The Deli at Alley Station

Dear friends, readers, and Internet search-bots,

We realize that posting here at LiM has dwindled to a meager trickle of late. We know. We get it. You are starved for content from our fertile minds. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on who you are), we have been busy with other antics, including our other blog about Montgomery — Midtown Montgomery Living. No, we have not left this blog to wither and die as the mainstream media would suggest. Rather, we have waited, biding our time, to return to LiM with a vengeance. We plan to be updating it much more frequently from here on out. Thanks for bearing with us (if, in fact, you have). We love you.

Here’s the setup: Historic American city trying to get back on its feet after years of neglecting its downtown takes bold new strides to re-zone and re-develop its urban core. A big fancy hotel is built with convention space! The (heterosexual) river is turned into something people might like to walk alongside and have lunch near! There’s a new bar with a surprisingly good happy hour, even though it’s stupidly closed for daytime football! And a new Italian restaurant that, despite being prone to bouts of extremely sketchy service, offers some damn fine food (including an outrageously tasty pizza with eggs on it)! And baseball! And oysters!

Even as the exclamation points pile up, redevelopment isn’t without its hitches. Lofts are built and occupied at a trickle. Others see construction slowed or completely abandoned when the economy collapses. Ultimately, everyone knows that if downtown is really going to thrive, people are going to have to live there. To get people to live downtown, there needs to be food available for purchase. Food that goes beyond ribs, pizza and vile “Chinese” food. Bigger cities than Montgomery have struggled with this very same issue. Los Angeles’ downtown residential prospects snagged for years on the “no grocery store” issue.

Functioning high density urban neighborhoods are full of delis, bodegas and other corner stores – residents need to run out and get food, diapers, cat litter and other city living essentials. Also they want to be able to eat delicious and reasonably priced food before and after attending the many urban cultural functions that make downtown living worthwhile.

That’s why we were so enthusiastic about the Deli at Alley Station. It seemed like a first step toward sustainable downtown living in Montgomery. Sure, there may never be a Winn-Dixie downtown, but that doesn’t mean there couldn’t be a nice market (milk, eggs, toilet paper, wine) that also sells tasty sandwiches. Alas, despite the various efforts of ex-mayor (and one-term Congressman) Bobby Bright and various other economic development types neither possibility has yet come to pass.

The Deli at Alley Station is an exercise in disappointment. First, you’ll be disappointed in the food. Maybe their Reuben is good – we’ll never know for sure. But the things we ate on a recent visit were truly terrible. One of us had the “Deli Salad Sampler” with pimento cheese, tuna salad and egg salad. Each salad came ice cream scooped onto a longboat-style lettuce leaf destined to ferry them into infamy. For those of us who have suffered the many indignities of repulsive office meals catered by Chappy’s Deli, this meal was the S.S. Minnow to Chappy’s Kon-Tiki. A total of four crackers accompanied this festival of objectionable goo.

It was probably for the best that we were unable to obtain more crackers. The egg salad may be the worst we’ve ever had (and the genre isn’t replete with luminaries). If you had told us in advance that it was actually a scoop of a flavorless mush called root marm, we probably would have believed you. Immediately after tasting, we were filled by regret. As it turns out, the consumption of emptiness is less glamorous than French philosophers have led us to believe. It is more like the feeling after watching Rhianna’s NBA All-Star halftime show, which is to say that you will need at least a shower and possibly a box of Girl Scout Thin Mints to rid yourself of its aftertaste.

Speaking of aftertaste, there was the tuna salad. Let us speak no more of it except to say that it is not good when your customers are unfavorably comparing it to the tuna salad at Subway (also served with a depressing ice cream scoop, and also the color and consistency of our coming nanotechnology Armageddon).

Finally, and with fleeting shreds of hope for a decent lunch, we dutifully sampled the pimento cheese. Which was served in a scoop-sized portion probably large enough to employ a small army of cardiologists. Now, we know from pimento cheese, and we can honestly say that this stuff was, um, edible. It wasn’t good (that honor is reserved for the edgier kinds of cheese spread that come with small amounts of diced jalapenos), but it was edible. But not in the bucket size. And not with four crackers. And really, not as a stand-alone entree for a lunch (which, where we come from, is a meal). We must emphasize that it was not good. But it did at least taste like the thing it was supposed to taste like.

On the other side of the table we had a cup of soup and the Alley Station Special Grilled Cheese Panini. This is a tarted-up grilled cheese, but it was heavily sold on the online menu, as well as the giant wall-sized menu in the store. This was no obstacle to our cashier’s total ignorance of the item’s presence on the menu. Which seemed odd since it was one of three items flagged with a fork to signify a “signature” item.

We assume, in this culture at least, that a “signature” appellation means that the item is one of the best on the menu – that it stands above the crowd of mundane club sandwiches and turkey wraps as something the chef stakes his or her name to, that it is therefore worthy of flourishes and the word “special” and the little hearts over the “i”s, or what have you. Not for nothing is John Hancock still associated with the politics of personal endorsement. If this is the case, then the Deli at Alley Station is in big trouble. This sad disaster of a sandwich was chewy and cheesy in all the wrong ways. Yes, Virginia, grilled cheese sandwiches can be gross. It was even gross dipped generously in the cup of mushroom bisque. Which soup was edible in the same way as the pimento cheese. Its cook, alas, had made the decision to replace flavor with extra cream. In the age of Rhianna, we all settle for simulacra.

The day we were there we felt it was almost certainly drawing lunch diners off of Sa Za. Which is too bad, if only because this meant more people were eating mediocre sandwiches when they could have been eating delicious egg pizza. It was the allure of the new, we are almost certain – the same reason you couldn’t get a table at Wintzell’s when it opened, but now can walk in and sit basically anywhere.

After you finish being disappointed in the food, you can start being disappointed in the place. The Deli at Alley Station misunderstands the problem with downtown living. The problem wasn’t that people couldn’t get lunch. Sure, maybe they couldn’t get much breakfast outside of the Renaissance’s restaurant (and certainly not “all day” breakfast – let’s see how long that lasts). But is a turkey club (or even a good Reuben) really a revolutionary addition to the downtown foodscape?

The problem was the lack of “grab and go,” of actual deli food (meats, cheeses, breads, the stuff a market offers) and the lack of market offerings. The DAS has decided, in the latter area, to opt for the Rhianna solution and substitute simulacrum for reality. They have a refrigerator case full of candy and dubious health waters up front. On the side there are moon pies and Cracker Jacks well out of reach of any adult (let alone child) who might like to purchase them. There’s a weird display of cans of dog and cat food next to Chef Boyardee ravioli on the other side of the freezer cases. It looks like it’s for show, but is “reachable” by sliding ladder (along with several six packs of beer that are seriously more than eight feet off the ground). Is this really going to be the thing (or a thing) that convinces folks that downtown is now livable?

The DAS could possibly appeal to people who think it’s a treat to go to Panera Bread. This might also eventually serve as an acceptable eatery for people that work downtown. Unfortunately, since the state is broke and probably due to fire all of the state workers soon, there will be fewer of those in the times to come.

There are too few tables for it to be a “hangout,” and we have outlined its total failure as any sort of grocery store, despite the hilarious prop cereal boxes that seem to suggest that someone once listened to an audiobook about urban redevelopment in their SUV as they sped off to their Eastside Hellscape McMansion.

Just because the Deli at Alley Station fails as a deli doesn’t mean it’s bad. We like Dr. Dre despite the fact that he’s not an actual physician. The problem is really with its failure as a restaurant. It will be interesting to see whether Montgomery consumers reward the DAS’ abject mediocrity, and whether downtown ever gets the necessities for the real urban living it claims to want.

Three ice cream scoops of spreadable badness.

Flavor is not the same as fat.

Note the rolling ladder on right, which you could use to reach the laughable inventory if you lived in your car and believed that Chef Boyardee was food.

Free Magazine Review: RSVP (Sept/Oct 2010)

It has indeed been a while. So many free magazines piled up around the house. Time to get to reviewing them again! It’s Lost in Montgomery’s only semi-regular feature, Free Magazine Review! Click here for past editions. Today, we just couldn’t pass up reviewing another issue of the local mag that is our go-to source for rich white people comedy.

What’s it called? Montgomery RSVP. As you may recall, RSVP is actually an acronym, standing for “Rental Space Vogue Parties.” They have a website.

Giant furries promote loyalty to higher education

What is it? Well, they claim in their subtitle to be “The River Region Guide for All Things Social,” but that obviously depends on your social scene. If you’re younger than 30, make less than $50,000 a year, or you don’t resemble Bob Costas or Martha Stewart, you may well decide that there are some “things social” that aren’t covered by the sweeping umbrella of RSVP’s claim.

Where’d we find it? Likely at one of the businesses featured in the many advertisements within the pages of the magazine. Our best guess after digging this issue out of one of our stacks of unread detritus is that this issue was grabbed at a local salon.

What’s the deal? We’ve reviewed RSVP twice before. First we looked at their March/April 2009 issue. Then we examined their July/August issue of the same year. Both were hilarious editions, but we took some time off to see if RSVP could get it together. But like awful adult contemporary singer Richard Marx sang, we just “keep coming back.”

RSVP is, after all, clearly the leading publication in the field of Montgomery’s vast and competitive free magazine landscape. You might say that it stands astride the world of free magazines like a Colossus towering over a giant pile of wasted paper.

RSVP appears to be plugging themselves into the municipal scene in a way that the somewhat-harder-to-find Montgomery Living is failing to do. Maybe it’s RSVP’s snazzy party planning business, or maybe they’ve simply got better connections. Maybe it’s because RSVP’s magazine is free, while Montgomery Living has a cover price (though we’ve never paid for one). RSVP is hooked into the young urban professional network in a way that has caused it to cross our paths several times over the past year.

What sections do they have? RSVP seems to have settled into a fairly regular set of features. They’ve got two stories under “Singled OUT,” which, we guess is about dating or something. There’s a feature story; the “socially SEEN” section; “Look, Listen, Lounge;” and the usual bunch. There’s no real reason why the sections are distinguishable. Music info could be under “Look, Listen, Lounge,” or maybe under “Now Hear This,” or as a “reason to gather” or “friends, trends, odds & ends,” or perhaps the catch-all category, “when? what? where?” Either way, the whole thing is advertising, so it’s not like there are firm editorial categories here.

Obviously, the most important section here is “the list,” which features several pages of photos and biographical information about “young leaders.” And trust us, if you have a job and are under 50, RSVP’s list considers you a “young leader.” One featured leader has been in the Air Force for 22 years.

Who advertises? The usual suspects. We’ve been through this in our previous two reviews of the mag. The first ad after the inside cover is for the Alley Bar, touting the fact that you can watch football there. Well, it says, “Game on!” and has a picture of an offensive line about to snap the ball. Wouldn’t that lead you to think you could watch Saturday morning college football games at the Alley Bar? Yet, do they show games there?

We went on a Saturday during October and they were closed. Do you think they’re open for the NFL on Sundays? Nope.

Game on!

In fact, if you’ll entertain a brief sidebar about the Alley Bar, we called their phone number on a Sunday morning and not only were they closed, they didn’t even have an outgoing voicemail explaining their hours. You get get a recorded message: “Memory full. Enter access code.”

Huh. OK. Maybe there’s info on their blog. Nope. Instead of info from the bar itself, you get posts from customers complaining about being overcharged on their credit cards.

Ah, downtown revitalization.

What’s interesting in this issue? Football! Like, totally, uh muh Gah!

Look, we love college football. More importantly, most people around here love college football. Thus, it’s a good cover choice and a defensible theme for a fall issue. There’s good fodder for a featured cover story and it’s likely to be a popular issue.

That said, it helps to have some idea of what you’re talking about before you pick something to be your cover story. Take the six ladies on the title page, for example. Usually, this is where you get a note from the editor. This month, we get six notes from various white ladies, each talking about autumn and football. Kim, the publisher, likes to “get [her] booty back in the gym.” Amanda watches Grey’s Anatomy and loves Auburn football. Amanda says, “since retiring my pom-poms years ago,” she is mostly “an avid fan of shopping.” Chandler enjoys picking out the perfect game day dress, while Mallory applies football terms to her dating life, talking about “steering clear of yellow flags” and not “jumping offsides” by texting or calling too much. Shopping and fashion and dating! Football!

Pages 12-15 are light on text, heavy on fashion, mostly trying to tell you brand name college-themed crap to buy to wear to football games. No faded lucky t-shirts for these ladies. We’re talking semi off-the-shoulder tops for “flirty fun looks.” And for the dudes? Shut up and drink your embroidered flask.

Also, while it’s nice that they threw Alabama State and Troy State (yes, we still call it that) into the mix with Bama and Auburn, there’s no mention in the fashion spread of other in-state teams like Samford, UAB, or LOCAL team Huntingdon.

The Hawks do make it into the “spirit of the game” section, which consists of “facts about these colleges that we downloaded off the Internet.” In the section about Alabama State (p. 28), the editors/writers manage to misspell both “Pittsburgh” and “Steelers.” Yay, football!

But what can we really expect from a publication that on the front end says several times that “every Southern girl” waits year-round for football season and then towards the back of the magazine alongside the printing of SEC football schedules includes this fine image:

Ladies like football ... unless it is boring torture that they endure because men force them.

Free Magazine Review: Montgomery Living (August 2009)

It’s time for yet another installment of everyone’s favorite feature here at Lost in Montgomery, the Free Magazine Review! Previous looks at the area’s free magazines considered an issue of Vetrepreneur, an issue of Dixie Living Magazine, and an issue of Montgomery RSVP. Now it’s time to take a look at one of the rivals of the latter publication:

What’s it called? Montgomery Living

What is it? The subtitle is “The River Region Magazine,” but don’t let that confuse you with yet another favorite free periodical often available here in Montgomery, River Region’s Journey, which is a very Christian magazine to be reviewed in another edition of Free Magazine Review. No, Montgomery Living is actually just a super-glossy and pretentious “high end” publication, complete with a whopping $3 cover price and a ton of color photos. Although we have never, ever, seen it for sale anywhere. According to its website, “the magazine is designed, edited and produced to appeal to upscale, well-educated, involved individuals.” Oh. Right. Also on the website? Super Hot, Blue Blood, All White debutante action.

Where’d we find it? Our memory on this is a bit hazy, but we think it either came from our vet’s office or a doctor’s office. Or maybe it was in a salon of some sort. Needless to say, these are a bit harder to find than Montgomery RSVP (due to their high price), but still are pretty much anywhere that rich people congregate and shop.

What’s the deal? This seems to be the kingpin of the local free mags. Hell, maybe they aren’t even really free. But they ought to be. Montgomery Living is full of predictable Chamber of Commerce schlock. It’s the typical fare about food and cultural events, with a focus on non-offensive looks at “social scenes” and half-assed travel writing. As with RSVP, the whole thing is run by women. The editor, all three people in marketing, the art director, the sole staff writer, the social gadfly columnist, the business manager, and 10 of 12 contributing writers — all ladies.

What sections do they have? Editor’s Letter, Favorite Things (“Cool, current products”), 10 Things (evidently random), On the Table (food reviews), Artbeat, Destinations and Diversions, Profiles and Perspectives, In the Garden, Living Well, Good Deeds, Interiors/Exteriors, Socially Speaking, Cityscapes, and Out and About.

Who advertises? All the heavy-hitters. We’re talking tons of full color, full-page ads from the big hospitals, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, real estate, hotels, restaurants, and furniture stores. It’s a who’s who of the White People Scene in Montgomery, with half-page ads from the two most exclusive private schools, personal trainers and yoga studios, heavy oil portrait painting, plastic surgeons, etc.

What’s interesting in this issue? The full page ad taken out by the Montgomery Area Visitors Center is pretty funny. It features a pile of crap you can buy at the visitors center, such as a t-shirt that says “Hey Ya’ll” and the cookbook written by the wife of the governor. Hurry down! Supplies may be limited!

As far as writing goes, there’s not much to recommend. The editor seems to struggle to put together an intro to the magazine in her perky and upbeat “From the Editor” column. But she does look like a victim of the Joker’s Smilex gas, so that’s pretty entertaining to look at for a few seconds. She writes about how it’s nice to write letters to people.

The “Ten Things You Might Not Know About the River Region” is a laughable attempt to fill one and a half pages. They were all things that we both already knew, and we have lived here slightly longer than a year. Did you know that Hank Williams used to play music here? That F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda used to live here? Yes. Yes, we did know that.

There’s a decent piece on how Montgomery is now sister cities with a city in Italy, “the vibrant Tuscan city of Pietrasanta.” It’s really more of a town (population: less than 25,000), but the article doesn’t mention that and has a nice photo of our mayor Todd Strange accepting a book of some sort from the mayor of Pietrasanta who is hilariously wearing a red, white, and green sash. So, um, yay for cultural exchanges.

There’s an article about a local private school titled “Still Pursuing Excellence,” which is funny both because that school has purchased an ad in this issue of the magazine, giving lie to any pretense of editorial objectivity, but also because the title makes it sound like the school has been chasing the elusive goal without success for quite some time. Happy 50th anniversary to a hallmark of the flight from the integrated City of Montgomery school system!

The cover story is about a new entertainment district inventively called “The Alley.” It boasts a bar, a Dreamland, and an Italian place. Oh, and “an event space.” Because those are cool. The article doesn’t mention that this is all the product of the former mayor, who was sent off to Congress, or that there were major legal fights about an ugly water tower that was plopped down at the entrance to the alley, or that the whole thing reeks of Trying Too Hard. Nope. Just an article saying that there are places to go and Please God Shop Locally because “We Have Nice Things Tooooo.” Mike Watson, a local architect, is the owner of the bar and he designed the Alley Project for the city. We think the Alley Bar is OK and plan to go there after some Biscuits games. But the Montgomery Living write up? Needs to be dragged out into the alley and beaten.

The Fashion “FIX-ations” section is truly cringeworthy. We really felt sorry for the poor women forced to model the paisley mini-bag (hilariously described as “of the moment”) and the tiered concoctions supposed to represent “Dos.” By the end of the article our female half had resolved never ever to set food inside Painted Pink, where the owners evidently recommend that ladies wear something called a “funky boyfriend/lumberjack shirt.”

Yes, this magazine has two pages of gardening advice and a two page barn burner of an article about why it’s important to get a good night’s sleep. Bottom line? For a superficial look at events that have likely already happened, or are too expensive to attend, or simply threaten to bore you to sleep, this magazine would be the perfect companion for any trip to the dentist’s office or hospital waiting room. And if shoddy travel writing along with poorly-conceived articles about food are what you crave, grab yourself a copy of Montgomery Living.