Monthly Archives: October 2022

Walhalla Heat

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It was a beautiful fall weekend and there’s a town name Walhalla (the first L is silent if you want to say it like a native) just up the road. Wonder what they might have going on in October? Oh look it’s Oktoberfest! Yes, please.

The 43rd annual Walhalla Oktoberfest is something I was not going to pass up so head towards the foot of the foothills I did. It’s a nice festival held at a local park that has plenty of room for rides, I mean full on fair rides not something Joe Bob threw in the back of his F150 and set up in 20 minutes. Sorry went off on a tangent, in addition to rides there were vendors, informational booths, an oompah band, a beer tent and a lot of food options. I had beer and bratwurst on the brain so the other options were just points of interest. I walked the whole area just to get the lay of the land before stopping by the Knights of Columbus Kraut Haus. It won’t be a shocker at this point but the I walked away with a sauerkraut laden brat and headed to the beer tent where I got a German Oktoberfest Bier and a souvenir stein.

I was quite satisfied with my choices. It was the second best brat I’ve had in Walhalla (the one last year at the Founders Day celebration was outstanding). This was all good but the actual highlight of the day was here.

I saw the sign first and thought “This is some bold marketing right here”. I mean I figured I’m going to be cremated rather than buried but bringing out the furnace operator for a meet and greet was either genius or macabre. Well turns out it was a hot sauce tent. I was more engaged with that revelation. They had 10 or so different flavors and the proprietor made sure I tried most of them. When I walked up a couple was sampling and I got to hear this exchange.

After looking at the bottle, reading the ingredients and asking for a sample the guy looked at his wife and said, “this is pretty good even with the cantaloupe.” “Oh my God, you’re allergic to cantaloupe!” Was his ladies response. “That was 4 years ago, I’m probably better now.” Well the small taste probably wasn’t going to send him into anaphylaxis but he doubled down and bought a bottle of that particular hot sauce. There might have been some eyerolling from his wife.

My turn to try the sauces and the proprietor made sure I tried most of them. They included 3 award winners and her personal favorite, which wasn’t an award winner only because they didn’t enter it. Her samples were teeny tiny pieces of cheese on the end of a toothpick dredged through the chosen sauce.

Now while I was mulling over one of the options these two young lads walked up and after ascertaining these were hot sauces the older of the two tried one of the medium heat level sauces, his little brother though was bolder and went straight for the hottest one in the bunch and asked for a sample of that. Ms. DD asked him if he was sure, twice, and also asking me to be her witness she questioned him on it and then gave him the sample. The little kid was game I’ll say that for him. You could see it on his face, his eyes teared up and he went flush but he was going to die before he admitted it was too hot for him. His big brother was pretty cool and said “Hey let’s go get a drink” like it was a thing he just decided they needed to do.

Anyway I walked away with these three tasty sauces. I am trying to figure out the best pairings for them beside teeny tiny pieces of cheese on a stick.

I don’t know what’s next but a good friend found a Georgian restaurant in Greenville that will be featured in the not too distant future.

Boxtys, Sliders & Brats, Oh My

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The trip to the NC State Fair last weekend was just the first of the food experiences of the weekend. After some intense football watching, that included channel flipping and dragging out the laptop it was time to grab dinner. The decision was we’d go to a local (Cary, NC) Irish pub named Doherty’s Irish Pub & Restaurant.

The visit started off kind of weird. Unsurprisingly, on a Saturday night they were busy and when we walked in the hostess was just walking back from seating people. She stood there and stared at us for several seconds like she was trying to figure out what her next move should be. She apparently didn’t have much luck because all she could come up with was “Did you need something?” “We thought we might get something to eat,” was my sisters reply. That was much nicer than what was going through my head but she’s nicer than I am so it was good she took the lead. It did seem to get the hostess jumpstarted and she was fast and efficient after that.

Lynn knew what she was getting, the mixed boxty app. The starter side of the menu worked for me too and I selected the pub sliders and smothered blue chips and of course a Guinness to wash everything down.

The boxty looks like street tacos made with potato pancakes. The fillings for the sampler are chicken, brisket and one with mushrooms. From all reports they are quite tasty. My sliders were also a trio of different items, all of them at least good. The chicken was a little disappointing, kind of bland, but OK. The other two were much better. The corned beef with spicy mustard was juicy, salty and very flavorful. A solid second place. The gold medal was for the Guinness braised brisket with horseradish sauce. It was just an excellent, tender slider with a ton of flavor.

The Smothered Blue Chips were, sadly, not blue. On the other hand they were crunchy house made chips smothered with gorgonzola cream, blue cheese crumbles and green onions. They were pungent but pleasant.

The eating continued the next morning when I was on the way out of town headed home. We grabbed breakfast at a local place called Brigs. This wasn’t a new place to me as we’d had several family breakfasts here before. They have an eggs benedict Lynn enjoys. They also have specials and interesting options that I enjoy. Lynn went with her standard and I jumped on one of their seasonal Bavarian themed specials, the bratwurst basket.

The eggs benedict plate was definitely more colorful than my rather monotone plate (at least I had the yellow of butter and yolk to break the off white). I’m not going to spend a lot of time on these except to say that the food is fresh and of good quality (although light on the salt). Also brats are a very valid breakfast option if you haven’t tried them.

It was, on the whole, a good outing for the Culinary_Passport, got in unusual American food, Irish inspired food and German sausage. I know for a fact there’s another brat in my future and I’ll let you know about it next time. Sláinte

It Was a Fair Weekend

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It has been quite a while since the old passport was pulled out of the drawer for a culinary trip so it was time to remedy that. My sister Lynn alerted me to some new food items in her area so I knocked the dust off the passport and headed to the exotic east. To the North Carolina State Fair in Raleigh to be precise.

After an extremely roundabout way to a parking place that was a hike from the fairgrounds and making said hike we came to edges of the fair. Fair warning, this post has more pics than normal.

It was beautiful day for being out and about so it shouldn’t have been a surprise the State Fair attracted a couple of folks.

We went into this knowing it was going to be an abbreviated, no rides, no games trip because there were afternoon football games to get back to the house to see but we did tour several of the buildings with exhibits. First was the one was a grist mill where they were giving out hushpuppy samples as well as selling varieties of cornmeal. Of course I decided to follow that up with a sample of Pepsi Zero and some new Mountain Dew sugar free orangey looking soda with a melonesque flavor. I didn’t bother to learn the real name. It was actually good.

My primary target for the day was a rattlesnake corndog but as pictured above there were a buttload of people there, all of them funneled through the food aisles, of which there were many. I was hungry and at one point we came to a dead stop for no reason apparent to any of my new close, I mean very close, friends. So we angled towards a vendor with some interesting wares.

You know it’s not a visit to the fair without something fried. I doubled down and got the deep fried country ham with the bourbon peach jam (middle picture above) plus the allegedly candied apple hushpuppies with Cheerwine glaze. They were hushpuppies and did have a sweet pinkish glaze that might have had some Cheerwine included however, there was not a hint of apple, candied or otherwise. Having said that though they were decent hushpuppies.

The deep fried country ham was much more pleasing to the palate. The ham was salty and tender which the bourbon peach jam complimented well and the greasy fried batter just guaranteed the whole thing slid down the gullet with ease. Quite tasty.

After much walking and exhibit viewing and a stop at a pizza seller so Lynn could get something to eat we were getting ready to head out when I spied the initial target of my quest to the east.

In addition to the rattlesnake corndog I was chasing they had an elk corndog and bison burger. I stayed on point though and got the rattlesnake corndog.

I can now say I’ve had rattlesnake sausage so I’ve got that going for me. The reality was, it was just OK. The cornbread outer was good but the sausage was a little chewy and didn’t have a lot of flavor on it’s own in spite of the visually apparent herbs in the mix. The avocado sauce drizzled on it was honestly the most flavorful aspect. Having accomplished this goal though it was time to make the hike back to the car which we both found quite the chore after lighting up our respective fitness devices with the steps we put in.

Turns out we like to eat. Dinner at an Irish pub and breakfast at place that was featuring some Bavarian dishes were the follow-up. I’ll hit those in the next entry. In the meantime if you’re in NC and the fair is still going on go have fun and even you don’t like the interesting foods you can still get funnel cake, hot dogs, burgers, cotton candy, deep fried deserts.