Cheese, Book, Restaurant, Thing #30
smart thoughts on highways, beautiful food illustrations, lacy-crispy burgers
Hi, hello, happy to see you here. For new subscribers… welcome and thanks for joining me in this lil nook celebrating dairy, books, and food. I think you’ll get the gist of this newsletter pretty quickly :)
Cheese: Humboldt Fog, while nothing compares 2 U (sung in a Sinead O’Connor voice), I’ve recently found two local-ish cheeses that are pretty close cousins. [For those not familiar, Humboldt Fog is an OG soft-ripened artisanal goat cheese from Cypress Grove in California, now quite widely available. It’s famous for its ribbon of vegetable ash down the center, as well as the gooey creamline beneath the edible rind. It’s a classic.]
Witchgrass from Valley Milkhouse is serious about its creamline; this thing will turn into a delightful puddle if left out at room temp. Witchgrass is for the person who doesn’t love the tangy flavor of goat cheese (this is a cow’s cheese), but still likes the gooeyness and wants something a little different than brie. Find it throughout the East Coast.
Napoleon’s Peak is Shepherd’s Whey Creamery’s (Martinsburg, WV) signature cheese—for good reason. It’s similar to Valencay, both in its trapezoidal-prism shape and goat-y taste with a gooey paste. If you’re a DC local, seek them out at the Dupont Circle farmers’ market or find the cheese around the DMV.
Book: City Limits by Megan Kimble is a trove of fascinating reporting about Texas traffic, displacement, and the case for highway removal. As someone who knows nothing about urban planning, I learned a tremendous amount. The data point that really stuck out to me: it has been widely disproven that widening highways does not actually ease congestion… it just welcomes more cars on the road. Kimble is great at sorting through tons of public policy paperwork and sitting through countless local political meetings to make a compelling story.
Honorable mention: Bite by Bite by Aimee Nezhukumatathil features short chapters of earnest and lovely vignettes about food, family, and friends. While this is a book of prose, it’s easy to see that Nezhukumatathil is a poet by training—her words flow in a very calming manner. I recommend reading a few essays at a time before going to sleep. It’s meditative and relaxing. This is a book for lovers of flash and creative non-fiction, and the simple yet extremely detailed illustrations by Fumi Nakamura really bring the book to life. Oh, and if you haven’t read World of Wonders, Nezhukumatathil’s earlier book in a similar vein (but about animals instead of food), that’s also a treat.
Restaurant: I wish that Hill East Burger was not on the other side of town from me, because they serve my ideal smashburger—definitely the best I’ve had in DC. The thin patty is perfectly salted, with a beautiful crispy edge. Hill East nails the ideal smashburger texture better than most. Dare I call the burger… lacy? It comes with griddled onions (non-negotiable), American cheese, and pickles (also non-negotiable even though I’m generally “meh” on pickles… but they really do add a needed crunch and acidity). Also, Hill East serves sidewinder fries, the underdog of french fry shapes. It’s the type of neighborhood local spot that feels increasingly rare to find: casual, simple but quality menu, good drinks, the end.
Thing: While I’ve been happy to sit on the sidelines during various water bottle crazes (okay, I did have a Nalgene whenever those were big a million years ago), I do have to shout-out my 24 oz. Owala FreeSip for being an ideal desk bottle. Because yes, you can choose from a range of colorways (see above for mine), but what I really love is the spout… something I have never thought about until I started drinking from this bottle. It gets you the perfect-sized gulp of water with each sip—enough to feel satisfied, not too much that you’ve spilled water all over your shirt. Simple daily pleasures, right?
See you soon.
-c