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I like to hear about good restaurants, so I'll use this page to share with you some of my favorite restaurants and travel spots...which typically have good places to eat as a key feature.

To start with , I'm pretty familiar with Kansas City, Dallas, and St. Louis, since I've lived all three places for some time.  I got to know Boston pretty well from my tenure with Fidelity Investments, so I have some definite favorites based on my dozens of trips there.

The thing about travel and restaurant advice, in general, is that things change.  Great places change hands, maybe they're now not so great...or maybe they got better with new ownership.  On the other hand, some things are timeless...the same "Smokestack" sandwich I enjoyed as a kid when my dad would stop by and bring them home to us is still on the menu at the SmokeStack BBQ in Kansas City, and still tasty.  Try to find a "Paul Bunyan Burger" on 7th Street in Kansas City, Kansas, however, along with a side of some of their incredible corn-batter dipped onion rings, and all you'd see would be a building center parking lot.  Sigh, what a loss.

Just so you'll know, I have some built-in biases about things I enjoy (doesn't everyone?).  For instance, the atmosphere of the place ought to be very appropriate.  The Dixie Chicken in College Station, TX, for example is just what you'd expect for the campus hangout of Texas A&M University...long wooden benches and tables, hand-carved with fraternity symbols and and other testimonies, rough-hewn wood slat walls, plenty of neon beer signs, Shiner bock longnecks, rowdy crowd, and a rattlesnake pit in the back.  Perfect.  On the other hand, Grill 23 in Boston has ferns, white tablecloths, careful service, fine food, but to eat there is to endure a veritable din such that table conversation is next to impossible.  In other words, if I'm shelling out big bucks on a nice place, it should be quiet.  I'm not terribly adventurous about entrails prepared however nicely, nor do I get too excited about strange-to-Western-tastes delicacies from around the globe.  Drinking a snake's blood cocktail in Shanghai (freshly drained from the snake) won't get my heart beating very fast.