Category: Food

I get a little cringy when people call me a “restaurant critic.” I’m comfortable with “food writer,” but “restaurant critic” has such a host of connotations — none of them particularly good — that I try to stay away from the term. Think “restaurant critic” and you don’t think of someone fun, laid-back, drinking a beer and asking you if your sister is still single. No, you picture a fussy, possibly mustachioed, narrow-shouldered, whiny loser who will pick apart everything that the waiter (who will also be  picked apart, by the way) brings to the table. 

I mention that because as a diner I’m pretty uncritical. I let a lot of stuff slide. I don’t give much of a care is service is good, or bad, or horrendous as long as the food is good. There are, however, a few things that drive me f’ing bonkers, and I’ve been running into them a lot lately.

Crappy Bread– Uh huh. I’m looking at you, Plan B, you, Sweetwater, and you, Cafe Marika. It’s really not hard to order good bread from a good bakery. You have absolutely no excuse for the doughy, cold, chewy slices you’re trying to pawn off as dinner bread. Honestly, just buy rolls from Safeway and heat them up. Odds are they’re better than the 1) frozen dough that you’re cooking before the shift starts, 2) cheap bread that you’re using for way too many days, or 3) the misguided crap that you’re trying to make yourself. Call a bakery. Don’t be a hero. Or a tightwad. Continue reading “Super Unimpressive Restaurant Trends”

Over a year ago, I had my first experience with Masullo, the small, upscale pizzeria on Riverside Boulevard. I sung its praises on this here weblog  and vowed to return often to sup full on Masullo’s perfect pies.

Well, until last weekend I hadn’t been back once. Don’t ask me why. Life just has a way of moving right by you like a slick river of slurry underneath your feet as you stand in front of the slurry outflow of the slurry plant in slurry county USA. Slurry aside, I was a bit anxious about revisiting the pizza purveyor, worried my memories of the place wouldn’t quite add up to the reality. It turns out that my memories, instead of hyperbolizing the savory goodness that lies behind Masullo’s simple glass door, had dulled like…some…uh…thingamajig that gets dulled by slurry. Masullo is as fresh and vibrant as ever, pumping out pies that touch that little inner pizza child in all of us (and not in an SVU way). Continue reading “Masullo:Revisited”

About five months ago, you may have been one of the hundred or so people that told me to read Blair Robertson’s Bee review of this new breakfast joint in town. The place was called Orphan and apparently “Robo,” as his friends call him (ok, I’m not really sure if his friends call him that, but they should, because “Robo” is a badass nickname, almost as badass as “Badass” being your nickname, which is pretty badass) tore the place a new muddy starfish and ripped it up and down for serving tasteless muck and for having an owner who is a bit of a jackass. Well, today I had my own Orphan experience, and at least they’ve improved the food.

It seems like they’ve improved the food quite a lot actually. The food was wonderful, flavorful, comforting.  My flank steak hash was packed like a clown car with onions, peppers, herbs, beatifully cooked potatoes, and lovingly seared steak. My lovely companion’s dish was equally well spiced, and served with a beautiful side of fruit and ridiculously good rosemary bread that did a fine job soaking up the yolk from the spot-on over-medium eggs and the sinus-clearing horseradish cream that came on the side. Continue reading “Orphan: Hipper Than Thou, and Tastier Too”