involves a Cuban sandwich.

I was out in the wood-chipped and (to my four year old eye) extremely large backyard at the Learning Tree Preschool, and for some reason, someone, somehow, had brought Cubanos. The Cuban is Tampa's most beloved native culinary treat, surpassing snackies like deviled crabs, Cuban bread and butter, and Hooters chicken wings, and they inevitably show up at any social event or gathering in the region, cut into triangles and laid out on the table. In any case, I vividly remember eating this thing, and I remember the flavor of it - new and unusual indeed to a person who has not yet been properly introduced to concepts like "mustard" and "pickles - and I was immediately charmed, devoted, pleased. Salami, cheese, roast pork, ham, pickles, mustard, and cuban bread, pressed and toasted until melty and delicious - this might indeed have been the very gnosis or beginning point of my life long food obsession, the point from which all else radiated. Maybe I should credit the sandwich itself as one of my very first mentors.

Okay, that could be going too far. Long story short. Them things taste good. Real good. I was in Tampa this June, visiting my grandparents (who live off Dale Mabry) and I had to get myself a Cuban. There was a second motivating factor: i had just survived a particularly aggressive bout of food poisoning, and I felt a powerful and near reptilian urge within myself to restore my fluids, to bump-up my electrolytes, to heal myself. What better food to do that then a ridiculously huge sandwich? Thought so.

Franciale is located in a Shell station. When you pull in, it doesn't look like a damn thing like a restaurant. In fact, it looks more like a front for a cunning yet down-trodden Cuban drug running operation. The front is a standard 7-11 type food shop with a bunch of dusty candy bars and a startling selection of pork rinds. The actual cafe counter is near the back and seems to be staffed exclusively by one Umberto, a highly energetic and extremely friendly Cuban-Italian guy, who has decorated his three table dining room with romantic 1970's posters of Pisa, Rome, and Sicily. There's a selection of Cuban dishes on the menu, but you should probably go for the Cuban.



Which is a fantastic Cuban, the best I've ever had. The pork is slow roasted in citrusy mojo sauce and falling-apart tender, and when combined with a giant hunk of buttered Cuban bread, nice quality ham, cheese, and salami, a boatload of mayo and mustards, and some crunchy lettuce and tomato - heaven on earth. Umberto makes the sandwich and presses it right in front of you so there's no doubt about the vintage of the ingredients. "You gonna eat that entire thing?" the high school football coaches (as I'd figured out by overhearing their conversation) asked me, when the puppy-sized monstrosity was handed to me.

"I can try," I said, vaguely. I figured I would eat half.

But I needed to restore my electrolytes and animal spirits, so I fell to the sandwich with an almost obscene vengeance. It was gone in about four minutes, the entire damn thing. The football coaches were sharing a single, and looked at me with something close to horror in their faces when I was done. "Good lord, you did finish it," the older one said. "That's incredible."

"I was very, very hungry," I said. This was probably obvious.

Umberto high-fived me on the way out.

I felt infinitely better, as if the dismal day of food poisoning had not actually happened but was in fact an unpleasant memory belonging to someone else. I drowsed the rest of the day, in the manner of a golf-course alligator that has just gorged itself upon a fat and complacent Labrador.

I love Cuban sandwiches.

The Gott Gourmet: Best Damn Lunch on Magazine Street? Likely!

Gott Gourmet Cafe
3100 Magazine Street
New Orleans, LA 70115-2351
(504) 373-6579

The Gott Gourmet is located on Magazine Street's restaurant row, promoting itself as a casual spot for more interesting then average breakfasts and lunches. That's not exactly a rare gambit, but the marvelous thing about the Gott Gourmet is that it actually pulls this off. Seriously - how many casual lunch places claim to be vaguely different from one another, when in actuality this means attiring waiters in ill-fitting "tropical" garb and putting incongruous mango chunks on endless, endless Chicken Ceasar salads? You know that of which I speak.

That is not the Gott Gourmet, which really does feature interesting riffs on typical lunch-time fare. Sandwiches, wraps, salads, burgers, and a couple of soup options are all on the menu - observe the coronary inducing St. Patty's Day Massacre reuben-esque (haha i made a funny) sandwich, the real-deal Chicago hot-dog, or the cochon de lait Cuban panini. Loverly.



We tried the loaded gumbo which comes with an extremely untraditional dollop of potato salad in lieu of rice. It's an all right gumbo that does boast a large amount of "stuff" but very little in the way of soulful, smack yo-mama flavor: the kitchen needs to add a little more oomph to this stuff to really wake up the ingredients. A healthy amount of Crystal helps. Like the toast points served on the side.



The shrimp BLT wrap with tabasco buttered sauteed shrimp, mozzarella, bacon, roast peppers, avocado, roast tomatoes, chili aoili, and chipotle cream cheese was a total knockout - a combination of crunchy shrimp, smoky bacon, and creamy avocado, working in tandem with the spicy flavor of the roast peppers. The thing dripped everywhere and got on one's hands, which just added to the experiential deliciousness of the thing. Devourable.



This is the grilled vegetable salad with chicken. God speed to Gott for figuring out how to produce a grilled chicken lunch salad that won't induce narcolepsy, will indeed make the dutifully healthful orderer happy. The perfectly cooked chicken was served on top of fresh wild greens with a flavorful assortment of roasted portobellos, peppers, onions, squash, zucchini, carrots, and other stuff, accompanied by feta and honey-sherry salad dressing. An excellent flavor combination and a damn fine salad. Salud.

Tried the St. Patty's Day reuben-thing - featuring corned beef, horseradish cheddar, french fries, cole slaw, 1000 island and creole mustard on pumpernickel on another visit. This was good but really pushed the boundaries of richness. Sort of like standing in front of your arteries and daring them, just daring them, to clog up and kill you, just try something, vascular system, make my day. Maybe I just miss my sauerkraut. The fries are made in house here, double-fried, and are excellent.

The dining room is utilitarian but clean and fairly open inside. Service is conducted by somewhat surly hipsters with ironic facial hair. This doesn't bother me too much (that after all does describe the vast majority of my friends) but your mileage may vary. Perhaps avoid discussing your fondness for Nickleback and day time television at the table. You never know.

Conclusion: The Gott Gourmet is one of the best lunch picks on Magazine Street, and an absolute winner for excellent food that won't bankrupt you or your company expense account when 12:00 PM rolls around. I am most sad that I am leaving the city and will not get a chance to work through the menu. Pick up the slack in my absence, New Orleans.