If Homer Simpson lived in Juneau, this would be the Kwik-E Mart.
Put another way: Mmmmmm...donuts.
This convenience store/deli across the street from the Nugget Mall is pretty much as good as one gets here, with a handful of others mostly offering small selections of limp and overpriced grab-and-go sandwiches. Those at the Breeze Inn are at least competent, even if they won’t make anyone forget a decent deli, but their real selling point is being the only decent source in town for traditional bakery items like donuts and fritters.
They have some other strengths as well, including a large and creative selection of bagels (although they have that soft, bready consistency of those found at supermarkets) and being the only place I’m aware of that’s open 24/7/365. That can be a big deal when one needs staples, a video rental or bottle of wine for a workday that goes past midnight or holiday. There’s a slightly better grocery selection than a typical 7-Eleven, but, alas, nothing hot aside from occasional soups and stuff one can microwave like frozen burritos (being across the street from one of our two McDonald’s, apparently they didn’t feel the need).
The cornerstone is operations manager Judy Hamann, who’s spent at least a decade baking and deep frying muffins, danishes, donuts, cookies and other mostly sugary starches on the self-help shelves near the register. Limp supermarket pastries are the pretty much the only competition for low-end grub like donuts, but Hamann deserves more than a title by default. She insists on continuing to buy higher quality ingredients, such as the chocolate to cover her donuts and cheese for her bagels, while the rest of the world is skimping to save pennies. She’s also a hardcore and knowledgeable football fan, which automatically elevates her status considerably.
One doesn’t need a massive 1,000-calorie fritter to indulge in the experience. Several varieties of donut holes cost a few pennies each, with the best coated with that rich and not overly sweet chocolate. Most of the time they still have that savory crunch of something recently out of the deep fryer- in fact, they seem to keep it longer than the donuts, so I usually just buy a small batch of the former. As for the fritters, they’re among the best I’ve had if they’re not overcooked, which happens more often than it should. They come in the usual apple, plus a rotating selection of other fruity flavors such as cherry, lemon and pineapple. Muffins, cookies, brownies and a few other things also satisfy the necessary sugar cravings, but don’t have the same edge over the competition. By the way, I accidently typed “vompetition” at first, which wouldn’t be a bad word to describe how one might feel after engaging in a citywide comparison of donut shops.
Bagels (79 cents for one, $7.50 for a dozen) are probably the food item the Breeze In is best known for (they do, after all, have a large liquor selection). The variety won’t overwhelm visitors who frequent Einstein Bros., but for a long time the Breeze In was the only game in town besides the marts. The downside is Juneauites came to think of those soft-crusted discs as what a bagel should be, so when a place finally came along offering the more legit jaw strainers it struggled mightily before establishing itself (this refers, of course, to Silverbow Bagels, a place of great personal affection even if they have a near-perfect record of messing up at least one of our orders).
The plainer varieties at the Breeze In aren’t any better than their supermarket wannabes. But a few standout recipes justify the extra trip, including butterscotch/walnut, parmesean/spinach and those generously topped with with quality cheddar. The big caveat is the baking isn’t consistent - some days they’re large and perfectly cooked, other times they can be pale or shrunken hockey pucks that resemble a cake that’s fallen in the oven. There’s a generous assortment of flavored cream cheeses, although very expensive for the quantity (especially with all that air whipped in).
Pre-wrapped sandwiches ($4-$6) are a step above a typical 7-Eleven thanks to better ingredients used in generous amounts and because they’re fresher. Those on bread (store-bought deli, as best I can tell) include the usual combinations of meat (ham, beef or turkey) and cheese (havarti, swiss, etc.), plus some with more exotic names like the Michaelangelo and Giovanni where various combinations of extras like sun-dried tomatoes and artichoke hearts are added. The latter types are almost always the better choice. Bagel sandwiches assemble meat, veggies and cream cheese into compact, durable packages. The Cobb croissant with turkey, bacon, veggies and blue cheese dressing is a good choice, although I tend to pull out some of the many sprouts that otherwise dominate the taste buds. The egg salad and chicken salad sandwiches are pretty bland. There’s also a mostly ordinary collection of wraps for about $4 - the ubitquous Thai chicken variety is absent, but a smoked salmon turkey wrap is a more than welcome substitute. Fairly cheap are a collection of mayonnaise- and pasta-based salads, but the pricier fresh veggie and fruit trays are far more appealing. Flavored coffees in vacuum bottles are OK, but this isn’t the place to get a latte unless you want it from a do-it-yourself machine.
Something special worth noting is the butterflake rolls and pies Hamann makes for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Both are as good as anything made anywhere in town and they sell out of as many she can make. It’s a glimpse into talent that obviously could go way beyond convenience store grub, but there’s also reason to be thankful she keeps cranking out pleasantly munchable stuff in volume that cheap and easy to go.
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Review: Zephyr (♦♦1/2)
Oddly, it took a restaurant to make me forget food used to be served here.
For a long time this downtown corner was the home of Rainbow Foods, Juneau’s only natural food grocer. The selection was small and quirky, and their salad/hot bar was expensive and inconsistent. But it was extremely popular and maybe the only place taking chances with unusual fare, including ethnic-theme dinner buffets once-a-week. It was pretty much even money whether the frequent substitution of tofu, vegan cheese and wheat-free noodles would be troublesome enough to sink the more exotic spices and textures of a dish.
Rainbow moved into bigger digs a few years ago and the space became the Friendly Planet Trading Co., offering pottery, jewelry, clothing and furniture aimed at the same crowd that used to buy organic groceries there. I never set foot in there without thinking of it as Grand Central Polenta.
Well, the polenta is back - yet for the first time I didn’t think of Rainbow Foods during our first visit to Zephyr, a Mediterranean restaurant trying to fit in with the more upscale theme Seward Street is trying to adopt. Across the street is Wild Spice, a continental/Mongolian BBQ hybrid doing a pretty good job of capturing the mood. Of course, a brightly-lit Subway continues to thrive on a third corner.
Zephyr is owned by Turkish native Haydar Suyun, who moved to Juneau after seeing it as a cruise ship worker during the 1980s. In 2004 he opened Raven’s Cafe in the rustic Imperial Billiard and Bar, serving casual fare like gyros, panini and chili-cheese fries. He closed the cafe in October of 2006, the same month Zephyr opened. It’s not just the menu targeting a more affluent clientele - there’s a wine bar for those climbing the narrow stairs to the loft and the likes of Sinatra being played at modest volumes on the loudspeakers.
Suyun has done an impressive job of remodeling the space with simple furnishings and a high ceiling, giving it an ideal sense of class and casual. Political power players were mingling at the bar much of our first evening, while the mostly full tables were occupied by couples and suits mostly engaged in quiet conversation. We didn’t have trouble getting a table without a reservation, but it might be advisable to make one during peak hours on weekends. An acquaintance at the bar was completely at ease shifting between an extra chair at our table and the power brokers - and when she started diving into one of our soups our attentive server showed up with an extra spoon almost immediately.
The food, while highly promising at times, needs to do a bit of catching up. Some dishes are great, others mediocre and others need a bit of tweaking in concept. At least one of us seems ready to embrace it as a new favorite, another sort of gave the food a shrug, but everyone agreed the setting and service alone make it a place for a good evening.
An appetizer of assorted spreads ($15 for three of the five varieties they offer individually) included hummus, a red pepper blend with an ideal level of zing and an pleasantly flavorful one with eggplant. It’s served with fresh bread and pita slices, the latter offering a more suitable texture match. A Mediterranean salad ($8 small/$15 large) was a fresh mixture of mesculun greens and other veggies, manchego cheese and quality sopresata salami. Less pricey starters such as avagolemono (a chicken, egg and lemon soup for $6) and a simple green salad ($5) are available among the roughly 15 options. Others looked like quality, if unoriginal, choices like steamed clams ($14) and a grilled portabella with mozzarella ($8).
There’s five pasta options and the four we tried during our visits were all solid, if not transcendent. The best was probably the pesto ($14), featuring thin-sliced fried potatoes and green beans over linguine - the double-starch mix of potatoes and noodles worked surprisingly well. A pasta rustico ($13) of roma tomato sauce, brown butter and parmesan over capellini (noodles even thinner than angel hair) almost got the concept of using a few simple ingredients to make a superior pasta dish right, but the light covering of tomatoes didn’t have enough flavor to anchor the dish and it could have used a bit more cheese. Fettucini alfredeo ($14) was ideally flavorful and mild, but didn’t surpass decent plates at a few other places in town. An agean pasta ($15) of sun-dried tomatoes, olives, pine nuts and feta butter over penne pasta was well-liked by others (I’m not a fan of the dish and unable to appreciate its nuances). Any of the pastas are substantial enough on their own, but it’s possible to add steak ($10), chicken ($7) or prawns and scallops ($11).
The entree menu is limited to seven items, plus nightly specials. A roasted half chicken ($19) was tender and well-seasoned with an avgolemeno sauce, but more a safe refuge than an example of an ordinary dish taken to the next level. A 12-ounce ribeye steak ($28) had a nice light crust and a tasty topping of wine, butter and cabrales cheese, but was grilled past the ordered medium rare. The best of our meat dishes was the lamb shish kebobs ($23), where chunks of flavorful spiced meat again were grilled to the point of having a crusty outside and tender inside, ideally complimented by tzatziki sauce.
Among those that didn’t work out quite as well was the polenta lasagna ($19), a great blend of flavors that was hard to appreciate because it was assembled into a smallish, tall square. The crustiness of the thin grilled polenta on top was pleasing but hard to cut with a fork, and the red peppers, portabellos, asparagus, goat cheese and pesto cream sauce underneath didn’t offer enough resistance to keep it from falling apart on the plate. The expert chef in our group and I later talked about ways of reassembling the dish without any real solutions, but it’s still tasty enough to justify scraping the various bits back together. Finally, in unremarkable territory was an enormous bowl of cioppino ($29), which ought to be served in a half-portion at half the cost. The tomato broth had spice, but not really any standout flavor, and the seafood suffered the nearly inevitable fate of being overcooked after being in a pot so long.
Service was among the best we’ve had in any Juneau restaurant: friendly, quick and almost scary in its sometimes invisible efficiency. Plates appeared and disappeared without some of us noticing our server step behind us. The slightest attempt to catch his attention was successful. One night, when we wanted to take some food home and watch a movie, the person on the phone was exceptionally friendly and helpful with suggestions of what would survive the trip well. Lacking anything to pack dressing for a salad in, they provided a generous amount in a wine bottle.
There’s a temptation to give Zephyr a higher rating for its ambient appeal, but there’s also the problem of some who feel the food rates no higher than two stars because of inconsistencies and overall shortage of top-end dishes. Still, it’s a place we’ll hit regularly when we have the funds and are craving the dishes we know are successes.
For a long time this downtown corner was the home of Rainbow Foods, Juneau’s only natural food grocer. The selection was small and quirky, and their salad/hot bar was expensive and inconsistent. But it was extremely popular and maybe the only place taking chances with unusual fare, including ethnic-theme dinner buffets once-a-week. It was pretty much even money whether the frequent substitution of tofu, vegan cheese and wheat-free noodles would be troublesome enough to sink the more exotic spices and textures of a dish.
Rainbow moved into bigger digs a few years ago and the space became the Friendly Planet Trading Co., offering pottery, jewelry, clothing and furniture aimed at the same crowd that used to buy organic groceries there. I never set foot in there without thinking of it as Grand Central Polenta.
Well, the polenta is back - yet for the first time I didn’t think of Rainbow Foods during our first visit to Zephyr, a Mediterranean restaurant trying to fit in with the more upscale theme Seward Street is trying to adopt. Across the street is Wild Spice, a continental/Mongolian BBQ hybrid doing a pretty good job of capturing the mood. Of course, a brightly-lit Subway continues to thrive on a third corner.
Zephyr is owned by Turkish native Haydar Suyun, who moved to Juneau after seeing it as a cruise ship worker during the 1980s. In 2004 he opened Raven’s Cafe in the rustic Imperial Billiard and Bar, serving casual fare like gyros, panini and chili-cheese fries. He closed the cafe in October of 2006, the same month Zephyr opened. It’s not just the menu targeting a more affluent clientele - there’s a wine bar for those climbing the narrow stairs to the loft and the likes of Sinatra being played at modest volumes on the loudspeakers.
Suyun has done an impressive job of remodeling the space with simple furnishings and a high ceiling, giving it an ideal sense of class and casual. Political power players were mingling at the bar much of our first evening, while the mostly full tables were occupied by couples and suits mostly engaged in quiet conversation. We didn’t have trouble getting a table without a reservation, but it might be advisable to make one during peak hours on weekends. An acquaintance at the bar was completely at ease shifting between an extra chair at our table and the power brokers - and when she started diving into one of our soups our attentive server showed up with an extra spoon almost immediately.
The food, while highly promising at times, needs to do a bit of catching up. Some dishes are great, others mediocre and others need a bit of tweaking in concept. At least one of us seems ready to embrace it as a new favorite, another sort of gave the food a shrug, but everyone agreed the setting and service alone make it a place for a good evening.
An appetizer of assorted spreads ($15 for three of the five varieties they offer individually) included hummus, a red pepper blend with an ideal level of zing and an pleasantly flavorful one with eggplant. It’s served with fresh bread and pita slices, the latter offering a more suitable texture match. A Mediterranean salad ($8 small/$15 large) was a fresh mixture of mesculun greens and other veggies, manchego cheese and quality sopresata salami. Less pricey starters such as avagolemono (a chicken, egg and lemon soup for $6) and a simple green salad ($5) are available among the roughly 15 options. Others looked like quality, if unoriginal, choices like steamed clams ($14) and a grilled portabella with mozzarella ($8).
There’s five pasta options and the four we tried during our visits were all solid, if not transcendent. The best was probably the pesto ($14), featuring thin-sliced fried potatoes and green beans over linguine - the double-starch mix of potatoes and noodles worked surprisingly well. A pasta rustico ($13) of roma tomato sauce, brown butter and parmesan over capellini (noodles even thinner than angel hair) almost got the concept of using a few simple ingredients to make a superior pasta dish right, but the light covering of tomatoes didn’t have enough flavor to anchor the dish and it could have used a bit more cheese. Fettucini alfredeo ($14) was ideally flavorful and mild, but didn’t surpass decent plates at a few other places in town. An agean pasta ($15) of sun-dried tomatoes, olives, pine nuts and feta butter over penne pasta was well-liked by others (I’m not a fan of the dish and unable to appreciate its nuances). Any of the pastas are substantial enough on their own, but it’s possible to add steak ($10), chicken ($7) or prawns and scallops ($11).
The entree menu is limited to seven items, plus nightly specials. A roasted half chicken ($19) was tender and well-seasoned with an avgolemeno sauce, but more a safe refuge than an example of an ordinary dish taken to the next level. A 12-ounce ribeye steak ($28) had a nice light crust and a tasty topping of wine, butter and cabrales cheese, but was grilled past the ordered medium rare. The best of our meat dishes was the lamb shish kebobs ($23), where chunks of flavorful spiced meat again were grilled to the point of having a crusty outside and tender inside, ideally complimented by tzatziki sauce.
Among those that didn’t work out quite as well was the polenta lasagna ($19), a great blend of flavors that was hard to appreciate because it was assembled into a smallish, tall square. The crustiness of the thin grilled polenta on top was pleasing but hard to cut with a fork, and the red peppers, portabellos, asparagus, goat cheese and pesto cream sauce underneath didn’t offer enough resistance to keep it from falling apart on the plate. The expert chef in our group and I later talked about ways of reassembling the dish without any real solutions, but it’s still tasty enough to justify scraping the various bits back together. Finally, in unremarkable territory was an enormous bowl of cioppino ($29), which ought to be served in a half-portion at half the cost. The tomato broth had spice, but not really any standout flavor, and the seafood suffered the nearly inevitable fate of being overcooked after being in a pot so long.
Service was among the best we’ve had in any Juneau restaurant: friendly, quick and almost scary in its sometimes invisible efficiency. Plates appeared and disappeared without some of us noticing our server step behind us. The slightest attempt to catch his attention was successful. One night, when we wanted to take some food home and watch a movie, the person on the phone was exceptionally friendly and helpful with suggestions of what would survive the trip well. Lacking anything to pack dressing for a salad in, they provided a generous amount in a wine bottle.
There’s a temptation to give Zephyr a higher rating for its ambient appeal, but there’s also the problem of some who feel the food rates no higher than two stars because of inconsistencies and overall shortage of top-end dishes. Still, it’s a place we’ll hit regularly when we have the funds and are craving the dishes we know are successes.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Review: The Hot Bite (♦½)
Consider the cow. Back around the time of Moses someone in Egyptian royalty - or one of their slaves - decided to squeeze those odd-looking things underneath a sow. Then they decided to drink what came out.
Fast forward several thousand years in the evolution of human thought and we now know milk is a horrific health hazard, thanks to the animal-loving folks at PETA who showed off their wisdom with their “Got Beer?” ads. They’re also snitty about harvesting heifers for beef and leather, but soybeans and polyester don’t have the same buzz factor.
For most of the rest of us, the health hazards of milk are less about its pasteurized state than the many things man creates with it. Like Reddi-whip, especially when inhaled with propellants from the can. Or Tombstone pizza, one of those brand names that makes you think the marketing staff was partaking propellants.
Or milkshakes.
This is, according to word-of-mouth, the best use of bovines at The Hot Bite fast-food shack in Auke Bay. For years a few among us have stopped by occasionally for a shake and it seems to be the first thing others mention when asked for an opinion, but phrases like “slow,” “expensive” and “nothing great” are remarkably consistent when seeking recommendations about everything else.
Not that this place couldn’t be a tucked-away grease spot of Heaven for boaters coming off the water and it wouldn’t take that much effort. But sometime those final little touches are the hardest to master consistently and it seems like The Hot Bite’s had the same problems too long to hope for an easy fix. When cheeseburgers are $9, consistently overcooked and don’t even come with fries, that’s a problem. Those prices became even harder to swallow when they forgot items we ordered both times we tried takeout.
There might not have been a bigger disappointment than the halibut and chips ($12 for four pieces, $14 for five), where the supposedly fresh-caught fish was deep fried much too dry and coated with batter possessing little character. The pieces are nuggets larger than those chicken things at McD’s, but feel skimpy. When one starts having fond memories of The Broiler, decent as the fried fish is there, it’s a bad sign. Luckily the fries - from a freezer bag of decent-size wedges with the skins on - were cooked nicely and not over salted or seasoned. They cost $1.50-$2.50 as an a la carte side to a burger.
A better fate for the halibut (ours, not theirs) was the grilled fillet sandwich ($13), correctly cooked and paired with decent tomatoes, real lettuce and a sauce that didn’t overwhelm the mild fish. A better flavor and texture combination was the halibut cheeks sandwich ($13), served with a cucumber-wasabi dressing, but, alas, those flavorful, chewy cheeks were cooked a bit too tough.
If only mild overcooking were the worst sin of the halibut chowder ($5). But this supposedly homemade soup tastes like it came from a commercial mix where the main additions to the artificially thick base seemed to be somewhat dry chunks of fish and an unwelcome extra dash of salt. They also offered the chowder with crab during one of our takeout visits, but all we found in our bag later was we’d paid $5 for something we didn’t receive.
Sandwiches and burgers are served on a “grilled locally made bun,” but they’re soft white rolls with no distinct characteristics not found in the package kind. They remain soft after getting only a light touch on the grill, except that during one of our visits the bottoms of our buns were slightly stale.
The showpiece mound of meat at The Hot Bite is the Big Bite Buffalo burger ($13), an eight-ounce patty cooked, in theory, medium rare unless specified otherwise (they don’t ask with the regular burgers). One time ours was cooked more medium to medium well, but the bigger problem was the meat didn’t have enough of the richer, sweeter flavor to make it worth extra expense above its more common cousin.
The regular burgers ($8, or $9 with cheese) are one-third pounders of ground Angus, a classification that doesn’t necessarily mean anything despite hype that only 8 percent of U.S. beef is tender and flavorful enough to qualify. Try the pre-cooked frozen patties available in local grocery store freezers if you need proof. Those at The Hot Bite are an appreciable step above fast food and other restaurants relying on those ubiquitous quarter-pound frozen discs, but no substitute for anyone who knows how to pat quality ground chuck into the proper shape and grill it. They’d get credit for not drowning the burgers in sauce - allowing diners to decide if the light spreading is enough - if it didn’t cost 50 cents extra to get more. They also ought to add a second slice of cheese on the milder burgers like cheddar and swiss, although those who like the stronger flavor of bleu will find it well balanced here. Adding bacon or grilled mushrooms and onions is an extra $3, which means one may be paying $20 by the time a side and drink are added.
Most of the burgers travel well, but a disaster was the Bavarian reuben burger, where the sauerkraut did nothing to counter the sweetness of the sauce and everything to cause the bun to disintegrate into a drenched mess. Takeout is also not recommended for many of the sandwiches made with grilled chicken breasts (again, the slightly processed-feeling kind found in Costco freezers), where some of the more creative toppings are offered. The Thai peanut chicken sandwich ($9.75) has a nice bit of biteback, as does the chicken Tex ($9.75) with its chiles, guacamole and other appropriate fixings (by the way, is there a reason guacamole isn’t a listed add-on for the burgers?).
Oddly, the best sandwich might have been the lone vegetarian offering — a portabella mushroom burger ($9.25) stuffed with red pepper and sun-dried tomato cream cheese. One really has to like mushrooms to enjoy this, obviously — it’s not trying to fake out beef eaters like a Boca burger — but it’s messy and juicy without being excessively so, just like a good burger should be.
A half-pound basket of onion rings ($3.75) make for a tastier side than the fries, even if they’re the freezer-bag kind, arriving crisp and with distinct sweetness from the onions and a mild bit of spice from the coating. They also sell homemade coleslaw for $1.50, but we can’t report on it, since that was one of the items they forgot when we tried takeout.
Now, about those milkshakes.
First, it’s worth noting they actually include the “milk” part. A lot of fast food places call them “shakes” for a reason: they’re made from the same sort of cheap artificial crud as Cool Whip and other dairy wannabees. Even better, The Hot Bite even uses real vanilla ice cream as the base for its more than 30 flavors, even if it’s cheap brand stuff instead of something with a high pure vanilla and butterfat content like Haagen-Das.
Flavors run the range from fruity to candy bars, with everything ground up finely enough to get through a straw (a good thing for some people, less so for others). There’s a nice creaminess to them and the fruit options like blackberry or fresh bananas aren’t overly sweet, a definite plus. Getting them with Snickers bars is every bit the trashy experience they ought to be.
Still, we’re talking a good, not great shake, and at $5 for an ordinary size one this doesn’t feel like something worth making a special trip for. It might be a nice way to recharge after a hike out the road, but it’s not like it’s that much further to competitors like The Udder Culture.
On the other hand, The Hot Bite is a reasonably pleasant hangout spot if you can get one of the seven small tables (a minivan of kids might fill half of them). The view of the harbor is a little blocked - sort of like a wing seat on a plane - but the wood panel/red paint decor is bright and cheerful. They even do lattes ($2.50 small, $3 large), but don’t come in expecting to surf the Net on your laptop. The best entertainment is hoping someone just off a boat has a good fish tale at the next table.
We’ve only tried a couple of places heavy on burgers since starting these reviews and The Hot Bite is the best of them when judged purely by their beef, but that’s saying very little given what’s been a mediocre experience at best elsewhere. If The Hot Bite knocked a couple bucks off their prices, or least started including fries, this would get a stronger recommendation — and if they’d get their cooking consistent and in order it’d have a real chance of standing out in a town where good pickings are slim.
Fast forward several thousand years in the evolution of human thought and we now know milk is a horrific health hazard, thanks to the animal-loving folks at PETA who showed off their wisdom with their “Got Beer?” ads. They’re also snitty about harvesting heifers for beef and leather, but soybeans and polyester don’t have the same buzz factor.
For most of the rest of us, the health hazards of milk are less about its pasteurized state than the many things man creates with it. Like Reddi-whip, especially when inhaled with propellants from the can. Or Tombstone pizza, one of those brand names that makes you think the marketing staff was partaking propellants.
Or milkshakes.
This is, according to word-of-mouth, the best use of bovines at The Hot Bite fast-food shack in Auke Bay. For years a few among us have stopped by occasionally for a shake and it seems to be the first thing others mention when asked for an opinion, but phrases like “slow,” “expensive” and “nothing great” are remarkably consistent when seeking recommendations about everything else.
Not that this place couldn’t be a tucked-away grease spot of Heaven for boaters coming off the water and it wouldn’t take that much effort. But sometime those final little touches are the hardest to master consistently and it seems like The Hot Bite’s had the same problems too long to hope for an easy fix. When cheeseburgers are $9, consistently overcooked and don’t even come with fries, that’s a problem. Those prices became even harder to swallow when they forgot items we ordered both times we tried takeout.
There might not have been a bigger disappointment than the halibut and chips ($12 for four pieces, $14 for five), where the supposedly fresh-caught fish was deep fried much too dry and coated with batter possessing little character. The pieces are nuggets larger than those chicken things at McD’s, but feel skimpy. When one starts having fond memories of The Broiler, decent as the fried fish is there, it’s a bad sign. Luckily the fries - from a freezer bag of decent-size wedges with the skins on - were cooked nicely and not over salted or seasoned. They cost $1.50-$2.50 as an a la carte side to a burger.
A better fate for the halibut (ours, not theirs) was the grilled fillet sandwich ($13), correctly cooked and paired with decent tomatoes, real lettuce and a sauce that didn’t overwhelm the mild fish. A better flavor and texture combination was the halibut cheeks sandwich ($13), served with a cucumber-wasabi dressing, but, alas, those flavorful, chewy cheeks were cooked a bit too tough.
If only mild overcooking were the worst sin of the halibut chowder ($5). But this supposedly homemade soup tastes like it came from a commercial mix where the main additions to the artificially thick base seemed to be somewhat dry chunks of fish and an unwelcome extra dash of salt. They also offered the chowder with crab during one of our takeout visits, but all we found in our bag later was we’d paid $5 for something we didn’t receive.
Sandwiches and burgers are served on a “grilled locally made bun,” but they’re soft white rolls with no distinct characteristics not found in the package kind. They remain soft after getting only a light touch on the grill, except that during one of our visits the bottoms of our buns were slightly stale.
The showpiece mound of meat at The Hot Bite is the Big Bite Buffalo burger ($13), an eight-ounce patty cooked, in theory, medium rare unless specified otherwise (they don’t ask with the regular burgers). One time ours was cooked more medium to medium well, but the bigger problem was the meat didn’t have enough of the richer, sweeter flavor to make it worth extra expense above its more common cousin.
The regular burgers ($8, or $9 with cheese) are one-third pounders of ground Angus, a classification that doesn’t necessarily mean anything despite hype that only 8 percent of U.S. beef is tender and flavorful enough to qualify. Try the pre-cooked frozen patties available in local grocery store freezers if you need proof. Those at The Hot Bite are an appreciable step above fast food and other restaurants relying on those ubiquitous quarter-pound frozen discs, but no substitute for anyone who knows how to pat quality ground chuck into the proper shape and grill it. They’d get credit for not drowning the burgers in sauce - allowing diners to decide if the light spreading is enough - if it didn’t cost 50 cents extra to get more. They also ought to add a second slice of cheese on the milder burgers like cheddar and swiss, although those who like the stronger flavor of bleu will find it well balanced here. Adding bacon or grilled mushrooms and onions is an extra $3, which means one may be paying $20 by the time a side and drink are added.
Most of the burgers travel well, but a disaster was the Bavarian reuben burger, where the sauerkraut did nothing to counter the sweetness of the sauce and everything to cause the bun to disintegrate into a drenched mess. Takeout is also not recommended for many of the sandwiches made with grilled chicken breasts (again, the slightly processed-feeling kind found in Costco freezers), where some of the more creative toppings are offered. The Thai peanut chicken sandwich ($9.75) has a nice bit of biteback, as does the chicken Tex ($9.75) with its chiles, guacamole and other appropriate fixings (by the way, is there a reason guacamole isn’t a listed add-on for the burgers?).
Oddly, the best sandwich might have been the lone vegetarian offering — a portabella mushroom burger ($9.25) stuffed with red pepper and sun-dried tomato cream cheese. One really has to like mushrooms to enjoy this, obviously — it’s not trying to fake out beef eaters like a Boca burger — but it’s messy and juicy without being excessively so, just like a good burger should be.
A half-pound basket of onion rings ($3.75) make for a tastier side than the fries, even if they’re the freezer-bag kind, arriving crisp and with distinct sweetness from the onions and a mild bit of spice from the coating. They also sell homemade coleslaw for $1.50, but we can’t report on it, since that was one of the items they forgot when we tried takeout.
Now, about those milkshakes.
First, it’s worth noting they actually include the “milk” part. A lot of fast food places call them “shakes” for a reason: they’re made from the same sort of cheap artificial crud as Cool Whip and other dairy wannabees. Even better, The Hot Bite even uses real vanilla ice cream as the base for its more than 30 flavors, even if it’s cheap brand stuff instead of something with a high pure vanilla and butterfat content like Haagen-Das.
Flavors run the range from fruity to candy bars, with everything ground up finely enough to get through a straw (a good thing for some people, less so for others). There’s a nice creaminess to them and the fruit options like blackberry or fresh bananas aren’t overly sweet, a definite plus. Getting them with Snickers bars is every bit the trashy experience they ought to be.
Still, we’re talking a good, not great shake, and at $5 for an ordinary size one this doesn’t feel like something worth making a special trip for. It might be a nice way to recharge after a hike out the road, but it’s not like it’s that much further to competitors like The Udder Culture.
On the other hand, The Hot Bite is a reasonably pleasant hangout spot if you can get one of the seven small tables (a minivan of kids might fill half of them). The view of the harbor is a little blocked - sort of like a wing seat on a plane - but the wood panel/red paint decor is bright and cheerful. They even do lattes ($2.50 small, $3 large), but don’t come in expecting to surf the Net on your laptop. The best entertainment is hoping someone just off a boat has a good fish tale at the next table.
We’ve only tried a couple of places heavy on burgers since starting these reviews and The Hot Bite is the best of them when judged purely by their beef, but that’s saying very little given what’s been a mediocre experience at best elsewhere. If The Hot Bite knocked a couple bucks off their prices, or least started including fries, this would get a stronger recommendation — and if they’d get their cooking consistent and in order it’d have a real chance of standing out in a town where good pickings are slim.
Review: Chan’s Thai Kitchen (♦♦)
In Thailand, it costs roughly the same for a used English paperback or enough street food to feed a family of 10. It’s a fantastic lesson in relative worth, especially for those able to appreciate a skewer of grilled frogs more than Dan Brown.
Such comparisons come to mind when evaluating Chan’s Thai Kitchen, which by any measure has been a local success story since opening in 1997. It’s nearly always packed and bad words about it are rare, other than long wait times to get a table and their stubborn refusal to do evening takeout. More than anything it’s proof Juneauites crave quality ethnic food (even if Chan’s quickly learned to tone down the spices), to the point where an average restaurant in the Outside world is a minor institution here.
Good as Chan’s is, there’s dingy hole-in-the-wall joints in Seattle some of us make beelines for, where the speed and price of our many cartons puts McDonald’s to shame. Sit-down places around the state and U.S. offer better high-end memories. As for competing with market stalls of Chiang Mai, well, nobody’s close to their bags of soup and noodle stir-frys that begin, not end, with pad thai. When you see guys in business suits going into the Sheraton for sterilized meals at 20 times the price, the urge to mock them openly is overwhelming (OK, they’re very lavish meals, but unless you’re the type who can appreciate a $100 kobe burger 20 times as much as a great $5 greasy spoon cheeseburger, there’s a seriously out-of-whack value thing going.)
But back to reality, also known as pretty much the only decent Thai food one can get in town, at least five days of the week. Chan’s is closed Sundays and Mondays, open for lunch (and takeout) and dinner Tuesdays through Fridays, and dinner only on Saturdays. A lunchtime trip to Auke Bay is too much effort for government work, assuming one works downtown, especially given Chan’s infamously slow service, which at least they’ve developed a sense of self-mockey about.
“Chan’s Thai Kitchen is absolutely the slowest restaurant in Juneau, probably in Alaska and possibly the United States,” a faux award certificate on the wall declares. Other signs mingling with the Asian art on the cheap wood panel walls warn “if you are in a hurry, it might be best to come back another time.” To their credit, the reason this happens is all their dishes are cooked fresh when ordered, which many of our cheap friends to the south can’t claim.
A line of people spilling outside the door is common since they’ve only got a couple of seats in the tiny waiting area. “We’ve done Chan’s only once and we’re probably done the ‘penalty lap’ ten times (in recent months),” one of our regulars said, describing the u-turn one makes in a pothole-filled parking lot when the crowd is more than one wants to endure. We’ve also had plenty of 45-minute delays where we passed time looking at the boats in the harbor across from the street. Unfortunately for Chan’s, that’s led to occasions where we’ve bought live crabs on impulse from returning fishermen — easily the best grade-A meal in this town if one knows how to boil water, and one that’s cheap to boot.
Speaking of cheap, Chan’s isn’t. Prices are getting close to double what quickie hole-in-the-wall favorites Down South charge. It’s the combination of slowness and price, along with a few not-universally-shared remarks about inconsistency, that bogs Chan’s down among the ordinary.
Which is too bad, because the food is good — sometimes damn good. The menu isn’t as long as the 43 items on it suggests, since many are merely different meats or tofu added to a base dish. But we have, over the years, probably eaten everything on the menu at least once and certain dishes seem to end up on the table a lot more than others.
The only drawback of the Tom Yom and chicken coconut soups (both $11.50) is they may set expectations too high for what’s to come. While the price might seem outrageous for soup — and shrimp is $1 more, as it is in all dishes — each is enough to be a meal or an appetizer for the table. The Tom Yom is spicy as advertised, but without overpowering the flavor of the lemon grass and lime leaves. The chicken coconut is milder and richer, with a pleasant spice bite that doesn’t burn. Both are loaded with chunky vegetables that are crispy and fresh, marred only by eating a few ginger slices mistaken for mushrooms, and various forms of protein that — like too many dishes — don’t add much enhancement because they’re a bit dry and overcooked. There’s two other soups with rice noodles and one with rice, but their seasonings aren’t interesting enough to keep them on our list of regular items.
The spring rolls ($11 for five, $7 for three) are middle of the road, crispy instead of greasy, but with nothing remarkable in the collage of flavors from the rice, chicken and vegetables. Then again, people at the table were complaining they were too hot to appreciate the flavor, while eating all of them anyhow before they had a chance to cool.
In American restaurants, one supposedly can get a good idea of overall quality by ordering that most generic of items — the chicken breast — and seeing what the kitchen is capable of when it comes to preparing and seasoning it. A pretty stupid idea, actually, especially for infrequent diners celebrating a special occasion at a place with more exotic choices. But it’s both more common and sensible at ethnic places like Chan’s, where something like pad thai ($13) is both a safe kids pleaser and a mellow counterpoint to sharper flavors from other dishes (if you’re with a group and everyone’s eating their own entree, get schooled in Food 101 as a prerequisite for reading the rest of this review). The pad thai at Chan’s is on the sweet side and tends to congeal into a giant starchy lump as it cools, suggesting it’s a bit dry on lubricants. Nonetheless, it’s addictive and seems to be part of the collective order any time more than two people are involved.
The chicken satay ($11) is another safe, regularly ordered dish registering on the sweet side. Chan’s peanut sauce is thick and savory, with only a hint of spiciness, and it’s a good match for the chicken and mound of cabbage it’s served with. It’s unfortunate the chicken is too dry and chewy almost every time we order it, but the flavor pairing is better than similarly cooked pork satay. A more complex and satisfying pairing of chicken and peanut sauce is the taa-po curry ($12.50), which adds tamarind juice, spinach and lime leaves. This combination, as with other curries, is also available with pork, beef or extra-cost shrimp, but the poultry option is most compatible.
The yellow curry ($12.50) is pleasantly mild and rich, with potatoes and onions replacing greener vegetables in other mixes, but we’ve seen these subtleties executed better elsewhere. The green curry ($12.50) has a good bit of zing to balance its inherent sweetness. A nice in-house special for those who enjoy spicy is the halibut option for the red curry ($13), where the smooth texture of the plain-flavored fish is an ideal match. Similarly the thin strips of beef — generally the most tender and well-cooked of the proteins — are a good match with the peanuts (but no vegetables) in the spicy panang beef ($13).
The basil chicken ($12) and its pork, beef and tofu incarnations are a solid option, stir fried with a hefty pile of peppers, bamboo shoots and zucchini. Same for the broccoli pork with basil ($12), which adds…do we really need to explain this? A (protein of choice) with young ginger ($11.50) is equally well done, but of more limited appeal, with mushrooms and those similar-looking ginger slices replacing the basil and peppers.
A few of the dishes that seem to have fallen off the radar, at least until we revisited them for this review: the vegetarian hed pat woonsen ($12.50), thin rice noodles sir fried with vegetables and egg, is a bit like Chinese lo mein - a lot of starch without many strong flavors. The garlic shrimp with cabbage ($12) sounds better than it’s executed, with the garlic flavor surprisingly light for the number of cloves involved, not enough shrimp and too much sodden overcooked cabbage. And while the pad see iew ($13), rice noodles stir fried in black bean sauce, gets ordered from time to time when we’re looking for a break from pad thai, it never seems to generate much excitement.
Something else none of has ordered in a while are the Thai coffee and iced tea ($2.25), a common indulgence at other places, but here the calories from all that coconut milk and sugar don’t seem to come together well enough to justify them. We didn’t order one during our recent visits, so all we’re left with here are memories of something that for some reason or another was missing the intangibles.
Our writer-of-the-week sent out the usual e-mail after our visit, asking for ratings and impressions, and maybe the most interesting one was one that gave Chan’s a high rating, but nearly every comment was critical: “The soups are always good, the food is consistent, and good and hearty, but won’t knock me off my feet. The attitude is poor, and that no takeout at dinner is a major bummer. Someday another Thai restaurant is going to show up and they’ll start having to treat their customers like customers.” Like a sturdy home on a solid foundation, Chan’s worth as a long-term haven can’t be questioned, but there’s so many little chinks in the decor one wonders why they can’t do a little touch-up. The answer, of course, is as long as lines are spilling out the door, there’s no reason they need to.
Such comparisons come to mind when evaluating Chan’s Thai Kitchen, which by any measure has been a local success story since opening in 1997. It’s nearly always packed and bad words about it are rare, other than long wait times to get a table and their stubborn refusal to do evening takeout. More than anything it’s proof Juneauites crave quality ethnic food (even if Chan’s quickly learned to tone down the spices), to the point where an average restaurant in the Outside world is a minor institution here.
Good as Chan’s is, there’s dingy hole-in-the-wall joints in Seattle some of us make beelines for, where the speed and price of our many cartons puts McDonald’s to shame. Sit-down places around the state and U.S. offer better high-end memories. As for competing with market stalls of Chiang Mai, well, nobody’s close to their bags of soup and noodle stir-frys that begin, not end, with pad thai. When you see guys in business suits going into the Sheraton for sterilized meals at 20 times the price, the urge to mock them openly is overwhelming (OK, they’re very lavish meals, but unless you’re the type who can appreciate a $100 kobe burger 20 times as much as a great $5 greasy spoon cheeseburger, there’s a seriously out-of-whack value thing going.)
But back to reality, also known as pretty much the only decent Thai food one can get in town, at least five days of the week. Chan’s is closed Sundays and Mondays, open for lunch (and takeout) and dinner Tuesdays through Fridays, and dinner only on Saturdays. A lunchtime trip to Auke Bay is too much effort for government work, assuming one works downtown, especially given Chan’s infamously slow service, which at least they’ve developed a sense of self-mockey about.
“Chan’s Thai Kitchen is absolutely the slowest restaurant in Juneau, probably in Alaska and possibly the United States,” a faux award certificate on the wall declares. Other signs mingling with the Asian art on the cheap wood panel walls warn “if you are in a hurry, it might be best to come back another time.” To their credit, the reason this happens is all their dishes are cooked fresh when ordered, which many of our cheap friends to the south can’t claim.
A line of people spilling outside the door is common since they’ve only got a couple of seats in the tiny waiting area. “We’ve done Chan’s only once and we’re probably done the ‘penalty lap’ ten times (in recent months),” one of our regulars said, describing the u-turn one makes in a pothole-filled parking lot when the crowd is more than one wants to endure. We’ve also had plenty of 45-minute delays where we passed time looking at the boats in the harbor across from the street. Unfortunately for Chan’s, that’s led to occasions where we’ve bought live crabs on impulse from returning fishermen — easily the best grade-A meal in this town if one knows how to boil water, and one that’s cheap to boot.
Speaking of cheap, Chan’s isn’t. Prices are getting close to double what quickie hole-in-the-wall favorites Down South charge. It’s the combination of slowness and price, along with a few not-universally-shared remarks about inconsistency, that bogs Chan’s down among the ordinary.
Which is too bad, because the food is good — sometimes damn good. The menu isn’t as long as the 43 items on it suggests, since many are merely different meats or tofu added to a base dish. But we have, over the years, probably eaten everything on the menu at least once and certain dishes seem to end up on the table a lot more than others.
The only drawback of the Tom Yom and chicken coconut soups (both $11.50) is they may set expectations too high for what’s to come. While the price might seem outrageous for soup — and shrimp is $1 more, as it is in all dishes — each is enough to be a meal or an appetizer for the table. The Tom Yom is spicy as advertised, but without overpowering the flavor of the lemon grass and lime leaves. The chicken coconut is milder and richer, with a pleasant spice bite that doesn’t burn. Both are loaded with chunky vegetables that are crispy and fresh, marred only by eating a few ginger slices mistaken for mushrooms, and various forms of protein that — like too many dishes — don’t add much enhancement because they’re a bit dry and overcooked. There’s two other soups with rice noodles and one with rice, but their seasonings aren’t interesting enough to keep them on our list of regular items.
The spring rolls ($11 for five, $7 for three) are middle of the road, crispy instead of greasy, but with nothing remarkable in the collage of flavors from the rice, chicken and vegetables. Then again, people at the table were complaining they were too hot to appreciate the flavor, while eating all of them anyhow before they had a chance to cool.
In American restaurants, one supposedly can get a good idea of overall quality by ordering that most generic of items — the chicken breast — and seeing what the kitchen is capable of when it comes to preparing and seasoning it. A pretty stupid idea, actually, especially for infrequent diners celebrating a special occasion at a place with more exotic choices. But it’s both more common and sensible at ethnic places like Chan’s, where something like pad thai ($13) is both a safe kids pleaser and a mellow counterpoint to sharper flavors from other dishes (if you’re with a group and everyone’s eating their own entree, get schooled in Food 101 as a prerequisite for reading the rest of this review). The pad thai at Chan’s is on the sweet side and tends to congeal into a giant starchy lump as it cools, suggesting it’s a bit dry on lubricants. Nonetheless, it’s addictive and seems to be part of the collective order any time more than two people are involved.
The chicken satay ($11) is another safe, regularly ordered dish registering on the sweet side. Chan’s peanut sauce is thick and savory, with only a hint of spiciness, and it’s a good match for the chicken and mound of cabbage it’s served with. It’s unfortunate the chicken is too dry and chewy almost every time we order it, but the flavor pairing is better than similarly cooked pork satay. A more complex and satisfying pairing of chicken and peanut sauce is the taa-po curry ($12.50), which adds tamarind juice, spinach and lime leaves. This combination, as with other curries, is also available with pork, beef or extra-cost shrimp, but the poultry option is most compatible.
The yellow curry ($12.50) is pleasantly mild and rich, with potatoes and onions replacing greener vegetables in other mixes, but we’ve seen these subtleties executed better elsewhere. The green curry ($12.50) has a good bit of zing to balance its inherent sweetness. A nice in-house special for those who enjoy spicy is the halibut option for the red curry ($13), where the smooth texture of the plain-flavored fish is an ideal match. Similarly the thin strips of beef — generally the most tender and well-cooked of the proteins — are a good match with the peanuts (but no vegetables) in the spicy panang beef ($13).
The basil chicken ($12) and its pork, beef and tofu incarnations are a solid option, stir fried with a hefty pile of peppers, bamboo shoots and zucchini. Same for the broccoli pork with basil ($12), which adds…do we really need to explain this? A (protein of choice) with young ginger ($11.50) is equally well done, but of more limited appeal, with mushrooms and those similar-looking ginger slices replacing the basil and peppers.
A few of the dishes that seem to have fallen off the radar, at least until we revisited them for this review: the vegetarian hed pat woonsen ($12.50), thin rice noodles sir fried with vegetables and egg, is a bit like Chinese lo mein - a lot of starch without many strong flavors. The garlic shrimp with cabbage ($12) sounds better than it’s executed, with the garlic flavor surprisingly light for the number of cloves involved, not enough shrimp and too much sodden overcooked cabbage. And while the pad see iew ($13), rice noodles stir fried in black bean sauce, gets ordered from time to time when we’re looking for a break from pad thai, it never seems to generate much excitement.
Something else none of has ordered in a while are the Thai coffee and iced tea ($2.25), a common indulgence at other places, but here the calories from all that coconut milk and sugar don’t seem to come together well enough to justify them. We didn’t order one during our recent visits, so all we’re left with here are memories of something that for some reason or another was missing the intangibles.
Our writer-of-the-week sent out the usual e-mail after our visit, asking for ratings and impressions, and maybe the most interesting one was one that gave Chan’s a high rating, but nearly every comment was critical: “The soups are always good, the food is consistent, and good and hearty, but won’t knock me off my feet. The attitude is poor, and that no takeout at dinner is a major bummer. Someday another Thai restaurant is going to show up and they’ll start having to treat their customers like customers.” Like a sturdy home on a solid foundation, Chan’s worth as a long-term haven can’t be questioned, but there’s so many little chinks in the decor one wonders why they can’t do a little touch-up. The answer, of course, is as long as lines are spilling out the door, there’s no reason they need to.
Review: Henry’s Food And Spirits (♦)
“The law provides that, if food is ordered, it must be paid for whether eaten or not.”
These prominent words on the menu don’t exactly match The Outback’s “no rules” as a customer-friendly slogan, but they’re a most appropriate warning and disclaimer for anyone finding themselves at Henry’s Food And Spirits at the end of the Mendenhall Mall. The only possible legal counterargument is this isn’t food, merely a caricature presented as satirical art for those with a sardonic sense of humor.
We shared many laughs there and it wasn’t because we were in the lounge. Nearly the entire menu features plates with lumps of various primal and drab colors large and distinctive enough to come from Fisher-Price. Someone in the know going there for a single familiar item - say, a burger or pancakes - can escape unscarred, but bringing an unenlightened family is best thought of as “quality time” before getting takeout pizza on the way home.
Food writers love places like this because it allows them to show the pummeling power of words, limited only by their own creativity. But there’s little joy using Henry’s for literary target practice because the bullseye is too easy to hit and some innocent employees deserving rescue from these ranges are victims of friendly fire.
Furthermore, words seem inadequate to describe the hopeless struggle of our plates to maintain their dignity under their burdens. A cobb salad making a mockery of its namesake by coming topped with actual “cobbs” (those wretched little baby corns). Sweet-and-sour Chinese where the sauce was - we swear - canned cherry pie filling that could be lifted like a rubber pancake with a fork after it cooled. A steak cooked into rawhide, followed by a replacement that was raw.
This used to be Tabby’s, where for years older family members came every Sunday for reasons we couldn’t understand. The genuinely earthy service must have been one, along with the familiar comfort of the same simple plate of eggs or some other dish. Not much has changed over time, although though the dining room has a lighter and cleaner feel. The setting is flexible, with a cocktail lounge and a children’s play area. Truth is, the more time one spends here, the easier it is to understand why there might be a fierce loyalty among customers and employees. There’s a real energy to please here and many of the diners — from elderly couples to disabled children celebrating an occasion to the lone silent guy reading the paper on a stool at the counter — add a sense of rugged communal wholesomeness. One could probably pass hours hearing fascinating life stories with any of them.
It’s a plus Henry’s serves breakfast all day, maybe the best reason to come if you’re in the mood for heavy fare and can’t make the half-mile trip to Donna’s at the Airport Shopping Center. A three-egg vegetarian omelet ($9) had far more mushrooms than tomatoes and peppers wrapped inside a thin egg disc, but was decent in a greasy diner (as opposed to fern-room fluffy) kind of way. Someone in the mood for the reindeer sausage omelet ($10) certainly couldn’t complain about the amount of meat inside. The home fries were diced potatoes that were neither appealingly crispy nor unappetizingly undercooked. They were a better option than the thin rectangular slab of hash browns that looked like they’d been cooked (for too long) only on one side.
Pancakes ($2 for one, $4 for two, $5 for three) are the size of a small plate and cooked nicely despite being very thick. An IHOP fan looking for a substitute in Juneau said these are the best sampled so far, even if they aren’t served with real maple syrup. Interestingly, despite all the gravy and sausage on the menu, there’s nothing related to pouring them over the biscuits.
The country-fried steak ($10 breakfast, $14 dinner) is a battered hamburger thrown in the deep fryer, not the well-pounded round steak that makes for one of diner food’s greatest pleasures. Too many places have succumbed to the cheap and easy fake version served in school cafeterias and senior centers, the same kind of culinary travesty experienced by people who think of Alaska salmon as that pink stuff that comes in cans. Speaking of cans, our man behind the plate was pretty certain the white gravy covering the steak came from one. He also tried the “real mashed potatoes,” although they would have been better if they were instant. (”whipped into a thin pasty consistency then, to salvage, undercooked potatoes were mixed in to give it those ‘down-home cooking’ lumps,” he mused). He had little luck passing them off on the rest of us. They were drowned in a brown gravy, creating a near-perfect ying and yang color combination with the steak, but the flavors were remarkably similar and unappealing. “In Texas they shoot people for less,” one of our Midwest transplants mused, looking at the plate.
In China they’d also send a bill for the bullet to the family of the person responsible for the sweet and sour pork and/or halibut, both cooked to an indistinguishable dryness and topped with that pinkish pie filling. The almond chicken was equally dreadful, topped with the same brown gravy suffocating the mashed potatoes. On the other hand, ordered as part of the Chinese combo ($15.50), it made for a pastel version of the ying and yang experience.
The New York steak (eight ounces for $16, 12 for $20) was an exercise in comedic extremes, with a store-grade slab ordered medium rare arriving well done. The kitchen clearly was unprepared when we sent it back, as the replacement arrived with a hot exterior and stone-cold interior, almost certainly because it’d been thrown on the grill directly from the freezer.
Given the strangeness of everything else, maybe it shouldn’t be surprising the best meat plate was the liver and onions ($13), a huge slab able to survive a thorough cooking without getting tough. Scrape off the gravy and ask for a few more onions and this nightmare of childhood isn’t a bad option — keep in mind people pay $50 for an morsel of goose liver, so maybe adults who haven’t ingested one from a cow recently might find it worth a try.
Those cobbs in the cobb salad ($10) was good for more merriment at Henry’s sense of the absurd, as they took the place of traditional baseline ingredients such as chicken and avocado. At least there were bacon bits, hard boiled eggs and blue cheese, giving it a faint semblance of what it was supposed to be.
The Britain burger ($8.75), a frozen patty topped with bacon and American and Swiss cheeses, was the only entree on one particular evening to emerge as decent. The burgers remained competent and unexciting on a couple of return trips (if cooked rather dry). It’s possible to get a few unusual variations such as an Alaska burger ($8.75) topped with cheese and large cocktail-size shrimp, but the sea creatures don’t have enough flavor to compete with everything else. It’s best to go with traditional toppings like bacon and mushrooms — or go for a strong flavor like Mexi-burger ($8.75), whose fixings include chili and Spanish meat sauce.
They also do a number of sandwiches, mostly the hot kind ranging from grilled tuna to BLTs. The Monti Cristo ($9 and, yes, that’s how Henry’s spells it) is a passable version of the artery-clogging classic, with meat, egg and cheese wedged between three layers of french toast, but seemed oddly dry and lacking in flavor for that much fat. Even those McGriddles down the street have more to recommend them. The patty melt ($8.45) was another dry burger and cheese on bread that was lightly grilled, a better alternative than burnt.
The accompanying fries - coated either with batter or leftover food particles in old frying oil - had the distinction of being unappealingly crunchy long after they cooled on our first trip. It can be worth paying the extra $2 for onion rings: only four came with each of our orders, but that’s because they were fist-sized with equally thick onion slices and batter. A couple were overcooked, but even they were better than the fries.
Sides did little beyond filling empty spaces on dishes. Soups - clam chowder and beef noodle - were the heavy, artificially thick and overly salty gloops of immediate familiarity to anyone who’s opened a can of Campbell’s Chunky. A few of the side salads were OK, but the lettuce on others was browning. The best item was the plain steamed broccoli and cauliflower, fresh and still crisp, but one hardly needs to go out for that.
But the worst tragedy wasn’t suffered by our digestive tracts, but rather by our server who resonated with everyone at the table in spite of the food she had to deliver. She wasn’t overly sweet, artificial or sophisticated — just eager to please under impossible circumstances. It was painful, like watching Jimi Hendrix play an out-of-tune axe with two broken strings.
If not for her and the few dishes that aren’t outright disasters, Henry’s might not even get one star on our ratings. But it is possible to get in and out of there with an enjoyable experience not based on laughing at their screw-ups. Find a comfort zone and this can be a hangout for the same reason one of us frequents the Silverbow even though they almost never get an order right and others are regulars at Chan’s Thai Kitchen despite their abusive-and-proud-of-it service policies. It’s an odd chemistry thing — which at Henry’s also unfortunately ends up being the best way to describe the food.
These prominent words on the menu don’t exactly match The Outback’s “no rules” as a customer-friendly slogan, but they’re a most appropriate warning and disclaimer for anyone finding themselves at Henry’s Food And Spirits at the end of the Mendenhall Mall. The only possible legal counterargument is this isn’t food, merely a caricature presented as satirical art for those with a sardonic sense of humor.
We shared many laughs there and it wasn’t because we were in the lounge. Nearly the entire menu features plates with lumps of various primal and drab colors large and distinctive enough to come from Fisher-Price. Someone in the know going there for a single familiar item - say, a burger or pancakes - can escape unscarred, but bringing an unenlightened family is best thought of as “quality time” before getting takeout pizza on the way home.
Food writers love places like this because it allows them to show the pummeling power of words, limited only by their own creativity. But there’s little joy using Henry’s for literary target practice because the bullseye is too easy to hit and some innocent employees deserving rescue from these ranges are victims of friendly fire.
Furthermore, words seem inadequate to describe the hopeless struggle of our plates to maintain their dignity under their burdens. A cobb salad making a mockery of its namesake by coming topped with actual “cobbs” (those wretched little baby corns). Sweet-and-sour Chinese where the sauce was - we swear - canned cherry pie filling that could be lifted like a rubber pancake with a fork after it cooled. A steak cooked into rawhide, followed by a replacement that was raw.
This used to be Tabby’s, where for years older family members came every Sunday for reasons we couldn’t understand. The genuinely earthy service must have been one, along with the familiar comfort of the same simple plate of eggs or some other dish. Not much has changed over time, although though the dining room has a lighter and cleaner feel. The setting is flexible, with a cocktail lounge and a children’s play area. Truth is, the more time one spends here, the easier it is to understand why there might be a fierce loyalty among customers and employees. There’s a real energy to please here and many of the diners — from elderly couples to disabled children celebrating an occasion to the lone silent guy reading the paper on a stool at the counter — add a sense of rugged communal wholesomeness. One could probably pass hours hearing fascinating life stories with any of them.
It’s a plus Henry’s serves breakfast all day, maybe the best reason to come if you’re in the mood for heavy fare and can’t make the half-mile trip to Donna’s at the Airport Shopping Center. A three-egg vegetarian omelet ($9) had far more mushrooms than tomatoes and peppers wrapped inside a thin egg disc, but was decent in a greasy diner (as opposed to fern-room fluffy) kind of way. Someone in the mood for the reindeer sausage omelet ($10) certainly couldn’t complain about the amount of meat inside. The home fries were diced potatoes that were neither appealingly crispy nor unappetizingly undercooked. They were a better option than the thin rectangular slab of hash browns that looked like they’d been cooked (for too long) only on one side.
Pancakes ($2 for one, $4 for two, $5 for three) are the size of a small plate and cooked nicely despite being very thick. An IHOP fan looking for a substitute in Juneau said these are the best sampled so far, even if they aren’t served with real maple syrup. Interestingly, despite all the gravy and sausage on the menu, there’s nothing related to pouring them over the biscuits.
The country-fried steak ($10 breakfast, $14 dinner) is a battered hamburger thrown in the deep fryer, not the well-pounded round steak that makes for one of diner food’s greatest pleasures. Too many places have succumbed to the cheap and easy fake version served in school cafeterias and senior centers, the same kind of culinary travesty experienced by people who think of Alaska salmon as that pink stuff that comes in cans. Speaking of cans, our man behind the plate was pretty certain the white gravy covering the steak came from one. He also tried the “real mashed potatoes,” although they would have been better if they were instant. (”whipped into a thin pasty consistency then, to salvage, undercooked potatoes were mixed in to give it those ‘down-home cooking’ lumps,” he mused). He had little luck passing them off on the rest of us. They were drowned in a brown gravy, creating a near-perfect ying and yang color combination with the steak, but the flavors were remarkably similar and unappealing. “In Texas they shoot people for less,” one of our Midwest transplants mused, looking at the plate.
In China they’d also send a bill for the bullet to the family of the person responsible for the sweet and sour pork and/or halibut, both cooked to an indistinguishable dryness and topped with that pinkish pie filling. The almond chicken was equally dreadful, topped with the same brown gravy suffocating the mashed potatoes. On the other hand, ordered as part of the Chinese combo ($15.50), it made for a pastel version of the ying and yang experience.
The New York steak (eight ounces for $16, 12 for $20) was an exercise in comedic extremes, with a store-grade slab ordered medium rare arriving well done. The kitchen clearly was unprepared when we sent it back, as the replacement arrived with a hot exterior and stone-cold interior, almost certainly because it’d been thrown on the grill directly from the freezer.
Given the strangeness of everything else, maybe it shouldn’t be surprising the best meat plate was the liver and onions ($13), a huge slab able to survive a thorough cooking without getting tough. Scrape off the gravy and ask for a few more onions and this nightmare of childhood isn’t a bad option — keep in mind people pay $50 for an morsel of goose liver, so maybe adults who haven’t ingested one from a cow recently might find it worth a try.
Those cobbs in the cobb salad ($10) was good for more merriment at Henry’s sense of the absurd, as they took the place of traditional baseline ingredients such as chicken and avocado. At least there were bacon bits, hard boiled eggs and blue cheese, giving it a faint semblance of what it was supposed to be.
The Britain burger ($8.75), a frozen patty topped with bacon and American and Swiss cheeses, was the only entree on one particular evening to emerge as decent. The burgers remained competent and unexciting on a couple of return trips (if cooked rather dry). It’s possible to get a few unusual variations such as an Alaska burger ($8.75) topped with cheese and large cocktail-size shrimp, but the sea creatures don’t have enough flavor to compete with everything else. It’s best to go with traditional toppings like bacon and mushrooms — or go for a strong flavor like Mexi-burger ($8.75), whose fixings include chili and Spanish meat sauce.
They also do a number of sandwiches, mostly the hot kind ranging from grilled tuna to BLTs. The Monti Cristo ($9 and, yes, that’s how Henry’s spells it) is a passable version of the artery-clogging classic, with meat, egg and cheese wedged between three layers of french toast, but seemed oddly dry and lacking in flavor for that much fat. Even those McGriddles down the street have more to recommend them. The patty melt ($8.45) was another dry burger and cheese on bread that was lightly grilled, a better alternative than burnt.
The accompanying fries - coated either with batter or leftover food particles in old frying oil - had the distinction of being unappealingly crunchy long after they cooled on our first trip. It can be worth paying the extra $2 for onion rings: only four came with each of our orders, but that’s because they were fist-sized with equally thick onion slices and batter. A couple were overcooked, but even they were better than the fries.
Sides did little beyond filling empty spaces on dishes. Soups - clam chowder and beef noodle - were the heavy, artificially thick and overly salty gloops of immediate familiarity to anyone who’s opened a can of Campbell’s Chunky. A few of the side salads were OK, but the lettuce on others was browning. The best item was the plain steamed broccoli and cauliflower, fresh and still crisp, but one hardly needs to go out for that.
But the worst tragedy wasn’t suffered by our digestive tracts, but rather by our server who resonated with everyone at the table in spite of the food she had to deliver. She wasn’t overly sweet, artificial or sophisticated — just eager to please under impossible circumstances. It was painful, like watching Jimi Hendrix play an out-of-tune axe with two broken strings.
If not for her and the few dishes that aren’t outright disasters, Henry’s might not even get one star on our ratings. But it is possible to get in and out of there with an enjoyable experience not based on laughing at their screw-ups. Find a comfort zone and this can be a hangout for the same reason one of us frequents the Silverbow even though they almost never get an order right and others are regulars at Chan’s Thai Kitchen despite their abusive-and-proud-of-it service policies. It’s an odd chemistry thing — which at Henry’s also unfortunately ends up being the best way to describe the food.
Review: Doc Water’s Pub (♦♦)
Trying to mail a cancelled stamp is punishable by up to a year in the brig, according to the 1923 U.S. maritime code. Cussing is good for three months. Propositioning a Negro? Don’t ask.
The tome doesn’t spell out a specific penalty for skipping out on a meal without paying, but the other stuff is sobering enough to quash thoughts of doing so at Doc Waters Pub. The antique book, one of many on the shelves at the wood-lined nautical entryway, is a suitable diversion during a quiet weekend brunch at a window table overlooking the waterfront. Only a few hours ago the soon-to-be-hungover, seeking nourishment to slow the pain, staggered out. A few minutes from now cruise ship passengers will ask if Docs has grits and biscuits as an unlisted menu item and if they can sit outside despite the rain since they don’t like the smell inside.
If there’s a lingering odor from the party it isn’t noticeable to our literary freak, who by now has abandoned yardarm justice for a thick text expounding on the wonders of the pocket calculator. More people come in wondering if they can have some item or other removed from the breakfast burritos (no, they’re made ahead of time). The coffee isn’t up to what can be found in to-go cups at several places a couple blocks away. But all in all, it’s an agreeable setting.
Docs is something of a Rorschach test, offering nearly any nosher what they might hope for in an experience. Pricey cuisine with light jazz, burgers and beer while watching the big screen (even if the Mideast conflict on CNN is a less than appetizing choice), Bloody Marys for breakfast, wasabi oysters at 3 a.m. There’s even a variety of catering from trays of deviled eggs with crab to sit-down plated meals. As a Jack-In-The-Box of all trades it usually meets and sometimes exceeds expectations, but isn’t really top-of-the-line in any particular area.
“Made for a good, but average, night out with friend,” one of us remarked after our initial night there. “Not an impressive date destination.”
He thought a table in the “Velvet Room” might change that last bit, which was full when we wandered in on a weeknight without reservations. So we got a booth in the Pub where the windows offer a first-class view of the parking lot across the street and the big-screen TV was showing non-stop carnage from the Middle East conflict on CNN. It wasn’t as intellectually stimulating as those yellowing pages on how to conduct a court marshal, but it helped fuel conversational topics such as establishing, no, Hezbollah guerillas aren’t the type to wear the intimidating uniforms we saw marching in formation.
Docs has its fans: one person called it her favorite restaurant and another rated it higher than Zen, the Asian eatery across the street that got three stars in our cumulative ratings (she was less impressed). It got positive scuttlebutt from some co-workers, including one happy to have a decent dining option during graveyard hours and another rightfully praising new chef Brady Deal as a noteworthy local talent. It’s a pub, so the booze selection is definitely good.
The setting is less appealing if you’re not bar hopping, with a general agreement it doesn’t match what Docs is trying to achieve on the higher end in the kitchen. One person said they have avoided it since last year due to poor service that seemed to assume it could survive on once-only visits from tourists, but there appears to be improvement in that area. You can say the setting is a letdown given the menu or praise the food as better than expected for the setting; they’re the pessimistic/optimistic sides of the same argument.
Perhaps the best thing about Doc’s cuisine is its consistency. During our first night there it was the only place in our short time of doing these reviews where every dish got remarks leaning toward the positive. The weakest entry was the 16-ounce gorgonzola ribeye ($27), topped with a savory combination of gorgonzola butter, shallots and ginger, but an ordinary piece of meat cooked to the ordered medium rare. The accompanying fettuccini with parmesan was undercooked and the grilled onions/peppers/mushroom side unremarkable (we might have thought it was meant as a topping if it didn’t come on other plates). Not a bad steak, but nowhere near as satisfying as the one we had at Zen last week.
A better meat choice was the daily special of bacon-wrapped caribou (we don’t remember the price, but it was in the steak’s range), two round pieces of flavorful meat that arrived rare (our server didn’t ask how we wanted it prepared). The bacon didn’t add much unless it played a role keeping the meat’s natural juices in during cooking.
Seafood dishes also went over well. The grilled halibut in adobo ($22) was an excellent example of making good use of a flexible fish. The halibut was fresh and grilled to the right degree of doneness. The menu lists it as prepared coconut adobo sauce, avacados, bell peppers, onions and tomatoes. But the key: “The sauce it came with was just the right thing,” said the diner behind that particular plate. “It was a mix of seasonings I could not identify.” Considering this person’s taste buds can identify flavors the way a musician with perfect pitch can identify notes, this is quite an achievement. The Sanso Ahi ($22), pan-seared with a crust of black sesame seeds and sansho, was pleasing and delicate in flavor and texture. The fettuccini underneath was OK but — like the saffron rice with the halibut and other sides — was mostly filler that didn’t enhance or detract.
Classic bar food, which takes up half the menu, is about half as expensive and satisfies in the way one would expect. The most positive feedback was for the beer-battered halibut and chips ($13), which uses Alaska Breaking Co. suds to lend further local credentials to a local fish. Burgers and sandwiches ($9-$13) offer various assemblys of beef, chicken, halibut and salmon, while salads with a Costco-quality base (that’s not a bad thing, really) include a caesar ($12, with chicken, salmon or halibut for $4 more, or ahi for $5), a pico chicken green salsa ($13) and a gorgonzola steak ($15).
Breakfast is much the same - pretty good with no real disappointments - as long as you’re in the mood for heavy grub. Two egg/lettuce/tomato breakfast burgers ($9 with bacon and cheese; $13 for halibut or salmon) were more than we were in the mood to stomach. But the saffron breakfast prawns ($13) are a worthy standout among the pedestrian selection, with the poached shrimp, eggs and saffron caper cream sauce over a baguette making for sort of an Alaskan eggs benedict. The country fries are fine wedges of real potatoes but not memorable, which is too bad since they come with every dish on the breakfast menu.
Still, for early grub there’s a few other places we’d hit first, depending on the mood. Same goes for post-midnight munchies, when stepping across the hall to get a takeout container of greasy Russian dumplings from Pel’ Meni is often more fitting for the mood. And that’s sort of the feeling about Docs overall: We can go there and count on having a good meal and a good time, but if we’re in the mood for something in particular there’s almost certainly going to be someplace else we’d prefer to get it. Given the prices of their entries, that’s not a great thing.
But there’d be no hesitation about making dinner plans there when a band is playing there we like or bringing relative there early in the evening if we wanted to show off the waterfront. Docs gets credit for being able to please many without resorting to Cheesecake Factory-like stunts of offering dozen or hundreds of mediocre dishes in an attempt to cover every possible mood and taste. And the potential meter is pointing up, a definite plus at a time when a number of nearby former favorites are in a noticeable decline.
The tome doesn’t spell out a specific penalty for skipping out on a meal without paying, but the other stuff is sobering enough to quash thoughts of doing so at Doc Waters Pub. The antique book, one of many on the shelves at the wood-lined nautical entryway, is a suitable diversion during a quiet weekend brunch at a window table overlooking the waterfront. Only a few hours ago the soon-to-be-hungover, seeking nourishment to slow the pain, staggered out. A few minutes from now cruise ship passengers will ask if Docs has grits and biscuits as an unlisted menu item and if they can sit outside despite the rain since they don’t like the smell inside.
If there’s a lingering odor from the party it isn’t noticeable to our literary freak, who by now has abandoned yardarm justice for a thick text expounding on the wonders of the pocket calculator. More people come in wondering if they can have some item or other removed from the breakfast burritos (no, they’re made ahead of time). The coffee isn’t up to what can be found in to-go cups at several places a couple blocks away. But all in all, it’s an agreeable setting.
Docs is something of a Rorschach test, offering nearly any nosher what they might hope for in an experience. Pricey cuisine with light jazz, burgers and beer while watching the big screen (even if the Mideast conflict on CNN is a less than appetizing choice), Bloody Marys for breakfast, wasabi oysters at 3 a.m. There’s even a variety of catering from trays of deviled eggs with crab to sit-down plated meals. As a Jack-In-The-Box of all trades it usually meets and sometimes exceeds expectations, but isn’t really top-of-the-line in any particular area.
“Made for a good, but average, night out with friend,” one of us remarked after our initial night there. “Not an impressive date destination.”
He thought a table in the “Velvet Room” might change that last bit, which was full when we wandered in on a weeknight without reservations. So we got a booth in the Pub where the windows offer a first-class view of the parking lot across the street and the big-screen TV was showing non-stop carnage from the Middle East conflict on CNN. It wasn’t as intellectually stimulating as those yellowing pages on how to conduct a court marshal, but it helped fuel conversational topics such as establishing, no, Hezbollah guerillas aren’t the type to wear the intimidating uniforms we saw marching in formation.
Docs has its fans: one person called it her favorite restaurant and another rated it higher than Zen, the Asian eatery across the street that got three stars in our cumulative ratings (she was less impressed). It got positive scuttlebutt from some co-workers, including one happy to have a decent dining option during graveyard hours and another rightfully praising new chef Brady Deal as a noteworthy local talent. It’s a pub, so the booze selection is definitely good.
The setting is less appealing if you’re not bar hopping, with a general agreement it doesn’t match what Docs is trying to achieve on the higher end in the kitchen. One person said they have avoided it since last year due to poor service that seemed to assume it could survive on once-only visits from tourists, but there appears to be improvement in that area. You can say the setting is a letdown given the menu or praise the food as better than expected for the setting; they’re the pessimistic/optimistic sides of the same argument.
Perhaps the best thing about Doc’s cuisine is its consistency. During our first night there it was the only place in our short time of doing these reviews where every dish got remarks leaning toward the positive. The weakest entry was the 16-ounce gorgonzola ribeye ($27), topped with a savory combination of gorgonzola butter, shallots and ginger, but an ordinary piece of meat cooked to the ordered medium rare. The accompanying fettuccini with parmesan was undercooked and the grilled onions/peppers/mushroom side unremarkable (we might have thought it was meant as a topping if it didn’t come on other plates). Not a bad steak, but nowhere near as satisfying as the one we had at Zen last week.
A better meat choice was the daily special of bacon-wrapped caribou (we don’t remember the price, but it was in the steak’s range), two round pieces of flavorful meat that arrived rare (our server didn’t ask how we wanted it prepared). The bacon didn’t add much unless it played a role keeping the meat’s natural juices in during cooking.
Seafood dishes also went over well. The grilled halibut in adobo ($22) was an excellent example of making good use of a flexible fish. The halibut was fresh and grilled to the right degree of doneness. The menu lists it as prepared coconut adobo sauce, avacados, bell peppers, onions and tomatoes. But the key: “The sauce it came with was just the right thing,” said the diner behind that particular plate. “It was a mix of seasonings I could not identify.” Considering this person’s taste buds can identify flavors the way a musician with perfect pitch can identify notes, this is quite an achievement. The Sanso Ahi ($22), pan-seared with a crust of black sesame seeds and sansho, was pleasing and delicate in flavor and texture. The fettuccini underneath was OK but — like the saffron rice with the halibut and other sides — was mostly filler that didn’t enhance or detract.
Classic bar food, which takes up half the menu, is about half as expensive and satisfies in the way one would expect. The most positive feedback was for the beer-battered halibut and chips ($13), which uses Alaska Breaking Co. suds to lend further local credentials to a local fish. Burgers and sandwiches ($9-$13) offer various assemblys of beef, chicken, halibut and salmon, while salads with a Costco-quality base (that’s not a bad thing, really) include a caesar ($12, with chicken, salmon or halibut for $4 more, or ahi for $5), a pico chicken green salsa ($13) and a gorgonzola steak ($15).
Breakfast is much the same - pretty good with no real disappointments - as long as you’re in the mood for heavy grub. Two egg/lettuce/tomato breakfast burgers ($9 with bacon and cheese; $13 for halibut or salmon) were more than we were in the mood to stomach. But the saffron breakfast prawns ($13) are a worthy standout among the pedestrian selection, with the poached shrimp, eggs and saffron caper cream sauce over a baguette making for sort of an Alaskan eggs benedict. The country fries are fine wedges of real potatoes but not memorable, which is too bad since they come with every dish on the breakfast menu.
Still, for early grub there’s a few other places we’d hit first, depending on the mood. Same goes for post-midnight munchies, when stepping across the hall to get a takeout container of greasy Russian dumplings from Pel’ Meni is often more fitting for the mood. And that’s sort of the feeling about Docs overall: We can go there and count on having a good meal and a good time, but if we’re in the mood for something in particular there’s almost certainly going to be someplace else we’d prefer to get it. Given the prices of their entries, that’s not a great thing.
But there’d be no hesitation about making dinner plans there when a band is playing there we like or bringing relative there early in the evening if we wanted to show off the waterfront. Docs gets credit for being able to please many without resorting to Cheesecake Factory-like stunts of offering dozen or hundreds of mediocre dishes in an attempt to cover every possible mood and taste. And the potential meter is pointing up, a definite plus at a time when a number of nearby former favorites are in a noticeable decline.
Review: Zen (♦♦1/2)
If a Chinese restaurant inspires one spew Japanese poetry, is that a good thing? If the decor taxes one’s bladder, can it be truly relaxing?
Apparently, yes.
It was one of those “I dunno, where do you want to go” weeks, so we took a flier on one of the more dreadful genres of eateries: the expensive hotel restaurant. Too often, they corporate-tailor menus for captive guests already paying high prices so they can avoid being exposed to the uncomfortable and the unfamiliar. At one point in history such restaurants strived to be the finest on the planet, and there are still amazing places paying tribute to this heritage, but where we were going didn’t exactly have a record of excellence during its past incarnations.
But the group’s reaction within seconds of getting our entries during our first visit to the new Asian restaurant at the Goldbelt Hotel was like nothing in memory. The sentence fragments from people stuffing the shared dishes into their mouths is best summarized by this subsequent haiku:
“We went to dinner at Zen
It was yum-a-yum
New favorite restaurant”
Subsequent visits smacked us with a moderate reality check about hoping for excellence in low-budget dishes like sesame chicken and lo mein noodles. They have, over a period of a several months, lost half a star from our initial ratings because of too many disappoints when we order something other than the "usual favorites."
But during that initial exploration of Zen’s specialties menu they could do little wrong.
Nearly every dish was all but assaulted with utensils, including a rib eye steak ($29) openly mocked based on the menu description as a “connoisseur” 16-ouncer pan-fried and slow-baked (”why not go the whole hog and poach it?”). Connoisseur steaks are supposed to be grilled at 1,800 degrees or some similar insane temperature, searing the surface while locking the juices inside. But Zen’s approach resulted in an equally pleasing crust and was perfectly cooked to a melt-in-your-mouth medium rare. “Exquisite — I could have cried,” our poet gushed. “I’d have to say my favorite, (even) with all these (other) delectable flavor combos.”
The ginger halibut ($22) was ordered with some hesitation since it’s essentially the mozzarella cheese of fish — only as good as the rest of the ingredients providing the actual flavor. The thin strips of halibut were tender, and the ginger and scallions they were stir-fried with gave it a strongly pleasing taste that wasn’t overpowering (although for some reason it wandered over the line in the fridge by lunchtime the next day). The sauce in the Thai coconut curry shrimp ($20) was monster — rich and assertive — and got its own box after the shrimp, peas, mushrooms, onions and peppers were fished out. Had we any appetite left, it would have been consumed like soup.
Things fell off a bit with the teriyaki glazed salmon ($22), a white king fillet lacking the preparation to elevate it above its inherent texture and flavor. It was perfectly acceptable, but we’ve done as well or better with fresh cuts at home. Failing to make even that grade were the teriyaki short ribs ($22), whose mild and sophisticated seasonings were a vast step above the typical sweet glazes, but the meat was somewhat tough and full of gristle. Long experience has taught us there’s usually a few bum steers in the herd, so to speak, and that may be the case here, but if so the kitchen should have noticed and put those stray ribs out to pasture.
Entries are served with nicely crunchy stir-fried Asian vegetables and “forbidden black rice,” a description that mystifies us since what was in our side bowls was your basic white. Our non-alcohol crowd felt the sodas could use an upgrade — mediocre fountain Cokes are expected at cheap places, but where triple-digit bills are common they ought to stock some Vernors and Thomas Kemper (”if you are going to have fancy-pants food, HAVE FANCY-PANTS SODA!” is one of our personal rants). But what appeared to be green iced tea was a refreshing change from the usual Lipton and “quite good for iced tea made north of the Mason-Dixon line.”
Having to ask for refills on the tea was a minor gripe in what was mostly good service matching the upscale surroundings. The room was packed during every peak dining period we were there (reservations are recommend during those times and for parties of four or more), but the servers never appeared hurried or made us feel so.
Zen put more effort than most into its decor, adding considerable ambiance to its built-in advantage of having a view of the downtown waterfront. Large bamboo poles, rocks and a fake bonsai tree (which apparently took some effort) are far more tasteful than the words imply. One of ours praised the “nice, relaxing atmosphere,” although for some reason “the waterfall in front made me want to pee.”
For those unable to get a table, Zen offers takeout and it was there — and ordering dishes often associated with to-go cartons — that imperfections were magnified.
A random sampling of appetizers were a letdown. Crab Rangoons ($10), ideal in crispness and their balance of cream cheese and real crab, also possessed a sweetness that caused the pleasure factor to drop considerably after the first one. Fantail shrimp ($10) were large but didn’t have much flavor beyond what they were dunked in. And the salt and pepper calamari ($10) were a rubbery waste of calories, again with little hint of flavor.
A better, but no more than ordinary, so-called starter was the peanut chicken salad ($10), an enticing mix of vegetables large enough to serve as a healthful entry. The chicken was a bit dry, but not enough to seriously distract, and the dressing tasty — although again flirting with the sweet factor too much.
Shrimp lo mein ($12) had large crustaceans of good quality and a mild flavor rather than the overpowering saltiness often experienced with takeout, but was heavy on oil and light on distinction. Sesame chicken ($14) did nothing to justify the price, suffering most of the same overpowering sweetness and chewiness found in cheap supermarket takeout. Crispy duck ($17) suffered the same disappointment as the ribs - the appealing natural flavor of the meat was negated by the fact much of it was too tough to appreciate. Admittedly, cooking duck properly is a real bear, but there are grocers in Seattle’s international district where you can get entire ducks to go for less that are just short of exquisite.
The dessert selection is short and unimaginative, limited to cheesecake ($5) and creme brulee ($6). The latter ended one meal more with a period than an exclamation point, scoring points for flavor, but losing them for a caramelized top that tasted slightly burnt and an overall texture more dense than light.
Zen ultimately has its fans and detractors in our group, but it is (perhaps strangely) now the place of choice if someone in the group happens to be in the mood for steak. The rest of us can order dishes we know and like, but it'd be nice to try something different and feel like we're not going to come away disappointed. Sadly, however, there simply hasn't been any evidence they're lively to elevate their kitchen over time.
Apparently, yes.
It was one of those “I dunno, where do you want to go” weeks, so we took a flier on one of the more dreadful genres of eateries: the expensive hotel restaurant. Too often, they corporate-tailor menus for captive guests already paying high prices so they can avoid being exposed to the uncomfortable and the unfamiliar. At one point in history such restaurants strived to be the finest on the planet, and there are still amazing places paying tribute to this heritage, but where we were going didn’t exactly have a record of excellence during its past incarnations.
But the group’s reaction within seconds of getting our entries during our first visit to the new Asian restaurant at the Goldbelt Hotel was like nothing in memory. The sentence fragments from people stuffing the shared dishes into their mouths is best summarized by this subsequent haiku:
“We went to dinner at Zen
It was yum-a-yum
New favorite restaurant”
Subsequent visits smacked us with a moderate reality check about hoping for excellence in low-budget dishes like sesame chicken and lo mein noodles. They have, over a period of a several months, lost half a star from our initial ratings because of too many disappoints when we order something other than the "usual favorites."
But during that initial exploration of Zen’s specialties menu they could do little wrong.
Nearly every dish was all but assaulted with utensils, including a rib eye steak ($29) openly mocked based on the menu description as a “connoisseur” 16-ouncer pan-fried and slow-baked (”why not go the whole hog and poach it?”). Connoisseur steaks are supposed to be grilled at 1,800 degrees or some similar insane temperature, searing the surface while locking the juices inside. But Zen’s approach resulted in an equally pleasing crust and was perfectly cooked to a melt-in-your-mouth medium rare. “Exquisite — I could have cried,” our poet gushed. “I’d have to say my favorite, (even) with all these (other) delectable flavor combos.”
The ginger halibut ($22) was ordered with some hesitation since it’s essentially the mozzarella cheese of fish — only as good as the rest of the ingredients providing the actual flavor. The thin strips of halibut were tender, and the ginger and scallions they were stir-fried with gave it a strongly pleasing taste that wasn’t overpowering (although for some reason it wandered over the line in the fridge by lunchtime the next day). The sauce in the Thai coconut curry shrimp ($20) was monster — rich and assertive — and got its own box after the shrimp, peas, mushrooms, onions and peppers were fished out. Had we any appetite left, it would have been consumed like soup.
Things fell off a bit with the teriyaki glazed salmon ($22), a white king fillet lacking the preparation to elevate it above its inherent texture and flavor. It was perfectly acceptable, but we’ve done as well or better with fresh cuts at home. Failing to make even that grade were the teriyaki short ribs ($22), whose mild and sophisticated seasonings were a vast step above the typical sweet glazes, but the meat was somewhat tough and full of gristle. Long experience has taught us there’s usually a few bum steers in the herd, so to speak, and that may be the case here, but if so the kitchen should have noticed and put those stray ribs out to pasture.
Entries are served with nicely crunchy stir-fried Asian vegetables and “forbidden black rice,” a description that mystifies us since what was in our side bowls was your basic white. Our non-alcohol crowd felt the sodas could use an upgrade — mediocre fountain Cokes are expected at cheap places, but where triple-digit bills are common they ought to stock some Vernors and Thomas Kemper (”if you are going to have fancy-pants food, HAVE FANCY-PANTS SODA!” is one of our personal rants). But what appeared to be green iced tea was a refreshing change from the usual Lipton and “quite good for iced tea made north of the Mason-Dixon line.”
Having to ask for refills on the tea was a minor gripe in what was mostly good service matching the upscale surroundings. The room was packed during every peak dining period we were there (reservations are recommend during those times and for parties of four or more), but the servers never appeared hurried or made us feel so.
Zen put more effort than most into its decor, adding considerable ambiance to its built-in advantage of having a view of the downtown waterfront. Large bamboo poles, rocks and a fake bonsai tree (which apparently took some effort) are far more tasteful than the words imply. One of ours praised the “nice, relaxing atmosphere,” although for some reason “the waterfall in front made me want to pee.”
For those unable to get a table, Zen offers takeout and it was there — and ordering dishes often associated with to-go cartons — that imperfections were magnified.
A random sampling of appetizers were a letdown. Crab Rangoons ($10), ideal in crispness and their balance of cream cheese and real crab, also possessed a sweetness that caused the pleasure factor to drop considerably after the first one. Fantail shrimp ($10) were large but didn’t have much flavor beyond what they were dunked in. And the salt and pepper calamari ($10) were a rubbery waste of calories, again with little hint of flavor.
A better, but no more than ordinary, so-called starter was the peanut chicken salad ($10), an enticing mix of vegetables large enough to serve as a healthful entry. The chicken was a bit dry, but not enough to seriously distract, and the dressing tasty — although again flirting with the sweet factor too much.
Shrimp lo mein ($12) had large crustaceans of good quality and a mild flavor rather than the overpowering saltiness often experienced with takeout, but was heavy on oil and light on distinction. Sesame chicken ($14) did nothing to justify the price, suffering most of the same overpowering sweetness and chewiness found in cheap supermarket takeout. Crispy duck ($17) suffered the same disappointment as the ribs - the appealing natural flavor of the meat was negated by the fact much of it was too tough to appreciate. Admittedly, cooking duck properly is a real bear, but there are grocers in Seattle’s international district where you can get entire ducks to go for less that are just short of exquisite.
The dessert selection is short and unimaginative, limited to cheesecake ($5) and creme brulee ($6). The latter ended one meal more with a period than an exclamation point, scoring points for flavor, but losing them for a caramelized top that tasted slightly burnt and an overall texture more dense than light.
Zen ultimately has its fans and detractors in our group, but it is (perhaps strangely) now the place of choice if someone in the group happens to be in the mood for steak. The rest of us can order dishes we know and like, but it'd be nice to try something different and feel like we're not going to come away disappointed. Sadly, however, there simply hasn't been any evidence they're lively to elevate their kitchen over time.
Review: Kenny’s Wok & Teriyaki Sushi Bar (♦♦)
Does any food run the range of sublime to sickening more than sushi?
On the swanky end are $1,000 lunches for two and toro served on naked women, each inspiring outrage from different factions. The dreadful side includes cheap buffets where even the imitation crab in the California rolls sits out so long the risk factor is slightly above a salmon plucked from a spawning stream.
So there’s a lot of middle ground. Kenny’s Wok & Teriyaki Sushi Bar in downtown Juneau is somewhere in the middle-low range, but increases its cred by covering a lot of other familiar Asian food territory pretty well. One can get better individual sushi or Chinese dishes elsewhere in town, but as a reasonably priced crowd pleaser this is a solid bet.
Kenny’s is popular in offices where some of us work, no doubt because they offer delivery. They also do takeout - a good thing, given a dining area that can get crowded - and service is usually surprisingly swift. Order a bento box ($10-$11) to go while a nutrient-challenged friend gets their daily Super Value Meal at the McDonald’s next door and it might be even money who comes out first.
Even average tempura shrimp - the kind you can buy from the freezer section and make at home - stomps mud puddles in the chest of an order of McFries. The two in the bento box are plenty to satisfy a fried food fix (and there’s some fried pot stickers in there if not), while still leaving room for the small bits of healthier stuff like teriyaki chicken and (gasp!) salad.
All of the box items and maybe 200 other options are available as separate items, although it’s a familiar case of mixing and matching a few ingredients in many ways. None are truly exotic, although a few sushi items like the Bulldog roll ($9.50), consisting of eel, yellow tail, yamagobo, onion and smelt egg, offer a potential novelty for many.
Most of our stops were quick lunch hits and takeouts, but some of us did get together there for a proper dinner. Things got off to a dodgy start when both the miso and egg drop soups served with separate entries were decent in taste, but barely warm. It was one of the few misfires, aside from the expected pitfall of having a delivered order of fried food arrive soggy. Another is the Dynamite appetizer ($7), a sort of mini mashed casserole whose sum is less than the shrimp, scallops, crab meat and baked mushroom within.
The cream cheese wontons ($4 for eight) are a solid crunchy fried starter, neither soggy nor tough, and lose little beyond a price increase by leaving out the imitation crab meat often mixed in. Those tempura shrimp ($7 for six) are also available in a combination with vegetables ($10), where the large chunks of onions, broccoli and other things retain enough crispness to indulge in the ridiculous fantasy something of nourishing redemption is being ingested with all that batter and grease.
The teriyaki and Chinese entries all got praise, if not raves. Teriyaki chicken ($7.50) is cooked properly, and the sauce doesn’t stagger too heavily into sweet or salty. Shrimp yakisoba ($9.50) is a good - not great - mix of crustaceans, vegetables and fried noodles that was a bit salty (the side of rice was more starch than our diner desired). General To’s chicken ($9) - labeled “spicy,” as all such dishes are - is a favorite of one person who’s a regular (”It won’t rock you, but it’s got some kick.”).
When it comes to sushi, Kenny’s level of proficiency is perhaps best illustrated in its quality assembly of the Wonder Bread of the genre - the California roll ($6). The word “yummy” may be as hip as “swell” these days, but it’s the right one here. The rolls can be eaten in quantity with far more pleasure than kind found in plastic trays in supermarkets, without feeling any need to think one is indulging in the finer aspects of Japanese cuisine. Don’t bother with optional toppings such as the assorted fish in a rainbow roll ($11); it tweaks the pallet chemistry like blue cheese on a Big Mac.
Instead, relish the higher-quality fixings in subtler combinations like that Bulldog roll, and asparagus and avocado topped with salmon in the Philadelphia roll ($8.50). One exception worth making is the sacrilegious Las Vegas ($9) roll, basically a California roll with other various fish inside that’s deep fried in tempura batter. It was a big hit with one our so-called discerning sushi eaters, a serious guilty pleasure for moments of reckless abandon.
The sashimi combinations ($16 regular, $32 deluxe) are fine, but potentially disappointing for those most familiar with the dish. The various fish are OK in texture and flavor, but don’t possess the special qualities of first-rate sushi fish and their preparation, as one nosher put it, lacks a certain artistry experienced at some personal favorites elsewhere.
Ultimately, Kenny’s is a place everyone seems to express varying degrees of like about. Nobody had negative comments and a couple of people raved, but mostly the thought seems to be anyone ought to be able to go there and be pretty happy with the results. No high-end provocations, no steam table hazards - sometimes middle-of-the-road is a good place to be.
On the swanky end are $1,000 lunches for two and toro served on naked women, each inspiring outrage from different factions. The dreadful side includes cheap buffets where even the imitation crab in the California rolls sits out so long the risk factor is slightly above a salmon plucked from a spawning stream.
So there’s a lot of middle ground. Kenny’s Wok & Teriyaki Sushi Bar in downtown Juneau is somewhere in the middle-low range, but increases its cred by covering a lot of other familiar Asian food territory pretty well. One can get better individual sushi or Chinese dishes elsewhere in town, but as a reasonably priced crowd pleaser this is a solid bet.
Kenny’s is popular in offices where some of us work, no doubt because they offer delivery. They also do takeout - a good thing, given a dining area that can get crowded - and service is usually surprisingly swift. Order a bento box ($10-$11) to go while a nutrient-challenged friend gets their daily Super Value Meal at the McDonald’s next door and it might be even money who comes out first.
Even average tempura shrimp - the kind you can buy from the freezer section and make at home - stomps mud puddles in the chest of an order of McFries. The two in the bento box are plenty to satisfy a fried food fix (and there’s some fried pot stickers in there if not), while still leaving room for the small bits of healthier stuff like teriyaki chicken and (gasp!) salad.
All of the box items and maybe 200 other options are available as separate items, although it’s a familiar case of mixing and matching a few ingredients in many ways. None are truly exotic, although a few sushi items like the Bulldog roll ($9.50), consisting of eel, yellow tail, yamagobo, onion and smelt egg, offer a potential novelty for many.
Most of our stops were quick lunch hits and takeouts, but some of us did get together there for a proper dinner. Things got off to a dodgy start when both the miso and egg drop soups served with separate entries were decent in taste, but barely warm. It was one of the few misfires, aside from the expected pitfall of having a delivered order of fried food arrive soggy. Another is the Dynamite appetizer ($7), a sort of mini mashed casserole whose sum is less than the shrimp, scallops, crab meat and baked mushroom within.
The cream cheese wontons ($4 for eight) are a solid crunchy fried starter, neither soggy nor tough, and lose little beyond a price increase by leaving out the imitation crab meat often mixed in. Those tempura shrimp ($7 for six) are also available in a combination with vegetables ($10), where the large chunks of onions, broccoli and other things retain enough crispness to indulge in the ridiculous fantasy something of nourishing redemption is being ingested with all that batter and grease.
The teriyaki and Chinese entries all got praise, if not raves. Teriyaki chicken ($7.50) is cooked properly, and the sauce doesn’t stagger too heavily into sweet or salty. Shrimp yakisoba ($9.50) is a good - not great - mix of crustaceans, vegetables and fried noodles that was a bit salty (the side of rice was more starch than our diner desired). General To’s chicken ($9) - labeled “spicy,” as all such dishes are - is a favorite of one person who’s a regular (”It won’t rock you, but it’s got some kick.”).
When it comes to sushi, Kenny’s level of proficiency is perhaps best illustrated in its quality assembly of the Wonder Bread of the genre - the California roll ($6). The word “yummy” may be as hip as “swell” these days, but it’s the right one here. The rolls can be eaten in quantity with far more pleasure than kind found in plastic trays in supermarkets, without feeling any need to think one is indulging in the finer aspects of Japanese cuisine. Don’t bother with optional toppings such as the assorted fish in a rainbow roll ($11); it tweaks the pallet chemistry like blue cheese on a Big Mac.
Instead, relish the higher-quality fixings in subtler combinations like that Bulldog roll, and asparagus and avocado topped with salmon in the Philadelphia roll ($8.50). One exception worth making is the sacrilegious Las Vegas ($9) roll, basically a California roll with other various fish inside that’s deep fried in tempura batter. It was a big hit with one our so-called discerning sushi eaters, a serious guilty pleasure for moments of reckless abandon.
The sashimi combinations ($16 regular, $32 deluxe) are fine, but potentially disappointing for those most familiar with the dish. The various fish are OK in texture and flavor, but don’t possess the special qualities of first-rate sushi fish and their preparation, as one nosher put it, lacks a certain artistry experienced at some personal favorites elsewhere.
Ultimately, Kenny’s is a place everyone seems to express varying degrees of like about. Nobody had negative comments and a couple of people raved, but mostly the thought seems to be anyone ought to be able to go there and be pretty happy with the results. No high-end provocations, no steam table hazards - sometimes middle-of-the-road is a good place to be.
Review: Southeast Waffle Company (♦1/2)
To see this place as a simple kitchen serving coffee and a few varieties of Belgian waffles overlooks its role as a purveyor of 13th century Greek cuisine.
The same Mediterraneans responsible for homework nightmares and sponsor-driven sports were cooking savory obleios flavored with cheese and herbs back when Aunt Jemima was feeling the marketing blues due to a shortage of plastic bottles.
History purists might argue real waffles arrived in 1953 when Eggo invaded supermarket freezers. But the Pilgrims also deserve credit for bringing them to the U.S. back in 1620, even if they probably got our relations with the Natives off to a bad start by ruining their appetites for Thanksgiving Dinner. Exotics might want to make a trip to Japan for their fish-shaped waffles filled with bean paste, but leave it to the British to screw up yet another dish by making them from reconstituted potatoes.
The kind sold at the Southeast Waffle Company made their public debut at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York when Brussels restaurateur Maurice Vermersch used his wife’s recipe to make the fluffy yeast- and egg-infused cakes. Wikipedia notes since “most Americans didn’t know where Brussels actually was, he decided to change the name from ‘Brussels Waffle’ to the ‘Belgian Waffle.’”
These days one can order or find recipes for as many varieties as any bread-like substance. It’s easy to be tempted by them as a dessert with strawberries and whipped cream, but loyalists also swear by pairing them with fried chicken (”pry off a bite of chicken with your fork, sprinkle on hot sauce, spear a syrup-drenched bit of waffle with that same chicken-laden fork,” advises the trendy Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles in L.A.). But they’re still the upscale and less popular alternative to the mighty pancake - especially when feeding multiple people - since they’re harder to prepare and must be eaten quickly before they become limp.
As such, the business model for the SWC doesn’t compute in theory and sometimes - such as long waits when there’s a backlog of orders - this spills over into reality. But in practical terms, they seem to have a large and growing fan base because even when things are rough they do so many vital little things well it’s hard not to enjoy the experience.
First, this isn’t just a breakfast place, since it stays open until midnight every day but Sunday, when it closes at 10 p.m. You can read, play chess or use the free wi-fi for hours while looking at the boats across the road in Auke Bay and never feel a bit of guilt, unless it’s a weekend morning and there’s a beyond-capacity crowd. The decor in what’s a fairly Spartan dining area has improved since they first opened thanks to touches such as a better paint job. One of ours who has an eye for such things comments “I’d encourage them to continue down that road, enhancing the feel with more and funkier paint, a bookshelf of trade-in paperback books and magazines, and maybe an old guitar (note: at least some of that is there already, although they could definitely use more). On the other hand, while that might make it even more of a gathering place, it won’t really help the bottom line.”
There’s a laundromat with broken change and detergent machines a couple of doors down, making the illusion of productivity possible. Speaking of which, they could use more electric outlets, especially within reach of the tables by the windows - and some cushions for those planning to occupy the hard seats for a while.
The young staff is perfect for a mellow hangout, pleasant and devoid of Starbucks-like snobbery. If they lived in a dorm up the road at UAS and invited a bunch of friends over for breakfast in the hypothetical communal kitchen, it might not be a lot different than this.
That holds true in both a good and bad sense. They cook their waffles on three irons and when things got busy on a recent weekend we ended up waiting for nearly an hour, getting our order only after reminding them about it. They also forgot the syrup, necessitating another quick trip to the counter. They were nearly empty during a weekday lunch, making it a good choice then for those in the mood or unhappy with the out-the-door line next door at Chan’s Thai Kitchen.
But by that rough weekend morning SWC had built up enough collective good will not to wreck the mood. They deliver on coffee stuff, balancing flavorings, foam and other inevitable extra requests better than a lot of coffee shops in town. Things like smoothies and spiced hot chocolate are worthy beverages for those needing a sugar jolt to wash down all that syrup.
The waffles are the heart of the menu, of course, and the only food option unless one is in the mood for plastic-wrapped Costco muffins. This is where the SWC both shines and suffers from things that seem easily fixed. The batter for the basic waffle ($4.50) is smooth and mildly sweet, a nice one-size-fits-all choice even if lacking the character of a good sourdough or buttermilk recipe. The biggest problem is even fresh they’re more soft than crisp. Some of us weren’t bothered; for others it’s a cardinal sin (asking them to cook it a bit longer is an easy fix if they’re not swarmed). We did see the kitchen doing a couple of takeout orders, by the way, but it’s hardly something we’d recommend unless you’re just going across the street to dine on the beach.
The standard syrup is that Log Cabin/Golden Griddle stuff that’s absolute Heaven for kids and best ignored by anyone old enough to afford the extra 75 cents for real maple. The inevitable strawberry-topped waffle ($6) is the inevitable pie-filling stuff instead of fresh berries, hard enough to get at classy joints Down South. Other default menu options include a chocolate chip waffle topped with peanut butter ($6) and a spelt waffle ($5.50).
The most interesting choice is the omelet waffle ($6.75), a source of confusion for a lot of customers since the chalkboard menu simply calls it an “omelet” (the staff says they make sure those ordering it know what they’re getting). It’s traditional batter on the bottom half, egg on the top half, with ham, cheese and peppers baked in, and topped with salsa and sour cream. It’s satisfying for the pallet and appetite, proving more than we could finish.
A ham and cheddar waffle served with syrup ($5.50) isn’t a bad balance of flavors, although one person thought it’d be better with the omelet toppings. Or maybe just cheese and sour cream. Or why not add turkey and swiss cheese (or even Gruyere) and call it a Monte Cristo?
And that’s maybe the quickest and easiest thing SWC could do to knock their appeal up a notch. Adding a few simple ingredients to the kitchen could vastly expand menu possibilities without making things much harder on the staff. One of our diners wanted yogurt, for instance, favoring it instead of whipped cream. Throw some canned pintos on one of these cheese/meat/salsa concoctions and you have a griddle variation of the Navajo taco. Heck, buy crab across the street, put cream in a side dish and call it Waffle Newberg (OK, maybe that’s stretching things).
The point is a little imagination and a build-your-own approach from those few extra staples might give SWC enough extra oomph to sway our few (and mildly) displeased critics. The bagels at the Breeze Inn are a travesty to their namesake, but they’ve been successful selling them all these years because they come in a bunch of wacky and wonderful flavors. SWC has a much higher quality product to start with; it doesn’t take much to visualize them being a special “find” tucked away in an obscure corner.
Then again, if it’s as crowded on all weekends as we saw, maybe they don’t need the extra boost. The last thing needed next to Chan’s is another place with a “we’ll feed you when we’re able to” attitude. Besides, the kitchen staff is so nice you can probably bring your own fruit and yogurt and they won’t say a word if you keep it on the table.
The same Mediterraneans responsible for homework nightmares and sponsor-driven sports were cooking savory obleios flavored with cheese and herbs back when Aunt Jemima was feeling the marketing blues due to a shortage of plastic bottles.
History purists might argue real waffles arrived in 1953 when Eggo invaded supermarket freezers. But the Pilgrims also deserve credit for bringing them to the U.S. back in 1620, even if they probably got our relations with the Natives off to a bad start by ruining their appetites for Thanksgiving Dinner. Exotics might want to make a trip to Japan for their fish-shaped waffles filled with bean paste, but leave it to the British to screw up yet another dish by making them from reconstituted potatoes.
The kind sold at the Southeast Waffle Company made their public debut at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York when Brussels restaurateur Maurice Vermersch used his wife’s recipe to make the fluffy yeast- and egg-infused cakes. Wikipedia notes since “most Americans didn’t know where Brussels actually was, he decided to change the name from ‘Brussels Waffle’ to the ‘Belgian Waffle.’”
These days one can order or find recipes for as many varieties as any bread-like substance. It’s easy to be tempted by them as a dessert with strawberries and whipped cream, but loyalists also swear by pairing them with fried chicken (”pry off a bite of chicken with your fork, sprinkle on hot sauce, spear a syrup-drenched bit of waffle with that same chicken-laden fork,” advises the trendy Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles in L.A.). But they’re still the upscale and less popular alternative to the mighty pancake - especially when feeding multiple people - since they’re harder to prepare and must be eaten quickly before they become limp.
As such, the business model for the SWC doesn’t compute in theory and sometimes - such as long waits when there’s a backlog of orders - this spills over into reality. But in practical terms, they seem to have a large and growing fan base because even when things are rough they do so many vital little things well it’s hard not to enjoy the experience.
First, this isn’t just a breakfast place, since it stays open until midnight every day but Sunday, when it closes at 10 p.m. You can read, play chess or use the free wi-fi for hours while looking at the boats across the road in Auke Bay and never feel a bit of guilt, unless it’s a weekend morning and there’s a beyond-capacity crowd. The decor in what’s a fairly Spartan dining area has improved since they first opened thanks to touches such as a better paint job. One of ours who has an eye for such things comments “I’d encourage them to continue down that road, enhancing the feel with more and funkier paint, a bookshelf of trade-in paperback books and magazines, and maybe an old guitar (note: at least some of that is there already, although they could definitely use more). On the other hand, while that might make it even more of a gathering place, it won’t really help the bottom line.”
There’s a laundromat with broken change and detergent machines a couple of doors down, making the illusion of productivity possible. Speaking of which, they could use more electric outlets, especially within reach of the tables by the windows - and some cushions for those planning to occupy the hard seats for a while.
The young staff is perfect for a mellow hangout, pleasant and devoid of Starbucks-like snobbery. If they lived in a dorm up the road at UAS and invited a bunch of friends over for breakfast in the hypothetical communal kitchen, it might not be a lot different than this.
That holds true in both a good and bad sense. They cook their waffles on three irons and when things got busy on a recent weekend we ended up waiting for nearly an hour, getting our order only after reminding them about it. They also forgot the syrup, necessitating another quick trip to the counter. They were nearly empty during a weekday lunch, making it a good choice then for those in the mood or unhappy with the out-the-door line next door at Chan’s Thai Kitchen.
But by that rough weekend morning SWC had built up enough collective good will not to wreck the mood. They deliver on coffee stuff, balancing flavorings, foam and other inevitable extra requests better than a lot of coffee shops in town. Things like smoothies and spiced hot chocolate are worthy beverages for those needing a sugar jolt to wash down all that syrup.
The waffles are the heart of the menu, of course, and the only food option unless one is in the mood for plastic-wrapped Costco muffins. This is where the SWC both shines and suffers from things that seem easily fixed. The batter for the basic waffle ($4.50) is smooth and mildly sweet, a nice one-size-fits-all choice even if lacking the character of a good sourdough or buttermilk recipe. The biggest problem is even fresh they’re more soft than crisp. Some of us weren’t bothered; for others it’s a cardinal sin (asking them to cook it a bit longer is an easy fix if they’re not swarmed). We did see the kitchen doing a couple of takeout orders, by the way, but it’s hardly something we’d recommend unless you’re just going across the street to dine on the beach.
The standard syrup is that Log Cabin/Golden Griddle stuff that’s absolute Heaven for kids and best ignored by anyone old enough to afford the extra 75 cents for real maple. The inevitable strawberry-topped waffle ($6) is the inevitable pie-filling stuff instead of fresh berries, hard enough to get at classy joints Down South. Other default menu options include a chocolate chip waffle topped with peanut butter ($6) and a spelt waffle ($5.50).
The most interesting choice is the omelet waffle ($6.75), a source of confusion for a lot of customers since the chalkboard menu simply calls it an “omelet” (the staff says they make sure those ordering it know what they’re getting). It’s traditional batter on the bottom half, egg on the top half, with ham, cheese and peppers baked in, and topped with salsa and sour cream. It’s satisfying for the pallet and appetite, proving more than we could finish.
A ham and cheddar waffle served with syrup ($5.50) isn’t a bad balance of flavors, although one person thought it’d be better with the omelet toppings. Or maybe just cheese and sour cream. Or why not add turkey and swiss cheese (or even Gruyere) and call it a Monte Cristo?
And that’s maybe the quickest and easiest thing SWC could do to knock their appeal up a notch. Adding a few simple ingredients to the kitchen could vastly expand menu possibilities without making things much harder on the staff. One of our diners wanted yogurt, for instance, favoring it instead of whipped cream. Throw some canned pintos on one of these cheese/meat/salsa concoctions and you have a griddle variation of the Navajo taco. Heck, buy crab across the street, put cream in a side dish and call it Waffle Newberg (OK, maybe that’s stretching things).
The point is a little imagination and a build-your-own approach from those few extra staples might give SWC enough extra oomph to sway our few (and mildly) displeased critics. The bagels at the Breeze Inn are a travesty to their namesake, but they’ve been successful selling them all these years because they come in a bunch of wacky and wonderful flavors. SWC has a much higher quality product to start with; it doesn’t take much to visualize them being a special “find” tucked away in an obscure corner.
Then again, if it’s as crowded on all weekends as we saw, maybe they don’t need the extra boost. The last thing needed next to Chan’s is another place with a “we’ll feed you when we’re able to” attitude. Besides, the kitchen staff is so nice you can probably bring your own fruit and yogurt and they won’t say a word if you keep it on the table.
Review: Wild Spice (♦♦)
The last time one of us set foot in here, he stripped nearly naked and was felt up by one of the employees maybe 10 feet from our table. So naturally our clothing-challenged nosher was the one suggesting a return trip.
Of course the tale loses shock value when the the details are told, since the downtown Juneau space housing Wild Spice used to be a men’s clothing store, an electronics shop and probably some other failed ventures. The restaurant is part of an ongoing makeover of Front Street, where a few eateries are opening near longtime establishment such as Valentine’s Coffee House and locations that seem to go out of business regularly (Bacar’s, whose down-home menu included a gastronomical nightmare known as tempura-battered Spam sticks, is the latest victim of one particular space). The hope is to draw a new crowd to replace the cruise shippers now buying their cheap souvenirs down by the dock.
Like the new Front Street, things are promising. But there’s still some work to do.
Wild Spice is the creation of Grady Saunders, owner of Heritage Coffee Co., and he’s branching into a considerably more upscale and eclectic realm than lattes and sandwiches. The hype seems to be about the pick-your-own-ingredients Mongolian barbecue, but much of their entree menu is at least equally worthy. The selection is contemporary comforts such as halibut topped with tiger prawn mousse ($19) and salmon with plantain risotto ($20). All come with varying side dishes such as ginger melon relish and poblano butternut squash.
The open dining room setting is tastefully understated and clean, with quiet conversation possible among the half-capacity crowd present during one of our visits. One of us was less than thrilled about lingering on the hard plain-wood chairs in the middle of the room, but not enough to try to get everyone moved to one of the padded booths along the walls. The view out the large windows is of a competing restaurant under construction across the street - even when complete, this isn’t going to match places like The Hanger for vowing visitors with scenery.
Winners among the appetizers included Manapua Pork Rolls ($10), combining meat, aloha salsa and jicama slaw wrapped in tortillas and served with “spicy” sweet and sour sauce. One taster said they were as a good as any crunchy roll-like starter he’s had. They didn’t have the Wild Cheese Fondue ($15) - apples, grilled vegetables and focaccia with a pot of unspecified melted cheese - apparently because they’re still getting the equipment necessary to serve it. Missing items seem to be a minor problem elsewhere on the menu as well, with one person unable to order a specific dessert on each of her visits. While we’re on missing, this is the second restaurant in a row where soda’s been on the flat side - is there a shortage of CO2 in town?
Salads featured a fresh assortment of vegetables and a quality roasted shallot vinaigrette among the dressings. A thoughtful touch was serving them in a small side dish, but there was barely enough to coat half the greens adequately. A carrot ginger soup was smooth and comforting with just enough spicy zing to keep it from being dull.
The create-a-bowl options take up two of the menu’s five pages, with a lunchtime special of a medium bowl and unlimited soft drink refills ($9 from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.) being a tastier and more nutritious option than a couple of generic fast food places in the immediate vicinity. The range and quality of the protein, vegetable, noodle and seasoning choices are outstanding compared to many establishments in other cities, where one might save a few bucks or get an all-you-can-eat option in exchange for limp ingredients. In addition to the usual beef, chicken and pork, there’s tofu, catfish, squid and other proteins in attractive bite-size and shaved bits. Nine sauces and three spice mixtures, from the expected curries and peanut sauces to Berbere Fire Water and Bahia Tamarind Mohlo, provide the finishing touch. Levels of spiciness and suggested “scoop” portions are listed so customers aren’t victimized by their choices. One of our diners felt the suggestions were conservative, putting twice the number of scoops on her bowls. The raw bowls are cooked on a huge grill in plain view at the far end of the dining room. There’s occasionally a line, but it never got so bad as to be annoying.
Entries from the menu were more successful than not, but missteps were pronounced. Barbados Molasses Mustard Ribs ($19) were tender as advertised and the sauce was an ideal balance of spice and sweet. The spicy Espresso Baked Beans, sweet potato mash and coconut cornbread were all hits, except for too many people wanting to sample the silver-dollar-size cornbread.
The Flat Iron Steak ($23) is a good cut of meat and seasoned well (if cooked a shade past the ordered medium rare). But the entire plate arrived too cool, with hot entries no better than warm and the “warm” wild mushroom raguet arriving cold. The educated guess was this plate was kept waiting while other orders were still cooking.
Disappointing was the Jamaican Jerk Chicken ($16), consisting of dry chicken breast slices that, when combined with the charred seasoning, simply tasted burnt. The filling in the accompanying cinnamon pumpkin ravioli was tasty, but the pasta was undercooked. The caribbean slaw was the best thing on the plate, fresh and with a balanced spicy zing.
Somebody in the kitchen has taken a class in food design, with large square plates being decorated with the entries instead of merely piled on. Servers mostly did a good job of rotating the dish and courses, with the exception of that one wait, and checking to see how things were. But it doesn’t seem like they’ve quite mastered the causal upscale approach Wild Spice is aiming for - it’s more like watching someone you know act the role and get the lines right, but never fully believing they’re the character.
The rating reflects current reality, but Wild Spice has three-star potential with more experience. All of us agreed we’d be willing to return for the group thing again and some of us make regular, if not frequent, stops for lunch bowls. If this is the emerging neighborhood standard of competition for those not craving Subway, it’s certainly a good thing.
Of course the tale loses shock value when the the details are told, since the downtown Juneau space housing Wild Spice used to be a men’s clothing store, an electronics shop and probably some other failed ventures. The restaurant is part of an ongoing makeover of Front Street, where a few eateries are opening near longtime establishment such as Valentine’s Coffee House and locations that seem to go out of business regularly (Bacar’s, whose down-home menu included a gastronomical nightmare known as tempura-battered Spam sticks, is the latest victim of one particular space). The hope is to draw a new crowd to replace the cruise shippers now buying their cheap souvenirs down by the dock.
Like the new Front Street, things are promising. But there’s still some work to do.
Wild Spice is the creation of Grady Saunders, owner of Heritage Coffee Co., and he’s branching into a considerably more upscale and eclectic realm than lattes and sandwiches. The hype seems to be about the pick-your-own-ingredients Mongolian barbecue, but much of their entree menu is at least equally worthy. The selection is contemporary comforts such as halibut topped with tiger prawn mousse ($19) and salmon with plantain risotto ($20). All come with varying side dishes such as ginger melon relish and poblano butternut squash.
The open dining room setting is tastefully understated and clean, with quiet conversation possible among the half-capacity crowd present during one of our visits. One of us was less than thrilled about lingering on the hard plain-wood chairs in the middle of the room, but not enough to try to get everyone moved to one of the padded booths along the walls. The view out the large windows is of a competing restaurant under construction across the street - even when complete, this isn’t going to match places like The Hanger for vowing visitors with scenery.
Winners among the appetizers included Manapua Pork Rolls ($10), combining meat, aloha salsa and jicama slaw wrapped in tortillas and served with “spicy” sweet and sour sauce. One taster said they were as a good as any crunchy roll-like starter he’s had. They didn’t have the Wild Cheese Fondue ($15) - apples, grilled vegetables and focaccia with a pot of unspecified melted cheese - apparently because they’re still getting the equipment necessary to serve it. Missing items seem to be a minor problem elsewhere on the menu as well, with one person unable to order a specific dessert on each of her visits. While we’re on missing, this is the second restaurant in a row where soda’s been on the flat side - is there a shortage of CO2 in town?
Salads featured a fresh assortment of vegetables and a quality roasted shallot vinaigrette among the dressings. A thoughtful touch was serving them in a small side dish, but there was barely enough to coat half the greens adequately. A carrot ginger soup was smooth and comforting with just enough spicy zing to keep it from being dull.
The create-a-bowl options take up two of the menu’s five pages, with a lunchtime special of a medium bowl and unlimited soft drink refills ($9 from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.) being a tastier and more nutritious option than a couple of generic fast food places in the immediate vicinity. The range and quality of the protein, vegetable, noodle and seasoning choices are outstanding compared to many establishments in other cities, where one might save a few bucks or get an all-you-can-eat option in exchange for limp ingredients. In addition to the usual beef, chicken and pork, there’s tofu, catfish, squid and other proteins in attractive bite-size and shaved bits. Nine sauces and three spice mixtures, from the expected curries and peanut sauces to Berbere Fire Water and Bahia Tamarind Mohlo, provide the finishing touch. Levels of spiciness and suggested “scoop” portions are listed so customers aren’t victimized by their choices. One of our diners felt the suggestions were conservative, putting twice the number of scoops on her bowls. The raw bowls are cooked on a huge grill in plain view at the far end of the dining room. There’s occasionally a line, but it never got so bad as to be annoying.
Entries from the menu were more successful than not, but missteps were pronounced. Barbados Molasses Mustard Ribs ($19) were tender as advertised and the sauce was an ideal balance of spice and sweet. The spicy Espresso Baked Beans, sweet potato mash and coconut cornbread were all hits, except for too many people wanting to sample the silver-dollar-size cornbread.
The Flat Iron Steak ($23) is a good cut of meat and seasoned well (if cooked a shade past the ordered medium rare). But the entire plate arrived too cool, with hot entries no better than warm and the “warm” wild mushroom raguet arriving cold. The educated guess was this plate was kept waiting while other orders were still cooking.
Disappointing was the Jamaican Jerk Chicken ($16), consisting of dry chicken breast slices that, when combined with the charred seasoning, simply tasted burnt. The filling in the accompanying cinnamon pumpkin ravioli was tasty, but the pasta was undercooked. The caribbean slaw was the best thing on the plate, fresh and with a balanced spicy zing.
Somebody in the kitchen has taken a class in food design, with large square plates being decorated with the entries instead of merely piled on. Servers mostly did a good job of rotating the dish and courses, with the exception of that one wait, and checking to see how things were. But it doesn’t seem like they’ve quite mastered the causal upscale approach Wild Spice is aiming for - it’s more like watching someone you know act the role and get the lines right, but never fully believing they’re the character.
The rating reflects current reality, but Wild Spice has three-star potential with more experience. All of us agreed we’d be willing to return for the group thing again and some of us make regular, if not frequent, stops for lunch bowls. If this is the emerging neighborhood standard of competition for those not craving Subway, it’s certainly a good thing.
Review: The Broiler (♦)
It’s not like expectations were high. Truth is, we were here partially as an inside joke involving a member of the crew.
Even so, while some of our one-word opinions of The Broiler were as family friendly as the Nugget Mall eatery itself, they still rate as hardcore culinary profanity. Since one of us likened the evening to a religious experience, even if it was the Last Supper, we’ll skip them here. Besides, on the way out one night we passed a guy planning to set up camp in the dining room - and he wasn’t even a transient.
None of us knew much about the place even though it’s been around a long time, but “the mood” was right for at least some of us as we mulled a handful of choices. The menu is heavy on various plates of protein and starch, from fish and chips to steak and baked potatoes. The lower end of the food chain is the way to go for the most part, not necessarily because the results are better, but it’s easier to satisfy the expectations and cravings of someone with a $9 burger fix than a person ordering a $23 steak.
There were decent crowds during our visits, but plenty of open tables, with a mixed crowd of older couples and families. Bringing kids here as a reward for putting up with a trip to the fabric store might make sense, but it’s hardly the place for a romantic date. The tables are close together in the two bright, but spartan dining rooms (with some chipper-looking fish on the wall apparently unmindful of their less fortunate brethren on the plates below). There isn’t much to see except a couple of stores across from the mall entrance.
A full range of unadventurous comfort foods are offered, including a few simple salads, chicken and spaghetti. The all-you-can-eat salad bar ($7) is small compared to those at the supermarkets in town, but not a terrible choice for healthy types since there’s spinach next to the iceberg lettuce and everything is mostly fresh. On the other hand, one of us thought it “looked picked over - like a horde of children attacked it.” According to our House Of Cod partaker, “the salad was like the Last Supper itself: adequate, but not really talked about much.” (Chill, ye accusers of blasphemy; this person is Catholic).
Those ordering upper-scale entries get a one-trip visit with a small plate; it’s a $2.50 add-on option for burgers and similar items. A shrimp Louie salad, one of three entree salads offered ($6 small, $10 large), had a decent number of tiny shrimp and too-crunchy croutons, but not enough variety among the vegetables to excite.
Steaks range from a $10 six-ouncer to the $23 20-ounce porterhouse, including sides. This is hardly the kind of place where one inquires if the meat is prime grade, but asking if the mashed potatoes were real or instant didn’t seem out of order. Our waitress, unremarkably pleasant on the rare occasion we saw her, said she didn’t know. The steaks were overcooked, with the worst sin being one ordered medium that arrived well-done. They rely more on seasoning than the store-quality meat for flavor, although to their credit when our waitress asked if we wanted steak sauce they had all of the brands requested, even if we got the wrong kind in one instance. “I’ve had better, I’ve had worse,” said one of our former cattle country dwellers, among the most positive comments.
The sides were a mixed bag. Mashed potatoes, apparently of the instant variety and far too heavy on salt, had quoting the Israelites’ opinion of manna from heaven in Numbers 21:5 - “There is no bread, neither is there any water, and we loathe this contemptible manna.” Baked potatoes were decent, cooked properly and served with a mini-station of basic toppings (”It kinda freaks me out,” our tater tester remarked. “Just doesn’t seem real sanitary to give the same dishes to multiple tables
throughout the night.”). Small cups of cole slaw, heavy on raisins for some reason, and mini corn muffins are unremarkable plate-fillers - they went mostly untouched.
Other dishes were also mostly below par. Pork wings ($15), described by one of us as a “compressed, reshaped and reflavored pork substitute for chicken wings” (again, our waitress didn’t know much about them), were no better than pre-cooked ribs from the store, with a sweet sauce closer to ketchup than anything with zing. It might be better on top of the cheddar and grilled onions on Dave’s Famous Barbecue Burger ($9), although a blue cheese burger at the same price was an ordinary overcooked patty on a too-large bun - toasting them with a little butter on the grill would help. The kitchen saved their light cooking touch for the slightly limp fries and jo-jos. Onion rings, a $4 side order, were cooked thoroughly, but flavorless. A four-piece fried-chicken basket ($9) was overcooked and rather salty. The two broiled chicken options involve boneless breasts topped with various sauces.
A decent option turned out to be the fried halibut, available separately or as part of the seafood platter ($17), as the puffy pieces of fish coated with just enough batter were thick enough to emerge from the deep frier perfectly cooked. On the platter, however, they only served to remind how overcooked the depressed-looking piles of shrimp (jumbo and regular-size) and clam strips were, all of which tasted of little but their salty breading.
Desserts are cakes and pies resembling those in the freezer case at Costco, plus a few sundaes. A temptation to try the latter was quashed when a root beer float arrived - a Thomas Kemper suffering the insult of being poured over soft-serve ice cream. Even so, it turned out to be a long evening, as our seldom-in-evidence waitress apparently took our half- and barely-eaten meals as signs we were still working on them.
There isn’t much chance of our making this a regular watering hole. Some of us gave them credit for a few scattered successes, but the following summary by one of us pretty much guarantees we’d be a man down on any future trips:
“I just really can’t even fathom why that business is in business. How can you mess up steak? How can you so chemically alter it that it tastes like cardboard? No, cardboard would taste better. There is nothing redeeming: The staff is not so charming, the decor is uninspiring and the tables are cramped, the food is totally marginal. I guess I would say, my root beer was good and my silverware appeared to be clean. As for taking the kids there, you are assuming they have no taste. Plus, McDs is right across the street, why pay $15 when you can pay $5 for better food?”
Still, the burly guy we passed at the cash register - apparently working a summer job on a fishing boat - seemed ready to stake out a table as his second home. Turns out he ordered the halibut.
Even so, while some of our one-word opinions of The Broiler were as family friendly as the Nugget Mall eatery itself, they still rate as hardcore culinary profanity. Since one of us likened the evening to a religious experience, even if it was the Last Supper, we’ll skip them here. Besides, on the way out one night we passed a guy planning to set up camp in the dining room - and he wasn’t even a transient.
None of us knew much about the place even though it’s been around a long time, but “the mood” was right for at least some of us as we mulled a handful of choices. The menu is heavy on various plates of protein and starch, from fish and chips to steak and baked potatoes. The lower end of the food chain is the way to go for the most part, not necessarily because the results are better, but it’s easier to satisfy the expectations and cravings of someone with a $9 burger fix than a person ordering a $23 steak.
There were decent crowds during our visits, but plenty of open tables, with a mixed crowd of older couples and families. Bringing kids here as a reward for putting up with a trip to the fabric store might make sense, but it’s hardly the place for a romantic date. The tables are close together in the two bright, but spartan dining rooms (with some chipper-looking fish on the wall apparently unmindful of their less fortunate brethren on the plates below). There isn’t much to see except a couple of stores across from the mall entrance.
A full range of unadventurous comfort foods are offered, including a few simple salads, chicken and spaghetti. The all-you-can-eat salad bar ($7) is small compared to those at the supermarkets in town, but not a terrible choice for healthy types since there’s spinach next to the iceberg lettuce and everything is mostly fresh. On the other hand, one of us thought it “looked picked over - like a horde of children attacked it.” According to our House Of Cod partaker, “the salad was like the Last Supper itself: adequate, but not really talked about much.” (Chill, ye accusers of blasphemy; this person is Catholic).
Those ordering upper-scale entries get a one-trip visit with a small plate; it’s a $2.50 add-on option for burgers and similar items. A shrimp Louie salad, one of three entree salads offered ($6 small, $10 large), had a decent number of tiny shrimp and too-crunchy croutons, but not enough variety among the vegetables to excite.
Steaks range from a $10 six-ouncer to the $23 20-ounce porterhouse, including sides. This is hardly the kind of place where one inquires if the meat is prime grade, but asking if the mashed potatoes were real or instant didn’t seem out of order. Our waitress, unremarkably pleasant on the rare occasion we saw her, said she didn’t know. The steaks were overcooked, with the worst sin being one ordered medium that arrived well-done. They rely more on seasoning than the store-quality meat for flavor, although to their credit when our waitress asked if we wanted steak sauce they had all of the brands requested, even if we got the wrong kind in one instance. “I’ve had better, I’ve had worse,” said one of our former cattle country dwellers, among the most positive comments.
The sides were a mixed bag. Mashed potatoes, apparently of the instant variety and far too heavy on salt, had quoting the Israelites’ opinion of manna from heaven in Numbers 21:5 - “There is no bread, neither is there any water, and we loathe this contemptible manna.” Baked potatoes were decent, cooked properly and served with a mini-station of basic toppings (”It kinda freaks me out,” our tater tester remarked. “Just doesn’t seem real sanitary to give the same dishes to multiple tables
throughout the night.”). Small cups of cole slaw, heavy on raisins for some reason, and mini corn muffins are unremarkable plate-fillers - they went mostly untouched.
Other dishes were also mostly below par. Pork wings ($15), described by one of us as a “compressed, reshaped and reflavored pork substitute for chicken wings” (again, our waitress didn’t know much about them), were no better than pre-cooked ribs from the store, with a sweet sauce closer to ketchup than anything with zing. It might be better on top of the cheddar and grilled onions on Dave’s Famous Barbecue Burger ($9), although a blue cheese burger at the same price was an ordinary overcooked patty on a too-large bun - toasting them with a little butter on the grill would help. The kitchen saved their light cooking touch for the slightly limp fries and jo-jos. Onion rings, a $4 side order, were cooked thoroughly, but flavorless. A four-piece fried-chicken basket ($9) was overcooked and rather salty. The two broiled chicken options involve boneless breasts topped with various sauces.
A decent option turned out to be the fried halibut, available separately or as part of the seafood platter ($17), as the puffy pieces of fish coated with just enough batter were thick enough to emerge from the deep frier perfectly cooked. On the platter, however, they only served to remind how overcooked the depressed-looking piles of shrimp (jumbo and regular-size) and clam strips were, all of which tasted of little but their salty breading.
Desserts are cakes and pies resembling those in the freezer case at Costco, plus a few sundaes. A temptation to try the latter was quashed when a root beer float arrived - a Thomas Kemper suffering the insult of being poured over soft-serve ice cream. Even so, it turned out to be a long evening, as our seldom-in-evidence waitress apparently took our half- and barely-eaten meals as signs we were still working on them.
There isn’t much chance of our making this a regular watering hole. Some of us gave them credit for a few scattered successes, but the following summary by one of us pretty much guarantees we’d be a man down on any future trips:
“I just really can’t even fathom why that business is in business. How can you mess up steak? How can you so chemically alter it that it tastes like cardboard? No, cardboard would taste better. There is nothing redeeming: The staff is not so charming, the decor is uninspiring and the tables are cramped, the food is totally marginal. I guess I would say, my root beer was good and my silverware appeared to be clean. As for taking the kids there, you are assuming they have no taste. Plus, McDs is right across the street, why pay $15 when you can pay $5 for better food?”
Still, the burly guy we passed at the cash register - apparently working a summer job on a fishing boat - seemed ready to stake out a table as his second home. Turns out he ordered the halibut.
Doing the introduction thing
It’s not that you can’t get a great meal in this town. You just have to kill it yourself.
There’s no place on Earth I’d rather live than Juneau, a town of about 30,000 in Alaska’s southeast Panhandle, but the dining scene has long ranged between middling and awful. Considering we get a million tourists a year - most of them affluent cruise ship types - plus an influx of politicians and wealthy lobbyists because we’re the state capital, there’s plenty of incentive for a few good chefs.
But the best meal here remains king crabs bought live from fishermen at the dock. You take the crabs home, step on them, rip off all the legs at once, then boil them in a very large pot. In second place is a whole king salmon wrapped in foil and thrown on the backyard pit grill.
These occasions of Last Frontier spirit are rare, however, since like the rest of the modern world life tends to revolve around too many hours in office cubicles. So at the end of long day, when someone says “I could really go for a good steak right now,” it’d be nice having a reliable place to go for one.
The good news is the scene is slowly improving. The bad news is there’s a long way to go.
This mediocrity is seldom reflected in tourist guides, where recommendations are often questionable and out-of-date, and in local newspapers. In fact, the title of this blog, Consuming Juneau, is taken from a long-ago column in the local daily that tried offering no-holds-barred reviews of stuff, only to get killed when businesses complained in droves. A restaurant review blog at the paper’s Web site died last year for similar reasons.
This blog is reviving and continuing those posts in an attempt to offer, to my knowledge, the only place offering objective restaurant reviews of Juneau and other places in Southeast Alaska.
I’d like to think these are something more than the ramblings of the uninformed or someone with an agenda, since they’re based on the opinions of a group who meets weekly to shoot-the-spit at whatever place suits the mood that day. It’s a pretty diverse group. We work everything from executive to blue-collar jobs, live in everything from million-dollar homes to trailers. Our hobbies range from death-defying mountaineering to "Deadliest Catch." Our group, among others, includes a gourmet-caliber cook, a frequent wedding reception worker, a vegetarian, a one-time rancher, a comfort food junkie and a person whose first priority is ordering the most unusual dish possible. We've collectively eaten good and bad meals throughout Alaska, the U.S. and dozens of countries around the world. We know the merits of fresh-caught whale in Barrow, prime dry-aged Midwest steak and how certain cooks can do wonders with lentils cooked in a stone tea hut at 15,000 feet in Nepal.
The point is to give serious diners an apples-to-apples comparison of how Juneau’s establishments rate against those in the big city.
We’re not snobs whose expectations of fine dining is $50 mac-n-cheese with shaved truffles. A hole-in-the wall place that does nothing but make dumplings is among our favorites. The bottom line is how well a place does whatever it’s aiming for and if it’s a fun place to be. Ratings on based on a four-star system, with no curve just because we’re a small town with some limits on our access to first-rate supplies. In general, the guidelines for food are as follows:
Four stars: A transcendent experience featuring top-quality food and service, unique in character, and in general surpassing expectations even for what might normally be considered a quality meal.
Three stars: A very good establishment that meets high-quality expectations for food and service. There may be a few pleasant surprises or letdowns, but none so remarkable as to detract from a consistency that makes it worth recommending.
Two stars: A good experience that will usually satisfy, if not thrill. A notable flaw in food or service will drop an otherwise excellent eatery to this level, as will a more regular occurrence of minor problems. Will usually be recommended, but with suggestions of where to exercise caution.
One star: Not recommended. There may be a reason or two to visit such as a particular dish or great view, but overall flaws in food and service are almost certain to result in a disappointing meal.
Technically a rating of zero stars is possible, but this would involve a level of negligence so bad it's unlikely to be met, such as the group getting food poisoning from a variety of dishes - or robbed by the dishwasher at gunpoint.
Finally, we’re doing our best to write these according to the standards of real reviewers, meaning multiple anonymous visits and not accepting any freebies. We’re also not letting past experiences prejudice current ratings. Feedback from anyone who visits these places is welcome and we’ll try to post some that doesn’t appear to be from publicity trolls or people with unreasonable axes to grind. They will, of course, not affect our grades. For anyone who disagrees with those, just remember you can always question the taste of people who like living in a town with three times the annual rainfall of Seattle.
There’s no place on Earth I’d rather live than Juneau, a town of about 30,000 in Alaska’s southeast Panhandle, but the dining scene has long ranged between middling and awful. Considering we get a million tourists a year - most of them affluent cruise ship types - plus an influx of politicians and wealthy lobbyists because we’re the state capital, there’s plenty of incentive for a few good chefs.
But the best meal here remains king crabs bought live from fishermen at the dock. You take the crabs home, step on them, rip off all the legs at once, then boil them in a very large pot. In second place is a whole king salmon wrapped in foil and thrown on the backyard pit grill.
These occasions of Last Frontier spirit are rare, however, since like the rest of the modern world life tends to revolve around too many hours in office cubicles. So at the end of long day, when someone says “I could really go for a good steak right now,” it’d be nice having a reliable place to go for one.
The good news is the scene is slowly improving. The bad news is there’s a long way to go.
This mediocrity is seldom reflected in tourist guides, where recommendations are often questionable and out-of-date, and in local newspapers. In fact, the title of this blog, Consuming Juneau, is taken from a long-ago column in the local daily that tried offering no-holds-barred reviews of stuff, only to get killed when businesses complained in droves. A restaurant review blog at the paper’s Web site died last year for similar reasons.
This blog is reviving and continuing those posts in an attempt to offer, to my knowledge, the only place offering objective restaurant reviews of Juneau and other places in Southeast Alaska.
I’d like to think these are something more than the ramblings of the uninformed or someone with an agenda, since they’re based on the opinions of a group who meets weekly to shoot-the-spit at whatever place suits the mood that day. It’s a pretty diverse group. We work everything from executive to blue-collar jobs, live in everything from million-dollar homes to trailers. Our hobbies range from death-defying mountaineering to "Deadliest Catch." Our group, among others, includes a gourmet-caliber cook, a frequent wedding reception worker, a vegetarian, a one-time rancher, a comfort food junkie and a person whose first priority is ordering the most unusual dish possible. We've collectively eaten good and bad meals throughout Alaska, the U.S. and dozens of countries around the world. We know the merits of fresh-caught whale in Barrow, prime dry-aged Midwest steak and how certain cooks can do wonders with lentils cooked in a stone tea hut at 15,000 feet in Nepal.
The point is to give serious diners an apples-to-apples comparison of how Juneau’s establishments rate against those in the big city.
We’re not snobs whose expectations of fine dining is $50 mac-n-cheese with shaved truffles. A hole-in-the wall place that does nothing but make dumplings is among our favorites. The bottom line is how well a place does whatever it’s aiming for and if it’s a fun place to be. Ratings on based on a four-star system, with no curve just because we’re a small town with some limits on our access to first-rate supplies. In general, the guidelines for food are as follows:
Four stars: A transcendent experience featuring top-quality food and service, unique in character, and in general surpassing expectations even for what might normally be considered a quality meal.
Three stars: A very good establishment that meets high-quality expectations for food and service. There may be a few pleasant surprises or letdowns, but none so remarkable as to detract from a consistency that makes it worth recommending.
Two stars: A good experience that will usually satisfy, if not thrill. A notable flaw in food or service will drop an otherwise excellent eatery to this level, as will a more regular occurrence of minor problems. Will usually be recommended, but with suggestions of where to exercise caution.
One star: Not recommended. There may be a reason or two to visit such as a particular dish or great view, but overall flaws in food and service are almost certain to result in a disappointing meal.
Technically a rating of zero stars is possible, but this would involve a level of negligence so bad it's unlikely to be met, such as the group getting food poisoning from a variety of dishes - or robbed by the dishwasher at gunpoint.
Finally, we’re doing our best to write these according to the standards of real reviewers, meaning multiple anonymous visits and not accepting any freebies. We’re also not letting past experiences prejudice current ratings. Feedback from anyone who visits these places is welcome and we’ll try to post some that doesn’t appear to be from publicity trolls or people with unreasonable axes to grind. They will, of course, not affect our grades. For anyone who disagrees with those, just remember you can always question the taste of people who like living in a town with three times the annual rainfall of Seattle.
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