A very grown up pleasure – The Wild Turkey Lounge at The Angus Barn

There are in the world, hierarchies. They exist everywhere and are a very human way for people to organize a world of chaos into a cognitive mental order.

In my high school, there were the superlatives. Mike Allocco and Doreen Iossa were "best dressed". Bill Cooper and Mary Anne Tuggle tried the hardest.

And so on.

When it comes to steakhouse, everybody has a favorite but there are only a few in the top tier. Everybody from New York City raves about Peter Luger's in Brooklyn. I've been there. I've been there and I've had the Porterhouse. It is perfect. I've also had a burger. The steak was magical; the burger, not so much. Oh it was good. But it wasn't a rave. No a great steakhouse burger doesn't come from Luger's. A better steakhouse burger lives in Raleigh.

Yeah. And I'm not just saying that because I live here. The Angus Barn does a better burger that Luger's. Hands down.

Heresy? To some, perhaps. Indeed, some people may think that going to the best steakhouse in town and ordering a burger is just silly. Dave's Rules of Restaurants explicitly stated that one should never go against the establishment's DNA. Well, the Angus Barn has DNA that very bovine. And the last time I checked, their burger was all cow.

Her Imperial Majesty and I checked into The Wild Turkey Lounge one recent Friday night and parked ourselves at the corner. The place was packed with folks waiting for their tables, although a wise few were dining at the bar. Live music from a pianist tinkled in the background while we did a couple of Wild Turkey Manhattans before dinner. Dinner at the bar consisted of a warm spinach salad and a medium burger. The salad itself – with spinach, bacon, mushrooms and hardboiled egg – wasn't warm, but is served with warm vinaigrette. The burger (a guess-timated pound – we split it) perfectly cooked to medium and served with a portion of perfectly crispy fries. . Yes they grind their own meat daily so you can enjoy it in a non-overcooked state. As we worked out way through dinner, the missus remarked that she loved the place and could grow used to coming. I concurred.

The Wild Turkey Lounge is a very grown up place. Men dress in power suits. Women are iced out and bedecked in finery. All in all, it's a very sophisticated place to spend a few hours.

In the end, we left about an hour or so later, completely sated and utterly satisfied. We knew we have been to the best in town. And we were okay with that.

The Angus Barn

9401 Glenwood Avenue
(Highway 70 at Aviation Parkway)
Raleigh, North Carolina 27617

TEL 919-781-2444
FAX 919-783-5568

Cuisine: A beefeaters paradise

Rating: *****

Prices: $$$$

Atmosphere: Coat and tie crowd.

Noise level: Moderate in The Wild Turkey Lounge

Open: MON. - SAT. 3:00PM-11PM; SUN. 3PM-10PM

Reservations: For the restaurant, yes, for the lounge, no.

Other: You can only get the burger in the Wild Turkey Lounge.

We rank restaurants in five categories: Extraordinary***** Excellent**** Above average*** Average** Fair*


 

Road Food – Only Burger

Soft unobtrusive music from the overhead speakers. Candles on every table. Waitrons cruising about, dressed in black and white, moving gracefully in their choreographed randomness. The perfectly coiffed hostess showing you and your guest to a table, six inches away from two other tables in the center of the dining room. All the other patrons dressed to eleven. The chinking of glasses and tinkling of silverware right out of a Barry Levinson movie. Polite, politically correct banter floats through the dining room like audio oatmeal. You are seated in the very center of the trendiest restaurant in your 'burb and it took weeks to get a reservation.

In these situations, I usually last about five minutes before informing my server that I simply must adjourn to the bar. I can't take it. It's too much.

In fact, that's why I usually eat at the bar. Fabricated environments bother me to no end. So, eating at the bar equals zero pretension in my book. So when I go to when I go to The Angus Barn in Raleigh, I sit and the bar in The Wild Turkey Lounge with my beloved wife and split a hamburger (medium rare) and a nosh on the warm spinach salad. And it's great. Same is true of Lantern in Chapel Hill. We sit at the bar and order the special, whatever it is. And whatever the special is, it is always brilliant. Heck, I did a $150 lunch at the Gramercy Tavern in New York City for my wife's 40th at the bar.

I detest pretension. I do. When I walk into a restaurant, I can sense the vibe immediately. If a restaurateur wants to sell me on how cool I am for being in his or her joint and how cool it is that I can rub elbows with his or her clientele, I generally head for the door. 

I'm sorry. I don't require self-esteem therapy to be served on the side with my meal. The ambiance thing only goes so far before it negatively impacts the culinary experience.

That's why I'm a sucker for road food. Anybody selling his or her wares out of the side of a truck isn't trying to fool you with soft music and candles on every table. This is the kind of food eaten standing up on the sidewalk or in the front seat of your car. And if the person running the truck has the onions to sell his wares without all the trickery baked into the restaurant business, his food must be pretty damn good. Food without pretension works for me.

And the best in The Triangle for my money is Only Burger. Everything made fresh to order, with toppings that run the gamut from the standard to the over the top. Parked in front of the Durham Farmer's Market one Saturday, Her Imperial Majesty, Her Imperial Majesty Junior and I feasted on burgers for breakfast. Junior had hers with ketchup. Mine was done up Carolina style, with chili, mustard, onions and slaw. My beloved went all out, doing a proper breakfast burger, decked out with a fried green tomato, pimento cheese, and an over easy egg. It sounded ridiculous. It tasted ridiculously good. So good in fact, I went back for my own.

Do I recommend it? Absolutely, if, of course, you can track it down. It is a truck after all and trucks have wheels, so it moves around. The best way to do that is to follow them on twitter. And be prepared for lines ten deep that last for hours. It's that good. 

They have announced that they're opening a brick and mortar location. I just hope it doesn't come with soft music and candles on every table.