Back issues
I’ve been publishing Argentfork since 2004, the year the Sons of Tito Francona broke the curse of the Bambino. Since then, I’ve eaten pig’s head, Samish oysters and Castelvetrano olives, drunk No. 209 gin, Cahors wine and New Belgium Tripel—and written about all of them. Dig in.
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SEATTLE Oct 11Travels with my gut
I love eating and drinking in Seattle, where a café sits in every strategic space, a pocket of neighborhood restaurants—any old neighborhood—emits a swarm of sweet aromas, a mixing glass rattles and froths with the emulsion of some new, smart set of elixirs.
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GARLIC Jul 11An ode to the clove
Roasted garlic is transubstantial: a candied gem from a dynamite stick. A decent restaurant runs on garlic and spews its exhaust into the common air. A restaurant that doesn’t cook with garlic is to me a cathedral without ghosts.
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ABSENT FRIENDS Apr 11Waking Blake
We met after work over a cocktail for the sole purpose, it was revealed, of plotting some strategy for his entrée into the slippery world of the singles ads. And with that I clumsily withdrew from his life.
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CHILI Jan 11His way or the 3-way
Chili came out of the land of scrub and hoof, up from Coahuila in the Mexican plain, into the vast triangulation of Abilene, San Antonio and Chihuahua, where a lot of miles and men and beasts crossed paths on the way to slaughter.
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PEARS Oct 10An engagement of the pome
Thomas Jefferson grafted the orchard of his dreams, buoyed by the fruits of travel and memory and acquaintances, asexually fixed—grafted instead of seeded—to avoid rogue genetics and new varieties.
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cochon-555 Jul 10The fat of the land
There’s a strip of belly in my hand that somebody cured into bacon where I shift my attention. I observe it long enough to salivate, then bite: It crunches magnificently, like a Heath bar.
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OLIVES Apr 10Midnight in the garden of oil and evil
The Sicilian set up shop on Mulberry Street, seeking refuge and respect. In the beginning, he imported oil, so the mamas dwelling among the Knickerbockers...
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WHOLE-HOG Jan 10Barbecue to the rescue
I arrive at the restaurant ahead of Alias Emcee and take a booth near the window, where all the booths, come to think of it, are. I am early, no, the Alias is late. The waitress, caring only that I am alone...
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CHOCOLATE Oct 09Just add milk
The Opossum God, when he hit the sacred road carrying the Rain God on his back, fueled his zeal with hits of hot chocolate. The Maya seemed always to be going someplace.
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WINE Jul 09A few honest thoughts about wine
I would cook and drink the fruity red cooperative wine and ponder what bottle to pull from the cellar beneath the stairs. The bottles came with the same fruit, but in more controlled blends, with less of a co-op’s democracy.
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FRIED CHICKEN Apr 09A history of hot oil
I like my chicken, like myself, with the bones intact. Bones are evidence of life, and it’s life, after all, that flavors a living thing. Meat hanging to bones is evidence of some plan, a design rendered by something beyond man to give him nature and character.
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TASTES Jan 09A few of my favorite things
When I was a teen, there was a fad to design flavored snack crackers and then sell them with pretend names. Like Chicken in a Biskit. Artificially flavored and preserved for posterity, these things got in my blood. They are the original bad taste in my mouth.
