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I second kylee's suggestion of Manny Randazzo's for king cake, but be prepared to wait an hour in line for one!

So a party favorite are my Chicken & Wafflettes.

I usually buy an 8 pc all-spicy mixed bunch from Popeye's. I also get a large mashed potatoes (with the gravy on the side). By the time I get back to the house, the chicken has steamed enough in the box making it easy to pull it off the bone. Separate the meat from the skin and reserve the skin for later. The meat gets coarsely chopped and thrown into a stand mixer with the masher and gravy to form a loose chicken-studded mashed topping.

The topping gets piped/spooned/glopped on top of an unbaked eggo mini, and then finally a piece of the skin gets applied on top. These suckers go in the oven to cook the waffle and crisp the skin. When all's said and done, it gets topped with a homemade maple butter (which is just melted butter mixed with maple syrup), and strewn on top.

Yes. It is a billion calories. Yes there's beaucoups cholesterol. Yes, I regret nothing.

Zapps Voodoo Gumbo is not the same, but it's got a similar salt and vinegar zing to it.

Great job as always, Kenji!

I was recently in Seattle for 36 hours for the Saints-Seahawks game, and in that entire period of time, I went to Dick's not once, but TWICE because it's so good. And SO cheap.

The Dick's sauce rivals both Shack Sauce (don't get me wrong and all) and Cane's Sauce (if anyone's from the south). You can really taste the pickles in the sauce.

Salty soggy fries are my fav. Every time I eat McDonald's fries, my favorite ones are the soggy ones. This place elevates that by using hand-cut. The kicker though, is that you have to go after midnight, when there's a lot of turnaround. Especially the one at Broadway on the Hill.

I second Delilah! The Jewish Coonass is so freaking good. Heads up: It's cash only though, and only open for breakfast and lunch, and is not open sundays.

Yelp has been pretty helpful in finding happy hours.

What kind of happy hour are you looking for?
I really like Nellie's Sports Bar (actually a gay bar, but still sports themed) which has "beat the clock" happy hour which starts out at $1 a beer from 5-6, $2 from 6-7 and $3 from 7-8. Granted your beer choices are Miller Lite and "Nellie's Light" which tastes exactly like watered down Bud Light. Our beers averaged out to $1.77 a beer when we went.

Oyamel's Margaritas are pretty good, even if their Happy Hour price is $4 a pop. Salsa and Chips are part of the deal.

Interesting article Kenji. Can you shine some light on the potato selection? Every time I've used Russets for frying in the past they've tended to break up too easily on me and get too soggy. I would just use white potatoes instead, and those usually gave me a better fry structure. Is this a relative argument (that white potatoes are better for frying?) or is it rendered irrelevant due to the vinegar brine that you're placing the potatoes into?

BEST.

9 for 9. Lucky Dogs are so so gross. They only work because they're right off bourbon, and after having slammed down hurricanes and hand grenades, most tourists at that point lose any sense of taste.

New Orleans has such potential to become a hot dog city, or at least a sausage on a bun type of city, what with Boudin and Andouille being around. For a good dog, try Cochon Butcher or my personal favorite, Bud's Broiler where they serve it on a hamburger bun with some of the most amazing chili ever.

I just learned how to make Pho. I learned some tips and tricks that kind of helped! To help reduce the amount of skimming you do, my mom suggested boiling the soup bones for 10 min in a separate pot first. Discard all the water, and then transfer the bones into the soup pot. Most of the debris that comes out, usually comes out at first, but you'll still have to do a little more skimming later on down the line.

For the onions and ginger, instead of browning them in the pot, my parents like to broil them in the oven. Remove the skins, get a bit of a nice char on top of the onions and ginger, and it adds a nice smokyness plus darker color to the broth!

Finally for the spices, they use the same spices that you do, but what they do is put it into a coffee filter, and staple it shut. It makes clean-up easier, and even though it seems like it might affect how well the soup takes up the spice, I must admit that the flavor still gets through.

Finally for removing the fat, if you can fit the pot in the fridge, then do so. If not, leave it in a cold temperature (e.g. outside during the winter), and the fat will first settle to the top, but then it will coagulate and be super super easy to skim off! Be careful not to freeze the Pho, but it's a little harder to do that, I think.

Looks like your pho came out well! Kudos for giving it a go! It's very time-intensive, and not so easy, but definitely manageable!

At college, I had my best and worst experiences with a vending machine.

Best - for some reason the vending machine in my dorm had a glitch and gave out free Cheddar and Sour Cream Ruffles. Nothing else was free, it was just this one item. On a college budget, this is pretty much amazing, despite how seemingly gross those chips may sound.

Worst - I tried to buy what I thought was microwave popcorn from a vending machine once. As it turns out, they were bluebooks used for exams.

I really wish that the Top Chefs would go head-to-head against one another. I bet Harold Dieterle would still win. And is anyone here noticing the trend of how the fan favorite keeps having a "bad night" when it comes to the finale. Carla (who I didn't think should have been the fan favorite) had a "bad night" in last seasons finale, and obviously Kevin here. Blais before that, too.