(Placement of this post today is deliberate, as tonight is the AOA Burger Lab Event at Central Steak. And I’m judging!)

When I committed to the Wrestlemania Menu, I knew I was going for something special for my sliders. For one thing, I wasn’t going to use pre-ground beef. I wanted a special bun.

It’s not a terribly difficult thing to grind up some meat and throw it on a bun, so I wanted to make sure I jazzed it up a little. Here’s the description from the menu:

Freshly ground beef brisket and chuck sliders with Stillwater bacon, Spanish Mahon cheese, and Roasted Garlic Honey Dinosaur BBQ sauce on All Good Bakers Parker House rolls

So I ordered some slider rolls from All Good Bakers. Through many communications back and forth with Britin, I finally decided that their Parker House style rolls would be simple and perfect. I ordered a piece of brisket and a piece of chuck from The Meat House; the Mahon cheese was something I also picked up there. The Stillwater bacon came from Adventure in Food Trading. Dinosaur BBQ sauce is available all over the place (consider it an inside joke).

So for the day of the event, I broke out the meat grinder.

I got the meat ready.

I sliced the meat into strips.

And I ground away using the smallest die I have.

While store-bought ground beef is convenient, grinding your own will ensure much better quality, and that was the name of the game here.

I got the rest of the ingredients ready.

I wanted my sliders to have some flavor throughout, so I used a number of things to flavor the meat. Here’s a list of how I seasoned the beef (go ahead and try to find a common denominator, I dare you).

• 3 lbs of ground beef (50% chuck/50% brisket)
• 3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
• 1 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce
• 6 tablespoons of ketchup
• 4 egg yolks
• half of a medium sized onion diced
• salt and pepper

I gave this a good mix and formed them into small patties, a little bigger than the size of the bun (because they’ll shrink in cooking).

I got a skillet and a cast iron pan going on medium heat to cook up the bacon and sliders, respectively.

(This Stillwater bacon is legendary stuff!)

I cooked up the patties for a few minutes on each side.

And I got an assembly line going with the rest of the toppings.

And I assembled the little burgers. First the burger on the bottom bun, then a small segment of bacon, then a chunk of Mahon cheese, which is something between swiss and cheddar, and then a small amount of BBQ sauce.

And we enjoyed these crazy little things!

The firm bread held these together nicely. Because the burgers have so much moisture in the mix, much of it escapes during cooking, leaving the burger to begin to fall apart. But because I used cuts of meat with some good fat to get the flavors distributed, they came out amazing. The cheese added some creaminess and a bit of tang. Bacon is always great on a burger. The BBQ sauce brought some sweetness to every bite.

This is a pretty awesome way to make up burgers, and, even if I don’t do sliders next time, I may still use this method.

Those of you who have been following derryX Dines for a while and those of you who recently discovered The Official derryX Dines Map probably realize I don’t write about many Italian (American) restaurants. There is a reason for that. I generally find that style cuisine to be lazy and uninspired. It’s not that I don’t think there are great Italian (American) restaurants out there, but rather that it’s an easy model to please a larger audience who isn’t looking for much past the “red sauce.”

On recommendation from my buddy, MetalFrog, on a weekend my brother came to town, we went to eat at Villa Valenti (369 West Sand Lake Road  Wynantskill, NY 12198).

The interior of the restaurant definitely has that old time Italian restaurant feel, and, while we were there at 6PM on a Saturday, the restaurant was packed with a number of families, all parties larger than 5 or 6.

It’s a family owned place that speaks a lot about its pride and dedication to quality. I was actually looking forward to the meal very much because it really had been a while since I’ve had some great Italian (American) food.

When figuring out what to order, I was focused on the chicken page in the menu.

As with most Italian (American) places, they have Chicken This and Chicken That. The Chicken Rosina – (medallions with a cream sauce with mushrooms and sherry – $17.99) seemed like something that popped out from the menu, so I had that.

But not before sampling some of the clearly homemade bread and garlic olive oil that was served on the table.

And also not before having a small serving of things from their salad bar, which had the essentials and plenty of them. It was also remarkably on the clean side for salad bars.

I had actually ordered a brasciole appetizer (steak rolled and stuffed with cheese and spices – $8.99), and that arrived pretty quickly after placing the order.

That's a lot of sauce!

I cut across to see if the cheese had all melted away.

...and it hadn't.

I did enjoy this dish very much. There was way more sauce than needed to be there and it was a little on the dry side, but, aside from those minor things, I thought it had a great amount of flavor. The cheese was clearly not a typical mozzarella, and the inside of the roll was seasoned nicely with salt and pepper (a liberal amount of pepper being a must for braciole).

My experience with the main course was less positive.

On the surface, it looked great, but it was pretty flavorless. The chicken medallions were cooked perfectly, but were barely seasoned. The cream sauce bringing everything together also lacked seasoning. You could taste the sherry in the sauce, but, without some saltiness, the texture of the sauce just left a flat, bland taste on the tongue. The mushrooms also suffered from the same issue and didn’t add much to the experience. It wasn’t the worst thing on the planet, but it could be better.

The fettucini pasta that was the base of the dish was actually a substitution. Most dishes come with one type of pasta (boxed, I’m assuming), but they charge a small fee to upgrade to their homemade pasta. That’s what I did, but it came out really overcooked. I didn’t mind much because I don’t bother much with pasta anyway.

The service for the evening was excellent. The young man who waited our table was super accommodating to our party. There was a bit of a misunderstanding of the presentation of the dishes. Before ordering, when I asked about how the pasta was served with my dinner, he said it would be tossed in the cream sauce and used as the base of the dish. We had assumed this to be the case for all of the dishes, but Cassie’s chicken milanese came with a plate of pasta with red sauce on the side, even though her chicken had a plentiful amount of its own sauce. When we flagged up her tomato allergy to him and asked for a plate of dry pasta that she could eat with her sauce instead, he was unnecessarily apologetic and willing to accommodate the request.

We didn’t opt for any desserts there because The Snowman was calling our names, but the dinner was filling and decent while the company and atmosphere was awesome. And what this place is really good at is providing a relaxing setting to eat some large portions in great company, the way an Italian American restaurant should be.

I’m not playing idiot at all when I tell you that I have no idea what a blouse is.

I hear people refer to women’s shirts as blouses all the time, and, admittedly, it’s getting less and less the farther we move from 1976, but the word still comes up, and it seems to refer to all different kinds of shirts for women.

I put my feelers out on twitter (why does that sound a little creepy?) to see what people have to say about the topic.

Help me twitter: is there a difference between a shirt and a blouse?

I was quite surprised by the responses.

Here are some:

• Yes…a man can only wear a shirt. A woman can wear either a shirt or blouse. A blouse is nicer than a shirt.
• A blouse is loose & flowey.
• A blouse is looser and more feminine in design. It’s also usually made of a silky or polyester fabric; a shirt is probably cotton.
• If you use the word “blouse” you’re probably chilling my mom in 1984.
• For women, a shirt is more casual. Blouse is for work. Like a dress shirt for men.
• yeah, if you’re a chick.
• All blouses are shirts. Not all shirts are blouses.
• It depends on the style and material. Generally men wear shirts and women wear blouses if dressy.
• Blouse is usually used for women’s tops, but it can be used for men as well. I think the difference is the fit.
• A blouse is any womens shirt that bottoms from top to bottom.
• I thought any woman’s shirt was a blouse. Especially if she is 70. Except t-shirts.

And these responses came in from men and women.

So there’s apparently a huge confusion over when a woman’s shirt becomes a blouse.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and for the discussion to continue, but I don’t think we’re going to come to a true consensus here.

(Not that I care or anything, but I enjoy debates over words that mean nothing to me.)

On the way to our cruise aboard Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas, we were stuck in the Baltimore-Washington International Airport for a long time because our connecting flight was delayed. We arrived there at 8pm and didn’t take off until 1:20am; we were supposed to take off at 9:45pm. Weather was the excuse the people at the counter cited, but all reports on the TVs in the station indicated weather along the east coast was fine.

Whatever. At that point, what was I gonna do? I couldn’t drive home or anything.

So we decided to sit down for dinner in the airport. I was excited about the cluster of fast food places in the terminal. There was Arby’s, McDonalds, Quiznos, Charlie Chang’s Kwai (looked like mall food court Chinese), and California Tortilla (something like Chipotle) right in a row. When it comes to fast food, I can appreciate a meal at any of them, taken for what it’s worth.

We also passed a diner that looked kind of fun, so that’s actually where we ate.

The Silver Diner is a 50s style diner that’s inside of concourse B. It was also a very interesting restaurant. It was interesting from the perspective of how they market themselves.

Like many smart restaurants, the Silver Diner is very committed to local ingredients fresh from the farms. This is the first diner I’ve seen with these types of values. When I think of a diner, I think of a kitchen with a short order cook standing next to a 3 foot stack of run-of-the-mill eggs making omelettes stuffed with American cheese on a flat top all day. I don’t think of opening the menu and seeing a list of where they source their ingredients. To me, this was pretty damn cool, even though the last thing I think about when I think of an airport is local ingredients.

There were some pretty interesting things on the menu, and they serve breakfast all day, so it was tough to not get pancakes for dinner. But, I set my mind to deciding on a burger.

The place is laid out with booths and tables just like any diner. Even the decor and jukeboxes at every table is reminiscent of a 50s diner. The one thing they didn’t account for when they built this place was that pretty much everyone eating there would be schlepping around their carry-on luggage. Ours sat next to our table and the servers seemed to be used to maneuvering around them.

Our server was a piece of work. He was very nice, and he actually made a comment about how amazing the nWo used to be back in the day once he saw my t-shirt. That’s always fun. He also had interesting disposition. When he wanted to refill our sugar packet container, which was pretty close to already full, he spoke directly at Cassie’s friend and said, “Excuse me; can you please do me a favor and hand me that sugar container?” It was borderline awkward (I guess you had to be there to appreciate the exchange), but he was very accommodating, and that’s what’s important. Because it’s an airport, he made sure to ask us if we were in a hurry, and I liked that as well. It was very reassuring that we could have a leisurely dinner while not inconveniencing other diners who may have been in a hurry.

Anyway.

I ordered the bacon bleu burger (Bleu cheese crumbles, nitrate-free bacon, onion straws, A-1, honey mustard – $10.99).

It seems like quite a bit to spend on a burger in an airport, but you have to realize you’re not just paying for their overhead for being in an airport; you’re also paying for their ethics. But ethical, non-ethical, who cares? How did it taste?

The burger was really good. The menu specifies that all burgers would be cooked medium well unless otherwise noted, so I didn’t want to argue with that. I figure they say that for a reason. It came out medium well. It had your standard two slices of bacon per burger, and it was clear that they do a bunch of bacon in advance and rewarm it on the flat top, but it was pretty good bacon. It tasted mild for bacon, honestly. The blue cheese, A-1, and honey mustard were not applied evenly, so there were some bites that were heavy in each. I love onion straws on a burger, and theirs weren’t bad at all. The fries were soggy and a little miserable. Eaten with some of the high fructose corn syrup free ketchup, they weren’t terrible.

It was a very positive experience in an airport, and the meal, shared with Cassie and friends, really helped to lift our spirits after finding out about our delay.

Walking to our terminal, we saw the coolest thing.

It’s a stand right in the middle of the concourse that does massages, pedicures, manicures, and possibly other spa services. It was the weirdest thing ever, but it was fun to find out it was there.

Instead of opting into one of these things, I just sat down at a chair and waited for the plane to arrive.

Ohh, and I obsessed over the Best Buy Express kiosks I kept walking past. A tech toy vending machine sounds pretty amazing to me.

For Wrestlemania 28, I cooked a killer poutine with oven baked fries, and I dubbed the dish “Poutine even CM Punk would love” for the event, but it was just my take on poutine. My description for the dish was “Oven roasted russet potato wedges covered in sweet beef gravy and Maplebrook cheddar cheese bites.”

Just about all of the info you need is there except exactly how I generated crispy oven fries and how I went about making the gravy.

I preheated the oven to 450° F.

I cut a bunch of russet potatoes into wedges and placed them in some boiling water for 8 minutes; this step is essential otherwise the potatoes will remain soggy even though they brown in the oven.

After their bath, I drained them and tossed them scantly in some vegetable oil on an oven pan. I also liberally mixed some Maldon sea salt and Penzey’s ground black pepper. These baked on each side for about 15 minutes. You gotta use your discretion, though.

While they were baking, I laid out ingredients for the sweet gravy and got to work on that. This recipe is adapted from Nadia G’s Bitchen Kitchen: Cookin’ for Trouble.

Ingredients for poutine gravy

In a small pan, I melted a half of a stick of butter with 4 tablespoons of all purpose flour and cooked this mixture for about six minutes to create a roux; I set this aside for a moment. In a small pot, I heated some olive oil and browned up 4 shallots (probably 6 minutes or so). I deglazed with about half a cup of my dad’s homemade wine, made from a mixture of moscato and concord grapes, and cooked that down for just under a minute. To that, I added four cups of beef stock, the leaves from about four thyme sprigs, 1.5 tsp brown sugar, some sea salt and ground black pepper. I whisked in my roux and let this cook down for about 15 minutes.

I had taken out my cheese curds to come to room temperature when I started cooking. I bought whole milk cheddar cheese curds made in Vermont by Maplebrook Fine Cheeses at The Meat House. On their own, these are amazing enough as just a snack.

Maplebrook Fine Cheese Whole Milk Cheddar Cheese Bites

To assemble the dish, I put some fries on a plate, scattered a handful of cheese curds over the fries, and smothered everything with the sweet gravy. Part of me wanted to toss the fries in the gravy instead, but the smothering technique allowed for more interactive distribution of gravy in every bite.

The gravy melts the cheese curds over the fries and just starts to penetrate the crispy exterior of the fries. This was truly delicious, and was a great appetizer for our evening.

Cassie had lunch one day at Maestro’s, and she liked it so much, she wanted to go back the next day and try out their restaurant week menu. Three courses for $20.12 certainly sparked my curiosity. This was all very spur of the moment within a day, so I had Cassie try to get reservations. We could only get reservations for 8:45PM or later.

So we made the trip on that Friday evening, and, after the usual Friday evening Saratoga quest to find parking, we walked a few short blocks in the unseasonably warm spring air. When we approached Maestro’s at the Van Dam, I had realized exactly where we were going. It’s the place on Broadway that has the crazy flame-looking things and patio in front.

This isn’t a place that you go for a quiet date on a Friday night. This place was loud! Other diners were literally screaming at each other to have a conversation. It was the place to be, I guess.

I had already figured out what I wanted my courses to be from browsing the menu online, but, for giggles, try to figure it out while I talk about the complementary stuff they brought to the table.

The first thing they brought us were crackers with a white bean and fennel puree to have with them. They weren’t just any crackers; they were like a flat bread covered with poppy and sesame seeds. Totally delicious; these things may be my favorite crackers in the universe.

While we were working on that, the waitress brought over some bread with a butter that was topped with some Hawaiian salt. The butter was lacking in any real flavor, but the pinkish salt, when added to the butter, made everything whole again. The salt really helped make this an enjoyable appetizer to the appetizer.

My appetizer arrived. I had the Grilled Veal Sausage (Veal sausage with sun-dried tomatoes & fresh mozzarella, roasted onion and peppers, balsamic drizzle).

This was pretty good. The problem with roasted peppers in a dish is that they tend to overpower everything else on the plate. That kind of happened in this case, as there were lots of roasted peppers, but with contrasting flavors like balsamic vinegar, and contrasting textures like the sausage and the cheese, this was interesting enough to enjoy. The sausage were grilled nicely and tasted great.

For dinner, I really wanted steak, so I tried the Steak Frites (Marinated Harris Ranch Teres Major Steak, fresh frites, mixed greens, peppercorn dressing).

I had to do some research on Harris Ranch before I went to the restaurant. It turns out it’s one of the largest beef producers in the US; they’re based out of California. So the lesson here is that even when a place names the source of their products, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re locally sourced. But local, national, whatever, what was the quality like?

Well, I ordered it medium rare. It did arrive at that temperature. Unfortunately, the meat was barely seasoned as it was cooked, so it lacked any crust and intensity in flavor that you would expect from grilling such a cut. The cut, teres major, is actually a muscle from the shoulder that is supposed to be as tender as tenderloin. Since the temperature was perfect, each bite was tender, but really would have benefited from some seasoning. The sauce, which was supplied in abundance, was very creamy, but also lacked some basic seasoning. I wasn’t going to dip the steak in the ketchup, so I added a little salt, which I never like needing to do.

The frites were pretty standard. They were actually quite liberally seasoned. The salad was comprised of a mix of bitter greens. It was a nice accompaniment to the dish, as the salad usually is for this dish.

For dessert, I really wanted the Strawberry Rhubarb Tart (served with Cinnamon ice cream), but, because it was a busy evening, I had to settle for the Lemon Cheese Pie (Chantilly cream, minted lemon curd). As it turns out, this was the high point of the meal.

The cake was delicious. It was built upon a beautiful cookie crust and loaded with a slightly sweet but tart cream cheese filling. The lemon curd, which was perfectly applied, was spiked with mint and also had a contrast of sweet and tart. Each bite was refreshing and offered flavor and texture combinations that really sent this meal to the next level. I’m never as impressed with dessert as I was here.

As we paid the bill, our waitress brought us a basket of a dark chocolate, mixed nuts, and dried fruit medley. I had to try a piece. It was also delicious!

As I did my research for this restaurant, I noticed that the prices are normally a bit on the high side. I am not sure if the portion would be the same size, but the steak frites dinner on the menu (same description as the restaurant week menu) normally costs $25. It’s a bit more than I’d like to spend for that meal, but there are worse places charging even more in Saratoga. Again, I don’t know if they do provide larger portions for the regular menu. I do know that my portion, even though it was underseasoned, was adequate and certainly well worth the price of admission for restaurant week.

I guess I’m having more and more positive restaurant week experiences as I attend more. That has to be like the law of averages or something.

MetalFrog is a good kid and all, but even he makes mistakes.

He counted down his favorite celebrity meltdowns on his own blog, and we got to talking about how fitting it would be if he wrote about one of my favorites, the Seinfeld meltdown, while I was away. It was a great post, and it was super popular while I was away, and I love that, but now I have to burst his bubble.

You see, there’s one meltdown that really transcends all other celebrity meltdowns, and he missed it.

The Buddy Rich Tapes

I was introduced to The Buddy Rich Tapes while watching the special features on the Seinfeld DVD set (I bought mine at Best Buy, and it actually came inside of a replica refrigerator — fun fact). In one of the documentary bonus features, Jerry Seinfeld mentions that some of the quotes from shows actually came from these tapes. He further elaborates that he listens to these tapes prior to getting up on stage to perform standup and that he and Larry David used to quote the tapes while writing Seinfeld.

Buddy Rich was one of America’s greatest jazz drummers, and he knew it. It got to his head, and he was quite a diva about it. He used to berate his band up and down, and one day, someone decided to secretly record the tirades. They’ve been released to the public and, through the wonder of youtubes, we can hear them.

The tapes are basically an angry man totally reaming out his band for playing like crap; for all we know, they could have been playing just fine and he was a crazy perfectionist.

It is ten minutes of comedic masterpiece.

So, take a listen, and I’ll join you afterwards. (The tapes are noisy. They’re still amazing.)

If you’re a fan of the TV show, Seinfeld, you’ll recognize a bunch of quotes from the show that were inspired by the tapes. They’re pretty well summarized on Buddy Rich’s Wikipedia page. I think that’s a testament to the strength of this meltdown; it was significant enough to endure the test of time and make it into one of the greatest sitcoms of all time.

Buddy Rich’s demeanor also made it into The Beastie Boys’s “Sabotage:”

I’m Buddy Rich when I fly off the handle

[RIP MCA]

So, the significance of The Buddy Rich tapes cannot be refuted.

Like I said, the meltdowns Metalfrog wrote about were great, but they’re no Buddy Rich tapes.

Those of you who follow along closely know that I was away for a good 10 days on vacation. Most of those days were spent travelling the western Caribbean on Royal Caribbean’s “Allure of the Seas.”

In addition to adventuring around the massive ship (“largest in the world”), we made stops in Labadee (Haiti), Falmouth (Jamaica), and Cozumel (Mexico). We have so many stories and pictures, that it’s almost impossible to even remember everything! So, just to organize everything, I thought I’d give a quick overview of the major events. Because the feedback I get focuses a lot on how much people like the vacation posts, I’m going to hash out some posts with more specifics.

In addition to the endless included food on the cruise, we also took advantage of some of the premium dining experiences that were available on the ship, so those will get the full “derryX Dines” treatment and will make it onto the map which I’m excited about!

So here’s a list of the major stories I have to tell over the next several weeks (contingent with having the time to write this stuff):

• Dining in Baltimore-Washington Airport
• Included (i.e. free) dining on the Allure of the Seas
• Events and activities we were a part of on the Allure of the Seas
• Labadee, Haiti aka the island of Mortal Kombat
• Falmouth, Jamaica aka the place where I discovered Stone’s Original Ginger Wine
• Chef’s Table dinner on the Allure of the Seas
• Samba Grill (Brazilian Steakhouse) on the Allure of the Seas
• Cozumel, Mexico aka Tierra de las Macaras de la Lucha Libre
• Vintages (the tapas and wine bar) on the Allure of the Seas

For now, here are a couple of pictures.

I’ve never actually been able to nail the whole fried Buffalo chicken wing thing. Part of it has been my stubbornness to not start with flour coated wings. Another part of it has been my insistence that buffalo sauce doesn’t need butter.

Well, when I put Buffalo wings on the Wrestlemania Menu, I was going to make damn sure I did my research and churn out the best damn wings that I could. So I took to all of my books and some internet sources and came up with what follows.

I started with 30 wings from The Meat House (I had to specially order these because they’ve stopped regularly stocking chicken wings because they’re not popular in this area).

Picture of raw chicken omitted due to the “no raw chicken pictures” rule

I mixed 12 tablespoons of all purpose flour, 3 teaspoons of good ground paprika, a few pinches of cayenne pepper, and some sea salt in a very large bowl. After drying the wings, I tossed them in this flour mixture and allowed that to sit covered in the refrigerator for an hour.

In the meantime,  I broke out the trusty Fry Daddy, which only makes special appearances, and I got some vegetable oil heating at 375°F. I opted for vegetable oil because it was the most affordable; it also can take being kept at a high temperature for a long time.

I got to work on the Buffalo sauce. For this, I wanted to try something completely new. Frank’s hot sauce has been done again and again and again. So has Crystal hot sauce. Around Super Bowl time, I saw tons of advertisements for Tabasco’s new Buffalo style sauce. After searching the area high and low, Cassie found me a bottle.

So in a small pot, into about 10 tablespoons of melted butter, I added three cloves of chopped garlic, some fresh ground pepper and sea salt, and the whole bottle of hot sauce. I heated this over a low heat until it formed a uniform mixture.

I got to work on the blue cheese sauce, because a good crispy, hot wing is only as good as it’s blue cheese sauce. One big assumption I’ve always made is that places just serve a bottled blue cheese dressing with wings, and I’ve always been disappointed when I eat them with this stuff. In actuality, I have it on good authority that the majority of places combine either blue cheese dressing with mayonnaise, or sour cream, blue cheese chunks, and mayonnaise. So that was how I constructed my sauce.

I combined about 1 cup of sour cream with about half a cup of mayonnaise and incorporated about 2.5 oz of the blue cheese, crumbled as finely as I could by hand. I seasoned with a little salt and crumbled the rest on top of the bowl for a cool effect.

By then, it was about time to fry the wings. Because of the expansiveness of the menu, I was busy with other things, but I gave Dom strict instructions to fry each batch for exactly 10 minutes.

After all of the wings were fried, I tossed them in all of the sauce.

And they were eaten immediately.

derryX's Buffalo Chicken Wings

These were restaurant quality chicken wings. It only took the combination of a great product, and a deep fryer, and a flour coating, and butter in the sauce.

The wings themselves were tender and juicy. Leaving the flour mixture to sit with the wings for an hour helps the coating develop into something that seals the juices inside of the wings. The crispy exterior to the wings was a great textural balance, and gave the sauce something to soak into.

The sauce was amazing. There’s something special about the Tabasco Buffalo sauce that I can’t quite put my finger on. The sauce had the tang and light heat that you’d associate with Buffalo wings. The garlic helped bring both of these attributes out of the wings.

The blue cheese sauce was pretty damn good. It was a little too thick and kind of heavy on the tongue. I think it might have been missing a small acidic component, maybe a squeeze of lemon juice or a splash of vinegar. But, it was creamy, cheesy, and delicious.

I would totally make these again, but, just as the Fry Daddy only makes it out for the special occasions, so will these wings.

I talk a lot about my disdain for Yelp! a lot. This is another case where Yelp! facilitates things going out of control and can be absolutely useless when looking for places to try.

According to what you would read on Yelp!, Burger Centric, located at 250 Delaware Ave in Albany, NY, is a place to find a defensive, racist owner who does everything from seating tables, to cooking the food, to serving the tables, and so on. There’s no consensus on Yelp! about the quality of the food, so let’s assume that means it’s inconsistent (that’s all you can do, right?).

I never, never trust any single person’s opinion when I am looking for new places to try, and you shouldn’t either. Ultimately, only you can decide what you like about a dining experience. You can gather data and see what people say to help you decide where to go, and I’m happy to help in that data gathering with “derryX Dines,” but my opinion should never be the be all end all of where you should go eat. I can only talk about what I find important in a dining experience; that may not be anyone else’s experience at all.

This said…

MetalFrog and I gathered on a gloomy Saturday afternoon to check out Burger Centric for ourselves. With such a diverse and extensive menu (too extensive?), which even includes a number of burger creations with exotic meats like bison, lamb, kangaroo, and goat balls, it has intrigued me for some time; I didn’t even care about Yelp!. I honestly don’t know too many places that serve a $10.99 Kobe beef burger in the area, and, even more, I don’t know many places that even serve Kobe burgers around here. This place even has grass fed burgers on the menu for under $10!

"All natural beef where the cows run around"

We were seated by the young man, Dave, who owns the restaurant. There was one table already seated in the restaurant, and there was a man with a young boy looking to place a takeout order. To say that MetalFrog and I were worried about the attention Dave would be able to pay to the food while doing all of this other stuff is an understatement. An African American family of four was also seated while we were browsing the menu.

This guy delivers too?

As a starter, I ordered the vegetable pakoras, but not before asking whether they were made with cauliflower. When I asked what vegetables were included in the pakora, Dave couldn’t answer; his curt response was to ask me if I had any allergies. When I told him about my cauliflower “allergy,” he obliged to not use cauliflower in the pakoras. Dave’s cooking clearly has Pakistani and Indian influences, so I figured it would be a great thing to order.

Vegetable Pakora at Burger Centric

The shape was certainly a surprise, but not so much after I realized there is a vegetarian pakora burger on the menu. The interior of most of the pakora were underdone, as you can see in the left most piece in the above image. It was a shame because the flavor was not bad.

I didn’t finish these; I couldn’t. I was more interested in the burger anyway. I ordered the Chef’s Kobe burger ($10.99), which came with fries and would be served with sauteed onion, tomatoes, garlic, ginger, and olive oil.

Mind you, Dave was busy running around the whole restaurant all on his own.

I always lift the lid to see what’s on top.

I was surprised and pleased to see that the components that make up the “chef’s touch” were cooked down into a chutney of sorts.  The “Centric Sauce” was akin to a thousand island dressing (think Big Mac), and there was the customary lettuce, tomato (which I pulled off), and raw onion on top.

There were no utensils so I didn’t cut across the burger to check the temperature. But I snapped a picture after a few bites to show that it was cooked a little past medium (I ordered it medium – no big deal); apologies for the picture of half eaten food in advance.

This burger was delicious. It did have it’s issues. The bottom bun was very crispy, just under burnt. The Kobe patty, formed to the thickness of an everyday burger, was thin enough to lose all of the fatty goodness that’s a part of the Kobe experience upon cooking. The chef’s touch “chutney” was a terrific topper to the burger. It was like a much more interesting ketchup; there was a great bit of sweetness from the tomatoes, and a fragrant taste from the ginger. The burger was nicely seasoned and juicy. I was honestly amazed that a place in such a sketchy looking building, with such a mired reputation, where the person cooking the food also has to worry about everything in the front of the house makes such a great burger.

When we paid our bill, things calmed down enough for us to provide some feedback to Dave. I made the comment that it was delicious, but that a Kobe burger should be thicker. At first he reacted defensively and said something like, “if I make it thicker, I have to charge you double and you can’t afford that,” to which we all had a laugh because I told him he has no idea what I can afford. I further explained and told him that I’d be willing to pay extra for a thicker burger, and he mentioned that I specify this the next time I come. Fair enough.

This brings me to an observation that I have about the place. If things aren’t explicitly stated, I’m not going to know what to get or expect. Other than the price being a vague indicator, I had no idea the burger would be that thin. Adding something like a weight or even a measurement would help people appreciate what it is they’re ordering; it would certainly help to set the expectations at a reasonable level. Another example of this is presentation of drink options. Instead of listing them on the menu or on a card at the table (mind you, there were already four or five additional printouts under the glass cover on the table), we had to get up and look at the options on the bar to figure out what to drink. It’s not a huge deal at all; it’s just something that helps the customer. Making things as visual as possible is only going to help the clients enjoy their experience.

You’ll recall that I mentioned an African American family was dining while we were there. You know I don’t mention details about a dining experience unless I find them noteworthy. Dave gave their table the same attention as all of the others, and I didn’t notice him speak any differently to them as he did to us or any others who were there. Perhaps he realizes the reputation he has on Yelp! is a problem for business, or perhaps the claims on Yelp! are complete garbage; we will never know, and I don’t think it’s important.

On the way out, Dave asked for us to share some more information about our dining experience. I told him that the chef’s touch was a very unique and great thing for his burgers, and that I thought the burger was delicious overall. I was also up front with the fact that I write about my food adventures. We chatted about his background and the unfortunate circumstances that led to the restaurant becoming a one-man operation. After listening for a few minutes, I did my best to bring the conversation back to the food, and it was clear to me that he is very passionate about food and his business, and that’s to a fault.

One of the many complaints that people lodge against his business is his explosive behavior on Yelp! It’s very easy to get sucked into the online world of feedback, complaints, and compliments. By taking these things personally on the social media and by lashing back at the customers, it doesn’t reflect well on the business overall and can irreversibly damage a reputation. This is the reason why social media consultants will recommend a manager with no personal ties to the business to oversee the social media aspect of the business. Social media can make or break your business, and this is a clear example of the latter, as he is clearly struggling to keep his passion going. This guy isn’t even making enough money to maintain a staff, and that’s unfortunate, because my impression of the burgers was very good.

I mentioned to Dave that I’ve been thoroughly researching his restaurant on Yelp! and other places on the internet and affirmed to him none of what I read dictated how my experience would be and that my experience was very good overall. He appeared to be very receptive to this and was appreciative for our business. On the way out, after I reaffirmed that I would be back with even more friends next time, and asked him for his recommendation of what to order next time. As kind of a no-brainer response, he said he’d get “Dave’s Fave” (sauteed mushrooms, onions, peppers, cheeses), but that he would have it with bison meat. Sounds like a plan.

Since there are so many conflicting things to read about this place on the internet, I couldn’t guarantee that your experience there will be stellar. Hell, even from what I ordered, I got something that was inedible and something that was fantastic. However, if you’re looking for a burger experience that might be able to provide some variety, I would recommend stopping in. In general, the burgers in the capital region are formidable and relatively uninteresting; this place may just be able to offer a burger experience that is more interesting than most.

Yeah. I watch way too many cooking shows. It’s really not a new thing. I always loved the Food Network, even when it started and Molto Mario was Mediterranean Mario.

I was recently watching “French Food at Home” with Laura Calder on Cooking Channel, and she said something that really took me back to a great story from my childhood.

Laura was looking for a synonym for “delicious” to describe her dish (I don’t even remember what it was. Something French), and she had a thesaurus in her hand. I said that she loves “scrumptious” and “yummy,” but her personal favorite is “scrummy.” I am having trouble finding a print thesaurus that has this word in it, but, thanks to the wonders of the internet, Urban Dictionary has it defined.

For a long time, I thought my friend, Anibal, made up the word “scrum.” When we were in middle school, calling people “scrubs” was the cool thing to do. He got in trouble for calling a girl a scrub. She may have been or not, who remembers? So after that, he was walking on thin ice for a while. I remember one day finding out that he got detention for saying something to someone, and he later explained that it was for telling the girl, “you’re a scrum.” I laughed so hard because it sounded made up and like a hilarious word.

Occasionally, though, the word comes up in real life. It’s actually a term in rugby. I have no idea what it means nor do I even care to look it up, but it’s real. Also, it’s used to modify the word t-shirt. As a matter of fact, the nWo shirt I’m wearing in my avatar picture was listed as “Jet Black Scrum.” That made me laugh.

Back to Scrummy. I don’t think I’ll be adopting that word to describe food, mainly because I don’t want to laugh that hard every time I write. You have no idea how funny the combination of s-c-r-u-m is to me.

Hey everybody! (Hey MetalFrog!)

I’m very much a behind-the-scenes-guy on this blog, but with Jerry on vacation, we thought it might be fun for me to write up a post. I’ve been casually blogging –read: infrequently posting without conviction– over at my own site, and I recently did a week dedicated to my favorite meltdown clips.

One of the clips I passed over was Michael Richard’s racial tirade at the Laugh Factory. Bear with me if you have no idea what I’m talking about, and resist the urge to use the Google and find the clip on the YouTubes!

I feel that it’s a comedian’s job to push boundaries and entice reactions. These reactions do not always need to be laughter, and there’s times where they’re extremely distasteful and provocative to garner responses. Kramer went way over the line, and it’s more sad than funny. When I think of great meltdowns I want ones that I can laugh at and quote, and I can’t really quote this one. I decided to pass on it.

So why this lead-up and talk of a clip I passed over?

Seven of the most brutally uncomfortable moments on network television were a result of this slip up. Jerry and I have very similar tastes in comedy, and we think the Kramer apology is absolutely fantastic. It’s easily his best work since Seinfeld ended, and we think everyone that knows us needs to see it.

It’s lengthy, so stick with it and hang around for some closing thoughts.

If I recall the circumstance correctly, Jerry Seinfeld was on a bit of a hiatus from being a public figure, and was doing promotional touring for DVDs or something. He just so happened to be scheduled on Letterman right around the time Kramer screwed up –it may have actually been the very next day– and he finagled Kramer on as a surprise satellite guest to explain himself.

I seem to remember some cooling-off time after Seinfeld, where Jerry just wanted absolutely nothing to do with any of the cast and crew. You can tell he’s pissed that he’s got to fend off questions about Mean Ol’ Uncle Kramer, and he’s really annoyed that Kramer’s eating up his Letterman spot.  When the crowd can’t make heads or tails of what Kramer’s saying, Jerry spits out that super snarky, “Stop laughing. It’s not funny,” line and it slays me every time I watch this.

Kramer awkwardly dancing around phrases with racist connotation (while saying he’s not racist) is pretty spectacular, so this is a solid clip with just that element. When you take into account Jerry Seinfeld’s body language, and his apparent contempt at his former co-actor, this jumps from being a weird moment in TV history to an all-time-classic clip. Check out that body language! He just wants to crawl off stage and not speak to anyone for a very long time, and he’s furious at Kramer for putting him into that position.

Now, for those of you that had no idea this existed before reading the post, I need your input. My theory about this is that when humans are met with uneasy situations, they tend to sheepishly giggle to ease the tension. Going on Kramer’s awkwardness and probably only knowing him as a quirky character on Seinfeld, you can see how the crowd would giggle at this. It’s absurd, and it reeks of performance art. Did you start to laugh at this? Are you a terrible person like me?

Now you can watch the Kramer meltdown if you haven’t seen it before (or just want to watch it again). It’s insane. By which I mean that it’s littered with racial slurs and obscenity that would have made Richard Prior blush.

Coming up with meals that are relatively high in protein and low in carbohydrates is sometimes tough when you don’t want to eat just a steak or a chicken breast.

That’s why I leave it to the pros. If you follow Gordon Ramsay on twitter, there’s a good chance that, on any given Friday, he’s going to dump a photo and recipe that fits the bill.

Weeks back, he posted a recipe that I needed to try!

When I read it and saw the picture, I finally realized that stuffed lentils isn’t the only thing you can make with lentils!

To get started, I laid out my ingredients.

Instead of bacon lardons, I fried up some pieces of guanciale, because that’s what I had.

After these crisped up nice, I added my diced onion and carrot along with the bay leaves.

After a magical pot change, I added the lentils (a full pound – I went with regular green lentils rather than put out effort to find puy lentils – I’m sure I also saved money) and added just enough water to cover along with some salt and pepper.

Once the water came to the boil, I covered it and moved on to the sausage.

I fried up a smashed garlic clove in a few tablespoons of olive oil.

In the meantime, I separated the tied sausages into links and discarded the string.

These went into the hot oil…

…and I browned them up real nice.

Once browned, I added enough white wine to come up the sausages about halfway.

I allowed this to cook on a low-medium heat for about 20 minutes. At that point, the white wine should start to coat the back of a spoon almost like a sauce.

The lentils and sausage were ready at just the same time, but, for good measure, I added the sausages to the pot with the lentils and nestled them in to allow the flavors from the sausage to start to enter the lentils.

To serve it up, I put about 3/4 cup of the cooked lentils on the plate and nestled 3 sausages on top. I garnished with (too much) parsley, and then enjoyed the meal.

What I liked about it was that the lentils had a persistent texture that was almost like rice in a way. Taken along with the spicy sausages, there was plenty of flavor in the lentils themselves, and occasionally, I hit a carrot or lardon that added some variety to every bite. This one is definitely getting filed in the High Energy cookbook, and is something I look forward to making again. Maybe next time with my own homemade Italian sausage, not that I even think mine could be as good as Dad’s or anything…

There’s a sushi restaurant seconds away from my apartment, and, in the 8 months living near it, I’ve never stopped in.

One evening, after work, I decided to change that.

Akanomi is located at 2568 Western Avenue at that point where it’s Guilderland/Altamont/Schenectady. I walked over at around 5pm. The every table in the small restaurant was available as was every seat at the sushi bar. Since I was dining alone, I sat at the sushi bar.

I really wanted sashimi, so I ordered sashimi deluxe ($18) that in addition to a roll. The meal came with either miso soup or house (ginger) salad. I opted for the salad.

This was exactly as you’d expect. The whitest part of the lettuce smothered in a sweet gingery and fruity dressing. It was quite refreshing and made me ready for my meal. Before my meal was ready, I noticed the sushi chef mixing up something with crab. Turns out he was making me a complementary portion of kani salad.

This was delicious. It was very sweet from the addition of eel sauce, and had lots of crunchy tempura bits.

He started working on my roll, the Akanomi roll (spicy crunch tuna & mango inside, topped with spicy salmon and avocado – $12).

This was presented with a trio of sauces arranged in a flame pattern at the top of the plate. This roll was great. The pieces were cut perfectly for single bites.

Even though I made my derryX sauce (the whole ball of wasabi slightly thinned with soy sauce), I didn’t use it for this. There were so many contrasts of flavors and textures that I really enjoyed savoring each bite.

As I was working on the roll, the chef presented my sashimi.

It was served on an LED light that was changing colors before my eyes! That was pretty cool. The fish for the sashimi were all sliced nicely. It is common around here to be served sashimi that is tough and chewy, but these pieces were neither. They all were easy to eat and were fresh; that is really important when you’re eating raw fish because one little bit of off flavor can ruin the whole dinner, and this was enjoyable from start to finish.

The whole time while I was eating, the young lady who owns the place spoke with me. We talked about Asian food in the area, and, in our conversation, she revealed that she and the rest of the staff are actually Chinese. It’s not uncommon to find that the Japanese restaurants in the area are run by Chinese people. I honestly don’t care as long as the food is good.

I also recommended a few of my favorite places to eat in the area to her and the sushi chef. It was a very positive and fun conversation.

It was also a fun and enjoyable meal. So now I know that I can walk to get decent sushi and sashimi.

(Yes I know “Out of Office” isn’t abbreviated “OOF”; I just think it’s funny to yell, “OOF”.)

Until next Monday (4/30), things may be a little slow. I’m going to a place where there’s no or limited internet access, so I won’t be able to interact with you all through twitter, facebook, email, or blog comments. There will still be a couple of posts that I’ve been working on. I haven’t taken a break from “derryX Dines” since I started doing it, so you can count on a dining post. And I have a pretty cool recipe post that just put the finishing touches on.

All blog comments will be moderated by MetalFrog, so make believe I’m still here, and don’t be rude.

Also, something to look forward to is a guest post from MetalFrog. On his blog, he’s been counting down the best celebrity meltdowns, and he and I spoke about how he missed one key meltdown. It fits pretty well with a lot of what I have to say here, so it’s gonna be a great post.

So, it’s going to be a pretty full week of content, and I’m going to miss a lot of the real-time interaction with you, but I’m not sorry. Everyone needs a vacation. [Plus I'll have some great stories from the vacation, I'm sure!]

When I was young, juice was juice!

Wow! That’s a really terrible way to start a post, and actually it’s not even true. Nobody even likes when old farts talk that way, but I guess now that I’m approaching that designation, I should be expected to talk that way.

The things that have passed for juice are just insane. I’m not even going to get into the “all-natural” fruit juices that are loaded with sugar, because you people talk enough about that stuff to drive me to drink it, but things seemed a whole lot more straight forward when I was younger, and things progressed to absolute bedlam over my lifetime.

As I grew up, the landscape of juices blew up. It wasn’t just apple or orange juice you could buy. Things like cran-apple, cran-grape, and other combinations were being manufactured, and it was totally lucrative.

As a little boy in Brooklyn, I used to nag my parents like mad to buy me the colored “juice” barrels (which I realize are nothing more than food colored sugar water.). Even the prisoners in Oz drank these.

Throughout elementary school, I was addicted to Ecto Cooler! (I also realize this was just sugar water.)

BRING IT BACK!!!

In a recent trip to Target, I was moseying through the grocery isles, and I heard an exchange between a parent and their young (5 years old or less) kid. The parent asked what kind of juice the kid wanted and gave options of apple and orange. The kid responded repeatedly and enthusiastically, “I WANT ARNOLD PALMER!!!”

The many faces of Arnold Palmer...do we need so many?

For those unfamiliar, an Arnold Palmer, or half and half, is a 50/50 mixture of iced tea and lemonade. It’s popular on golf courses, and comes in many incarnations (how?!) from Arizona Iced Tea Co.

Nothing about this is juice.

It’s not bad stuff, but it’s not juice. I certainly equate this with being an adult or maybe adolescent beverage; it’s usually less than what I consider sweet and has enough bitter and sour elements to be unappealing to the average child. I would have never expected kids to want to jump out of the carts to drink it, not like I was with Ecto Cooler, at least.

But I guess the world is changing and Ecto Cooler is nowhere near a comeback.