Drunkest Cities List: How does Charlotte rank?

Men's Health magazine did an online survey of American cities with the worst ranking for drunkenness, using stats like death from liver disease, traffic fatalities blamed on drunk driving, DUI arrests, and a couple of others. Which city got the dubious honor of first? Fresno, Calif.

St. Louis, which won't host the 2012 Democratic National Convention, just missed the top 5, clocking in at No. 6.

Carolinas cities didn't escape: Columbia, S.C., ranked highest, at No. 13, while Greensboro (43), Raleigh (63), Charlotte (74) and Durham (94) all landed in the Top 100.

Unfortunately, Men's Health has it posted as one of those click-at-a-time slide shows. Find the whole list much faster at Eater.com.

Super Bowl Contests: Judging Chili

My Super Bowl Sunday started hours before the actual festivities. St. John's Episcopal Church asked me to be a judge for the Souper Bowl, a chili and soup contest that was a fund-raising kickoff for their hunger awareness week. Given the enthusiasm people showed when they hit the tables, it will be awhile before anyone who was there will be aware of being hungry.

Luckily, I didn't have to judge all 27 entries, although I did my best to try a ridiculous number of them. Church members paid $1 for samples and voted to narrow the field to the final six. Then the three judges - me, Father Todd Dill from St. Margaret's in Waxhaw, and the senior warden, who paid $80 for privilege - had to narrow those down to the first-, second- and third-place winners.

For a dish that is basically meat, spices and possibly beans, an amazing variety of things go under the name "chili." There was cinnamon-spice chili, wild boar and venison chili, sweet-hot chili, brisket-based chili, beer-flavored chili, vegan chili and your basic chili-chili.

Despite that, the first-place winner wasn't actually a chili. The contest also had been opened to soup, and the pot that blew away the competition was Creamy Chicken Risotto Soup by Michael Ragon. It was as thick and satisfying as a good chili, but it had enough cream to wring out a cow. Ragon was kind enough to send me the recipe. The Super Bowl may be over, but soup season continues on.

Creamy Chicken Risotto Soup

By Michael Ragon, St. John's Episcopal Church

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 large onion, peeled and diced

2 cups diced celery

2 cups chopped carrots

1/2 gallon chicken stock

2 cloves chopped garlic

2 tablespoons tarragon

2 tablespoons dillweed

10 black peppercorns

1 large bay leaf

1 quart cream

1 quart sour cream

1/2 stick butter

1 roasted chicken, skin and bones discarded, meat diced

2 cups cooked Arborio rice

Chopped flat-leaf parsley for garnish (optional)

HEAT olive oil in a large soup pot and saute onions, carrots and celery until onions are translucent, then add a generous pinch of kosher salt.

ADD chicken stock and garlic. Tie bay leaf, tarragon, dillweed and peppercorns in a square of cheesecloth and add to the soup. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer about 20 minutes. Remove cheesecloth bundle.

ADD cream, sour cream, butter, chicken and cooked rice and heat through. (Don't bring back to a boil so the sour cream doesn't curdle.) Serve sprinkled with chopped flatleaf parsley.

Durham A Day: Finally, Saxapahaw

In the last of my week of postings about a one-day swing through Durham last week, I'm going to cheat. This one isn't exactly Durham, and it wasn't on that one-day trip. It was where the trip started the night before.

But the Saxapahaw General Store project is so cool, I can't resist. If you know North Carolina history, you know the state is dotted with old mills, mostly near rivers. And mostly, they were massive brick buildings that were the hearts of their little towns.

The town of Saxapahaw in Alamance County on the Haw River was like that, a mill town until 1995, when the mill closed. But the son of the family that owned the big brick building wasn't ready to just abandon the place. Instead, a new vision: Apartments and condominiums overlooking the river. It's 45 minutes from downtown Raleigh and a good drive even from Chapel Hill, but it's attracted a thriving community of commuters who want to live closer to the country with the amenities of a city.

And the big mill building has also become a home for all the local-food producers that dot that part of the state. With the help of visionary chef Jeff Barney, it contains what has to be the most interesting restaurant in the state, the Saxapahaw General Store. It's still the town general store, with BC Powders, motor oil and Vienna sausage cans. But at the front, in a tiny kitchen space where you'd usually get a livermush biscuit or a hot dog, they're turning out plates of amazing, all-local, gourmet-level food. Serious food, like duck fat fries, free-range chicken, Cane Creek farm pork chops and wild-caught striped bass. At reasonable prices, even -- most plates hang in the $15 to $20 range, which isn't out of the ordinary for food on that level.

Tables are tucked in the aisles among the crackers and general merchandise, and you can get a craft beer or whatever you want from the coolers. When I headed to Raleigh, my food-writing colleague Andrea Weigl offered to take me anywhere I wanted to go. Saxahapaw was where I wanted to go.

We got there at the right time, too. The project expanded just a few weeks ago with the opening of The Eddy on one end of the building. The Eddy is a bar with pub food, most of it a trimmed-back version of the plates you get at the store, and a long list of in-state beers and specialty cocktails. It's a beautiful, warm space, all copper and natural woods, with a new deck overlooking the river. We were there on a Thursday night and a whole table of local-food stars, including Eliza MacLean of Cane Creek, came in for their own dinners.

Graham isn't on the way to pretty much anywhere. It's way out in the country, sort of between Graham and Carrboro. You have to make an effort to make the drive. But from what I saw and tasted, it's worth the trip for anyone who is interested in local food, new ideas, vision and what you can do with an old brick building.

Get the details here: Saxapahaw General .

Durham A Day: Fullsteam Ahead

We interrupt this series of posts about a single day in Durham last week with a stop for beer.

Yes, boss, that is sometimes my job. Ever since a guy named Sean Lilly Wilson led the lobbying effort Pop the Cap, to raise the alcohol limit on beer, North Carolina has exploded with craft beer and microbrews. When the campaign was over, Wilson got into the beer business himself with a sort-of crazy idea to make beers from ingredients and inspirations that reflect traditional North Carolina foods. Like sweet potato beer, and hickory-smoked beer.

The beer tastes a lot better than that sounds. And the whole thing is truly going full-steam since Wilson (left) and brewmaster Chris Davis joined up with Brooks Hamaker (right).

Brooks is well-known in the Southern food-writing world for several things: His thoughtful posts, under the name Mayhaw Man, back when eGullet first got started. His dedication and constant presence at the Southern Foodways Symposium meetings in Oxford, Miss. And -- oh yeah -- his career in beer. Ever heard of Louisiana's Abita Beer? That was Brooks. After he sold it, he became a brewery consultant all over the world, including here in Charlotte, when he helped get the old Johnson Brewing up and running.

Today, the three of them brew beer that is showing up all over the Triangle, and they've opened the brewery as a beer palace. That's sort of the best way to describe it: It's in an old auto shop in a warehouse district near downtown Durham. Finding it is tricky unless you know to look for the big backward "F" on the door. Inside, there are ping-pong tables and pinball machines, and when I stopped in after lunch Friday, Brooks and Chris were struggling with putting up a new dart board. The whole thing feels sort of like a frat house for grown men. With much better beer.

I was driving, so I kept my sipping to samples. You have to sample a lot to really get a feel for Fullsteam. For instance, there's the Workingman's Lunch. It's supposed to be inspired by a Moon Pie, but it doesn't taste like marshmallow and chocolate (luckily). It's a nice, dark, rich beer. El Toro is Hamaker's "beer beer." My dad had a gold Toro lawnmower that I remember well, so I get where's he's going with that. I also tried their new persimmon beer, which is just slightly fruity and much better than I expected.

Fullsteam is now open at noon most days (get the details here), and there actually were a handful of people at the bar when I stopped in. Friday nights have become quite a scene, Brooks says. A lot of the food trucks (see my Tuesday post) park on the street outside, and everybody from college professors to off-duty police come in to drink and talk. They offer a few bar foods, such as Dos Perros tamales and leftover goodies from Scratch Bakery (they call them "Scratch and dents.") There's even a local baker who's making "beer cookies," designed to go with the eclectic Fullsteam tastes. (That's a five-spice snickerdoodle on my notebook above.)

Fullsteam's main problem right now is that it's a victim of its own success. Tanks are at capacity, says Hamaker. Until they install more, they can't even consider expanding to markets like Charlotte and Charleston. For the moment, you have to either go to the brewery or look in hipster food places all around the Triangle.

Hamaker splits his time between Washington and Durham. Nice life, he admits. He likes Durham a lot for the spirit of food entrepreneurialism that's sprung up from its large creative class. "A lot of us just got tired of trying to find consistent work," he says. Instead, theyr'e finding fun work. Like making whatever kind of beer they can dream up.

The perfect Super Bowl soup

Ed Levine, the editor of the web site Serious Eats, commented in a Tweet this week that the Super Bowl is almost as much of a food holiday as Thanksgiving. And I think he has a point.

My colleague Andrea Weigl has a roundup of recipes from both Pittsburgh and Wisconsin on this week's food front, all worthy contenders for Sunday's Super Bowl parties.

But before you chisel your menu in stone, I wanted to offer one more. I ran this with last year's Super Bowl package that I think may just be the perfect football-watching soup. I got a reminder at a Christmas party this year when I ran into a woman I had never met. When I told her what I do for a living, she grabbed my arm and said, with real excitement, "Do you know about the Buffalo Chicken Soup?" Sure, I said - I wrote the story that ran with it.

She turned and hollered across the room at her husband. Pointing at me, she just said, "The soup! The Buffalo chicken soup!"

I get it, ma'am. And I understand - it's a terrific soup. You could double it, although it's very rich so you don't need big servings. It's just the right thing for a football afternoon in February.

Slow-Cooker Buffalo Chicken Soup
I adapted this originally from "Make It Fast, Cook It Slow," by Stephanie O'Dea (Hyperion, 2009). Feel free to keep right on adapting it.

3 tablespoons canola oil, divided
1/2 large yellow onion, peeled and diced
3 stalks celery, diced
2 to 3 large skinless, boneless chicken breasts, or 2 to 3 cups cooked, diced chicken
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup chicken broth
2 cups nonfat or reduced-fat milk
1 teaspoon celery salt
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 cup hot wing sauce, such as Texas Pete Buffalo Wing Sauce, plus more for garnish
4 ounces Velveeta cheese, diced
Crumbled blue cheese (optional; garnish)

Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large skilelt over medium heat. Add the onion and celery and saute about 5 minutes, until slightly soften but still crunchy. Scrape vegetables in the liner of a 4- to 6-quart slow cooker and return skillet to heat.
Cut chicken into bite-size pieces. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in skillet and add half the chicken, stirring occasionally, until browned in spots and opaque. Add chicken to the slow cooker and repeat with remaining chicken. (If you're using cooked chicken, skip this step and just add it to the vegetables in the slow cooker.)
Melt the butter in the skillet over medium heat until just foamy. Whisk in the flour to make a roux, stirring well to incorporate all the flour. Cook 1 to 2 miutes, until roux is slightly golden. Scrape the roux into the slow cooker.
Stir in the broth and milk. Add the celery salt, garlic powder and wing sauce. Cover the slow cooker and cook on low for 6 to 8 hours, or on high for 3 to 4 hours. Stir in the cubed Velveeta about 20 minutes before serving.
Garnish with additional wing sauce and crumbled blue cheese if using.

Durham A Day: Shopping and eating

Continuing my report from a day of eating and food-trolling in Durham last week, we turn our sights to that great American sport - shopping. And eating. Maybe we should just make them one word: "shoppingandeating."

Parker and Otis, 112 S. Duke St., http://www.parkerandotis.com/. I first visited here years ago when it was Fowler's, an upscale food market and restaurant. It's still similar, although it's no longer a place to buy meat. Now it's a sprawling bistro (sandwiches/salads/baked goods/brunchy stuff) with the tables tucked in, around and through upscale kitchenware (think stacks of Le Creuset) and goofy food gifts on par with Seattle's Archie McPhee. It's a little chaotic (place your order at a counter, go find a table and your food will eventually come find you). The parking is confusing: It's on the side of the Bright Leaf Square parking lot, but it isn't officially a part of Bright Leaf Square, so good luck getting that parking ticket stamped. But still, for a certain kind of gourmet selection, it's a good place. Personally, I settled on a bottle of Bandol rose and a package of my personal favorite chocolate sin, salted caramels from Fran's in San Francisco. Did I need them? No. But need isn't what stores like P&O are really about.

Foster's Market, 2694 Durham-Chapel Hill Blvd., http://www.fostersmarket.com/. Sara Foster has her food credentials firmly in place. She's a bona fide FOM (friend of Martha) with a whole list of comfortable, cozy cookbooks in place. The market is a comfortable, cozy place too. Again, it's part cafe and part store, with counter service and tables parked in, around and through. The shopping is less upscale, though. With Valentine's approaching, there are lots of candies right now, and there are always jams, jellies and other ingredients. My score: A jar of her famous Seven-Pepper Jelly. And just two driveways down busy Durham-Chapel Hill Boulevard, you come to:

The Guglhupf, 2706 Durham-Chapel Hill Blvd., http://www.guglhupf.com/ What's Guglhupf? What isn't Guglhupf? It's a bakery. It's very busy, very popular cafe with two floors of packed tables and art dripping from the ceiling. It's an outdoor garden decorated with whimsical sculptures. The food leans toward mittel-Europe, with decorated plates of cake, including the popular fruit tart topped with several kinds of berries over a shortbread-like crust. What really struck me at 3 o'clock on a Friday afternoon: Who are all these people and why do they have the time to linger so long over lunch? Still, when there's a chocolate treble-clef sticking out of a puff of whipped cream on your plate, it feels very European, mittel or otherwise. Long live the Guglhupf.

Durham A Day: Food trucks

Food in Durham is no bull. Asheville and Chapel Hill are hip, Charlotte and Raleigh are all business. But Durham is something else. I spent a day last week trolling Durham, where young food entrepreneurs are skipping the lousy economy and building their own food world.

Exhibit A: Food trucks. They've moved beyond construction sites to become a phenomenon. In New York and L.A., food truck festivals bring out mobs of fans and Twitter posts pop up daily to tell you where to find the latest players. Charlotte has joined in slowly, with just a couple of trucks, including Wingzza and Harvest Moon Grill. But Durham has really grabbed it. The web site Carpe Durham tracks trucks daily on a map, and there are trucks with real personality, such as the Daisy Cakes baker who sells cupcakes on Saturdays from an Airstream trailer.

With only one short day, I set my sights on Only Burger. After starting as a truck, it opened a restaurant, in Hope Valley Square, 3710 Shannon Road. But the truck is the original, and a quick check online showed it would be at Lemond and Gregson streets near downtown at lunch.

When I pulled up, the truck was hard to miss, with the slogan "Only Burger: When Only the Best Will Do." They were having parking issues, though, so I settled in to wait until the truck was safely stowed in a community center parking lot and the generator had fired up with a roar like a lawn mower.

The truck menu is simple: Hand-cut fries and burgers made from hormone-free beef ground daily at Cliff's Meat Market in Carrboro. While I waited, I talked to Nolan Brodalski, 30. He moved to Durham from Atlanta in search of work and got so hooked on Only Burger, he was eating there two or three times a week. Finally, he got sick of his real job and quit to take a job working on the truck.

"When I first moved here, I never thought there'd be so much food," he said. "I love this town! I'm definitely not leaving."

My bacon cheeseburger was definitely the best one I've gotten from the window of a truck. But the fries were the best: Long and thin with crispy edges, they were served in a brown paper sack. Along with the salt, I was even happier to find flecks of black pepper. Even places with great fries forget the pepper to balance the salt.