Archive for the ‘Restaurant Reviews’ Category
Melograno: Oxtail Sadness
t says: I’m sure you’re tired of reading of Melograno, much like you’re tired of reading about Sampan. But, I think I have finally uncovered Melograno’s weakness (aside from the horrendous cheese plate we had on our first trip there some time ago).
5/2010, 8pm, Party of 3. On a recent visit with g and lc, I ordered the “special”: oxtail ravioli. It sounded like a surefire winner, as I love oxtail. Unfortunately, it was not. Despite the profoundly-beefy flavor that oxtail usually delivers, I barely tasted the oxtail at all – it was masked by a tsunami of herbs like basil and rosemary! For the record, a tsunami of herbs isn’t that bad, but when you’re expecting savory meat, fresh herbs is quite surprising. Additionally, there was supposed to be oxtail in the sauce, but I encountered not a single strand … strike 2! Then, I found that parts of the ravioli (where you’d pinch close the pouch) was a bit too firm … strike 3 – you’re outta there! Oh … and what’s this? An intact rosemary leaf to bite into and get stuck in my teeth, leading to mild discomfort and an overwhelming rosemary taste? Yea, that’s like hearing the home crowd’s yo’-mamma jokes as you walk back to the dug-out with your head bowed down in shame …
Of course, g’s wild boar pappardelle was perfection as usual, and lc’s carbonara was delicious (who could say no to pancetta?), so some things were going quite right. I guess even Melograno can turn out a flawed pasta dish.
g says: I don’t know what you’re complaining about. You still ate every last bit, even though you “weren’t that hungry”. Sheesh.
t says: <moment of silence to reconsider> I never said it was so awful I couldn’t eat it … just flawed.
By the way, our server for the night was the awesomest server at Melograno ever. He was very pleasant, didn’t mind giving us gratuitous amounts of bread, and suggested at the end of our meal that if we didn’t want their desserts, there was Capogiro right around the corner … and Melograno even offers gelato on the menu (for 50% greater cost)! I love the honesty – the only thing left for him to say would be, “whatever you do, don’t get our cheese plate”.
Percy Street BBQ: sr-Approved
t says: My dad is is quite tough to please when it comes to food. Well … kinda. He’s actually quite easy to satisfy with foods of all kinds (there are notable exceptions – but I won’t share them – they’re like his kryptonite), but in terms of going to foodie-approved restaurants, it’s hard to find a place that he’d actually want to go to. The first difficulty is that he doesn’t need glitz and glamour in his food; he’s a manly man with manly man tastes. Shmears of sauces on plates with intricate layering of shrimp and gold leaf so they perfectly resemble the Mona Lisa don’t really matter … well … maybe if the food somehow resembled a Philadelphia Eagles logo or something like that, it might. He’d be just as happy with a pile of buffalo wings as some truffle-infused-this or foie-gras-that (actually, I’m sure he’d prefer the wings). Second, he’s a manly man with a manly man appetite. For places like Melograno, while we’re sure he’d enjoy the food, we know that he would definitely require two entrees just to get rid of his hunger, much less get full. This leads us to a corollary of the second reason: getting two entrees costs double the money. Our grandfather cut down our money tree (inside joke), so getting two entrees (or suggesting that he eat a pre-dinner burger from McDonald’s) is a bit much.
g and I have been racking our brains for a while to find an sr-worthy eatery in Philly. First – it had to have good-tasting food. Sure, Tony Luke’s is great for cheesesteaks, but we wanted a real sit-down place to eat. We also kind of wanted it to be somewhat “cool” or “hip” – not just a dive hidden somwhere in South Philly. We wanted a sizable portion of food for under $25, which is what we often deem as the max we’re willing to pay for food unless we’re celebrating something. And if there was some way that he could use his fingers (without anyone minding that he’d be using his fingers), that’d be icing on the cake. Well – one such restaurant does exist: Percy Street BBQ.
The short version (because we’ve already been there once) …
5/2010, Saturday 6:30pm, Party of 4. g, j, sr, and I all went to Percy Street for dinner. After scrutinizing the menu, and doing some fancy calculations (i.e. counting on our fingers), we decided that the wisest decision was to do the Lockhart. We went all in. It. Was. Awesome. Each of the meats had its own shtick. The sausage and chicken had smokey flavors unlike I had ever tasted in sausage or chicken. The pork belly was spot on [again]. j liked the brisket. And there’s not a person alive who can resist ribs – it almost doesn’t matter what they taste like. At the very least, the sides were “good” or “solid” (e.g. cole slaw, black-eyed peas) – but the baked beans and chilis showed the most flavor. Somehow, we still managed to forget to get the cornbread – darn. Percy Street also debuted a new bbq sauce – it was their sweet version. I think we all felt it was too sweet, but it was much better when you mixed it with the Louisiana hot sauce. The regular bbq sauce was pretty good (although we realize that bbq sauce tastes vary widely among people), but we know we have to go back when they get their spicy bbq sauce going (apparently they’re still figuring it out).
The desserts were completely new to us, as the last time we went, we didn’t have room. While two of us had the root beer floats, g ventured the red velvet cake, and I went for the ice cream sandwich. The red velvet cake was pretty good – not as moist as Isgro’s, but very nice; the “homemade” cream cheese icing was the star of that dish. The ice cream sandwich was awesome. It had crunchy chocolate cookies with a raspberry ice cream – very nice (although g was looking for the classic soft cookie-esque thing that is on normal ice cream sandwiches). Nothing like ice cream to wash down some bbq – I wish it had a bit more ice cream, however.
In the end, we think sr liked it quite a bit. He liked how open the restaurant was. He liked glass vessels that you could order beer in. And the price wasn’t too bad, either – considering that all of us were most definitely full … even him.
Good job Percy Street. Now if only you had something for mom, too …
Cabot’s Ice Cream: A Boston Classic
k says: A friend recently told me she was visiting my home town in MA, which got me feeling nostalgic about my most favorite ice cream store in the world. I can’t imagine why you would care, but let me tell you about it anyway.
Cabot’s Ice Cream is a classic ice cream parlor. I don’t think the menu or the prices have changed in the past 2 decades at least. They serve old fashioned sundaes. There are red stools at the bar, a huge ice cream cone clock on the wall, and framed photos of the youth baseball teams that Cabot’s has sponsored through the years. They serve child-sized sundaes with two M+M’s for eyes, a cherry for a nose, and a cone for a hat. They serve these insanely huge buckets with 100 scoops of ice cream, 20 candy and nut toppings and 10 wet toppings for big parties where the goal is apparently to make people sick. They have ice cream concoctions with ridiculous names like “Chocolate Suicide”, “The Taj Mahal”, and “The Dentist Disaster.” http://www.cabots.com/pdf/menu_ice_cream.pdf.
They also serve crappy greasy food but why would you ever go for food when you can fill up on ice cream? There is an old lady who has worked there since I can remember whose job it is to seat you, and don’t you dare try to seat yourself. And then there is the old lady’s mother, who is a really, really old lady. Her job is to sit on the stool and give dirty stares to the pre-teen customers who are goofing around and to the teenaged waitresses flirting with the bus boys. It seems impossible, but just as the prices haven’t changed, neither has the age of the old lady.
Cabot’s has been the site of many memories. When we were kids, we used to go to Cabot’s after big soccer tournament wins, elementary school choir concerts, and many, many piano recitals. Later, it was the place I went to on my first “boys and girls hang out”. There’s nothing like a lot of sugar to make a group date a little easier for a bunch of awkward teenagers. Much later, I went there with cm and our good friend b for the famous ice cream competition of 2005. (b and cm ordered different ice cream sundaes with equal prices and had an eating competition. Unfortunately b’s was absurdly large, and madness ensued.)
But none of these details really matter. I go to there for one thing only – mint chocolate cookie frozen yogurt. This is made with thin mint girl scout cookies mixed in smoothly with vanilla frozen yogurt in an old time ice cream machine. It is delicious. It’s not exactly a novel idea, but it’s superior for a few reasons. One is that it actually tastes like mint cookie ice cream, rather than vanilla ice cream with mint cookie chunks haphazardly folded in like at Cold Stone Creamery. And, unlike other stores that use a mixing machine, the selection of flavors to mix in is very wide including candies, fruits, brownies, and the will do it with a vanilla or chocolate base of ice cream or different types of frozen yogurt for those picky people like me.
I should say also that I am not just a casual ice cream eater. In Massachusetts, people take ice cream very seriously. It is not just a summer treat where I come from. Ice cream can be eaten in any weather, any time of year, and on certain occasions can take the place of meals even. There are many ice cream stores that I like in the Boston area – Lizzy’s has great hard frozen yogurt flavors and a chill feel in Harvard Square, Christina’s in Inman Square is also delicious (cm and I visited there often the summer he lived right next door), and White Mountain Creamery across the street from Boston College where they make the ice cream fresh in the store is a solid second choice for a Monday night in Newton (Cabot’s is closed on Monday’s.)
JP Licks- I will never go there despite their popularity because I am loyal to the Baskin Robbins that used to be in that locations before they took over… the Baskin Robbins where the owner would give you another scoop if you dropped it on the ground, where a kiddie size was $1, where my sister had her first summer job. JP Licks is lame and expensive and smells like too much sugar.
But despite all the options, nothing is like Cabot’s. Sometimes I sit in the booth looking at the menu, pretending to consider ordering a different flavor, but let’s be honest, I’m obviously going to order the mint chocolate cookie. It’s predetermined. Sometimes when I go with my sister, she likes to order a side of hot fudge to share. The hot fudge is a deeply rich dark chocolate that is so good, but in my opinion masks the goodness of the mint chocolate cookie itself. A bunch of years back, when I introduced cm to my love for Cabot’s (a very meaningful experience), he found a way to take it up a notch. cm surprised me one birthday with a mint chocolate cookie frozen yogurt cake (made to order). Amazing. Since then we have celebrated many birthdays with a Cabot’s cake. So, early in the stages of planning our wedding, we (I) had already decided Cabot’s mint chocolate cookie ice cream cake would be our featured dessert. Yes, I know it’s not a classic wedding cake. But in my opinion, your wedding is your opportunity to eat the foods that you love most in the world and everyone else has to eat it because it’s your wedding. And believe me, I don’t think anyone really complained, because that cake was devoured. Plus I like the weird look I get from people when I tell them we had an ice cream cake as our wedding cake.
So, after this review, I hope you’ve been convinced to try Cabot’s Ice Cream on your next visit to Boston. Try not to do anything to piss off the really old lady.
t says: Yea ... that cake at their wedding was hellawickedgood.
GTC: We found GTC’s Achilles Heel
t says: In the world of Garces restaurants, we like GTC a lot. It’s a fun concept that reminds us a little of Talula’s Table, but with slightly heftier/fancier lunch options available; you can get good food without having to do the whole formal sit-down thing – which is great. And, as far as the food is concerned, I think between our experience, and k and cm’s experience (k and cm fully approve of the vichyssoise and flatbreads as well as the ability to pick up a nice, inexpensive bottle of wine), we haven’t yet found something wrong with GTC. I even bought a mess of their desserts for an Easter celebration, and they were all delicious – g’s mom said that their lemon tart has the best lemon substance she’s ever had! That’s some serious praise.
Well … today we may have stumbled upon GTC’s weakness. It all started when I saw scones while waiting in the checkout line. They were peach-ginger-cranberry. It sounded promising. I started having visions of the lemon-ginger scones at Talula’s Table, which makes the best scones that g and I have ever had. Could it be possible that these are even half as good as those? I could get a scone fix without going to Kennett Square? If anyone could do it, surely Garces could, right? I ordered it on a whim and g fed it to me in the car as we made our getaway.
The result: salty. That’s right – the scone was salty. It actually reminded us of the time we made David Chang’s Momofuku shortbread biscuits, but used Morton’s kosher salt in lieu of Diamond Crystal brand – it was ridiculously salty. g pointed out that she hit some sweet sections that were less salty and very delicious, so perhaps it was a mixing issue, and not a salt level issue. In any case, I really couldn’t taste much of the peach, which was sad. Cranberry was the biggest non-salt thing I could taste, but the bits of cranberry were more like Craisins than actual cranberries, so they were a bit tough to chew. The cake was also a little dry, so maybe it was sitting out for too long (although we’ve had day-old Talula’s scones on several occasions without a problem). Well, I hope that Jose fixes this problem soon (as I’m sure he’s an avid reader of “the sneeze”). Then again, it’s not like if he didn’t fix it that I wouldn’t go to GTC … I just won’t get the scones, cuz everything else we’ve had is awesome.
Cafe Estelle: Nutella and Scrapple – Duh!
t says: I actually completely forgot that we went to Cafe Estelle! Only when we recently saw our Cafe Estelle brunch-mates did it click that we went! Because my memory has faded, I’ll give you the short version …
Setting: Honey’s Sit-n-Eat was completely packed at 10am. We were sad. As we sat in line, we were cold. We decided that being warm was more important than Honey’s. Sorry Honey’s. Our friends suggested Cafe Estelle. We walked briskly.
5/2010, Sunday 10:30am, Party of 4. We were told that the wait was going to be 40 minutes. We had a sneaking suspicion that they were lying. Indeed, they lied; we were seated 10 minutes later.
I found stuffed French toast on the menu. I felt the allure, having experienced delicious stuffed French toasts before at Sabrina’s. Then I found that the special was chocolate-hazelnut-cream stuffed French toast. I was sold. Then I read “house made scrapple”. Yes please. When we ordered, the very nice waitress expressed her concern that others at the table would be envious of my meal. I agreed and began planning my defense just in case they attempted to overtake me for my food.
Result: The French toast by itself was good – the nutella filling was great (I wish it was a little thicker or a little fluffier – it was a little soupy). Add in the scrapple, and wow! Of course, this scrapple was “home-made” and you could see the textural difference as it felt like it was actually composed of fine shreds of meat – but let’s face it – you don’t eat scrapple because it’s meat! Scrapple is clearly a meat-like-thing and should be crunchy on the outside and smooth on the inside (like pre-chewed sausage). Consequently, the “homemade-ness” of the scrapple didn’t win me over (don’t get me wrong – it was good – but not better than a well-executed not-homemade scrapple). The nutella-scrapple combo however was dynamite. I will now carry nutella with me to South Jersey diners if there’s a chance that I might order scrapple (best non-homemade scrapple: Mayslanding Diner ca. 2000).
Definitely a great meal and worth revisiting – especially if Honey’s has the audacity to make you wait in the cold.
Mixto: Great Potatoes
t says: We got together at Mixto this past weekend with a fairly large group of friends. They take reservations and have ample space to handle such large groups, so we figured it’d be a safe bet; we were also far closer to Mixto than Cochon, ruling out a trip to my favorite pancakes. We’ve been to Mixto at least once before – if we’ve gone more than once, I’ve forgotten. In any case, I distinctly remember their croissant French toast, which were quite tasty (how can you go wrong if you start off with a croissant? Dunkin’ Donuts and Burger King have been relying on croissants for years), although small in serving size, so I was pumped to try something else.
5/2010, Sunday 12:30pm, Party of ?12?. We arrived and were seated promptly. There was some snafu with the table we were seated at and the number of people we had coming (g and I were last minute add-ons … oops!), so we had to be reseated at a larger table. I appreciate their ability to “roll with the punches” on a fairly busy Sunday. As we sat and got reacquainted with our friends, I perused the menu. Would I go for the pancakes? That’s the natural move, as last time I had the French toast. But, in my head, I doubted whether they’d stack up against Cochon’s, which is a tall order to fill. So, instead of set myself up for disappointment, I went for a g-dish: steak and eggs. Now, Mixto claims that theirs is “Argentinian steak and eggs”, so I was excited to taste something a little different. I ordered and “patiently” (i.e. looked longingly) at servers holding trays, hoping that one would carry my steak and eggs.
When my dish arrived, my nostrils were filled with the beautiful smell of beef and potatoes. It was a manly smell – the kind that puts hair on your chest … well – the kind that smells good and puts hair on your chest. The portion of beef looked substantial (vs. what I had seen a friend recently enjoy at Parc) and the potatoes were golden brown. The two perfectly over-easy eggs stared at me, like a deer in headlights; they knew what was coming … and there was nothing they could do to stop it.
I then sliced into the beef … or at least, I tried. It was a little more resistant to cutting then I had hoped – a combination of the knife’s fault (it was fairly blunt) and the meat being a little over-done; I ordered medium-well, but there was not a trace of pink in sight (as a general rule, I save medium and medium-rare for places that either specialize in steak or have small enough volume to ensure consistency coming out of the kitchen). The beef was seasoned well, but its toughness dampened my spirits. I also didn’t really taste a whole lot of bold flavors or anything to justify the tag “Argentinian” (I actually had no idea what flavors make something Argentinian, so I was looking for anything).
The potatoes, on the other hand, were delicious. They had a little crust but were soft and moist the whole way through, just how I like my morning potatoes. Bravo!
There was also a side salad that was little more special than a side salad. A friend of ours swears by the dressing that accompanies the salad, but compared to great salads like kp’s spinach-and-pancetta salad or g’s super-summer-special salads, it really didn’t stand out. It did however add much needed vegetal zing to an otherwise heavy dish – so I was happy it was there.
g had the huevos rancheros, another classic g-dish. She seemed satisfied with it, but it was a little more deconstructed than she had had the last time she was there, so it didn’t sing quite as harmoniously. That said, she did eat it all, so I’m sure it was fine (I had a taste – it was fine) … just not fine enough for her to rave, “hey – you have got to try this”.
In summary, outside the overcooking of the beef, I don’t have any problems with Mixto. I think that the food is “good”. But I think that in the future, I’ll mostly think of going to Mixto because of their ability to accommodate a group, not because I’m looking for mind-blowing food. But when you have friends, who needs mind-blowing food? Mind-blowing food doesn’t drink a mojito, get an Asian flush, and then state emphatically at the top of its lungs: “most men do NOT do yoga”.
after dinner sneeze 