Could've Done Better

Logan's Roadhouse
8310 Interstate 40 West
Amarillo, Texas

There are three steak places within half a block along the freeway here: Saltgrass, Longhorn, and this place. Saltgrass was too busy, so the wife picked Logan (she meant Longhorn, but said Logan, and by the time I got into the bumper-to-bumper traffic along the access road, I wasn't about to try and get back; so Logan's it is.)

The wait wasn't too long, although waiting by the outside door on a frigid evening with a strong wind made for an intense 15 minutes of self-doubt.

The place was clean enough, if you allow for the obligatory peanut shells on the floor. It was loud, but not too loud; and there were enough TV screens showing college and professional football to satisfy anyone with a gambling addiction (plus one screen with local news and Wheel of Fortune, for hostages to fate). The service was prompt and pleasant, and the prices were in line with what you'd expect in a chain restaurant of this sort.

The food seemed promising on the menu. My wife went for a small steak, which she said was fine. It came with two sides: steamed broccoli and a small salad, with bleu cheese dressing that started off on the side, but by the time it reached the table it had slopped over onto the salad in copious amount, sort of defeating the "on the side" instruction.

My choice was glazed salmon and shrimp served atop rice pilaf, with broccoli and a mushroom skewer as my sides. Both the fish and shrimp were reasonably well-prepared; the salmon was slightly charred on the bottom, but not enough to detract from the overall quality. The shrimp were medium-sized but plentiful, and the glaze on both was excellent: sweet and piquant, and applied in unexpected moderation. (That's a good thing, by the way.) Unfortunately, the rice pilaf (which, incidentally, was also flavourful) was served cold and slightly undercooked -- something that I managed to get through a lifetime without experiencing in a restaurant, but have now encountered twice in two weeks. Is there a fashion trend that I'm unaware of? The broccoli was, you know, okay; the mushrooms were plain ol' white mushrooms grilled on a skewer without benefit of any oil or butter. They were overcooked on one side and undercooked on the other.

Makes me wish I'd fought the traffic after all.

THE CURMUDGEON’S RATINGS (explained, sort of, on the Curmudgeon-About-Town blog):

FOOD: 2 chili peppers (out of 5)

SERVICE: 2 1/2 chili peppers

AMBIENCE: 2 1/2 chili peppers

VALUE: 2 1/2 chili peppers

Hard to Dislike

Texas Roadhouse
5019 Keystone Crossing
Eau Claire, Wisconsin

(just off Hwy 53, one exit north of I-94)

My main gripe about chain restaurants in general, as I've said often enough that I shouldn't have to say it again, is that their food is dumbed down to a corporate idea of what average people like. My gripe about Texas Roadhouse (a Kentucky corporation, by the way) in particular stems from an article in a San Antonio newspaper more than 20 years ago.

It was the first time I'd heard of Texas Roadhouse. I don't remember if it was in the local daily paper, or the throwaway weekly rag, or in a legal news publication. I think it was the last, but I could be wrong.

The gist of the article was this: there was a small business in a town east of San Antonio that went by the name of Texas Roadhouse. It had been around for decades, selling beer and who knows what else to the people of its small community. We call those places "ice houses". The Kentucky corporation, looking to expand into Texas, wanted the rights to the name, which, according to the article (and my own understanding of that field of law) they couldn't get without the co-operation of the little ice house. Apparently the little ice house wouldn't give up the name. (I suspect, more than remember, that piles of money were offered; I know that, were I the ice house's attorney, I'd've sure recommended selling the name for anything with six figures left of the decimal, and then using some other name. Lord knows, the people that constitute its market don't give a damn what the place is called, they just want their beer and they know where to get it. Besides, they probably just call it "the ice house" anyway.)

Anyway, the upshot of the article was about the heavy-handed browbeating legal tactics the Kentucky corporation used to force the little ice house to give up the name. I don't know now what they were, though I recall there was an extensive discussion of it (which is why I think it was probably in a legal publication), but what I have remembered all these years is the indignation I felt that such robber-baron tactics would be used by Goliath against David. As a result, I've never been to a Texas Roadhouse.

But a friend of mine was taking me to dinner and Texas Roadhouse was the place he selected. 

This place is no different from a handful of similar steak houses: it's Outback without the Ozzie theme, Logan's Roadhouse with a southwestern theme, Beau's Place with more peanut shells on the floor. There's nothing original about the concept, but I find that it's done, overall, a tad better than similar places. 

There was a wait of about 15 minutes for a table, an interval spent shelling peanuts in the waiting area by the front door before we were led through the labyrinth to our two-person booth. Drinks were ordered and quickly brought by the assigned member of the uniformly chirpy waitstaff, who without exception managed to make terminal chirpiness seem not just normal, but infectious. Orders were placed with our capable and knowledgeable waitress. A couple of people nearby had birthdays, prompting me to observe that, in the hour or less I was there, I heard the word "yee-hah" more than I have in nearly a lifetime in Texas. I felt I should be insulted by the perpetuation of simplistic stereotypes about Texas, but then I thought of everything ever said about the state and its people on The Big Bang Theory, and decided that these simplistic stereotypes are the lesser evil. 

The time we spent waiting for our food -- not a long time, especially considering the crowd in the place -- was used to shell more peanuts and plow through a tray of deliciously fattening dinner rolls served with butter laced with honey and cinnamon. 

My dinner was a rib eye, ordered medium rare, a baked potato with everything on the side, and steamed vegetables. Everything was prepared exactly as it should have been: the veggies were hot and cooked to precisely the right point, with no spritz of oil or butter to diminish their healthful attributes; the potato was perfectly cooked (and of a proper size, not one of those over-large things you get at "steak houses" patronized by broke students); all the accoutrements were served on the side, as requested, in amounts that would ensure that I would have more than enough without being made to feel wasteful; and the steak, surprise surprise, was actually medium rare and tender.

My friend ordered a rack of ribs; I tasted the sauce and found it more Kansas City than Texas. Not bad, but not authentic either. Maybe corporate research indicates that KC-style barbecue plays better in Wisconsin. 

The place was loud in a bubbly sort of family-friendly way, not uncomfortably so; it was clean, except for the peanut shells all over, for which there is a traditional exception to standards. 

The prices struck me as about right for this sort of mid-range steak house; except the price of drinks ($2.59 for a bottomless glass) is higher than it should be, though I am apparently the last person in the whole world who cares.

 

The Orchard Bar & Grill
571 Highway 63
Baldwin, Wisconsin

Just north of Interstate 94, in the small farming community of Baldwin, Wisconsin, stands a large restaurant called the Orchard Bar & Grill. The building was formerly a nursery; the bar in the main dining room is built around the base of an old silo. Except for the unavoidable television sets, the room holds a sense of elegance that, set against the fields and (actual) orchards visible through the large windows, gives diners the slight sensation of being Lord of the Manor. If only there were some serfs plowing in the distance....

The waitress turned out to be a former student of one of our group (no surprise, really; it's an area where everybody knows everybody else), so every time she came by we had a few minutes of reminiscences and gossip to listen to. Amusing to the others of us, since we're not from this part of the world, but such tidbits are the mortar that holds our society together, even if they're about people we don't know. Once heard, they give us the feeling we do know the people, after all. Because they're just like us.

The service we got was very good; the gossip and chit-chat made it even better. It was easy to see that others in the restaurant were equally pleased with it, even if they didn't get the who-done-what narrative with their food.

We started off with a round of drinks, followed up with an appetizer of New Glarus cheesebread: "Spotted Cow cheese blend" melted on a sliced baguette. New Glarus Brewing Company, located in southern Wisconsin, uses a spotted cow in its logo. It seems to be a local icon, but honestly I neither know nor care what the connection is with the cheesebread at the Orchard. It didn't taste of beer; it tasted more like pizza. Good, but not great, and in retrospect I could have done without it. I'd've had more capacity for the highlights of the meal.

The first highlight was the soup. The onion soup was well made in the thoroughly traditional manner, and was loaded with cheese over caramelized onions in a deep, dark beef stock, with a slice of the same baguette that was used for the cheesebread. The sweet potato soup was thick, slightly warm, and tasty. I might have been happy with just a big bowl of that, but I had already ordered an entrée.

What's that mean?

My friend's blackened New York strip steak was grilled perfectly and liberally covered with sprinkles of bleu cheese. You might expect cheese in Wisconsin to be extraordinary, but this, I'm told, wasn't quite to that level. It was merely very good. Since I don't like bleu cheese myself — I try to stay away from rotten food, whether the rot is considered desirable or not — I have to take his word for this. My coconut shrimp stir-fry was right up there in the food standings, too; maybe not a champion but definitely a contender.

All this, though, was but prelude to the deserts: Wisconsin cherries with vanilla ice cream, and turtle pie. Cherries are, to my way of thinking, only good at all when they are very fresh, as when found at a roadside stand at the height of their season. These cherries may have been acquired in that fashion, as they were perfectly ripe, perfectly tart, and perfectly juicy. The vanilla ice cream was as good as one can expect from a state famous for its dairy industry. Good as that dish was, the turtle pie was even better. It was heavenly, with the perfect texture in all its makings. If I were rating only the desserts, there'd be another chili pepper on the board.

B, as in Bourgeois

Colton's Steak House & Grill
5 Eagle Mountain Boulevard
Batesville, Arkansas

This place was reluctantly recommended to us by our motel clerk as being "not too bad." It was, I'm afraid, only slightly oversold.

Them Texas flags ain't foolin' nobody

Colton's is a Little Rock-based franchise chain with a few dozen locations in five states. It seems to be the brainchild of a solid B student in the junior college's Restaurant Science program: everything about it is culled from one successful chain or another, from the buckets of peanuts on your table to the layout of booths and tables in the dining rooms. The atmosphere is fin de siècle trendy fused with aw-shucks hillbilly. If it weren't for the concrete floors, hard walls, and complete lack of sound-deadening materials, we would not have been treated to the cacaphony of the five squealing teeny-bopper co-eds in the corner booth, the audio from at least three televisions tuned to different channels, the canned-music soundtrack, and some unruly screaming baby in the other dining room. But credit where credit is due: when I complained about the noise to the waitress, she handled it with aplomb, and offered to turn off the television closest to us.

Alec Baldwin, who doesn't eat
in Independence County, Arkansas
(photo by David Shankbone)

Batesville, Arkansas, is in a dry county. Being sophisticated big-city types, we have forgotten what a hardship this creates for the casual restaurant diner, unable to drown the din in a nice relaxing highball. I'm sure that Congressman Wiener had just come from a meal in a dry county when it struck him as an intelligent thing to do, to snap a pic of his crotch with his smartphone and send it off to some little hotsie he was hoping to impress. Alec Baldwin, who suggested, too late to do the Congressman any good, that a martini might be a better way to unwind, obviously has not been to dinner in a dry county lately.

So we had to drink water. Local tap water is crystal clear and only slightly flavoured with treatment chemicals. I could get used to it, though it does make me really appreciate the Edwards Aquifer. Since we had the bucket of peanuts, we passed on an appetizer and went straight to salad, which was pro forma packaged. Not bad, but nothing to attract any real attention. Mostly just a salve to the guilt of not ordering the side of steamed veggies or green beans.

Our entrées were New York strip with loaded baked potato (an extra charge for the loading seemed kind of nickel-and-dime-ish) at $19, and a ribeye and shrimp combo for $20. The New York strip, ordered medium, came out somewhere between rare and medium rare. Other than that, it was a good piece of meat: maybe not USDA Prime, but acceptable, except for the price. The potato was large enough to be respected but not large enough to be impressive. That is both good and bad, depending on whether you feel you should be impressed by a baked potato. 

What do those ratings mean?

The ribeye was a fatty piece of meat. My dog would have been very happy if I'd served this meat at home, because he has a thing for big chunks of beef fat. I used to, myself, but have outgrown that particular vice, and so was unhappy at having it placed in front of me. It was, at least, properly cooked to medium rare, as ordered. 

The shrimp, five of them, were medium sized, battered in corn meal and fried artlessly. They were just shrimp, served with a mediocre cocktail sauce in a little plastic tub. Their main function is to remind the diner that Arkansas is a long way from the Gulf, and there are no shrimp in the Mississippi River. They are as good as one would get at, say, Red Lobster or some similar chain. They do not justify their cost.

Amerigreek Steak House

Log Cabin
201 North Main Street
Galena, Illinois

Galena, Illinois, is a gentrified overgrown one-street country town. Some time ago, it was rediscovered by the artsy-fartsy crowd and gussied up to look like what it looked like in its prime, nearly 200 years ago. Except, of course, without the horse droppings, cigar smoke, noise and poverty of the American frontier. Another Disney version of history, ready for the tourists who like to be abed by ten.

There's a stretch of that one street (Main Street) that has a restaurant in almost every space, it seems. They probably open and close with a regularity that would make sand dunes seem stable, but a few of them seem to have managed to stick around. We took the unanimous recommendation of our hotel staff and slid into the Log Cabin for dinner on a Friday night. Run by a Greek family, it did not so much feature Greek foods or styles as offer them here and there: feta cheese in the house dressing, a couple of appetizers, a couple of dishes. All dark wood and banquettes, the interior made a pleasant change from the slightly-humid, bug-infested evening outdoors. (Box elder bugs are swarming just now; they're harmless, but irritating like gnats.)

We started with a round from the bar, all of which were well-prepared. That would have put us in a good mood for dinner if the service hadn't been so ... uh ... expeditious. Considering that the dinner rush was long over by the time we sat down (but closing time was still a good way off), there was no reason for hurrying us through the courses; yet they did. Our salads arrived only seconds after our drinks; the main platters arrived immediately after. Our before-dinner drinks ended up being after-dinner drinks, and there are few drinks that can perform both roles with any kind of aplomb. 

What's that mean?

Fortunately for our moods, the salads were quite good, large bowls of fresh lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and all the other appropriate rabbit-food items. The dressings tasted home-made (house, with feta cheese, and creamy Italian). The coleslaw chosen by one of our group was even better: sweet, creamy, lusciously delicious. If I ever return to this restaurant, that will be my salad of choice.

For main dishes we had a plate of fried shrimp, one of pork ribs, and one of steak. The pork ribs were easily the best of the three, with a sweet barbecue sauce that brought out the flavour of the perfectly cooked meat. I don't ordinarily do messy food — watermelon, buffalo wings, and barbecue (and long pasta is on my "caution" list) — but I would make an exception for these delicious ribs.

Ranking next in the hierarchy was the shrimp. Present in quantity commensurate with their price, they were breaded in a wheat batter and fried quickly, tempura-style, resulting in very light, very tasty shrimp.

The weak spot of the meal was the New York strip steak. Thick and large but hardly tender meat, with minimal ribboning of fat through it, it was grilled a little beyond the medium-rare I ordered, and it had been rubbed with unusual seasonings — possibly Greek seasonings? — that I found gave it a slightly unpleasant aroma, and the drippings from the meat concentrated the flavour of those spices in a way that I didn't like. I thought the steak was a little overpriced at $26, but not enough to get worked up about. The less-than-perfect quality of the meat was more the issue.

(And while I'm talking about price, let me say this: I wanted to order prime rib, but was irked by the fact that that dish is offered at one price ("our everyday price," ironically, since it applies only three days out of seven) on weekends and another, lower, price the rest of the week. There is no acceptable excuse for that kind of institutionalized price-gouging.)

The accoutrements of the meal were good: good, soft bread; baked potatoes offered with melted cheese, sour cream, and plenty of butter; and a relish tray of a sort that I have not seen in ages, containing raw radishes, celery, carrots and green onion to munch on. There's a tradition that should enjoy a resurgence.

There were some service issues: we asked for utensils twice (there were only two sets on a table set for four), and finally had to swipe some from another table; our waitress was ready to walk away after only one of us had ordered a drink, and had to be stopped so the rest of us could place our orders; we had to ask twice for some of the dressings for our potatoes; and despite the unrelaxed speed at which things were brought from the kitchen, empty plates were slow to make their way back, and we had to resort to piling things on the next table in order to have room to eat. Listing the flaws like that may make them seem more important than they seemed at the time. In fact all they did was keep the service at the Log Cabin from being rated above average, because otherwise the server was pleasant and engaging, knowledgeable, and attentive to our needs. Taken altogether, I would say simply that the service here was uneven, nothing worse.