Pizza Heaven...

Mellow Mushroom

1185 Lenoir Rhyne Boulevard

Hickory, NC 28602

www.mellowmushroom.com/ 

On the night that I was leaving for the airport, my sister’s husband said he wanted to take me to Mellow Mushroom for a pizza and some beers before I caught my flight. I was a little apprehensive because I missed my flight last time I left from visiting my sister even though I was a half hour early for my flight (screw you US Airways). But he really wanted to go, so we stopped in Hickory on our way to Charlotte to have a beer that he had been raving to me about and some of their delicious pizza (sorry sister!) If you have never been to Mellow Mushroom or seen one around, they are decorated in psychedelic colors and have giant mushrooms decorating the entire place. It was clearly created by people that like to get stoned and eat pizza, but they really nailed the concept, and the pizza is phenomenal.

We ordered our pizza to go, so it was ready when we got there and we grabbed two seats at the bar and ordered a Big Boss Bad Penny each. The beer was fantastic. It was smooth like a Guiness, with very little carbonation and completely tasty from start to finish. It paired really well with the buffalo chicken pizza that we had ordered as well. 

Their buffalo chicken pizza is one of if not the best buffalo chicken pizza that I have ever had. Their crust is thicker than I usually like mine, but it is so well done that I do not mind. The crust is coated in garlic butter and parmesan cheese which makes it more like a breadstick than a crust. The pizza is topped with grilled chicken, caramelized onions, and then swirled around in circles with hot sauce and ranch. The cheese is perfect, and you don’t even miss the traditional red sauce that you usually find on pizza. It is pizza bliss from start to finish and they nail it every time.

Mellow Mushroom is an awesome place to drink some beers and eat some awesome food. Their pizza rocks, and so do their pretzels, but their sandwiches and salads are really great as well. I would recommend it to anyone out there, so give it a try if you have one near you. Cheers!

Mi Pueblito...Si Senor!

Mi Pueblito

220 Oak Street

Forest City, NC 28043

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mi-Pueblitos-of-Forest-City/132311166824804

On the last day that I was visiting my sister in North Cackalacky (North Carolina), her husband, her twins, and I all went down to have lunch with her and the girls near the vet clinic that they work at in Forest City. We went to a Mexican restaurant that I had been to once before with my sister known as Mi Pueblito. We sat down and began feeding the babies while we pondered what to order. 

The decoration inside was kind of plain, but the feel inside was as authentic as they come. The food smelled fantastic, and each and every server was Mexican. They bring you out an order of house made chips and salsa, still warm from the fryer. They also brought us out a little bowl of their queso dip, made with a white Hispanic cheese that tasted a lot like queso fresco. In the mean time we ordered our meals and devoured multiple baskets of their chips and salsa. 

For my lunch I ordered their three item combo of a beef taco, chile relleno and a chalupa. All three were very good. The taco beef was seasoned well, and the chile relleno was warm, crunchy, cheesy and fresh. Finally the chalupa was a bit forgettable. It didn’t really impress me much, and I kind of wish I had simply ordered some beans or rice instead of it. It lacked flavor and didn’t really have much of an impression on me.

Mi Pueblito was a great place to grab some authentic Mexican food for a very reasonable price. I think my meal only cost 6 dollars or something silly like that. You get a lot of food for what you order, and it is really well done for the most part. Give it a try if you are ever in the Forest City area. Cheers!

Backstreet Delicious...

Jax Backstreet Tavern

55 Glenway Street

Belmont, NC 28012

www.jaxbackstreet.com/ 

While visiting my sister in North Carolina, I had the opportunity to go to a bar/restaurant that one of her friends from the vet clinic she works in works at as a second job. The place was pretty cool, a sports bar with a pretty crazy menu full of their wild take on bar food. Everything is pretty cheap, and something really caught my eye, and my brother-in-laws as well, so we ordered it to go with our beers, and shared it with the table.

Now a word about the beer… Red Oak. I long for the day that I can get a Red Oak back here in the Philly area, but I am unsure if it will ever come. Red Oak brewing company is located in Burlington, NC, right near my alma mater of Elon University, so I am very familiar with their beer. Not only have I been to the brewery several times, but I drank their beer every chance that I got while I was in North Carolina because it is so darn tasty. Don’t pass up any opportunity you have to try a Red Oak, because you will be sorry you did. It is hands down one of the best beers I have ever tasted.

We ordered the smothered angry tots. I had to order the tots because you simply don’t see them on a whole lot of menus, not to mention they were topped with bacon, cheese, jalapenos and chipotle ranch sauce. This was a mind blowing thing to eat. I seriously want to make it myself because it was so damn good. I cannot stop thinking about it, and I could not stop eating it at the time. The tater tots were super crunchy, even under all of the toppings. The jalapenos and chipotle ranch gave it a nice bit of heat, while the ranch and cheese gave it a creamy texture and cooled it down a bit. And what is there to say about bacon other than its amazing. I’m telling you each and every bit of this dish was incredible.

Next time I go to visit my sister I am making her take me back to Jax for these tots. I don’t care that its an hour plus drive from her house…I want those tots again! You do too, so give them a try if you are ever in the Belmont, North Carolina vicinity. Cheers!

A Little Break from the Norm...

Chick’s Deli

906 Township Lane

Cherry Hill, NJ 08034

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Chicks-Deli/114067088623666 

We seem to be stuck in the same routine when it comes to going out for lunch at work lately. We either go out for sushi, pho, Korean, or a Primo’s hoagie. I was glad when my buddy said that he had been craving a sandwich with broccoli rabe on it, since that brought us to Chick’s Deli in Cherry Hill for something a little different.

The place was completely packed when we walked in. It looked like it should be on Diner’s Drive-Ins and Dives because it is a little place tucked away in an alley that you would never know was there unless someone told you about it. You can walk up to the counter to order and then you go sit down, eat, and pay when you are finished. So I walked up to the counter, ordered my special for the day, which was a roast pork sandwich with broccoli rabe and provolone, and I of course added long hots to that. I grabbed a bag of salt and vinegar chips, a water, and waited anxiously for my sandwich.

When I got my sandwich I was in heaven. It was right up there with one of the best roast pork sandwiches that I have had. The bread was soft and chewy, and the pork was super tender. It melted in my mouth, and the strong flavor of the sharp provolone cut stood out  in each and every bite. The kicker to the whole sandwich was the long hots. They were really hot, but I don’t know that there is a more perfect marriage of flavor than long hots on a roast pork sandwich, filled to the brim with broccoli rabe and sharp provolone cheese. To top it all off, the sandwich was showered in the pork juice, leaving the whole sandwich nice and moist.

I hope we make a habit of going to Chick’s for lunch when we go out at work. The place is awesome, and the food is fantastic. Get out there and try it when you get the chance. Cheers!

Birthday Burger Bonanza!

Pub & Kitchen

1946 Lombard Street

Philadelphia, PA 19146

thepubandkitchen.com/ 

My birthday was a few months ago and my girlfriend wanted to take me out to lunch on the day before my birthday because I had hung out with my guy friends from work the night before and we hadn’t had our usual Friday night dinner date. I told her I wanted to go to Pub and Kitchen because I had recently seen that they had taken the voter’s choice for best burger in the city over Village Whiskey and I wanted to see for myself if it was true. I had tasted Village Whiskey’s burger, so I knew I could choose objectively.

I was a bit hungover when we ventured over to 19^th and Lombard, so I was really happy to see that they had bloody marys on the menu, and especially one called the Wrangler, a spicier version of the traditional bloody mary with a cherry pepper and freshly grated horseradish added to it. It was wonderful to me as you can imagine since I love spicy food. Being that I was hungover, the bloody mary was even more perfect that it would have been otherwise. My girlfriend who is not a spicy fan, thought it was a bit too spicy. I slurped mine down and felt a lot better after I finished it.

Pub and Kitchen offers two different burgers on their brunch menu, the Parliament burger and the Churchill burger. My girlfriend and I wanted to try them both, so we each ordered one, and we also ordered a special called the disco fries, and waited with anticipation. When the burgers came out, the first thing that I noticed was how beautiful the plates were. Burgers are not usually the most glamorous dishes, but these burgers were really visually appealing. The Parliament burger was made with a traditional ground beef mix that you might find in many other places, and topped with bacon, cheddar, and pub sauce. The Churchill burger was made from a Pat LaFreida dry-aged beef mix made especially for Pub & Kitchen and topped with sautéed onions. Apparently Pat LaFrieda is a famous meat company from New York that has been providing top notch meats to restaurants in that area for years. Their meats are supposed to be the best of the best.

I personally liked the Parliament burger better because of the addition of the pub sauce, bacon and cheese. I thought the Churchill burger’s meat alone was better, but as a whole the burger didn’t have as much flavor as the Parliament burger. The meat however was melt in your mouth tender, and you could really taste the difference and notice the difference between the two textures of the burger meats. That being said, both were very good burgers, and I definitely think they are worthy of being nominated for one of the best burgers in the city. 

The disco fries we got a bit late because our server forgot to put the order in, but they were fantastic when they finally came out. I wish the burgers hadn’t come with fries as well, because I just ate more fries than I probably would have otherwise. The disco fries were topped with a white gravy and cheddar sauce, a fried egg, and what tasted like fried bacon to me. I was in richness heaven while eating these fries. The fries were cooked perfectly, the cheddar sauce and gravy were salty and delicious, and the fried bacon added both an element of crunch as well as a porky layer of fantasticness to the dish. It was some of the best bacon I have ever tasted, and also some of the most unique bacon I have ever tasted. 

I cannot wait to go back to Pub & Kitchen. I know that any friends that I take there will love it. Of course I would love to go back and try some of the other awesome things they have on their menu. Go out and grab a burger, a drink, or anything at Pub & Kitchen and you will definitely fall in love with the place the same way that I have. Cheers!

Last Minute Decision Turned Amazement

The Dandelion

124 South 18^th Street

Philadelphia, PA 19103

thedandelionpub.com/ 

I am so incredibly sorry to all of my readers yet again for my hiatus from posting. Tax season really got the better of me again with my writing, but I will be back in full force now that I am past it. I can only hope that my readers are all still interested. Cheers!

Another of Stephen Starr’s restaurants had been on my top to try list since it opened a few months ago, and that restaurant was the Dandelion in Rittenhouse Square. My girlfriend and I hadn’t really planned our dinner one night and just decided to go out on Saturday to a restaurant without a reservation. Surprisingly. The wait was only 15 minutes for us, and we were seated upstairs in a room decorated much like an English style cottage. It had a really eclectic feel to it, yet it made me feel very at home.

We ordered our meals, the Cumberland sausages for me, steak and chips for my girlfriend, grilled salmon for her dad and baked trout for her mom. In the mean time we enjoyed a few beers and some bread while we waited for our food to come out. We had eaten a lot that day, so no appetizers, salads, or soups were necessary. The bread was of course just as fantastic as Parc; since both are Stephen Starr places I was not at all surprised. The beers were very delicious as well. They offer a few beers from casks, which are lowly carbonated like a Guinness and served room temperature instead of cold like most beers. We shared some laughs, and our drinks, passing them around the table for everyone to try. 

When our plates came out I was so excited. It was hard for me to choose the fish and chips for dinner because I had seen them mentioned on the Food Network by Marc Summers as one of the best things he had ever eaten, but I love sausages and potatoes, and the onion gravy really made my choice a lot easier. It was not the most visually appealing dish on first site, but man was it tasty. The potatoes were creamy and rich. The onion gravy was flavorful, and salty in the best of ways. I mixed it in with each and every bit of the potatoes that I could. The sausages were magnificent. They had a crispy crust on the outside, and they were spiced and cooked perfectly on the inside. The fattiness of the sausages paired so incredibly well with the creaminess of the potatoes. I guess that’s why bangers and mash is such a popular dish in Britain. 

I also had the pleasure of tasting my girlfriend’s steak, and boy was it amazing. It literally melted in my mouth, and the steak butter that it was prepared with was luscious. The “chips” that it was served with were super crunchy. They are triple fried, so you can just imagine exactly how crunchy they are.

The part of the meal that really blew me away was dessert. As if the meal wasn’t fantastic enough, we weren’t really looking forward to order dessert, but we decided that one dessert for the four of us would not be too much, so we ordered the toffee pudding with toffee-rum sauce and date ice cream. It was absolutely phenomenal. The pudding was warm and covered in the sticky toffee-rum sauce. The date ice cream was just the icing on the cake. It had a nice date flavor, but it wasn’t overpowered by the dates. I could have eaten many more plates of this pudding, and I wish I could figure out how to make it. It was better than any bread pudding or riff on a bread pudding that I have ever had.

The Dandelion was absolutely fantastic. The food was executed to perfection, the drink menu offers bountiful options, and the ambiance inside is quite fun. I cannot wait to make a return visit some day. Go out and try it because I know you will love it. Cheers!