Not-So-Mellow Mushroom

There's a reason I finally learned to make pizza. That reason is the Mellow Mushroom.

It's been a couple years since we last ate at our local Mellow Mushroom. Maybe it was the burnt pretzels, or the burnt pizza crust, or the fact we waited nearly ninety minutes for the burnt pizza to reach our table, but whatever it was I knew I was done with the place. The real shame of it is how excited we were for the restaurant to open. Mellow Mushrooms in other cities had never failed to please. Their service is timely and their food noticeably unburnt, both of which are qualities I admire in restaurants.

As a result, we were justifiably delighted to hear someone was going to open a Mellow Mushroom only a few miles from our house. We watched and commented as construction progressed.

"Did you see they hung their signage?"

"Did you see they paved the parking lot?"

"Did you see they're going to have an outdoor patio?"

My Lovely Wife and I were so anxious to have a Mellow Mushroom nearby, we couldn't even wait for the kids to be available to try it out. The first day the restaurant was open to the public, while the kids were at school eating peanut butter sandwiches, we were sitting on the covered patio dining on delicious items from the Mellow Mushroom lunch menu. And it was good. Good enough for us to recommend the restaurant to our friends and family.

As time pressed on, however, we noticed inconsistencies in the quality of food preparation and long waits for tables (which is good for the restaurant) and for the delivery of food to the tables (which isn't any good for anybody). People around town started grumbling. We started grumbling. That last time we tried the restaurant, the ninety-minute wait for burnt pizza was the straw that broke the caterpillar's hooka. I found a Mario Batalli pizza dough online and we never looked back.

Then, just last week, the local high school jazz band performed at the restaurant to raise funds for the band program. Our Daughter and her boyfriend, Señor Awesome, both are in regular band and Señor Awesome is featured prominently in the jazz band, so we thought: "What the heck. Let's give Mellow Mushroom another chance and help raise money for the school band at the same time."

I would like to list now the reasons why we should have stayed home, eaten our own homemade pizza, and simply written the school band program a check.

1. Non-burnt pretzels, served promptly: This sounds like a promising start, but in hindsight it really wasn't. All it did was draw us into a false sense of security about the rest of the meal.
2. A Confused Waitress: For obvious reasons, a bad omen. When you tell the waitress you want a cheese pizza with basil and Roma tomatoes (both items from the list of toppings in the menu) and she doesn't understand what you're talking about, you know you're in trouble. And the fact no one at Mellow Mushroom seems to realize cheese pizza with basil and Roma tomatoes is commonly known as a Pizza Margherita also says a lot about this place's pizza bona fides.
3. One-Hour Wait Until Management Steps In: Yes, one hour. In an industry governed by ticket times and the expediting of food from the kitchens, it took the assistant manager one hour to realize we had not yet received our food, but only because we called it to his attention. At least he was kind enough to assure us our meal would be on the house.
4. Another 45 Minutes After Management Stepped In: We waited impatiently for a total 105 minutes from time of order to the time our pizzas were placed in front of us. During that time, I somehow managed to refrain from pointing out to the assistant manager that pizza normally takes five minutes to prepare and ten minutes to bake. Allowing the dough to rise is the only time consuming process, but I have to think if any place of business is going to have a ready supply of risen pizza dough, it's a restaurant that specializes in pizza.
5. A Confused Waitress, Part 2: After being reassured multiple times by multiple people we would not pay a penny for our meal, the waitress came to the table to ask how we wanted to split the bill. She might have gotten a tip if, just once during the two hours we sat at her table, she had refilled our glasses.

The manager arrived in time to apologize and offer us certificates for free food the next time we dined at his restaurant. Fortunately, he neglected to provide us the promised certificates before we left.



© 2013 Mark Feggeler

Pete's Parm

You'd think, having a healthy dose of Italian heritage infused into her genes, Our Daughter would know where and when to order an Italian entree.

Not that I'm any connoisseur of world cuisine -- and there's absolutely no Italian blood in my veins -- but I did grow up on Long Island not far from Manhattan. You couldn't spit in our neighborhood without hitting a pizza parlor or an Italian restaurant run by someone who looked like an extra from one of the "Godfather" movies. Add a few hundred randomly placed delicatessans, each serving a meatball sub more delicious than the other, and it's almost impossible not to develop a keen appreciation for properly prepared Italian food.

Twenty-three years ago, when I moved from the Empire State to the Tar Heel State, the lack of diversification among restaurants was the most difficult change to tolerate. We were lucky to have a McDonald's, let alone a great place to get pizza.

My Mother-in-Law used to have little sympathy for my complaints. She had moved to North Carolina in the early 1970s and one of her favorite stories to tell was about the time she went to the local supermarket and asked for help locating bread crumbs. She would roll out her best Yankee impersonation of Southern drawl when she mimicked the confused store clerk: "You want cruuuuuumbs? Of bray-uhd?"

Her story always reminded me of the time back in the early 90s when I made a sales trip to Charlottesville, VA. Not knowing the area, I asked the front desk attendant at the hotel if there were any good ethnic restaurants nearby. The poor girl stared at me like I had asked her to provide detailed instructions for nuclear fusion. After a moment's reflection, she offered this nugget: "There's a Shoney's down the street if you like country." If nothing else, I was glad to know someone had developed a work-placement program for ex-Hee Haw Honeys.

Over the years, our community has been blessed with the addition of a handful of eateries that understand tomato sauce and ketchup are very different things. And they have names that lead you to suspect they might know what they're doing -- Vito's, Valenti's, Fratello's. Let's face it, if an Italian restaurant has a single-word name ending in a pronounced vowel followed by a possessive apostrophe, it's already halfway along the road to success. This is a fact Our Daughter should have learned by now.

So, when her boyfriend's parents took her to dinner not long ago to a restaurant in a metal building on the side of a semi-rural highway, she should have known better than to order chicken parm at a placed called Pete's. You don't order chicken parm at a restaurant called Pete's. You order chicken fried steak, or country fried steak, or fried shrimp. Heck, order just about anything fried you care to from Pete and he'll probably do it extremely well. Like hushpuppies! Pete probably has perfect hushpuppies, but I promise you parmesan was not a staple product in his parent's pantry.

And even though Pete's name ends in a vowel, it's a silent vowel. Had the restaurant's name been Pietro's, then you could have made an argument for ordering chicken parm, or saltimbocca, or even a linguini appetizer. But it isn't, so you can't.

When Pete attempts chicken parm, you get country fried chicken and a red-colored sauce topped with a cheese bearing little resemblance to parmesan. And when that plate is dropped in front of you, you're getting exactly what you deserve for ordering it from a guy named Pete.

Clearly, we have failed to properly educate Our Daughter.



© 2013 Mark Feggeler

Urine My Memories

Not to be indelicate to the female audience -- presuming this blog actually has an audience -- but something struck me funny the other day when I made use of a public restroom at a local restaurant. I mean struck me figuratively, not literally. That would be disgusting.

In that particular restroom, the urinal was mounted so high on the wall as to render it unusable by anyone under, say, seven-foot-five. It became clear after a quick glance around the tiny room it had been decorated by someone who was not a practicing man.

Let's face it, you could relieve yourself on the floor and write your name on the walls with your own feces without significantly impacting the cleanliness of most public restrooms. So, when you find one -- a men's room mind you, not just a unisex bathroom -- that has pretty little handsoaps near the faucet, extra toilet paper stocked neatly beneath the sink, and wall tiles sporting a repeating flower print, it's a safe guess a woman was in charge of the design. And a urinal positioned at a higher altitude than any other urinal in the history of modern plumbing is the final indicator of a non-user calling the shots.

Moreso than as an inconvenience to myself, I considered how utterly useless a high-mounted urinal is to my 11-year-old sons. The entire point of a urinal, as I've always seen it, is to keep men from peeing all over the seat of a standard toilet, thereby reducing the risk of inconveniencing the next seat sitter to come along. If you're then going to mount the urinal so high that men who are not professional basketball players have to stand tippy-toe and arc a stream four feet into the air to avoid free-form urinating all over the restroom, then what possible hope does the average kid have?

Of course, I'd rather have to aim high than pee on my own feet, like those old-timey urinals that run all the way down to the floor make you do. You don't see them around much anymore, but when you come across one you'd better hope your not wearing sandals.

Which reminds me of my favorite urinals of all time, that really weren't so much urinals as a step-down groove in the concrete floor. These were the specialty of some of the racetracks our Dad would take us to from time to time when we were kids. It's amazing how quickly hundreds of beer-filled men can relieve themselves when all they have to do is pee semi-indiscriminately on the floor and let gravity take over. Even the cows at our Uncle John's farm had a more sophisticated waste removal system. You knew you were at a fancy racetrack when they had that twenty-foot-long bathtub in which to pee instead of the floor groove.

So here's a little friendly advice for any ladies out there who might ever find themselves in the position of having to tell a contractor how exactly to mount a urinal:

1. Higher than the toilet.
2. Lower than the sink.

That's really all you need to know.

Oh, yes, don't forget dividers if you're going to install more than one. I'm already trying not to pee all over myself. I don't want to have to worry about the mouth breather next to me who smells like his trip to the restroom is already five minutes too late.



© 2012 Mark Feggeler

Those, Sir, Are Nuggets

I'd never heard of Boston Pizza before our trip to Niagara Falls. Turns out the company has locations in Canada and many US states, just not in the Carolinas. Who knew?

When the Boston Pizza commercial appeared on screen to help fill the gap between hockey periods, the company heralded its latest addition to its menu: All Meat Wings!

Uh, um, huh, wha?

Apparently the oft-used phrase Boneless Buffalo Wings didn't satisfy the Boston Pizza marketing department. That, or the name is trademarked by some other restaurant. Maybe Chili's Southwest Grill? They have boneless Buffalo wings. I should know, I've eaten my share of them. They serve well when you're craving the spicy goodness of chicken wings but can't afford to have your fingers tinged red up to the second knuckle and your face smeared with bleu cheese dressing.

But, the benefits of not slopping yourself full of Buffalo sauce up to your earlobes aside, the brazen claim of that Boston Pizza commercial was the feather that broke this chicken's back. I don't care how convenient they are or what you call them, they aren't wings.

Wings have bones and shreds of meat so small any rational human being wouldn't waste time attempting to extricate them. The joy of wing eating doesn't come from sustenance. People don't finish a dozen wings and push back from the table, satiated, unbuttoning their pants to relieve the strain of a bulging belly, and announce loudly to world they are full. They push back, greasy and stained, sweat beading on their foreheads from the heat, bits of chicken dangling from their teeth like Quint from the jaws of Bruce the shark, wondering how many more dozens they can eat before their tastebuds are permanently damaged.

But these boneless bites are all about sanitized, generic quantity. And when you break them down, they are nothing more than breaded breast meat (I hope) coated with sauce and served with a side of dressing for dipping. In short, they are chicken nuggets.

Chicken nuggets are not manly. Chicken nuggets require little effort, no tearing meat off bones that stack high like morbid structures in ancient catacombs beneath Paris. Chicken nuggets satisfy no deep-rooted, caveman-like desire to hunt and gather. Chicken nuggets are pacifiers for children too fussy to eat real food.

So, do me a favor Boston Pizza, Chili's, and yes, even you Buffalo Wild Wings -- hold your hype and modify your menus. Those breaded shams you're shilling may taste good in the spicy sauce, but that doesn't make them wings.



© 2012 Mark Feggeler

Hush Little Puppies

A landmark was razed to the ground last week.

It had existed in its present location for less than 20 years, which means the building itself was not the landmark so much as it represented the landmark institution that lived within. Before moving into its more modern building in the 1990s, it resided in a rundown little shack only a little ways away.

I first ate at the restaurant in 1990 when I was a wet-behind-the-ears newspaper reporter and the rundown shack was still its home. It was my introduction to several Southern staples, including Carolina barbeque, the classic Carolina-style hamburger, the grilled chicken sandwich with mayo and pickles, sweet and tangy baked beans, greasy green beans prepared with chunks of bacon, and hushpuppies. Whatever you do, don't forget the hushpuppies.

Being a Yankee born and bred, hushpuppies were not known to me as being delectable balls of cornbread lovingly deep fried and served by the dozen in tiny plastic baskets. Hush Puppies were a brand of shoe. More specifically, they were the brown or black leather loafers our parents made us wear to church on Sundays or to school for class pictures. They were not soft and chewy. They did not smell like fry grease and cornbread. They were hard, smelled like feet, and caused blisters to form on the backs of our heels.

It is as incontrovertible as the wetness of water that John's Barbecue served the lightest, fluffiest, sweetest hushpuppies ever known to man. Some people don't care for them light and fluffy and sweet. Some people like their cornbread to resemble packed sand with a flavor to match. Those people are fools.

John understood how to treat his cornmeal like a gentleman should. He showered it with sweetness, formed it gently into golden nuggets, protected them from over-cooking, and served them piping hot.

The best thing to do with one of John's hushpuppies was to take a bite out of it and use the remaining portion as a scoop for the baked beans. Forget peanut butter and chocolate, these two tastes were beyond great together. Hot and tangy baked beans swimming in a thick, brown, sugary sauce that soaked into the nooks and crannies of the cake-like fried cornbread. My mouth waters just thinking about it.

Unfortunately, for reasons unimportant to this blog, the restaurant has slowly been withering away over the past few years. Like an old hound hanging back from the hunt, it seemed to lose its will to continue with the old traditions. For me, the restaurant became a ghost long before it died.

In it's place they will erect a Cracker Barrel. A fine restaurant with some excellent food, certainly. But their cornbread crumbles to sawdust in your hands, and to the best of my knowledge they don't even list hushpuppies on the menu.

The passing of an era takes a toll on people in different ways. If you were to survey the former patrons of John's Barbecue about what they will miss most, you would probably receive a broad range of responses. Some will miss the camaraderie of old friends at their favorite haunt, some will miss the smiling faces that served them faithfully all those years, and some might even miss the pig-themed decor.

I will miss the hushpuppies. Rest in peace, little doggies. Rest in peace.




© 2010 Mark Feggeler

A Bowlful of I'm-Still-Hungry

Kids are a pain in the butt to cook for, which is not a secret, but I really didn't expect it to be this difficult.

I could understand if we were constantly cooking exotic meals seasoned with curry, star anise, or cumin. If our preferred protein were, say, rabbit or eel or boll weevil, I could again understand our children's reticence to eat what we dish out. Even if we served up items only slightly off the beaten path, like sushi or jambalaya, I could excuse their finickiness.

To be fair, our Daughter tries just about everything and has a very short list of disallowed menu items. No chili. No Brussels sprouts. No ham, although bacon is A-OK and close to the top of the list of things for which she might hurt somebody. She amazes me, really. When I was thirteen, my favorite meal most definitely was not grilled marinated salmon with broccoli and a twice-baked potato. I wouldn't have sat on a plate of that, much less eaten it.

No, our Daughter is a great eater. It's the boys that bother me.

For starters, the Italian doesn't like pasta. That's wrong in so many ways, I have trouble processing it. I find myself time and time again standing in the kitchen staring dumbstruck at him when he says he doesn't like pasta. How is that possible?

He likes macaroni and cheese, right? Right.

Macaroni is pasta, right? Right.

But if you take the cheese off the macaroni and give him a bowl of it, he won't eat it because now it's just pasta and he doesn't like pasta!

And if that weren't bad enough, he also doesn't like hamburgers or hot dogs. Not only is he refusing to live up to an ethnic stereotype by not eating pasta, he's refusing to live up to the most basic requirements of an American child by not eating hamburgers and hot dogs. Even if he disliked only one of those, I could let it slide. But both? Patently un-American.

But as difficult as he is, he pales in comparison to the German.

It's much easier for me to offer a list of the foods the German does eat than to attempt summarizing what he won't. Quite simply, he eats bread, cheese, bread with cheese, macaroni and cheese, and plain pasta. It's a miracle the boy has had a bowel movement at all in the past five years. On the odd occasion we are able to blackmail him into eating a kernel of corn or a wedge of apple, his intestines must go into shock.

For a while, taking our family out for a meal was an experiment in pissing away money. As my Lovely Wife put it: "I don't want to go to a restaurant just to order them each a seven-dollar bowl of 'I'm still hungry.'"

These are the same children who, when they are in their twenties, will discover how good food with flavor can be. They will want to bring us to their favorite restaurants, or cook their new favorite meals for us, and behave as though they are introducing us to some previously undiscovered culinary world.

That's when I'll tell them I don't like whatever it is they want me to try, and I'll order a basket of chicken fingers with fries off the kids' menu.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler