Hot Dog Heaven - Who Cares?

Listen to this review from Gayot:

"Hot Dog Heaven has been operating for more than a decade in the same little concrete block building along busy Colonial Drive. Walk up to the spotless counter, then take your dog outside to one of the concrete picnic tables, or eat inside perched on a stool at high white counters that face the walls. The menu is nothing but hot dogs, french fries and ice cream, but these aren't ordinary hot dogs, they're authentic Chicago hot dogs in natural casing that gives you the pop as you bite in. There are about 36 varieties on themenu---the most-ordered is the Chicago hot dog, served on a steamed poppy seed bun, topped with mustard, relish, onion, tomato, pickle and hot peppers. The Rueben dog has Thousand Island dressing, Swiss cheese and kraut. Our favorite is the chili, cheese and slaw dog with an order of perfect fries."

I just don't see what the big deal is.  The buns are just like the cheap ones at the store except with some poppy seeds on them.  The hot dogs themselves seem identical to the cheap ones at the store.  And then they put some toppings on, all of which you could easily buy at the store...  I had the Reuben, and the sauerkraut wasn't even good.  The fries are good, but nothing remarkable.  And then they don't have ranch or any dipping sauces (unless you count mustard or ketchup, which I don't).  That sucks for me because I can't even enjoy fries without something good in which to dip them.  I eventually paid .42 for some mayo, with which I mixed some salt, pepper, hot mustard and a little ketchup.  After asking about the ranch, I first asked if I could get a little cup of the 1000 island dressing, and the guy actually told me they didn't have any.  Um...there was some one my Reuben hot dog...wasn't there?  I had difficulty even getting the stupid mayo as the guy I asked was dismissive of my requests and questions.  His tone was basically, "Oh we are too busy selling our amazing, authentic, Chicago style hot dogs to deal with your dipping sauce needs.  Who doesn't love the deliciousness of ketchup, anyway?"  Ugh, tomato paste with corn syrup and a few spices, not exactly a culinary wonder.    All of the other sides are just bland and run of the mill.

Furthermore they only serve Pepsi products.  Blech.

Art & Design Cafe - Ft. Lauderdale, FL

Not every place on this list will be here for being ghetto. Take the Art & Design Cafe in Ft. Lauderdale, for instance. The art is really cool, pretty freakin' neat actually, but that's really it. If you want to pay a significant premium for simple food you could easily make yourself after stopping at your local Wal-mart, have at it!

Let's take a look at the menu:

Appetizers:

-Small Mango Chutney Baked Brie - $10 (I wish my sister had chosen to order this. It probably would have been tasty.)

-Large Mango Chutney Baked Brie - $16

-Tomatoes $ Mozzarella Caprise - $10

-Shrimp Cocktail - $10

-Bruschetta - $10 (Cami ordered this, which I know she did to make our group a little more socially acceptable after the waiter made his disappointment in our party's 4 waters and no wines very apparent. Well, pardonez nous, we were two Mormons and two chicks on their way to an open bar. Anyway, the bruschetta was bad - the tomatoes were mushy, blech. Cami actually make kick ass bruschetta, so bad brushchetta at restaurants is particularly annoying for me.)

-Lentil soup - $9 (Cami ordered this, and it was pretty plain, despite the waiter's misplaced enthusiasm in recommending it.

-Soup du jour - $9 (Ce jour, it was cream of brocoli - oh, please)

Salads:

-Boring chicken caesar salad (romaine lettuce, grilled chicken, croutons, and caesar dressing), inexplicably named after Picasso, even more inexplicably priced at $15

-"Van Gogh's" Spinach Mushroom salad: just spinach, mushrooms, pine nuts, and a balsamic vinaigrette - no mystery, no intrigue, the mushrooms are plain ol' agaricus mushrooms - the cheap kind you see in packages at the store - $15

-"Monet's" Vegetarian Salad: very typical: field greens, celery, cranberries, raisins, peaches, mandarin oranges, walnuts, and raspberry vinaigrette - $15

-"Rembrandt's" Salmon Grill: just salmon, field greens, tomatoes, Italian vinaigrette - boring - $19

-"Chagall's" Mahi Mahi Grill: mahi mahi, spinach, mixed peppers, mango chutney dressing - $19

-"Maxx's" Tuna Tataki Grill: seared tuna tataki, arugula, asparagus, wasabi dressing - $19

Oh, wow, look what I just found on the menu: "All salads, pastas & entrees are served with our delicious assorted breads & dipping oil." What bull shit. We ordered three of those, and got nary piece of bread, much less dipping oil. I would have really enjoyed assorted breads - I love assorted anything.

Sigh..moving on...

Entrees: All typical meat entrees you'd expect from anywhere: lamb, veal, skirt steak, filet mignon, mahi mahi, tilapia, salmon, ahi tuna, chicken picata: $22-$29

The side options are pretty decent, so at least there's that. Unfortunately none of us ordered an entree, so I can't say if they were of notable quality.

You can also make your own salad, but if you want it to be good or interesting, you pretty much have to pay out the ass.

Some of the desserts looked tasty is uninspired, but they were all also at least $9 of course, and I can only assume they wouldn't have been worth it since nothing else on the menu was.

Our waiter was new, and told one of the people in our party something I can guarantee wasn't true about the menu. The pasta section looked like this:

-Sauteed Pesto Pasta 12

-Sauteed Pasta with Garlic & Oil 12

-Sauteed Tomato Pasta 12

-with Diced Chicken Breast 15

-with Tigertail Shrimp 18

I suppose it takes a bit of brains for this to be intuitive. All of those baseline pastas are 12 bucks. Adding the meats is a simple matter of tossing them in or on the pasta. Now of course, everyone would rather have yummy pesto over plain tomato, and the chick in our party felt the same. She asked our ditsy gay boy waiter if she could get the pesto pasta with the shrimp, but he was (ridiculously) pretty sure she couldn't. A combination or laziness, stupidity, ignorance, and the hesitation of being wrong...it was his second day, and it's okay if he didn't know, but what he should have said was, "Oh, I'm not sure. I'll ask the chef for you. If you can't have that, do you still want the tomato pasta with the shrimp or the pesto pasta?" He didn't want to do that though because if she'd opted for the pesto pasta sans the shrimp, our bill would've gone down six bucks. He was overly trying to up sell us at every step of the way, which is normal to some extent, but it was a little over the top with this dude to the point of being tacky at times. Man, he didn't bother getting us the breads and oil, he was slow, he couldn't answer our questions, and he didn't get us the coupons we were promised by the friendly owner or manager or whoever it was who came out to do the typical owner-introduces-herself-to-you-to-make you-feel-like-you're-having-a-special-and-classy-dining-experience thing. Bah.

It did give us a good story to tell for the night, though, when a random drag queen started performing out of the blue, walking all around the restaurant and up to people's tables. All in all, this is one of those places I write off as pointlessly pretentious.

Wings and Pizza Buffet

There are some restaurants at which no one should ever eat. This blog is my attempt to help others so that they will not need to repeat my mistakes.

Yesterday I was in my drunk/hungover limbo that comes after a night of heavy drinking, as was my friend Travis (though we had attended separate drinking venues), so we wanted to go eat lunch together. Obviously, we wanted to eat total crap, as drinking heavily gives you license to do so the next day without guilt.

A couple of weeks earlier, a flier had found its way into my girlfriend's car and then found its way under my gaze:



Obviously this looks delicious and amazing. Also, obviously, it looks too good to be true (or, more accurately, too good to be good). But, as always, I had to know what lies behind such a flier. The drunk/hungover limbo was the perfect opportunity.

Travis and I discussed what was probably in store for us. I felt secure in my belief that no matter how low the quality of the food would be, as long as there was ranch, I'd be happy enough.

We walked into this place that was roughly half the size of the living room in my apartment. I couldn't even see the buffet and was growing concerned until Travis pointed out that it was simply the counter to the left of the cashier, a counter about 4 1/2 feet long. Obviously the $5.99 buffet price was one of the intriguing and seemingly wonderful things about this place that pulled us in. Well the crafty bastards charged $3 dollars for the sodas they know we'll need to drink with this greasy crap. They did have Diet Dr. Pepper, thank "god", proving just how well they know what's up. By the time I'd paid tax and the .50 a piece for 2 things of ranch (yeah, of course they charge for the effing ranch), I'd spent 11 dollars at this place.

Well, there were a couple of decent flavors of chicken, the fries weren't bad, the catfish wasn't good enough to eat more than once, the hush puppies were okay but mostly fry, and the salad was as I had predicted, just a bowl of lettuce in the corner. I had to keep eating fries until I had used a significant amount of the second cup of ranch, so as not to officially waste it and my money.

These people are out and out great capitalists really - there was even a slot machine in this maybe 300 square foot place.