Wasabi

You’re a tuna. You’re arcing through the Pacific on a path older than time. You sense an enticing glimmer, feel a violent tug, and are now dying on the deck of a boat.

You catch fish for a living. You know you’re over-fishing the oceans, but the endlessly chomping mouths demand the fruits of the sea. Plates in Omaha, El Paso, Des Moines, and Montgomery, Alabama, require tuna and salmon and eel. You try to think of the happiness that the flesh of your catch will bring to some famished diner, honoring your labor. You try not to think of business guys shoving vast quantities of sashimi into their laughing gullets.

You’re opening a Japanese restaurant. Your market research tells you that the average consumer of Japanese food in this area is mostly interested in a birthday party surrounding a hibachi grill — the kind where the chef tosses a shrimp high into the air and puts on a funny show. You are taking a risk by opening a new place. You add more water to your miso soup, hoping to stretch it a little further.

You like going to restaurants. You try the new Japanese place shortly after it opens. The food is limp and depressing. The service is a step or two below that. To be kind, you decide not to write a review because it’s hard to open a new place and get it firing on all cylinders. You decide to come back when it’s a little more established. Maybe they’ll have everything worked out and you can give it a fair consideration.

A co-worker proposes going to Wasabi for lunch. Another co-worker vetoes the idea because the online reviews are so scathing.

A work lunch eventually brings you to Wasabi. It wasn’t your idea, but this is where you are told to meet. You are excited to finally get to see the restaurant on a representative day. Scan the menu’s “Prattville rolls” (fried shrimp and cucumber topped with lobster salad) and ponder those who will identify themselves according to stated preferences for the “Roll Tide roll” (lobster salad and avocado topped with tuna and avocado) or the “War Eagle roll” (tuna and avocado topped with salmon and avocado and the “chef’s special spicy sauce”). Idly wonder if the lobster is langostino.

Your food is again very poor. You struggle to communicate with your server, who seems unfamiliar with the permanent lunch specials. You try adding the restaurant’s namesake spice to your food, in hopes of stimulating your tongue. Nothing. Fortunately, your companion picks up the tab.

You’re describing a cucumber roll to a friend. “The rice was so dry, it reminded me of a certain snapping, crackling and popping breakfast cereal,” you explain. “The slices of sashimi may have been brightly colored bits of a leather belt from Wal-Mart, chewy but flavorless — as if they had perfected an alchemical process in the kitchen that removed the unique taste of fresh tuna and left behind some kind of pink simulacrum.”

You ponder the future of The Alley. Although nearly empty at lunch, maybe traffic picks up at night. Maybe folks don’t mind, or even enjoy Wasabi and the reprehensible Jalapenos. Maybe restaurant owners will get rich and customers well-fed well, fed.

True(ly), Made(ly), Deeply

It is tired to even mention that we live in a culture that is materialistic. All human cultures have ever been so, and there’s not much of a point to arguing that ours is any more thing-oriented than the culture of our parents (they wanted cars, suburban homes, crystal decanters) or our grandparents (they wanted washing machines, televisions, record players). When everyone has pretty much what they need to survive and be comfortable, they must be sold adjectives rather than nouns. We don’t need soap, we need beauty. We don’t need shoes, we need cool. Where once we wanted things, now we want adjectives. This is all Marketing 101 and familiar to anyone regardless of whether they’ve watched Mad Men. Materialism reaches its apex in the culture of the adjective.

Montgomery, seeking to become something other than the mostly broken city it’s been for so long, has seized on adjectives with a surprising fierceness. The City of Dreams (noun) having largely failed to take hold, slogan-wise, thanks to a high-priced consultant’s advice, we’ve now turned to an adjective (Capitol Cool, which the city uses lavishly to describe basically all local activities, including many that are profoundly un-cool – we’re looking at you, Crusade for Christ).

In other cities, they read nouns (The Stranger, The Village Voice). Here we have been delivered an adjective, Made, which is also (and perhaps not coincidentally) a truism. We once dined at nouns (The Village Kitchen, Roux), but now we eat at an adjective (True – yes, we know it’s the chef’s last name, its vague space between proper noun and adjective does nothing to diminish the point here). Both signify a similar zone of authenticity, the liminal space of the real, a branding sweet spot that assures the consumer of the product’s point of origin and epistemological locale. The thing itself is not important. What is important are its adjectives: the thing is made, never mind by whom; it is true, never mind by what criteria. This is the trick of the claim of authenticity – it is non-falsifiable, a matter of perspective, the kind of floating signifier that happens to be flitting wherever you wish it to be. It both valorizes agency and strips it away in one elegant and perfectly Pantone-d typographical set.

To immerse ourselves in the City of Adjectives the other night, we read Made while dining at True. Other than the wine, which was quite good, and the blue cheese (holy hell, Asher Blue), it was a lesson in authenticity. Which is to say inauthenticity. Which is to say it was like nothing at all had transpired except suddenly we found ourselves presented with an improbably large bill.

We’ve been to all of the incarnations in the True space. We had a rave-worthy experience at the Village Kitchen the first time we ate there, then watched as it rattled downhill to its inevitable demise. The rumor was it was just a place-holder anyway, to fill the space and make sure the lofts stayed profitable in the wake of Nancy Paterson’s sudden exit. Then there was Roux, much-heralded but just not good. I got food poisoning there once, then another time I sent the food back¹ only to have the chef come out and argue with me about it.

We’ve now been to True three times. The first time, I was served one of the all-time worst things I’ve ever had in a restaurant – an oyster stew that seemed to be, basically, a bowl of warm half-and-half with a few sad oysters floating dimly beneath the surface. It was so amazingly bad that I found myself wanting to take other people there to experience it in one of those “I think this milk is spoiled – taste it” moments of sadism. Nobody took me up on my offer. I see they still have an oyster stew on the menu; I hope for the future of our fair city that this dish has improved on its early incarnation. The second time we went, we had a perfectly nice meal. This was when I was still eating fish.

In 1994, I stopped eating animals because I became convinced that it was unethical to do so. When I moved to Montgomery, I conjured up a series of rationalizations that ended up in eating the occasional fish. This was mostly because it is damn hard to find a decent meal in this town if you’re a vegetarian. Salad’s good, but it’s not a meal every time. Vegetarians like fruits, vegetables, fats and proteins just like every other human. Also we need them to survive. But recently we adopted some fish and I decided I was done with eating their extended family.

So the other night at True, seeing no vegetarian entree on the menu, I asked if it was possible to order one. Our server (and let me say here that the service at True has always been outstanding, the sign of a well-run restaurant) checked with the kitchen and said it was. In the meantime, we had the cheese plate (too much Boursin but damn good pecans) and deviled eggs (really, for $4.50 you maybe should get two whole eggs as opposed to 1.5). When my entree arrived, I was stunned. I’d simply never seen anything like it. It was an asparagus puree topped with fingerling potatoes topped with fruit. It was like the kind of meal you’d make out of little plastic foods from the kind of play kitchen I had as a child – the kind your mother would pretend to eat to humor you. Except that it was also covered with salt. More specifically, warm and salty cantaloupe.

The bread was really delicious.

The fruit surprise. They described this as a “veggie plate.”

My companion had the seafood in parchment. He pronounced it good.

The cheese plate and deviled eggs.

But it sure looked nice. So did Made, which has looked like a design class project since its first issue. Here in its third, the content is wearing a little thin but the patient attention to font and color persists. The July cover features a man wearing sunglasses and a sheepskin vest over a long-sleeved red plaid shirt riding a skateboard in an alley holding an American flag behind his back like a wee parachute. This same man, whose name is evidently Luke Lindgren, is posed with the flag-as-shawl on page 11’s “Montgomery Street Style” display with the confusing caption “Board and summer plaid set the local Superhero scene spotted in a Cloverdale alley.” In a July that has so far suffocated us with heat and humidity, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would wear a long-sleeved plaid shirt, much less with a sheepskin vest. Why is Superhero capitalized? Is this person a superhero? If so, is their secret power resistance to heat? Superhero or not, why are they hanging around in a Cloverdale alley?

The July issue of Made begins with a but well-meaning attempt by one of the editors to acknowledge the publication for what it is – something for people of a particular socioeconomic group. Anything we say on this point will be obvious. The first issue featured the work of Natalie Chanin, founder of Alabama Chanin, whose clothing is lovely but unaffordable for all but the very wealthiest people in our city (e.g., the $155 “basics” T-shirt). The second issue’s discussion of our beloved Florida Panhandle advised visitors to 30-A to go to Seaside, Alys Beach or Rosemary Beach, all “made” communities far removed from the working-class wonders of Panama City Beach. This issue takes a more Chamber of Commerce type approach to the city, listing a variety of places one might go in Montgomery, with a layout so big and puzzlingly expansive that it makes those of us who’ve worked in newspapers feel like maybe they didn’t have a lot of content to work with this month. Still, there are some nice features. Some of them are even well written (though Made still needs to work on copy editing).

This issue’s call for writers whose voices might add diversity, while well-intentioned, seems a little bit like anticipatory self-defense. In other words, if other folks not as keen on ironic facial hair don’t chime in, then it will be their fault for not getting involved. Here we find the same logic of meritocracy that powers all kinds of systems that just happen to exclude poor people and people of color. Black people not in the University of Texas’ law school? Got to be their lack of trying. Poor people not voting? Guess they don’t care. After all, we asked them to vote and desegregated our schools.

In the end, we’re not interested in hating on Made in the same way that we have come to despise some of our city’s other free magazines (Montgomery Parent, we’re looking at you). There’s no doubt that they have good intentions and want to make a nice looking product that makes the city look better. They just have the slippery adjective feel, which when paired with the gross noun-ing of “creatives” (as in the weird and baldly narcissistic declaration that “we are creatives”) leaves the reader feeling like they’ve just eaten one of True’s deviled eggs: it’s like what you conjure of the real thing, slipping through memory like an oiled weasel through Astroturf, interesting not in itself but as compared to something else or, more likely, interesting because we have become the kind of person who consumes such things (artisanal deviled eggs, Made).

When the server asked how our entrees were, I tried to be circumspect. I said that if any other vegetarians wandered in on that Saturday night, the kitchen might want to reconsider its approach. Minutes later, an official kitchen presence appeared to discuss the dish. I explained that the plate, as presented, was both incoherent and not super-tasty. She responded by saying that perhaps it could use some work on the composition front. I wanted to say that the emphasis on composition was perhaps part of the problem but didn’t want to quite go down the Of Grammatology front, so settled for some vague comments to the effect of “it was salty,” also “these things don’t quite go together,” and finally “this is not actually a meal,” all of which seemed to result in vigorous nodding on her part and a comp on the bill for the offending (but, again, quite lovely) entree.

So for all of Made’s (really, Oxford American’s) well-founded criticism of “Southern Glossy,” we found the culprit just a few miles from our home: beautiful food, exquisitely presented, giving us the choice between a grimace and a thoughtful nod toward innovation. This took the form of warm, salty cantaloupe. Which of course brought to mind Adolf Loos. Not familiar? His 1908 lecture/essay “Ornament and Crime,” a polemic against Art Nouveau, points out that the emphasis on form (and in particular, continuous innovation in form) devalues the product of labor by pushing us into an accelerated production cycle:

“Changes in decoration account for the quick devaluation of the product of labour. The worker’s time and the material used are capital items that are being wasted. I have coined an aphorism: The form of an object should last (i.e., should be bearable) as long as the object lasts physically. […] A ball gown for a lady, only meant for one night, will change its form more speedily than a desk. But woe to the desk that has to be changed as quickly as a ball gown because its shape has become unbearable, for than the money spent on the desk will have been wasted.

This is well-known to the ornamentalists, and Austrian ornamentalists try to make the most of it. They say: ‘A consumer who has his furniture for ten years and then can’t stand it any more and has to re-furnish from scratch every ten years, is more popular with us than someone who only buys an item when the old one is worn out. Industry thrives on this. Millions are employed due to rapid changes.’ This seems to be the secret of the Austrian national economy; how often when a fire breaks out one hears the words: ‘Thank God, now there will be something for people to do again.’ I know a good remedy: burn down a town, burn down the country and everything will be swimming in wealth and well-being. Make furniture that you can use as firewood after three years and metal fittings that must be melted down after four years because even in the auction room you can’t realize a tenth of the outlay in work and materials, and we shall become richer and richer.”

– Adolf Loos, Ornament and Crime, 1908

Adolf himself had some issues – notably racism (against the tribes of New Guinea, at the very least) and a hefty dose of Social Darwinism, but still makes a good point: Economies come to depend on design, on presentation, on the adjective. This makes them money even as (and because) it devalues the labor of workers.

More recently, Hal Foster brought Loos into the present day, considering the difference between ornament and design. His writing helps us to understand True and Made; most especially my warm and salty fruit-vegetable medley:

“Design is all about desire, but strangely this desire seems almost subject-less today, or at least lack-less; that is, design seems to advance a new kind of narcissism, one that is all image and no interiority” – Hal Foster, Design and Crime

That’s my dish for you, and the rift Made teeters ever closer toward – all image and no interiority. Foster brings us back home, describing this design culture as “an apotheosis of the subject that is also its potential disappearance. Poor little rich man: he is ‘precluded from all future living and striving, developing and desiring’ in the neo-Art Nouveau world of total design and Internet plenitude.” Why are we precluded? Because design maps our boundaries as precisely as a kitten in the litterbox. How else can it make its point?

Full circle to the confused person at True. Should the dish be more composed? No, that is part of the problem. Can Made become something better? Almost certainly yes. Will there be any place beside El Rey that serves decent vegetarian food? Don’t hold your breath. This is the City of Adjectives, a sultry but struggling heat-sink that makes possible the cantaloupe-potato-asparagus puree combination ($19). We like our cow tender, our newspapers glib and our food salty.

—————

Note

(1) I should mention that I waited tables for many years and as a result try not to be a douche at restaurants. This means I don’t do things like order water with no ice and never, ever send back food. But when the fish has turned, it doesn’t take a culinary expert to taste it, and the appropriate response is to comp the meal and produce a new entree ASAP. Sure, some diners think they are all big time and need someone from the kitchen to come out for the ritual bowing and scraping. I am not one of those people. But I understand why someone from the kitchen does come out. You just don’t expect an argument. In any case, we stopped going to Roux.

Jalapenos in The Alley

You don’t need to be Don Draper to know that “New” moves product. Most people who do not lobby the statehouse for a living (that is to say, most people with souls) are optimists at their core. Even if we’ve been hurt a hundred times before by something very similar, a few tweaks and the glimmer of possibility is often enough to get humans to buy or do something that they should know perfectly well will not turn out the way they hope. It was new. This is enough to explain, if not excuse, our decision to go to Jalapenos in the Alley for lunch.

The experience was equally unsavory for the fact that we were seated beneath a photo of an actual execution (a picture of a firing squad from what looked to be the Pancho Villa days) as it was for the fact that we were seated next to a table of cops bragging to each other about beating people up. Not the most appetizing of lunch settings to be looking at executions while hearing about police brutality.

But we were still determined to give the food a fair shake — and it was indeed terrible, perhaps even more terrible than the terrible atmosphere. People that think of Jalapenos as good Mexican food probably also think of Cinco de Mayo as an authentic Mexican holiday. To be fair, good fun can be had drinking beer on May 5. But nothing good can come out of eating the watery tomato swill that Jalapenos calls salsa.

The best thing that can be said about lunch at Jalapenos is that it doesn’t take very long. They whip the menus right at you and are ready to take your order before you have even glanced through items numbered 1 through 70, to say nothing of the 20-plus other items on the special lunch menu. They want to know what number you’re having. They don’t want you to try to pronounce it. They want the number. There are only about 100 numbers, and you need to pick a number right now. Are you ready yet?

Vegetarian items are helpfully set aside on the menu, and the pickings are slim. No, they can’t make the chile rellenos without meat because they are all pre-made. They are ready to bring them out to you now. Have you ordered yet? Have you picked a number?

Don’t get distracted by the Barbie doll wearing a bull fighter costume that has been affixed to the wall. That’s called culture. Don’t let the echo of the 1920s Mariachi music distract you from the surprising emptiness of the place during the lunch hour. That’s how you know what country your lunch recipes came from. It fulfills all of the official red-white-and-green flag criteria for Authentic USA Mexican Restaurant Incorporated. What number are you having?

One of the veggie plates

Inside the veggie quesadilla

Veggie quesadilla

The inside of the space is nice

You can’t really make out Bullfighter Barbie in this case

Execution photos while you eat!

The salsa and chips

So many options

Perhaps you have been slowed by the stale chips that have been slung at you, the plastic basket staring up at you like an accusation. You chose this fate. You have plugged into Jalapenos for lunch. Just as Jalapenos was plugged into an empty space in the city’s favorite economic development site — The Alley.

This restaurant used to be The Cantina. That restaurant was also terrible, famous for sticking frozen fish sticks in a tortilla and calling it a fish taco. Is this location cursed? No. People might be willing to eat lunch here even though parking is scare. But for that, the food would have to be good.

Look, nighttime might be another story. Conventioneers from out of town might not know any better. Jalapenos may do a brisk trade in watered-down sugar-syrup margaritas and Dos Equis. Those people may just be looking for something to fill the “dinner” slot in their evening agendas, just as Jalapenos throws some shredded iceberg lettuce onto your lunch plate to fill that extra space. It doesn’t matter what’s there. It’s just a thing to eat.

For people that have never had any better, this may be just fine. If someone grew up in Hayneville and had never had Mexican food before, Jalapenos might be a delightful treat on a trip to “the big city.” If they’re in for a convention and staying at the Renaissance, they may feel like they walked over and found a gem of a place to hit on Betsy from Accounting.

But we left Jalapeno’s talking about the nature of violence. Our guts were churning in hostile protest about the offense we had just committed against them. The grease was making vile claims. And the city’s favor towards The Alley as the crown jewel of downtown economic development seemed ever more like a farce: “Here’s a tax break. Look at these people drinking cheap beer. Open a business here and hire someone but please, for your own sake, don’t put any of this food in your mouth.”

Jalapenos is not the only restaurant in The Alley that sucks. But it is the only one that feels like someone’s revenge against the city where HB 56 was passed.

Graham Woods Neighborhood Pub

One of the most popular posts over at Midtown Montgomery Living is the one where we published the speculation we had received about an Irish pub opening in the “Five Points” area of Cloverdale. No seriously, if you want to see some hilarious comment section trolling, check out that post. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the label of “Five Points,” I’m talking about the part of town over by The Capri.

An Irish Pub in Cloverdale? People freaked out. Again, check out the “love it or leave it” tenor to the comments section. Also, an Irish pub just opened downtown. The concerns about Cloverdale parking and trash pickup are legit, especially the parking ones. But while concerned, we also don’t want that strip to remain empty. Someone to buy and fix up that building? Sounds great. We support economic development. And if we can get a nice beer in a chill environment, all the better. Competition is good for everyone, and even the sanctified El Rey and LeRoy bar scene(s) could use a healthy (and friendly) rising tide to lift all boats.

So here’s the latest: It’s not going to be the SugrueBAR. It’s going to be named after the original name for Cloverdale, which is at least a cool historical nod. It’s still going with the ethnic gimmick. If you can’t have an Irish pub, why not just switch it to Welsh Gaelic Scottish? And the spelling on their promotional material reflects an attention to detail that is, um, “forthcomming.”

When they say “comming soon,” they mean that they will be using communication devices like in Star Trek

For what it’s worth, yes, that is a falcon ripping apart a stork. We assume that the anti-stork sentiment is part of a critique of over-population. And the “Ne Oublie” thing means “never forget,” which the Graham Clan says means we are never to forget “the concept of chivalry, bravery and Christian service to your fellow man.”

So, ladies, keep in mind that chivalry. And Christian service. Two universal hallmarks of a fun bar. And don’t forget that Scottish clan. And beer in the neighborhood pub. Huzzah! Economic development!

Lunch at Martin’s

A truly great restaurant lunch can force you to ask some difficult questions about yourself. Of course, there is the very common, “How can I learn to prepare food like this in my kitchen?” But there is also, “Why don’t I come to lunch here more often?”

That’s what I was asking myself about Martin’s after a fantastic lunch there last week. The answers to the latter question were unsatisfying. Sure, it’s not right next door to my office, but it’s not a substantially long drive. I could get in and out of there easily within my usual lunch break.

And sure, the turn-in from Narrow Lane is horrible. In fact, it is both a terrible piece of paving to enter the parking lot (prepare to scrape your car), but it is also situated at one of the very worst intersections in the city.

But those are not great reasons. And they’d have to be great reasons to avoid the fantastic food at Martin’s. It’s reasonably priced, the service is excellent, and you get the clear feeling that you’re supporting something local with a bit of tradition under its belt.

We don’t even eat fried chicken, which most people will tell you is the main reason to go to Martin’s. It’s clearly some kind of super secret bonus level of amazing fried chicken, but the fact that we’re vegetarians and still rave about the place ought to tell you something about the quality of the other dishes.

Folks that read our food reviews know that we sometimes make exceptions to our vegetarianism for a good piece of fish, and that was the case on this lunch at Martin’s. The fried catfish compares favorably with any other in town, probably one microscopic notch below the lemon-pepper catfish at Isaiah’s.

Restaurant front

Massive chocolate pie

Cobbler!

One plate

Another

Cornbread

The menu

But the veggies really stand out. First, you have the huge variety. There’s a long list for each day of the week, plus a rotating “veggie of the day” slot that was occupied during our lunch by an excellent dish of boiled and cubed rutabagas.

The mashed potatoes were creamy, and the peas and beans were boiled just right up to the point before they become mushy. We were pretty much too full for dessert, but went there anyway because we knew that (at least for the sake of writing a review) a meal at Martin’s just can’t be considered complete without sampling the dessert menu.

The cobbler quickly made the transition from bowl to stomach to precious memory. The pie was (as it always is) an enormous and eye-popping wedge of chocolate that would seem like an airport restaurant novelty item except that it is one of the finest food items you have ever consumed.

If anything could be improved about Martin’s, the tablecloths and bottles of hot sauce and pepper sauce on the table were a little sticky and grimy. The history of the place is awesome (and it’s great when restaurants put their history on the front of the menu). But you don’t want to feel like you are sharing a meal with all of the sticky-fingered people that have sat at that table before you.

All in all, as noted, we were confronted with tough questions. “Why don’t we come here for lunch more often?” Faced with no decent answers, plans were made to incorporate Martin’s more frequently into the lunchtime rotation. We encourage you to do the same.

That’s My Dog

Nobody wants to feel like optimism is a mistake.

Yet, walking back from the new downtown hot dog cart, that’s exactly how we felt. The problem, we felt, in the classic act of victim blaming, was not that the hot dog cart didn’t “get it.” The problem was that we don’t belong here, vegetarians in a state that resents vegetarians. And our botched lunch plans were not the fault of the hot dog cart. They were our fault for expecting any better.

We were cautious at first. We heard that there was a new hot dog cart downtown and thought about big cities, where carts and food trucks are viable sources of tasty lunches. We thought about the massive number of trucks in Washington D.C. that line up outside government offices, forking over delicious pizza and Chinese food and felafel to workers conscious of time and money. Those other cities have taco trucks and cupcake wagons and vans that cook empanadas with solar powered ovens. Here, we would be content to start our journey to mobile food sales with the humble hot dog stand — no New Orleans Lucky Dog, to be sure, but a start.

Still, we knew, being Montgomery, that our cart might not be likely friendly to our radical fringe vegetarian beliefs. But when a friend assured us on Twitter that she had inquired as to the status of veggie dogs, we were reassured when she told us that they would begin serving them. She contacted us later to confirm the news: The hot dog cart had veggie dogs.

Today was the day. We walked over, confirming the location on the cart’s Facebook page. There it was! State workers were in line, lanyards dangling around their necks! And there, on the menu, veggie dogs! Two dollars! I wanted to order four of them.

I settled for two, my dining companion for a solitary veggie dog. We were disappointed when the vendors told us that the City of Montgomery had forced them to stop selling cans of soda for some reason related to the fact that they were doing it out of a cooler. Thanks City! Looking out for small business!

But when we received and paid for our dogs, excited to sit down and consume them, even without a beverage, my dining companion poked through her hot dog bun and asked if they had forgotten the veggie dog – you know, the thing that the food product is named after?

No, it turns out that this hot dog bun full of toppings – cole slaw, relish, some shredded cheddar – was what they called a veggie dog. This was what they had added to their menu after a request they had received from some other poor Montgomery vegetarian.

We explained that we had expected a soy based cylinder there in the bun, nestled underneath the condiments, and they seemed curious but receptive to the idea, as if we were explaining that hot dogs could also be constructed from sonic energy and distillations of human love.

Oh, Montgomery. On a day when we in Alabama have elected Roy Moore to return to the office from which he was humiliatingly expelled, our greatest disappointment is a misunderstanding by a start-up small business. Because in the latter case, we made the mistake of expecting better.

The cart

The works dog

The menu

Um, there’s no dog here

Two dogs, sans dog

Update: Based on the discussion in the comments below, we did a follow-up at Midtown Montgomery Living.

Chin Chin

Montgomery has terrible Chinese food.

A few years ago we went to East China based on the consensus ranking of Grandma Advertiser’s readers. That was when we learned to be suspicious of the “tastes” of our fellow Montgomerians. Also, we felt a little sick. But we were younger then, and more idealistic, and we thought for sure a place next to the “Oriental Food Mart” would be pretty good. Sadly, we discovered that all Number One China should be known for is its flagrant false advertising. It took us a year or so after that to work up the courage to go to Ming’s Garden out on the Boulevard. I think we’d secretly hoped that place would be good and were “saving” it for a pleasant surprise. Hopes were dashed. Our food there was a basically inedible pile of vegetables in cloying sauce, served in a time-warp array of vinyl booths. We were so depressed, readers, that we could not even bear to write the place up.

But then just the other day we saw a notice in the paper that lifted our spirits – Atlanta staple Chin Chin has opened a branch in Montgomery! One of us spent many years living in Atlanta and eating at Chin Chin. This prompted extremely fond memories, so we went that very evening, all the way out to one of the bleakest parts of the Hellscape (Taylor and Vaughn, where culture goes to die and be reborn as artisanal mantle decorations) on a night when the City was screaming about tornadoes on the Facebook. Nothing could stop us.

We were richly rewarded for our knee-jerk decision to drive across town in possibly dangerous weather. The restaurant is beautiful, warm and inviting. There’s a small sushi bar with seating in the back, but the main dining room is divided by a nice installation of several giant ceramic pots that are also fountains. The water’s noise actually makes the large room seem quiet and intimate.

The menu is surprisingly vast, with sushi, Thai dishes, specialties and even hibachi meals. We ordered the seafood hot and sour soup, vegetable spring rolls, a yellowtail roll, the New Zealand mussels with black bean sauce and Crispy Fish Fillets in Hunan Style. Service was impeccable. All the dishes rolled out quickly (but not too fast) and were easy to share. To start, the seafood hot and sour soup (for two) itself may be worth a trip across town. It’s laced with egg and has just the right vinegar-y sour taste. The vegetable spring rolls were not that great – a little slender for the price, served with a giant vat of pink sauce. But the mussels were pretty amazing, each one extremely meaty and glazed with the salty sauce. As we were cooing over the soup, the yellowtail roll appeared. We are sometimes mostly wary of Montgomery sushi (nothing against any particular place but it just isn’t that great in our experience). This was the best roll we’ve had here in town – impeccably fresh fish, well rolled with not too much rice, perfectly served in the true minimalist style.

And then there was the Hunan style fish. It’s plenty for two (we even took some home for lunch the next day), but your willingness to share it with your dining companion is a true testament to your love. The fish is not so much fried as it is crisped, or something similar, so that there’s barely any batter at all, and finished with a great sauce that’s not too sweet or corn starchy. It comes with a small bowl of fried rice that’s loaded with little bits of egg and not at all greasy. Afterward, of course, there were were fortune cookies – except these were more like personal affirmations (“You look happy and proud”). When we extract text from cookie, we want cryptic prognostication, not vapid compliments.

We left so happy and full, only $35 the poorer for our sumptuous meal.

If only it weren’t so FAR AWAY. Seriously, from our house, it takes 25 minutes each way to get there – way too long for a meal if you’re not out in that part of town already. But maybe you’ll start finding reasons to go there once you eat at Chin Chin. We never, ever say this about the Hellscape, but we really should find a way to support this place. Maybe by somehow teleporting it to Fairview.

The sauce color hurts my eyes.

Not exactly fortunes.

Mussels and soup.

Perfect yellowtail roll.

Things that are closed on Mondays

It’s a Monday. That means that if you want to go out to a nice meal in this town you’re basically out of luck. Recently we had the opportunity to take someone dear to us out for a nice celebratory meal. We were looking for something good, with tablecloths and a wine offerings beyond simply “red or white” and a good vegetarian option, or at least some good seafood. Alas, it was a Monday. Evidently this means most good Montgomery restaurants are closed. We know, because we called them.

We started with Jubilee, because nothing says “Happy Birthday” like an amazing piece of fish served with overpriced rice pilaf. Closed. Then we thought: Michael’s Table! We’ve still never been, but this might be just the right time! Closed. The Olive Room, for spy-movie ambiance and martinis? Nope. The Chophouse, where we’ve been meaning to go when we get rich someday? No. Sure, Roux is open on Mondays in our part of town, but at what cost? We decided to look further afield.

We considered Garrett’s, which is basically in Shorter but has amazingly delicious flash fried oysters. Closed. The last time we had a nice dinner with our loved one, we went to Ham and High – enough to convince us we weren’t going back there, plus it’s at (shudder) Hampstead – nevertheless, the home of Montgomery’s worst fried green tomatoes was closed.

What were we left with? Capitol Oyster Bar is closed on Monday, and although the dining is fine there, it’s not exactly fine dining. There’s always El Rey, but we eat there so often with our loved ones that we feared it wouldn’t have the super special birthday feel we were hoping for – though we knew they would do us proud, we wanted to tablecloth it up and use cloth napkins (instead of the otherwise perfectly serviceable roll of paper towels at the table).

Then it came to us – the City Grill. It’s way out in the Hellscape, and we’d seen it before when we visited the simply atrocious East China years ago (our stomachs may still be recovering – if you haven’t been, spare yourself). A call confirmed our reservation, and we had a plan.

City Grill doesn’t have a website. They have a Facebook page where updated menus and announcements are posted, and it’s easy to find their contact info all over the Internets. We rolled in for a fairly early dinner and immediately found the place to be warm and inviting. The wine list was affordable and unpretentious, the bread was good, and even though we were sitting in a booth we found that the place met our tablecloth-y needs. Two of us got fish, and one got some mussels and their grilled Greek cheese salad. The latter had been highly recommended by a bunch of people on Yelp, which should have been taken as a warning rather than advice, given that the damaged online mob was basically the same group of food idiots who got us to East China in the first place via the Advertiser’s “Best of Montgomery” supplement. The fish was good. The salad was slippery, oily and weirdly sweet. But the fish sure was good, and the mussels were also delicious, like the dessert (creme brulee) we shared afterward. City Grill’s a find, for sure.

Unfortunately, we had to drive all the way across town to get there. What is the deal with the Monday night conspiracy, Montgomery?

We understand that many places are open on Saturdays and want to have a two day weekend for staff. But this doesn’t seem to bother restaurants in other cities. You just rotate staff. That seems like a reasonable solution. Or maybe some people want to work 7 days a week. Kind of like people enjoy eating 7 days a week.

Isn’t this a gaping hole in the market? Won’t some enterprising restaurant owner step up and say, “People of Montgomery! Feast at my table for a reasonable cost on a Monday night!”

Olive Room Lunch

There’s an old saying about wanting something so much that you wish it into reality.

Unfortunately, I can’t remember that old saying right now, although I have the vague feeling that it may be Eastern European. But I’m not about to sit here and Google, “Old Saying About Wishing For Stuff.”

Needless to say, that old saying wouldn’t apply here because, as much as we wish that a decent place for lunch would open up downtown, we’re still stuck with the likes of the greasy and slow Flames (142 Montgomery St.) and the country-fried meat-laced veggies of the Farmers Market Cafe (315 N. McDonough).

Sure, we know Cool Beans has recently re-opened, but we have yet to return to their newest incarnation for a lunch. Here’s hoping their prices have come down a bit. And yes, Saza is really good. But we still need more decent lunch places downtown.

Our hopes were exceedingly high when we heard that the Olive Room was going to start serving lunch. It’s a nice venue. We’ve never had dinner there because entrees run between 20 and 30 bucks, but we’ve heard the food at night is among the best in town. But lunch? At $9 (including chips and a drink)? Sounds awesome!

Yet, again with the wishing.

We wished so hard that I even went twice to see if it would be better the second time. That’s because the first time I went, I was puzzled that the menu seemed to consist of only five things. You have to go in and walk up to the bar in the back to order. And you’ve got five options. And if you’re vegetarian, you’ve got one: the pine nut salad.

I explained to the guy that I didn’t want a pine nut salad and he said his chef could “do me up” a Caprese Panini. It turned out to be sort of a Cuban with, well, tomato, cheese, and maybe a tiny green ribbon of basil in there somewhere. It was greasy and pretty good, as would be any decent cheese that had been pressed into bread in some mass market sandwich pressing machine. Also greasy and pretty good (in that order) were the homemade chips it came with. Yet, at the end of the meal, I reflected on the fact that I had just spent $9 on a grilled cheese sandwich.

Sure, the tomatoes were good. And sure, it’s a hip, funky, sort of dark place, with couches and a weird ancient elevator in which they have placed a tiny table (think about a romantic date that edges closer to creepy due to the tiny size of the elevator). But a $9 lunch is supposed to be a bargain, not an investment in atmosphere. And when they’ve cranked 70s glam rock so loud that you have to yell to be heard, we left less than thrilled with our lunch, although we were coated in a nice shimmering reflective glaze of grease from the homemade chips.

But like those theater performances of Peter Pan, where they get the lady to play Peter Pan and the fast-moving spotlight to play Tinkerbell, the kids in the audience have to clap to bring Tinkerbell back to life after she is pierced by Captain Hook. You have to clap really loud to show that you believe, because, kids, the power of belief can conquer death. Note to self: Peter Pan is a damned filthy liar.

No matter how much you want to believe, lunch at the Olive Room is not, in fact, good. We went back another time for a $9 special and I decided to try something else: a tomato-basil “pita.” I asked about the nature of this “pita” and the guy behind the counter (who had just been bragging about being a big supporter of off-the-deep end Tea Party Congressperson Martha Roby), explained that it was more of a “pizza” than a “pita.” Maybe they just thought those two words sounded enough alike that they were likely synonyms.

Well, it was either that or the damned pine nut salad. And it may be an odd thing for a vegetarian to say, but a salad ain’t a lunch. Maybe you can trick it out with some boiled egg and artichoke hearts, like some kind of mutant concoction at Jason’s Deli. But most places, I don’t want your salad as my entree.

The pita? Sure enough, it’s got tomato. And cheese. And basil. Where have I seen these ingredients before? Oh right, on the grilled cheese I paid $9 for last week. This time around, they’re all laid flat on a crusty piece of dough cut into four pieces. And some chips. And a drink. Sigh. Nine dollars. Salt cheese salt coma.

My dining partner had no complaints about his chicken sandwich, although noted that it was “nothing exceptional.” He was far more impressed by the atmosphere and hoped to return for a dinner sometime.

And I guess I’m willing to do that too. The dinner may well be spectacular. The lunches certainly were not. But it’s not their fault they saw an opening in the totally crappy current downtown lunch market. And the $9 lunch seems like a bargain when you factor in chips and a drink. And yet, you leave feeling greasy and light in the wallet. No wonder it has been pretty empty both times I went.

Sorry Tinkerbell. I just can’t keep clapping.

Ala Thai Insectoid Water

In these modern and confusing times of information saturation and economic collapse, perhaps we could be forgiven for confusing “irony” with “karma.”

Or perhaps it is neither of those things when one week we praise the time-testing lunchtime cuisine of the Ala Thai on Ann Street … and then the next week we go to lunch there and have a truly putrid experience. Perhaps the key mistake (as so many in Alabama would have you believe) was diverging from tradition and into new and experimental waters. Instead of the ritual “Crazy Noodles,” for some reason, I decided to try the Singapore Noodles with tofu.

This was an error, with the resulting plate being covered with rice noodles, flavored with dish water. The parts that were flavorless were a welcome reprieve from the parts that tasted like a wash basin. The tofu cubes appeared to have been, for whatever reason, rolled in black pepper. All in all, I was prepared to grit my teeth and eat about half of it and go back to work dissatisfied but still relatively full (if not nourished).

That was when I saw something floating in my water glass. I hoped that it was an eyelash, I really did. There was a moment when I entertained the notion of forcing myself to say that it was, fish it out with a finger, and go on with my objectionable meal. Yet, I compelled myself to look and saw the feelers, the bend of a “knee,” and I knew that it was a leg.

Illustration by HelloVon

It was probably a prothoracic leg, and the hairs were unmistakable. A dining companion agreed that it was unlikely to be the leg of a cricket and all were generally repulsed. Suddenly, my willpower to choke down the rest of the terrible Singapore Noodles had evaporated.

When I took the leg, still floating in its icy solution, to a server (quietly, not causing a scene at our table), I was met with extreme skepticism. Upon pouring part of the water into a sink and scrutinizing the tiny appendage floating in the remainder, it was agreed that my glass of water was inadequate. I was presented with a new glass of water in a (hopefully) clean glass.

Seeing my plate three quarters covered in food when the check came, no questions were asked about the adequacy of the food, nor my run-in with Periplaneta americana. I was charged full price for the food without a word of apology.

The worst, obviously, is not the leg in the glass itself, but what that says about the cleanliness of the overall situation in the kitchen. Had the food been delicious, it would have been perhaps easier to excuse the experience as an inevitable glitch in an imperfect world. But with the food tasting like garbage, it made me wonder what sort of sanitation was afoot behind the closed kitchen doors.

It’s too bad. I’m a big Thai food fan and the restaurant remains a favorite of my co-workers. But with the shoddy customer service response to my reasonable concern about the insect parts in the water, I’m not likely to be back any time soon. Totally avoidable and totally unacceptable.