All I want for Christmas is juice.
Megan Seling: "I drank Mariah Carey's Butterfly juice. It was almost 1 a.m., I was exhausted from running last-minute Christmas errands all day, we were at Walgreens because I had 800 packages to send out but ran out of boxes, and it was there, and I was thirsty and it tasted like pineapple bubblegum. I'd like to say I will never buy it again, but I feel like that'd be lying."
Stephen Trageser: "I stayed really, really busy this weekend, but a grilled cheese with cheddar on some decent-thickness sourdough bread was all I needed. Can’t beat it. I also had some povitica from Strawberry Hill. The Eastern European treat looks like a regular loaf of bread on the outside, but it weighs about four pounds. Is it made of super-dense star dust? No, but it is basically half a dozen nut rolls wrapped up together. Slice it like bread and you get a handful of flaky little mini-buns with delicious gooey filling — cream, apple-cinnamon jelly, and so on."
Steve Cavendish's French onion soup.
Steve Cavendish: "The great thing about
Roy Choi’s cookbook is that it’s autobiographical. So while you get a lot of cool Korean dishes, you also get food from different points in his life. There’s a casino prime rib from his time in the card rooms and this unexpected favorite: French onion soup. The recipe is zen simple and the result is fantastic (and makes enough to feed four to six people). Put a little bit of baguette and gruyere on top and you’re golden. Next to chili, there’s nothing finer in a bowl in cold weather."
Jim Ridley: "Remarkably good pub food at M.L. Rose on Charlotte to celebrate the kids' last day of school this year. The kids' burgers were first-rate — though note to self: Try not to hit a burger joint the day after Cavendish writes that it's one of the best in the city — and the fine club we split was just the right amount for two. Highly recommended: the Triple Dip appetizer of queso, guacamole and salsa, all superior, with maybe the best chips I've ever had. (Major bonus points for our flawless server Jay, who we wish worked at every place in town.) Also tried out the new barbecue place Smokies from the Mack and Kate's folks in the same Thompson Lane corner mall as House of Kabob. Shows a lot of promise: unusually good sides (meaty baked beans, close-to-homemade potato salad); pulled pork studded with big hunks of bark; lean, juicy brisket (chopped rather than sliced) that was neither ash-grey, leathery nor unpleasantly fatty."
