During a trip to Fort Wayne to do a presentation for the staff at Sweetwater, one of the largest dealers of products for professional and amateur musicians in the nation, my colleague Simon set up a get-together for some of the sales staff at an Irish bar called J K O'Donnell's. He'd taken some of the staff there before and they were sequestered in a partyroom where they had a fixed menu of appetizers and entrees. Oh, and unlimited beer. Simon got it set up for another night of food and beer when we were there just before Christmas last December.
Downtown Fort Wayne is not unlike many mid-sized Midwestern communities that has suffered from an economic downturn over the past 10 to 20 years. With an urban flight of both people and businesses, store fronts have closed up, people are living away from the center of cities, and downtown areas have become ghost towns after 5 p.m. A number of business people saw the need for a revitalization of the downtown area and one of those men was Scott Glaze, the owner of a company that made medical grade wiring in Fort Wayne. Glaze traveled often for his job, both across the United States and to foreign countries. He was struck at how some similar sized cities had a downtown area with shops and restaurants that he didn't find in Fort Wayne. He wanted to begin a renaissance of the downtown area, but knew he couldn't do it alone.
Glaze got a group of what he called "crazy entrepreneurs" on board for his vision of a downtown revitalization in Fort Wayne. He knew it wouldn't happen overnight, but he had to help get the ball rolling in regard to bringing the downtown back to a vibrant destination. Along with his wife, Melissa, Glaze wasn't certain if he wanted to open a retail shop or a restaurant for their part of the revitalization project. They just knew they wanted to do something.
It was during one of his trips to Castlebar, Ireland to a facility that worked with his company, Glaze found himself in a quaint Irish bar that he fell deeply in love with. The Irish pub gave him the inspiration to open an authentic Irish pub in Fort Wayne. Along with partners Dennis and Jeremy Rohrs, and managing partner Kim Jacobs, the Glaze's opened J K O'Donnell's in August of 2007. Two years later, they expanded into a building beside the business and made that an overflow/party room with extra restrooms.
The main dining room consists of a quaint three-sided bar with a highback bar area that goes from ceiling to floor centered in the middle of the room. Regular tables and high tables like you'd find in an Irish pub were throughout the room. You have to walk through the dining area to get to the party room in the back corner of the restaurant.
Simon had invited about 25 of the top Focal Pro loudspeaker salesmen to the little soiree that snowy evening. Like before, he settled on a number of appetizers and a fixed menu for dinner. As many of the Sweetwater people made it into the room, the appetizers were brought in and a waiter went around taking drink orders.
The beer list at J K O'Donnell's is pretty extensive with a mix of domestic and imported beers. They had a number of very good Midwestern microbreweries to choose from including the Three Floyds brewery out of Munster, IN. (Click here to read about my visit to the Three Floyds brewpub.) For my first beer of the evening, I went with a Three Floyds Alpha King pale ale, a very forward and hoppy pale ale that I like to drink from time to time.
The appetizers were set on a table and they consisted of chicken wings, an artichoke dip served with toasted bread slices, homemade potato chips (that were way over-cooked) and Simon's favorite - fried pickles. Here's a picture of Simon taking a bite into the fried pickles at J K O'Donnell's. Quite actually, the fried pickles were the highlight of the appetizer spread with the artichoke dip a close second. The fried pickles weren't dill spears like you normally will see with that type of appetizer, but rather dill chips covered in a beer batter that was very tasty.
I had finished my Three Floyds Alpha King and decided that while I was in an Irish pub, I'd better get an Irish beer. I ordered up a Smithwick's the second time around. But when the waiter brought it to me I found it to be very flat. So much so that I didn't even finish it. I got the waiter's attention and told him that I wanted something else. I ordered up a Bell's Two Hearted pale ale and stuck with that the rest of the evening.
The fixed menu we had that evening had a number of items off of J K O'Donnell's regular menu including fish and chips, Irish stew, an authentic corned beef and slaw sandwich, as well as a corned beef and cabbage entree, and bangers and mash. Actually, Simon had talked up the Shepherd's Pie before we got there and I was disappointed to not see it on the fixed menu. Even though both the corned beef and cabbage and the corned beef and slaw sandwich sounded good, I ended up ordering the Irish stew which was the closest thing to Shepherd's Pie without the mashed potatoes on top. (A late arriving Sweetwater person actually ordered the Shepherd's Pie. Had I known I could have done that, I would have.)
Our meals began to show up and a couple people at the table I was seated at got the fish and chips (below left). The fish looked a little dark and both people said that it was a little overcooked. Like the homemade potato chips, the fish was darned near burnt from the fryer on the outside. It was like the oil in the fryer was too hot and they should have taken the fish out a minute earlier. The fish was a little rubbery, it was reported to me by those who had it, probably from the overcooking.
My Irish stew was actually pretty good. It was thick and hearty with a very robust taste. It had large chunks of all-natural beef along with a potpourri of vegetables in a dense gravy/broth. A side house salad came with the Irish stew that went well with the meal. A guy at a table next to me got the corned beef and cabbage. And while it did look very good, I was overly happy with my Irish stew. It was a good "stick-to-your-ribs" meal on a cold winter evening in Fort Wayne.
Many of the Sweetwater gang began to filter out before 9 a.m. as they had a 7 a.m. sales meeting the next morning. I settled up the bill with the waiter and it was actually pretty reasonable for the amount of food and drinks that we had. I'd have to say J K O'Donnell's did a fine job in capturing the essence of an authentic Irish pub with the food, the extensive beer list and the decor throughout the place. The wait staff was quick and efficient, and it was a pleasant evening all around. Simon does these little parties from time to time when he comes out to Fort Wayne to deal with Sweetwater. Now that I've been indoctrinated into the Sweetwater culture I'm sure I'll be back to J K O'Donnell's at some point quaffing a few beers and hopefully getting the Shepherd's Pie.
On a visit to Kansas City just before the end of 2011, I was in the Westport area of Kansas City looking up the new location for Vinyl Renaissance, a record store/audio dealer in the greater Kansas City area. The owner of Vinyl Renaissance had invited me to stop by his new store on West 39th St. and I made my way there during the middle part of the day. As I was going down W. 39th, just inside the Missouri/Kansas border, I happened to look over and see a place called KC Smoke Burgers. After my visit to Vinyl Renaissance, I decided to back down the street and have lunch at this burger place. (see map)
KC Smoke Burgers opened in December of 2010 in what was the former Jerusalem Cafe, a Middle Eastern restaurant that was once one of three locations around Kansas City. Owner Farid Azzeh decided that there were too many similar restaurants in the immediate area and came up with a concept of a smoked burger restaurant. After remodeling the restaurant into a burger place, KC Smoke Burgers was born.
They grill the burgers first, then they put them in an enclosed pot with wood chips on the bottom, the burger on a little grill and a pot top over the burger. Leaving it in the smoke pot for a short time closing out the cooking process gives the burger a hearty smoked taste. (Photo courtesy of the Arnot family.)
It was just after the noon rush and a number of professionals, quite possibly from the Kansas University Medical Center which is just two blocks away across State Line Road, were finishing up their lunch. (KC Smoke Burgers' web site is geographically challenged. They say they are located in Kansas and not Missouri.) A booth in the corner was open and a waitress took me over there. She asked me if I wanted anything to drink. "We have Pepsi products," she said.
I asked if they had Boulevard Beer, which is a pretty stupid question because nearly every bar/restaurant/barbecue joint/burger joint in Kansas City has Boulevard Beer. She said, "We don't serve alcohol here."
Whaaaaaat? A burger joint with no beer? A red flag popped up in my head. What kind of place was this? I just got a glass of water instead.
The inside of KC Smoke Burgers wasn't all that big. It featured a high ceiling with an arched wood beam across the length of the restaurant. Tables and booths were throughout the place offering seating to about 40 to 50 people at a time. Above the front door was a plaster mural of some of the buildings along the Plaza, one of the municipal icons of Kansas City. There's an outdoor seating area that was shut down for the winter.
On the concrete brick walls was a bunch of graffiti. Interestingly, it appeared that most of the graffiti was done by people with similar penmanship. Graffiti reached from the floor to the ceiling. It was sort of interesting and strangely weird in a sort of forced way of decorating.
The menu at KC Smoke Burgers features a number of basic burgers, as well as a handful of specialty burgers. They have a lamb burger with ground lean lamb meat and topped with a garlic cucumber sauce. They also had a gyro burger that featured a 50/50 mix of ground lamb and beef, mixed with Greek spices and topped with Greek Tzatiki sauce. They also had a Kansas City variation of the Twin Cities "Jucy (Juicy) Lucy" stuffed cheeseburger.
Their basic burgers featured a Danger Zone Fire smoke burger topped with jalapenos and chopped habaneros, as well as pepper jack cheese. They also have a Bacon cheese smoke burger, as well as a Challenge burger - something that evidently very spicy.
In addition to burgers, KC Smoke Burgers has all beef hot dogs (including Chicago-style hot dogs and chili dogs), Philly cheesesteak sandwiches, grilled chicken sandwiches, a gyros sandwich (old habits from a former Mediterranean restaurant are hard to die), and something called a grilled chicken gyros sandwich.
I decided to go with the Bacon cheeseburger and you get your choice of one of six different types of cheese. I took pepper jack cheese and I asked if I could get mushrooms along with the burger. It cost 50 cents more, but I didn't care.
It takes awhile to get a cooked burger at KC Smoke Burger. I'm sure between the grilling, then the smoking process it's going to take awhile. I was hoping that they didn't overcook it. When the girl brought out my burger and took it off the smoke pot and placed it on the lower part of the bun, I could tell from the hardness of the meat that it was overcooked. But the the presentation was nice including the branded "KCSB" in the top of the bun.
Even though I wasn't looking to get fries, they came with the burger. The smoky smell from the smoke pot was still in the air as I doctored up my burger with pickle slices, lettuce, a tomato slice and sliced onions that came with the meal.
The bacon was thin and pretty pedestrian when it comes to bacon. The burger was definitely overcooked and not very flavorful. Actually, about the only thing I could taste was the smoke flavor. And I really couldn't taste the mushrooms - I had to stop once just to pull the toppings off and look to see if they had actually put the mushrooms on the burger. They had, but they were grilled down to almost nothing.
I had a few fries and they were cool, limp, mushy and basically lifeless. I ate what I could of the burger and left the fries on the plate. When the waitress came over to take my plate and leave my bill she asked how it was. "Good," I said, knowingly lying. It wasn't.
I can't give KC Smoke Burgers any type of glowing recommendation. I can't give it even a glimmer of a recommendation. The burger was overcooked, it was too much of a smoky taste to it. The fries were bad. It just wasn't a good dining experience. You may want to try it if you get to Kansas City to see if you like it. But I certainly won't go back.
It had been a long week on the road by the time I pulled into my hotel in northeast Indianapolis one evening around Christmastime. Not wanting to travel much in the month of December, I found myself staying in yet another hotel room over 4 hours from home. Sort of down in the dumps and burnt out from the travel, I wanted to get something different for dinner that particular evening but I wasn't sure what I wanted. I went to the front desk and I asked the girl if there were any brewpubs in the immediate area. She didn't know of any, but a guy standing there piped up that there was a sports bar that had a lot of beers to choose from not far from the hotel.
I ended up going there, but when I walked in the place was packed. It was loud and I'd had enough of dealing with people at that point. I turned around and walked out and took off back down 82nd St. near the Castleton Square Mall. Looking over to my right, I spied a place in strip mall - Taj of India. I quickly made the turn into the parking lot. (See map)
Actually, the parking lot was sort of full and I was worried that there would be a lot of people in the restaurant. But it turned out that a beauticians school was right next door to Taj of India and most of the cars in the parking lot were for people in there. When I went into Taj of India, there was only one other couple having dinner. I didn't know if that was a good sign or not. It was after 8 p.m., but I still thought more people would have been in the place. But it was quiet and would require only minimum interaction with other people.
Taj of India has been around since 1995. The original owner, Deep Mand, turned the reins over to Churdip Mand (don't know if that's a son or daughter or even if it's a relative), and Gurdap Singh. Taj of India is sort of locally famous for their lunch buffet they serve from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. daily. Their dinner hours are 5 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., seven days a week.
The dining room isn't all that large, but it still probably sat 50 to 60 people comfortably. A number of larger table that sat six people were in the center of the restaurant, while smaller tables ringed the walls. The lights were somewhat subdued in the place, but not dark enough that it was difficult to read the menu or the Indianapolis Star newspaper that I brought in.
I was seated at a table along the front wall of the restaurant. A young guy was the host and waiter. He asked me if I wanted anything to drink and I asked for a Kingfisher. He looked over in the glass-doored refrigerator and he said, "I'm so sorry, sir. We are currently out of Kingfisher." He gave me some other possibilities of Indian beers - Godfather, Haywards, Taj Mahal. I wasn't familiar with the first two, but I was with the Taj Mahal. I got a large bottle of that.
He brought me back my beer and a menu. The menu was rather extensive at Taj of India with a number of Tandoori and vegetarian dishes, along with a large number of chicken, lamb and seafood entrees. They also had a number of rice-based entrees, as well. I was having a lot of trouble trying to figure out what I wanted.
The shrimp vindaloo sounded good to me - shrimp and potatoes in a spicy vindaloo sauce. I do like vindaloo sauce, but I wanted to try it with shrimp instead of chicken. I then saw the chicken tikka masala - chicken chunks in a homemade masala sauce with onions, bell peppers and tomatoes. Ummm... that was a possibility. Then I saw the chicken mushroom - chicken chunks with fresh mushrooms in a creamy tomato sauce. Boy, I was really having trouble.
But at the top of the chicken part of the menu was the chicken curry - lightly seasoned boneless chicken chunks in a curry sauce complemented with other spices. The waiter came back over and asked if I was ready to order and I ordered the chicken curry. He asked how I wanted it prepared, "Medium or hot?" I said I wanted it somewhere in the middle - medium-hot, if he could do it. He asked if I wanted any naan bread to go along with the chicken curry. Absolutely! They had a bunch of different types of naan breads on the menu and I was torn between the ginger naan or the garlic naan - both topped with cilantro. I hemmed for a second and finally went with the garlic naan. I'm glad I did.
About 10 minutes after I ordered, the young man brought my food out to me and did it look good. One thing that I have a little problem with at Indian restaurants is the amount of rice that they bring to the table. With the garlic naan and the chicken curry, there was no way I would be able to make a healthy dent in the large bowl of rice he brought out. I did spoon out a little rice onto my plate and dumped the chicken curry on top.
Now, I'm far from an expert on Indian food but I do know if I like something or not. And I REALLY liked the chicken curry at Taj of India. It had a little spicy kick to it - the medium-hot was tolerable and I concluded that I probably would have been able to have it a little more hot in spiciness. But the overall taste of the spices mixed together with the curry was just outstanding. Dropping some of the curry chicken onto the very good - and very pungent - garlic naan was another taste treat. The smell of the spices permeated the area around my table and the overall taste of the meal as a whole was simply wonderful. I made short work of the chicken curry and used the garlic naan to sop up the remaining curry sauce from the bowl. I was like a man devouring his first meal in weeks. The garlic naan was so good that I ate the whole piece - something that I regretted doing. But it was so damn good.
Compared to other Indian restaurants I've been to, the service at Taj of India was pretty good. Granted, there was only one other couple at the place that night. But the young guy came back and checked on me to see how my meal was going on a couple occasions. And the price of the meal was pretty good, too. The chicken curry was $10.99 and the garlic naan was $2.95. The Taj Mahal beer was the kicker - it was $7.99 for a 22 ounce bottle. Ouch!
Back at the hotel, the aroma of the curry sauce and the garlic from the naan bread was still on my hands. I had a helluva time getting the smell off even after multiple hand-washings and a subsequent shower the next day. I don't know if those aromas were burned into my olfactory system, but I swear to God that I was still smelling the curry sauce and the garlic well into the next day. It was too bad that I wasn't in Indianapolis for another night because I would have gone back to Taj of India the next night and gotten the shrimp curry. I'm serious. It was that good. Like I say, I don't know if it compares well to other Indian restaurants, but Taj of India tripped my trigger. To me, it was absolutely fabulous. As I broaden my knowledge of Indian cuisine, Taj of India may be the standard I use from here on out. I'm certainly glad I went there rather than gotten a sandwich or burger at a loud sports bar. It was the perfect food at the perfect time.
(Update - I've been told that Taj of India was purchased in the fall of 2012 and has been transformed into Amber Indian Restaurant, a Carmel, IN-based Indian food restaurant opening their second location on 82nd St. I'll have to go back at some point and give Amber Indian a try.)
During our visit to Las Vegas for the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, the fine gentlemen from Cambridge Audio invited us out to dinner at Roy's Hawaiian Fusion, a Pacific Rim/Pan Asian restaurant with 30 locations in 8 states, Guam and Japan. I was somewhat familiar with Roy's from our trip to Hawaii a couple years ago. It was an option for dinner when we were on the island of Hawaii, but other restaurants in the area where we were staying were more highly recommended. Still, when the guys from Cambridge Audio told us they were taking us to Roy's, I was intrigued and hopeful.
Roy's got its start 24 years ago when chef Roy Yamaguchi opened his first restaurant that featured a fusion of far eastern and western food fare. Yamaguchi, who was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and a Hawaiian father, spent much of his youth in Tokyo, but often vacationed with his grandparents on Maui. After graduating high school in 1974, Yamaguchi studied at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY, and upon graduation from the C.I.A. he moved to Los Angeles and began a journey of working in some of the finest restaurants in Southern California.
In 1984, Yamaguchi (pictured right) opened the acclaimed 385 North restaurant in Los Angeles - a fusion of European and Far Eastern foods. He was named the California Chef of the Year in 1986 and 1987 and was acclaimed by Bon Appetit magazine for the merging of classic European cuisine with Asian fare.
Yamaguchi moved to Hawaii in 1988 and opened his first Roy's restaurant in a suburb of Honolulu. His vision of Hawaiian cuisine went further than the local stuff that was served to tourists at luau's. Yamaguchi melded the bountiful local foods from sea and land with classic European cuisine to create a new concept in Hawaiian regional foods. Yamaguchi then partnered with 11 other Hawaiian chefs (including Beverly Gannon and Peter Merriman) to develop "Hawaiian Regional Cuisine" - a concept that raised the bar when it came to using locally raised foods in Hawaii. The chefs worked together to conceive and promote Hawaiian cuisine as something more than Spam and poi.
Food and Wine Magazine proclaimed Roy's as "Honolulu's crown jewel of east-west eateries." Conde Nast Traveler named Roy's as one of their Top 50 restaurants in America in 1991 and 1992. Yamaguchi garnered the James Beard Award for best chef in the Northwest/Pacific in 1993, the first Hawaiian-based chef to win the prestigious award. Yamaguchi partnered with Hawaiian Public Television to produce a show called, "Hawaii Cooks with Roy Yamaguchi", a cooking show featuring Hawaiian Regional Cuisine that ran for six years and was seen on 200 PBS television stations in all 50 states.
After opening his second Roy's location in 1992, Roy's looked to expand to the U.S. mainland opening his first restaurant outside Hawaii in the mid-90's. Yamaguchi partnered with OSI Restaurants in Tampa to develop the mainland locations (OSI also owns Outback Steakhouse, Carraba's, Fleming's Steakhouse and Bonefish Grill). OSI and Yamaguchi mutually own the 22 mainland locations and Yamaguchi solely owns the six Hawaiian Roy's, as well as the one in Guam and the one in his native Japan.
The Las Vegas Roy's Hawaiian Fusion opened in 2000 and I'd seen it a few times as I drove by it on Flamingo (see map), but never really paid attention to it until after going to Hawaii in 2010. Many of the Roy's locations feature a chef who is also a minor partner in the location. Percy Oani was the longtime executive chef partner at the Flamingo location, but recently left that location to become chef partner at the La Jolla, CA Roy's location. The former sous chef at the Flamingo location, Quy Trinh, became the chef partner at the west Las Vegas Roy's location in 2010, but was named chef partner for the Flamingo location after Oani left to go to California in 2011.
Upon arrival, we were escorted to a private room toward the back of Roy's. A prix fixe menu with Cambridge Audio's name at the top were placed on the table - a nice little touch by Roy's, if you ask me. The table was set for 16, but a couple three people from both our company and from Cambridge Audio couldn't make the dinner due to previous commitments. I sat next to Peter Brown, the C.O.O. from Cambridge Audio and we immediately began to reminisce about our great dinner at Morton's during his trip to Chicago last fall. "That was one of the most fabulous steaks I've ever ate," Peter said. "I'm looking forward to coming back out to Chicago sometime."
We had a couple servers for the evening and one of them came around to take our drink order. Roy's has a number of signature drinks including their house mai tai. I got one of those. It was just OK - it seemed to be a little short on rum. I had better mai tai's in Hawaii. I switched to a red wine after that - one that they had ordered for the table and which I forgot to take a picture of to remember the name. Actually, the wine was very good.
The first course of the evening was brought out to the table. It was a medley of appetizers including Szechuan Baby Back Ribs, seared shrimp on a skewer, lobster potstickers, and a Hawaiian ahi poke that was sided with a spicy rayu sauce along with wakame salad (wakame is a Japanese/Korean sea grown green) blended with sea salt from the Hawaiian island of Molokai.
The ahi poke was the best of the lot. It was seared on the outside and was very flavorful. The rayu sauce, which is basically a sesame seed oil infused with hot chiles, gave the ahi a good spicy bite to the taste. The rest of the appetizers were rather pedestrian. The skewered shrimp were underwhelming. The lobster potstickers were just OK, as well. They were topped with a miso butter sauce that was pretty nondescript. And the ribs had a smoky Szechuan taste, but were sort of tough and unappealing after the first bite.
The next part of the meal featured the salad. It was a plate of mixed greens topped with a lilikoi dressing, bleu cheese crumbles, onions and pecans. Now, I love anything to do with lilikoi - I fell in love with anything to do with lilikoi when we were in Hawaii. Lilikoi margaritas, lilikoi syrup - lilikoi goes with anything and makes it that much better. But the lilikoi dressing at Roy's was underwhelming. There was a hint of sweetness like you get with lilikoi, but it didn't have that WOW taste that I'd grown to love with lilikoi.
The main entrees for the prix fixe menu are similar to what you would find on the regular menu at Roy's. While many items are the same from Roy's location to Roy's location, each chef is allowed to infuse their own signature items on their local menu. The prix fixe menu allowed choices from five different entrees including an 8 oz. beef filet, blackened ahi, and a macadamia nut encrusted mahi mahi. All three I considered before I opted for the blackened ahi.
Here's my blackened ahi, which I'm not certain it was blackened at all. It was topped with some pickled cabbage - it may have been bok choy - and placed upon a bed of rice and a green leaf, also indescribable, with a pool of spicy soy mustard butter sauce which didn't seem to be all that spicy.
The ahi tuna, although not blackened the way I think of blackened fish, was still fresh and flavorful. It was a thick chunk of fish, almost two and a half inches thick. It had a great texture to it and had a little bit of marbling for that fatty tuna taste that is oh so good. I was happy with my ahi filet, other than the fact that it wasn't blackened and the sauce was rather bland.
However, others at the end of the table who got the ahi tuna weren't happy with it. My colleague John felt the tuna was "fishy" in taste and not all that great. A couple of the Cambridge Audio guys - Brits who know a little bit about fish - also felt their ahi tuna was not up to par.
Peter, who was seated next to me, got the macadamia nut encrusted mahi mahi. He declared it to be "excellent". I was not keen on macadamia nuts before our trip to Hawaii, but quickly fell in love with those rich tasting morsels when we were on the Big Island. But I'm not certain that I'd care for them with fish.
A nice touch to end the evening was a dessert tray (which I didn't participate in) and some champagne, complements of the guys at Cambridge Audio. We toasted our friendship and the hope for a stellar year in 2012. It was a good evening all the way around.
Even with mixed reviews from those in our party, I thought my meal at Roy's Hawaiian Fusion was interesting and above average. But I'm not certain that in the future I'd seek out a Roy's to have a meal. I don't know, I always have trouble finishing posts like this. I did like Roy's, but it didn't trip my trigger as some place that I absolutely have to go back to. If someone suggests going to Roy's in the future, I won't say no. But I may look for alternatives first.
Once again, I'm sorry that I don't have the name of the person who sent me an e-mail last summer telling me that I had to go to Woodyard Barbeque on the Kansas side of Kansas City. I do remember that I was told that it wasn't much to look at as far as atmosphere is concerned, but to overlook all that because the food was pretty good. On one trip to Kansas City just before the end of the year, I had dinner at Woodyard Barbeque on Merriam Lane in Kansas City, KS. (see map) Merriam Lane runs parallel to Interstate 35, just before it meets up with Interstate 635 that takes people from Johnson County in Kansas up to Kansas City International Airport. I used to make that run years and years ago when I worked for a company in southwest suburban Olathe for about five years back in the 80's when I first started to travel for work. I know I had passed Woodyard Barbeque hundreds of times over the years on trips to Kansas City, but it turns out that it has only been open as a full time barbeque house for about 10 years.
It was a cold night when I drove down Merriam Lane past warehouses, industrial businesses and other non-descript commercial buildings. Set back from a street a bit is the old farm house that serves as the nerve center for Woodyard Barbeque. I drove past the place and then doubled back and pulled into the parking lot in front of the place. There was a faint smell of smoky wood in the air and it was coming from the large brick smoker located in front of the house. It was the smoke remnants of the meat that was cooked earlier in the day.
There is an outside patio - actually a couple of them that I saw. There's one that attached to the front of the house and another one across the lane from the house to the west. The patios feature picnic tables and antique-looking metal tables and chairs. It was very rustic in its appearance. Since it was cold, of course, no one was seated outside. But I was told that in the summertime, especially on the weekends, the patios can get packed.
The inside of the main building for Woodyard Barbeque featured a small dining room next to the counter where you order your food. A couple guys were in there enjoying their barbeque at the old farm-style wooden tables. A large picture of Guy Fieri, host of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on the Food Network. I went up to the counter and a guy greeted me. I said, "Guy's been here?"
He said, "Oh, yeah. He did a piece on us a couple years ago." I found the video for Woodyard Barbeque from Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives on You Tube:
Even though there was a big board with all the food they do at Woodyard Barbeque, the guy at the counter asked if I needed a menu. I did and he pointed out some basic printed menus in a bin on the wall next to the counter. He asked, "First time here?"
I told him it was and that I had been told about this place by someone. I said, "This place looks pretty interesting and it smells pretty good, so far."
He told me that Woodyard Barbeque had been at this location for over 60 years, and they'd been doing barbeque for about 30 years. And just within the past 10 years that they started to sell barbeque full time.
The genesis of Woodyard Barbeque began back in 1913 when Frank Schloegel (pronounced SCHLAY-gul) opened the Southside Coal Company near the Westport area of Kansas City where he and his son, Frank, Jr., sold heating coal to customers around Kansas City. Once fuel oil took over for coal heating, Frank, Jr. moved the business to the current location in the 50's and changed the name to Southside Patio and Wood. He sold wood for customers that still needed wood for heat, but he also sold patio bricks, lawn ornaments, sand and other things that people would ask for.
With the advent of the barbeque craze in Kansas City, Frank, Jr. began to provide other barbecue joints in the area the apple, pecan, cherry, hickory or oak wood they used to cook their barbeque. During the weekends, Frank, Jr. would fire up his grill and cook free food for his customers over the wood that he supplied to other barbeque vendors.
His son, Frank III, took over the business and continued the practice of smoking meats on the weekend. But he took it a step farther as he began to smoke meats for charity fundraisers and church groups. Because his smoked meat was so good, Frank III was pressured into opening a restaurant that served barbeque. Initially, it was only opened on weekends, but about 10 years ago, Frank Schloegel IV - yep, the fourth generation son, decided to open through the week (they're closed on Sundays).
It became a family thing for the Schloegels - Frank IV's sisters helped lay bricks in the patio out front. His cousin helped with the design of the large brick smoker and his brother-in-law helped him build it. Today, Frank IV's cousin Mark O'Bryan is the pitmaster, smoking the meats on a nearly daily basis. And former manager Joe Daly is now a co-owner of the place along with Frank Schloegel IV.
I'm not certain, but it may have very well been Joe Daly at the counter that particular visit. He was showing me pictures of Frank Schloegel III who still comes in from time to time to talk barbeque with the steady customers they get in the summertime. "Wintertime, we're a little more slow at night," he told me. "But we still have a pretty good lunch crowd. And we do a bunch of Christmas-time catering. We can do groups as small as 10 or as large as 10,000."
I looked through the menu, trying to find some sort of a sampler platter. They had the usual ribs, brisket, pulled pork, chicken, turkey, ham, and sausage on the menu. They had a combo that had two ribs, a chicken leg, sausage and brisket. I'm not big on smoked chicken and I would have rather had pulled pork than sausage. Just under that, they had a four meat combo platter. I took the pulled pork, ham and double brisket. "You don't want any burnt ends," he asked me.
"Naw," I replied. "I know a lot of people think of burnt ends as a delicacy, but I've never warmed up to 'em."
He said, "We have a burnt end chili that is to die for." I told him that I thought I had enough food for that particular visit. But at the last moment, I asked if I could get a couple baby-back rib samples - they sold them for $1.75 each. He asked me what side I wanted and I took their baked beans over cheesy corn, potato salad or cole slaw. I grabbed a couple beers to take to my table while I waited for the food to show up.
The guy brought out the meet platter and the ribs about five minutes after I ordered them. Man, this was a lot of food for $13.50! He told me that the barbecue sauce was over by the door. They had two different types of homemade sauces - an original that was a sweet Kansas City style, and a hot that had a sweet and peppery taste. The guy seated at the table near the sauce dispensers said to me, "The hot isn't all that hot." He was right - it had a little spiciness to it, but it wasn't overpowering in heat.
I dug in and grabbed a rib first. Big and thick with succulent pork, the ribs are dry rubbed with a homemade concoction that includes garlic, cayenne, sea salt, lemon pepper and three spices that you don't normally associate with barbeque - ground cloves, ground cardamom and ground tumeric, three spices you'd usually find in Indian food. The meat was moist, tender and pulled effortlessly off the bone.One thing they don't do at Woodyard Barbeque is pull the skin off the back of the ribs like other places will. It helps keep the moisture in and it's easy to peel off during the eating process. (I'm gonna have to try that the next time I do ribs. I have a good friend who taught me to take the skin off. It's a pain in the ass to do, but he says that's the way to do it. I may beg to differ after having the ribs at Woodyard Barbeque.) The combination of the faint smoke taste and the rub concoction gave the baby back rib a wonderful taste sensation. It was very good even without any sauce added to it. I made quick work of the two ribs I had.
I dug into the pulled pork next. It may have been some of the best pulled pork that I'd ever had. It was moist, flavorful and had a hint of smoke. With a little bit of the homemade hot sauce, it was fabulous. I immediately wished I would have gotten a double portion of the pulled pork instead of the brisket.
The brisket was, eh! Actually, it was a little cold as it wasn't heated up enough (I'm sure they smoke a lot of their meat and refrigerate it as a number of barbecue houses do these days). It was OK, but it was far from the best brisket I ever had. I was disappointed in the brisket, to say the least.
The ham was very good, but not anywhere as good as the pulled pork. The ham was thinly sliced, had a great cured smoke flavor to it. I was sort of craving ham that particular day and I'm glad I got it.
The baked beans were good, not outstanding, but good enough. They were good without adding any additional barbeque sauce, as I like to do. But they weren't anything special, even with the sauce.
I got back up to get some more barbecue sauce and by this time another gentleman had joined the guy at the table next to the sauce dispensers. I heard him say, "Man, I love this chili!" I looked over and he had a bowl of Woodyard Barbeque's famous burnt end chili and it did look very good. It had large chunks of pork burnt ends, and was thick and rich. I thought about taking some to go with me and heating it up in the morning in the microwave. But after I finished what I could of my meal, I decided that I'd come back and get pulled pork and a bowl of chili the next time.
So, my scorecard for Woodyard BBQ - Baby back ribs = Excellent. Pulled pork = May have been the best pulled pork I've ever had. Ham = Above average. Brisket = Below average. Sauces = Average. Baked Beans = Average. Ambiance = Interesting. History = Overly interesting.
Woodyard Barbeque is not a fancy place, even for a regular Kansas City-style barbeque joint. If you can get past the fact that it's a little rugged and rustic, the food at Woodyard Barbeque was - overall - very good. I even left with a smoky wood smell on my clothes. The ribs and pulled pork more than made up for the short fall in the quality of the brisket. Next time, I'm going for more pulled pork and a bowl of chili.
When I get the time when I go to St. Louis, I like to go to Urzi's Market on The Hill to pick up fresh spices, bread crumbs, fresh parmesan cheese and/or olive oil. (See my entry on Urzi's here.) Next door to Urzi's is a small Italian restaurant, Lou Boccardi's. It's been there as long as I've been going to Urzi's, which is getting close to 15 years by now. I've been in Urzi's at times when you could smell the pizza cooking next door. I've always wanted to try a pizza at Lou Boccardi's. On a trip to St. Louis just before Christmas last December, I needed to stop at Urzi's. Since it was early in the afternoon and I needed to get some lunch, I stopped into Lou Boccardi's to try it out. (See map)
Born and raised near Naples, Italy, just before the Second World War, Luigi Boccardi and his younger brother, Guiseppe, came to the United States hoping to find a better place in life. They ended up in St. Louis helping a cousin work in an Italian restaurant. Guiseppe - "Joe" - eventually opened a pizza restaurant in far southwest suburban Eureka in 1971. Today, Joe Boccardi's has three restaurants around the greater St. Louis area.
Luigi "Lou" Boccardi opened his little Italian restaurant on the Hill in 1972 using old family recipes. Much of the pasta and the sauces were made in-house, and the pizza dough was made from scratch each day. Even their sausage was made in-house using a family recipe with specific spices. Lou Boccardi made thin-crust Neapolitan style pizzas that people from all over would come to try. He was even known to freeze some of his pizzas and send them to people hundreds of miles away.
Lou Boccardi passed away in 1985 and his daughter, Lilly, bought the business ten years later. It's still the same as it was when it opened 40 years ago this year.
It was around 1 p.m. through the middle of the week when I stopped into Lou Boccardi's. The lady behind the bar asked me if I wanted to sit at the bar or at a table in the upper level. I decided to sit at the bar since it was bright outside and I could easily read my St. Louis Post Dispatch that I brought in to read during lunch. The bar area was decorated in festive Christmas ornaments and lights. Large, antique wooden soldier nutcrackers stood at the far end of the bar by the window.
Lou Boccardi's, compared to other restaurants on the Hill, is tiny. Next to the bar area is a small eating area consisting of four or five small tables and chairs (above right). The tables look like they'd be pretty small if you had four people eating pizza or Italian entrees on them.
Upstairs are two small dining rooms off the side of the kitchen (right). Both have the same small tables as the dining area off the side of the bar has. The rooms were small, quaint and cozy. It was like stepping back into a small Italian restaurant in the 40's or 50's.
Looking through the menu, Lou Boccardi's is not unlike many of the other Italian restaurants on the Hill. They have the main Italian dishes you'll normally find at any Italian restaurant. But I was there for the pizza. Through the week, Lou Boccardi's has a lunch special where you can order a 9" pizza and a side salad for $9.95. I ordered my standard sausage, pepperoni and mushroom. The very pleasant lady asked me what dressing I wanted on my salad and I asked what were their house dressings. She said, "Well, we have two. We have a house Italian and a homemade celery - anchovy."
I said, "Wait a minute. Celery and anchovy?"
She said, "Oh yes. We puree the anchovies and celery in a little bit of olive oil. It's really refreshing. Some people don't like it, but I sure do." I asked if I could get both on the side. She said it would be no problem.
I was a little apprehensive of the anchovy/celery dressing. When she brought out the salad, the small tub of green dressing looked more like soupy guacamole. I dipped a little of the lettuce into the dressing and I was pleasantly surprised with the taste. It was very refreshing on the tongue. I didn't get that fishy anchovy taste, nor did I get a overpowering celery taste to the dressing. It was like the two canceled each other out and created this light, lively taste. I tried some of the Italian dressing and it was similar to a lot of other sweet oil and vinegar dressings you find on the Hill. I went with the anchovy/celery dressing, mopping the remaining bits of it out of the small container with a piece of fresh Italian bread.
Not long after I finished my salad, the lady brought out a small rectangular baking pan that had my small pizza in it. The pizza itself was more rectangular than round and large chunks of mushrooms (canned, not fresh) along with multiple slices of pepperoni were on top. I had a hard time finding the sausage, however, and an even more hard time tasting them on the pizza. They were there, but the sausage was very bland in taste.
Another small problem with the pizza was that it was a typical St. Louis-style pizza with creamy provel cheese rather than mozzarella. Honestly, I don't mind provel cheese on pizza, but I'd rather have mozzarella. I told the lady when she asked how my pizza was after a couple pieces that I forgot that I was in St. Louis and they use provel on their pizzas here. I asked if mozzarella was available - on my next visit - and she said, "Well, yeah, we can put mozzarella on there for you. But it would be an additional charge."
I said, "An additional charge instead of provel?"
"No," she replied. Then she changed her mind, "Yes!" I was confusing her and she was confusing me. She said, "You know, all these pizza places around here use provel."
I said, "Well, yes, but I know of a couple three around the Hill where you can request mozzarella instead of provel."
She said, "Really? Where?"
I couldn't remember the name of the places at the time, but I've had mozzarella on pizzas at Milo's, Guido's, and Rigazzi's, all within walking distance from Lou Boccardi's.
Now, I really want to say that I liked the pizza at Lou Boccardi's, but I really can't. The sauce was good, but I wasn't really in the mood for provel cheese that particular day. The sausage was lifeless and bland, but the pepperoni slices had a nice spiciness to them. The mushrooms were processed and didn't add much to the whole taste of the pizza. But the crust was thin, but not so thin that it was "cheese on a cracker" as some thin-crust detractors like to call St. Louis-style pizza. The pizza was just OK, at best - definitely not the best on the Hill.
While I should go back and try it again with mozzarella cheese, I can think of about six or seven other places I'd rather go back to in St. Louis before I'd go back to Lou Boccardi's. I really did like the quaint atmosphere at the restaurant, although it looked like it could be a little tight in there if the restaurant was full. But the cozy atmosphere doesn't help if the food isn't good. Now, the anchovy/celery dressing was outstanding. I don't know about their pasta dishes, but I wasn't overly impressed with their pizza. And that's too bad. One of these days down the road I'll probably stop back into Lou Boccardi's to try a pizza with mozzarella cheese on it. But it will be much further down the road.
Back in the 1960's, a number of - what was then - upscale steakhouse chains popped up across the nation offering good food in a wholesome family atmosphere. If you're over the age of 40, you probably remember Stuart Anderson's Cattle Company, Mr. Steak and Boar's Head, to name a few. All of those companies have gone out of business years ago, but one steakhouse name from the 60's that I do remember is Cork 'N Cleaver. It turns out there's still a Cork 'N Cleaver in Fort Wayne, IN and when I was out there with my colleague, Simon, for a presentation at Sweetwater we had dinner there one evening.
The first Cork 'N Cleaver opened in 1964 in the Phoenix area offering high quality steaks, seafood and chops in a casual and cozy Southwestern ranch-style setting. The concept was so popular that there were soon well over 80 locations in over two dozen states. In the mid-70's, the Chart House restaurant chain bought the Cork 'N Cleaver brand. Changing food attitudes spelled the demise for many steakhouse restaurants like Cork 'N Cleaver and the beginning of the end of many of the locations happened in the 80's. Chart House began to close Cork 'N Cleaver locations beginning in the early 80's and by the early 90's there were just three locations left - Fort Wayne, Evansville, IN and Kalamazoo, MI. (The original Phoenix location is still open, but was not part of the chain.)
In 1994, a young executive for Chart House restaurants, Wally Seward, bought the remaining three Cork 'N Cleaver locations from the corporation and moved his family from Daytona Beach to Fort Wayne. Quite seriously, that had to be both a cultural and climate shock for the Seward family. But Seward believed in the Cork 'N Cleaver concept and wanted to keep the name going. After all, he got his start in the restaurant business with Cork 'N Cleaver.
Wally Seward - pictured right
In 1975, Seward was a student at Jacksonville University in Florida when he took a job working at the local Cork 'N Cleaver location as a server. It was there where he met his future wife, Ellen, who was a hostess at the restaurant. Over the years, both Wally and Ellen earned promotions that took them to a number of Cork 'N Cleaver locations working in many levels of capacity. When Chart House bought the Cork 'N Cleaver restaurants, Wally became a Cork 'N Cleaver restaurant manager at locations in Kansas City and Orlando, then became a regional manager in Atlanta and in Cincinnati before becoming the V-P of Operations for Chart House at the young age of 34. He was 41 when he moved his wife and their three young kids to Fort Wayne.
Unfortunately, Wally Seward tragically passed away in 2007 at the very young age of 53 leaving Ellen and his son, Josh, to run the restaurant. Josh had gone to college to learn restaurant management so he could follow in his father's footsteps. He just didn't think that he was going to have to run the restaurant sooner than later.
I had picked up Simon at the airport earlier in the evening and we were at the hotel figuring out where we wanted to go eat dinner. It was a Sunday night and we knew that most restaurants wouldn't be all that busy - or we ASSUMED they wouldn't be that busy - so we didn't bother making reservations anywhere. When we finally decided to go to Cork 'N Cleaver, a restaurant Simon had eaten at before during his previous visits to Sweetwater, we took off for the 15 minute drive to the steakhouse. When we pulled into the parking lot at the location along Washington Center Road (see map) we found a very packed lot full of cars. I said to Simon, "Maybe we should have made reservations."
We went inside and found that it was, indeed, packed. The hostess told us that it would be a 10 to 15 minute wait, which wasn't that bad. I said to her, "We figured that on a Sunday night we wouldn't need reservations."
She sort of snottily replied, "We strongly suggest reservations at all times." It was like I was just talked down to by a maitre d' at a high-end Chicago or New York restaurant rather than some 20-something part-time hostess at a restaurant in Fort Wayne.
When we were finally seated, it was in one of the myriad of dining areas throughout the Cork 'N Cleaver restaurant. We were near the salad bar and in kind of a high traffic area. There seemed to be a lot of birthday celebrations going on in the restaurant involving families. And there also seemed to be a number of older people dining in the restaurant.
Our server for the evening, Pamela, greeted us and sat down the menu for that evening. It was literally engraved on a meat cleaver, not a sharp meat cleaver, but a real meat cleaver. It featured, of course, steaks and seafood, along with chicken and pork entrees. The only problem is that only one person could look at it at a time as there was just one. I wasn't certain that I liked the clever cleaver concept (I just couldn't wait to write that).
Pamela asked us if we wanted to start out with an appetizer and Simon said that he fancied the seared tuna with wasabi - six one-ounce pieces of sushi grade tuna, seared rare, drizzled with a wasabi sauce and served with kimchee cabbage and ginger. OK, that sounded good to me, as well.
While we were waiting for the tuna to show up, I looked long at hard at the cleaver menu to figure out what I wanted to get that evening. I definitely wanted a steak and the first thing that popped up on my screen was the Pepper Steak - a 14-ounce New York strip that is rolled in cracked peppercorns and marinated overnight. (They didn't say what it was marinated in.) However, it was served on a bed of grilled onions and topped with a brown sauce. (It didn't say what kind of brown sauce, so I figured it was just a gravy.) It sounded good except for the onions and the sauce.
They also had prime rib on the menu and I hadn't had prime rib in a long, long time preferring to eat more lean cuts of beef when I've gone out. But the 10 oz. prime rib sounded pretty good that evening.
Simon had his eye on the coffee-encrusted filet. He remembered that I had the coffee-encrusted filet at Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill restaurant in Vegas earlier this year. "You didn't like it, if I remember," Simon said.
I said, "I don't know if it wasn't that I didn't like it as much as I was disappointed that we had a fixed menu and what I really wanted to order that night wasn't available." Actually, it was pretty good.
Pamela came back with the seared tuna appetizer and asked if we were ready to order. I pretty much had made up my mind to do the pepper steak, but I wasn't sold on the grilled onions and the sauce on top. I asked if I could just get the regular New York strip rolled in the cracked peppercorns, then grilled. She said, "Well, the regular New York strip isn't marinated overnight." I asked if I could get the Pepper Steak without the onions and the sauce on the side and she said, "Sure!" Then she asked, "Would you like sauteed mushrooms to go along with it?" I couldn't say no!
Simon ordered the ground coffee filet with some rice pilaf. Pamela asked if we wanted any other sides and she made some suggestions including garlic mashed potatoes with crab meat. Oooo... That sounded good. I ordered that for Simon and I to share.
The seared ahi tuna appetizer was quite good, actually. It was served with both soy-sauce and a sort of honey-mustard sauce along with the kimshee. We both got three pieces each and it was a nice start to the meal. The tuna was very flavorful and delicious. It was a very good start to the dinner.
Along with the meal, we got Cork 'N Cleaver's "award winning" salad bar. I had forgotten my phone back at the hotel, so Simon did the honors of taking pictures of the meal for me. He tried to do his best in capturing the essence of the salad bar, but the back lighting was just too intense. The salad bar was really nothing special above and beyond any type of salad bar I've encountered at any similar steakhouses. The most notable exception was the sweet raspberry vinaigrette dressing that I got. Simon was just amazed. "I can't believe you got that dressing," he exclaimed. "It was more like raspberry jam!" It wasn't bad, but I wouldn't get it again if I went back. Simon got the homemade creamy bleu cheese dressing for his salad and he said it was good.
Pamela came back to pick up our salad plates after we were finished and let us know that our steaks were coming shortly. I ordered up two glasses of the Franciscan cabernet for Simon and I to enjoy with our meal. She brought them out the just before our steaks showed up on the table.
When our steaks came out, we were ready to eat. My steak wasn't covered in peppercorns the way I had envisioned it to be when I ordered. But it was rare with a cool center when I cut into it. I still don't know what they marinated the steak in, but it was pleasant enough to the taste and the meat was very juicy. I dipped a couple pieces of the steak in the brown sauce I had off to the side and I'm glad I didn't get it on top of the steak. While it wasn't bad, it would over overpowered the taste of the steak and I'm glad I decided to just get it on the side.
Simon poked at his steak and cut into it to make sure it was rare enough for him. He took a bite and said, "This isn't coffee. This is pepper." He sort of shrugged his shoulders and decided to eat it as is. It, too, was a perfect rare with the cool center. He was happy with what he got.
The sauteed mushrooms were a good complement to the steak, but the highlight of the meal had to be the garlic mashed potatoes with the crab meat. It was absolutely fabulous. I put it in between Simon and I and we took turns dipping into the potatoes and crab meat. The crab meat was chunky and you could easily taste it in the mix. I said, "You know, this is so stupidly easy to make at home. I don't know why I haven't made this before."
It was a lot of food and I had trouble finishing my steak. I don't know if it was from the meal or what, but I had some gastric uncomfort for the next couple of days while we were in Fort Wayne. I finally began to feel better around noon a couple days later. The steak was so large and so rich that it probably aided in my discomfort.
I can see why people in Fort Wayne flock to Cork 'N Cleaver. The service was very good, Pamela did a fine job in taking care of us. The food was good, definitely above average. I've had better steaks at other places, but the steak I had at Cork 'N Cleaver was tasty enough, although there was a lot of fat on it and it got tough to cut in some places. But you could get that anywhere. The atmosphere at the restaurant was fine enough, relaxing and inviting. I'm sure I'll be coming back out to Fort Wayne at some point and while I may not go out of my way to go have dinner at Cork 'N Cleaver, I could see myself going back for a good meal.
Late last year, I put on a new Focal dealer in a small town near Springfield, IL. I was at the store doing training one evening and was going to take the group out for dinner afterward. However, the owner went home sick and the rest of the staff either had family obligations, other plans or, in one guy's case, had to go work at a second job. I went back to Springfield and settled into my hotel, sort of cold and hungry. I decided to go out and scope what was in the general area for food establishments and I happened upon a Smokey Bones barbecue place just down the road on Dirksen Parkway from where I was staying. (See map).
Smokey Bones is a somewhat regional chain of nearly 70 restaurants located in 17 states - primarily in the Southeast. Based out of Orlando, the original Smokey Bones restaurant was opened in 1999 by the Darden Restaurant Group, the same corporation that owns Red Lobster and Olive Garden (two restaurants that I'll never go in), but they also own the upscale Capital Grille steakhouse chains and the very good and not so upscale LongHorn Steakhouse restaurants (both of which I'll happily eat at). The original concept of a Smokey Bones restaurant was to have barbecue served in a somewhat Northwoods lodge appearing structure, complete with pine paneling and high ceilings, with stone-hearth fire places. It was somewhat out of character for a place like that to get its start in Orlando, but with Darden's money behind the restaurant they began to grow and branch out with franchises across Florida and the Southeast.
In 2007, Darden sold their interest in Smokey Bones to Barbecue Integrated, an off-shoot of the huge Sun Capital Partners investment company based out of Boca Raton, FL. Many of the Smokey Bones locations have been upgraded in their look and feel, getting away from the rustic, mountain lodge theme and going to a more contemporary decor.
The one in Springfield still had the mountain lodge motif going for it. The main dining room featured booths with wood backs with similar wood paneling on the walls. It as well lit and it seemed comfortable enough.
I took a seat at the bar and waited for the bartender to acknowledge me. She was the only one behind the bar and most of the people eating at Smokey Bones that evening (after 8 p.m.) were seated at the bar. There were two ladies to my right - a mother who worked as a waitress at Smokey Bones, and her 20-something daughter who was there to pick her up, but was also getting something to eat. How did I know all this? They were loud in their conversation and their banter back and forth was so rapid fire that I thought I'd walked into a Gilmore Girls episode.
The bartender stood there and conversed with the lady and her daughter for about a couple three minutes, completely overlooking the fact that I was seated two spots away with neither a menu or a beer - two things I wanted and wanted right friggin' now! When she finally came over, she was all nonchalant and folksy, like I'd just sat down seconds before instead of about five minutes prior. I did get a menu and I did get a beer.
The menu at Smokey Bones is nothing overly special - it was typical of a chain with a number of appetizers, sandwiches and burgers, chicken entrees, pasta and seafood, and, of course, barbecue with steaks and chops. Places like this with large and varied menus scare me because they do so much that they can't do everything really well. They can only usually get the food "good enough".
I was in the mood to try their barbecue that evening and in most cases at barbecue places I've not been to before, I like to do the combination platter. Smokey Bones had a combination where you could choose three meats from a list of brisket, pulled pork, smoked sausage, chicken and turkey that are slow smoked. But you could also choose from chicken fingers, smoked chicken wings, deep fried chicken wings or a grilled chicken breast. I'd never seen those items on a barbecue combination menu before.
I looked briefly at getting one of the rib combos - a 1/3 rack of Smokey Bones baby back or St. Louis-style ribs with your choice of pulled pork, brisket or sliced smoked turkey. I would have rather liked to buy the ribs individually by the bone as some barbecue joints will do. But not at Smokey Bones.
The bartender, busy as she was, came back long before I was ready to order. I found that was a mistake as when I was ready to order, she was too busy to come to me now. I left my empty beer glass toward the bar side of the top and waited for her to show back up. She was getting a number of "to-go" orders for people who had called ahead and were waiting at the bar for the pick-up. When she finally did get back to me, I ordered the three meat combo, but I only wanted brisket and pulled pork. So I did double brisket for two of my meat choices and the pulled pork for the third. She said I got a couple sides to go along with the barbecue, so I took baked beans (always have to try the baked beans) and the cole slaw.
When my meal made it out to me, I was ready to eat. It had been a long day of travel, meetings and trainings. Smokey Bones has four different types of barbecue sauce available - a sweet sauce, a hot sauce that is a little more subdued in sweetness and more tangy than hot, then there was a sauce that was a vinegar and tomato based, and a Carolina mustard sauce. I'm not big on the mustard sauces for barbecue, so I didn't try it. I did try the vinegar sauce and it was just too runny and vinegary for me. I ended up combining the hot sauce and the sweet sauce to try on my barbecue.
The brisket was lean and tasty, but nothing all that special. Actually, it tasted more like a roast beef than a smoked brisket. It was edible, but not the best brisket I've ever had. The pulled pork was similar - nice chunks of pulled pork that had a good flavor to it. I probably should have ordered a double shot of the pulled pork because it was a little bit better than the brisket.
The beans were all right - a little bit of the hot sauce helped zip them up - and the cole slaw was sweet and creamy, actually it wasn't all that bad. For a meal that was close to the hotel, it did all right for me.
Smokey Bones is one of those types of places that you can count on if you're hungry, it's close to your hotel and you don't want to do a lot of research on some of the better local places to try. The food was acceptable to me, but as I said, they try to do so much that they can only do everything just so well. Still, Smokey Bones shouldn't be dismissed as another chain that tries to cater to the masses. The barbecue I had was good in the pinch. At least you hope that the other locations are as consistent as the one in Springfield.
My colleague Todd did a good job of picking out restaurants in Las Vegas this year. One that we went to which was a complete surprise for me was a place that opened last March in the Shoppes at the Palazzo, next door to the Venetian - I ♥ Burgers. After a few hours of setting up displays at the Venetian and the Mirage for CES, we were ready for some dinner. We took the short walk across the way to the Palazzo and after some backtracking and searching, we found I ♥ Burgers.
I ♥ Burgers bills themselves as "a modern take on a classic American burger joint". Just as many gourmet burger places are popping up around Las Vegas, I ♥ Burgers tries to set itself apart from the others with homemade buns, in-house ground beef, bison and turkey, and having one of the largest selection of eclectic beers and drinks in Las Vegas. The restaurant is part of the Fine Concepts group, a group of restaurants and food concessions run by local entrepreneur Jeffrey Fine that also include a number of Jamba Juice locations and a handful of The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf franchises.
I ♥ Burgers executive chef and general manager Errol LeBlanc (pictured right) used to own the R.E. Tapas Kitchen in Las Vegas and has worked at such renown restaurants as the exquisite Aureole at Mandalay Bay, as well as stints at restaurants at the upscale Green Valley Ranch resort and at the heralded Les Artistes steakhouse in the Paris hotel in Vegas that closed up last summer. LeBlanc reportedly worked with 16 different types of bun recipes before settling on the one they use at I ♥ Burgers. They tried 50 different variations of potatoes before settling on a Yukon Gold potato for their French fries. And LeBlanc worked with different blends of beef - primarily steak and brisket - to come up with a consistency in his burgers.
Figuring that we'd be working pretty late getting the bulk of our product up on display, Todd had made the reservations at I ♥ Burgers for 8:30 p.m. However, our fearless leader, Daniel, decreed around 7 p.m. that he was hungry and we had made a significant dent in getting the displays up and running. He asked Todd to see if the restaurant could move the reservation up an hour. Todd called over and since it was a Sunday evening they didn't have any problem fitting us in.
I ♥ Burgers is sort of tough to find in the Shops at the Palazzo. It's up on the second level tucked back in a corner toward the northeast corner of the mall. We were seated at a long table and immediately given menus. The decor of I ♥ Burgers was interesting, the most prominent feature were these large contemporary art mushrooms that seemingly rose from the checkered floor toward the well-lit ceiling. It was a curious decor choice for a burger joint. The open kitchen was toward the back and a contemporary bar area with high chairs was toward the front of hte restaurant. The staff were casually dressed in t-shirts with broad "I ♥ Burgers" across the front. Except a couple of the guys had t-shirts that said "I ♥ Beer". I found out that those shirts were available for $15 bucks. But they were cut small and even their XXL shirts looked snug.
A beer menu was on the table and I immediately began to look through that. I ♥ Burgers had a boat load of eclectic beers to choose from including La Fin du Monde, a beer that I've had up in Montreal, Arrogant Bastard Ale from Stone Brewing Co. in California (Todd had one of those because I'd accused him of being an arrogant bastard earlier in the day), and beers from the Delirium brewery from Belgium. I found one of my all-time favorites on the menu, an Alaskan Amber from the Alaskan Brewery in Juneau, AK.
I ♥ Burgers also features a number of specialty drinks including a bloody mary that had Cajun pork rinds, or pork cracklins, in the concoction with applewood smoked bacon salt on the rim of the glass (didn't know there was such a thing as applewood smoked bacon salt), a number of interesting ice cream drinks including one that had butterscotch schnapps and vodka, and for the adventurous milk shake drinkers - the Blueberry Panshake. They take vanilla ice cream and blend it with pancake batter, blueberries and maple syrup. Man, you want to talk about a gut-bomb!
We were there for the burgers. While the burger menu wasn't deep - they really only had six different burgers to choose from - you can personalize your burger with a number of toppings (for an extra charge) including four different types of cheese, applewood smoked bacon, jalapenos, roasted green chiles, sauteed mushrooms and caramelized onions. A couple three of the burgers caught my eye.
The Oregon Trail burger featured lean ground bison meat with aged cheddar cheese, a variety of veggies, and roasted garlic aioli on a wheat bun. The Dante had toppings of American bleu cheese, caramelized onion and the roasted garlic aioli. And the I ♥ Bacon burger had applewood smoked bacon ground up with angus beef, then the patty was topped with strips of bacon, mayo with bacon bits, smoked gouda cheese, onion strings and served onI ♥ Burgers' homemade brioche bun. It all sounded good.
I ended up getting the Standard Burger - ground angus with lettuce, beefsteak tomato and red onion on top - then added a fried egg, pepperjack cheese and roasted green chiles. I didn't order fries, but some of the guys near me did. I ♥ Burgers has their regular Yukon Gold fries, as well as sweet potato fries and parmesan garlic fries. The parmesan garlic fries got my attention and there was enough of all three ordered that we all could enjoy the different styles of fries.
The burgers and fries came to the table and I was ready to eat. A hard fried egg was on top of my burger, which was topped with the pepperjack cheese. The only problem was that I couldn't find the roasted green chiles. I asked one of the ever present waitstaff got get the green chiles on the side and he protested that they had to be on the burger. I looked underneath the patty, then underneath the veggies and didn't find them. When he brought out a small side of the green chiles, I immediately realized that what I was seeing on the bottom bun were the green chiles. They were in roasted strips and not in chopped up fashion that I expected. I was sort of embarrassed.
The burger, itself, was good. The patty was lean, but not overcooked. The egg gave it a nice overall taste to the burger and the smokiness of the green chiles gave it a nice little after-bite on the taste buds. The brioche bun was light and moist, and didn't overpower the the burger. The lettuce and tomato were OK - I ended up taking them off halfway through the meal, and they only gave me about three or four small rings of red onion. But that was more than enough as they were very pungent.
The regular Yukon Gold fries were served in a basket with checkered wax paper, just like the burgers. They were a thin cut and crispy to the bite. They were good, but not overly outstanding. I tried some of the garlic/parmesan cheese fries and, they too, were good, but nothing to write home about. Actually, the best of the three types of fries we had at the table were the sweet potato fries. They had a nice crispiness on the outside and were light and flaky on the inside. They had a wonderful, rich taste to them. Rich, as in filling.
Todd got the Oregon Trail bison burger (below left), but had it topped with avocado and got a side of jalapenos. He said, "This is pretty good. I like the avocado taste. Very fresh." I tried some of the jalapenos on my burger and they were pretty mild. The roasted green chiles were better.
My colleague John was seated next to me on the other side and he got the Dante (above right). I almost got that as I wanted to try the combination of the bleu cheese and the garlic aioli. John said his burger was good, but that the bleu cheese overpowered the taste of the garlic aioli. I sort of wondered if it would.
Todd got thumbs up from all of us for pickingI ♥ Burgers for our opening dinner at CES. The burgers were good, service was very good and the beer list was outstanding. It was a great night to relax and get everyone together, even though we'd all just been in Montreal about three weeks before. Still, we've got a great team that works hard and a boss that loves to see us all have a good time when we get together. And I ♥ Burgers was a very good time.
I really can't tell you about the first time I ate at an El Maguey Mexican restaurant in the St. Louis area. It may have been back in 1994 when I was working for a company based out of the far western St. Louis suburb of Chesterfield whose office was near the Spirit of St. Louis Airport in the Chesterfield Valley. I just remember the food being very good and thinking that the pronunciation of the place was "El MAG-way".
A few years later, I was working for a company based out of St. Peters, another far western suburb of St. Louis. The sales manager of the company asked me if I wanted to go eat Mexican for lunch, someplace called "El Ma-GUY". He said it was over in St. Charles, not far from the office. When we went to the St. Charles location, I said, "Oh, I've eaten at one of these before!" Only I thought it was pronounced El MAG-way."
My sales manager looked at me like I was a complete Midwestern hick. "It's El Ma-GUY!" I am such an uncultured dweeb sometimes. But, then, that was a long time ago...
On a recent trip to St. Louis, I found myself staying in the Chesterfield valley one evening and I found out that there was an El Maguey not far from the hotel. I took a short trip over to the one off of Long Road in the Chesterfield Towne Center, right in the flight path of Spirit of St. Louis airport. (see map)
I can't tell you how many El Maguey's there are in the St. Louis area. I've seen them in Kansas City, Columbia and Springfield, MO. I have eaten at - maybe - six different El Maguey's around the St. Louis area over the years - a couple of them I've been there multiple times in the past. I was somewhat surprised that I'd never written about El Maguey before this.
The name of the restaurant comes from the name of a Mexican plant from which Mezcal is extracted from, then distilled. The maguey plant is a close relative to the agave plant from which top-notch tequila is made from. They extract the Mezcal from the heart of the agave plant known as the "pina". Mezcal is the Mexican liquor in which the worm comes at the bottom of the bottle. But not all Mezcal bottles have the worm - it started out as a mistake in the 30's when an infestation of larvae from a moth that lives in the maguey plant got into some of the bottles during the distilling and bottling process. Some companies then used this as a marketing ploy and began to put the little larvae worms in the bottles with the Mezcal. Today, most of the Mezcal that is produced comes from the Oaxaca region of Mexico. Over 500 distilleries are located in Oaxaco. I had Mezcal one time back in the 70's when I was much younger and much more stupid than I am today. I think I saw Jesus that night...
I don't exactly know when the first El Maguey came into being, but today there are about 40 El Maguey franchise locations in Missouri and Kansas. In doing some research for this entry, the name Martin Leon came up in connection with many of the El Maguey locations from St. Louis to Topeka, KS. I don't know if he was the founder of the original El Maguey, but I'm guessing he has something to do with the overall corporate structure of the company.
When I pulled into the parking lot of the Chesterfield Towne Center that one evening, I immediately remembered that I had eaten at this particular El Maguey location at one point and not all that long ago. It is located less than 100 yards from where the company I used to work for back in the early to mid-90's was located. But the land on which the Chesterfield Towne Center sits today was a large open field back then.
The dining area of this particular El Maguey is open and spacious. The well lit room features a number of tables in the center with booths lining the walls. A young man greeted me when I came in and escorted me to a booth - I remember sitting in the exact same booth on my previous visit - and he handed me a menu.
The first thing I did before he walked away was to order one of El Maguey's large margaritas. I've always liked El Maguey's margaritas - the mix is not too sweet and syrupy like you find at a number of other Mexican restaurants. And they always seem to pack it with a generous amount of tequila. After mixing up this particular margarita and taking a sip, it confirmed my assertion - there was a LOT of tequila in this one.
The menu at El Maguey is really not unlike many other Mexican restaurants that I've been to over the years. We have a lot of Mexican restaurants in the Quad Cities of Iowa and Illinois and the menu at El Maguey could literally be interchanged with some of them. We used to joke that a Number 4 combination and a Number 22 combination on the menu at one of the Azteca locations in the Quad Cities is the same as the Number 4 and the Number 22 at El Maguey. We figured that there had to be one guy who overlords all of the Mexican menus at places like El Maguey and Azteca.
El Maguey features, of course, fajitas that include your choice of beef, chicken, shrimp or chorizo (or all four, if you want). But they also feature a vegetarian fajita and something called the Fajitas del Mar - a seafood fajita entree that features tilapia, shrimp and crab meat. I don't know if I've ever seen a seafood fajita entree on a menu at a Mexican restaurant. I was seriously considering getting that. They also feature a number of Mexican style steak entrees, as well as a number of chicken dishes. Their quesadillas are very good and I do like their Quesadilla Jalisco which consists of El Maguey's succulent grilled shrimp mixed with beans. There's something about El Maguey's shrimp that sets me off. I don't know if it's the seasoning they use or the way they grill it, but the grilled shrimp I've had at any El Maguey is outstanding to my taste buds.
I looked at enchiladas (their Enchilada Maguey - filled with grilled shrimp - is to die for), their burritos (the Burrito Mexicano with pork is excellent, as well) and chimichangas. They have a Carnitas Dinner entree that I've had and is also very good - they take seasoned slow-roasted pork and serve it with rice, beans, guacamole, pico de gallo and grilled onions. And, of course, I had to go through their combinations - over 30 of them - all of which cost $8.25 each.
I was torn between getting something with shrimp and something with pork. I did the best of both worlds with a shrimp chimichanga and a pork taco a la carte. The waiter asked if I wanted my taco with a hard corn shell or a soft flour shell. I went with the soft shell that evening. It wasn't long before both the taco and the chimichanga showed up at my table.
The first thing I ate was the pork taco. It was the slow roasted carnitas style of pork that I like at El Maguey and it was outstanding. A little bit of lettuce and cheese was sprinkled on top and I didn't need to add any of El Maguey's very good salsa to the taco. The succulent taste of the pork jumped out with each bite.
After getting my pork fix for the evening, the shrimp chimichanga was next. It was smaller than the pork or beef tipped chimichangas I've had at an El Maguey in the past. There were - perhaps - 10 medium sized shrimp inside the flour tortilla wrap. And the wrap was entirely too large for the chimichanga. I was getting more of the tortilla with each bite than I was the shrimp, so much so that about halfway through eating the chimichanga that I just started picking the shrimp out of the inside of the chimichanga and eating it like that. Like I say, there's something about the shrimp at an El Maguey's that just sets me off and these were no exception. I wonder if I could just go into El Maguey and order a couple dozen grilled shrimp - no sides - and see what they'd charge me for it.
The beans and rice were serviceable - not much to talk about there. El Maguey's guacamole is above average and they never give me enough when I order a chimichanga from there. I should just order some guacamole dip when I go there and quit bitchin' about not getting enough of the stuff.
El Maguey is always a predictable outcome for me. The food is good and they have a number of items to choose from. The service is good, as well. The chips and salsa are good. The margaritas are good. If you're looking for "good" Mexican food, but nothing outstanding or flashy like you may find at more adventurous Mexican restaurants, El Maguey is going to suit your needs. It's family friendly, fast and efficient, and I've never had a bad experience during all the years I've eaten at an El Maguey. I can see where some people may not like the food, while others will rave about the place. Put me in the middle, but more so to the "rave" end of the spectrum.
I've got a dealer in Milwaukee who is a nice guy and I offered to take him out for lunch on my last visit to that city. He suggested a couple places that were national chains. I told him that I'd rather eat at a place that is either local or, at least, a local chain like The Chancery or The Charcoal Grill. He asked me if I liked seafood and I said I did. He suggested a place up in Brookfield that was a little bit of a drive from his shop - Joey's Seafood and Grill. I asked it was a place that did fish or seafood other than deep fried and he said, "Oh, no. They cook it all different ways."
Joey's Seafood and Grill started as a Canadian chain in 1985. Seeing a need for a smaller seafood restaurant than Red Lobster, but a leap above fast seafood places like Captain D's and Long John Silver's, Joe Klassen opened his first restaurant in Calgary. (Click here for the Canadian web site.) It became an immediate hit and he soon opened more restaurants in Western Canada. By 1992, he began to franchise the Joey's Seafood and Grill and Joey's Only restaurants. Today there are nearly 70 locations from British Columbia to Ontario, each of them offering fresh seafood that can be cooked many different ways - poached, grilled, lightly battered and fried, or blackened with Cajun spices.
In 1995, Joey's began to franchise into the United States using an American company that sold franchise rights for the Canadian company. At one point, there were 19 locations in 13 states, but the economic downturn forced the closure of a number of the restaurants and in 2008 the U.S. franchising arm closed down and sold the U.S. franchise rights back to the Canadian company. A handful of Joey's Seafood and Grill locations stayed open, notably one in Madison, WI (click here for their web site) and the one in suburban Brookfield, both of which are locally owned. Jim Knop bought the franchise rights to the Brookfield location and continues to run the business today as a single entity.
It was just before 1 p.m. when we pulled into the parking lot at Joey's, located in a small strip mall at the southwest corner of Capitol Drive and N. 124th St. (see map). The place was about half-full with a lunchtime crowd enjoying their food. The restaurant features a bar area with a pine log awning over the top. There are a series of sturdy tables and comfortable booths throughout the place. A quick calculation on my part showed that you comfortably seat 90 to 100 people in the place at any one time.
My dealer is sort of a regular at Joey's and our waitress came over to greet us. She looked at him and said, "Well, hello, stranger. I haven't seen you in here for awhile."
He said, "Yeah, I know. I've been busy and haven't been up this way for awhile. This is one of my reps and I suggested this place to him and he said, 'Let's go for it!' So you're under a lot of pressure to make sure the food is extra good today."
She laughed and said, "Isn't our food extra good EVERY day?"
He looked at me and said, "The food IS very good here."
We looked through the lunch menu and seafood is definitely the star at Joey's. (The dinner menu is a little more extensive than the lunch menu and they feature grilled mahi-mahi fish tacos - I've got to get back and try those at some point.) However, they also feature soups and seafood salads, sandwiches such as a lobster and seafood-blended hoagie with house spices and mayo, a blue crab melt that is basically like a tuna melt, only with blue crab meat with lettuce, tomato and melted cheddar cheese (that sounded REAL good), and a Jamaican jerk chicken sandwich. They also had a burger topped with melted garlic butter.
They also had some Cajun specialties on the menu such as jambalaya, blackened tilapia with red beans and rice with andouille sausage, and blackened shrimp. In fact, you could get shrimp cooked any of 10 different ways - Battered, Asian Sesame, Cajun, Garlic, Lemon, Charbroiled, Lime, Blackened, Poached, and for 50 cents more, Malibu Coconut. I was just about to get the jambalaya when I noticed the "Shrimp Your Way" heading. I asked the waitress if I could split two of the ways to cook the shrimp and she said, "Sure!" So, I ordered half garlic and half Cajun. I got the red beans and rice for my side dish.
My dealer, according to him, has had about everything on the menu. One thing he hadn't tried was the special that day - a grilled chicken breast with grilled shrimp combination. A vegetable medley and a salad came with the meal. He ordered that up.
After my dealer finished his salad, we had a good talk about products, the direction of the industry and the problems he faced as a small business owner. The conversation was so good that I didn't realize that nearly 25 minutes had passed from the time he got his salad. He finally said in mid-conversation, "This has never taken this long to get our food here." He flagged down our waitress and asked her where our lunch was. She went to check on it and she came out with his chicken and shrimp, but not my shrimp and red beans and rice. About three minutes later, another waitress came out with my shrimp. It was my guess that either our waitress or the kitchen dropped the ball on our lunch.
My shrimp platter was teeming with a mound of boiled shrimp, half slathered in garlic, the other half powdered up with Cajun seasonings. Inexplicably, a side of rice came with the red beans and rice. I certainly didn't need that. The shrimp were - in a word - excellent. The Cajun seasoning wasn't overpoweringly hot, and the garlic wasn't obtrusive where I was going to smell bad all afternoon. Actually, I would have liked it if they WOULD have made it more hot and more garlicky. The highlight of the meal, however, was the red beans and rice. They were excellent. That's not to say the shrimp were bad - far from it. They were just a notch down from the red beans and rice. I was happily impressed with what I had at Joey's.
My dealer thought his chicken was a little overcooked (above right). He said that this was the first time he'd gotten a grilled chicken breast at Joey's Seafood and Grill where it was cut in half. "Maybe they do that because of it being a lunch special," he said.
I finished my shrimp and my red beans and rice. I left my corn muffin on the plate and he said, "Aren't you going to eat your muffin? Man, that's the best part of the meal!"
I said, "You know, growing up in Iowa, you'd think I'd like cornbread, corn muffins or corn dogs. I just don't like the taste of corn meal all that much. It's too dry for me." I offered him my corn muffin and he immediately grabbed it off my plate. It was like I was offering him free gold.
Other than the service being a little slow and dicey, I was overly impressed with my meal at Joey's Seafood and Grill. The shrimp I had reminded me of the night Cindy and I had our "seafood overload" meal at Hudson's on the Dock on Hilton Head. The shrimp was almost as good as it was that particular evening. And the red beans and rice rivaled anything I'd ever had at any authentic Cajun restaurant. The whole meal was just tough to beat and while I was a little apprehensive going to a seafood place for lunch (thinking that it was going to be a lot of deep fried fish and such), I'm already looking forward to the next time I can make it back to Milwaukee and try the fish tacos at Joey's. If they're even half as good as the shrimp, I'll still be happy.
March is rolling in like a sleepy lion this morning on the first day of the spring. Well, it's the first day of the Meteorological spring (March 1 - May 31) and even though we're still 20 days away from the vernal equinox I still refer to this day as the first day of spring. If it's good enough for meteorologists, it's good enough for me.
While yesterday saw blizzards up in Minnesotaand devastating killer tornadoes in Southwest Missouri and Southern Illinois, here in Eastern Iowa the weather couldn't make up its mind as to what it wanted to do. We had a high yesterday of 53 degrees - and that was around 5:30 in the morning. But the wind picked up and we had gusts approaching 50 miles an hour at times throughout the day. Coupled with falling temperatures and a precipitation remnant of the back side of the store that affected the Midwest yesterday, at 5:30 p.m. we had a temperature of 33 degrees with heavy wet snow. Thankfully, it was a fast moving front and most of the wet snow melted by 7 p.m.
This morning is starting out cool and cloudy, but the winds that howled throughout the area yesterday have subsided and we're supposed to have partly cloudy skies later on with light westerly winds and a high in the upper 40's. So if we didn't have the Leap Day yesterday, then March would have come in like an extremely pissed off lion.
But I can't really complain - we've had a great winter around here. That is, if you're like me who hates snow and cold. Compared to the last couple of winters, it has been very pleasant around here for the past three months. We've had moderate temperatures with little snow fall since December 1. What snow we did get, it was usually gone within a week thanks to a consistent jet stream that brought in warm Pacific air from the west coast. Oh, we did have some cold days, but they certainly didn't last.
Up north, they didn't have the large snowfalls that contribute to spring flooding on the Mississippi River. Last year, we had about three weeks of flooding thanks to record amounts of snow in Minnesota and Wisconsin. It could have been worse as cold temperatures in late March slowed the melting process and the record floods they were predicting only became a nuisance for the flood warrior veterans in the Quad Cities. (To see my entry and pictures of the Flood of 2011, click here.) This spring, the National Weather Service is forecasting a below normal chance of flooding along the Upper Mississippi (above St. Louis). But in the past we've also seen sustained spring rains raise the river level quite quickly, so we always have to keep a leery eye on the Mississippi.
With the lack of snow, we were worried how it would affect our plants and rose bushes that we have in our yard. We did put mulch around the base of our 27 rose bushes, as well as some of the new bushes and a tree that we planted over the past year. We hoped that the snow would help insulate the roots against any extreme cold, but we haven't had the snow - nor have we had any really cold sustained temperatures. In fact, we've got a couple rose bushes on the east side of our house where we're already beginning to see chutes of growth coming out of them. Many of our rose bushes didn't lose the green on their base stalks during the winter. We always worry when April comes around hoping that the roses survived the winter. This year, I don't we have to worry about that.
That is, unless something catastrophic comes about over the next 45 days. Catastrophic, as in sustained freezing temperatures that could damage buds and chutes on the rose bushes like it did about four years ago after temperatures reached the 80's in March, but went sub-freezing for three straight days in early April. We lost about 8 rose bushes after that little stretch of abnormally cold weather that year. But, there wasn't much we could do. Mother Nature was throwing curve balls all over the place that particular spring.
This year, we're hoping that we don't have that problem. After a little weather system comes back through the Midwest this weekend, promising to dump more snow over Western and Northern Iowa and points north and east, we're supposed to be back in the upper 40's by Monday and into the low 60's on Tuesday. But, just like any spring we've had in the past, the warm weather won't stick around. It's only supposed to be 52 on Wednesday.
However, we know we've dodged some major bullets this winter. As my grandma always said, "There's always one last big one (as in snow storm) out there before spring really comes." And living in Iowa I know that adage is more right than wrong the majority of the time. We could easily see a big snow storm come our way, even with the grass becoming green and trees beginning to bud. But hopefully sooner than later we'll be able to see our rose bushes look this way once again.
