Jun 10
Also, at 19 Anna Nicole worked at a Red Lobster.
But I suppose in an 8,000+ word article about anything, Red Lobster is bound to come up at least once, right?
The Dallas Morning News ran a recipe for Cheddar Bay Biscuits just a few weeks ago. Secrets: Bisquick and margarine.
Texas-shaped biscuit photo from Information in Motion
In bizarro Williamsburg, residents clamor for a P.F. Chang’s and an article is written on how to attract the retail chains you want to your community.
I wonder if the other Williamsburg’s Dunkin' Donuts-and-Duane Reade-loving lady has come out of hiding yet.
Tenpenny’s spring vegetables might well be the best (and possibly the only) elevated ranch dish since Park Avenue Autumn’s sweet potato fries with homemade dressing. It’s also quite pretty. Enough to counteract the unfounded ugly room criticism? I happen to like my spaces generic and spacious (surprisingly spacious on a Friday night, two days post-New York Times review) rather than cramped and twee.
The hodgepodge of green peas, wax beans, tomatoes, corn, squash blossoms and one microscopic frond-topped carrot were surrounded by a sweet, crunchy sunchoke dirt that looked like Bac-O-Bits. The dusting of ranch was subtle, more of a perfume than omnipresent.
Same for the root beer extract vermouth in The Madison, which along with Michter’s rye and a bourbon steeped cherry, smelled more like a soda and tasted more like an sweeter Manhattan. The Negroni (pictured) and The Landlady, a salt, cucumber, chile drink, also made an appearance, making up three of the four featured cocktails. The Unstrung Harp, Sam Sifton’s cocktail of the summer just didn’t appeal. I’d rather just have a glass of white wine, so I did. Albariño. Ok, mystery…the cocktail listed on Tenpenny's site contains white wine, not prosecco like recipe detailed on Diner's Journal. The sparkle might've changed my mind.
Pretzel rolls come with horseradish-spiked mustard and an apple butter that’s flavored butter not jammy and made of fruit.
The next morning, there was some horrible infomercial being passed off on public broadcasting as an educational show. A doctor was telling an audience that they could break free of their food addictions, and there was lots of head-nodding and tearing-up. There was a lot of talk about salads and fruit, which I’m totally for and should be for, but I started getting depressed (or maybe I was just hungover from the cocktails) about having to live in an all lean protein world when pork belly tots exist.
Sure, they’re coated in potato flakes and fried, but the Granny Smith slivers and green leafy shoots must count for something.
You’d better like wax beans, such is the way of seasonal cooking. The burnished duck confit came in a skillet (more down home-style than Applebee’s affectation) atop a succotash with still-pliable croutons that appeared to have been soaked in chorizo oil. Just in time to snap me out of my Spain-vacation-is-a-fading-memory funk.
Tenpenny * 16 E. 46th, New York, NY
But now the company plans to open 150 of these fast food joints in 2011. And lest you believe this is a middle-American phenomena, one already exists in midtown, a mere two blocks from the recently shuttered Jekyll & Hyde, and is Kosher certified.
Mrs. Garrett photo from X-Entertainment
El Corte Inglés is the Macy’s of Spain, and no great shakes, I know. But beyond the obvious culinary attractions of San Sebastián, I needed more bait to get James to take a vacation (if it were up to me, I'd stay out of NYC half the year). Having a mall and a subway (TV and internet access goes without saying) are the two unspoken requirements for cities we may visit.
In the 11-and-half-years we’ve been dating (ha) Bangkok, Toronto, Montreal, Barcelona, Madrid, Shanghai, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Singapore and London have had both; the only exceptions being Macau, which was a Hong Kong addendum and Penang, which only had a bus system but made up for it with amazing food and a hotel abutting a shiny, air conditioned mall. Oaxaca had neither, and tellingly, I traveled there alone (though took a cab out to Plaza del Valle, where fast food and a strip mall lurked).
That San Sebastián supposedly had a Corte Inglés, helped matters. Except that it didn’t. The address listed online was nonexistent. I was totally up for finding one, though. Bilbao had one (and a metro and a lightrail, both of which we rode on a day trip. I don’t talk art, but Paul Pfeiffer’s The Saints was the best thing at the Guggenheim) but we’d already been to that more modern city, which brought up the question, “Why didn’t we stay here?” Pintxos, that's why.
Pamplona, the next biggest city, was only an hour by bus in a different direction. 
El Corte Inglés' familar font on a billboard. The sure sign that we were getting closer to civilization.
And then we waited in line for lunch, the only pile-up during the week. Everyone loves a menú del día, the affordable workhorse midday prix fixe served in nearly all restaurants. They’re rarely exciting—so much so that I won’t document another from Bilbao’s Café Iruña—but usually good value. While waiting in the entryway between the cafeteria and El Corte Inglés' branded travel agency, I had plenty of time to plan my three courses.
I was totally going to get a hamburger because I hadn’t encountered one in Spain yet, plus it came with an egg, which seemed oddly Australian. I also spent an inordinate amount of time parsing that a rollito de primavera wasn’t some rolled arrangement of spring vegetables but a spring roll. Duh.
Soup is usually dreary to me, but I ordered it anyway hoping it would counteract the fries I would have next. Once again, I exposed my shoddy Spanish. Crema de calabacín, was not a squash like the orange pumpkiny calabaza I see at stores in NYC, but zucchini, which I guess is squash too.
If you order the ensalada mixta, which I did not, you get to make your own pepper-free dressing.
Ugh, una hamburgeusa wasn’t a hamburger either. I was most definitely wasn't expecting a naked, well-done patty. At least I had the fries and egg to make up for the lack of a bun. And the pleasure of eating a regular person’s lunch instead of something Michelin-starred or smothered in foie gras. Actually, they did have foie gras and fries on the regular menu.
El Corte Inglés * Calle Estella, 9, Pamplona, Spain
I only became aware of The Tilted Kilt after taking a Hunch quiz last year to guide me to the best chain restaurant. I’m still not sure why I got the scantily-clad Scottish theme.
An article in this month’s Entrepreneur explains the success of such “breastaurants.” I wouldn’t think one would need to dig further than boobs, beer and wings, but I learned a few things:
In related news, a group of middle-schoolers ate at a Hooters as part of a Baltimore field trip. This is not the first time a field trip has shown up at Hooters, and it probably won’t be the last. Youngsters are totally welcome at breastaurants.
Kids a.k.a. Mountain Scouts eat free at Twin Peaks on Saturday and Sunday. A similar special runs at select Hooters and Tilted Kilt. Family fun.
Clearly, my psyche is more attached to my camera than I realized. I toted along my DSLR on a two-day-jaunt to Atlantic City, then decided to leave it in the hotel room. It’s just Atlantic City. Three nights in a row I had bad dreams involving not having a camera when I needed one or the camera not working when I pushed the button. (Objects that demanded photographing were dead horse-dinosaur creatures piled high as a mountain on the side of the road and a ‘70s home movie projected onto a wall that supposedly featured the dead dad of a friend. This friend does not have a dead dad in real life and I doubt he looked like Tom Selleck in a lumberjack shirt.)
White House Sub Shop: Ok, I did take photos because they make a handsome sandwich, which I’ve blogged about before. It’s always weird when I return someplace six years later and end up ordering the exact same thing, but it happens all the time. The youngish counter guys were ribbing me: “No photos! You’re going to steal our secrets.” I couldn’t tell if they were serious or not at first because the waitresses are of the sourpuss, no-nonsense school who just might spazz on cameras. There are an awful lot of rules plastered on the walls. The cheesesteaks are kind of odd, served sub-style with lettuce, tomato and pepper relish, provolone by default. No one should go to Atlantic City, though, and pass up the White House Special; a slab of salami, ham and provolone folded slightly and stuffed awkwardly into a length soft Italian bread. What's pictured is only a half. A whole might kill you.
Dock’s Oyster House: We enjoyed a reasonably priced seafood tower with raw oysters and clams, mussels, half a lobster tail, claw, ceviche and lump crab meat chunks. The panko-crusted soft-shell crabs served on field greens (their wording) was my attempt at limiting carbs despite the breading. As is often the case when traveling anywhere, a Brooklyn couple ended up sitting right next to us. How do I know they were from Brooklyn? Because the female was lamenting the crowd at Brooklyn Bowl. Not a fan of hipsters nor people in their late 30s-to-early-40s. I don’t think there’s even anyone that old in Williamsburg, which only led me to believe that they must’ve been younger than they looked (the boyfriend was balding; she had a mild New York accent, which always makes someone seem older). She whipped out a point-and-shoot for her banana cream pie. I don’t want to be that person.
Borgata Buffet: My first-ever casino buffet. I don’t think I’m a snob. I’d flat-out deny it. But occasionally something horribly pretentious will come out of my mouth. Something like, “This doesn’t really compare to the InterContinental buffet in Hong Kong.” Don’t get me wrong; the prime rib and ham carving stations, waffles, eggs benedict, fried chicken, piles of bacon and so on were exactly what I was expecting in NJ for $26, and I got beyond my money’s worth even if I felt sick for hours afterward. If you want imported Spanish cheeses and jamón instead of cheddar cubes and lunch meat and lobster, sashimi, foie gras and unlimited champagne instead of baked salmon, little piles of shrimp with cocktail sauce and juice, you can pay three times more and spend a day on a plane. It’s up to you.
Chelsea Prime: Steakhouses rarely make it onto my itinerary—the last was Wolfgang Puck’s Cut in Vegas over New Year’s Eve—but it must be done if dining in a casino town. The biggest twist on the menu was having tater tots offered as a side. Tots mean a lot to me. What?! Tater Tots is a proper noun? I learn something every week from The New York Times restaurant review. Shocking because I’m from the Ore in Ore-Ida. I still have the remainder of my bone-in rib eye waiting at home in the fridge, but don’t know if I can eat something so meaty without air conditioning.
Oyster Creek Inn: I wanted waterside dining, but this was more swampside. I’m still feeling the bug bites. Most people eat fried seafood like the crabcake sandwich, but I was curious about the advertised specialty called Crab Norfolk, which turned out to be a pile of buttery lump crab meat seasoned with Old Bay served naked on a styrofoam plate with a lemon wedge. Three Yeunglings in a plastic cup weren’t enough to delude me into believing I was at the Maryland shore (where I wanted to be eating fat blue crabs). That will have to wait unitl July.
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