Three Fun Things for June 29, 2025

It's been a while. Hope you're hungry.

1. I was back in the old country recently, by which I mean south Mississippi, and I finally got around to trying a gas-station snack I’ve always skipped over to save more room for fried chicken—potato logs, whose ugly-sounding name really fails to sell what’s going on with these unassuming treats.

Potato logs: Not to be confused with jojos, a Pacific Northwest invention in which potatoes are cut into thick wedges, heavily seasoned, lightly breaded, and fried. I used to buy them all the time at the Red Apple on 23rd and Jackson before it closed, and they’re like zazzed-up steak frites.

Compared to a Mississippi potato log, as this Southern Living recipe refers to them, jojos are restrained. To make potato logs, you take a baked potato, slice it into four wedges, and thickly batter and fry it until the inside is fluffy and the exterior has the exact texture of crispy chicken skin. I suspect that true potato-log flavor comes from a deep-fryer that’s been cooking chicken all day, but since I’m rarely at a gas station in the south, I’m going to try making them at home, adding a bit of chicken bouillon powder to the spice mix. And next time I’m in Hattiesburg, I know where I’m headed.

2. Much, much closer to home is Saigon Drip Cafe, a popular spot for bánh mi and phở in Pioneer Square. Josh loves Saigon Drip for its tofu sandwiches, but I’m going back as soon as conscionable for the Bánh Mi Drip, a flavor bomb that includes deeply caramelized onions, tender, anise-scented brisket, and mayo, along with a side of pho broth for dipping or sipping. At $17, and stacked inches thick, it’s not the cheapest or lightest lunch, but I promise you it’s worth the money and the indigestion. This is the best fusion-style banh mi I’ve had outside of the New Orleans area, and one of the best sandwiches in the city.

3. Guys, did you know there is such a thing as SPRING panettone? I happened into a deal on an orange-scented loaf through Too Good to Go this week via ChefShop.com, a local gem on 15th Ave. W that sells hard-to-find international snacks and kitchen goods. I wasn’t expecting much—the standard cinnamon-laced, raisin-dotted Christmas panettone leaves me cold—but the second I peeled back the floral wrapping paper I knew I had lucked into something special.

The rich yeasted cake, made by this Italian company, was pillowy, lightly sweet, and vividly yellow thanks to copious egg yolks, orange essence, and threads of candied orange peel, topped with a rich streusel and a smattering of whole almonds. ChefShop.com appears to be sold out, but you might be able to find it at other online sources—or set a calendar alert for next year, when this extremely seasonal delicacy will be available again.

What I’m reading:

Fiction: Long Island Compromise, by Taffy Brodesser-Ackner. You may think it’s hard to sympathize with a story about intergenerational trauma among the very wealthy, and you’d be right: No one in this novel, which starts with the violent kidnapping of the scion of a polystyrene manufacturing empire, goes unscathed, and every character is horrible in their own unique, larger-than-life way—like the Righteous Gemstones of the old-money set. I’m calling it: Taffy Brodesser-Ackner is the Philip Roth of her generation.

Nonfiction: The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson. Before writing her sweeping interrogation of inequality, Caste, Wilkerson wrote the definitive history of the Great Migration of 6 million Black Americans from the South to the North and West, telling the stories of three people who participated in that exodus to illustrate why millions left and how they fared. I thought I knew about the Great Migration, but Wilkerson’s book made me think about America in a different way, as a place where every single region was profoundly shaped not just by the reprehensible history of slavery but millions of brave individual decisions to leave for parts unknown.