TripCart :: The Travel Blog

When will he stop?

Donald Trump and Steven Carl (a caterer) are proposing a restaurant/banquet hall to develop at Jones Beach. Diane Yatauro, Nassau County’s presiding officer backs Trump in this fiasco, so that’s another strong point for Trump and Co.

Newsday quotes Trump: "As a New Yorker with an eye on historical significance, I am pleased to be a part of the history of Jones Beach."

It’s not that I’m against Trump or against building a nice banquet hall on Jones Beach, it’s this particular model which I find distasteful and gaudy.

Thanx newsday.com

I guess I’m not the only one who feels that way. The Newsday article continues: “In addition to surprise over the dimensions of Trump's moniker, "it doesn't look like the materials that we outlined or have agreed to."”

And the defense?: "This is solely, 100-percent, down to the square foot, what was approved earlier this year in the blueprints -- they just haven't seen the 3-D visualization of it," insisted Michael Russo, who has managed the project for the architectural firm of Hawkins Webb Jaeger.

Other ridiculous monstrosities in the area bearing the Trump family name include:

1. The Trump International Hotel and Tower Fitness Center and Spa, New York City
2. Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, Atlantic City
3. Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort, Atlantic City
4. Trump Marina Hotel Casino, Atlantic City
5. Trump Hotel Casino, Gary, Indiana (ok, this one is a bit out of town)

Maybe I’m just jealous of rich people. That’s come up before, hasn’t it?

DOH!

Do your part to promote beer literacy by learning the art of beer tasting. The AHA (American Homebrewers Association) invites YOU to join the ranks of the few, the proud, and the lucky men and women of America who are trained with discriminating abilities to drink beer. YOU can become a beer judge, too, and travel around the U.S. chillaxing and drinking. I’m thisclose to quitting my day job… Every year over 100 beer judges judge 2,300 beers at Denver, Colorado’s Great American Beer Festival. For three days straight at the beginning of October, these guys get to drink beers and give out medals to their favorites. In 2007, 25,000 gallons of beer “flowed.” (And it would be a huge shame to go all the way to Denver and not check out the Coors Brewery, the world’s largest brewery on a single site.) The Madison Homebrewers & Tasters Guild sponsors the Big & Huge Homebrew Competition in April (we just missed it). Wisconsin is home to great breweries, including Miller Brewing Company, Sprecher Brewing Company, Lakefront Brewery, Capital Brewing Company, and more! The Oregon Brewers Festival is in July at the Tom McCall Waterfront Park in Portland. Drink and listen to great music for four days straight. And east of Portland, in the town of Hood River, you can visit the Full Sail Brewing Company, get a free tour, and relax with some beers out on the brewery deck overlooking the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area — what a life! It’s like Benjamin Franklin said, so many years ago, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” Amen, Brothah!

BBQ in your Pocket

BBQ sure tastes good and it's such a shame that you can't BBQ all the time, but the Grilliput will make it a little easier.  This little grill claims to be the smallest on the planet, it's about a foot long and less than an inch in diameter.  The Grilliput even comes with a notched groove to help you clean it off after each use.  Now if they can figure out a way to make the world's smallest 6-pack to enjoy the grilled fish with.

Koolickle - The Kool-aid Pickle

If you're going to be in the Mississippi Delta soon you may want to try one of the region's newest delicacies: a Kool-Aid pickle.  We're not sure if they're any good but kids seem to love them.  You probably won't find them on any restaurant menus but in mom-and-pop convenience stores throughout the region red jars full of dill pickles soaked in strawberry, cherry or tropical fruit Kool-Aid are becoming more and more popular.  Above, you can see Berverly Boddie and one of her Kool-Aid pickles that she hopes to trademark soon and sell out of her Cleveland, Mississippi, grocery store.  Yummy - maybe.

(thanks NYT)

Top 10 Cities to Feed Your Face

We're suckers for top 10 lists and Forbes Traveler has been kind enough to put together their thoughts on which ten cities in America have the best grub.  Their ranking are based on several criteria: # of restaurants, # of fine dining restaurants, representation of regional cuisine, # of second-tier restaurants, # and depth of ethnic restaurants (extra points for a Chinatown), # of neighborhood restaurants frequented by locals, and the number of travelers who think eating out in the city is one of its highlights.  And here is the definitive list of America's best restaurant cities-

• New York - Chinatown, Little Italy, SoHo, TriBeCa, NoLita, the Lower East Side and many many more
• Chicago - counter service at Avec to a 22-course experience at Alinea
• San Francisco - a great city to Asian in from Bong Su in Market to Green's at Fort Mason
• Los Angeles - lots of celebs, great sushi and the best new steakhouse in the US (Wolfgang Puck's CUT)
• New Orleans - still recovering from Katrina but most restaurants have made a strong rebound
• Houston - here you'll find New Texas cuisine and Nuevo Latino food, head to San Antonio for more traditional TexMex
• Washington, D.C. - great international cuisine and the country's finest classic Spanish restaurant Taberna Alabardera
• Atlanta - Hotlanta's Midtown and Buckhead neighborhoods are full of great southern flare
• Boston - from French to ethnic, there's just about everything somewhere in Beantown
• Las Vegas - those free lunch buffets at the casino just keep getting better and better

Click here for the picture slideshow.

Wheel O' Lunch

Looking for an interesting way to figure out where to eat lunch?  This silly little website, takes data from Yahoo Local and throws it on to a roulette wheel.  Type in a zip code and some other info (like "Chinese" or "Cheap"), give the wheel a spin, and it'll find somewhere different for you to eat.   Let us know if it works on mobiles.

The Top 10 Places to Eat

More and more travelers are planning trips these days based around their stomachs.  As a result, Travelocity recently decided to rank their top 10 favorite destinations for the food obsessed.  We think Travelocity might be a little biased but other than Barcelona, London, Montreal, and Rome the rest of the cities on their list are all in the US.  Lucky for us.  They are as follows-

• Boulder, Colorado - eco-friendly and earthy with unique boutique ingredients
• Charleston, South Carolina - amazing seafood wrapped in Low Country cuisine
• Las Vegas, Nevada - top chefs from around the country routinely cook here
• New Orleans, Louisiana - legendary Cajun food
• New York, New York - it's not just street food, NYC has the most restaurants per capita of any place in the United States
• San Francisco, California - a great mix of seafood and wine country

(thanks travel industry wire)

Free Crack on the Fifteenth from Starbucks

Starbucks is having it's second annual Coffee Break.  If you need some get up and go juice on your travels you'll be able to swing by and get a 12-ounce cup of joe for free between ten and twelve tomorrow.  Expect to see apron-clad Starbucks Coffee Masters milling about to answer questions and educate the general public about both coffee and the coffee brewing process.  We were unable to dig up an official statement from Starbucks but this rumor seems legit.

(thanks slashfood)

6 Sites for Travelling Super Smart

We're always trying to find ways to travel cheaper, or smarter, or quicker, or more efficiently.  CNNMoney.com has found a selection of 6 websites they think will help-

• ExpertFlyer.com - helps you score super-cheap First Class tickets and lets you know which flights are most likely to give you an upgrade
• JiWire.com - a list of over 130,000 WiFi hotspots that are searchable by location and vendor
• FlightStats.com - real-time arrival and departure info for almost every flight in the world
• Zagat.com - user-submitted reviews started with Zagat way before there was even a web
• HopStop.com - if you're going to be in Boston, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Washington then HopStop can sort you out with all of your public transportation needs
• AthleticMindedTraveler.com - where to work out in alomst 60 cities

fastfoodmaps.com

Now it's so much easier to get your trans-fat on.  The next time you're driving around like a chicken with its head cut off looking for a Taco Bell you can whip out your mobile and head towards fastfoodmaps.com.  They've got almost 50,000 fast food joints online for cities and towns all over the country.  They point to McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Carl's Jr and Hardee's, but we're still holding out for Waffle House.

Menus for Me and You

Why haven't all restaurant menus been online since the first internet bubble?  Who knows?  All we know is that Menutopia is trying to make amends.  Currently their smooth little website works in only 8 cities in the U.S. (Chicago, Boston, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Miami, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington DC) but they claim to already have over 16,000 menus on hand.  There is also an option to read user reviews about the different restaurants but it doesn't look like anyone's bothered to do it yet (probably because they're all over at Yelp).  Any website offering restaurant listings really should have access to their menus, we're kind of surprised this hasn't already been done.

Update:  We got an email from MenuPages today, they've got over 60,000 reviews for restaurants throughout NYC and have recently added 6 new cities:  San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington DC and Chicago.

Pay What You Want Cafes

Two new restaurants have opened up out west, one in Salt Lake City and one in Denver that not only offer you a wide range of buffet-style dishes but also offer you the opportunity to pay whatever you want for the food.  The idea is that the more unfortunate can come in and get a bite to eat for free or in exchange for an hour of work helping around and the better off can help foot the bill.  Time Magazine says that the pay-as-you-wish method has been tried before with varying degrees of success.  No word on whether or not the tip's optional too.

Eating Solo on the Down-low

The holidays can be a little depressing for those who aren't around their loved ones, but being alone is never easy. There's a new website on the web aiming to at least make eating alone a little easier. SoloDining keeps tabs on the best restaurants in the US to eat at alone and tells you what makes them worth your while when you've got no one to go dutch with-

The SoloDining.com web site is chockfull of strategies and tips on how to increase your comfort and options as a solo/single diner, plus need-to-know information for anyone considering solo/single travel.

You'll get the scoop on notable solo-friendly restaurants across the United States and beyond. And while discovering what's out there, you'll learn what to look for and, "just as important," what solo dining amenities to suggest to your favorite restaurants. (Some need a bit of coaching about what solo diners want and love to receive from restaurants!)

The Washington Post also ran a story this week detailing the kind of hoops (half-bottles of wine and laptops to borrow for lunch, to name but a few) restaurants will jump through in order to cater to their guests eating by their lonesome because "They drink more, they eat more."

(thanks buzzfeed)

Heart Attack? No Reservation Needed

Obnoxious? Unnecessary? Gimmicky? You better believe it. The Heart Attack Grill in Tempe, Arizona, doesn't just make a two-pound hamburger that's way too big to actually put in your mouth; they also employ waitresses dressed as strippers nurses.  And if the burger's already starting to take its toll before you get up from the table you can order a wheelchair to roll you out to your car.  They claim that the burger weighs in at a hefty 8,000 calories - two of these a week should be all you need to stay alive. If you need something else to further your dietary suicide you can try their fries fried in pure lard.  Yum yum.

Americans Continue to Forget How to Cook

A new Zagat's poll has just confirmed that Americans love getting someone else to make their food for them. Over 80% eat out as much or more than they did two years ago and connoisseurs from the biggest cities in Texas take the cake, eating out an average of four days a week (we assume they're eating out of their doggy bags the other three days a week). Las Vegans, Los Angelenos, and Miamians rank close behind eating out an average of just under four times a week. Not surprisingly, New York averaged the most expensive place to get a meal at just under $40 a pop (though it might be the that Masa is skewing the numbers). Finally, Italian is still everyone's favorite, followed by Asian (Japanese, Chinese and Thai), American and French.

Top 10 Most Expensive Places for Your Date To Order a Salad

Americans are going to spend over $500 billion on eating out this year, if you're falling behind but still want to do you part maybe you should check out one of the most expensive restaurants in the States. Forbes has teamed up with Zagat's to give us a rundown on the priciest plates - cost of the meals include an entree, a drink and the tip. Why are French restaurants so damn expensive?

1. Mistral - Seattle - $109 a head, expect either a 5,7, or 9-course meal
2. Maestro - Washington, D.C. - $114 a head, Italian in Tyson's Quarter
3. Alex - Las Vegas -   $114 a head, Sin City's most expensive restaurant with the worst name
4. Le Bic-Fin - Philadelphia - $120 a head, ritzy French cuisine
5. Quinones Room at Bacchanalia - Atlanta - $122 a head, truffles are the specialty
6. The Inn at Little Washington - Washington, Va. - $141 a head, seasonal mountain dishes
7. The Herbfarm - Woodinville, Wa. - nine-course meals in a farmhouse
8. Alinea - Chicago - $168 a head, 12 or 24-course mini-dish meals
9. The French Laundry - Yountville, Ca. - Thomas Keller's Napa Valley retreat
10. Masa - NYC - $446 a head (or a meal for four at Mistral), sushi flown in daily from Japan

Dipsomania for Dummies

Recently we were tipping you off to where to get your buzz on the cheap in Chicago. Today, we've dug up a few more sites to help you get hammered. StumblingDonkey's got your happy hour info for San Francisco and Washington, DC - it's not very detailed though, just the address, what's cheap and when you can get it. Unthirsty's got the goods for Seattle, Portland and NYC. More ambitious is beermapping.com, which attempts to locate microbreweries and brewpubs throughout the lower 48. Lastly, MappyHour's taking on the world, their site seems to do a pretty good job of finding bars (in the States, at least) but there's a real dearth of information when you look for details.

(thanks dethroner)

Related posts: Best Beer Buzz in America? Burlington or Portland • Top 10 Cities For One Night Stands • Time Lapse of Los Angeles at Night • From Web Surfing to Couch Surfing • Turkey and Gravy...Soda • Koolickle - The Kool-aid Pickle • Free Crack on the Fifteenth from Starbucks

Related travel guides: Restaurants and Food in San Francisco Bay Area, Carmel, Napa Valley, Central California • Restaurants and Fine Dining in Seattle, Tacoma, Washington Cascades • Restaurants and Fine Dining in Western USA

Taco Hunting on the PCH

Apparently great minds think alike. Here at TripCart we're moments away from releasing our newest guide: the Central California Coast. Over at the New York Times Cindy Price has put together a great piece on her hunt for the best Mexican food along California's PCH (Pacific Coast Highway, also known as California State Route 1). Here's an excerpt from her find along Morro Bay:

Morro Bay is a fishing village about 10 miles north, with a service street that runs along roaring Highway 1. Tucked discreetly into a gas-station minimart, Chapala is easy to miss. Last November, after seeing long lines form for his homemade tacos, its owner, Antonio Dominguez, turned Chapala into a full-service restaurant, with a mariachi band that plays Friday nights. To mark the changeover, a temporary plastic sign flags in the wind.

Inside, the restaurant is awash in color — a vibrant, charismatic place with big wooden chairs brought in from Mexico. Festive music competes with the clank of the kitchen as the host grabs a couple of menus. The tacos are the best yet. The al pastor (marinated pork) is kicked up with a zigzag of cream; the shrimp taco is sautéed in a homemade achiote sauce.