Unintentionally Retro

The Copper Kettle
1005 South Main Street
River Falls, Wisconsin

There are two kinds of retro restaurants in my experience of the world: the self-consciously and intentionally retro, which is to restaurant dining as the PT Cruiser is to driving; and the unintentionally retro, which is more akin to a white '65 Impala with red tucaroles. The Copper Kettle is definitely in the latter category.

The place looks, at first impression, thoroughly up to date. Then you notice that you enter, not next to the bar, but through it. The dining room is off to the side, and the patio is beyond. We opted for the patio, it being a fine late-Spring evening in western Wisconsin. (We probably would have picked the patio back home, too, but we would have sweated through the evening as the temperature grudgingly gave back that third digit.) Out there we found a plastic dog guarding plastic roses and plastic tulips, all unabashedly placed as though fashionable, and with no sense of irony.

We had to start with an order of fried cheese curds, just because my friend Rick, who is on his maiden voyage to the midwest, wasn't sure he should believe us when we said there was such a thing. He was unimpressed: snobbishly so, I would say, and I put his dismissive attitude down to a lack of timely medication. The cheese curds were nicely done. Yes, they are somewhat reminiscent of fried mozzarella, just as an old Karmann Ghia convertible could be considered reminiscent of a Jaguar E-Type -- they're both European and only nominally 4-seaters, and both were available with steering wheels and gear shifters. I, who have at least had a few cheese curds in my life, the recent parts of it anyway, consider these tasty little beer-battered morsels to be well above average in the cheese-curd universe. But then, everything tastes good fried, right?

We ordered drinks all around, something we don't normally do back home. They were delivered by our waitress in good time, precariously balanced on a tray in a manner that set the mood for the evening. By the time we left we were on our way to a close friendship with this child of exile who claims unconvincingly that she can, in fact, remember the '70s. (Not because she was spaced out during those years, but because she was too young, if she was alive at all. You don't have to clarify that for any other decade in human history, except possibly the '60s.)

Our choices for dinner started with onion soup and house salad; roast beef with mashed potatoes; a Reuben sandwich with fries; and the chicken Kiev, a dish I have not seen on a menu since the 1970s.

The onion soup was unusual, in that it was made with a light broth instead of the de rigueur dark beef broth. The onions weren't carmelized, and the cheese sprinkled (sprinkled!) on top was either mozzarella or a travesty of Swiss. It was a thoroughly unauthentic concoction, and the greatest failing of the evening, but even at that it was enjoyable. The salad was perfectly ordinary, not quite as fresh as it could have been.

The Reuben sandwich was well made: plentiful corned beef and a goodly serving of sauerkraut on a superior quality pumpernickel bread, but presented as though no one in the kitchen has ever given the least thought to making a plate attractive. It was just put on the plate with a pile of fries and served, artlessly. Well, that's okay, I guess, but how easy would it have been to make it look more attractive? Extremely easy, as my friend Rick demonstrated before eating. A little presentation doesn't hurt, and it doesn't have to be fru-fru (the opinion of too many chefs notwithstanding; it's the student-loan debt talking, with them). The fries, by the way, were pretty good, although completely unsalted; cut medium-thick, with the skins, and fried the right amount of time in new oil at the proper temperature.

The pot roast was plentiful, and made just like most people's grandmothers would have done it. The mashed potatoes were made with the skin left on, and seasoned with garlic. Made with butter and milk and left slightly lumpy, so you know it's not fake mashed potatoes, and not made with a food processor. The meat required no knife; it yielded at the mere sight of a fork waved purposefully at it. And there was almost too much of it, despite the extremely reasonable price.

The chicken Kiev, that classic dish of the 1970s, was served as though it was still 1978. I suspect that the chicken breast was rolled around the seasoned butter in some distant food-processing factory, not the Copper Kettle's kitchen: it was simply too perfectly formed to be made in house. The batter on it was underseasoned and had the gritty quality of dry corn meal. In addition to being stuffed with butter, the dish was laid in a bed of butter and topped with a butter sauce. I haven't seen that much butter all in one place since Dr Atkins made his debut. It was, of course, delicious. I only hope my cardiologist doesn't read this.

What better way to top off a trip back in time than to order drinks that haven't been ordered since Styx broke up? A Colorado bulldog for Rick, a Golden Cadillac for me. Mine was all vanilla ice cream and no discernible liqueurs; Rick was happier with his. (He is out on the front porch now, still being happy.)

On the way out, the plastic dog bit me. I kicked him, but he didn't yelp. Stoic, he is.

[Since I'm writing this post on someone else's computer, I don't have access to my usual graphic for ratings. I will give this restaurant three chili peppers for the food, four for the service, three for the ambience, and three and a half for value. What's that mean? All in all, it was a pleasant experience, and I would be comfortable recommending the place to anyone looking for a meal in western Wisconsin.]



Dining Out in Kansas City

Accurso's Italian Food
4980 Main Street
Kansas City, Missouri

It's just a guess, but I suspect that as you move away from the heart of Country Club Plaza, prices get better and the snob factor declines in inverse proportion. Accurso's is just far enough from that point of overpriced snobbery that the prices are acceptable even to this miserly curmudgeon, while the snoot-elevation was still sufficient to lend an air of sophistication.

We were surprised to be seated right away, at 7pm on a Friday evening — but judging from the many restaurants we passed on our way here, no one goes out on the Friday of a three-day weekend in Kansas City.  I celebrated this unexpected bit of lagniappe with a glass of wine, an inexpensive and unpretentious Riesling that I really enjoyed. We started with the antipasto sampler, tasty and easily large enough for four people: artichoke hearts, olives, salami, provolone, capicola, mozzarella, pepperoni and tomatoes slathered in way too much balsamic vinegar and olive oil. 

What's that mean?

The dishes we ordered were lasagna, ravioli raphaela, and two of that evening's specials: stuffed rigatoni in a cream sauce, and tuna steaks on capellini. Of those four, only the tuna would seem to match the promise of the restaurant's atmosphere and reputation. It was excellent, cooked to within a hair's breadth of perfection, with a delicious light sauce. The stuffed rigatoni was cooked al dente but seasoned with an overdose of salt, and an underdose of stuffing in the pasta (and what there was, was bland). The ravioli raphaela was plentiful but, sadly, uninteresting, to the point where I actually left a good portion of it uneaten, and didn't take it home for leftovers, a shocking behavioural abnormality that should speak volumes. The lasagna was either okay or lousy, depending on which you accept of the four opinions it produced at our table. My own thought was that it was just okay, though the sauce relied too much on mere tomato flavour. The link of dry Italian sausage served with it was grilled well beyond expectation but not quite beyond acceptability. 

Things Are Looking Up: Day 2 of the 2011 Wisconsin Road Trip

[Some of the photos taken on this trip are posted on line HERE]

Stratford, Texas, at sunrise

I was up early, like 5AM, wide awake, so I got dressed and went out to see the sights of Stratford, Texas, a small panhandle town that, honestly, has no sights. It didn't take long. At least the angle of the light gave mundane things a slight romantic cast, and the cool air was bracing. Rick was up a couple of hours later, and we loaded the car pretty quickly and headed off in search of coffee.

Before we found that, though, we reached Boise City, Oklahoma, where we witnessed the destruction wrought by the US Army Air Corps pilot who accidentally dropped three bombs on the town during a 1943 training mission. Luckily for the town, bombs used during training missions back then weren't live ordnance, so the destruction was mostly to the surface of the earth. One of the bombs has been enshrined as mute testimony to the town's will, in its crater in front of the Chamber of Commerce. The others are in the town's museum collection, which we didn't see.

After that, we drove out to the edge of town to see the city's welcome to visitors from the north. When it was built, these giant sauropods were called brontosaurs, so it probably had some cute diminutive name like Bessy the Bronto. Now they're called apatosaurs, and that just doesn't lend itself to charming iambic phrase. So now it's called The Dinosaur.

Following that, a quick tour of the town revealed that there was only one surviving eatery where we might get coffee and breakfast ... a Subway in the local truck stop. It could've been worse. Much worse. At least breakfast at Subway is a thing of known quality and composition, and the truck stop's coffee was pretty good, and voluminous.

From there we headed northeast, clipping the corner of Texas County (which was why we went that direction in the first place) and then up into unexplored Kansas. We paused briefly to admire the vastness of the grassland in the Cimarron River bottom, then continued north to Wallace, epicenter of a number of battles between the US cavalry and whichever tribe of Indians inhabited the area at the time. I thought it was Arapaho, but there was some Pawnee pottery in the local museum.

The big draw of that museum, though, is its collection of barbed-wire animal sculptures executed by local artisan Ernie Poe ("Ernest E. Poe, if you want to get formal. I don't.") His chef d'oeuvre is the near-life-sized buffalo that stands out front, seven hundred pounds of wire on a steel frame. 

In addition to the museum, the exhibits include a station of the old Butterfield Overland Despatch line that ran through the area, complete with bullet holes and trap door that led to the tunnels that once connected the station with its outlying defenses; a Union Pacific Railway station; and a building built to house the collection of the larger implements of frontier life -- a corn wagon, a chuckwagon, a sleigh, some other carts, a loom, a mock-up of a blacksmith shop, and the various animals that Ernie has built to pose with the vehicles. All in all, an entertaining half hour by the roadside.

Inside the museum were some photographs of people exploring an interesting geological formation called Monument Rocks, which we found out were just a small distance out of our planned way. So we drove over to Oakley, the next town, where we saw the monumental sculpture of Buffalo Bill Cody on a mound,

and the little Fick Museum (which consists of one fascinating fossil exhibit and piles of local craftwork)

and then we drove fourteen miles south to a dirt road that led, after 7 miles, to Monument Rocks, an impressive stand of chalk towers left behind when the land around them eroded away. We spent at least a good hour clambering around in these rocks.

After that slightly mystical experience (you always understand why the Indians thought of these places as "sacred"), we headed north toward Nebraska, stopping for dinner in Oberlin, Kansas, a pleasant Plains city given to variety in its garden plantings of irises.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like Cameron Diaz with a West Texas Drawl

Green Chile Willy's
13651 Interstate 27, at McCormick
Amarillo, Texas

It's just a simple metal building, plopped down between the frontage road and a horse farm. Inside the decor is typical of many Texas restaurants: framed, autographed pictures of local celebrities, some western impedimenta, some old sepia-toned photos. Not a very large place. In fact, not nearly large enough for the crowds it attracts. We got there just in time: we were seated immediately; fifteen minutes later, all the seats in the waiting area were taken.

The menu is as simple as the architecture: fried chicken; chicken fried steak; burgers; and side dishes like fried corn and baked potatoes. I went for the Jalapeño Jack chicken fried steak; my friend Rick opted for the chicken fried chicken.

Our waitress, the title character of this post, greeted us as though we were old friends come to call, but with a degree of sincerity that is hard to fake. When Rick asked for sweet tea, she told him they only had unsweetened, "But can you stick your finger in it?" An old line, but delivered with such unforced charm that it still works. She was attentive throughout our meal, but without hovering. She struck just the right balance between visiting with her customers and getting her work done, and we could see that no one in the place felt any lack of attention from any of the staff.

Both our meals were priced at $11.25, though the menu did claim that all the chicken fried steaks were "Texas sized," and both meals included a salad and one side order. Still, I thought the price a little on the high side. My initial dissatisfaction with that aspect of the visit increased when I found that Texas is not as big in the Panhandle as it is in the rest of the state. I expected a CFS that draped over the sides of a respectable platter; I got one about the size of a dessert plate. Big enough to satisfy the stomach, but not the eyes. I know, I'm better off not having gotten some gigantic slab of breaded meat, but I had kind of been hoping for leftovers for tomorrow's lunch.

See my comment, below,
re the "value" rating

I certainly didn't leave with any sense of dissatisfaction, however. It may not have been the absolute best CFS I've ever had, but it's up there. The breading was a little crunchy, as it should be, and well seasoned; the meat was good quality, and the cream gravy was excellent. The best part of it, though, were the added ingredients of jalapeños and shredded Monterrey Jack cheese, which were present in just great enough quantity to add their flavours to the mix with clarity, not intruding on the simple pleasure of CFS with cream gravy, but augmenting it. Rick's chicken fried chicken had the same combination of ingredients, and was equally tasty. 

The side dishes were done with a precise hand. Simple foods like these are hard to screw up, but also hard to excel at. Yet the kitchen at Green Chile Willy's Grill has excelled. The green beans I had were fresh, cooked long enough to be tender but not so long as to get mushy, and seasoned with a tangy mixture of spices that does not appear to include bacon or fatback. They were delicious. And Rick's baked potato was large but perfectly baked, with plenty of the toppings that make a baked potato so heart-clogging good. 

The kitchen at Green Chile Willy's is geared toward speed. Salads, condiments, toppings and such are packaged in the slow times for quick delivery when the crowds start pouring in, but they achieve that speed without sacrificing appreciably on quality. It's a good thing, because the lines are out the door.