Friday was just exhausting, no? By the time I got home and mentally dealt with the impending weather, I just hadn't the pluck to either pick a restaurant or shop for food. So it was to the sad, sad pantry I went.

It is my life's mission to open the fridge/pantry and be able to pull together something pretty fantastic. A la MacGyver, I would find eggs, chives, some funky cheese and be able to whip together a major soufflé. Granted, that's easy—it's when you can only find tortilla shells, Chinese leftovers, wasabi paste, a pack of string cheese and crusty-around-the-edges prosciutto that you have to be really creative. My husband can do it. He can come home and throw together the most amazing egg scramble with ingredients I didn't even know we had, but the man's been to chef school, so he doesn't count.

I've had my victories (a version of pork Wellington with ancient puff pastry and goat cheese), and I've had my flops (buckwheat crepes with roasted red peppers and salami). But despite my battle with a sparsely stocked pantry, Friday's effort was light, flavorful, and lifting.

The first step was to crack open a bottle of wine because inspiration needs greasing.

Next, I fully decided that it would be a pasta dish of some sort, and of all the open boxes, the fettuccine seemed most full. Boil water, prepare to dump pasta.

I'm lucky that I can open my fridge and pantry doors for viewing at the same time, which is what I did. Beans and rice? Anchovies? Hummus? Applesauce? Crème fraîche? Then I spied the cans of clams that had been sitting there for a few months. Of course.

Two cans of clams (say that three times fast) whole and chopped were thrown into a bowl. Stirred in a couple of spoon-hunks of pesto, a good squeeze of lemon juice, a generous shaking of red pepper flakes, and a little S 'n' P for good measure. Heated up a healthy cup of olive oil in a deep sauté pan and added some chopped onion and garlic until lightly browned. Poured in the clam mixture, stirring. Let it reduce a bit and, with a blaze of insight, dashed in a few cherry tomatoes that were on the verge. Added cooked and drained pasta to gloriously bubbling mess and tossed to coat.

Plated up for one kid + hub and opened the second bottle of wine. Put the week to bed.

Lockhart, Texas

If you’re going to spend a day riding a bus, eating four barbecue meals in less than five hours, there is only one way to begin.

Donuts.

There are sixty of us split between two buses, which are motoring north from Austin, Texas, on I-35. On one bus is Michael Stern, and on the other is Jane Stern, the beloved American roadfood gurus, published monthly in Gourmet, heard weekly on NPR’s The Splendid Table, and authors of more than forty books, including the 2008 update of their guide to authentic American eating, Roadfood. Their web home is the wonderful, if not quite beautiful Roadfood.

Last December I was agile enough to secure two spaces on the Stern’s fourth annual Roadfood road trip, this one to the barbecue country east of Austin. This would be traditional Texas barbecue: mostly beef, heavily smoked, sauce free. It was me and the boy, out to see a side of American barbecue with precious little resemblance to the dripping Kansas City style of ‘cue popular throughout the northern Midwest.

Texas barbecue arrived not through the typical West Indies routes, but via Eastern European immigrants who popularized it to make use of unloved and excess cuts of meat in the days before refrigeration. The most typical cuts are luxuriant, fatty brisket, and thick, natural-casing sausages (“hot guts”).

But did I mention donuts? Round Rock Donuts sits in a new wood and stone building in an Austin exurb. The glazed donuts here would have put Krispy Kreme into bankruptcy if greedy management hadn’t. Hot, melting, dripping with glaze that looks like cheddar cheese while still coagulating, this was easily the best donut I ever ate. Sweet-dough pigs-in-blankets and savory jalapeño cheese sausage rolls are other highlights.

Round Rock Donuts

****

Twenty minutes later, palates-teased, we arrive at Louie Mueller’s in small-town Taylor. A storefront in a fading downtown, the place is a cavernous former gymnasium, walls literally blackened by wood smoke. You order at an old counter, watch a pitman carve your meat, then are served on a plastic disposable plate. The sausages (mostly beef, a little pork) are encased so thickly that trying bite through one guarantees a blast of grease. The brisket, available fat or lean, is covered in a thick pepper and spice crust that is probably the signature of the Mueller barbecue. Peppery coleslaw is exquisite. White bread, pickles, and raw onion slices are complimentary as is a thin, peppery “jus” that was the closest thing I saw to sauce all day. The next generation of the Muellers has come onboard, hopefully guaranteeing many more years of authentic Texas goodness in Taylor.

Louie Mueller's: Michael Stern (far left, standing) and Jane Stern (far right, seated, in black)

****

Another short piece down the trail took us to Elgin (hard “G”) and the massive Southside Market, which is situated in a newish building where the food prep is invisible, you order fast-food style, and the sausage is pre-cut for your convenience. Southside’s modernity saps all the charm, but there’s no denying its breadth of offerings, from incredible smoked chicken, baby back ribs that would make Famous Dave anonymous, and beloved local Bluebell ice cream. Awaiting our arrival is the larger than life Bud Royer, proprietor of the Round Top Café in Round Top, Texas. Round Top was too far off our routing, so Bud came to us with dozens of incredible pies, including a lip-smacking pecan and tart cherry pies. If only Solveig Tofte at Turtle Bread could make a crust this melting.

Southside Market (left) and Bud Royer (right)

****

With an hour on the road to Lockhart, Michael Stern spent some time on the PA chatting with the trippers, many of whom are regular contributors to the Roadfood website. Local color of the Minnesota variety is disproportionately in evidence, most notably Hell’s Kitchen proprietor Mitch Omer and clan, jars of his homemade peanut butter being passed around to keep hunger at bay. More than 10 percent of the trippers have Minnesota ties, perhaps evidence that when you live somewhere without an authentic food culture, you do whatever’s necessary to immerse yourself in one.

Downtown Lockhart could be downtown Taylor, and the storefront entrance to Smitty’s Market is equally forlorn. The smoke hits right when you open the door, a literal haze you follow to the sight of burning logs and men in white aprons. A corridor leads to a scene out of Dante: a blackened anteroom where pit men pull briskets from huge, room-sized smokers; lay them on a table cut from an old oak tree; and slice them for your pleasure. The meat is placed on butcher paper, which is folded up and handed to you. Next is a stark white room that feels like a 1930s drugstore, where you order drinks and condiments (raw onion, pickles, avocado halves, cheddar cheese hunks, Saltine crackers). Seating is in here. There are no plates, forks, or other frills. But the brisket, sausage, and beef shoulder are succulent and memorable.

Smitty's Market

Sausage, beef shoulder, cheddar cheese, and iced tea; Inside Smitty’s smoker

All the action is at the pit.

****

Smitty’s longtime Lockhart competitor, Kreuz (krites) Market, is out by the highway in a new building, a modern iteration of Smitty’s, with a big parking lot, multiple dining rooms (some air-conditioned), and a big, brick-colored pit room with the same service system as Smitty’s. (This is perhaps no surprise since Smitty’s building downtown used to be Kreuz’s home.) There is also pit ham and jalapeño cheddar sausage in addition to the standards, and it is all very good though the modern environs inevitably sap some of the pleasure. (And some in our gang suggest Smitty’s smokes longer at lower temperatures, resulting in more melting meat.)

****

We pull out of Kreuz around 4 p.m., full to bursting, and Michael Stern pops a DVD in the bus’s video system—a documentary about the Sterns filmed by German television. The filmmaker’s thesis was that fast food had not yet won out in America because the Sterns and their acolytes would not let authentic American food die. The Sterns proved terribly unassuming, friendly and accessible, but largely stayed in the background. The trip was more about the food, the places, and the camaraderie of sharing notes about discovering America by its regional cuisine.

Those barbecue dining rooms were filled with a cross section of America: old farmers in seed caps, enlisted men and women from the nearby base, black families in hip-hop regalia, Latino locals, and the odd tourist. They might not live in the same neighborhood, vote for the same candidates, or share any of the same culture. But they come together for that most authentic of American foods: barbecue—hold the sauce, crackers on the side.

I’m currently on the road, attending Jane and Michael Stern’s annual Roadfood gathering this weekend in Texas (will be blogging and offering up some photos on Monday, hopefully). A massive delay in our Amtrak train from Dallas to Austin yesterday forced some improvisation, and we rented an aging Mazda 6 station wagon and drove the 200 miles after lunch at Love Shack in the Ft. Worth Stockyards (the burgers were overcooked, but the country soundtrack was killer) and took a quick spin through the city’s arts district. Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Art Museum is worth the trip as is Tadao Ando’s Modern Art Museum though both collections are eclipsed by the architecture.

I-35 between Ft. Worth and Austin is two lanes of eighteen-wheelers packed cheek by jowl with the occasional car thrown in for variety. It’s a life-size slot-car derby, and I spent much of the time with fingernails dug into the steering wheel. Midway, past Waco, I needed a mental health break, and we pulled off into a Sonic, the drive-in chain you see ads for on TV but that doesn’t exist in Minnesota. (They’re coming, I suspect, but the climate is ill-suited.)

Our drinks came in massive Styrofoam cups, narrow at the bottom, huge at the top (cup-holder friendly, American ingenuity!). At mid-afternoon, drinks are half-price, but the volume of ice to drink was only satisfactory in that it didn’t require a bathroom stop before Austin. When I opened the lid, I found the famous crushed ice that Southerners, particularly Texans, love so much they eat it plain, by the cupful.

Crushed ice is largely a thing of the past in Twin Cities restaurants and bars (Yum! had it for awhile), but it is the optimal soft drink/iced tea ice and is plenty fun to munch on if you can take your hands off the wheel.

I am jonesin' for Spring. Right now, I am staking a claim on any outdoor patio table that I can find (had a nice Strongbow Cider afternoon at Psycho Suzi's the other day). And the markets! This weekend marks the opening of the big farmers markets in Minneapolis and St. Paul. I am an early prowler, I admit it. I know it's mostly a floral market at this point, but I just need to wander the aisles with brat and lemonade in hand. I seriously love getting in there, butts to elbows with everyone, and watching what people are buying, listening to the producers proudly describing their wares, and planning my weekend meals row by row. Yes, I am a food nerd, I get excited when there's dirt clumped on the green onions I buy.

Although the Mill City Farmers Market won't be opening this weekend (must wait until May 10), I was lucky enough to get a sneaky peek at some of the local vendors. I have to say that I have a little crush on Matt Oxford who runs Wild Run Salmon. He's a big, burly dude who takes his kids with him to Alaska to catch the fish that he sells. He custom packs his entire catch and handles his fish through the entire process.

Also had some killer all-natural s'mores from the prairievores at Very Prairie, a spicy Nepalese momo from the Cafe Himalaya gang, and a rich and unexpected beef tongue taco from Carrie Summer, soon-to-be market star Chef Shack—the further evolution of Urban Donut (look for a hot truck with Hula-Hoopin' go-go dancers, fresh donuts, and funky music).

I know it could snow this weekend, but it will have to blizzard to keep me from getting my spring market fix.

Also, check out the new Second Helpings about Muffuletta!

Stewart and Heidi Woodman’s Heidi’s, in case you missed it, was named to Condé Nast Traveler’s “Hot List” for 2008. Trust me, it’s a rare occasion when a Minneapolis joint makes the buzzy anointing.

But why Heidi’s? It’s less than it appears. The fact that Heidi’s is the rare local restaurant ever to make “The Hot List” does not mean the consensus of national foodies believe it’s the most important Minnesota restaurant in a decade, though that’s the way a lot of readers seem to take it.

Though Heidi’s is among the best restaurants to open in the last year, and deservedly well thought of, there are any number of other new Minneapolis restaurants working at Heidi’s level, some of them with more interesting menus and others with better service or ambiance. What happened was Heidi’s got lucky in the game of Can You Get New York’s Attention?

Trust me, I’ve been on the receiving end of desperate calls from national magazine junior editors looking for something to highlight in flyover territory. CNT has no local editor, its corps of regular writers live nowhere near the Twin Cities—mags like it depend on “stringers” here, folks on call for the magazine to suggest ideas and occasionally write a blurb—they get a lot of their ideas from reading us and MnMo and the Strib. Minneapolis is in a window right now where we have a national profile, and I’d guess CNT was looking for something to highlight here.

The people it talked to and the media fodder a Google search turned up led CNT to conclude Heidi’s was the one. But the national food and travel mags are an infinite loop of creating and responding to hype.

Those of us in these parts who have known about Heidi’s for months shouldn’t be kicking ourselves for preferring Red Stag or Meritage. Condé Nast doesn’t know something we don’t. It made a good pick in Heidi’s, but all the other wonderful local restaurants it has ignored over the years says more about “The Hot List” than one it got right.

This weekend I drove to Kansas because my daughter is trying to decide if she can commit to being a Jayhawk. We stayed in KC, MO on Friday night, and because I hadn't had time to perform my due diligence and find us thirty-seven options for late-nite snacking, we approached the good man at the front desk of our hotel.

We asked him for a good BBQ place, natch, it was Kansas City for crying out loud. He replied that in the hot, hot new hot spot in town, the Power & Light district, there was a new place that just opened up: Famous Dave's.

What?! I just drove seven hours south into the BBQ belt, and I'm offered Wisconsin BBQ first?! Don't get me wrong, I like a little Dave's now and then, and it feeds my giant family well, but I was hoping for some crusty old place that secretly lives in the basement of a tool shop and cranks out ungodly sauce.

It seems like I'm always looking for that place.

In fact, I think we have our own weird fascination with BBQ here upnort'. I don't know if it's because we have to parka-up most of the year and we crave something to melt our bones or if that's just how our Scandi roots rebel, but we are preoccupied. OK, I am preoccupied.

So much so that the mere mention of a new place opening puts me right in my car. I heard about a place in Champlin that opened not too long ago, Qfanatic. Scratch cooking, local owner, homemade sauce. On my way up there, I was rather hoping it would turn out to be a joke because how can I haul my cookies to Champlin every time I need a sauce fix?

It is a small, humble space, and the boys in the kitchen were chatty and sweet. Jake, my sauce-lovin' five-year-old, and I did ribs and corn fritters and onions strings. I chose the espresso sauce, medium heat, and loved its sweet-to-smoky balance and thick character—clearly made in that kitchen. The ribs were slow roasted but used liquid smoke, of which I'm not a huge fan. I think they're brilliant in offering Cabin Packs for the coming carloads heading north. I'd say grab a gallon of that sauce.

Was it the revelation of BBQ nirvana? Not quite.

It struck me as odd that the Qfanatics claim there is a hole in the local BBQ market, that somehow we're being underserved. Although I welcome any new upstart (with gas prices, please within the metro), I'd say we're lucky to have the depth of choices we do.

The news over the weekend that Thom Pham closed Temple was little surprise to restaurant watchers. The winter’s Naked Sushi gambit was merely a distraction and couldn’t overcome the fact that Temple opened several years too late. In an era when every aspect of America’s culture seems overextended, a very expensive, high-style (“sexy”) restaurant with mediocre food seems very 2003 (can you hear us r.Norman’s?). At Temple, there was this last-days-of-Pompeii vibe—decadence without authenticity.

Thom Pham’s magic has been at the mid-price point, where diners are more forgiving of culinary and service imperfections. Pham has told other media he’s planning on opening several restaurants this year, versions of his mid-price, modest acclaim ThanDo. But following his scary brush with death in a beating outside Azia and now the Temple fiasco, I hear strains of David Fhima in such ambition. Let’s hope for Pham’s sake his next move is a careful one.

Fans of often-inspired comfort food at David Webb’s Good Day Café will be pleased to learn that the long-promised dinner service is to begin in mid-May with an array of heartier fare and some popular dishes from the lunch menu, or so a staff member told me this week. GDC’s weekend brunch waits are notorious; we’ll see if Golden Valley is as dinner-starved as well.

Welcome to Foodie File, mspmag.com’s new food and restaurant blog. As you might have noticed, mspmag.com is arguably (perhaps inarguably) the most comprehensive website devoted to food and eating out in the Twin Cities. We’ve spent most of the winter dreaming up new ways to offer you more, and those additions are rolling out this month.

Foodie File aims to be a one-stop shop for the Twin Cities foodie. There’ll be at least two original posts each week from myself and longtime local food writer and restaurant insider Stephanie March, who now helms our voluminous Twin Cities Restaurant Guide. It could be something about the arrival of fiddlehead ferns in the markets and a link to a recipe or restaurant where you can find them. It could be gossip from the local restaurant biz (Is Thom Pham serious about opening three new restaurants this year, or merely suicidal?). Or it could be commentary on last night’s Hell’s Kitchen or Top Chef. Now and then, other members of the deepest food bench in town will post as well. Your comments and responses will be welcome across the board.

We’ll also use Foodie File to announce and link to fresh food content elsewhere on the site. It might be a restaurant review by Peter Lilienthal or Beth Dooley, a First Impressions visit to a brand new restaurant, a Second Helping mini review of an existing restaurant, Bill Coy’s monthly Wine Line, super chef Steven Brown’s Frugal Gourmet, or a video from Andrew Zimmern.

Zimmern will be across the aisle with Chow & Again as usual, and there’s more to come at month’s end. Please let us know how we’re doing. —Adam Platt, restaurants editor