Food: Cubans on the Run

Fidel Castro leaves behind a decidedly mixed legacy, but one happy accident of his dictatorship was the spread of the Cuban sandwich: ham, roast pork, Swiss cheese, pickles, and mustard between two toasted loaves of Cuban bread. You see, Castro's repressive regime prompted thousands of exiles to flee to Florida, making this wonderful concoction the semi-official sandwich of Miami.

What non-Floridians might not know, though, is that the Cuban sandwich is everywhere in this state. You can actually find some of the best sandwich shops in places like Tampa and Orlando - shops like Cubans on the Run, an unassuming diner off a highway in Casselberry.

The place is open breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and serves up mostly-authentic Cuban-American food at rock-bottom prices. You can get a standard Cuban, hot off the press, for five dollars, with fancier steak and chicken options available for a couple bucks extra. There are also other standard Cuban entrées available, including picadillo, palomilla steak, and ropa vieja.

Don't expect much in the way of ambiance - food is served in plastic baskets or takeout containers, and the inside is bereft of the faux-Havana accoutrements that you might find in a fancier Cuban restaurant further south. Still, I mostly grade restaurants on the food they serve, and Cubans on the Run gets a hearty...

3/4 stars

Viva Cuba Libre!

Guns: S&W 686 PC review (2.5" snubnose) - Plus Size Performance

Introduction

Smith & Wesson's Performance Center turns out some fascinating semi-custom guns of dubious utility, like the subject of today's review - the 686 Plus PC snub. It's designed as a high-end .357 magnum concealed carry option and comes equipped with all sorts of literal chrome, but is it worth the thousand-dollar asking price?

First Impressions

The 686 PC has a slab-sided 2.5" barrel that actually conceals pretty well. Unfortunately, the barrel is mated to a standard 686P frame and 7-shot cylinder, as well as long wood grips. The package positively dwarfs more reasonably-sized belt revolvers like the Model 60 Pro and the 642.  It also weighs 34 ounces, making it almost impossible to carry in anything other than an OWB belt holster.

In hand, the gun feels pretty good. The slim finger-grooved wood grips won't be to everyone's taste, but they are nicely stippled and don't add additional bulk to the backstrap. The sights are also excellent - the big bright red-orange front ramp is mated with an adjustable rear sight, which is perfect for a personal defense revolver that can fire everything from .38 wadcutters to full-tilt magnums.

The 686 PC has a chromed trigger (with overtravel stop), a chromed hammer, and an unfluted hammer cut for moonclips (actually carrying the moonclips as a reload is impractical, but they do ease the emptying of the first cylinder of fired shells in a fight). The Performance Center also performs an action job on the gun, giving it a very smooth and light trigger pull in both single and double action.

Cosmetically, I dock the 686 PC several style points because the front sight juts out of the dovetail on both sides, and because it sports a ridiculously large ".357 Mag 7x" billboard etched on the left side of the barrel.

Range Report

In my hands, the short barrel and sight radius somewhat hampered performance from the big snub, at least compared to a conventional 4" barrel 686. I managed to get okay accuracy at 15 yards out of my handloads (158 gr. Speer lead SWCHP over 3.2 gr. Bullseye), but other revolvers can certainly do better, even when yours truly is pulling shots everywhere:

Remington 125 gr. Golden Saber registered similar accuracy (ignore the leftmost shot). This is a pretty light load:

Next up was Magtech 158 grainers, which were all over the place. To be fair, the huge, blinding muzzle flash might have been a factor:

One good characteristic of this revolver is that because of the tuned action and the relatively large frame/grip size, you can still be quite accurate at range with a double-action pull. One bad characteristic of this revolver is that the lightened springs can lead to light primer strikes when the gun is dirty (I believe this is because some of the hammer's impact energy is wasted pushing the round forwards into the cylinder). Another problem is S&W's infamous key lock, which really doesn't belong in a defensive revolver.

Though this gun can certainly handle a steady diet of .357, and the recoil from such loads is not bad at all, I'd still probably carry it with .38 +Ps. Here are two cylinders' worth of Remington HTP 158 gr. +P lead hollowpoints (a/k/a the poor man's "FBI load") at 15 yards:

Conclusion

So would I recommend this gun? Probably not. Though the work done by the Performance Center is pretty good, the 686 PC doesn't exist in a vacuum. Compared with a standard 686 2.5" snub, you're paying about a $250 premium for (1) grips that you may or may not like, (2) a trigger stop that you don't really need, (3) a slab-sided barrel that doesn't seem to improve accuracy, and (4) a cylinder cut for moonclips that are finicky and hard to carry. For most people, I think the better option is to buy the standard snub and do the work you want to it.

Books: The Paper Menagerie

Author Ken Liu and I have a few things in common, in that we're both Chinese-American attorneys with a background in computers. It's no great surprise, then, that I enjoyed "The Paper Menagerie," Liu's collection of science fiction and fantasy short stories. Some of the 15 works here are new, most are previously published, but the quality of the stories is uniformly high, and they all draw on Liu's background in some way or another.

There are technology-focused tales, like "The Perfect Match" (a man struggles with an overbearing Siri-like computer) and "Simulacrum" (a man creates a semi-conscious hologram of his daughter). These essentially read like episodes of "Black Mirror" - except they are way better than the actual episodes of "Black Mirror." There are also fantasy stories ("Good Hunting") which draw heavily from Chinese culture. They're fun, and very different from Western fantasy (if you like what's here, check out Liu's silkpunk novels, starting with "The Grace of Kings").

Occasionally, things get poignant for poignancy's sake. I thought some of the emotional beats in "The Regular" and title story "The Paper Menagerie" were forced, for instance, but they were undeniably dramatic. It's merely a small quibble with Liu's writing style; if you like science fiction or fantasy at all, you'll probably like the book.

Veterans Day

Michael, Byron, and Mitch, thank you for your service, and happy Veterans Day!

Miscellany: 2015 - 2016 Dodge Charger R/T review - My Big Fat American Muscle Car

Thanks to my BMW 328i's unexpectedly long sojourn at the dealer to upgrade its onboard cellular system, I got the chance to live with the latest-gen Dodge Charger R/T for a week. The Charger is a common upgrade at rental car fleets across the country - here's what I liked and didn't like about the vehicle:

Pros

Engine: Though it makes 370 horsepower and nearly 400 lb-ft of torque, the 5.7 liter Hemi in this trim is actually the weakest V8 available in the Charger lineup; if you want even more power, you can step up to the 6.4 liter SRT 392 or the almighty supercharged 707 hp SRT Hellcat. The extra juice is overkill except for an enthusiast, I think, since the stock 5.7 gets you from 0-60 in a hair over 5 seconds and runs mid-13s in the quarter-mile. The engine is also smooth and quiet on the highway, since it barely needs to rev to maintain cruising speed.

Suspension: The Charger handles surprisingly well. Simple physics prevents it from having the same cornering characteristics of say, a Camaro or Mustang, but for a 4,000+ pound car, the Charger eats up swooping turns and highway irregularities with aplomb. It's not unlike the feeling you get in a big German sedan - solid and impervious.

Steering and Dashboard: When it comes to driver controls and feedback, the Charger is pretty squared-away. You get a big thick steering wheel with okay amounts of road-feel, an analog tach and speedometer, and a customizable center in-dash LCD that will relay everything from your fuel economy to your oil life. The infotainment unit uses a touchscreen, but has physical knobs and buttons for volume, tuning, and A/C, which I much prefer.

Cons

Interior Quality (considering the price): The dealer gave me the standard R/T model, which is essentially a base Charger equipped with the 5.7L Hemi V8. All of the money is spent on the engine; you get none of the niceties on the upgraded (and confusingly named) "R/T Road and Track" version. The cheap seats and hard plastics are acceptable in most American sedans, but a little hard to take in something that stickers for around $34 grand.

Efficiency: The naturally aspirated V8 is nice, and Dodge uses every trick in the book, including cylinder deactivation, but there's just no masking the fact that this is a heavy car with a thirsty truck-sized engine. The Charger's EPA-estimated 16/25 MPG is right on the money; you'll be stopping at gas stations much more often than you would in other cars that have similar horsepower via forced induction.

Trunk Space: Interior room in the Charger is definitely on par with the class (this is designed to be a police cruiser, after all), but I found the trunk to be surprisingly small. The limited cargo space is unlikely to woo people who fled the sedan market for crossovers and large trucks.

Conclusion

Overall, I liked my time with the Charger - it put down plenty of power, and proved to be very livable as a daily commuter. If I were buying one, though, I'd probably save up for the midlevel SRT 392 trim, given that it has the same fuel economy as the smaller V8 and has nicer everything else.