Lindsay and I were thrilled to receive an invitation to be judges at the Grand Champion round of the 2014 World-Wide Mustard Competition, held this year on the campus of Kendall College in Chicago. The competition is run by the National Mustard Museum in Middleton, Wisconsin, and directed by amiable museum curator Barry Levenson (a.k.a. Mr. Mustard) and his wife, Patti Levenson (Mrs. Mustard). You can read all about Barry and Patti’s background, as well as everything else you ever wanted to know about mustard and the museum, on the NMM’s fantastic blog and website.
Mr. and Mrs. Mustard rocking mustard-themed apparel.
Due to a work conflict, Lindsay couldn’t go, so I represented the ETW team. As I quickly realized upon entering, mustard judging is serious business (especially obvious when Barry led us in singing the Poupon U fight song – Wisconsin version, of course). While the first two rounds of judging (held last month in Middleton) sorted through the winners in each of sixteen different mustard categories, our task was much more difficult: rank each of the sixteen category champions from best to worst, thereby establishing the overall winner. Barry described this as akin to judging the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show: comparing a garlic mustard and mustard barbecue sauce is as tough as comparing a poodle to a greyhound. Yet we must do it! Barry and Patti encouraged me to conduct multiple rounds of tasting each of the sixteen entrants, ranking them by how well they exemplified each category (read the full list and descriptions here), as well as basic questions we always ask ourselves: would we use this on our food? Does it make our food better? Does it showcase the mustard well?
The official entry platter, with sixteen categories identified by number. One will emerge as Grand Champion!
I was presented with a plate of each of the sixteen mustards, identified only by their entry number and their category (no other labels, manufacturers, or information provided). I opted for a three-tier judging system. First, I took a sample of each for initial impressions and thoughts. They ranged from mild and incredibly hot, from mustard-centric to more balanced flavors, from grainy to silky smooth. I then went through a second round, separating them into categories: top, middle, and bottom. Finally, I went through them again to separate out the rankings, coming up with a final mustard ranking, from grand champion (1) to bottom (16). Just to confirm my choices, I then opted for another round of tasting in order to be sure I made no mistakes.
I took spoon-size samples of each entry to facilitate my judging. Here I’ve already finished tasting #1, “Sweet-Hot.”
While I can’t reveal my final rankings, I can provide some of my general thoughts on how I proceeded. Many of the mustards were fiery hot, and I while I always appreciate the boldness of heat in condiments, one must balance that heat against showcasing the flavor. This is true for even milder mustards: if I felt it was bland, or lacked real mustard flavor, I ranked these lower than mustards that utilized their flavors in complex and satisfying ways. Finally, many readers will be familiar with our love of Category 16: “Mustard-Based BBQ Sauces.” Our original BBQ love will always be South Carolina mustard sauce, so I knew beforehand it would take a lot to impress me in this category!
The three judges seated at my table took the opportunity to compare our rankings once we were finished, and occasionally there was significant divergence, but four or five of the mustard were near the top in all our sheets. Perhaps these mustards are in the running for the top awards! We won’t know until May, when the winners of the Grand Championship will be for available for tasting and sale at the NMM’s “Salute! to the Winners” event on May 3 and 4 from 10am to 5pm. Come by and see if you agree with the judges, and if the other judges agreed with me!
Speakeasy. Tiny. Crowded. Delicious. That’s Greenbush Bar in a nutshell. One of our go-to places in Madison, we have been there countless times since Matt started graduate school in 2006. Serving Italian-American fare (though the website says “
To say we had some difficulty in finding Las Americas would be something of an understatement. 
So we first saw this pig on our first visit to Miami in January, and well…. we didn’t know if she’d still be around in February. Made into lechon, we assumed. We didn’t know if she was a pet or dinner! Turns out she is a pet, and her name is “Chucha,” and you can see her and her menagerie any day. It seems like she has a pretty content life. Case in point – we ordered two watermelon jugos one day, and Chucha got the entire watermelon rind, so we like to think we are contributing a little bit to her happiness. There is also a baby pig nearby, but you have to ask permission to see her. We’ll be back whenever we are in Miami – for the ambiance, the drinks, and to visit our favorite animals!
A new country! Miami finally provided us an opportunity to sample Nicaraguan cuisine. We’re sad it took us so long to get here: though there are no Nica places in Chicago, there are a TON in Miami. So, where to eat? The simplest answer is that you can eat at one of the many “fritangas,” a type of Nicaraguan restaurant where home-style food is served, often in a cafeteria setting and under heat lamps. But Cesar Perez and his sister Martha, the owners and operators of Chayito’s Fritanga, offer one better by offering una nueva experiencia en fritanga (“a new experience in fritangas”). The difference? Cesar and Martha make their food to order, as opposed to serving it on a steam table. That means everything is fresh!
While Enriqueta’s Sandwich Shop is in many ways a typical Cuban sandwich joint in Miami, it attracts a loyal and devoted following. A little off the beaten path, Enriqueta’s is a simple lunch counter with one side facing into the restaurant and another side with a window open to the street. Sometimes I wonder how a place like that can ever keep up with orders, but somehow they do, albeit a little slowly. Being from Chicago, I can’t quite ever wrap my head around the concept of an open air lunch counter, or frankly any outside window walk-up, so of course we had to order our food there. When in Rome…
Ba Le is such an old favorite we can’t believe that we haven’t written about it before. Honestly though, the more often we go to a place, the more often we assume we have already written about the place (as is the case with our favorite restaurant in Madison, Greenbush Tavern). Oops! In any case, Ba Le is certainly someplace you should not overlook. Their specialty is the Vietnamese 
One of our favorite cuisines is Thai, and though we love our go-tos, sometimes we get a little suck in a rut and keep ordering the same thing. However, Sticky Rice is the perfect antidote. Most Thai restaurants in Chicago specialize in Southern Thai food, and the cuisine of Bangkok. However, Chicago is lucky enough to have Sticky Rice, a Northern Thai restaurant that has dishes that are uniquely local. Sticky Rice is cute, clean and open, and was pretty crowded (though the photo from this angle doesn’t show it) when we arrived on a Saturday night. The menu is prodigious, covering, curries, soups and noodle dishes; but on this night we made a beeline for the Thai Northern specialties. 
It is particularly appropriate that I am writing this review of a little French bakery while listening to Julia Child’s “My Life in Paris” (so she’s not a pastry chef, but still…) We happened upon La Fournette after a trip to the Chicago History Museum, and we were pleased by the quaint ambiance and the large variety of baked goods. We were a little taken aback that we were greeted with a chipper “Bonjour” upon entering, but in the best possible way.
At Papa Llega y Pon, the pork is lightly but effectively seasoned, the hot sauce adds a tinge of spice (barely discernible to M), and the onions blend in with the rest of the pork, adding a little extra texture and variety to the flavors. Adding more texture is the obligatory chicharrón (fried pork rinds) mixed in with the pork meat. You can order yours without chicharrón, but you’ll get some strange looks from your servers. Overall, this is simple comfort food, so those expecting bold flavors or exquisite preparation will be disappointed. This is well-made, well-seasoned, and classically prepared food for those who have come to expect the best of the same. It definitely satisfied our lechón cravings, and there is no wonder it is so popular in Miami.
Eating The World 