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I can barely make out the text, but I think that is cheese stuffed/covered hotdogs in a bath or creamed corn and mustard.
Madmen seems to be pretty popular these days and people are having viewing parties where they dress the part, drink the drinks, and pretend like it’s the 50′s. I don’t watch the show (yeah I know) but I do like to pretend like I’m from the 50′s, except in my world I’m a time traveller from the 1980′s. I digress.
I recently stumbled upon Retrospace, a pretty amazing site chronicling all sorts of stuff from times past. Considering my weird interest/obsession with f’ed up junk food, i went directly to the Gastro-Abominations section and perused the images. I guess to go full circle, is anybody having Madmen viewing parties where they are serving some of this gnarly cuisine? And if so, can I come?
Asides from the image up top, here are some more of my favorites:
I guess this is meat wrapped around celery covered in some sort of cheese?
This really isn’t that crazy, I just think it’s a cool ad and concept.
And this image which won’t show up for whatever reason. I can imagine some executive being like “Well have YOU tried it? That’s what I thought so JUST DO IT.”
The whole site seems to be full of treasures, and I’ve just barely cracked the surface. Here’s another one of my favorites, this one from the Retro Ads section.
Anything on the site make you smile?
A couple of weeks ago while trying to enjoy myself in the Lower East Side a friend of mine and I went to get some post drink snacks at Mikey’s Burger, the latest offering from lower Manhattan’s leader of Vietnamication, Michael “Bao” Huynh, the guy behind Baoguette and Bia. A smallish, tiled greasy spoon, Mikey’s Burger just sells burgers, hotdogs, fries and shakes, mixing in elements of Southeast Asia with the classics of American fast food.
My friend Steve and I, after glancing over the menu, decided to go with the The Mikey, which is a burger topped with onions, corned beef, and pickled mustard seed. We perched ourselves on two stools by the fryer and watched as the cooks took out and shaped fresh hamburger patties and cooked them to order on the grill. I also took note that the precooked fries were kept oiled in a tray before they hit the fryer, which, while I dont know much about frying, struck me as a pretty interesting approach as I always assumed blanching was the way to go when making fries. Either way if and when I ever decide to make my own french fries, I might give that approach a try, but then again we didn’t get the fries so I have no idea if they were any good. Anyways, after about 5 minutes, we got our burgers, served in little paper tries. I proceeded to pour some Sriracha on the burger and dig in. The first thing I noticed was that the burger itself was juicy and thick, as they went with the more patted down ball of meat approach as opposed to the patty. But beyond that I didnt really taste the corned beef or the mustard seed. All in all it wasn’t a bad burger, and it really hit the spot at 3AM, however it’s a tad bit pricey ($5.50…I guess it could be worse), but when you’re drunk at 3AM, everything seems like a great idea.
Today I made a trek through the snow globe that has become the northeast to Bark Hot Dogs, a newish(?) semi-upscale hot dog spot in Park Slope.
The interior is nice, modern, sparse, and sort of fancy what with its wood panelling, plain white brick walls, and long communal bar benches, which I always think is a crucial set up when ever hotdogs and burgers are involved. But enough about the interior, I’m here to talk about the dogs, and they were…ok. I got my usual litmus test dogs, chili cheese and sauerkraut with mustard, and a lemon-lime FoxOn Park soda. After a 5 or so minute wait, my order came out on a nice little metal tray lined with butcher paper. The first thing I noticed was that they went for the “just right” approach with the toppings. As opposed to some hot dog places like say, Happy Dog in Cleveland who overload your dog to the point that you need a knife and fork, Bark put just the right amount so that things were spilling out all over the place while you ate or overpowering the fairly slender dog (oddly enough though, my chili cheese dog sort of ended up leaning to one side of the paper tray it sat in and the chili and melted cheese ended up adhering to the tray so I used a knife and fork anyways). The second thing I noticed was that the dogs were longer than the bun and curled up on the sides. The weiners had a nice snap and fairly mellow hot dog flavor, which I think could be attributed to the use of a pork blend as opposed to the heavier somewhat spicier taste of all beef, which I prefer but I’m not complaining either. The cheese was a melted white cheddar and the chili was a beanless meat sauce (yes!) both of which were decent. The kraut dog was pretty straightforward, nothing really notable to mention, but one thing that did stick out to me about both dogs was the bun. They were toasted really nicely and had a nice chewiness to them, a real quality piece of bread.
All in all the meal was pretty good, leaning more towards decent as opposed to awesome, but something that kept ringing in my ear from the second I paid to my walk home was that 2 hot dogs and a soda came out to about $15. A while back there was a small discussion in the comment section here about people paying way too much money for what’s supposed to an everyday man’s meal, and I honestly leaned towards the “sometimes you’ve just gotta pay a little more for a quality product”. But after eating at Bark, and I am no way saying it’s a total rip off or anything, I couldn’t stop thinking about the David Cross bit about eating at Jean Georges and then while eating you realize “WAIT A MINUTE…THIS ISNT WORTH $______!” I mean, I think Crif Dogs makes a more quality product and they’re at least a dollar cheaper across the board. Five Guys, despite being about $12 for a burger, fries, and a drink, fills you up and gives you enough fries to feed a small family.
So there you have it, my all over the place review of Bark Hot Dogs. Pretty good, definitely worth a stop in if you’re in the area, and possibly worth a second visit (they serve breakfast on weekend mornings, as well as burgers and fries which I didn’t try), but nothing really mindblowing.
So a little while ago there was a big buzz in the fast food world about KFC’s Double Down sandwich, which if you don’t know is a sandwich where fried chicken is the bun and bacon, cheese, and some mystery sauce is the filler. However it was then revealed that it was only being sold in select markets and those of us not in those markets were left with only our imaginations as to what this monstrosity could taste like and just how many of them we could eat before dying.
Well, what was also sort of causing a little buzz, granted only in the midtown lunch world, was Midtown Lunch’s Sandwich Challenge. Sort of a competition, the idea was for midtown lunch spots to come up with a sandwich under $10 that is, in Zach’s words, “Bold. New. Unhealthy. Wrong (but oh so right.)”. Some entries included a Mexican Cheesestreak from the El Rey del Sabor cart, a Fried Calamari Hero from Lazzara’s, and a Duck Pastrami Sandwich from Free Foods. Sadly enough, a lot of these places are a little too far out of my jurisdiction here in midtown east (the El Rey Del Sabor near me didnt have it), so I didnt get around to trying any of them…until now. And which one did I try? The winner of the Midtown Lunch August Sandwich Challenge, The Colonel’s Heart Attack from Cer Te.
Located a little bit of a walk from my work, Cer Te is a place Id been meaning to check out for a while due to the many entries about on Midtown Lunch. So with today finally being a slow day here in magic TV land, me and my usual lunch companions Phil and Delancey made the trek and got 3 Colonel’s Heart Attacks to go. Oh what’s that? What’s a Colonel’s Heart Attack? Well I’m glad you asked. It’s 2 pieces of boneless fried chicken breast, topped with mac & cheese, and collard greens sandwiched in a biscuit with a side of gravy. How can you go wrong? Well first off, upon ordering the guy told us they were out of collard greens, but they had sauteed spinach. Ok, fine, even though I would’ve rather have had the collard greens. And then we ended up waiting for honestly at least 15 minutes. Ok, whatever. Like I said, it’s a slow day at work. And it’s a $9.75 sandwich. Look as long as it fills me up and is good, fine. We get our sandwiches after slowly depleting their supply of free brownie samples and made the trip back to the office. Everything looked good, it was a good size, and I dug in. Shit was crumbly. Crumbs were flying all over the place so I switched to a fork and knife. Still crumbs, so I put it on a paper plate and went to town. It was good, but I noticed that it was also somehow a tad bland and dry. But no problem right? They gave us gravy on the side…no they didn’t. It turned out to be a little container of cole slaw and some bullshit pickle (I hate pickles). But whatever, I dumped some hot sauce on and finished that thing.
The moral of the story: conceptually it was a good idea, but, but what I think this is an issue with a lot of these Frankenstein Foods is that as you start to combine all these foods, shit just gets too convoluted and next thing you know you’re not really tasting one thing or the other. And in the case of the Colonel’s Heart Attack, not only did flavors blend into each other, they blended into each other in a bland way. I mean right now it feels like I just ate a biscuit and spinach sandwich that had some crusty stuff and yellow glop in it. Now before this ends with me sounding like I’m damning the Colonel’s Heart Attack, I still want to commend Cer Te for making a creative sandwich, and I will definitely consider going back to check out some of their other sandwich specials such as the Thanksgiving Dip (I’ve always wanted to open a year round Thanksgiving restaurant that just served Thanksgiving food), as well as what looked like quality desserts.
It’s also summer 2.0 outside, so you should just do yourself a favor and go for a walk regardless.
Enjoy!
I’m pretty sure that 95%+ of the contributors to this site have some sort of affiliation with the grey skied wonder that is Cleveland, Ohio. I would say that I grew up there (my family moved there was I was 8 from Dallas) and I still call it home. I don’t get back there as much as I used to, and I definitely haven’t had many chances to go out and explore the ever expanding gastronic community that Cleveland has to offer as I’m often eating dinner at home with the folks (which I should stress is not a bad thing). So a couple of weeks ago I went back for my 10 year high school reunion (yeah), and I made it a point to go out and get some food. Here’s how it went down.
Thursday
My mom picked me up from the airport and we went to Pho Hoa, formerly known as Superior Pho. My parents usually opt for #1 Pho (that’s where my mom initially wanted to go) and I think it’s mainly because it’s nicer. However, in the few times in the past that I’ve managed to get Superior, I always found it to be, well, superior. The broth just seems better and for me thats the deciding factor. This homecoming bowl was no exception as it was as good as I had remembered and definitely a great post-airplane meal.
It’s still got nothing on my mom’s though.
(sidenote: I notice that a lot of pho places use the thinner more vermicelli-esque noodles as opposed to the flat ones. What’s with that?)
Friday
I went to my high schooll reunion and they had pretty mediocre “barbecue”. I did get pretty drunk though.
Saturday
I had Popeyes with my parents. As my brother would tell you, my parents love Popeyes. The nearest Popeyes is by Randall Park Mall (RIP) and that’s like 20 minutes away, yet they make the drive every other week. When asked why, they cited the spicy chicken and just the overall quality. Recently when my mom was on her maiden trip to New York, I took her to Egg where reportedly one of the girls from Pies N’ Thighs makes the fried chicken. She ordered it, and when my brother asked her if it was as good as Popeyes, my mom said “No…but they’re different.”
I for one have always loved Popeyes because of their mashed potatoes, which has chunks of chicken and skin in it.
When explaining my parents’ love of Popeyes to my girlfriend, she said “Now I see where you get it from.”
Sunday
We ate at this pseudo-fancy seafood place at Beachwood mall. My parents and brother had eaten there before and said it was okay, and at first glance it was. I even ordered oysters and they were fine. But my entree, some Ahi Tuna dish, was an honest to goodness disaster. It was “Cajun spiced” and cooked rare, but it was served like sashimi, with the traditional sushi ecoutrements and some nori wrapped rice. Instinctively deciding to eat it like sushi I dunked a piece of tuna in my soy sauce, only I discovered that “Cajun spiced” meant “salty as F” and that combining that with the soy sauce was salt overload. And the rice rolls were too few to really matter for anything. Why would you Cajun spice a dish you’re serving and presenting like it’s Japanese? All in all it was a horriblely conceived dish and enough to not make me care enough to look up the name of the place.
There’s better seafood in Cleveland.
Monday
After a year or two of good intentions, I finally went to Melt in Lakewood. Original plans to go were often maligned by “There’s an hour wait” or “Mom’s making steak”, but this time I made it a point to designate one lunch for Melt, and I was not disappointed. I had long studied the menu in my off time to prepare myself for the day that I actually went, so I knew what I was in for food wise. However I was a little surprised to see that the place was a legitimate bar/restaurant, with decor not too far off from The Winking Lizard (only a little more focused on rock & roll and retro kitsch like a 1978 Cleveland Browns team photo in the bathroom). I always just pictured it as a greasy little place with some stools and a counter.
Accompanied by my pal Jim “Lil Shakespeare” Zadd, we sat at the bar and were promptly attended to by the bartender. We ordered our food and drink, I a Municipal Stadium (bratwurst, sauerkraut, american cheese, I asked for no peppers) with lemonade and Jim an El Diablo Burger con Budweiser. After a bit of a wait, our food came out and here’s what I got:
Each dish came with a side of handcut fries and slaw, both of which were pretty good (only I don’t really like sweet slaw). The sandwich however was obviously the real star, as it is the namesake, and it didn’t disappoint. I was a little skeptical prior to my Melt experience as I have had poor grilled cheese sandwich concepts before, but this was pretty much right on the money. They split the sausage so that it didnt slide all over the place, and they put just enough kraut so that it didnt squirt out when you took a bite. Honestly every bite had every ingredient in it, no joke, and I think that’s a pretty big plus in my book. The sausage was flavorful, as was the kraut, and the cheese being American did it’s job (I really like American cheese). My only minor complaint was that the bread was a little too thick, but it’s honestly negligible. Best of all, this pile of food that I did not finish (fries will always be my downfall) was only $9.
All in all, it was a great sandwich well worth the money, and I would definitely go back and try another. And if you haven’t been there yet, you should. Just check out the menu.
So that’s it. Tuesday I went back to New York with my mom and brother because my brother had this reading he was doing at Le Poussin Rouge. There are many more places in Cleveland I need to hit up, some new, most old, and I hope to check some more off the list when I’m back for the 4th of July. If you’ve got any suggestions, feel free to comment away.
