Chicken Blogwich

Torts

2008-10-21T16:07:00.003-04:00

Law school can be a fascinating thing. Let me just give you one example.A tort is, roughly, a wrong committed to another person where there is no preexisting contractual relationship. There, now you know the single fact that most distinguishes lawyers from non-lawyers.In torts (or "in tort," as I think you are supposed to say), damages are intended to compensate the victim (punitive damages are

Airport Memories

2008-09-27T12:15:00.003-04:00

Bulldog Burrito - 0 stars320 Elm St., New Haven, CTCosi - 1 star338 Elm St., New Haven, CTAu Bon Pain - 1 star1 Broadway, New Haven, CTIt's been over a month since I ate in an airport, but that doesn't mean I haven't been able to eat national-chain airport food. Loyal readers will know that one of the most dependable airport staples is the highly Americanized burrito place, and there's one just

You Want to Work Where?

2008-09-25T18:42:00.004-04:00

Jasmine - 1 starChurch and Grove Streets, New Haven, CTThere is a chill in the air, but it's still warm enough to get out of the law school for lunch, so I went to Jasmine, a Thai pushcart on the streets of New Haven a few blocks away. It's cheap, convenient, and filling. I got "drunken noodles" - rice noodles (I think) with that basil-soy flavor common to Thai food - and a mango curry with

Historian Makes Good

2008-09-22T01:10:00.005-04:00

I know a celebrity!

At What Price?

2008-09-20T16:46:00.003-04:00

I'm forgoing the usual restaurant review because there is a pressing question I want to raise about the mother of all bailouts, announced at $800 billion but almost certainly going to cost far more than that: what's the price? It's a question passed over almost entirely by the financial journalists, who are proving that they know no more (and probably a good deal less) about the financial markets

Sub-prime crisis, continued

2008-09-18T14:43:00.004-04:00

Indian cart, the U.N. - 1 starProspect St., New Haven, CTNew Haven is currently enjoying its beautiful two-week season of early fall, with crystal-clear skies and temperatures in the low 70s. So for lunch today, Kiel, Tommy, and I took a stroll up Prospect St. to the School of Management, Yale's idiosyncratically-named business school. The object of our quest was an array of pushcart vendors

Yale Law School of Pizza

2008-09-16T09:21:00.004-04:00

Est Est Est - 1 star1176 Chapel St., New Haven, CTBella Haven - 0 stars240 College St., New Haven, CTTypical YLS organization meeting - 0 starsNew Haven is justly known for having some of the world's best pizza; of all the places I've been, including Boston, New York, and California, I would say that only Naples has generally better pizza. And when you go to Yale Law School, you end up eating a

Another September 11th

2008-09-11T21:26:00.003-04:00

Thali Too - 2 stars65 Broadway, New Haven, CTOne of the best things about Yale Law School (one shared, I'm sure, with many other law schools) is small group. (This is not the best thing about Yale; the best thing is that there are no grades for required classes, and everyone passes. But I digress.) In the first semester, you take one of your classes in a group of about 14 people (mine has 14),

Back in the Ivory Tower

2008-09-10T08:52:00.005-04:00

Copper Kitchen - 2 stars1008 Chapel St., New Haven, CTIn the mid-1990s, my girlfriend (not the woman I ended up marrying) went to art school at Yale. (Little-known fact: Yale has one of the best art schools, and perhaps the most prestigious one, in the country. Its music school is pretty good, too.) She is known in some circles for having painted an obscene painting about a Yale art school

Generations

2008-08-16T23:13:00.005-04:00

Rendezvous Bistro - 3 stars380 South Broadway, Jackson, WYI was walking up from the Yellowstone River to the Tower Falls overlook, and there was a portion of the path that traversed a steep incline, with slippery sand underfoot. A man was helping his children across. Then I went across and held out my hand to make sure my father didn't slip. You reach a point in your life where you take care of

The Subprime Crisis, Explained

2008-08-08T16:09:00.003-04:00

Cactus Cantina - 1 star3300 Wisconsin Ave NW, Washington, DCI was in Washington to visit my sister's family (after seeing my wife's whole family). We ordered takeout from Spices, a passable pan-Asian restaurant in Cleveland Park, and the next day we all went to Cactus Cantina, supposedly George W. Bush's favorite restaurant in Washington. I guess that fits: it's Tex-Mex, boisterous, friendly, and

The Worst Place To Be a Vegetarian

2008-08-07T21:48:00.002-04:00

Rising Tide Restaurant - 1 star96 King St., Scarborough, MainePortland Lobster Company - 1 star180 Commercial St., Portland, MaineOmaha, Nebraska? Paris, France? No, it's the Maine coast in the summertime, when the only thing anyone wants to sell you is lobster. I was at Higgins Beach with my family and my nephew, who was visiting us for a few weeks. Higgins Beach is relatively undeveloped, which

The Last Time

2008-07-26T00:17:00.006-04:00

Qdoba - 1 starPITAu Bon Pain - 1 starPITAndale - 2 starsSFOFrench Meadow Cafe - 2 starsMSPThis week I took my last business trip. Which was nice, because otherwise my last trip to my company's headquarters would have happened back in May, and I would not have realized it at the time.As usual, I bought the cheapest ticket I could find, which involved taking the US Airways 6.45 am flight to

Right Back Where We Started from

2008-07-25T00:45:00.004-04:00

China Best - 0 stars883 Hamilton Ave., Menlo Park, CAI'm taking one last trip to the office in California before starting law school in September. Since I'm a sucker for nostalgia, I took a drive down to Menlo Park to take a look at our first office, where we started the company back in September 2001.Our first meeting there was on September 17, six days after you-know-what. We were renting a few

Down on the Farm

2008-07-22T19:03:00.003-04:00

Riverland Farm - 2 starsSunderland, MassachusettsI've been doing more cooking than usual, first because I'm not traveling much these days for child care reasons, and second because of our farm share. Each week we visit our farm to pick up our fresh, organic vegetables, some of which we have to pick ourselves out in the fields (brilliant idea, making your customers do your work for you). We

A Little Piece of Italy

2008-07-21T13:50:00.003-04:00

Caffè dello Sport - 1 starHanover St., Boston Yesterday we took Thomas to the North End in Boston to see some of the historic sites, like Old North Church (of "two if by sea" fame) and Paul Revere's house. The North End, of course, is Boston's Italian neighborhood, a maze of old red-brick buildings dotted with cafes, pastry shops, and gelaterie. Like many such neighborhoods across the country,

Invest Your 401(k) Wisely

2008-07-18T11:34:00.004-04:00

My company just switched to a new 401(k) administrator in the U.S., so a lot of people will be thinking about their portfolio allocations around now. I decided to put my advice on this blog (rather than the internal blog) because a lot of my friends tend to ask me for investment advice periodically.A 401(k) is a tax-advantaged retirement savings account. Put another way, it is a government

What Am I Eating?

2008-07-16T21:29:00.002-04:00

Hei La Moon - 1 star88 Beach St., BostonWe went into Boston on Sunday to pick up my nephew Thomas, who is visiting for a few weeks. Thomas is a pretty adventurous eater, especially for a 14-year-old from Southern Virginia, so we went to Chinatown for dim sum (Sunday, remember?). We went to Hei La Moon, one of the more popular places in Boston, which is the classic Chinatown Sunday dim sum

Telecom Hell

2008-07-16T11:21:00.002-04:00

Most non-bloggers don't realize how much work it is. Every week or so you have to come up with something that you care about and that other people might find interesting enough to write about. When short of inspiration, though, you can always call a telecom company.One of my projects for the summer is to rationalize my telecom situation. Right now I pay about $45/month for fixed line, $125/month

Quitting

2008-06-30T16:21:00.002-04:00

This year has seen a number of endings. Bill Gates is retiring from his day job at Microsoft to focus on his foundation. Justine Hénin, the best woman tennis player in the world, retired at the age of 25 while still ranked #1 to focus on the rest of her life. Euromad is moving back to the U.S. after two years in Europe and slowly winding down his blog. And, after eleven years, three jobs, and

Traveling with Children

2008-06-24T21:23:00.004-04:00

California Tortilla - 0 starsIADLa Cascada Taqueria - 1 star2164 Center St., Berkeley, CALoco Pops - 2 stars431 W. Franklin St., Chapel Hill, NCI've decided to leave the business world - about which more later. One consequence, though, is that I will no longer be traveling "on business," as we say, which was in fact the original motivation for this blog. One of my colleagues - in fact, the one I

And So It Ends ...

2008-06-17T21:21:00.003-04:00

Euro 2008 for France, that is. Although few of my readers will care (or recognize the names below), French soccer is part of the heritage I have gained from my travels around the world, and so the catastrophe of the last nine days deserves a mention. Today France lost 2-0 to Italy, in a match that was not as close as the score indicates (and 2-0 is a rout in soccer, as opposed to baseball) and

Another Country

2008-06-12T14:42:00.004-04:00

Claude Postel - 2 stars75, rue Notre Dame Ouest, MontrealI've always thought Montreal would be a nice place to visit - I could indulge my francophilia and maybe eat some good desserts, without having to fly across the Atlantic. But when I visited last weekend with my wife, our daughter, and my wife's parents, I quickly gave up most attempts to speak French. Not that I couldn't understand

Baiji, R.I.P.

2008-06-11T21:43:00.002-04:00

I was reading my news feed and saw this article saying that the Caribbean monk seal, last seen in 1952, has been formally declared extinct. The article also pointed me to a story I had missed back in December 2006: the baiji, or Yangtze River Dolphin, last sighted in 2004, can no longer be found and is effectively extinct. Robert Pitman, a scientist who participated in a search for the baiji,

Where's Your Bumper Sticker?

2008-06-10T15:27:00.003-04:00

Well, the Democratic primary is finally over, and in commemoration I replaced the John Edwards sticker on my car (although I will continue to drink my tea out of my John Edwards mug and wear my John Edwards T-shirt).More significantly, I finally maxed out my primary election contribution to Obama, although I haven't yet decided whether or not to give him money for the general election campaign;

If It's June in an Even Year ...

2008-06-09T22:32:00.003-04:00

I'm just back from a weekend in Montreal, on which more later, but while in the hotel I managed to steal a few minutes watching bits of some early matches of Euro 2008 (Switzerland-Czech Republic, Germany-Poland, and Croatia-Austria) - the quadrennial championship of European national soccer teams. The European Championship always falls halfway between two World Cups, and so every even year there

Time to Get a Mac?

2008-05-29T15:50:00.003-04:00

Today is my wife and my ninth wedding anniversary. (I think that's correct; I know it's not "my wife's and my," because together we only have one anniversary, and calling it just "my" wedding anniversary feels wrong.) Most of our presents to each other these days have to do with our children, so I wanted to make a very simple slideshow/movie of our daughter, showing how she grew up over the last

Even the Airport Food Is Better

2008-05-26T22:34:00.002-04:00

Tomokazu - 2 starsSFO, United concourse Fung Lum - 1 starSFO, United concourse If you read this blog, you may already realize that I love California, or at least the part of it around San Francisco. The weather is like paradise, the food is unmatched, the flowers smell better in the night air, and even the airport food is better. The United section of Terminal 3 has a food court that has five

Chicken Blogwich at Home

2008-05-19T16:58:00.004-04:00

Alice Waters, The Art of Simple Food - 2 stars I spent all of last whole week at home - for the fourth time out of nineteen weeks so far this year, which really isn't all that bad. So instead of eating fake Mexican food in airport restaurants, I've been cooking. Or "cooking" might be a more appropriate way to put it, as any new parent probably knows. After a day in the basement office, with a

Paris Saint-Germain

2008-05-18T18:13:00.000-04:00

One of the things I acquired during my travels a long time ago was a love of European soccer. I suppose that going to soccer games was part of my general desire at the time to fit in with what real Parisians did. The first game I went to was a Champions' Cup match between the Paris team, Paris Saint-Germain, or PSG (European team names are not plurals, like New York Yankees or Boston Red Sox, but

Save Our Taco Trucks

2008-05-06T19:33:00.004-04:00

dell'anima - 2 stars38 8th Ave, New York, NYSpice Market - 2 stars403 W 13th St, New York, NYA food pushcart - 0 starsW 28th St, New York, NYThose who do not have their finger perpetually on the pulse of the Zeitgeist may not realize the epic cultural battle going on today. Actually, I didn't realize it either until my friend Viviane called attention to it on her Facebook page: the epic battle

The Center of the World

2008-05-02T09:02:00.000-04:00

Cafe Spice - 1 starGrand Central Station Two Boots - 2 starsGrand Central Station Today I passed through Ground Zero for the first time since it became Ground Zero. I looked at it once in early 2002, when there were still crowds of people lined up against all the fences and pictures of victims plastered to those fences, but this was the first time I was actually down in the pit itself. Because,

Little Green Bag, R. I. P.

2008-04-18T00:04:00.002-04:00

Lamen Restauration Rapide - 1 starRue des Petits Champs and Rue Ste.-Anne, 75002 Paris Best Saveurs - 2 starsPassage de Choiseul, 75002 Paris Exki - 1 starBoulevard des Italiens, 75002 Paris Little Georgette - 2 starsImpasse Gomboust, 75002 ParisLast week I left my suitcase in my hotel in Paris so I didn't have to carry it to the United States and back over the weekend - especially important

The Romance of Air Travel

2008-04-16T06:53:00.002-04:00

Panini Express - 1 starTerminal 1, JFK Growing up in a suburb of New York, Manhattan was the ultimate symbol of the urban adult world. And John F. Kennedy Airport, or JFK, as the most important airport of the world's most important city, was the symbol of air travel and all the romance it promised. Today, New York area air travel is pretty evenly split between JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark, and

My coffee place

2008-04-12T18:34:00.002-04:00

Café San Jose - 2 starsRue des Petits Champs, Paris 75002 I've already pointed out that my company's Paris office is just a block from the old Bibliothèque Nationale (National Library, known to the regulars as the BN) where I spent most of my days when I lived in Paris back in 1994. I just spent a week in the office, and although everything else has changed, my favorite coffee place hasn’t.

Passport Number 2,906

2008-04-03T21:26:00.002-04:00

If this blog is about anything, it's about travel and nostalgia. So this week, as I sit at home, I'm going to go much, much further back. This is my father's Korean passport, issued in 1953. It's passport number 2906, which, I believe, means that it is the two thousand, nine hundred and sixth passport issued by the Republic of Korea, which only came into being in 1948 or so. You can see the

The Routine

2008-03-26T11:34:00.000-04:00

The Last Resort - 0 starsHartford airport (BDL) Waffle House - 2 starsAll over the South Panera - 1 starYour friendly local strip mall Musashi - 0 starsDetroit airport (DTW) One week the JW Marriott in Copacabana, the next week (after a short break) ... the Comfort Inn in Birmingham, Alabama, after eating a disgusting piece of pizza (barely any tomato sauce, slightly sour-tasting cheese that

Breaking News

2008-03-25T01:09:00.002-04:00

Euromad discovers why croissants au beurre are so much better than croissants ordinaires (which are now, apparently, in a perversion of the French language, called croissants a la nature)! Click here for the shocking answer!

Copacabana in the Rain

2008-03-15T20:56:00.005-04:00

Fasano al Mare - 2 starsIpanema, Rio de Janeiro Fagulha - 1 starsRua Santa Clara 18, Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro In many ways, I am a very fortunate person. You know those articles about jet-setting executives who get to go to exotic places and stay in nice hotels? Well, that's me ... if only a tiny bit. At home I drive a 1999 Chevy Prizm, I wear the same suits I bought 11 years ago when I

"Living Life Navigator Style"

2008-03-13T22:06:00.001-04:00

(The title is a reference to a story by my friend Euromad.) I'm in Rio de Janeiro this week, in a hotel overlooking the Copacabana beach. But I almost didn't make it here. We planned this trip a few weeks ago, at the invitation of a possible client here in Rio. To get a visa you need a plane ticket and an invitation from a business in Brazil. On Friday, February 22 we got the faxed invitations

Home Away from Home

2008-03-08T01:45:00.002-05:00

Zachary's - 1 starSolano Ave., Berkeley, CaliforniaCollege Avenue, Oakland, CaliforniaI've lived in Berkeley (or the Oakland hills, which are basically the same thing) for nine out of the last eighteen years - 1990-97 (except for a year in Paris), in grad school, 1999-2001 while working at McKinsey and Ariba, and 2005-06 while my wife was on sabbatical at UC Berkeley - and I've visited many times

South Beach

2008-02-29T17:13:00.004-05:00

Pizza Rustica - 2 stars3 locationsMiami Beach, FLLa Provence - 1 star1627 Collins AveMiami Beach, FLFront Porch Cafe - 1 star1418 Ocean DrMiami Beach, FLI was lying on my beach chair, not ten feet from a woman talking loudly on her cell phone. She was talking about an article in the New York Post about a "device" that you could plug into a cell phone to retrieve its deleted text messages (no big

Now Is the Time

2008-02-21T12:55:00.002-05:00

Those one or two people who use an RSS aggregator to read my blog may have noticed a post I made in favor of John Edwards a few days before Iowa. I pulled that post from the site a few minutes later, having decided not to put a political endorsement on a blog that has a link from a couple internal web pages at my company. Which is, of course, another example of Democrats obeying scruples that

History

2008-02-19T22:10:00.003-05:00

Yes, I have a Ph.D. in history. Not only in history, but in French intellectual history. And not only French intellectual history, but avant-garde cultural movements in France in the 1950s and 1960s. Existentialism? people sometimes ask. No - some people after the existentialists, who were much less interesting and even less important.For a while I was actually embarrassed by this. My biography

Why?

2008-02-11T18:19:00.000-05:00

I recently flew home from Florida - Miami Beach in particular - where it was 85 degrees and sunny today, the air so perfectly warm and slightly heavy in the air it feels like you are suspended in it. At the company we visited, there was a Lamborghini parked in one of the reserved spaces just in front of the door, and after lunch we had to navigate around a Rolls in the restaurant parking lot. But

The Last Time ...

2008-02-01T21:46:00.000-05:00

I'm in Paris again.Like the last couple times I've come here, I can't t help but wonder: "Is this the last time I will come to Paris?" Part of it is being 38 years old and right about the middle of my life expectancy; for no rational reason, having less time to live than I've already had reminds me that I will not do everything I would like to do, nor will I do anything unlimited number of

A Real Diner

2008-01-27T21:41:00.000-05:00

Paul's Diner - 2 stars6 Carlisle Rd.Westford, MA On Wednesday I was in Northeastern Massachusetts, driving to New Hampshire to visit a client, when I pulled off of 495 to get gas. After getting gas, I was hungry, and I had some extra time, so I started looking for one of the usual standbys to grab breakfast: maybe Panera, or Starbucks, or some Mexican chain that served breakfast burritos.

One Small Country

2008-01-17T22:25:00.000-05:00

Waffle House - 2 starsAll over the SouthNone of my friends understand my affection for Waffle House. After all, I am a California foodie at heart who learned how to cook as a graduate student (in the humanities, no less) in Berkeley - and a vegetarian.If I wanted, I could explain my relationship to Waffle House with a sentimental story. The first time I ever ate at Waffle House was on Thursday,

Down Memory Lane

2008-01-12T01:40:00.000-05:00

Senor Jalapeno - 1 starSJC, Terminal CFrench Meadow Organic Bakery - 2 starsMSP I used to fly to San Jose a lot when visiting my office, for cost reasons, but sometime around 2005-2006 it became cheaper to fly in and out of San Francisco, which is closer to the office anyway. This week, though, I bought a ticket at the last minute and it was cheaper to return from San Jose, so this morning I

Paris to the Moon

2007-12-31T22:10:00.000-05:00

I haven't done any traveling since my last adventure returning from California, so I don't have any new restaurant reviews, but I didn't want to let the year slip away without some final thoughts. And since so much of this blog has been about Paris, I thought I would finish 2007 with the book I'm reading, Paris to the Moon, a collection of New Yorker articles and other essays by Adam Gopnik, an

The Year in Review

2007-12-15T19:29:00.000-05:00

La Farine - 3 starsSolano Ave., Berkeley, CaliforniaI woke up this morning in Berkeley, California, my favorite town in the whole world (I stayed with my friends Robert and Jenni and saw their 2-month-old son Evan, and also so my friends Ori and Lori, and their daughters Hannah and Ruby). For breakfast I stopped at La Farine on Solano Avenue in North Berkeley for a morning bun, perhaps the best

New York, New York

2007-12-12T07:56:00.000-05:00

Aquavit - 3 stars65 E 55th St.Aquavit is, according to New York Magazine, the 9th-best restaurant in New York City. (New York Magazine isn't a particularly trustworthy source, but Aquavit also got 3 stars (out of 4 - almost no one gets 4) from the New York Times. As such, Aquavit is also precisely the kind of restaurant I couldn't afford to eat at when I lived in New York from 1997 to 1999.

Kit-Kats?

2007-12-06T21:12:00.000-05:00

I'm just back from a short business trip to visit one customer and to make one sales call. I flew from Hartford to Louisville, had an all-day meeting in Louisville on Tuesday, flew to New York on Tuesday night, went to a sales call Wednesday afternoon, took the train to my parents' house, where I stayed Wednesday night, and drove home on Thursday.My meals went something like this:Monday lunch:

The City

2007-11-15T23:20:00.001-05:00

Sushiya - 2 stars28 W 56th St. Pret a Manger - 3 stars (for the brownie)630 Lexington Ave. (at 54th) The Oyster Bar - 1 starGrand Central StationGrowing up in a suburb of New York, it was just "the city." This may be true for people growing up in any suburb of any city, but for New York, the greatest city in the world, it seems especially appropriate. As a child, I

London, on the other hand

2007-10-22T10:17:00.000-04:00

Prêt à Manger - 2 starsEverywhere EAT - 1 starEverywhere Marks & Spencer - 1 starEverywhere Stick and Bowl - 2 stars31, Kensington High Street, W8 Foubert's - 0 stars17 Kensington High Street, W8 As opposed to Paris, London is a city I remember fondly, although for no good reason. I first visited in 1993, when my girlfriend and I stayed with my sister for a week near

Paris, again, again

2007-10-16T16:01:00.000-04:00

Cafe Guitry - 1 star10, place Edouard VII, 75009Luna di Miele - 0 stars49, passage Choiseul, 75002Wadja - 3 stars10, rue de la Grande-Chaumiere, 75006Tresor du Kashmir - 0 starsrue de la Michodiere, 75002Santi - 1 star49, rue Montorgueil, 75002Regular readers of this blog (of which there may be one or two) know about my complex relationship with the city of Paris. I was just there for six days,

Who's the entrepreneur?

2007-10-12T16:21:00.000-04:00

I wrote this on an impulse because I was enraged by an article in The New York Times about VCs posturing as entrepreneurs. Of course, the Times didn't print it (they get a thousand submissions for everything they publish), so enjoy.***As an entrepreneur, I was surprised to read the title "Entrepreneurs Defend a Tax Benefit Despite a Dubious Congress" (V. C. Nation, Sept. 21), and offended to

St. Paul, MN

2007-08-02T17:39:00.000-04:00

Mickey's - 1 starSt. Paul, MinnesotaPazzaluna - 1 starSt. Paul, MinnesotaA year and a half ago I wrote about my favorite airport restaurant, which happens to be in the Minnesota-St. Paul airport, where I find myself at the moment and plan to eat dinner in an hour or so. I arrived two days ago for a sales call in St. Paul. The last time I came here (other than to eat in the airport) was in the

Mexican airport food

2007-07-12T22:16:00.000-04:00

Andale, SFO - 1 star Qdoba, PIT - 0 stars Tequileria, CLT - 1 star Even the airport food is better in California. Those who fly through San Francisco will have noticed the market upgrade (in both quality and price) of the SFO restaurants in the last few years. The sushi place, the Chinese place, and the Italian place are all decent, but my favorite is probably Andale, the Mexican place in

Paris, again

2007-05-24T11:18:00.001-04:00

Berthillon - 3 stars29, rue St. Louis en l'Ile, 75004La Chope Daguerre - 1 star17, rue Daguerre, 75014Gérard Mulot - 3 stars76, rue de Seine, 75006Bistrot du Dôme - 2 starsrue Delambre, 75014Poilâne- 3 stars8, rue du Cherche-Midi, 75006As I get older, I seem to spend more and more of my time trying to recapture moments and sensations from my past. I was just in Paris for three days on a business

Moscow

2006-04-26T19:11:00.000-04:00

April 22-25, 2006Correa's - 2 starsOrdynka ulitsa 40Soup Cafe - 1 star1-ya Brestskaya 62 Teremok - 1 starmany locationsThere are, of course, many ways in which the glamour of international business travel is a far cry from the reality. One of the more mundane, though painful, is hunger.Right now I'm flying from Moscow to Atlanta (twelve hours) with a connection to San Francisco (5 hours). If

Paris, La Defense, Courbevoie

2006-03-11T22:03:00.000-05:00

March 7-10, 2006Lina's - 1 starCNIT building, La DefenseLa Brasserie du Faubourg - 0 starsCourbevoieL'Estivals - 2 stars58, rue Montorgueil, 2emePoilane - 3 stars8, rue du Cherche-Midi, 6emeCacao et Chocolat - 1 star29, rue de Buci, 6emeAu Vin des Rues - 2 stars21, rue Boulard, 14emeBerthillon - 3 starsIle St. Louis, 4emeGerard Mulot - 3 stars76, rue de Seine 16emePerre Herme - 3 stars72, rue

Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport: French Meadows Cafe

2006-02-23T15:25:00.000-05:00

Grilled Cheese Sandwich - 2 stars$6.99 with green saladFebruary 22, 2006Every so often life surprises you. I just had the best meal I can remember having in an airport, on my layover flying back from Milwaukee, in the F concourse at MSP (which, in general, has very good food for an American airport). The French Meadows Cafe is an all- or mostly-organic sandwich shop (with assorted other things,

Cambridge, MA: Bartley's

2006-01-26T17:10:00.000-05:00

Mitt Romney Turkey Burger - 2 starsabout $9 with onion ringsJanuary 25, 2006Cambridge, MA: Pinocchio'sChicken Parmigiano Sub - 2 starsabout $4 (small)December 5, 2005Worcester, MA: Crowne Plaza Hotel Room ServiceChipotle Chicken Sandwich - 1 starabout $8 with fries or fresh fruitJanuary 23, 2006Worcester, MA: Prospect CafeteriaChicken Breast with Spinach and Roasted Tomato Sandwich - 0

Berkeley, CA: Jimmy Bean's

2005-08-21T13:08:00.000-04:00

Tortilla Eggs - 3 stars$7.50August 20, 2005I had ambivalent feelings about Utah and Nevada. On the one hand, we were in the desert, it was blazingly hot every time we stopped, and good food was hard to find. (Although Starbucks, always out to trap travelers, set up shop in the Red Lion Inn and Casino in Elko, Nevada.) On the other hand, we were somewhere between Elko and Winnemucca, I looked

Topeka, KN and Colby, KN

2005-08-17T17:13:00.000-04:00

Panera (Topeka)Tuscan Chicken Sandwich - 2 stars$6.50 for 1/2 sandwich with soup or 1/2 saladAugust 16, 2005Quizno's (Colby)Chicken Milano - 1 star$8.19 (large)August 17, 2005The Starbucks Tax. Starbucks has discovered a clever way to tax people driving through the state of Kansas. From Salinas to the Colorado border - a distance of 250 miles - there is nothing. A few cornfields, a few cows, a

Sharonville, OH and Champaign, IL

2005-08-16T13:19:00.000-04:00

Chipotle Mexican Grill, SharonvilleChicken Fajita Burrito - 1 star$5.25August 14, 2005Borders Books and Music, ChampaignAsiago Chicken Salad Sandwich - 0 starsabout $5August 15, 2005If you look hard, you can see the differences in the many places you see as you drive across the United States. But mostly you just see how everything is more and more the same. And while I could go on for chapters

Amherst, MA: Bertucci’s

2005-08-01T17:18:00.000-04:00

Chicken Marinara Sandwich – 1 star about $8 with pasta saladJuly 31, 2005 In addition to all the usual excuses for not posting to my blog, there are two others: first, I have been traveling less over the past two months and, thanks to my move to California, I am now on my last trip back to the office for a year; and second, due to my newfound obsession with eating at least seven fruits and

San Jose, CA: California Pizza Kitchen

2005-07-08T19:56:00.000-04:00

Caesar Chicken Sandwich - 1 star $7.49 The best thing about this sandwich was that I actually got to eat it. Like many Fridays, I was busy well past the time when I should have gone to the airport, in this case walking out at 10.15 to catch an 11.31 flight at SJC (about a thirty-minute drive, plus time to get gas, plus 10-15 minutes for the brontosauran rental car shuttle to pick you up

Coventry, RI: Denny's

2005-06-22T22:56:00.000-04:00

Italian Chicken Melt - 0 stars about $7 with friesJune 7, 2005In some ways, it was a prototypical sales call. I was working on a demo in the hotel, trapped in a huge but strangely desolate strip mall complex: a Hampton Inn, a Wendy's, a Denny's, a gas station, a Home Depot, and vast expanses of nothing more typical of Arizona than of Rhode Island - no forests, no farmland, no towns, just

Windsor Locks, CT: Fresh City

2005-06-03T22:29:00.000-04:00

Chicken Fajita Wrap - 1 star$6.29Yes, it's been a while since I've written about a chicken sandwich. I actually eat fewer than one might think. You see, I don't particularly like chicken sandwiches - they're my fallback when I'm on the road in places that don't have very good food (that would be most places). But recently I've been spending most of my time at home or in California, where there

London, England: Upper Crust

2005-04-14T17:00:00.000-04:00

Chicken Tikka Sandwich - 1 star About 3 poundsOn the way from Manchester to London (actually, to Tim's place in Speen, where I slept in a 17th-century house for the first time in my life) in Tim's Boxster, I saw one of the most disturbing things in my life. We were at a cafe in a rest stop, and behind a sign saying "scones," they had these large, rectangular, brownish, hard-looking things that

London, England: Ponti's

2005-04-14T13:00:00.000-04:00

Mediterranean chicken sandwich - 0 starsAbout 4 pounds, with exactly 3 potato chipsI spent my first two days in England trying to find a chicken sandwich. On Monday in the hotel restaurant in Manchester I ordered the "spicy chicken," neglecting to note the absence of the word sandwich, and was treated to a rather small and not very spicy fried thigh and leg. (This was the "American" entry in the

Hastings, MI: Applebee's

2005-04-08T12:00:00.000-04:00

Chicken Fajita Rollup - 1 star$6.29 with fries, about $1 extra for onion peels insteadThere is a place in downtown Hastings called Richie's Diner. Richie's occupies a proud place in the history of our company; it was there that Alex, John R., and I had breakfast before the sales call that led to our first (or second, or third, depending on how you count them) customer. Richie's is an old-style

Chicago, IL: Cosi

2005-03-24T00:31:00.000-05:00

Tandoori Chicken Sandwich - 2 stars $6.29 with potato chips or carrotsIt turns out that, in addition to being a fine sandwich spot with now-cliched self-consciously-urban decor, Cosi is actually a great test of personal virtue. You see, after you order your sandwich, you have a choice between potato chips and carrots - two completely opposing points on the nutritional spectrum, with no happy

Somewhere over Utah: Bennigan's/United Airlines

2005-03-24T00:16:00.000-05:00

Turkey O'Toole - 0 stars$10 with potato chips and chocolate chip cookieAs most of you know, airlines began selling food on board a couple years ago in a desperate effort to earn a few extra bucks. Until now, I resisted this trend on the grounds that airport food was better and cheaper. But on Tuesday, I barely had time to catch my plane (I didn't even fill up the gas in my rental car, for the

Burlingame, CA: Chicken! Chicken!

2005-03-21T13:00:00.000-05:00

Jerk Chicken Breast Sandwich - 1 star $6.95 with one side[photo coming - don't have the right software on my laptop to upload ]The most fascinating thing about the Toyota Prius is not the gas mileage itself; it's the way it constantly reminds you of the gas mileage, by means of a visual display that shows you, at each instant, how power is flowing between the internal combustion, the engine, and

Lincoln, RI: Prospect's cafeteria

2005-03-01T12:00:00.000-05:00

Crispy Chicken Sandwich - 1 star $3.29Would you believe it - our own Patty was born and raised in Lincoln, Rhode Island? And apparently, when people from Rhode Island get together, they compete to see who can remember what various things used to be, as in "Do you remember when that restaurant was ... ?" In the course of living this cultural peculiarity, we found out that the Roast House -

San Mateo: Taxi's

2005-02-24T22:00:00.000-05:00

Avocado Jack Burger (Chicken) - 1 star $7.50 or soOn Tuesday I had another chicken-free sales call, this one in Worcester, Massachusetts: 3 eggs over hard with home fries and toast for lunch (eggs overcooked, otherwise serviceable) and cheese pizza and Greek salad in Logan Airport for dinner. (I got in an argument with the server, who handed me a Caesar salad, and, when I said I had asked for a

Photo from the road

2005-02-14T16:00:00.000-05:00

There were no chicken sandwiches on Monday - lunch was passable cheese pizza from the prospect's cafeteria - but the meetings went well and the audience was happy. We first met with them in October 2003 (yes, 2003), which did not go well, but after they saw our competitor's product they asked us to come back. This is a shot of the field across the street from the prospect's headquarters. We're

Hartford-Springfield Airport: Fresh City

2005-02-13T23:00:00.000-05:00

Texas BBQ Chicken Wrap - 0 stars$6I really expected to give Fresh Citya star, and I wanted to, but I just couldn't bring myself to. A BBQ chicken wrap sounds simple, but it turned out to be a Frankensteinian combination of mismatched ingredients: bland white "Jasmine" rice (that was undercooked to the point of near-rawness), assorted Asian-style vegetables (broccoli, snow pea pods?), bland but

Amherst, MA: my house

2005-02-10T20:00:00.000-05:00

Roast (free-range, organic) chickenBecause today's all-day meeting in Cambridge was cancelled (due to a snowstorm that turned out to be a dud), I had time to prepare and roast a chicken for dinner. Recipe: wash the chicken inside and out and blot dry. Salt and pepper liberally all over and inside the cavity. Stuff thyme branches under the skin covering the breast and inside the cavity. Truss and

Smithfield, RI: The Roast House

2005-02-09T13:00:00.000-05:00

Chicken Fiesta Sandwich - 1 star $7 with fries, curly fries, or onion rings and pickle I was really looking forward to eating in Cambridge (since I travel so many places with no good restaurants), but the meeting there was cancelled, so there was no reason for us to drive there. The Chicken Fiesta Sandwich is a decent attempt at a fake-Mexican chicken sandwich. It included two breaded and

Charlton, MA: McDonald's

2005-02-08T23:00:00.000-05:00

Crispy Chicken Sandwich - 0 stars about $4 Yes, McDo is getting expensive; you can end up spending over $6 for a value meal these days. I swore off of McDonald's since reading Fast Food Nation, but at 11 pm on the Mass Pike rest stops there isn't really any other option, and the 6 packs of Asian-style crackers I ate in the Air Canada lounge in Toronto weren't cutting it for dinner. I know I

Toronto, CA: Sizzler's

2005-02-08T01:00:00.000-05:00

Chicken Shishkabob on Pita - 1 star about $5 Canadian Close to midnight, lying on the spare bed in Michael P.'s hotel room while he and Daniele figure out the scenarios for the next day's demo, I decided if I didn't eat something I would either pass out from hunger or fall asleep from fatigue. Room service was shut down, but the front desk recommended I try the Wendy's in the same building, and

Columbus, OH: Elevator Brewing Co

2005-02-07T13:00:00.000-05:00

Turkey Reuben - 1 star about $7 with fries and a pickle (actually, a thick slice of a pickle) Well, our choices were Elevator's, a Wendy's, and a place in between that looked like it served food from behind a bullet-proof glass window. Inside, the place was surprisingly airy and urban. The turkey reuben was encouragingly decent - perhaps an indication that Russian dressing smothers all else -