In the last year I have introduced my seventy year-old mother to No Reservations, and she feels like she's discovered a long lost relative. My mother's mother was born in Ukraine in 1906. Though her family immigrated in 1910, they continued to cook and eat the old country way. My mother grew up eating and loving organ meats. Calves brains were her favorite. Her old country grandparents used and ate everything on the pig. My mother loves souse loaf aka head cheese. And every autumn at the first sign of a chill in the air, she has to cook up a big mess of pigs feet: simmered in water for at least 24 hours, very plainly seasoned, just salt and pepper. She has her own wrinkle on what Nana called borsht, which was an everything but the kitchen sink beef and vegetable soup. My Mom deep sixes the cabbage and adds barley instead.

Mom and I both love the fact that Tony can appreciate everything from the most avant guard haute cuisine to hole in the wall places where you eat standing up. And by the way Tony, the DC show where you ate fresh steamed crabs down on the warf? That was my mother's very favorite food in childhood, only the whole of the river front along Maine Avenue was filled with places like that. Now it's all developed and ruined.

Thank you Tony for your eclectic taste, your heart and your snark.