In honor of National Pie Day I've decided to put together, with the help of serious eaters everywhere, the Serious Eats Pie Honor Roll. I've tasted most of these myself, but I've also taken the liberty of adding some pielicious places my friend John T. Edge has written about. Please add your favorite pie places to the Serious Eats Pie Honor Roll. More

I lived in Los Angeles for a few years and have often gone there for business, but until I read Jennifer Steinhauer's article in the New York Times, I had no idea that it had become the grilled cheese (fancy-pants and otherwise) capital of the U.S. and maybe the world. She describes the grilled cheese sandwich in L.A. as "an object of outright mania." She makes it sound as if grilled cheese sandwiches are the closest thing Los Angelenos have to their own organized religion. But I, too, am a grilled cheese maniac, and I figure a lot of you are, so today I am soliciting entries for the Serious Eats Grilled Cheese Honor Roll. Why?... More

As someone who's written his fair share of fried-clam roundups, I know how hard it is to find anything new to say about those crisp, creamy, full-bellied bivalves. As I said in the post I linked to above, fried clams are either good or they're not. It turns out, however, that my blanket statement has some holes in it. David Leite's fried clam round-up in today's New York Times is so full of pleasure, nuance, and doggedly reported new information I could only sigh with envy after reading it. Leite tells us why fried clams are so inconsistently prepared (inexperienced temporary student fry-cooks) and so inconsistently sourced and sized (weather is the most influential factor).... More