Showing posts with label diners. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diners. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Grandma Lives!

Audie's Restaurant
314 North Nicolet
Mackinaw City, Michigan

We opted for dinner at this local family-style place at the recommendation of our hotelier. The ambience is middle-class-comfortable, clean and well-maintained, not the least bit pretentious or trendy. Solid and reliable, I suppose,  are the adjectives they're going for, and they succeed.

They have a full bar, and my driving obligations for the near term consisted only of the three-block trek along near-deserted streets, so my friend Kirby went for a vodka martini (yes, yes, I know: if it's not gin it's not a martini. Pace, fellow curmudgeons), while I did the beer thing. Since they actually carry my favourite brand (Killian's Irish Red, in case anybody's looking to supply my wants), it put me in a rare good mood.

The menu carries all the usual stuff for this type of restaurant, although the heavy presence of smelt and whitefish is a local thing. Those breeds of fish are, along with midges, the main foodstuffs produced locally. Kirby chose chicken primavera, one of the day's specials, while I picked lasagna after being assured that it was made in-house.

The house salad I got as a first course didn't bode well for the evening's experience. Not that anything was wrong with it; it was just ordinary salad mix pulled by the handful from a big plastic bag, then decorated with a sprinkle of cheddar cheese and a couple of rings of red onion so it would look, you know, like they really made the effort back in the kitchen. The honey mustard dressing on the side was thick and tangy, and the salad ingredients were reasonably fresh, so it gets a passing grade. (Kirby got a trip to the salad bar with his meal, and fussed about having to do the work himself while I got mine delivered. He has been learning to grouse from me for several years now.) The rolls served with the salads barely pass, being the kind that come in a big pan, are heated in the kitchen, and dry out as quickly as they cool.
What's that mean?

The chicken primavera was a little heavy on the alfredo sauce, but otherwise somewhere between good and superior. Lots of vegetables -- asparagus, cauliflower, mushrooms, squash and green beans -- mixed with rotini underlay a nicely grilled chicken breast. It was served with a heavily buttered slice of garlic bread, and nearly proved to be too much for one person to eat.

But the star attraction (in addition to excellent service overall) was the lasagna. I would not have expected to find a lasagna in an out-of-the-way burg like Mackinaw City, Michigan, that could rival my grandmother's excellent, excellent version, but there it is. A large bowl of noodles still al dente despite who knows how long warming in the kitchen, interspersed with layers of cheese and meat and topped with a tomato-based sauce that was seasoned to shocking perfection. Magnifico! And it was such a large portion that I have enough for a second meal, although the lack of a refrigerator in my motel room probably will defeat that plan, and it will go to waste with my fullest regrets. Unless I eat it now....

The prices were pretty good, even by my miserly South-Texas standards: entrées are ten bucks or less, and drinks prices are moderate.  All in all, a solid three and a half chili peppers out of five.
Audie's Restaurant on Urbanspoon

Monday, April 25, 2011

Fine Diner. Giggle.

City Diner
3116 I-10 Service Road East
Old Metairie



Before starting for New Orleans this week, I spent some time poring over the list of the top restaurants in the city, hoping to pick maybe half a dozen places to try. I ended up with 19 on my list, including this place, which I found nestled into the parking lot of my hotel.

The customer comments that got this place onto my list mentioned things like crawfish and andouille sausage, blackened chicken sandwich, duck and sausage gumbo ... things you'd find in a diner only in South Louisiana. Having now been here, my first take on the place isn't particularly favourable. 

I went around 8pm; the place was all but empty when I arrived at this converted Denny's. (I assume it was a Denny's, because it's in a La Quinta parking lot; and everybody knows "La Quinta" is Spanish for "Next to Denny's.") The place is clean, and simply decorated. The seats are in good repair, always a concern at places like this, where maintenance tends to get put off when money gets short, and the walls have a few good, nicely framed photos of typically Orleanian subjects, to make City Diner feel a little more like New Orleans and less like ... well, Denny's. (There's also an LED sign at the far end of the dining room, advertising specials and features, and occasionally flashing blindingly and disturbingly bright.)

There were two people in the kitchen and two on the floor when I arrived. Since I was the only person there you'd think I could have gotten quick, attentive service. I did, until another guy walked in and ordered toast and milk to go. I kid you not. This episode absorbed all the attention of the wait staff. Fortunately, the interchange with this new customer was sufficiently entertaining to keep me amused, and only then did the waitress bring my drink.  ("Do you have sweet rolls? How about muffins? No, not English muffins. Cake? No, not ice-cream cake." I finally called out to the waitress that she should sprinkle some cinnamon and sugar on buttered toast for the guy. He settled for plain buttered wheat toast.) And a couple of other groups came in later, to keep me company.

I went for the evening's special: red beans and rice with sausage. It was exactly the same order I'd had back home, at the Big Easy Café, three days ago, so I thought it'd be an excellent opportunity to compare New Orleans' signature dish in Old Metairie with what I'd gotten from a family of Katrina refugees. The dish at the City Diner comes with sausage or pork chop. When I asked the waitress (who is from New Jersey and has only been here two months) if it was andouille sausage, she didn't know. It was smoked sausage, or I could have spicy sausage patties, or the grilled pork chop. I took my chances with the smoked sausage, and yes, it was andouille, and moderately good andouille at that. (She also didn't know what swamp water was, but mixed up a pretty good one when I told her how.)

Louisiana restaurant inspections have been
removed from the State's web site
for "technical reasons."
While I was waiting for my order, I had the chance to listen to the repartee going on between the employees. Without going into detail, I will say that it reminded me of why I moved away from New Orleans after only a few months, last time I came to live here.

You know how everybody thinks New Yorkers are rude? They're actually not, they're regular people, but their ways grate on my Southern sensibilities, and after a little while I grow uncomfortable in their continued company. This little group of Orleanians impressed me the same way. From their reactions, I could tell that they were all perfectly at ease with each other; but the words that come to my mind to describe their way of dealing are "attitude" and "lip." It was exactly that way when I lived here, as an adult, back in the mid-80s, and I thank God I had the good fortune to move away as a child, in time to learn a less sarcastic and caustic way of dealing, even if I don't always use it. These restaurant employees were all perfectly polite in dealing with me and the other customers, but if I'd've worked there I'd've popped somebody in the mouth before too long. Probably that smart-ass blond guy in the kitchen.

Once I was finished with the red beans and rice (which, by the way, was better than at The Big Easy Cafe -- much more like what I remember from my youth, with a creamy thick sauce), I decided to try the bananas Foster ice cream cake that had been offered to the guy with the toast. A sign on the diner's door advertises Blue Bell Ice Cream, so I expected it to be pretty good. There was banana ice cream and pecan chunks topped with whipped cream and served over a sliver of generic cake and what appeared to be pie crust. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't as good as it looked, nor was it as good as I'd hoped.

To be entirely fair, the City Diner seems to have built its reputation as a top restaurant largely on the strength of its breakfast fare. So maybe I'll come back one morning before I leave, and check that out.

Accustomed as I am to prices back home, I expect that the prices at City Diner are considered low by the locals. They're not bad. Maybe they're good enough to get excited about, if you live in a place like Metairie.

City Diner on Urbanspoon