Smokey's BBQ Shack

There is something about the words "roadside" and shack that really make my mouth water. Perhaps it's because they are usually associated with the best of all words "BBQ".  I've made no secret of the fact that I'm a fan of BBQ ribs but honestly I'll take any BBQ.  Shredded pork, wings, brisket, chicken you name it, and if you serve it in plastic baskets with giant bottles of unlabeled sauce next to a roll of paper towels on the table, I'm pretty much sold.  Of course the added bonus is if you do it all in a shack that looks like a strong breeze could do significant structural damage while maintaining the integrity of the meat. 

So today I found myself at Smokey's BBQ Shack. The building was small and looked mostly homemade, but it wasn't exactly a shack. Wes, Dan and I  drove farther than usual slogged through the muddy parking lot and waited in line for what I can only describe as brain-meltingly good ribs and shredded pork smothered with sauce from a mysterious red bottle.  The ribs were falling off the bone and had the great flavor combination of spice, meat and wood smoke.  The smoke makes all the difference. 

The shredded pork was equally flavorful although it did pale in comparison to the ribs. But really, what wouldn't?  It did have the advantage of being cooked dry, allowing me to drown it in as much sauce as I wanted, which is as it turns out a fair amount of sauce. 

The sides were ok, I got fried okra and baked beans. The okra was a little flavorless, but ok. The baked beans were really interesting though. Rather than the standard beans and bacon it was a melange of different kinds of beans and onions.  It was nice to see something different, sadly, I didn't love it. Maybe it's because of the lima beans but most likely it was just that meat overpowered everything else. 

It's got to be difficult trying to scrape together side dishes at a BBQ joint. You have to have them, but no one is actually there for them. Why would they?  I mean I guess it's possible that a BBQ joint could make collard greens compelling enough to compete with brisket, but it seems incredibly unlikely. So do they serve them so we don't feel bad about eating massive quantities of meat? or is it that the BBQ experience just isn't complete without the little paper baskets of fried or boiled veggies.  

I think for me it's the guilt. I would never go to a restaurant and just order protein. Even if I have no intention of eating the vegetables they must be on the plate.  It's sort of shocking how much guilt rules what I order.  I spend countless hours looking up nutritional info on places I like to eat, picking out the best menu combinations or at least the ones that make me feel best about myself.  I bargain, rationalize and compromise all to feel ever so slightly better about myself at the end of the day.  Until I started this blog I never really though about how much I enjoyed eating out. (Of course since this blog is the ultimate rationalization, that might explain my sudden surge in guilt-free meals. ) 

Hopefully as I cut back on junky meals I'll be able to enjoy the times I do eat out more. 

Breaking The Chain

For me the horror of the corporate chain restaurant is only eclipsed by the horror of encountering the corporate chain Italian restaurant. I love Italian food, when its not a mass produced pile of limp noodles, overcooked protein and runny reheated sauce served in dishes that closely resemble troughs.  These chain restaurant strips  away the individuality of the chef and presents a false impression of an entire country worth of cuisine.  Of course, you can say the same thing for any chain restaurant, Chinese, Mexican, French, whatever, but for some reason the Italian ones seem to offend me the most. 

So today when I found myself planning to visit Brio, the new "Tuscan grille" by Crabtree Valley Mall, I was looking forward to ripping into them and writing my first really negative blog.  I was quite surprised that there were quite a few things I actually liked about Brio. 

Upon entry the leading chain assaults you musically with That's Amore and other Americanized Italian classics.  I don't remember the music at Brio, which is a good thing. I've been in too many restaurants where the atmosphere was carefully designed to distract from the food.  Brio has a nicely neutral palate with the most noticeable thing being the smell of the brick oven. It's a comforting campfire type of smell and it certainly helped put me as ease. 

Following my rules I ordered the fish special, grouper with a lemon butter sauce served with sauteed veggies and potatoes. For a starter I got the soup of the day - tomato bisque. Dan tried the crab cakes with a lobster bisque. 

When the soups arrived I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was a reasonable cup of soup, rather than the bucket I had been conditioned to expect.  It was creamy and tangy at the same time, rich and satisfying.  The lobster was equally creamy with chunks of lobster and a nice spice on the end of it.  Lunch was off to a good start. 

The grouper arrived shortly after and once again it was a nice filet. The perfect size for the preparation of the dish. The sauce was drizzled lightly over it with most of the plate being occupied by the sauteed vegetables. The fish flaked easily and was complimented, but not overpowered by the sauce.  The vegetables however, slid back into chain territory. Bland, oily and flavorless they did little other than look pretty.   

The fish was good enough to encourage me to check out dessert. I was delighted to see their presentation, tiny espresso cups filled with creme brulees, chocolate cake, cheesecake and other tiny treats. I ordered the chocolate, Dan got brown sugar brulee and neither one of us was disappointed. The brulee had a nice subtle brown sugar carmel finish and the cake really gave the feeling of eating fine truffles. 

So can a chain ever overcome their bland mass-produced nature? They are, after all, designed to offer the same quality at every location, individuality  be dammed!  Brio almost overcame it's chain roots by bucking tradition and serving meals small enough to be cooked properly giving the feeling of individual service, but was ultimately done in by ignoring the details. Vegetables are not a garnish and deserve to be treated as well as the entree! 

Also an odd note - we ordered peach iced tea and were rather surprised to see it delivered to the table in plastic bottles.  Not cool. This isn't a cheap place and tea isn't hard to make. Grow up and brew your own!  

Always Get the Special

How do you judge the quality of a cuisine you've never had before? It seems like the one thing professional critics excel at is knowing how a variety of foods are supposed to taste, measuring their authenticity almost. While that's sort of the thing I'm trying to stay away from, I do feel a bit at a loss discussing today's restaurant Cool Runnings - a local Jamaican place. 

I'm not familiar with Jamaican food and I've only been to Cool Runnings twice but both times I was blown away by the food.  The first meal there was lunch with Wes and Dan. The guys ordered jerk pork while I decided to be adventurous and get the curried goat.  The jerk pork was fantastic - spicy with a rich sweet sauce without loosing any of the flavor of the meat. Accompanied  by crisp sauteed veggies and fluffy rice it was a great introduction to Jamaican foods.  

The pork was good, but the goat left me speechless.  I didn't know what Jamaican curries were supposed to taste like and I had no concept of the flavors in goat meat.  It was so rich and gamey. Sort of  like lamb if the lamb had spent his time knocking over convenience stores Even though I had no frame of reference, I knew that this was the way goat was supposed to taste. Almost like tasting the culinary history of the dish. Combined with the curry and rice it was just about the perfect meal. 

Which brings us to today, Dan and I returned to Cool Runnings for what I thought would be a second helping of goat, but my #1 restaurant rule is  "always order the special" and today's special was BBQ Ribs.  

I used to be a rib fiend. My dad would make them for me every Sunday pretty much all summer long, I would seek them out at restaurants. Dry, wet, pork, beef, didn't matter. I could eat some ribs.  When I moved to Phoenix it got hard to find good ribs, I stopped eating out so much, and my beloved ribs were forgotten. 

So, do Jamaican BBQ ribs live up to the home-cooked ribs I remembered? Well, does anything live up to our favorite childhood recipes? Yeah, sometimes it does.  The ribs were hot and sweet, messy and tender, fall-off-the-bone good.  I lost track of the spices in the sauce other than cumin and some kind of sugar.  I think I went through a couple stacks of napkins, always a good sign for ribs.  

The older I get the more I looks for those foods that take me back to the best parts of childhood.  There's nothing quite like the joy of being covered in BBQ sauce and not caring and as an adult there are so few opportunities to experience that.  Sadly BBQ ribs aren't on the menu at Cool Runnings, but every time they're on special I'll be getting them. So if you see me walking around with a huge grin and a swipe of sauce on my cheek, don't say anything, most likely I'm just too happy to care.

Holiday foods

I'm back from a nice long stay with my folks in D.C.  and ready to write!  While in Washington I was able to visit the Carlyle a bustling and comforting if unspectacular restaurant.  If you've never been to Shirlington, its basically a row of restaurants surrounded by hotels and office buildings.  We usually stop off there after doing the tourist thing in DC or the shopping thing at Pentagon City. 

We had been to the Carlyle before and it's  a good place, the food was nice and the desserts were really good. But the whole time  we were there I was thinking that  we should have gone to Bistro Bistro, another restaurant we had visited previously.  I'm not going to go into detail about Bistro Bistro, I'll save that for an actual visit, but I will say that it has a quiet elegant charm that is the opposite of the Carlyle's busy carnival atmosphere. 

So, the food was good, and the decor cheerful but I'm at a loss for anything to say about the Carlyle. I'm suffering from food envy. No matter how good the crab cakes were, and they were pretty fantastic - full of fresh crab with a light sauce -I chose the wrong restaurant.  It's impossible to truly loose yourself in a meal when your heart isn't in to it. Then it just becomes eating for the sake of eating, which is the one thing I'm trying to stay away from.

Now I'm very grateful to my folks for taking us out for lunch, but what I enjoyed most about the Carlyle is just being out and about with my family - oh and the flourless chocolate waffle with the molten chocolate inside.  That was killer.

Wasabi for lunch

Now that the migraine fog has passed I realize I'm a bit behind on my blog. Two restaurants behind actually, which probably means I'm eating out a bit too much.  I'll try to get caught up this weekend, but since I'm headed home tomorrow for a week of Washington DC treats and home cooked meals I'm not sure if I'll stay caught up. 

On Thursday between doctors appointments Dan and I stopped in to our favorite sushi place here in Cary, Wasabi.  Wasabi is a Thai/Japanese restaurant with beautiful bamboo accents dim lights and unobtrusive music.  It looks, feels and smells authentic.  My cousin introduced Dan and me to Wasabi and in our own version of paying it forward we love to bring new friends there to celebrate what occasion calls for a sushi dinner, and really what occasion doesn't?

But today we weren't celebrating, just pausing for some comfort food. I settled in to my old favorite Chirashi- the chef's selection of fresh fish over rice.  The fish was wonderful. Cool and flavorful, beautifully arranged  but as I was eating I realized that I viewed the fish as almost the opening act to the dish. The real reason I order the Chirashi almost every time we go is for the rice. 

See while I'm nibbling away on salmon all the flavors of the white tuna, lemon, whitefish, and the sauce that goes with the eel has been soaking into the rice. By the time I'm done with the fish that rice is a  smokey, spicy, sweet, roe-covered desert. It's nothing that could be prepared in a kitchen, there is no recipe for it. Chirashi rice is unrepeatable, as every time I order it the chef uses different fish, but every time it gives me that same amazing feeling. It's like knowing the secret to the dish. Any maybe that more than anything is the appeal. 

The other day I was at dim sum with a group a friends and the topic of strange food preferences came up. No one was able to think of any or at least, no one wanted to volunteer any of theirs.  Maybe it's because we all eat lovely normal things, or maybe it's because what are strange eating habits to others are our very own own secret dishes. These recipes we have discovered through snacking trial and error, or family traditions handed down are personal private things. 

Being the only one who eats them makes them all the more special. 

There are plenty of recipes to share with friends, to prepare as a group and cherish together. But I'm going to try real hard to remember to cherish the foods I eat alone, they are just as worthy of thought and recognition.  And in the end spending a little more time thinking about what I eat when I'm alone probably isn't a bad thing. 

Carmen's Cuban Cafe and Lounge

Yesterday Wes Dan and I went to Carmen's. The food was good, although the plantains are better at Cool Runnings, a little Jamaican place I will eventually blog about.  I ordered a steak sandwich, which was in retrospect not very smart of me. The sandwich was good, but it wasn't very Cuban. Dan ordered this wonderful roasted pork and lime dish that was not only tender and flavorful it tasted authentic. The combination of the salty pork and the fresh lime was so natural I can't imagine pork any other way now.   If I'm going to really get into the heart of food, I'm going to have to be a little bit more adventurous with my selections. 

But missed opportunities aside, what really struck me about Carmen's is the decor. There is another Cuban place that Dan and I frequent.The Havana Grill is a bright open place that looks as Wes put it, like a house converted into a restaurant. The service is casual cafeteria-style with more outdoor seating than indoor and the emphasis on the food seems to be more homestyle than anything else.  The food there is great and comforting and I recommend it to everyone but I'll be going back to Carmen's before I return to Havana Grill. 

See, and some part of me realizes that this makes me a superficial person, but Carmen's looks like a Cuban place should. The bar is covered in dark wood rafters and the whole place is dimly lit. There are fabric wall hangings and fancy lights that project dim patterns on the walls. It's moody, mysterious and romantic.I'm prone to flights of fancy and I have a tendency to let my imagination run away with me. When I have the opportunity to slip away from a hectic day, sit in a romantic Cuban cafe , sip an Ironbeer, (not actually a beer) and indulge in a 30 second vacation fantasy, the comfort of that beats comfort food any day. 

The other highlight of Carmen's was the Tres Leches cake. I loved it, but better than that was watching Dan try it for the first time.  I hope he doesn't mind me writing about this, but I sort of have a love hate relationship with food. I mean I love it, but since I'm always struggling with my weight and balancing portions and all that tiring stuff sometimes I get so sick of it, food, weight, the whole thing.  But Dan, he can enjoy food like no one else I've met. Totally guilt-free. When he enjoys food, especially when it's food I've cooked, he looks so appreciative. Every cook should have a customer like Dan and I really wish who ever made the Tres leches cake could have seen him try it.  They would have continued on baking happily for the rest of their lives armed with the most rewarding kind of job satisfaction. 

 

Abbey Road Cary, NC

What makes a burger go from good to amazing? What makes one of the most available foods not only satisfying to hunger but also emotionally. High quality beef? A patty the size of my head? Cold, crisp lettuce and pickles?  I can go to MCDonald's and have a meal in under 5 minutes. It will be hot and after eating it I will no longer be hungry, but I will not be satisfied.  So, today we (Dan. Wes, Karen and myself) went in search of the elusive the burger and fries that will satisfy hunger and my soul. 

Now, when I say "went in search of" I really mean it. Abbey road is probably about 10-15 minuted from the office, but since we had never been there Wes took care of  directions. Twenty minutes later while cruising around deepest darkest residential Cary we realized that Wes had actually googled the directions for Abbey Lane the road not Abbey Road the restaurant. By the time Dan and I had stopped laughing, Wes had corrected out course and we were back on track. What would have been an annoying detour turned into a bizzard trip through a campy Christmas wonderland when we had to turn around in a cul-de-sac where every house was covered from foundation to chimney in garish inflatable Christmas decorations somehow made tackier by the presence of pouring rain.

By the time we found the bar I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was a separate non-smoking section. I had been warned that although the food was good the place was smokey. Nothing kills the impact of good food like cigarette smoke. The walls of Abbey rod are covered in 45's, posters, magazine covers and pictures from the 60's and 70's. We were seated immediately by an efficient and pleasant if not overly friendly waitress and given enough room to peruse the menus. They do have a decent lunch menu with sandwiches and wraps, but we were there for burgers so the poor wraps got ignored. 

All of the Beatles named burgers looked good, but I settled on the George - bacon and cheese with a side of onion rings. I haven't had onion rings in months and couldn't resist. Dan and Karen were much more disciplined and got salads while Wes committed 110% and went with cheese fries. I don't remember what burgers they ordered. 

When the food arrived I was both pleased and dismayed to see that the patty was the size of my fist and just as thick. The first bite is always the best part, the most telling and the George did not disappoint. I got bun, lettuce, pickle, cheese bacon and burger all together but I could taste each element separately. The meat was perfectly cooked, medium rare and I got that wonderful dribble down my chin. It was a mess and I loved it. I don't usually think of myself as a tactile person but for some reason I need to feel my food. The crunch of vegetables, the tear of a steak the snap of an apple that's what is satisfying about food. That's  what is missing, for me, from the mushy flat Quarter Pounder- the feel of it. This burger felt great, it felt satisfying.

And now , sadly, a word about onion rings. They should be rings. Circles of  perfectly fried onion, easy to hold, easy to dip in ketchup and able to deliver onion napalm directly into the mouth, a painful but necessary part. They are not strips, the batter should not be hard and they should never EVER arrive in a clump.

I will happily return to Abbey Road when I get a burger craving but I'll be sticking to the fries.