July 2008 - Culinary Hatchet

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Culinary Hatchet - July 2008

Sonic: Accessible, and Alright

July 22nd 2008 04:19

After six years of being bombarded with commercials of a magical fast food burger joint with over one hundred thousand drink combinations and "full menu all-day" feature that allows us bums who sleep late to still get breakfast, Sonic opened on the outskirts of St. Paul in late May. A few blocks from my mother's house, I thought it would be an easy stop on my way back home. Hell, it was a week since they opened, the line shouldn't be too bad, right?
"Finally," I thought, "I get to see what all the damn hoopla is about with this Sonic." Not so. As I drive near, I see that Sonic needed it's own police officer to direct traffic into "Staging Areas," which were parking lots filled with cars waiting for the magical Sonic. I left.

In the following weeks, I heard horror stories of three hour waits and expensive food: "A guy I know got a basic California burger with a tiny fries and a drink and it was nine bucks."
This Sonic is the only in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and Saint Paul), one restaurant for 650,000 people. The six years of advertising in a high population area apparently worked for Sonic, as one hour plus lines in staging areas lasted more than a month. Is this what it's like when a Podunk town gets a McDonalds multiplied by 10,000?
So finally, about 6 weeks after opening, I was driving down Sonic Avenue after a trip to an auto parts store and saw that the staging line for drive-thru was only 2 cars deep. I jumped right in there and waited about ten minutes before I even saw the menu and realized that besides recalling a few years of Sonic "ciabatta" burgers, I didn't really know what they were all about. So, I decided to go simple and get a double cheeseburger with everything, fries, and a cranberry lime-aid. The teen staff was kind of on top of things despite a 17 year old dealing with credit card malfunctions getting in the way of the 16 year old trying to hand me my food. I also witnessed no rollerskating, but I've heard they're there somewhere.

"I've sort of subconsciously waited for six years for this bite." Upon first bite, the burger is pretty basic and pretty tasty. The beef tastes kind of charred, which I like, and the cheese delivers on the saltiness. The fixings aren't rubbery and foul like large chains and the sauces leave no desire for any additions. Good, but not three hours wait good.
The fries were skimped upon and dry. Not even top 5 for fast food joints around town. Tater-tots and onion rings were an offer, but a. I'm not a fan of grade school lunchatorium fare and b. once you've had Porky's onion rings, all others are blasphemous impostors.
The drink was pretty good; a fizzy and tart concoction, but way too sweet. Apparently, there's other drinks I could have gotten but like any situation where you have to make a decision in two minutes, it's likely second thoughts would abound.
So, Sonic is likely here to stay. Is it amazing? Not really, but it's better than most. For anyone who wants a quick, unhealthy treat, Sonic is a good option.

Best Fast Food Burgers (that means a drive through) in the Twin Cities:
Porky's Twinburger
A&W's Papa Buger
Sonic's Double Cheeseburger
Culver's Butter Burger

...and worst:
Burger King's Whopper, Whopper Jr.
McDonalds's cheeseburger, hamburger
Wendy's Minnesota Wild burger

Home of the worst burger on earth: Denny's

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Posted By: Neal - Category: No Category

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I Love Savory Beans

July 8th 2008 10:57

Aside from Canada, the more obedient English colonies all have an American product that virtually nobody eats in America; Heinz Baked Beans. Instead, we prefer our beans to be loaded with sugar and served alongside...grilled food? No offense to fans of the North American baked bean as I've been known to partake with a nice bratwurst myself. It's just a weird concept the more you think about it....sweet beans.

But when I was living in the South Pacific, most of our groceries came from Australia or New Zealand, and this included "Wattie's Baked Beans." Thinking that they were akin to their American counterpart, I purchased a can of them on one of my first shopping trips, wondering if they were the same beans I had enjoyed with breakfast at the local watering hole. I cooked them up and placed them alongside my fried eggs and toast, and damn is that a great combo for a sodium filled breakfast.

One of my friends there was from England, and once mentioned that his Sunday meal would "probably just be beans on toast." I asked if he ate that meal frequently and he went on to tell me that it was English tradition; a staple of "tea time." From that point on, several bored afternoons were slightly improved by a simple snack of baked beans on toast.

I suppose I didn't really fall in love with the style of beans enough to care about them during my first few months back in the country because I was so delighted to see cheese, milk, USDA Prime and a selection of more than 4 beers (man can not live on 4 beer varieties). I was probably six months in before summer which is prime baked bean season in America, and along with it came my disappointment with the domination of sweet beans loaded with maple flavoring. I looked in the area that would most likely have the beans I'd enjoyed overseas but found no substitute for the sugar beans. Then, I did some research.
Heinz, the Pittsburgh food company, made Navy Beans in their signature Tomato Sauce, and the product went from an exotic food to a staple in the British diet. The band The Who famously bathed Roger Daltrey in them on their album cover for "The Who Sell Out." It was a variation of these beans that I had tasted living in the islands and now was growing increasingly obsessed with finding in my own country.
After casually noticing that some online "English Specialty" stores sold them at $3 a can, and that Brit's Pub in Minneapolis served sides of them for $3, I came to the realization that Heinz Baked Beans were just out of reach in America, and probably not worth the trouble. Back to life, back to reality.

It wasn't a week later that I was grocery shopping at Cub Foods at 2:00am, browsing through my favorite super-aisle, the best collection of multi-ethnic foods I think I've seen anywhere. I always get my curry, Indian, Asian and Hispanic foods from this area but had somehow skipped right passed Italian and Greek to Indian and East African, not noticing the small ENGLISH section! It had all their little Cadbury candies, canned puddings, Biscuits (cookies to us bleedin' Yanks) and of course, Heinz Baked Beans. I bought 6 cans at $1.83 each and drove home repeating how awesome Cub is.
The next morning, I made one piece of toast covered with a slice of sharp cheddar, piping hot beans and an over easy egg. Delicious. The next, just beans on toast. The next, well, just a banana. But the next day was as close to the full English Breakfast as you can get here: sausages, a tomato, fried eggs, Heinz Baked Beans and toast. There's nothing quite like using toast as a utensil to combine egg yolk, fried egg white, beans, and the patented Heinz tomato sauce. The English really have comfort food down, maybe because their weather is so depressing.
Even if beans with breakfast sounds strange, at least it's a fantastic snack on toast. It just happens to work well with breakfast; it's got enough sweet to balance eggs and sausages but is still savory, much like Bush's baked beans with a salty bratwurst. I can't picture the two beans accompanying the other meal, and the thought of Bush's with breakfast actually makes me a bit ill.
So, to see if your grocery store is cool or not, try finding not only Heinz Baked Beans, but Gulabjamun in a box, Panjera bread (no, NOT PANERA) and coconut juice all in one double aisle sandwiched into a normal grocery store. Then buy each food item I mentioned and have a blast (don't mix any of them)!

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Posted By: Neal - Category: No Category

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Review: Mancini's Char House

July 8th 2008 09:35

Sad times at Mancini's Char House

Mancini's is a well known, old school bar, and in a separate room, a “Char House,” in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It's located in a neighborhood that used to be home to the overflow of Chicago's mobsters and it's interior is proof. I had been to Mancini's as a bar a few times before. Cheap top shelf drinks, "gangster booths," and Minnesota's strangest getting funky to the Midas Touch, their house band. Back in those days, you could smoke inside, and Mancini's looked like a place that needed a foggy haze to add to it's nostalgic charm. When you're drinking and with friends, you don't need much if you're having fun, and it's definitely a fun place to escape that trendy joint you can't really afford to drink at anyways.

This was my first trip to the Char House, mostly because I'm not an elderly person who wears cotton sweatshirts as formal wear. I had heard nothing but great things about their steaks, but mostly from meat-n-potatoes macho dudes who think carrots are for wusses, yet are scared to try steak tar tar (they're surprisingly hard to avoid). Still, most should know a good steak, right? And the average review from customers online is usually four or five stars. I had high hopes.

As I walked to the table in a packed but comfortable room made of stone, there was a plate of “relish” sitting on the table, which was a pile of sliced pickles and mediocre looking beefsteak tomatoes fresh from the slice-o-matic. Next to that were four huge bowls of mystery sauces. Were these for the relish?

Then, the server came around with a basket of sliced and toasted garlic bread that was actually tasty, which turned out to accompany one of the mystery bowls filled with what turned out to be aoli. I looked at the menu and saw about six choices for steak; it was between the filet and the New York strip, at $24 and $26 respectively. I chose the strip with a baked potato over fries or mashed, and a “house salad” would come to utilize the other mystery sauces shortly.

The salad is dropped off in front of me, and I can't even remember what the actual plate it was on looked like, because I was so amazed by what I saw as part of my $26: grocery store grade bag-o-salad; thick chunks of iceberg lettuce with carrot shreds and hints of red cabbage. I've never before seen bag-o-salad in a restaurant, let alone a place with a reputation. I decided to try to choke some down to balance out the meal to come, so I reached for the 3 bowls of mystery. Upon closer inspection, it was fresh out of the Wish Bone bottle “Italian” and “French” dressing (both as unauthentic as they are putrid), and what looked like bleu cheese dressing. I reached for what looked the least horrible and poured some over my chunks of iceberg and took a bite. If Miracle Whip and Dole joined forces to make a “bleu cheese salad” for Michael Hutchence (post head injury, pre-death), this would be it; an awful, tangy dressing with little cheese and no “bleu,” over what your average college freshman would know as “lettuce.” I've been to the corniest family joints in my lifetime, for some reason or another, and they at least make an effort to have their own sauce, not just 3 bowls of Wish Bone sitting out. And what sort of Italian-owned eatery doesn't put vinegar and oil on the table? I kept looking for it, or my waitress, to no avail. I stopped after trying to chew a few pieces of the “salad” and reached for more bread as I awaited my steak.

My strip finally came out on a plain plate with a sad baked russet covered in tin foil. The steak looked fine at first, so I decided to dress my lonely potato with the sides they provided: a single serving cardboard package of sour cream, and a single rectangle of foil wrapped butter (nice touches). Just as I was about to cut into my steak, I looked at the woman next to me who ordered the side dish of steamed vegetables in lieu of potato, and I almost laughed out loud at what I saw. They actually steamed mini carrots found in the bag lunches of teenage girls and never a self respecting restaurant. At this point, I dreaded cutting into my meat.

As soon as I cut in towards one end of the strip that I ordered medium-rare, I saw that it was going to be a rough meal. Literally. After I cut a piece off with the ease of cutting suede with plastic Fiskars, I saw that this steak was overdone to medium-well. Brown and light pink, not red and bloody as I ordered it. I usually don't stand for this nonsense, but it dawned on me that the server only comes to the table to bring food which we all had. I decided to choke it down with bad memories of eating charred box steaks that came free with a new windshield in days of yore. Another problem with this overpriced hunk of wasted meat was that there wasn't a hint of seasoning. The salt was repeatedly in one hand being shaken over each individual bite of this disgrace.

The server probably didn't ask how my food was because every blue haired, hot dish eating member of the greatest generation chews everything down without causing trouble when they eat there. I however, would usually have sent the steak back, especially when paying $26 for it. So, aside from that, the server basically did her job: take the order, bring the salads, bring the steaks, and I did notice my water was never empty (thinking back, I should have drank it down to bring her attention to the brick on my plate). I didn't order any drinks, but people around me seemed to be happy with their beverages.
I would expect to pay around $14 for my meal at a place like Timber Lodge, a sad chain usually found in malls. A plate that simply comes out with a steak and a baked potato in a tin foil wrap with pre-packaged accoutrement is something you expect to see at a roadside diner, not a place charging an outrageous $26.

I consider Outback Steakhouse to be corny, lame and of mediocre quality, and it has absolutely nothing to do with Australia beyond the “found art” they throw up on their walls. But for $20, you get an attentive wait person working for tips who's job it is to accomplish a people-pleasing corporate mission statement, a 20 ounce edible porterhouse (strip loin and tenderloin) that if not cooked to your liking, will be replaced on the fly, a baked potato with anything you want out of the “loaded” options with it's jacket coated in kosher salt, and a caeser-ish salad that actually tastes good, not to mention all the freshly baked pumpernickel with whipped butter (in a DISH!) you can handle. Here's my point: Outback should be looking down at Mancini's, and for a place known for it's steaks, what does that say about the famed Char House?

If you want a steak and don't want to spend Morton's money (which isn't much more than the value-less Char House), don't think you're doing the community a favor by supporting a local restaurant that serves school lunch salads, flavorless and carelessly plated potatoes, steamed lunch snack vegetables and badly cooked, unseasoned meat...but also don't feel bad; they have plenty of returning customers who love the idea of steak yet don't know what a steak should taste like. If you want an evening out at Mancini's, eat at home first and go for what Mancini's is good for: cheap drinks, fun and nostalgic atmosphere, and it's famous people-watching.

GRADES
ATMOSPHERE B-
SERVICE C
FOOD D-
VALUE F---

OVERALL: D
Mancini's not only doesn't live up to it's hype, it chokes like a Minnesota sports team. Not the best first review...

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Posted By: Neal - Category: No Category

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The Food Network and

July 8th 2008 08:51

I have found myself in a social circle fairly close to the "hipsters" seen roaming the trendy, gentrified neighborhoods of most large cities. With hipsters often come forms of elitism, whether it's music, fashion, and even food and drink. I'm guilty, yet increasingly cautious, of hipster elitism too.
My father was a chef at some of the finest restaurants in town, so a lot of my food elitism stemmed from hearing things like, "real chefs don't go to culinary school, they work their way up from the very bottom," and "only idiots eat that crap." I also was eating a weekly surf and turf of filet mignon and fresh lobster tail, as well as knowing what a Your text goes heretapenadeYour text goes here was in fourth grade. He also got me started in my short kitchen career as a dishwasher at 13, prep cook at 14, and line and saute at various places off and on until I was 20. My last "back of the house" job was at a yuppie deli in which I freely (yet against store policy) sampled fine meats, pungent cheeses and befriended sushi chefs who loved making me try exotic sea creatures. Sounds good, but that job was so insufferable that I walked out mid-shift. I served at another place (in which I was also trained in the kitchen) for two years before leaving the restaurant world, never to look back.
To get to the point, I know my way around food more than the average slob, but I still don't know much about gourmet gastronomy. Enter The Food Network to let everyone else know that they're equally qualified as me, if not far more, because they saw Bobby Flay easily whip up some moist chicken breasts on a grill or some other talking head sear a tuna steak. From the mind of the self conscious, hipster elitist

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