Category: Savory

Savory

Eater: Holler & Dash is Cracker Barrel for Millennials

This is either a very cynical, last gasp attempt at relating to a younger crowd or a slam dunk:

Considering Cracker Barrel is a chain that has long represented the antithesis of youth culture, with its front-porch rocking chairs and old-timey feel, this restaurant is going in a totally new direction. Instead of opening off an interstate exit, Holler & Dash is moving into Homewood’s pedestrian-friendly downtown. The space’s interior is obviously directed at the coveted millennial demographic with a number of hot design elements found in many of today’s trendy eateries. There’s plenty of exposed brick, industrial lighting, and detail on the ceiling.

Evidence that it might end up being more of the latter – Cracker Barrel tapped rising star chef Brandon Frohne, formerly of Nashville’s Mason’s, to be the new venture’s directory of culinary. Color me intrigued.

Savory

N&O: Oiso Sushi & Korean now open in Cary ↬

This new sushi restaurant is in a tough location for exposure, but would be way more convenient for me than my other favorites in the triangle.

His selection of some 30 specialty rolls, a list peppered with rolls you won’t find elsewhere, provides further evidence. Hamachi Mania, for one, serves up yellowtail three ways — spicy, seared and deep-fried — in an East-West fusion of avocado, cucumber, scallion, pepper, tobiko, ponzu and Peruvian aji amarillo sauce. Then there’s the Chef Kim’s roll: tuna, salmon, white tuna, lobster salad, and masago in a daikon wrap, topped with special ponzu and truffle with seaweed salad.

If it’s as good as advertised, it could lead to a sharp uptick in the number of sushi date nights for us!

O&F
Savory

Pickin’ A Cake That Goes With Pig

This past weekend, Eater sent my heart all a flutter by introducing the web to a dessert near and dear to my heart: the Pig Pickin’ Cake:

Pig Pickin’ Cake is a traditional Southern dessert that is often eaten at barbecues, picnics, or other communal gatherings. A vanilla cake batter is usually tossed with segments of mandarin oranges which help keep the cake moist and add a sweet citrus flavor. Once baked, the cake is traditionally topped with a whipped frosting that includes chunks of pineapple and its juice.

After my first introduction to the Pig Pickin’ Cake, it became my standard request for birthdays or practically any other meal for which I had the privilege of selecting the dessert. Even as my tastes evolved into preferring red velvet cake, I tried to hold on maybe a bit too long to my all time favorite by asking my mom to take a stab at red velvet Pig Pickin’ Cake. No one liked the result except for me.

On a semi-related note, Eater is fast becoming my favorite of the Vox stable of web properties.

Savory

Driftwood Southern Kitchen

Last night, I met up with a couple of friends at Driftwood, my first visit to the southern style kitchen in North Raleigh’s Lafayette Village. Everything about it made a great first impression: the decor, atmosphere, Wednesday night whiskey special and, of course, the menu. Undoubtedly, the brisket was the star of the table, with the ribs being a close second. I had the meatloaf, which was also very good.

As it turns out, brisket is on a bit of a come-up in the barbecue world, as chronicled in a recent feature by Jim Shahin over on First We Feast1.

Once associated solely with Texas, the meat is so commonplace that it is harder to find a barbecue restaurant in the country—even in full-blown pig territories—that hasn’t added the Lone Star icon to its menu.

If you haven’t tried brisket yet, I highly recommend it; and Driftwood’s take on it would certainly make for a nice introduction.

  1. via Dave Pell  ↩

Savory

A New Kind of Brew

Second, perhaps, only to the meteoric rise in popularity of local micro and craft breweries is the proliferation of local coffee. Be it cafés, roasting or specialty brewing, coffee has never been more popular as an entrepreneurial endeavor in America. I’m especially excited about the local coffee scene that’s been brewing in the Triangle for the last few years. Continue reading “A New Kind of Brew” →

Savory

A Mountainous Feast Fit For the Sea

No two visits to The Lobster Trap (35 Patton Ave, Asheville; $17-$49) have to be the same but, in my opinion, there are two requirements for every trip: oyster shooters and lobster macaroni & cheese. Fill in the rest however you please. Even if you disregard my recommendations, I dare say you will not be disappointed. In two trips to this downtown Asheville institution, I certainly have not.

The Food

On the most recent outing back in May, the group decided to attempt The Lobster Trap Feast – a smorgasbord of menu offerings fit for a party of four to six (our party included eight, myself and two others going out on our own to explore the menu). The seemingly never-ending arrival of food to the table is impressive, if not overwhelming. It begins with the oysters, pulled from a selection of locales and prepared to your preferred temperature, cooked or raw. Cups of soup or bisque soon follow, paving the way for the main event, a smattering of crustaceans, mussels and clams. A selection of sides for this group begins and ends with lobster macaroni and cheese, possibly with a vegetable somewhere in there to placate the carbohydrate overload.

I’m not a lobster guy1, but I do enjoy seafood. Over two separate trips to The Lobster Trap I’ve tried their crab cakes, the aforementioned lobster mac & cheese, and, most recently, grilled tuna accompanied by the superfood du jour, avocado2, and matching drizzle. I ordered the tuna rare and it arrived as near to perfection as I could detect. To put it succinctly, the food was spot on.

The Drinks

Not to be outdone by the kitchen, the bar offers a wide variety of cocktails, even putting their own spin on a few classics. This group has been on a bourbon kick lately, and many of the custom offerings, sounding like unique yet familiar concoctions3, catered perfectly to our tastes. The Lobster Trap is also associated with its own brewery, though I don’t think any of us took a dip. I’ve already mentioned the oyster shooters, which are fantastic.

The Room

The Lobster Trap is smallish, and is certainly not quiet. The staff is very pleasant and accommodating – the hostess took a cell phone number and offered to call us to let us know when our table was ready, allowing us to pre-game around downtown Asheville while we waited. The eight of us sat reasonably comfortable at one of their large booth tables, with one person at the end. The atmosphere is rustic without feeling old; modern materials intended to look old adorning the room.

Experience

Someone once asked me why we eat. Unguarded and let down by my inner Admiral Ackbar4, I fumbled through an apathetic, yet ill-fated response. Emboldened by my failure, my antagonist proceeded to lecture me on food’s vital role as an energy source for our bodies and our collective over-dependence on food as a source of pleasure5. But, to me, this is an overly simplistic view of the relationship between food and the human experience. If we are all just machines, mechanical processes dependent on optimized input and output for the most efficient operation, then yes, food is just fuel. But we’re not. We are human, designed to experience pleasure, to fellowship with each other and, when possible, share our experiences with each other. I’ve been fortunate to be in great company every time I’ve visited The Lobster Trap, but being complicit in that experience is no small feat. As easy as it may be to serve as the backdrop for that experience, it can be just as easy to ruin it. The Lobster Trap nails it, providing a great atmosphere, pleasant and accommodating staff, and fantastic food to top it off.

Rating: Notable.

  1. It falls into a category I call “Things I Don’t Need to Know I Like”.↩
  2. I am among the smitten.↩
  3. Our waitress claimed authorship of one of the drinks (Smokey Eye).↩
  4. “It’s a trap.” ↩
  5. Later that evening, he proceeded to wrestle with our waiter over the limited, perhaps even non-existent, gluten-free options on the Applebee’s menu. In 2003. ↩
Savory

The Burger is Back

It might have started long ago elsewhere, but in Raleigh and the rest of the Triangle, the burger is back. Fast-growing national chains like Five Guys and BurgerFi have made their way into the market and now local hot spots are sprouting up – each with their own spin: Tribeca Tavern, a moderately up-scale establishment that grinds their own beef and features their own brews (along with others, including a decent selection of NC brews); Bull City Burger – a walk-up and order establishment serving locally sourced, grass-fed beef, sporting an in-house brewery and unique wine bar situated in a revitalized downtown Durham; Chuck’s – part of Ashley Christensen’s three-headed restaurant experiment in downtown Raleigh; Only Burger, a burger stand that started (and still exists) as a food truck; and the subject of this review, Charlotte-based Bad Daddy’s Burger Bar (nee Big Daddy’s) – a specialty burger shop with full bar, end-capping a new structure in the Seaboard Station area of downtown Raleigh.

At first glance, Bad Daddy’s Burger Bar (111 Seaboard Ave, Raleigh; $10-$13) seems like a retread of a familiar concept – a bar that serves burgers. Novel idea, right? But the name and ambiance imply something different – almost as if the founders wanted to flip that concept on its head. Start with a great burger, add myriad options and serve some drinks along with it. The menu, as one member of my dinner party commented, seems to require the time to consume at least one beer to sort out. We witnessed this first hand when another fellow diner ordered a side salad – the options seemingly sprouting at every turn from his lettuce base (two choices), two “toppings”, a fruit, a meat, and a dressing! The burger options were similarly mesmerizing, offering near endless combinations of toppings and even patty meat mixtures.

Beef lovers eagerly anticipating the ruling on the quality of the hamburgers will be disappointed – I opted for a black bean burger, my current obsession when visiting spots that offer one. Though it is also possible to create your own, the menu standard Cantina (with the addition of jalapeños) was enough to satisfy my black bean hankering. As I alluded to earlier, I’ve tried a fair number of black bean burgers in the area and this one certainly found a place near the top. I rarely take an opportunity to jump on the growing sweet potato fries bandwagon, but I strayed from the norm here again. I certainly wasn’t disappointed with my choice, though I will admit that the Bad Daddy’s version of sweet potatoes served french style didn’t stray too far from what I’ve had elsewhere.

And that’s ultimately where I ended up in my overall impression of Bad Daddy’s. The burger’s are great1 – maybe not any better than the best burgers we’ve had in the area, but certainly not discernibly worse. However, the options that Bad Daddy’s provide are so impressive, it’s hard to imagine any burger lover wouldn’t be able to build the burger of their dreams.

Rating: Notable.

  1. According to my cohorts. Among my meat eating dinner party, the average score for the burgers was 7/10 ↩