Restaurant review extravaganza 16 page 2

Cantina Laredo

In 2003, a team of consultants and researchers published Trading Up: The New American Luxury, a study of the psychology that leads people to splurge on high-end brand-name items. The book draws on examples of people spending disproportionate amounts of their income on luxury products such as Viking stoves, Callaway golf clubs and boutique vodkas. More >>

“Cantina Laredo, is to Mexican as P.F. Chang’s is to Chinese”

New York

Southern Spice

Sometimes a restaurant makes such an impression that it changes your way of thinking about an entire cuisine. Southern Spice is just such a place. While we’ve been conditioned to think of South Indian cooking as one giant collection of dosas, iddlies, and utthampams, Southern Spice flings open the doors on a half-dozen regional micro-cuisines. “Much of the food comes from Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu,” the kindly proprietor told us, answering a question posed by an artist at our table notorious for her depictions of dogs in human clothes. “But one of the cooks is from Delhi,” he continued, explaining the presence of some northern Indian specialties on the menu. More >>

Orange County

Essential Summertime List of Top Local Keepers of the Barbecue Flame

Barbecue: If there’s a more loaded word in the culinary dictionary, I don’t know it. It is a catch-all term meaning different things to different people. It hopscotches cultural lines, conforming to none. Even within what our own country calls barbecue, there is vehement disagreement: One region’s sacrosanct recipe for baby-back ribs is another’s sacrilege. More >>

Phoenix

Moira Sushi Bar & Kitchen

It’s no secret that Japanese food is my obsession. I’ve certainly written about it enough times, rapturously blogged about it, photographed it, and sought out ever more esoteric eats on my annual trips to Japan. My appetite for it is endless. More >>

“Moira Sushi Bar & Kitchen is downtown’s first sushi bar in many years — but was it worth the wait?”

San Francisco

The Broken Record

If you live out in the Excelsior District, you probably already know about the Broken Record. Located four blocks east of the Mission/Geneva crossroad along a broad swatch of barbershops, auto repair establishments, and pizzerias, its rambunctious hipster vibe is so reminiscent of what you’ll find in the Mission or the ‘Loin, any thoughts of municipal sectionalism will vanish in its candlelit glow. More >>

Seattle

Queen’s Deli

Queen’s Deli may be the most attractive storefront on White Center’s 14th Avenue, a street where auto-body shops and strip malls alternate with strings of bungalows surrounded by chain-link fences. The deli shares a roof with one of those mini-markets whose success seems to depend on sales of calling cards and cigarettes. But with the deli’s salmon-colored exterior and brand-new sign, it’s the pretty head of the conjoined twins. If your standards are calibrated so high that a good paint job won’t make you pull over to take a closer look at the place, perhaps the printout taped to the window will. It says, simply, “Phnom Penh Noodles.” More >>

St. Louis

McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurant

McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurant announced its arrival in St. Louis in February by installing a giant inflatable crab atop the parking garage at West County Center in Des Peres. The crab, named Jake, overlooked I-270, its claws beckoning drivers below to feast at the first area location of the upscale national chain. I suppose it was cute, or as cute as a crustacean can be. I found it vaguely threatening: All right, you Midwestern rubes. It’s time you learn what seafood really is. More >>