The grilled cheese sandwich yet is another Lazy Chef Vegetarian Menu
Staple that gets on my nerves. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good
grilled cheese like nobody’s business, but I tend to resent their
presence as (usually) the standby meatless option, and I get annoyed at
the lack of vision that goes into their creation.
They’re everywhere, you know. Once, I tried to go a week with out eating a grilled cheese, but I came to realize that they are everywhere.
Pervasive (and boring) as fuck! If you think about it, cheese pizza,
caprese sammiches, cheesy garlic bread, Welsh rarebit – it’s all a
grilled cheese. Hell, I can and will even argue that lasagna is
basically a multi-level melted cheese sandwich with tomatoes.
I didn’t make it the whole week. It was a quesadilla that did me in,
and that’s basically a grilled cheese with salsa and beans. I work
downtown and have the usual downtowny uninspired food courts and chain
restaurants to choose from. (No, most days I do not pack a lunch; I need
to leave my office building and get fresh air and the quest for
sustenance is really the only way I can accomplish that.) Even with all
the options available, I still had to work to dodge crepes with brie and
paneer naan and one day I just caved -- the weather was crap and Taco del Mar was right there -- and the rest is history. I'd only made it five days.
So restaurants, if you’ve gonna insist on foisting that on me, at
least make it interesting, please! God invented things like apples,
beer-soaked raisins, roasted beets, fig jam, and bananas especially, specifically
to be put in sandwiches. And protip: there are things other than
Velveeta that melt - bleu cheese, pepper jack, chevre, and gouda all get
all gooey. Peanut butter aint cheese, but that melts too; pop some in
there!
Bread! Also! Too! In addition… the holdy-onny part of the
sandwich need not be butter-soaked Wonder Bread; in fact, it’s best if
it’s not. Rye bread, sourdough, brioche, heck even cinnamon swirl bread
makes for a nice sandwich. Pita bread grills up nicely, as does spinach
naan. Using pumpkin or zucchini bread may take a delicate hand, but
why not give it a go? Wanna make a grilled cheese all Luther Burger
style by tossing some cheddar between a couple of Krispy Kremes? Go
right ahead! Add some dipping sauce, too. The Dutch eat their “tosti”
with all kinds of tasty things – honey mustard sauce, flavored
mayonnaises, chutneys of unknown origin. What do we have, ketchup and
ranch dressing? Yawn.
I think the biggest mistake restaurants make though - aside from
unoriginality - is that they seem to try to cram as much cheese into
their sandwich as possible. Perhaps they think that what’s lacking in
creativity, they can make up for in goop. Which is great for the $4
Kraft-Singles-on-white-bread kid’s menu offering at Red Robin, but if
I’m ordering a nice meal from the grownup menu I do not want
butter/grease/cheese oil soaking through my bread. It makes for an
aesthetically unpleasing sandwich, for sure, but really I just don’t
want the reminder that the thing I’m eating is causing my arteries to
harden faster than a 15-year old’s boner.
It's not all gloom and doom and fail, though. The sandwich situation
seems dire, but there's really quite an easy fix. I propose the
following - sandwich choices based on the cheese pizza model. Sandwiches
are made to order anyway, so why not list the breads available, jot
down all the cheese options, and maybe let me have a bit of vegetable in
there too? There. I fixed it. Problem solved. No more
complaining. I’ll take mine with a crusty-but-chewy rosemary bread,
garlic mayo, thinly-sliced roasted butternut squash, and some
Jarlesberg, please.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Regarding Veggie Burgers (Bitchy Vegetarian Girlfriend)
Gawd, I hate veggie burgers.
So when I talk about them, I fall into the slouch of a bitter drunk telling stories of how everything was better back in the day… I lean to the left and rest on my elbow, I get a bit of a vacant stare, and I jab the air dangerously close to your eye with a crooked finger to make my point. You know the sad old woman at the end of the bar, ordering two double 7&7s just minutes before the end of afternoon happy hour, talking about all her various aches, pains, ills, and ailments to anyone who will listen even if there is no-one listening? That’s me. About veggie burgers.
Here’s the thing, my sweet petunias, Maude’s honest truth, if a veggie burger was a person, I’d totally snub that sucker. If I had to give a veggie burger a birthday present, it’d get the shake from the bottom of my purse, all wrapped up with a pretty bow. My special valentines love letter to a veggie burger would be a directly slurred quote from Peter of Shut Up Little Man fame: “I got a decent dinner ready. Nothing happened with the dinner. Because you crucified it. You ruined it. God damn you.” For x-mas, I’d give it a used Cheryl Crow CD and a bottle of Shania Twain’s “Starlight” perfume. That, my friends, is hate well spent.
The problem with these burgers is kind of threefold, starting with point one - commercial vegetarian patties aren’t made from any kind of recognizable vegetable. Maybe there is a bean or two, or something yellow that could possibly pass for corn, but those bits of glamour matter are the best you can hope for; the rest is some kind of Soylent Green filler matter, perhaps the stuff that sticks particle board together. And it’s a True Science Fact that these patties not only lack flavor, they are the anti-flavor. Have you ever had ketchup, mustard, and cheese not taste good? Apply them liberally to a Boca burger and see what happens.
Homemade patties tend to fare better on the flavor side, but only by sacrificing texture. I recently had Blue Glass’ veggie patty and while it tasted ok, it was an unholy mess of a sandwich - the burger was at least twice as big as the bun and not of a consistency that made it edible sans bread. After surgically removing the hangy-off-the-bun bits, I could easily have had 2 additional buns worth of filling. Even after the initial surgery, what was left on the bun didn’t seem to want to stay there and for every bite I’d take, an equal amount of filling would fall out the back.
I kid you not, just look at all this leftover detritus; they could have turned the one patty into three sliders and charged two dollars more for the lot. I'd have eaten that!
Also, unless you’re at a very vegetarian-friendly joint, I mean veeeeeery veggie-friendly, like we kiss vegetarians on the lips as they pass through the door kind of joint, veggie patties of either origin are handled with meaty hands and usually not cooked on a dedicated meat-free part of the grill. In fact, I am pretty sure that they are made by people who hate people who have to eat veggie burgers.
So, to sum this up:
1. Pre-made veggie patties were formed in a sterile lab by soulless robots
2. Housemade patties need to be trussed up like a French whore in order to stay on the bun
3. Haven’t decided what point 3 is yet, but trust me, it’s salient
4. Odds are, veggie burgers are not really vegetarian anyway
5. Hey you whippersnappers, buy this old broad another drink whydontcha
So when I talk about them, I fall into the slouch of a bitter drunk telling stories of how everything was better back in the day… I lean to the left and rest on my elbow, I get a bit of a vacant stare, and I jab the air dangerously close to your eye with a crooked finger to make my point. You know the sad old woman at the end of the bar, ordering two double 7&7s just minutes before the end of afternoon happy hour, talking about all her various aches, pains, ills, and ailments to anyone who will listen even if there is no-one listening? That’s me. About veggie burgers.
Here’s the thing, my sweet petunias, Maude’s honest truth, if a veggie burger was a person, I’d totally snub that sucker. If I had to give a veggie burger a birthday present, it’d get the shake from the bottom of my purse, all wrapped up with a pretty bow. My special valentines love letter to a veggie burger would be a directly slurred quote from Peter of Shut Up Little Man fame: “I got a decent dinner ready. Nothing happened with the dinner. Because you crucified it. You ruined it. God damn you.” For x-mas, I’d give it a used Cheryl Crow CD and a bottle of Shania Twain’s “Starlight” perfume. That, my friends, is hate well spent.
The problem with these burgers is kind of threefold, starting with point one - commercial vegetarian patties aren’t made from any kind of recognizable vegetable. Maybe there is a bean or two, or something yellow that could possibly pass for corn, but those bits of glamour matter are the best you can hope for; the rest is some kind of Soylent Green filler matter, perhaps the stuff that sticks particle board together. And it’s a True Science Fact that these patties not only lack flavor, they are the anti-flavor. Have you ever had ketchup, mustard, and cheese not taste good? Apply them liberally to a Boca burger and see what happens.
Homemade patties tend to fare better on the flavor side, but only by sacrificing texture. I recently had Blue Glass’ veggie patty and while it tasted ok, it was an unholy mess of a sandwich - the burger was at least twice as big as the bun and not of a consistency that made it edible sans bread. After surgically removing the hangy-off-the-bun bits, I could easily have had 2 additional buns worth of filling. Even after the initial surgery, what was left on the bun didn’t seem to want to stay there and for every bite I’d take, an equal amount of filling would fall out the back.
I kid you not, just look at all this leftover detritus; they could have turned the one patty into three sliders and charged two dollars more for the lot. I'd have eaten that!
Also, unless you’re at a very vegetarian-friendly joint, I mean veeeeeery veggie-friendly, like we kiss vegetarians on the lips as they pass through the door kind of joint, veggie patties of either origin are handled with meaty hands and usually not cooked on a dedicated meat-free part of the grill. In fact, I am pretty sure that they are made by people who hate people who have to eat veggie burgers.
So, to sum this up:
1. Pre-made veggie patties were formed in a sterile lab by soulless robots
2. Housemade patties need to be trussed up like a French whore in order to stay on the bun
3. Haven’t decided what point 3 is yet, but trust me, it’s salient
4. Odds are, veggie burgers are not really vegetarian anyway
5. Hey you whippersnappers, buy this old broad another drink whydontcha
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Mac and Cheese, Oh Please (Bitchy Vegetarian Girlfriend)
It’s no secret that macaroni and cheese counts as 3 of my top 5 comfort foods. I love it. I’ve participated in, and hosted, mac and cheese cook-offs. I will eat it for breakfast. I can make it from scratch even if there is no cheese in the house. That’s how much I fucking love the stuff.
So it pains me to say this, Seattle restaurants, but please, stop making mac and cheese your default meatless menu item. It’s getting worse than the whole veggie burger thing. Just stop it.
First off, unless you are Madame K’s or Café Venus, your mac and cheese isn’t that good. It’s not. There is a lot of gimmicky mac out there; you can get it with a Velveeta pour, you can get it garlicked or ungarlicked, with sliced hotdogs, with shitake mushrooms and truffle oil ... heck, even with lobster chunks. But all that is just lipstick on a pig, you know. Café Venus and Madame K’s (which is now closed and sorely missed) have the formula down pat. K’s was baked, Venus’ was sauced, and both had the perfect comfort food trifecta -- simple, cheesy, sating -- made to order with nothing unnecessary in the mix. If the mac and cheese doesn’t stand up on its own, the addition of a bit of glitter won’t help matters.
Secondly, when mac and cheese is on the menu, it’s just that – there are no vegetables, no contrasting textures, nothing, zip, zilch, nada. It sucks to be at a table with fellow diners who have well thought out and crafted entrees - plates brimming with balanced and complimentary tastes and textures - when I just have a plateful of glop with nary a vegetable in sight. And no, the addition of salsa or green onions or even chanterelles into the mix does not count. It’s just a half-step above the “oh I guess I’ll just take these appetizers and attempt to make a meal out of them” thing. Makes me stabby.
Also, last, thirdly, thridst: Mac and cheese is not good for you. Remember the whole fettucine alfredo “heart attack on a plate” jibba-jabba? Well, et tu, mac and cheese? I’m not a vegetarian for my health, but I would like to not die from coronary heart disease until I’m at least 45, please.
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