A recent article in one of our major local papers, La Nación, was scribed by a local Chinese food and culture writer, and touted seven Chinese restaurants in the city that are &l&hell…Read More

We’re still in Africa, but have moved cross-continent to the northeast, and the country of Eritrea. There was no such country when I was growing up. Eritrea was a confederated reg… Read More

A recent article in Business Insider was rapidly passed around, more for its headline than its content. The title asserted “The key to happiness might be living within walking dis… Read More

This time around, a two-month Casa SaltShaker wrap-up. February was a little short because of my time away in Montevideo, plus one weekend we were busy and didn’t host a dinner. Here&r&hell…Read More

It’s been awhile since I’ve had a solid “you should check these places out” group of restaurants. There always seems to be one or two that just don’t make the g… Read More

Those of you who’ve been with me awhile may well remember my explorations of the four famed pastas of Rome, and their family tree connections. A quick reference back – grici… Read More

A quartet of Italians today, one of which I’ve reviewed before, and was worth a revisit and more sampling! We’ll start with two in Parque Patricios, both close on the park itself… Read More

Janus was the Roman god of doors, gates, passages, beginnings, transitions, and time. But also, the middle ground between concrete and abstract dualities such as life/death, beginning/end, y… Read More

We start with the cheese, the taleggio, a washed rind cow’s milk cheese from Lombardia, the province around Milan and Bergamo. Named for the Val Taleggio, or Taleggio Valley… Read More

From cheap to dear, from casual to fancy, we’ve got a little of everything this time around in Bite Marks! Arredondo, Virrey Arredondo 2562, Colegiales – I’ve heard great… Read More

It’s been awhile on this project, and it’s become clear it will happen as it happens. Probably, as in past years, in spurts. Today, we’re on to Equatorial Guinea, a we… Read More

It was a short four days in Montevideo, but I packed a lot of eating in. There wasn’t a lot else to do as it poured rain and howled wind most of the time. Luckily, I don’t mind c… Read More

A trio of Asian spots this time around, two Korean, one pan-Asian. I’m going to start with my favorite. Actually, I’m going to start with the only one I liked. So there. Prewarne… Read More

How does the Chivito Uruguayo stack up? We’re off, today, to the República Oriental del Uruguay, or, just Uruguay. Probably about a decade ago I got into an online “d… Read More

The Italian word maccheroni is often simply translated as macaroni into English, but that’s a bit of a falsity. While in general it’s often used for a tubular type of pasta… Read More

First, for those who may have missed it, I have a new, longer review piece up on the Substack feed. I’ll get the back and forth between these down smoothly with time, or, maybe go back… Read More

Flavor, quality, and intentional misspelling. I was just wandering down the street one afternoon in late December, feeling a bit peckish, and suddenly saw this Peruvian restaurant. Now, I&rs&hell…Read More

Time for my monthly Casa SaltShaker round-up! Standout dishes from each dinner, mostly in my opinion, but also those we got great feedback on! Also, note our new table linens in the cover ph… Read More

Here, a link to my first article over on the new Substack feed. We’ll see how this goes. It’s a very different platform to use for publishing than this one, and while relatively… Read More

So, first off, a fairly big announcement about this blog, it’s content, and something new. For those of you who aren’t connected with me or follow me elsewhere, and haven’t… Read More

Before I get to a year in review post of any sort – which I may or may not – a look back at some of my (and some guests’) favorite dishes of last month. I had several &l&hell…Read More

I’m actually a bit excited about this particular Bite Marks. I think it’s been quite some time where every place that I’m including is one I’d recommend. It’s n… Read More

When the city of Santiago, Chile, was founded in 1541 by Pedro de Valdivia, it was named in tribute to James the Great, patron saint of Spain. And while one might reasonably think that &ldqu&hell…Read More

I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It was in all the papers. Gastronomic detectives worldwide were set out on the task to track down the best cannoli their cities, towns, villages, and… Read More

It takes me awhile to collect together enough steak experiences to post a scroll. Despite living in Argentina, and early on indulging in the great beef here, in general, I probably don&rsquo&hell…Read More

My roundup of favorite dishes at Casa SaltShaker over the previous month – one from each dinenr! Pork Loin “Carbonara” – medallion of pork loin, rubbed with salt, pe… Read More

May as well stick with five spots in a post for the moment, and pivot from Peru to Italy. Because who doesn’t love Italian food? If you don’t, go read someone else’s blog… Read More

Another Peruvian restaurant round-up. This is one of those never-ending projects. I’m not sure that even if I concentrated solely on Peruvian restaurants I could ever get to all of the… Read More

This time around, we’re in Tuscany, for a classic boscaiola sauce. Italian lumberjacks like bacon, mushrooms, and tomatoes, with a touch of cream on their pasta. Let the Canadian lumbe… Read More

“The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the Ho… Read More

I’ve gotten way behind on reviews, so over the next days, I’m going to play a little catch-up. Starting off the deluge (okay, it won’t be that bad) with a trio of French sp… Read More

Once again, a look back at some favorite dishes from our Casa SaltShaker meals over the couple of months. A combination of my personal favorites and those that guests have commented on as th… Read More

All food, all the time, no? I really didn’t do much else on my return to Lima for three days – a single visit to the city’s art museum for an exhibit on Incan culture. I li… Read More

Okay, so I’m behind, because I just decided not to spend time while on vacation posting on the blog. For those who follow me on Instagram, you’ve probably seen a good portion of… Read More

Welcome back to Lima! I haven’t been here since mid-2019, pre-pandemic. This is a somewhat spur-of-the-moment visit (I knew I’d come some time between now and early November, as… Read More

I don’t remember who it was among my circle who asked about a recipe for Pizzoccheri alla Valtellinese, but as the last gasps of winter die out in Buenos Aires, it seemed time to… Read More

This post has come together over a couple of months. I had just decided to do an Italian focused theme, and it took that long to end up with three that I wanted to showcase. Some of it was s… Read More

The city and area around Rome is known for three types of pizzas that differ from what I think most of us think of as Italian style pizza, pizza napolitana. The first is the pizza… Read More

Our usual grab bag of various and sundry. We have sushi, wine bars, a special pizza, and some creative modern Latin American street food. What more do you want out of life? Kanji, Scalabri… Read More

Time for some meat! A trio of steakhouses that have been on my list for eons. Literal eons. Since the creation of the cow. Or, like, somewhere around a decade. Don’t ask why I haven&rs&hell…Read More

We’re back with Stan! Yes, it’s been awhile. The dish I’m about to demonstrate uses lamb stock and I kept putting off making some sort of lamb dish in order to have lamb bo… Read More

I’ve not remotely exhausted the list of contenders for filling out the currently short-filled top five burgers in the city list. But, I have filled in that blank spot, and I’d st… Read More

Time for a look back at some of our (and our customers’) favorite dishes of the last few meals at Casa SaltShaker. These include a couple of further iterations on dishes that I’v… Read More

Over time, I’ve built up quite the list of burgers. My map has, well, a lot of places, many recommended, many not. And it doesn’t include those places that I’ve reviewed in… Read More

It’s been a colder, wetter few days and a big pot of locro seemed in order. It was time to get back to my list of the various regional South American locros, this time, we he… Read More

For most of my life I’ve thought about something that has a corkscrew shape as a “spiral”. But it turns out that’s wrong – something maybe that was buried in th… Read More

It’s been since mid-pandemic that I haven’t written a Where to Eat recommendation piece. There have been too many mediocre or bad spots recently, and writing about them was… Read More

We’ve talked about this before. There’s classic, homestyle kind of Peruvian cooking, and there’s the newer, Japanese fusion style Nikkei cooking. And there are places that… Read More

Sushi, Tempura, Dumplings. These are a few of my favorite things. Okay, there’s only one tempura item in this Bite Marks-ish, or Chop Suey-ish roundup, but it works for the title, so I… Read More

I’m just going to throw out a (not so) wild guess that 99.9% of you have never encountered Pasta alla zozzona before. We’re still hanging out in Rome – I mentioned mon… Read More

I have been a bit less active with planning Roving Ravenous Horde activities. Personal/family stuff that just left me a bit lacking in enthusiasm for social stuff, though I’m… Read More

It’s that time again, a new month, and a look back at the last month, Mais… err… May. Once again, a select dish from each of our Casa SaltShaker dinners. This time, only… Read More

We’re back in Lazio, in Rome, with another pasta. It came up as I was watching a video from someone purporting to know all about Italian pastas, as he asserted that the only pastas wor… Read More

It’s pizza. Is there such thing as bad pizza? Yes. But mostly, no. Because, pizza. We start off at Brucia, Ramón Freire 1302 in Colegiales, a fairly new opening, where, I… Read More

Originally, I was going to make this an all suburban Peruvian post, and set out to visit a few restaurants in the afueras of the city. And, I made it to two, one solo, one with my most… Read More

We were off! It’s been a bit since we got away for a few days to just relax together. It was also a bit of a mistake, in that I had a senior moment, having booked a private party for t… Read More

“Venice is a cheek-by-jowl, back-of-the-hand, under-the-counter, higgledy-piggledy, anecdotal city, and she is rich in piquant wrinkled things, like an assortment of bric-a-brac in the… Read More

This sounds like the title of a novel that might have been written by one or another fantasy writer in the realms of dragons, elves, monsters, and heroes. But, it is a reference to a very ob… Read More

It’s that time again, a new month has dawned and we have a little round-up of the last one. I’m finding that a lot of my focus in creating dishes for Casa SaltShaker seem to end… Read More

With the closing of Mykonos in Las Cañitas during the pandemic, we lost our only Greek restaurant in town. Some mediocre Greek food started coming out of the small stand, Souvlak… Read More

El cheto o la cheta puede ser una persona que vive en una zona acomodada, que suele interesarse solamente por las cosas de marca, que frecuenta lugares “top”, etcéter… Read More

You know the drill by now. This time around we head out for Lebanese shawarma, Peruvian and Sichuan chicken, and a little pastry. We have highs and lows and in-betweens, all wrapped up in a… Read More

On to the roundup of last month’s Casa SaltShaker meals. Despite taking some time off, we still managed three public and one private dinners over the course of the month. A combination… Read More

As always, The Roving Ravenous Horde continues. We had a bit of a hiatus, culpa mia, when I took most of March off for some… me time… my father passed away at the beg… Read More

How and when did Neapolitan cuisine, probably most epitomized by pasta and tomato sauce, become the symbol of Italian cooking? It certainly wasn’t early on, as tomatoes didn’t be… Read More

I got on the wrong train. That’s how this one started. I was headed to someone where I wanted to try for another “project” but accidentally got on the wrong train and found… Read More

It’s been awhile for this project, no? Our last entry, Egypt, was back in December 2021! Like all my projects, this one hovers in my mind, and it stalled out when I couldn’t find… Read More

There once was a poet in Italy named Filippo Tomasso Marinetti. In the leading gastronomy magazine, La Cucina Italiana, in the early 1930s, he wrote the Manifesto of Futurist Cooking, a… Read More

In which we bounce all over the map, gastronomy-wise. This time, serving up six spots – we have two Peruvian, one seafood, one Jewish deli, one vegetarian, and one classic Argentine&nb&hell…Read More

Many moons ago on a visit to Boston, I went with my friend I was visiting to Neptune Oyster Bar where I indulged in his recommended vitello tonnato sandwich. It was as glorious as… Read More

Here we are, the end of another month. I, of course, will be taking February 29-31 as days to do things like not drink wine, go on a diet, and exercise regularly. Because I’m just that… Read More

I was once, many years ago, accused on social media of “only reviewing restaurants in Recoleta and Palermo”. It was laughable at the time, as anyone who’s spent any time re… Read More

The second half, and second dish, of the Calabria episode of Stanley Tucci’s Searching for Italy. In the previous post, I covered the sweet red onion spaghetti he waxed poetic abo… Read More

I haven’t forgotten my Tucci series. Nor any of the series – like The Bread & Soup Project, or the L-Word Project, or getting to every Peruvian restaurant in the city, or, al… Read More

The lunch group I put together, The Roving Ravenous Horde, a few years back still exists (the starting point was here). It’s morphed a bit. About six months back the core group of… Read More

Let’s start with the admission of guilt. This traditional pasta dish from the province of Matera (and surrounds) in Basilicata, southern Italy, is “supposed” to be made wit… Read More

It was a quiet January, Casa SaltShaker-wise. As previously mentioned, Henry’s away in Peru for his annual family visit, plus I spent a week in São Paulo, so we only offered up… Read More

Blecs After that, it seems like there’s no more to say. It just, at least in English, has a sort of finality to it. But, it’s the Slovenian name for a pasta from the Istrian penn… Read More

Just back from six days in São Paulo. Initially planned as a solo getaway with the intent to get to a bunch of the “50 Best”, “Michelin Star”, or simply highly… Read More

There, that title should attract some new folk to my site…. It’s time, yes, for this week’s pasta! I told you I had one in reserve, since I’m now looking out over th… Read More

Flotsam, jetsam, lagan, and derelict… the opening salvo of 2023’s Bite Marks, a bit of this, a bit of that, some of it washed up, some of it not. One man’s cast-offs are a… Read More

It’s been a couple of weeks since I delved into a new pasta step-by-step for you. The holidays were busy for us at the restaurant and personally, so not a lot of time for playing aroun… Read More

The barrio of Caballito, in the middle of the city of Buenos Aires was created around a small pulpería, or, general store. The store was opened in 1821 by Don Nicolás Vila… Read More

Small plate, creative food, is still a thing here. Is it still a thing wherever you are? Three relatively new spots recently checked out. Social Paraiso Bistro, Riobamba 1220, Recoleta… Read More

Continuing with my new dish of the meal approach to the Casa SaltShaker dinners and lunches. We had a few extra in December, with some private parties, as well as we added in Saturday nights… Read More

A recova is a market where live poultry is sold. There was a building constructed in 1803 near to the Plaza de Mayo that was called La Recova for the former poultry market located… Read More

I promised you variations on penne all’arrabiata, and I’m here to fulfill on at least one of those. Easily the most well-known of them is penne alla vodka. Now, this is… Read More

I’m sure that at some point in its history… …this street was much more attractive. It’s not exactly the sort of block I’d head to looking for excellent dinin… Read More

I’ve been mulling this over for about a week now, trying to decide how to approach it. The situation, recently, we had a guest who attended. Though not definitively ill, she was sweati… Read More

I was talking to a friend about this series of pasta posts, and he noted that I’ve mostly focused on the area around Rome and Naples, wondering just how many pastas there are from thos… Read More

Posting each meal’s menu and a description began to seem a bit boring, especially as we often repeat dishes. Besides, I post each meal with photos and menu on my Instagram account, so… Read More

Getting back to watching more of Stanley Tucci’s adventures around Italy. I note, here in the second season, with the episodes I’ve watched so far, that he’s putting less f… Read More

The last Bite Marks before we do something, I don’t know, special for the 100th one. That will take some thought! Cafe Mishiguene, Cabello 3181, Palermo – The casual off-shoot o… Read More

I was 22 the first time I encountered a “sausage and peppers”, the street food sandwich ubiquitous in Italian celebrations in and around New York. I’d just moved there… Read More

Amazonica Bar, Vicente López 2180, Recoleta – New spot, recently opened. Taking up the slack on the strip, I suppose, for the short-lived and not good Heisenburger Recoleta. Th… Read More

In Apulia, or Puglia, as well as Lucano in neighboring Basilicata, it is not unusual to encounter classic strascinati, or “dragged” pasta. And, I could have started the… Read More

A quintet of disappointing pizza experiences. Sometimes here, I just want to give up on finding good pizza. Or just keep going back to the places I already know make good pizza. None of thes… Read More

As with so many of these origin stories, we have some facts and we have some speculation. Let’s contrast… the recipe came to fame at one of two restaurants in the town of Bari… Read More

No, I’m not going to overdo this and subject you to fifteen dishes in one post. I was just falling behind, wanted to catch up, and didn’t feel like I needed to detail very dish… Read More

A mix of new and old, visits to spots that have opened only recently, and some visits to others that I haven’t been to in awhile. Just reminding us all that they’re still here, a… Read More