Author: Andy MacDonald

It’s about time we had a decent place named after one of our own. Celebrating the love of life the late Eugene Walter so often expressed on these very streets, Eugene’s Monkey Bar puts you at ease at the bottom the Hilton Garden Inn on Conception Street. It’s the only hotel in town I know of that sports a front porch. I’m certain the creative Walter would have approved. I’ve only visited the Monkey Bar twice before, just for drinks. Once my old friend Justin Adcock, owner of Bombshell Comics in Hattiesburg, came in for a visit and in...

There isn’t a finer way to celebrate our nation’s independence than a booze-filled day of food gorging. We’d be better off taking the 5th of July as a day of rest and recovery. Once you snap out of your food coma and sober up, you realize your day of gluttony and excess left you with so many leftovers your refrigerator door won’t stay shut. What’s a boy to do? You’ve got about three or four days of serious eating ahead, so let’s try to make this as interesting as we can. I know you went overboard on the barbecue....

It’s rare that I’m afforded the opportunity to review a restaurant that can be deemed “a chain,” but that’s exactly what happened this week. There was a toss-up over which of the two higher-end eateries that recently found footing in our Shoppes at Bel Air to review. Neither are your typical “mom and pop” stores. It was either going to be Grimaldi’s Pizza or P.F. Chang’s. I was up for either. My dining companions, however, enjoyed pizza for lunch so we limped the 30 or so feet westward to our Asian option. It’s been so long since I visited...