What a shitty blog!

Well, it's been a solid seven months since I last wrote anything about eating, but don't you worry -- I've eaten plenty of stuff. Of note:

1. Whole Foods has a four-day sale every fourth of July where their burgers are only a dollar each! A DOLLAR!!!!!!!!!

2. My dad introduced me to an Italian place in Trenton (maybe Lawrenceville? It's right by Notre Dame) that I really loved at first, and then I went there a second time and got food poisoning. Bummer. It's called Enzo's, and here is my review in bullet-point form:

-awesomely simple, classic, rustic bread
-awesomely simple, classic, rustic salad
-mediocre (but not crappy) entrees. Highlight: They have a variety of traditional Italian sauces and pastas, and you can mix and match whichever you like. This rules for somebody who loves vodka sauce but is not that into penne.
-KICK ASS cannolis
-BYOB
-Too small and crowded
-Reasonable prices
-Don't get anything that combines creamy and fishy. Tastes like Tuna Helper and will make you barf all night.

3. I joined a CSA this summer and it sucks pretty hard. I've gotten almost nothing but lettuce and bok choi for like three weeks now. $500 down the shitter.

What an exciting post! At least I wrote something!

Blue Bottle Cafe and The Best Thing I've Ever Eaten

There is only one restaurant I know of worthy of such a triumphantly 90s soundtrack, and that's the Blue Bottle Cafe BYOB on Broad Street in Hopewell. Platonic Life Partner and I chose to have our belated Christmas dinner there two days ago, and it bordered on a religious experience.

The ambiance and service at Blue Bottle are both perfect, in my opinion. While it's much more hectic than your typical "fine dining" atmosphere, I find it kind of charming and much less stuffy/awkward than if you were sitting in some silent, stoic room feeling like everyone is watching you chow down and listening to you curse. The decor is really pretty -- all about the blue bottle theme -- and the lighting is really nice; not too dark but definitely not bright. The waitstaff is very friendly and attentive, but not annoyingly so, and they don't hover around your table trying to wipe your ass like they do at some other fancy restaurants. And speaking of ass-wiping, the one-seater bathroom is well-decorated, clean, and pretty-smelling, so bonus points for that.

I've eaten at Blue Bottle four or five times, and every time has been utterly amazing, but this last visit really blew my mind.

I always start with the Blue Bottle Salad as my appetizer, partially because I need to eat lettuce with dinner or I feel weird, but mostly because it's the best salad I've ever had in my life. The dressing is some kind of peppery vinaigrette (maybe Champagne?), and the salad is mixed greens with toasted hazelnuts, huge slices of Manchego cheese and halved red grapes. Awesome. Went great with the Indaba Sav Blanc we brought.

For our entrees, we broke our usual habit and actually ordered the same exact thing: Tri-tip of Wagyu beef with sauteed mushrooms, a mustardy-tasting sauce, and a puree of lobster and celery root.

I think I might have to take a second to collect myself.

Okay.

I don't really know what the hell Wagyu beef is, but the owner described it as "American Kobe," so I guess it must be made out of chubby cows who get regular massages from Americans or something. Whatever it is, those cows did not die in vain because they taste fucking incredible, and so did the perfectly tangy and salty dark sauce, and so did the perfectly browned mushrooms. The lobster and celery root puree was the ideal complement; it was super rich and kind of sweet, so I was mushing everything together like a five-year-old because it all tasted so good in combination. I ate every molecule of food on my plate, and then I scraped up PLP's puree/gravy sludge, because manners are pretty irrelevant when you're in the middle of eating The Best Thing You've Ever Had.

Thank god PLP thought to bring a white and a red, because the Indaba Pinotage he picked out was possibly the perfect wine for this perfect-ass meal; like the pureed awesomeness, the Pinotage was also really rich and kind of sweet, whereas the Sav Blanc kind of tasted like water when it tried to stand up to the amazingly fattening and expensive food I was in the process of housing. Not that that stopped me from killing the bottle.

Of course we had to get dessert, because one of the owners is a pastry chef so the quality doesn't stop at the end of dinner. I went with the Grand Marnier Cheesecake with chocolate wafer crust, and PLP got a modest little scoop of Bent Spoon Earl Grey ice cream. What a pussy. He did eat some of my cheesecake though, and we agreed that it ruled.

I actually meant to ask what kind of coffee they use because I'm guessing it's Small World (they're all about the local stuff) but I'm not sure which roast; in any case, the shit is delicious and totally French-pressed.

Whole meal gets A+++, like we're talking 102 average, extra credit, honor roll, the works. If you ever want to get in my pants, you know where to take me.

Luca's

Luca's is a small Italian BYO in one of the strip malls on 27 -- I think it's technically in North Brunswick. While I find myself going to Luca's on a semi-regular basis (maybe once a month), I recently came to the realization that this is really only due to three things: #1, convenient location. #2, don't have to pay for drinks. #3, the bread.

The ambiance at Luca's is cute. Appropriately dimmish lighting, kitschy Italian murals on the walls, uncomfortable-but-pretty dark wood tables and chairs, etc. The service is good. The prices are reasonable at best, but the bread is fucking bangin. Actually, only one kind of bread is bangin, but it's so bangin that it will have you jonesing for Luca's to the point that you forget about the semi-unreasonable prices and totally half-assed entrees.

After he gets your drink order, your waiter will come back with a basket of warm, presumably home-made assorted breads, and you need to immediately pounce on the small triangles of stuffed focaccia. Sometimes it's mozzarella and sundried tomatoes, and sometimes it's goat cheese and peppers, but it always rules, and there's never enough of it. Don't tell the people you're going with that it exists, and that way maybe you can horde it all before they even notice it.

Once the focaccia is gone, you're on the fast track to culinary blue balls. The salad is so-so; while the house dressing is one of those yummy, opaque balsamic vinaigrettes, they don't dress or toss the fucking salad for you and then they serve it on a tiny little plate, so the dressing is always just in a huge puddle at the bottom and I usually make some kind of embarrassing mess. On the menu, it's very important to notice that there are two sections of pasta: "Handmade Pasta" and "Traditional Pasta." Definitely go with the handmade; the "traditional" entrees are fucking insulting. If I wanted jarred sauce and boxed, dried pasta, I'd go eat for free at my dad's house. I usually get the gnocchi, and then I usually ask myself why I got the gnocchi, but then next time I look at the menu I remember that I got the gnocchi last time because there's really like nothing else that I want. Options = shitty.

I took the boyfriend there last week, and he got "the worst veal parm of [his] life," but on the other hand, my dad claims that their eggplant parm is "good" (I think it's okay), but it isn't on the menu; you have to ask for it. And if you do ask for it, you should also ask them to hold the boxed, dried side of bullshit penne that comes with it. You don't need that garbage in your life.

Dessert gets an F- for no cannolis and an obviously-frozen assortment of go-to "Italian" desserts, but the coffee gets an A because it's strong and (I think) French-pressed.

Crap Creek Grille

We not-so-recently visted Salt Creek Grille on route 1 in one of the Windsors, and for some reason I've decided right now to write about how bad it sucked.

First of all, it turns out this total whore we went to high school with works there, so that pretty much ruined the whole lunch right off the bat, but the shitty ambiance certainly didn't help. We were a party of two, and for some reason they seated us at this GIGANTIC U-shaped booth that was insanely awkward to sit at no matter how we positioned ourselves. The whole place is really creepy and good-old-boysish, with all this black leather and dark wood and really oversized, fat white man furniture. There was also a horrible glare coming through the ugly blinds that made it impossible for me to enjoy gazing at my platonic life partner's adorable face.


You think all that shit sounds bad? Wait until I tell you about the food. Hoooooolyyyyyy SHIT did it ever suck. The wine was really overpriced, and although I can't remember what we got, it doesn't matter because you aren't going to go there anyway so get off my back. There was literally nothing on the menu that I really wanted, so I ended up settling for a seared tuna sandwich, and I asked to substitute the fries with mashed potonks.

Big mistake.

The piece of tuna was seared, and it appeared to be a pretty nice piece of tuna, but not for a god damn sandwich because it weighed about four pounds and was about twice the width of anything I could ever fit in my mouth. This problem was compounded by the hardness of the roll and the utterly insulting lack of sauce of any kind. If I'm gonna pay for some food, you better believe it's going to come with some fucking sauce.

The mashed potatoes were the ultimate irony of our crappy lunch, or at least we thought so when we were half-drunk in the parking lot afterwards. In retrospect it doesn't seem so devastatingly witty to say, "The mashed potatoes were dry and they needed salt, and this place is called Salt CREEK Grille! Maybe we should dunk the potatoes in the salty water! HA!," but it seemed hilarious at the time.

I can't remember what PLP got, but it doesn't matter because we didn't even take home our leftovers, so again, there's no way you're ever gonna go there. And who even spells "Grill" with a fucking "e" at the end? It looks gross. We should have known better. F-