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.

A perfect weekend breakfast – Northern California Style

At the behest of my beloved wife, my lovely  sister gave to me for my birthday Thomas Keller's The French Laundry Cookbook. It's beautiful, with extraordinary insights into the mind and professional acumen of one of the greatest chefs in America, if not the world. Indeed, no less than Anthony Bourdain once said he considered The French Laundry the best restaurant in the world.

So this cookbook was in the perfect place to be THE gift of the year, to be warmly remembered for years and years to come, its pages dog eared, with the entire house smelling of the gastronomical wonders of Thomas Keller and my mediocre ability to channel his culinary genius.

But alas, it was not to be. While the recipes looked fabulous and the photography borders on food porn, everything in it is just too complicated for even an experienced duffer like me to pull off. 

But this is not the first time I've waded into the waters of the Northern California restaurant scene by purchasing a cookbook and seeing if I can conjure that same magic in my own home kitchen. No, the last time I tried that stunt, I had a go at working the culinary genius of fellow Chatham High School graduate Alice Waters (class of 1963). Her restaurant, Chez Panisse, was the toast of the culinary world long before there was Food Network and Emeril LaGasse was just a skinny kid doing guest spots on Cooking with Master Chefs with Julia Child. For the record, he deep fried a turkey.

I don't what it is that makes these recipes so perfectly opaque. I can't seem to pull off any of them. Exotic ingredients coupled with high French technique leave me simply dumbfounded. Indeed, the only dish inspired by Thomas Keller that I can actually prepare with any competence comes not from his beautifully appointed cookbook, but from an extra feature on the DVD of the movie Spanglish.

Yes, that silly Adam Sandler movie, Spanglish.

In it, there is a scene where the Adam Sandler character, who plays a chef, is talking to his romantic interest in the film, played by Paz Vega. During a telephone conversation between the two, there sits in the chef's kitchen one of the most perfect examples of a breakfast sandwich ever made – The Spanglish Sandwich. The producers of the film wanted to give the Adam Sandler character something to eat  that a real chef would prepare after a long shift at the restaurant. For technical assistance, they went to – here's your time to guess – Thomas Keller of the afore mentioned French Laundry. During the scene, Adam's character looks at, but never bites into the sandwich.

So much for the willing suspension of disbelief. The thing is such as work of art that everybody watching the flick is waiting for a moment that never comes – the happiness of the first bite of the perfect late night / early morning breakfast.

Interestingly enough, this is actually easy to prepare and makes a wonderful weekend breakfast. It's basically a BLT, with an egg fried over easy with the yolk is just barely runny. Add toasted bread and a slice of cheese and you're off to the races. When you do make the toast, run the slice with the cheese under a broiler or  in a toaster oven to get that slightly burnt cheesy "au gratin" effect. Bibb lettuce works best for this and you can add some fresh basil if you have that on hand. I typically layer it from bottom to top: lettuce/basil, tomato, bacon, egg, cheese. Mayo or aioli is optional.

Bon appetite!

Scallops with white beans, tomatoes, crispy prosciutto and arugula

These days, television is jammed packed with pretentious morons who preen about and squawk about the things they preen about and squawk about as if they are the only people with any wisdom at all about the given subject at hand. And no, I’m not talking about the talking heads at either Fox News or MSNBC although I easily could be. No, what bothers me is the second tier hosts of the Food Network and the Travel Channel shows. Watching the ridiculous competitions of aspiring celebrity chefs or food spokes models jabbering on and on about whatever they (or in reality, their production assistants) are cooking sets my teeth on edge.

Don’t get me wrong. Mario Batali is a real genius and I’ve been to some of his places (Babbo -- duck breast, medium rare with a raspberry reduction served with a heavenly sage risotto). Ditto chef, writer and world class raconteur Anthony Bourdain (Les Halles -- steak frites, medium rare – ‘natch). But for my money, the reigning genius is Jamie Oliver, who comes off as almost autistic in his devotion to food and its preparation. His focus is so laser sharp he almost appears to be channeling The Almighty.

This recipe comes from page 160 of The Naked Chef Takes Off, published in 2000. Like most of Jamie’s dishes, there are a lot of flavors and textures that work in a most harmonious fashion. It’s a very simple recipe with ingredients you can get at the neighborhood Trader Joes: scallops, tomatoes, anchovies, white beans from a can, prosciutto, arugula, lemon juice and olive oil.

To start, preheat the oven to 475 degrees. Quarter your tomatoes and season them with a bit of oregano. Let them go skin side down in the oven for about 15 minutes. Next, put the prosciutto in the pan next to the tomatoes at let it go for another 15 minutes or so until the prosciutto is all crispy and happy and the tomatoes are roasted through. While that’s happening….

Sauté some garlic in olive oil (no, you don’t have to use EVOO, that’s for salads) and your anchovies for a minute or two, then add a can of white beans (cannellini beans are what the recipe calls for but I’ve used navy beans in a pinch. I’ve even thought about trying chick peas next time. The extra nuttiness might work). Add a bit of white wine, and then once everything is heated through, mash the beans into a course puree. Once that’s done and the tomatoes and prosciutto are resting…

Sear off the scallops in olive oil. They should be dry before you cook them or else they won’t get that caramelized happiness you need to make this dish work. Two minutes a side should be sufficient. Now, it’s time to assemble.

I typically serve this in bowls just because the presentation looks so much better. Beans go in as the base. Then, add the scallops. Then top with the roasted tomatoes and crispy prosciutto, crumbled up like bacon bits. As a finishing touch, top with a bit of arugula and dress the whole thing with a dressing of lemon juice and olive oil (now you can use the EVOO). In my dressing, I usually add a bit of kosher salt as an emulsifier.

The result? Simple. Easy. Relatively inexpensive. Damn tasty. And one of the very reasons I think Jamie is a genius.

Sunday Brunch -- Sub Conscious

Sunday morning is way too intense for a complicated brunch menu. What, with having to recover from the day used to recover from the work week, it’s just not a good time to make serious decisions. The brain can be a bit foggy and incapable of discerning essential adjectives from non-essential ones. A Belgian Waffle? Why can’t we just have an American Waffle instead? Eggs named after a Pope? Sorry, there are too many issues involved to make that choice.

The whole business of Sunday brunch itself is a bit disconcerting. Everybody knows that the A List chef – who worked his/her busy digits to the bone the night before – is at home with a hangover and couldn’t possibly be brought in to supervise the operation unless he/she was transported by ambulance. Indeed, Sunday brunch is where busboys pretend to be line cooks and line cooks pretend to be chefs. It’s all happy, in an “up-from-bootstraps” sort of way, but doesn’t do anything to improve the quality of the meal. Staring down at a seafood frittata at a Sunday brunch, one comes to the realization why it’s not offered the rest of the week: the seafood bits are what are left over from what they could not sell the rest of the week. Insert the appropriate cat food reference here.

After all, what is a frittata anyway, other than an Italian name for an omelet that’s been finished off under the broiler? Somehow it wouldn’t taste nearly as good as if it were just labeled an “omelet that’s finished off under the broiler”. If polenta is just grits with better PR, isn’t a frittata just an omelet for somebody in search of the exotic?

That’s where the idea of food as entertainment comes off the rails. As Americans, we seem to have stumbled into a notion that everything we do should be exotic and jammed packed with entertainment value. Three channels on the telly aren’t enough? Let’s have 500 hundred including seven ESPNs. Coffee-flavored coffee a tad too pedestrian? Have an iced double decaf mochaccino, half-foam instead. Don’t bother with the omelet; have the frittata.

This constant and monotonous pursuit of the novel, the new, the oh-so-trendsetting is another mind numbing manifestation of the consumerism treadmill. One gets on and can never really get off without experiencing the polite condescension from those still handcuffed to the machine. Those in the perpetual pursuit of ever more exotic food have left me utterly bored with the pursuit of ever more exotic food.

That’s why the missus and I have a simple plan for Sunday mornings. We drop the kid off at Grandma’s and head straight to Sub-Conscious on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh. The place is usually empty and funereal quiet (save the TV in the background) which is the way we like it.

On the menu are all the normal things that a college sub shop would typically carry – sandwiches, fried bits of this or that and pizza. I’ve never tried any of the fried bits or the pizza. It’s just not fitting. No, one comes to Sub-Conscious for one thing – the subs. And they are brilliant.

This stuff in the middle – the sandwich fixin’s – are where most restaurant of this type concentrate their efforts. And at Sub-Conscious, meats, veggies and whatnot are fresh and well prepared. But that’s not what makes their offering so much better than the next guy down the street. It’s the bread. They get theirs from upstate New York. It’s crispy without being crunchy; light but still full of flavor. Indeed, the outside crusts crackle with every bite.

The two we typically order are the cheese steak and the Italian. Both are prepared with lightly toasted bread. The contrast of the warm and slightly crispy bread to the cold ingredients in the Italian is striking and makes for a marvelous mouthful of sandwich happiness. The cheese steak is a sandwich utterly without pretension. It stand on its’ own in near perfect balance – not too much steak, not too much cheese. Caramelized onions add both to the aroma and to the sandwich’s umami. It is arguable as good as I’ve ever had anywhere.

Service is fast and friendly, with the staff starting on our sandwiches when we park the car. You tell the folks what you want, and they call your number a few minutes later.

So what’s not to like? For my own money, nothing. For those looking for atmosphere, there are plenty of places in town where you can feel both special and entertained. Sub-Conscious is not like that. Here, simple, wholesome food is made with care and really good bread. It is the perfect antidote to the Sunday brunch seafood frittata.


Sub Conscious
www.subconscious-subs.com
3209 Hillsborough St
Raleigh, NC 27607-5438
(919) 833-3495

http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/25/292147/restaurant/West-Raleigh/Sub-Conscious-Subs-Raleigh