http://nutsandboltons.com/food

I've lived in Austin for the better part of a decade, and it's one of the best food towns there is. I've held that to be true since before the recent influx of food trucks and gourmet chefs. The variety and number of restaurants is staggering, especially for a city of its size. New York compares favorably to this baseline. Sure, there were a couple misfires, but we're in unfamiliar territory, so that's to be expected. Here's a brief list of places to take a bite out of the Big Apple.

I knew I should have written this article just after we visited, but didn't have time before our New York trip (more on that in the next post). I'm post-dating this article to the day we went, but writing it almost two weeks later. As such, the details are kind of fuzzy. Maybe that's partly to do with the amount of beer we consumed that evening. I remember the food, though. It was fantastic.

Kua'aina is a nice little burger joint just outside Soho. We were doing some shopping on Regent street yesterday, and when we got done around 1, we realized we were starving. We were headed toward Covent Garden and stumbled upon this place.

We've finally found a BBQ place in London that gets it. It's called Red Dog Saloon, and we went on Monday. They also have wings in a few different flavors. More on all that after the break.

But also bangers. Mother mash is a haven for those who like mashed potatoes. Or maybe a heaven. Or maybe a little of both.

The office hosted a welcome dinner for a couple new transplants this last Tuesday. We went to Barcelona tapas over near Leadenhall Market. I won't go into too much detail about the food, other than to say it was all very good. Try the seafood paella and as many different dishes as you can. I didn't find anything I didn't like.

The Dutch love their pancakes. So do I. And everybody loves a bargain. This is why there's always a crowd at My Old Dutch on Monday nights. They discount all of their pancakes to 5 for the evening. The queue extends out the door and down the block all night long, and with good reason.

London has a number of restaurant chains based in the US. There are your fast food and burger joints, like KFC, Subway, Burger King, and McDonald's. On occasion, we've been out and about and needed a quick meal, and we've found that the burger joints translate almost exactly. Subway is actually much better over here, on average, and they always smell fantastic when we walk by, which is something I'd never say of the US locations. We haven't tried a KFC. I'm sure at some point I'll indulge a hankering for fried chicken and be sorely disappointed.

We're going to miss this place. It's right next to where the old office was, and thus, only about 200 feet from the front door of the corporate flat we've been staying in. Up until just before we moved to London, it was an O'Neill's. I never went in when it was an O'Neill's. It had that trying-too-hard feel that too many chain restaurants in the US have, so we were never really interested. When we arrived last month, though, the familiar blue facade was gone, and it was in the process of being converted to Philomena's.

So much fail here, unless it's 2 AM and nothing else is open:

http://io9.com/5954327/the-hobbits-second-breakfast-being-served-at-denn...