Pumpkin Head

Posted on October 30, 2016 by culina23_wp

Pumpkin Carving

This weekend it was neither restaurant nor food truck that had me on the road it was an annual pumpkin carving/decorating event hosted by one of my cousins. She & her fiancé not only provide a fantastic setting for this gathering but put on a spread some restaurants should be envious of. The lucky guests need bring only a pumpkin and whatever their adult beverage of choice is.

For me this is an opportunity to see a couple of my oldest friends in the world who happen to be my cousins too. I saw one of my sisters and took my mother to the event as well so it was a day of family and friends of family. Did I mention the food yet? There were two buffet lines, one with BBQ and sides and one with hamburgers and hot dogs that were cooked up fresh and pulled off the grill as people were arriving.

I snagged a plate of bbq, hash & rice, beans & corn and found a spot in the shade to enjoy my meal. I had a Hell or High Watermelon beer to go with it. This was my introduction to the beer and I tried it based on hearing positive reviews on several different podcasts I listen to and honestly I was expected more. It’s a wheat beer made with watermelon as the name suggests. It does have a slight hint of watermelon both is smell and aftertaste. It wasn’t bad and certainly light and perfect for hot days I just didn’t see what all the hype was about. That disappointment didn’t deter me trying other stuff as there was a table in the vicinity that featured items brought by the guests such as the mummified pepper poppers & pumpkin spice cupcake which somehow found their way to my plate as you can see below.

After lunch while the gourd gutting, carving and decorating continued I took a stroll around the garden and snagged a shot of the early finishers. The food was great, the weather cooperated and any weekend you get to spend with family and friends is a win. Can’t wait until next year!

Feeling Cheeky

Posted on October 1, 2016 by culina23_wp

Taqueria Celeste

Today was just about as perfect a day as you could ask for to dine outdoors. That being the case and continuing the segue to food trucks being added to the international restaurant theme of the blog I decided to hit up the food truck closest to me. The Taqueria Celeste is just about a mile from my house and within walking distance if I wanted to risk my life crossing Celanese Rd.

It’s located in the back corner of a gas station parking lot and is a semi-permanent fixture. They drive the truck up to a covered area with some picnic tables, fire up the generator, hang the signs and they are good to go.

They specialize in tacos (duh), tortas and burittos among other things. Here are a couple of the menu boards in case you were wondering what kind they have. In case you didn’t know, and I’ll admit I didn’t until a couple of years ago, a torta is a sandwich.

After deciding on a cabeza burrito and a campechano taco I placed my order with the elementary school kid working the window who was quite polite and helpful.

After a short wait enjoying the wonderfully cool fall weather (finally) my food was up.

The tacos here come standard with onions, cilantro and radish on a soft tortilla. The ground steak taco had plenty of meat and was ok but nothing to make you go out of you way for. The beef cheek burrito comes with the titular beef cheek and Mexican rice wrapped up to make the burrito. This was my first beef cheek and it was not bad if a little fatty. It wasn’t spicy at all and the rice had decent flavor so it also wasn’t special other than the fact I got to use it in my title. The mango drink was probably the most interesting item I had. Although not Mexican it did have an international component being made in Korea. I was surprised on my first sip to find it had bits of mango floating in it kind of like pulp in orange juice and there was some in every sip.

Overall if I hadn’t been here before and tried one of their sandwiches and a different taco only their proximity might get me to come back but I know the chorizo torta with the load of jalapenos they use is muy bueno.

Island Hopping

Posted on July 24, 2016 by culina23_wp

Cuba

Image result for cuban passport stamp

After a short hiatus for some vacation time at the beach, to quote a famous Cuban “Lucy, I’m home!”

This week I dusted off the old Culinary Passport and took a trip to Cuba via A Piece of Havana on S. Tryon in Charlotte and wow was that a good choice.

Nice place sitting by itself at one end of a shopping strip. The interior has some Cuban paraphernalia and a big flag hanging from the ceiling. The furnishings are dark like a club rather than a breezy tropical place which probably works well since they have live music on the weekend evenings. It was basically empty when I arrived so I was greeted and seated quickly and the waiter had my tea at the table in a flash. He also asked if I had any questions about the menu and patiently provided answers to the few I had. But enough of the set up, let’s talk food.

Because I’m a good blogger and willing to make sacrifices for my readers I started with the small empanada appetizer as seen below. They were only $2 and a great size for an appetizer. Inside was a tasty ground meat filling and as you can see it came with pico de gallo and another dipping sauce that was ok but I liked the empanadas just fine plain. What you don’t see is they were freshly cooked and smoking hot.

Next up was the crispy beef with rice and beans plus plantains. I’m going to say this was my favorite meal all week and I had a Trumplet earlier this week (it’s an omelette that’s been politicized).

Let’s go from left to right. The rice and black beans I could have made a meal of just by themselves. They were obviously cooked together and not just beans dumped on rice and stirred together. They also had a wee bit of fatty salt pork cooked with them which warms any born and bred Southerner’s heart. I’m not sure what seasonings they had but they were very good. Now the crispy beef. As you can see it was topped with grilled onions and a chimichurri sauce. The marinated meat is cooked until tender then shredded and cooked again until it starts getting crispy. I don’t know what exactly was in the marinade but the flavors were subtle and quite tasty. Finally we get to the plantains. They were my least favorite, not because they were bad but because the other two were just so good. They were also the sweetest plantains I’ve ever had and I think that threw me as well. Good but unexpected.

I washed the meal down with jupina, a pineapple soda. Not too sweet and although it was slightly artificial the pineapple flavor was good and went well with the meal. For mojito fans they had a list of 10-15 different types of mojitos and some of them looked interesting. My plan was to finish off with a Cuban coffee but there was just so much meal I didn’t have room. I’ll have to skip the emanadas and save room for the coffee next time and there will be a next time.

You can link to the restaurant by clicking the name above and don’t forget to check out the Tell Me More page for a crispy beef recipe and a great video of street musicians in Cuba as well as the usual random fact and Amazon top results for Cuba.

Oh! Canada

Posted on June 18, 2016 by culina23_wp

Canada

That’s right it’s a country, they have food. What they don’t really have is Canadian restaurants. As I was lamenting the fact that North America is sadly underrepresented on the blog and since I’d done Mexico already it wasn’t going to get much better. Then it hit me, find some place that serves poutine. That’s Canadian so it’d do. A quick search turned up 3 possibilities and two of them looked like hipster gastropubs so I decided the Friendly Moose in Matthews, NC was the place to go.

From the outside it looks like a good sized brick house that has been converted to a restaurant / bar and inside kind of continues that look with several rooms with seating. I sat in the front room since it had a big window and a stunning view of the parking lot. The moose theme is embraced and there is one in the foyer (see below) as well as a fake stuffed moose head in the front room and a couple of wooden ones outside. When I got the menu I discovered they do breakfast until 2pm on weekends and was sort of bummed out until I saw they considered poutine a potential breakfast food plus they had a loaded breakfast version which is what I went with.

I’ve never had poutine before but I knew in general what it was but for those who don’t, standard poutine is French fries and cheese curd covered in brown gravy. The Friendly Moose breakfast poutine offers options of types of potatoes and gravy. Poutine purists will likely be scandalized but you can get it with fries, hashbrowns or tater tots and your gravy options are white sausage gravy or standard brown beef gravy. I kept it standard and went with fries and brown gravy but the loaded breakfast poutine came with 2 eggs, a biscuit and one of several meat options. I was hoping they had Canadian bacon but no such luck. Sausage it was then. They don’t use cheese curd but use a shredded white cheese that was stringy but didn’t seem to be mozzarella. Whatever it was it tasted ok but was very break resistant in it’s stringiness.

As breakfasts go this was decent and filling. If I visit the Moose again I will likely go with tots over fries and if I’m going off the rails I might as well try the sausage gravy too.

If I lived in Matthews I could see making this a regular place as it does have the Friendly feel. The only issue I saw was the apparent preciousness of butter. I heard two people have to ask for some before my food arrived so I was on alert and when there was none immediately asked for it. I got it after asking a second time and I was well on my way to being done. In the grand scheme of things that’s a pretty minor deal.

And for the record while there were plenty of meese, I didn’t see any sign of a Captain or a flying squirrel. Here’s the web link, The Friendly Moose and don’t forget to check out the Tell Me More page for a poutine recipe and the #1 Canadian song ever according to the CBC.

South of the Border

Posted on March 26, 2016 by culina23_wp

Mexico

I kept the passport close to home both figuratively and literally by choosing Mexico as the country and El Molcajete in Rock Hill as the restaurant. This is a relatively new Mexican place that is just a couple of miles from me and web research pointed to them having some dishes more authentic than a lot of the standard tex-mex joints that all have the same basic menu. You know, where you can just give them the number of your favorite combo and it’s the same from place to place.

I was excited to try them out and hoped they might have at least a couple of different items and they did. First let me say they didn’t totally forgo the old standbys everybody knows and they have the lunch menu dutifully numbered so those more comfortable with consistency are covered. For my purposes though they did have a few less common items and I indulged in three of them. I got the lengua taco (that would be beef tongue), the carne con platano frito (grilled steak, eggs, plantains and beans) and some horchata (rice milk with cinnamon) to wash it down.

El_Moljecate-005

I’ll be honest, having never had beef tongue before I expected it to be a little chewy but this was some tender tongue. As you can see in the picture they keep it simple and have just onions, cilantro and a side of grilled onions on soft tortillas. I squirted a little salsa verde on part of it after I tasted it as presented and that was tasty too. The carne con plantano frito is just more proof that steak and eggs are good for any meal no matter your nationality. The steak was a thin cut and cooked well but not too the point of being shoe leather. It was lightly seasoned so the steak flavor came out. It didn’t strike me as I was wolfing it down but I’d have to say this meal, as a whole, was very light on any flavors other than those of the food. It wasn’t bland but more like the food stood on it’s own and if you wanted to spice it up with a condiment you could without fighting a ton of other flavors. I don’t know that horchata is all that rare on Mexican menus because I don’t look for it that often but it caught my eye today and if you haven’t had it you should give it a try. It is a sweet, cold, refresher that goes well with spicy foods and even non-spicy meals.

I believe this is a family place and they seem to have pride in the restaurant. The service was good and the place was very clean and bright and still had that new booth smell. If you live in the area you should give them a shot.

They didn’t have a web page that I could find but they do have a Facebook page, El Molcajete.

Look for a horchata recipe on the Tell Me More page and because it’s almost Easter as this gets posted you can find a bunny there as well.

To the Islands Mon

Posted on February 27, 2016 by culina23_wp

Jamaica

Today was such a bright and beautiful day it felt like a great day to hit the islands even if the temperature wasn’t quite tropical. With that in mind Jamaica became the country and Caribbean Hut restaurant the representative for the food. There are two locations in the Charlotte area and the closest to me is off Woodlawn and I mean off. Google maps pinned it but couldn’t quite figure out how to get there. It ran me past the location, indicated I should do a U-turn and then just gave up. The pin was an island on the screen Google couldn’t navigate to.

Fortunately for me the JROTC training kicked in and I was able to figure out the map and successfully arrive in the parking lot. The Caribbean Hut shares the lot with some interesting company, including a restaurant named Chubz, and the Gentlemen’s Club that I don’t believe is a habitat for gentlemen but I could be mistaken. In any case I reached the destination and it looked promising.

I walked in and was greeted by the sounds of Mr. Bob Marley, whose likeness also graced one wall. The staff and several of the restaurant patrons had accents than pegged them as being from the Caribbean if not from Jamaica. As I’ve said more than once it’s a good sign to me when people from the culture eat at the restaurant.

The menu wasn’t huge but did have a nice variety of items including some combos that came in small and large. I went with the small oxtail and curry goat combo that also came with rice and beans, vegetables and plantains.

IMAG1698crop

I have never had oxtail at all or goat this way, which is of course why I got them. I liked them both but preferred the curry goat overall. The goat was cooked in a mild green curry that had a nice flavor and the meat was cooked tender and had a rich taste. If you are a health nut and you’ve never had oxtail keep it that way. The oxtail was about fifty percent meat with the other fifty percent being just about equal measures of fat, gristle and bone. I know some of you are saying “Yum” and meaning it while others probably fought back a gag reflex but let me assure you it was actually quite good. The meat was very tender and flavorful and the brown gravy was just a bit sweet and tasted like it had some of the same spices used in jerk seasoning in it as well. The rice and beans had just a few beans in it but did have other seasoning that went well with both the curry and oxtail. The vegetables consisted mostly of steamed cabbage with a can of veg-all thrown in. The cabbage was cooked thoroughly and not overdone so it was nice. The plantains were cooked with a slight glaze on the outside and soft on the inside while staying firm enough you could push food on to your fork with them.

They had a selection of other Jamaican foods and drinks including meat patties, island sodas and Red Stripe beer. I can definitely see giving the Caribbean Hut another shot to try some of the other menu items.

They don’t have a website but here’s a link to their Facebook page:

Caribbean Hut Facebook

don’t forget to check out Tell Me More

Culinary-Passport

Experiencing foods of the world locally

Category Archives: North America