Better Luck This Time

Posted on August 20, 2016 by culina23_wp

Ireland

Image result for irish passport stamp

This week I decided to take another stab at an Irish pub since I struck out the last time I tried. This time there must have been a leprechaun riding shotgun because my luck was great when I hit McHales Irish Pub in downtown Rock Hill. Not only did I get a space on the street almost in front of the place it wasn’t very busy either.

McHales has that pub feel, kind of dim with heavy wood furnishings stained dark and a couple of regulars sitting at the bar chatting with staff. As I said, I pretty much had the place to myself aside from the guys holding down the bar so the waitress was able to be attentive. She was attentive and friendly without being annoying.

Of course since I was in an Irish pub I had to get my standard pint of Guinness while I checked out the menu.

The menu was loaded with bar food but there were some more “Irish” dishes on the menu and I opted for a small bowl of potato soup and the corned beef and cabbage.

The potato soup was very good. It was creamy with diced skin on potatoes that were firm and not cooked to death. The cheddar and bacon were great garnishes. A little black pepper and it was about as good as you could ask for.

The shredded corned beef and cabbage came with some potato cakes and it looked quite good. My first taste was of the cabbage and it was disappointingly bland. Oh, wait just a second. Grabbing a fork full of the corned beef, “There it is!” A big old dose of salt. Either of these two by themselves would actually be off putting, however if you balanced each forkful with a bit of cabbage and a bit of the corned beef you had a winner. The potato cakes had a hint of cheese and were good but needed just a bit of onion to be great.

Overall I enjoyed the meal and the staff was very pleasant and attentive. It was heavy though and I’m going to have to go for a long walk to burn it off. Right after my nap.

Don’t forget to checkout the Tell Me More page for a recipe, some music and goods with an Irish theme.

No Hobbits In Sight

Posted on August 13, 2016 by culina23_wp

New Zealand

Well this week was a bit interesting. I found a restaurant called the New Zealand Café and I thought Jackpot! Who would have thought we had a restaurant specializing in New Zealand food. I didn’t even know what that might be other than probably mutton so I was looking forward to it even if was in Matthews.

Imagine my surprise when I walked up and they are advertising $1.00 sushi. It’s a fairly small place but apparently quite popular as it was almost at capacity 10 minutes after opening and they have the tables squeezed in to maximize the seating potential. I got a seat and was provided with not one but four menus. There was the new sushi menu, the daily special sushi menu, the regular sushi menu and the everything else menu. I was beginning to suspect they might specialize in sushi. I like sushi but I just had some excellent fish for dinner so I opted for the everything else menu in the hopes of finding something New Zealand-y.

Not even one mutton dish and nothing else that felt unique to NZ. So with a bit of disappointment I ordered the New Zealand pork chop. While I was waiting I got a look at some of the sushi rolls and bento boxes being served to others and I have to say they looked pretty good. When my meal arrived it was on a tray, as you can see below, like the bento boxes and the way the pork was cooked it reminded me of what I had in Japan.

The pork chop was fried and served with onions and a mayonnaise sauce that turned out to be sweet which was a surprise and better than I expected. I went with noodles instead of rice and it came with salad, two fried shrimp and two chicken skewers. The meal was good but really felt much more Japanese than anything else.

I expect you could get all the items on the menu in New Zealand somewhere but nothing on the menu was uniquely New Zealandish. If I was in the area again and felt like grabbing some sushi I’d join the crowd and grab some here because it looked quite good and they had a huge variety.

On the other hand the Tell Me More page has a music video with some amazing scenic shots of New Zealand, plus a kid friendly recipe.

Like the title mentions there was a disappointing lack of hobbits for a place with New Zealand in the name.

It’s all Greek to me

Posted on August 7, 2016 by culina23_wp

Greece

This week’s culinary passport trip was to Greece as represented by Akropolis Kafe in Ballantyne. It’s a small place in a little square with several other restaurants and bars. You order at the counter and they bring it to you so it’s not a fancy joint. On the day I went they were having the opposite problem their mother country was in that they were lacking employees rather than jobs. They had a big help wanted sign on the door. When I walked in there was just one man in the place and he looked harried. He took my order while mentioning he didn’t know where his help disappeared to. As he was ringing me up she showed up and finished the transaction while he went to the kitchen to get things started on my meal.

The décor didn’t scream Greece but there were a couple of paintings on the wall intended to evoke that Greekish feel.

I ordered the Gyro & Shishkabob plate which came with a salad and fries. The baklava was sitting there taunting me so I had to get a piece to eat for vengeance. I had a choice between the pork or chicken and got the pork which came out nice as you can see below.

The shishkabob was tender and had been thoroughly marinated so the flavor was in every bite. The gyro meat was ok and once you threw it in the pita with some tzatziki sauce you had something going. I don’t really know why fries are included except as a filler and I didn’t bother to eat a one. So now I’m going to say something that I can barely believe I’m putting to words but I was most disappointed in the salad. It wasn’t bad but the lone olive, tomato slice and cucumber slice made it feel like some kind of weird orphan vegetable salad. There was enough tzatziki to dress the salad so didn’t even try the provided dressing. The baklava was quite good and very cinnamony. I will say my sister & brother-in-law team up to make one that’s better but I could be biased.

Overall the place wasn’t bad. In spite of any employee issue the staff present was very friendly and the food was solid if not exceptional. I’d go back if I was in the area but wouldn’t make a special trip.

You can check out their web site by clicking their name above and don’t forget to check out Tell Me More for a tzatziki recipe, music and more.

Finally Made It

Posted on July 30, 2016 by culina23_wp

Liberia

This week I made it to the restaurant that was to be the subject of the first blog post but it was closed that weekend and so many months later I finally made it to Zoewee’s.

To say the outside is unremarkable would be giving it too much credit. It sits off N. Tryon in Charlotte at the back of a parking lot among a group of buildings that are all past their prime. When I got there just before noon two of the employees were waiting outside to be let in as well. I thought that meant I’d be sitting for a while before they actually opened but they hit the open sign at 12:01.

The interior was basic restaurant décor with that minimalist feel. The man who let me in was friendly and told me it would be just a few minutes while they finished opening. The short conversation let me know he was not originally from the US so my hope for authentic Liberian cuisine was bolstered.

After just a couple of minutes a nice young lady brought me the menu. The menu is basically a list of daily specials and there are 4-6 dishes per day on the list. I was torn between the potato leaves and cassava leaves both with rice. I went with the cassava leaves since I didn’t even know what a cassava was. The waitress looked at me funny and asked if I had ever had African food before and I said a bit but was there something she thought I needed to know. She said no but still had a skeptical look on her face as she walked away. When she strolled up with a plate and a bowl, one with the rice and one with the cassava leaves, I suspected I was going to get my money’s worth. OK, I was thinking the same thing you probably are seeing the pictures below, “That doesn’t look all that appetizing” or something more scatological, however just stay with me here. My attitude adjusted quickly.

As she was placing the food she pointed to the small plastic container in the upper right of the pictures and said it would “add spiciness” to the dish if I wanted it. I think this may have been why she asked if I had African food before to see if this should be a side item or not. Well of course I needed to know what “spiciness” was so I got a little on the tine of a fork and tasted it. Hey now! That had a bit of heat since it was essentially hot pepper paste. I did wind up adding most of it to the cassava leaves but that first undiluted taste was a sinus clearer.

I thought I might be eating a meat free lunch but as you can see in the second picture there was chicken liberally interspersed in the cassava and oil. At this point I still didn’t know what a cassava leaf looked like in the wild because these were just short of pureed and liberally doused in what I’m going to assume was palm oil as I’ve since learned that is the traditional oil. So based on what I had to work with I used the cassava leaf mixture as a gravy on the rice and dug in.

It was so much better than it looked. It had a very earthy taste and the rice helped cut the oil and the chicken flavor was very noticeable. The peppers brought it up another notch and improved the flavor even more. This was not haute cuisine but it tasted good and was filling. As suspected there was too much for me to finish so I brought some home for later which is another sign I liked it since I don’t often do leftovers.

Overall I’d say this is not a place to book your fancy party but if you want to try some interesting west African food, with a limited menu you can feel free to ask about, served by what I found to be a friendly staff this is a good option.

They don’t have a website but you can find the address searching on Google or Bing. One thing some of the websites indicate they open at 11:00 but that’s not correct it’s 12:00 on Saturday.

Check out Tell Me More for a recipe for Liberian greens & rice, music & more.

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.

Ciao Y’all

Posted on June 28, 2016 by culina23_wp

Italy

On the way out of town Saturday I stopped by La Fornarina Italian restaurant in Fort Mill. I’d heard the food was supposed to be pretty good and the owner was from Sicily so I figured it was a good possibility for some authentic Italian. It’s located in what was previously a chain pizzeria location and there are some remnants of that in the design. You can order takeout or dine in.

The menu is fairly standard looking but they do say they make their bread on site and use fresh ingredients. I went with their Sicilian Calzone which has cheese, ham, mushrooms and a white sauce in lieu of red sauce but it did come with a side of marinara for dipping. You can get it baked or fried and I almost went with fried but decided to stick with baked. It came out golden as you can see with a just a hint of char on the bottom which you can’t.

The crust was nice and crispy on the outside and inside there was plenty of ham, cheese & mushrooms. The crust did have a taste and texture a bit different that standard pizza crust, more bread like. The “white sauce” felt more like just some olive oil and garlic but it’s pretty hard to go wrong with that combo. I enjoyed it and now that I’ve had the baked I will try the fried next time to see what that’s like.

Since I was about to embark on a 4 plus hour drive I figured I needed a palette cleanser and followed up the calzone with a lemonchello gelato.

That was worth the trip all by itself. Man that was good stuff. Tart enough to start your mouth puckering with every bite and sweet enough to keep you from making that duck face thing that teen girls do in their selfies. They have several other flavors too but this one was just the perfect thing to set up the road trip.

Overall I have to say I enjoyed this place and will definitely go back when I’m tooling around the Ft Mill / Tega Cay area and lunch time rolls around. Another plus and probably a confirmation of what I heard about the owner is that I heard nothing but Italian coming from the kitchen.

I didn’t find a web site but you can Google them to find the address if you are so inclined. Check out the Tell Me More page for a recipe, music and a little something I bet you didn’t know about Italy.

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.

Don’t Cry For Me

Posted on June 11, 2016 by culina23_wp

Argentina

This week after spending a week at the beach chowing down on seafood pretty regularly hitting Parrillada Che Gaucho seemed like a good idea. This is a restaurant that is supposed to have food authentic to Argentina and Uruguay. I think it started as an Argentine place and now is owned by Uruguayans based on what I could determine from some light research.

The restaurant is in a, let’s call it a well established, strip of shops off Old Pineville Rd in Charlotte. Not far off the interstate and easy to get to. So my first gripe is that the website is awful and inaccurate. It indicated the place opened at 10:00 on Sat. which seemed odd but what did I know. When I get there at 11:30 they’re closed still because according to the door sign they open at 12:00. WTF, where’s the food?

When they do open there’s no line beating down the door so I get a chance to check out the place. Lots of flags of Argentina, Uruguay and USA along with soccer paraphernalia and one wall has a number of pictures of gauchos covering it. There’s also a small bar along one wall and a few TVs going. My waitress spoke enough English to make up for my lack of Spanish. She was friendly but not chatty.

The first thing I ordered, Matambre, she came back and told me they were out of but had other blah, blah, blah. I was really looking forward to that stuffed flank steak (see the recipe on the Tell Me More page). My back-up was the parrillada for 1. It was pricey but had a ton of meat as you can see.

The meat was delivered on a warmer that had some hot stones or something in the bottom to keep the metal cover warm. Nice idea. The parrillada consisted of a chorizo sausage, a blood sausage, sweetbreads, chicken, short ribs, stuffed small intestine, and flank steak. I got rice and salad as my two sides. To drink I got what was allegedly tea.

The chorizo sausage was good but I was really expecting some spicy heat and there was none. The blood sausage had an interesting texture. It was less dense than most sausage and mixed with some rice it was pretty good. The Argentine chitterlings were fried and stuffed with some kind of ground something that was pretty much a paste. Based on the taste and texture I’m guessing it was some sort of organ meat. It was a bit chewy and didn’t taste bad but the visual and texture made enjoying it beyond me. The chicken was lightly seasoned and a nice palette cleanser after the intestines. The sweetbreads were pretty good. They were a little crispy, again lightly seasoned, and they were probably my favorite of the lot I ate. I did wind up bringing home the steak, short ribs and a couple of sweetbread chunks.

The salad was just some lettuce, a couple of tomato slices and slivers of onion. No dressing offered and nothing included when it was delivered. The tea. Oh the tea. If you are a tea fan and especially if you are a Southern iced tea fan just don’t even stop here. The glass I got had two cubes of ice, which normally I would be fine with if the tea had already been cold but it wasn’t. The only way I knew this was supposed to be tea and not rusty water was that rusty water would have had taste.

My last gripe is the wait I had to get my bill. I asked for a box which would normally have indicated I was finished and just might be ready to leave but apparently that was a bit subtle. When she was bussing the table and asked if everything was okay and I said “Everything was fine but I’m done.” I thought that was also a clue but it apparently wasn’t. So I finally asked who I had to see to pay the bill and she figured it out.

So in spite of all the meat options I have to say this is the first time I have been disappointed over all with my experience. This is the only place I’ve been to I wouldn’t go back to.

Just so this doesn’t reflect poorly on Argentina as a nation check out the Tell Me More page for a matambre recipe and what looks like an Argentine Moon Pie.

Around the Horn of Africa

Posted on June 4, 2016 by culina23_wp

Somalia

Busy day today but I managed to get down to Central Avenue to Jamile’s Cuisine International or Jamile’s Cuisine & Grocery Store depending on the sign you choose to believe. Either way it was the designated representative for Somalian cuisine. This is a place you’d never find if you weren’t looking for it. It’s in an older plaza that looks like it might have started life as offices but since to other things like Jamile’s which takes up two suites, one for the restaurant and one for the store but they share a common entrance. You turn between one obvious Mexican restaurant and another that doesn’t have a name that I could see and Jamile’s is on the left.

I was among the first diners of the day and the lady who was my server came over from the connected store. There is nothing fancy about Jamile’s, it’s kind of dim and decked out with a number of 4 seat tables covered with blue and white checked plastic table cloths but it was clean. The menu is very limited with 6 main dishes plus a choice of 5 sides and a couple of other meal options. You don’t have to worry about getting hung up making decisions. When she gave me the menu the lady mentioned they were out of 2 of the 6 main dishes and 2 of the 5 sides further facilitating decision making. She asked if I’d been there before or was familiar with the food and since I hadn’t been and wasn’t she explained a bit about the choices. I opted for the goat meat with rice. As an aside I’ve had more goat since I started this blog than I have in my 50 plus years prior, I kid you not.

With the meal there is an optional free soup that I opted to receive. As you can see in the photo below it is served in a stemmed heavy glass bowl that looks like it would be right at home with a frozen fruit drink in it. This soup however was the opposite of frozen, oh my was that stuff hot. Initially it was just heat hot and when it cooled enough to taste I discovered it brought a little spice to the party as well. It was a pretty much just a meaty broth with an occasional bit of herb spotted but it did have enough salt and spices to add too but not overwhelm the broth’s meaty flavor.

The main course came out just as I was finishing the soup. It was a healthy portion of rice with a good amount of meat and a token salad, my favorite kind. The rice was good by itself and had some herbs mixed in to make it pleasant tasting and there were a small number of raisins scattered at the edges that added a hint of sweetness. The goat was very tender and seasoned well but it was also bony. Not a bad thing necessarily but some of those bones could have been used to shank someone. It did have a good taste though. Now if you will direct you gaze to the center of the plate in the picture you will see a small little container of an innocuous looking green sauce. Another aside, I found this place just this morning when I was checking the hours of the place I originally intended to go and I checked them out on Yelp to make sure they didn’t specialize in ptomaine and one of the reviewers gave one of my new favorite descriptions on Yelp ever. This sauce was described as “hotter than the devil’s daughter”. Being prepared I didn’t just start lapping in up and dipped a small goat chunk in to get a feel for the heat. My conclusion is that while it was no joke in the spicy department I think the devil’s daughter is likely hotter.

Once I got that salad out of the way and settled in to a rice, goat, sauce rhythm the meal was quite enjoyable. As with a lot of the places I’ve been to since starting this blog the patrons were mostly from the same area as the food represented by the restaurant. Verdict for Jamile’s is that it was an enjoyable meal that felt authentically Somali. I couldn’t find a web site or Facebook page for them so just Google them to find more info. As always stop by the Tell Me More page for some additional content on Somalia.

Visiting the Balkans

Posted on May 28, 2016 by culina23_wp

Serbia

That’s right it says Serbia. I was as shocked as some of you probably are to find out we had a restaurant in the area that had Serbian dishes. Honestly I didn’t even know what those might be but it turns out the one I tried was good.

So the place du jour was the Intermezzo Pizzeria & Café. It’s on 10th St. in Charlotte and pretty easy to get to. It wasn’t very busy when I arrived and I was seated immediately. They probably have more seats outside than in and since it wasn’t too hot I opted to sit outside. The waiter was very nice and we discussed beer to start and I went with a La Fin du Monde from Canada. He also brought me a sample of the Blanche de Bruxelles which he thought would be refreshing on the warm sunny day. He was correct.

The outside view was traffic heavy but there were a couple of interesting looking businesses to liven up the scenery. The coffee place and tattoo parlor were pretty easy to get a bead on but I’m not sure what the White Rabbit is aside from colorful.

I had it narrowed down to two items on the menu and I appreciated the candor from the waiter with his thoughts on the two options. He mentioned that one was pretty plain and not that flavorful. So I went with the Karadjordjeva and skillet potatoes.

If you are like me and had no clue what a Karadjordjeva was until now let me enlighten you on this version. It is a pork cutlet pounded like schnitzel with ham and kajmak cheese rolled up inside, breaded with site made bread crumbs, pan seared and finished with dill tartar sauce. “Tartar sauce on my pork, that’s crazy” you say? So did I but figured what the heck and that was a gamble that paid off. As you can see from the dissection photo there was plenty of ham and cheese rolled up in this thing and with that squeeze of lemon plus the dill tartar sauce the whole thing was very tasty. I don’t want to give short shrift to the skillet potatoes. They would have gone great with any meal. Cooked with a little onion and fried enough to have some light crunch in spots, tender throughout and salted just right so it was a good accompaniment but not competition for the main dish.

Overall I really liked it but for me I think it would be better as an evening meal rather than lunch on a warm spring day. I will say the pizza smelled good so if I’m back in this neighborhood I think I’ll have to give one of those a try. My streak of good places to dine continues and if you are interested their web link is below and if you want an interesting fact on Serbia check out Tell Me More.

Intermezzo Pizzeria

Culinary-Passport

Experiencing foods of the world locally