Road Tips

Hofbrauhaus Chicago - Rosemont, IL

The Hofbrauhaus in Munich may be one of the most famous - if not THE most famous - beer hall/restaurants/breweries in the world.  Hoping to capitalize on the success of the first Hofbrauhaus-franchised brauhaus in Hong Kong, an American franchise office opened in Frankenmuth, MI in 1997 with the first American Hofbrauhaus opening six years later in Newport, KY, just across the river from Cincinnati.  In 2012, a large 20,000 square foot Hofbrauhaus opened in Rosemont's MB Financial Park entertainment district in the Chicago suburb of Rosemont, near O'Hare Airport.  I had lunch at the Hofbrauhaus Chicago in Rosemont on a recent visit to the area.  

Now, I had tried to go to the Hofbrauhaus Chicago in Rosemont three times before.  The first time I was with my colleague John after we had been setting up for a trade show at a nearby hotel.  It was late, we were tired, we were burned out from setting up a sound system and wanted a nice meal and some peace and quiet.  You don't get peace and quiet at night at the Hofbrauhaus Chicago, which is billed as the only brewpub/restaurant/beer hall/beer garden in the Chicago area.  They have live music each night in the beer hall and that particular night it was LOUD!!!  We ended up going some place else.  

Two other times I tried to go, once the power was out at the place and it was closed, the other time the entrance was so packed with people waiting to get a seat that I decided to bag that opportunity.  This time, I had a couple of appointments in the morning and had a chance to stop for lunch at the Hofbrauhaus Chicago since it was close to my hotel in Rosemont.  

I was able to get right in on this visit as it was past the noon lunch rush and well before any of the nighttime festivities would start.  The large beer hall had only a handful of people eating in the place when I first got there.  The beer hall at Hofbrauhaus Chicago is an exact replica of the original Hofbrauhaus in Munich down to the murals on the ceiling and the large tables for communal seating.  

I ended up taking a seat at the bar along the south side of the beer hall.  Behind the windows behind the back bar, large beer kettles were present.  The Hofbrau Beers served at the Hofbrauhaus Chicago are made with the original recipe handed down over 400 years ago by Wilhelm V, the Duke of Bavaria.  Ben Zollenkopf, a native of Bavaria and who was the technical director for international brewing at Hofbrauhaus in Munich, oversees the brewing process at the Hofbrauhaus Chicago.

The waitstaff are dressed in traditional costumes and a couple young ladies were working behind the bar that particular day.  One of them came over to greet me, dropped off a menu and took my beer order.  I got a big-assed mug of the Hofbrau original lager.  

The lunch menu is a truncated version of the dinner menu served at Hofbrauhaus Chicago.  It features German specialties including sausage platters, weinerschnitzel, and Bavarian-style goulash.  They also have burgers - including a German-style burger mixed with ground pork and ground beef - and sandwiches that include a Bavarian-style bratwurst, a chicken schnitzel sandwich, and a Braten Semmel - a roast pork sandwich served on a toasted pretzel bun.  

This time, I went with the jagerschnitzel - a pork cutlet that was topped with a mushroom gravy, along with a couple strips of bacon and crispy fried onions, served with spätzle and cranberries.  And it was good - the jagerschnitzel was tender and savory.  The mushroom gravy had a delicious taste to it.  The onion straws and bacon that sat on top of the jagerschnitzel were a great touch to the overall taste of the meal.  And mixed with the mushroom sauce, the spätzle was a great side dish with the jagerschnitzel.  

While the food at Hofbrauhaus Chicago probably wasn't the best German food I've had, I found it to be very good for what it was.  I've always like Hofbrau beer and the house-brewed beer was every bit as good as the original Hofbrau lager I've had in the past.  I'm glad I finally made it in to try their food and see what the place was all about.  At night, I would probably say that the Hofbrauhaus Chicago would be a great place to go with a group of friends.  In the daytime, that's when it would be a good place for a business lunch or for a quick bite after going shopping in the area.  Either way, you're probably not going to be disappointed in the food or beer.

Nonna's Italian Cafe - Springfield, MO

It had been a long day of traveling when I finally pulled into Springfield, MO on a chilly evening.  Driving over 400 miles that day alone, I had been in freezing rain (always a treat) earlier in the day and high winds later on.  Completely burnt out from driving and very hungry, I asked one of the people at the front desk at the hotel I had just checked into what was good in the immediate area.  She asked me if I liked Italian and I said, "Sure!"  She told me about Nonna's Italian Cafe that was a short drive from the hotel on the city's south side.  

I've been traveling to Springfield, MO for a number of years and I remember a couple of really good Italian restaurants in the city in the late 1980's.  Unfortunately, both of those places closed a number of years ago.  Nonna's is one of the "newer" Italian establishments having first opened in 1996 in downtown Springfield.  (And I use the term "downtown" loosely when it comes to Springfield - it is one of the most undefined downtown areas of any mid-sized American cities I'e ever been to.)  Mary Faucett, the founder of Nonna's and original "nonna" (Italian for grandmother), also ran another Springfield Italian restaurant - Bambino's - that was started by her son and another partner in Columbia, MO.  In 2006, in order to concentrate on a facility upgrade of Bambino's, Faucett sold Nonna's to a group that included Craig and Julia Anderson. The Anderson's and two other partners ran Nonna's for three years before Shawn Kraft bought the business in 2009.  I read somewhere that Kraft got the idea to buy the restaurant after watching the animated movie Ratatouille.  

Kraft's wife, Allison, was a graduate of the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu culinary academies.  However, the Kraft's marriage broke up about the time that Shawn Kraft decided that it was time to get a second location in Springfield because of the small space of the original Nonna's, the lack of nearby parking, and long waits, especially on the weekends.  Kraft found a space in south Springfield in the midst of what is known as the "Medical Mile" of health care facilities along S. National Ave.  Allison Kraft went to the new Nonna's South, while Kraft continued to work at the original Nonna's.  In February of 2013, Peter Tinson -  who was the chef at the recently closed Gallery Bistro - teamed up with Allison Kraft to run the kitchen at Nonna's South.  Shawn Kraft and Tinson have traveled to Italy a couple times to learn more about the local cuisine and to bring back fresh ideas for both Nonna's locations.  

Pictured right - Allison Kraft (picture courtesy of Springfield News-Leader.)

(Just last year, Shawn Kraft, along with former college buddy and local insurance CEO Trevor Crist - also a partner in Nonna's South - bought the iconic Casper's, a burger/chili joint housed in a Quonset hut along Walnut Street in Springfield.  It's been years since I was in Casper's as I remember them having a pretty damn good chili dog.  I need to go back there at some point.)  

It was the Nonna's South location that I ended up at just off S. National and S. Culpepper Circle.  (see map)  Contrary to the original Nonna's, there's plenty of parking in the lot in front the restaurant, which is located at the end of a small strip mall.  Going inside, I was met by a tall young lady in oversized glasses, Ashley.  I told her it was just me for dinner and she asked, "What would you be more comfortable in - a booth or a table?"  She explained that she knew that dining alone was sometimes an uncomfortable thing and she wanted me to be comfortable.  How nice was that?  I took her up on sitting in a booth.  She asked me if I wanted anything to drink to start off and I ordered a Boulevard Pale Ale to cut the dust from a long day.  She cheerfully served me the bottle with a chilled pint glass.  

The well-lit dining area featured a number of booths and tables, but it wasn't claustrophobic at all.  Earth-toned walls featured a number of pictures including two paintings depicting the front of the original Nonna's and Nonna's South.  

Over a partition from the dining room was a small bar area complete with a handful of booths and tables.  (Below left)  Nonna's features an extensive wine list as well as a number national and regional craft beers.  

There's a large room off to the side of the dining room that is used for banquets, receptions, parties, etc.  It can hold up to 50 people or so and has the same cozy feel as the dining room.  

Nonna's features an extensive menu of seafood and pasta dishes, entrees that include sausage and polenta, beef tenderloin tips, eggplant parmesan, and even down home favorites such as homemade meatloaf.  Of course, there's Kraft's version of Ratatouille on the menu.  There's also a number of appetizers, soups and salads on the menu.  

I didn't really know what I was looking for, but pasta sounded good.  The had Northern and Southern Italian pasta dishes on the menu including fettuccine alfredo, tri-color tortellini in a cream sauce, good ol' plain spaghetti. and Veneto ragu with Italian sausage, pancetta, and beef.  They also had three different types of lasagna including a deep fried lasagna where the lasagna is encrusted in bread crumbs.  I thought about that for a moment before I dismissed deep fried lasagna for my meal that evening.

Another thing that caught my eye was the chicken parmesan.  I hardly EVER order chicken when I'm on the road and for some reason it sounded pretty good that night.  What cinched it for me was the side of fettuccine alfredo.  It would be the best of both worlds of Italian cuisine - a tomato sauce and a cream sauce at the same time.  Along with the meal, I got a glass of the Tilla malbec from Argentina.  When I ordered up my meal, Ashley said, "That's a good choice.  I like our chicken parm."  

The presentation of the dish wasn't anything fancy, but it included a good sized chicken breast covered in cheese and marinara sauce.  The fettuccine alfredo was served on the same plate - I would have preferred it be on a separate plate so the cream sauce and the marinara don't mix.  But it was fine for what it was.  

And the chicken parm was actually very good.  I think I make a pretty mean chicken parmesan at home, but this was one of the better ones that I've had out. The marinara sauce had a hearty sweet tomato taste with a LOT of garlic mixed in, the chicken breast was lightly breaded and was easy to cut with a knife or fork.  I was pleasantly surprised by how good the chicken parm was.

The fettuccine alfredo was also fine - the richness of the taste of the chicken parm sort of trumped the overall taste of the fettuccine.  But for a contrast in flavors, the combination of the chicken parmesan and the fettuccine alfredo was a winner.  

Ashley did a great job of taking care of me for the evening.  She checked on me in a timely fashion before, during and after the dinner was served.  Rarely do you find someone who understands and appreciates the sometimes awkwardness of dining alone in a nice place.  She made me very comfortable with her outgoing and genuinely friendly demeanor.  When she brought back the check after she ran my credit card, she sort of gave me a friendly tap on the upper left arm - something a friend would do to another friend as a sign of thanks - and said, "Hey, seriously, thanks for coming in and dining with us tonight."  It was like I'd dined at Nonna's a dozen times before.

Dining alone on the road can be a pretty uneasy proposition at times, but I can not reiterate how comfortable Ashley made me feel during my dining experience at Nonna's South.  The food was well above par and I was impressed with both the wine and craft beer selection that Nonna's offered.  This is one of those places that I'll remember very well on my future trips to Springfield.  (Picture at right courtesy of Springfield News-Leader.)

Cleveland-Heath - Edwardsville, IL

I had a dealer in St. Louis who closed up his store last summer and one of the guys that worked for him was looking to open a small shop in Edwardsville, IL, north and east of downtown St. Louis.  I wasn't certain that I was going to do any business with this guy because he didn't seem to have much of a business plan going forth for his new shop.  I decided to head over to Edwardsville to give him a courtesy call one day, but my ulterior motive was to stop and have lunch at Cleveland-Heath, a farm-to-fork restaurant I'd heard good things about in downtown Edwardsville.  

The story of Cleveland-Heath begins when Eric "Ed" Heath walked into the Desert Edge Brew Pub in Salt Lake City and filled out a job application for what he thought was a job as an assistant bartender.  When he found out that the opening was for a cook position in the kitchen, he walked out.  However, Desert Edge owner Rich Parrent called him up and cajoled Heath into working in the kitchen.  Under Parrent's mentorship, Heath found that he really enjoyed working in the kitchen at Desert Edge.  

One day a young lady from Bethalto, IL by the name of Jenny Cleveland came into Desert Edge to apply for a job - any job would do for her, kitchen, waiting tables, she'd done it all up to that point.  She had restaurant experience in her background - her aunt was the owner of Josephine's Tea Room in Godfrey, IL (her mother baked the pies at Josephine's) and Jenny bussed and waited on tables there.  After getting her degree at Southeast Missouri State, Jenny Cleveland wasn't quite certain what she wanted to do with her life.  She worked for an environmental consulting firm as a field technician during the day, but found work at a sushi restaurant in Springfield, MO in the evening.  She had visited Salt Lake City while she was in college, fell in love with the Utah mountains and decided to just move there.  

Pictured right - Jenny Cleveland and Eric "Ed" Heath.  (Picture courtesy St. Louis Magazine)

It was at Desert Edge Brewpub that Jenny and Ed met and their passion for cooking food flourished.  The two decided their next step was to kick their culinary education up a notch and they enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in Napa Valley.  After receiving their degrees - Jenny received the school's "Culinary Award" for outstanding cooking - the two found jobs in the area.  Jenny found a job in the kitchen at Ad Hoc, the sister restaurant to Thomas Keller's prestigious French Laundry.   Ed found work at JoLe, a restaurant owned by Sonjia and Matt Spector in Calistoga, CA.  

After awhile, Jenny was hired on to work at The French Laundry where she learned the intricacies of a top notch fine dining establishment.  Making the customer feel comfortable and helping shape their food choices for the best experience possible was one of Jenny's duties as she worked the front of the restaurant.  During this time, Ed had found a position at Farmstead at Long Meadow Ranch, a true "farm-to-fork" restaurant in St. Helena, CA that grew their own vegetables, fruits, grass-fed beef and lamb.  

Ed took a position at an upscale fish camp in Idaho and the couple moved there for a few months before moving on to restaurants in the Twin Cities.  It was while they were in Minneapolis-St. Paul that they decided to open their own restaurant somewhere in the Midwest.  

On a visit to her home in Bethalto in 2011, Cleveland found out that chef Amy Zupanci had just closed the upscale Fond restaurant in downtown Edwardsville.  It was then that Cleveland-Heath was born in the old spot with the two bringing a little bit of their experiences from the restaurants they'd worked at to their new restaurant.  

I finished my meeting with the prospective dealer around 1 p.m. and got to Cleveland-Heath awhile later.  Parking is available behind the building, but I was able to find a spot on N. Main just down the street from the restaurant.  (see map)  As I walked in to the restaurant, I found a wonderful copper-topped bar up in the front of an L-shaped room layout and decided to park there for lunch.  American roots music from the likes of Johnny Cash and John Prine to more obscure artists such as Dan Reeder (a protege of Prine) and Minnesota musician Mason Jennings was playing in the background.  

The restaurant is sort of a mixture of modern and past with contemporary designs weaving with old-style small town architecture including tin ceiling panels in the bar area.  The dining area wasn't huge, but it was comfortable and well lit from natural light coming through the door.  The bar area featured an L-shaped bar with an elegant back bar area.  Servers were dressed more like they were in a Bay Area coffee shop than in a somewhat upscale restaurant in the Midwest.  It was a very laid back and comfortable setting at Cleveland-Heath.  

The bartender/server dropped off a menu for me and asked what I'd like to drink.  They had a pretty good list of craft beers and I saw that they had Ballast Point Sculpin, a wonderful San Diego-brewed India Pale Ale.  I ordered that as I figured out what to get for lunch.  

The menu at Cleveland-Heath is pretty basic.  But it's eclectic enough that they categorize their food as "gourmet comfort".  From the appetizers on, the menu can be a little intimidating for some people.  Starters include Okonomiyaki, a Japanese pancake consisting of shrimp, bacon, cabbage, Kewpie mayo and a housemade barbecue sauce;  Gravlax featuring house-cured salmon, chive cream cheese, capers, red onion and parsley on a bagel from the La Bonne Bouchee bakery in the Creve Coeur area of St. Louis; and a paprika-marinated octopus appetizer that includes the spicy Diavolini sausage from Salume Beddu, an upscale artisan meat shop in St. Louis.  

From there the menu goes to the soups and salads which include a braised-pork pozole soup, a grilled hearts of romaine salad with Diavolini sausage, and Cleveland-Heath's kale salad that the two fell in love with while working in California.  

The server had a couple of specials that day - one was a grilled ham and cheese sandwich made with three different types of cheese and locally grown Rensing Farms ham.  Now, that actually sounded pretty good.  The guy seated a couple seats down from me at the bar ordered the pulled pork sandwich made with Rensing pork and topped with blue cheese coleslaw on a pretzel bun.  When it was put in front of him, he just said, "Wow!"  It was a lot of food.  

I ended up ordering the double-pattied cheese burger made with Rensing beef and topped with American cheese, a pickle sauce and caramelized onions, and served on a brioche bun.  The menu said that the burger patties would be cooked "through".  Cleveland-Heath cooks beef they way they see fit given the type of fresh beef they get from Rensing Farms.   

And they did cook it through, but not to the point where the beef was inedible.  The Rensing beef was still flavorful and juicy with the cheese and pickle sauce dripping off the top. I opted for the fries on the side and it turned out that it was a mixture of regular potato and sweet potato skinny fries.  

The burger, I will say, was good.  Not great, but good. But the brioche bun didn't hold up well from all the stuff that was put on the burger.  By the time I got about halfway though the burger I had to give up and start to eat the rest of it with a knife and fork.  A truly good burger needs to have a bun that holds up all the way to the finish.

I had a few of the regular potato fries, but hardly touched the sweet potato fries.  The bartender/server asked me if there was something wrong with the sweet potato fries and I said, "No, I'm just not big on sweet potato fries.  But if my wife were here, she'd be eating them up."  

The burger that I had at Cleveland-Heath was... all right.  I thought it was a tad overcooked for my taste and the bun tasted fine, but didn't hold up well.  I liked the atmosphere of the place and the service was fine, as well.  I was very intrigued by some of the appetizers on the menu and thought that this would be a fun place to bring my wife at some point in the future to try a couple of the interesting starters on the menu.   I can see where some people who don't know Cleveland-Heath and the culinary history behind the menu could be turned off by their notion of "comfort" food.  But the menu is certainly interesting and adventurous.  It's not surprising that food connisseurs from St. Louis make the trip to Edwardsville to experience a meal at Cleveland-Heath.   

Pilot Pete's - Schaumburg, IL

I've always been fascinated by flight.  Although I don't like to fly that much due to the pain-in-the-ass procedures it takes just to get on a passenger plane these days, I find myself still looking up at a passing jet and still have the same young boy amazement that a plane like a 747 can even get up - and stay up - in the sky.  I've also been fascinated by the weekend pilots who fly small planes from point to point to have a "hundred dollar burger" at a diner near a small municipal airport.  They call it a "hundred dollar burger" because it usually costs them that in fuel just to get the burger and to fly back home.  One of the more famous places in the Midwest to get a $100 burger - and more - is a restaurant at the Schaumburg Regional Airport, a place called Pilot Pete's.  

Pilot Pete's has been on my radar (OK, pun intended) for awhile, ever since it was named one of the Top Ten restaurants by John Purner, the author of The $100 Hamburger annual guide to restaurants at municipal airports around the U.S.  (I picked up my copy through iBooks for only $4.99!)  Purner's book lists and rates restaurants at airports - from the greasy spoon diners to five-star fine dining establishments - and has been a handy guide for pilots for over 15 years.  

First of all, there is no Pilot Pete.  According to owner John Minginas, who has owned Pilot Pete's since 2009, Pete is a pilot in the Caribbean, hopping from island to island to enjoy the tropical and laid back way of life.  Pilot Pete's has been in business since 1999 when the Village of Schaumburg built a new terminal building for the small airfield that also had space for meeting rooms, small shops and a nice restaurant.  

My wife had gone into Chicago to meet a friend of hers to go on a shopping trip late last year.  They stayed at a hotel I got for them near Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg and she called me one night when they were out to dinner.  She said, "Have you ever heard of a place called Pilot Pete's," she asked.  

I said, "Oh, yeah!  I've got them on my 'restaurants to visit' list!"

She said, "Well, we're here now.  The people at the hotel told us this was a great place to go."  She said it was lively and looked like it had a pretty good menu.  She told me later on that the food they had was excellent.  I couldn't wait to give Pilot Pete's a shot. On a trip to Chicago a few weeks ago, I stayed out in the western suburbs and went to Pilot Pete's one evening.  

Now, I've been past Pilot Pete's a handful of times, but never paid attention to the location.  It's on a stretch on Irving Park Road in Schaumburg that I've traveled on in the past as kind of a short cut to a couple dealers I had in Elgin a few years ago.  (see map)  There's a large parking lot in front of the terminal building and steps going up to the main entrance of the building.  

Walking past a couple rows of old airline seats in the hallway leading back to Pilot Pete's, I was greeted by a young lady at the hostess stand.  At first, she tried to seat me at the bar.  But after looking at the bar area and seeing only one seat open, I asked if I could sit in the dining room.  She said that would be no problem and she took me to a booth near the windows that look out onto the tarmac at Schaumburg Regional Airport.  She dropped off a menu and said my server would be by in a moment. 

In John Purner's book, he wrote, "You can judge the food you're about to have (at a municipal airport restaurant) by the amount of airplane décor, and they have an inverse relationship."  In other words, the more airplanes and aviation memorabilia on the walls and hanging from the ceiling, the worse the food.  If you would follow that guideline at Pilot Pete's, you'd think that this would be an all-time horrible restaurant.  As you walk past cases of model commercial airplanes, Pilot Pete's opens up into what looks like a large hanger with a curved metal ceiling.  A small experimental two-seater plane hangs from the ceiling along with murals of planes and aviation equipment.  To add to the flair of the decor, Pilot Pete's has a bit of a Caribbean feel with small tropical trees and plants, a large shark, and colorful table coverings.  The bar area had an awning that gave it sort of a tropical cabana look.   There is a semi-circular room in the back of the place - the Balloon Room - that is used for parties and private functions.  

Looking through the menu, I found a number of items that included seafood appetizers, soups and salads, full entrees, steaks, seafood, a number of sandwiches and a hamburger that was given 5 stars by the $100 Hamburger.  Now, I have a rule of thumb that a restaurant that has an extensive menu probably can do all of it well, but not very good.  So with the airplane decor guideline from John Purner and my "too much food on the menu" rule, one would think Pilot Pete's would be a total washout.  

One of the things they're famous for at Pilot Pete's is their lobster nachos - they take a whole steamed lobster tail, chop it up and mix it with chopped chives, celery, diced tomatoes, white pepper, and a special sauce, and then it's put on top of housemade tortilla chips.  Then they top that with colby cheddar cheese, slice jalapenos and served with guacamole, pico de gallo and sour cream.  Oh my GOD!!!  The description alone is making my stomach do jumping jacks right now, but the picture (courtesy Chicago's Best.com) is making my stomach scream.    

While I seriously thought about getting one of their burgers, I was looking through the "Specials List" they had for the evening and I saw a pot roast bake that featured slow-roasted black angus beef mixed with mushrooms, green beans and peas, then topped with garlic-horseradish mashed potatoes and cheddar cheese.   It had been a long week and I thought I needed a little comfort food, but that sounded somewhat heavy to me. 

Looking at the menu, at the top of the "Signature Dishes" list was Pilot Pete's "World Famous Pot Roast".  While the title was rather audacious, it got my attention.  They slow cook a black angus roast in its own juices, then serve it with garlic-horseradish mashed potatoes and a vegetable of the day.  It was similar to the pot roast bake, but was lighter. I decided to go with that for my meal.  

The only problem was that no one had come over to greet me and ask for a drink order after the hostess took me to the booth.  It was over 10 minutes and I was still sitting there, checking out the menu for a second time to see if there was anything I missed (there wasn't) while I waited for a server to come around.  I was "this" close to getting up and leaving when a young lady came over to my table.  She asked what I'd like to drink (a Lagunitas IPA they had on tap) and then asked if I knew what I wanted to eat.  After I ordered, it took a another five plus minutes for her to bring me the pint of beer.  

After getting a salad with fresh greens and French dressing for a starter, another person brought out my dinner.  It featured a generous portion of chunks of slow roasted beef with a mound of the garlic-horseradish mashed potatoes and a vegetable medley consisting of green beans, sliced carrots and chopped broccoli.  There was a small bit of brown gravy on top of the beef.  It looked like the quintessential American comfort food meal.  

The beef - at first bite - was a little dried out and a little chewy.  But on the bottom of the plate sitting in its juice, the beef placed there was tender, moist and very flavorful.  The horseradish-garlic mashed potatoes were more garlic than horseradish, but it wasn't a lot of garlic, either.  The garlic-horseradish potatoes that I make at home from time to time have a lot more flavor than the ones at Pilot Pete's.  The vegetable medley was sort of a throw away for me as I was concentrating on the beef and having a few bites of the mashed potatoes.  Overall, the taste of the meal was very good and very satisfying.  

OK, so maybe both John Purner and I are wrong about our preconceived notions on some restaurants.   I think we were both wrong on Pilot Pete's.  Even with all the aircraft memorabilia throughout the place and an extensive menu I thought my meal was very good.  It was the proverbial "spot-hitter" for me.  The value was also very good - the meal with a beer before the tip (not a big one because the service was rather choppy) was just under $20 bucks.  And it was a lot of food.  I want to go back to Pilot Pete's during the daytime when the weather is nicer, sit near the windows to watch the planes fly in and out, and have one of their burgers.  The combination of good food, a good selection of beer and watching planes coming and going sounds like a fun and relaxing afternoon to me. 

River City Brewing Co. - Wichita, KS

I put on a new dealer in Wichita late last year and they're already turning into a promising account for me.  I've had to make a couple three trips to Wichita and on a recent trip I had time to grab some lunch at a brewpub in Wichita's Old Town shopping and entertainment district - River City Brewing Co.  

River City Brewing Co. is the oldest brewpub in Wichita and one of the oldest in the state of Kansas.  It was founded in 1993 by Monte Griffin whose passion in life prior to opening a brewpub was to visit breweries of all sizes when he was on vacation.  For his brewpub, Griffin found an abandoned warehouse in Wichita's downtown area - one that had been around since 1905 that originally housed a paint company before being the home to a grocery store, a tanning company and - up to the late 80's - a warehouse for a paper company.  

Working with craftsmen, Griffin found leaded glass for the building's entryway from an old mansion in Wichita, wood for the bar came from the old Salvation Army building in Wichita, some of the seating for booths and overhead lights came from an old church in the area, wainscoting and flooring were saved from a house that was undergoing demolition, and wood trim and other materials for the booths were salvaged from old mansions that were being demolished in the historic Quality Hill neighborhood in Kansas City.     

Along with partner Bill Shea, Griffin ran River City Brewing Co. for four years before selling his shares to Shea.  In 1997, Shea sold the brewpub to a group of Wichita businessmen who called upon local native Chris Arnold to run it for them.  Arnold had been running a restaurant in Arkansas - in a dry county, no less - and he knew absolutely nothing about running a brewpub, and not much more as how to work in a restaurant that sold alcohol.  

The biggest problem that Arnold faced was the reluctance for locals to try a craft beer that was brewed in house.  Customers continued to buy Coors Light and Budweiser, but River City's own beers weren't selling.  Not only did Arnold have to educate himself on the brewing process and what made a handcrafted beer special, he had to do the same thing for his customers.  He eventually installed former River City Brewing Co. server and home brewer Dan Norton as the head brewmaster for the brewpub.  It was Norton's passion for brewing that eventually turned around the fortunes of the brewery part of the business and today the brewpub sells only beers that are brewed in house.    

In 2001, the group remodeled the upstairs floor of the building and opened Loft 150, a combination live music venue, dance hall, billiard room, cigar bar and outside deck.  Arnold eventually bought into the partnership as some investors dropped out and today he is the managing partner in the business.  The brewpub is now producing up to 800 barrels of beer annually including special edition barrel-aged beers developed by Arnold and Norton.  

I found River City Brewing Co. on N. Mosley St. near the corner of E. 1st St. N. (see map)  There's a parking lot on the north side of the building and it was just past the lunch rush so plenty of parking was available.  Walking inside, I found a space that held the historic value of the building.  Beer vats were located behind a couple large glass windows behind the bar area.

The main dining space features the bar, a number of high tables and chairs, and an area on the other side of the room with booths.  I was greeted by a hostess and I asked if I could sit at the bar.  She said it was no problem.  After sitting down, a bartender came over to greet me and dropped off a menu.  She asked what I wanted to drink and a quick look at the beer menu showed me that they had an India Pale Ale by the name of Tornado Alley, one of over a dozen beers they had on tap that day.  

Most of the food on the menu at River City Brewing Co. consists of pub fare including appetizers, soups and salads, sandwiches and burgers, as well as pizzas.  They do have entrees including steaks (the Cowboy Ribeye is rubbed with a housemade ancho chile seasoning), pork chops, barbecued ribs, chicken and some seafood items.  What caught my attention were the grilled tilapia tacos.  Always a sucker for good grilled fish tacos - plus the fact that I really needed to eat something more light for lunch that day - that's what I ordered.  

The grilled tilapia tacos were topped with fresh Mexican white cheese, an avocado relish, and a creamy chipotle sauce that had a nice spicy bite on the back end and some chopped lettuce.  The fish and toppings were tucked inside a couple flour tacos and a side of rice came with the meal.  I contemplated putting some rice in the tacos, but they were so full already with a good amount of grilled fish and the toppings that I just let the rice sit on the side.  The tacos were going to be enough. 

And the grilled tilapia tacos were very good.  Surprisingly very good.  The fish was light and flaky with no hint of a fishy taste.  But the creamy chipotle sauce had a pretty forward bite to it, enough to get your attention that it was spicy but not overpowering.  The Tornado Alley IPA did a good job of knocking down the spiciness of the sauce as the hops mixed well with the sauce.  Compared to other IPA's, the Tornado Alley had a good hoppy taste, but not so much that it had an overly forward hoppy taste.  The beer was as good as the fish tacos.  

Wichita is a long way from my home - about 8 hours one way by car - but it appears that I'll be making regular trips to the city thanks to the growing business I'm doing there.  My goal is to get back to River City Brewing Co. to enjoy a beer on the upstairs deck on some warm summer evening.  While the menu isn't going to win many awards for uniqueness, what I had on my visit was very good and I'm sure the rest of the food on the menu is of the same level.  River City Brewing Co. wouldn't be in business for nearly 22 years if the food and beer weren't good. 

Grad School - Springfield, MO

Always on the lookout for a good burger on the road, I was in Springfield, MO recently and stumbled upon a little burger joint in the what is called Springfield's downtown area.  The name - Grad School - conjures up an interesting back story about how this somewhat counterculture place came to be in the heart of the Bible Belt.  

Danny Schlink was on the "10-year plan" at Missouri State University working toward his degree in history.  While he was going to college all those years, he was working in restaurants to make some extra money.  One of the places he worked in was a small Caribbean restaurant called the Rasta Grill.  When he finally graduated with his bachelor's degree in history in 2008, Schlink pretty much knew he had a diploma that wouldn't open many doors in the business world.  When he quizzed others who had a degree in history what they were going to do, they nearly all replied they were going to grad school.  

Since the restaurant business was in his blood, Schlink - along with friends Josh Nail and Shane Rice, who also worked with Schlink at the then closed Rasta Grill - decided to start their own place.  They settled on a burger joint concept with a laid back atmosphere for the place and gave it the Grad School moniker so Schlink would always be able to say he went to "grad school" like many of his classmates.  They were able to rent the same building that used to house the Rasta Grill and opened their doors in 2008.

Initially, business was very slow.  It didn't help that Schlink and his minority-ownership partners eschewed any type of social media or even a web site for their small burger place.  But word of mouth picked up about this little burger joint that was a hangout for misfits and urban hipsters and within 18 months Grad School was cashing in on the downtown lunch crowd business.  

In 2010, Schlink opened his second endeavor - the J.O.B. Public House.  Figuring that he now had "graduated" beyond the Grad School concept, it was time to get a job - hence the J.O.B. name.  J.O.B. Public House initially featured a dinner menu only, but also boasted over 300 different types of whiskey to choose from.  The Bourbon Review magazine called J.O.B. Public House as one of the top 50 whiskey bars in the U.S.  J.O.B. now serves a lunch menu in addition to their normal dinner menu.  

I got into Grad School (that's got a weird ring to that sentence) just before noon and was able to find a spot at the counter.  It's a very small place featuring a small backroom for overflow dining (there's also a small patio out back that is used during the warmer months) with the grill behind the counter.  The room is so tight behind the counter that the workers were constantly saying "Behind you!" to their co-workers manning the grill to let them know they were going around them.    

As I sat down at the counter, I noticed the old style gas flat top grill big enough for - maybe - 16 burgers at a time.  The grill had a lot of what I like to call "zest" built up on it from the thousands of burgers that has been cooked on it over the last 6 plus years.  I was given a menu that was basically a tri-folded piece of paper and asked what I wanted to drink.  I saw they had a beer menu, as well, and I ended up getting a bottle of the Schlafly Pale Ale.  Music, in the form of the Close to the Edge album by Yes, was playing out of the small speakers on the wall above the grill and prep area.  Wow!  70's progressive rock on the sound system at Grad School!  I immediately liked the place.  

It turns out that Grad School is more than just a burger joint.  The menu (which is also colorfully written up on a chalkboard) features just two burgers - the Full Ride which consists of two flat-grilled patties topped with lettuce, bacon, tomato, caramelized onions, and soft sharp cheddar cheese; and the Codi Bra which is a housemade veggie burger.   In addition to the burgers, Grad School has pasta dishes, salads and chili (I smelled the chili - the aroma was terrific!), tacos and burritos that could either be vegan or filled with steak, chicken or tilapia, and a handful of pressed panini sandwiches made with house-baked bread.  It also seemed like their wings - or known as "wangs" - were a popular item during the lunch rush when I was there.

I ended up getting the Full Ride burger.  It came with fries and a dill pickle spear and was served on a rectangular ceramic plate.  The outside of the burger was crusty from the cook smashing it on the grill.  I'm still not sold on the smashing concept of a burger on a flat grill, but the burger was still juicy and flavorful.  It may have been a tad overdone for my tastes, but it was still a good burger.  

The fries were the crispy skin-on variety that I like from time to time.  They definitely weren't limp and had a good potato taste.  This was a very good lunch.

While it may not have been the best burger I've ever had, the Full Ride at Grad School was definitely well above average.  I liked the low key atmosphere at the place - the laid back attitude by the staff was also a plus, in my book.  If you can get past the fact that most of the staff have big bushy beards and are wearing stocking caps inside, then you should thoroughly enjoy going to Grad School - the more fun of the grad schools I know. 

El Olmito - Muscatine, IA

Muscatine, Iowa is a city of about 23,000 people and approximately 1 out of 6 residents are Hispanic.  Years ago, migrant farm workers from Mexico made the trek to the Mississippi River valleys around Muscatine to work in the melon fields.  Many of them stayed in Muscatine and put down roots that have lasted for generations.  Because of the large Latino population in the area, a number of very good Mexican restaurants have thrived in the area for years.  One place that I knew about, but had never been to until recently, is a small Mexican tienda/restaurante by the name of El Olmito.  

Felix Calderon was 15 years old when his father moved the family from extreme southern Texas to the Muscatine area.  The younger Calderon grew up in the area, married a local lady by the name of Norma, and settled into life in and around the Muscatine area.  The only problem was that in order to get authentic Mexican spices, chiles, and other food stuff, he and his wife would have to drive into Chicago on a regular basis to go to Mexican food stores.  One day, Calderon told his wife that they should open a store that would cater to Muscatine's Hispanic population.  Nearly 30 years ago, they opened El Olmito (the little elm) which paid homage to his South Texas hometown of Olmito.  

At first, the family sold food stuff and clothing before deciding to start making authentic Mexican food in a small restaurant in the back of their store.  A fire about 15 years ago displaced the business and they soon moved into their present day location at the corner of 5th and Mulberry in downtown Muscatine.  (see map)

El Olmito is not very big.  In fact, more floor space is devoted to the handful of tables in the back of the place than the amount of food that they sell in the grocery store part of the building.  It's not fancy in the least.  There's no singing waiters, there's no bright tapestries on the walls, there's no alcohol served at El Olmito.  It's pretty "plain Jane".  But you know what?  Those are usually the best places to get good authentic Mexican food.  

A number of Mexican spices, sauces and other food items are on display on a double sided shelving unit in the middle of the restaurant.  Along one wall were bags of spices and other items for authentic Mexican food.  Sliding glass doored refrigerators were full of bottles of Mexican pop, juices and water.  A freezer had a slew of different types of meat.  El Olmito wasn't as big as El Mexicano in Moline, IL or El Patio in West Liberty, IA - two other Mexican grocery stores that happen to serve outstanding Mexican food (click on the links to see the entries on those two places) - but they seemed to be doing a brisk business while we were in there.  

We took a seat at a table and picked up a couple menus that were on the table.  While the list of food isn't extensive - tacos, tostadas, tortas, gorditas, burritos and individual platters - the types of fillings they had were rather impressive.  Including carne asada (steak), ground beef, carnitas (pork), barbacoa (barbecued beef), and chicken that you'd find at any Mexican restaurant worth their salt, they also had interesting fillings such as chicharron (fried pork rinds), ceviche (fresh fish marinated in limes), buche (pork stomach), guisado (chipotle-spiced chicken), tripe (beef stomach), lengua (beef tongue) and a number of other interesting (but somewhat unappetizing - to me) selections.  

My step-daughter's husband is a Mexican national and he says that the best way to find out if a restaurant is good is to just try the tacos.  And I went that route.  I got an al pastor (pork) taco, a steak taco, a ground beef taco and a barbacoa taco.  Cindy decided to get the taco platter - three tacos with a side of refried beans and rice.  She got two chicken tacos and a steak taco.  For drinks, I got a bottle of water out of the cooler and Cindy got a "coquito" - a small bottle (7 ounces) of Mexican Coca-Cola.  

We waited less than 10 minutes for the guy who took our order to come back with our taco plates.  The first thing that I noticed was that compared to other authentic Mexican restaurants, the corn taco shells were a little bigger and were generously filled with grilled meats, pico de gallo, and fresh cilantro.  Getting four tacos is generally no big problem for me.  I could tell it may be a problem to finish all of the ones I ordered.

Cindy's tacos were as big as mine and half the plate was filled with an ample helping of Mexican rice and refried beans.  "Oh my gosh," she exclaimed as the plate was set in front of her.  "This is a lot of food."  

After taking the requisite pictures of the food, I grabbed the barbacoa taco first.  I squeezed out some of the chile verde sauce they had on the table (they also had a spicy pepper sauce, too) on to the taco and took a bite.  The taste was well, exquisite.  It was outstanding.  And it was damned spicy!  I couldn't tell if it was the barbacoa spices or from the green salsa.  But it wasn't overpowering to the point where all you could taste was the hotness of the spice.  The fresh pico de gallo and cilantro gave it a cooling taste quality.  This was simply a great taco.

And the rest of the tacos were equally as good.  Cindy was using the green salsa on her tacos and we were whipping through the bottle pretty quickly.  I determined that either the barbacoa - on its own - was spicy, or I'd gotten used to the spiciness of the chile verde sauce on the subsequent tacos that I had.  Each of the tacos had their own signature taste and I couldn't even begin to tell you which one I liked the best out of the four that I had.  

Cindy, however, told me that she should have gotten two steak tacos and a chicken taco.  She said she didn't care for the chicken tacos.  "It's good, don't get me wrong," she was explaining to me.  "But they use both dark and white meat for the chicken.  I would have liked it to be all white meat."  She said it was far from a deal breaker for her, but she liked the steak taco better.  

After I finished - barely - my tacos, I tweeted out a picture of my plate of tacos to Brandon and Jake, the two guys behind the QC Mexican Food web site that highlights Mexican restaurants in and around the greater Quad Cities area.  I said, "This is AWESOME!  You've got to come to El Olmito!"  And I say that to anyone reading this.  It's not fancy, the decor is not ornate, and the service is pretty basic.  But the food is wonderful.  And there's a lot of it for a pretty good price.  El Olmito is one of the best Mexican restaurants that I've ever encountered. 

Papa Bob's Bar-B-Que - Bonner Springs, KS

Kansas City has long been my favorite place for barbecue.  The last couple of visits to the city, I've gone in different culinary directions searching out burgers, Mexican food and Indian cuisine.  On my last visit to the area, I made it a point to search out a barbecue joint that has been on my radar for quite sometime, a place on the far west side of Kansas City, KS called Papa Bob's Bar-B-Que.  

Bob Caviar is the man behind Papa Bob's, a nickname bestowed on him by his seven grandchildren.  A big guy with grey hair and a pony tail, Bob Caviar fell in love with barbecuing and smoking meats when he was in his mid-teens.  He opened up his barbecue joint along a stretch of Kansas state highway 32 near Bonner Springs (see map) and not far from the Cricket Wireless Amphitheater (a.k.a. Sandstone Amphitheater) where Papa Bob's maintains a concession booth to sell their barbecue during concerts.   

To help call attention to his little barbecue place, Bob Caviar came up with a sandwich called the Ultimate Destroyer.  It is over five pounds of a combination of pulled and sliced pork, smoked turkey, three smoked burgers, smoked brisket, smoked sausage, a bunch of bread and barbecue sauce, and topped with Papa Bob's homemade horseradish dill pickles.  Oh, and for good measure they throw in a pound and a half of fries on the side.  Dozens of people have failed to finish the behemoth sandwich in the allotted 45 minute time period including Adam Richman from the Travel Channel's Man vs. Food program. (Pictured right)  Only five people have been able to finish the Ultimate Destroyer including Omaha's Molly Schuyler who is one of the best competitive eaters in America.  

Finding Papa Bob's - which is just about two miles west of the Kansas 32 exit along Interstate 435 - I pulled into the parking lot only to find the lot was full of cars.  This was  good thing, I thought initially.  However, I couldn't find a parking spot and ended up heading in toward Bonner Springs to get some gas.  By the time I made it back out to Papa Bob's about 15 minutes later, a car was pulling out of a space near the front door.  I took that spot, parked the car and went inside.

As I walked in the front door, I figured out why the parking lot was full.  I was met by a large crowd of men who were standing in line to pay their food checks.  They had just finished a dinner meeting for some club they were involved in.  I took a seat in a booth in the back corner of the front dining room (there was a back dining room that the men had just come from) and waited patiently for the young lady - who was both cashier and waitress - to finish up to come over.

The main dining room at Papa Bob's kind of has a 60's-diner motif to the place.  Brightly lit with a series of vinyl-topped booths and tables, it also had an old style counter that looked like it was more home to a malt shoppe than a barbecue joint.  On the wall near the door that went into the side dining room were dozens of pictures of the people who tried - and failed - to eat the Ultimate Destroyer, as well as pictures of the five who were able to eat everything in under 45 minutes.

While the girl was still cashing the rest of the men's dinner checks, a worker from the back came over with a menu and asked me if I wanted anything to drink.  I ordered up a draft beer and figured that I had a lot of time to take a good look at the menu.

The menu at Papa Bob's Bar-B-Que is rather extensive.  First of all, the featured nine or ten appetizers including fried okra, sweet potato fries, chicken fingers and mini corn dogs.  For barbecued and smoked meats, they featured brisket, ham, turkey, sausage, pork, pulled pork and, of course, ribs including baby back ribs.  And they also serve a Kansas City barbecue staple - burnt ends.  I've never been a big fan of burnt ends, but there are tons of people who love 'em.  

Papa Bob's also features a number of sandwiches including a grilled chicken sandwich, a breaded pork tenderloin, and hickory-smoked corned beef or pastrami served on rye bread.  They also have smoked burgers on the menu, as well as a long list of sides that include tater tots, creamy or sweet and sour cole slaw, pesto pasta salad, onion rings, and potato salad.  

When the young lady finally finished up at the cash register, she made it over to the table to greet me.  She apologized for the wait and I told her it was no problem.  I asked what the large group was all about and she said that she got a call around 5:30 to see if they could accommodate 16 people at 6 p.m.  She said that it wasn't any problem until she found out that it was more like 28 people instead of 16.  "We've been running around here like we've had our heads cut off for the last hour and a half," she told me.  

I was ready to order my dinner and I went with the deluxe meat platter - your choice of two types of smoked meats and with it you get two ribs and two sides.  I picked pulled pork and brisket for my meats and I ordered fries and something they called "Brooke's Bad Ass Beans" - slow simmered baked beans that were full of chunks of pork and beef.  I also had to get a side of the horseradish dill pickles.  The young girl asked me, "Do you like horseradish?"  I said that I did.  "And you like dill pickles?"  Again, I said that I did.  She said, "OK, well, some people order them up and say they don't like them."  She said the description is pretty self-explanatory - horseradish dill pickles - but people are still somewhat surprised by the taste.  I told her that I would give them a shot.

About 10 minutes after I ordered, Papa Bob, himself, brought my platter of food out to my table.   As you can see by the picture, it was a ton of food.  The ribs were big and meaty, there was easily a 1/3 pound of both the pulled pork and the sliced brisket.  A large plate of fries accompanied the smoked meats along with a cup of the baked beans.  The horseradish dill pickles were in a small dish - about nine or ten chips in total.  

There were two different bottles of barbecue sauce on the table so I asked Bob Caviar what the story was on the sauce.  He said one of the two bottles was their sweet barbecue sauce, the other was sort of a sweet and spicy sauce.  "And..." he said as he hesitated for a moment looking back behind him, "...she's bringing out some of the Bob-anero sauce for you."  Some what?  "Bob-anero sauce.  It's a special concoction I came up with that's sort of sweet with a spicy bite from chopped habanero peppers."  I told him that I'd like to give that a try.

"We've got others that are hotter," Bob volunteered.  He named a couple - H2 OMG sauce, Crazy Dog chipotle sauce.  "We got this stuff called Blazin' Butt sauce, too.  I can bring some samples of that our for ya."  I declined his offer.  I was fine with the three sauces that were on the table.  

The first thing I ripped into were the ribs.  The ribs were huge with a lot of tender meat that pulled easily away from the bone.  The meat had a slightly smoky taste and I enjoyed them with the little bit of the regular sauce that was on them.  

The next thing I tried was the brisket.  Thinly sliced, the brisket had a slight smoke ring along the outside rim and the taste was very good.  I like a good brisket and Papa Bob's had some very good brisket.

The pulled pork was slightly dry and copious amounts of the barbecue sauce helped make it a bit more moist.  Of the three items on the plate I'd put the pulled pork at the bottom.  It was still good, but the ribs were outstanding and the brisket was very good.  

I'm a sauce guy when it comes to barbecue and the sauces at Papa Bob's were all very good.  The regular sauce was a thick sweet and smoky Kansas City-style that hung onto the meat very well.  The "hot" sauce at Papa Bob's had sort of a black pepper aftertaste to it and had a nice lingering spicy bite.  Surprisingly, the Bob-anero sauce had a lot of things going on.  It had a sweet front end that slowly turned into a spicy back side.  There seemed to be a lot flavors going on between the initial sweetness to the lingering spicy taste on the Bob-anero.  Quite actually, I thought the "hot" sauce was more spicy than the Bob-anero sauce.  

The fries were crisp and I ate just a handful of them, primarily using them to test the sauces.  I probably should have gotten the sweet and sour cole slaw instead of the fries, but the fries served their purpose in allowing me to try the different sauces with a more neutral taste.  

The baked beans - served in a common coffee cup, an interesting twist - were thick and had a lot of chunks of pork and beef mixed in.  On their own, the beans were very good.  As I'm wont to do with baked beans, I added some of the hot barbecue sauce to them to zip them up.  The beans were outstanding.

But the winner of the evening at Papa Bob's were the horseradish dill pickle chips.  They had a slight - but not overpowering - taste of fresh ground horseradish.  Mixed with the vinegar dill flavor, the overall taste of the pickles was immensely heightened.  Looking back, I should have just bought a quart jar of the horseradish dill pickles to take back home with me.  But I still had three more days on the road and I was worried that they wouldn't last the week.  

The barbecue at Papa Bob's, well, I'd put it up against many other places I've tried in the Kansas City area.  I don't know if I can call it the best I've had - the pulled pork was really the only thing that I can say held it back from being a truly memorable meal.  But the ribs and brisket were very good, as were the baked beans and the sauces provided.  And the horseradish dill pickles?  They were to die for.  I'm going to make it back to Papa Bob's to try more barbecue at some point, as well as picking up a quart jar of the horseradish dill pickles.  I'll have to hide them in trunk of the car, though - out of sight, out of mind.  That way I wouldn't be tempted to eat them as I'm driving down the road.    

BurgerFi - Glenview, IL

I was seeing some dealers in the northern Chicago suburbs on a recent trip there and I passed by a place at the corner of Lake St. and Milwaukee Ave. in Glenview that I hadn't noticed before - BurgerFi.  My interest was piqued and it was time for dinner, so I circled back and stopped it to see what BurgerFi was all about.  

It turns out that BurgerFi is a chain of upscale burger places based out of Florida.  It was started in 2010 by three partners - John Rosatti, Lee Goldberg and David Manero.  Rosatti was raised in a working class family helping his father work on boats.  Using his mechanical know-how, Rosatti got into automobiles and opened a body shop in 1968.  He parlayed his business acumen into buying an Oldsmobile dealership in Brooklyn, NY in 1975.  Eventually, Rosatti's dealership grew into sixteen brands and he renamed it the Plaza Auto Mall - one of the largest auto dealerships in the nation.  He expanded the Plaza Auto Mall into Nevada, Florida and New Jersey.

Pictured right - John Rosatti with ladyfriend Dawn Kimball.  (Picture courtesy Newportseen.com)  I'll save the editorial comment about the fact that money CAN buy you love.  

Rosatti's first love was boats and he built 15 yachts including a 168 foot super-yacht that he still owns.  He also began to dabble in the restaurant business opening such iconic South Florida eateries as Vic and Angelo's and The Office.  His partner in the restaurants was David Manero, a longtime restaurateur in the South Florida area. Along with Lee Goldberg - who was a successful franchisee for both Wendy's and Popeye's Chicken - the three came up with the BurgerFi concept.  They wanted to have burgers made-to-order with top quality, organically-grown Black Angus beef, French fries that are cooked in peanut oil, and using a number of locally grown toppings and ingredients in their food.  (BurgerFi is short for burgerfication, a term the group came up with.)

Two years after opening their first BurgerFi location in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, FL, Rosatti and Goldberg sued David Manero (whose real last name is Mainiero) over charges of embezzlement and money laundering.  Manero had suddenly split from the company a few months before and no one really knew the reason why until the lawsuit came public.  

It was also alleged that Manero's son, who was expected to open a BurgerFi location in Southern California, had decided to open his own restaurant, Urbun Burger, instead of becoming a BurgerFi franchisee.  Rosatti and Goldberg alleged that the younger Manero had taken all the equipment that was given to him by the group with the stipulation that it would be a BurgerFi and had not compensated the corporation.  That lawsuit was eventually settled with the restaurant becoming a BurgerFi, but I couldn't find if the lawsuit against the elder Manero - who with actor Danny DeVito once owned DeVito's in South Florida until it closed in 2010 - had been resolved.  

Today, with Rosatti as CEO and Goldberg's son as chief council, there are over 75 BurgerFi locations in over 20 states from Florida up the Eastern Seaboard with locations as far away as Anchorage, AK and Napa, CA.  In the Midwest, there are BurgerFi locations in Kansas City, Lawrence, KS, Ann Arbor, MI and the one in Glenview, IL.  The Glenview location opened in the summer of 2013 in the new Glenview Commons shopping area on the southeast corner of Lake St. and Milwaukee Ave. (see map) and is owned by developer Altaf Hemani and accountant Ahmed Lakhani. 

The interior of the Glenview location has sort of a contemporary industrial decor with industrial-type lights handing from a metal ceiling, slat-wood paneling, with metal chairs and tables on a concrete floor.  For as many lights that they had in the place, the lighting wasn't overpowering.  

The concept is to order at the front counter, take a buzzer pager and get your food when you're paged.  The menu is located on the wall above the open window to the kitchen and in addition to burgers, they also feature vegetable burgers at BurgerFi, as well as a 28-day-aged brisket burger, hot dogs - including a Kobe-beef hot dog and an apple/chicken hot dog - fries, onion rings and frozen custard shakes.  I didn't know it at the time, but BurgerFi also has a secret menu - ala In-N-Out Burger - that includes a Supreme Burger with grilled mushrooms, bacon and American cheese, 1/2 + 1/2 burger with a beef patty and a vegetable quinoa burger patty, and alternative style fries that are smothered in cheese, grilled onions, mustard and a housemade sauce - BurgerFi sauce - that is basically a mayo-based sauce with 15 different spices and herbs added in.  

I was met by a rather indifferent lady at the front counter and I noticed that their regular burgers were all doubles - flat grilled and thin.  But you can also order your own "made-to-order" burgers - single, double or triple patties.  Then you get your choice of four different cheeses and toppings such as Peter Luger steak sauce, organic ketchup, a fried egg, hickory-smoked bacon or grilled mushrooms for an upcharge.  Toppings and condiments such as regular ketchup, yellow mustard, A1 steak sauce, jalapenos, garlic mayo, barbecue sauce and regular mayo could be added for free.  

I ended up ordering a double burger with chopped onions, grilled mushrooms, Swiss cheese and bacon.  They had a special that evening where I could get a regular order of fries at a reduced price.  I thought, "What the hell..." and ordered up some of their fries.  Then the lady asked me if I wanted any seasonings or toppings on the fries - cheese sauce, chili, chili and cheese, parmesan cheese and herbs, a spicy cajun seasoning, and sea salt and vinegar.  I was about to tell her to put nothing on the fries when I thought about the cajun seasoning.  When I asked about that, she very disinterestedly said, "I like the cajun seasoning..."  Her overwhelming endorsement of the cajun seasoning - no matter how underwhelming it really was - was enough for me.

They also had a number of local and national microbrews on tap.  I ordered up a Samuel Adams Winter Lager.  When she told me how much it all was - $16 bucks with tax - I was a big taken aback.  And that was with a reduced price on the fries and a $2.00 special on the beer that evening.  I can almost imagine how much it would all cost if they didn't have the specials that evening.  

I waited about 10 or 12 minutes sipping on my beer before the pager buzzer began to vibrate somewhat loudly on the metal-topped table. I went up to the counter to grab my platter of burger and fries.  Ketchup and mustard were in container pumps on the side by the soft drinks and I poured some on my platter for the fries.

The first thing I noticed about the burger is that they brand the BurgerFi logo into the top of the bun.  I thought it was a nice little touch, but nothing that added to the value of the burger.  The burger was served in a small wax paper bag and was thick with chopped fresh onions and crispy bacon on top, and a lot of oozing Swiss cheese covering the burger patties and grilled mushrooms.  

And the taste of the burger was not bad - pretty good, as a matter of fact.  I'm not certain it was worth the money I paid for it, but it seemed to be a fine tasting burger.  Everything went very well with one another on the burger and nothing seemed to overpower the other tastes.  The bun was lightly grilled, but it was light and airy and held together very well with each bite.  It was simply an above average - but not great - burger.  

The fries, to me, were the highlight.  The rather stoic counter person should have been more exuberant about the cajun seasonings on the fries.  The seasoning had a nice kick, but not enough that it completely set your tongue on fire.  On their own, the fries were very good - they were sort of that limp style of fries that had a bit of a greasy taste to them from the peanut oil they cook them in.  With the cajun seasonings mixed in, the fries were out of this world.  I usually don't get fries all that often with burgers, but I'm glad I went with the fries this particular evening.  

BurgerFi is setting their sights on having upward of 250 outlets by the end of this year.  All I can say is that you'll have to give one a try - that is, if you haven't already.  While I thought the burger - for what I got - was a little overpriced, it was well above average in taste and quality.  I wouldn't put it in the same league as a Five Guys, but they do hold their own in what is becoming a rather crowded landscape of upscale burger joints popping up around the Midwest and beyond.

Pellegrini Pizza - Las Vegas

During the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show held recently in Las Vegas, we rented a large 9 bedroom "villa" to house the sales team who worked the event.    We had been working at The Venetian all day setting up the suites where we showed our gear and we were pretty tired when we got back out to the house.  Instead of making something or going out, we decided upon getting some pizza delivered to us.  We found a place not far from the house by the name of Pellegrini Pizza that delivered and the pizzas were so good - and unique - that I wanted to tell you about them.  

Pellegrini Pizza is a relatively new restaurant, opened in 2013.  Their specialties are thin crust pizza and chicken wings, but they also serve pasta dishes, sandwiches and subs, burgers, soups, salads and a wide variety of appetizers.  Although we didn't go to the restaurant, it is located in northwest Las Vegas in a strip mall back off of Rainbow, just south of the Highway 95 freeway where it meets up with Summerlin Parkway.  (see map) 

On our first full day in Las Vegas for CES we set up our displays in a handful of suites in The Venetian.  It was getting to be close to 6 p.m. and we'd pretty much finished up with what needed to be done and our boss suggested that half of us take off and figure out what to do for pizzas that night and the rest of our group of 10 would follow along shortly.  On the way to the house, my colleague Matt was looking up pizza places in northwest Las Vegas and whether or not they delivered.  He came up with three different places and when we got back to the house, we got on my lap top and took a closer look at these places on Urbanspoon and Yelp.  Overwhelmingly, the on-line users of those web sites gave Pellegrini Pizza the most glowing reviews of them all.  

We looked up Pellegrini Pizza on-line and found their menu page.  We found that they didn't just have the regular "small, medium, large" sizes of pizza - they had SIX different sizes ranging from 10" all the way up to a 30" pizza!  Well, we wanted to see a 30" pizza!  And this was our first mistake.  Our second mistake is that we ordered FOUR of them!  For 10 guys!  The third mistake was when Matt called in the order, he was told that it would take over an hour to make the four pizzas, then another 15 minutes to deliver them.  If I would have known that it was going to take that long, I would have put the kibosh on that many 30" pizzas and gone with smaller ones.  But the order was in and we had to wait for 90 minutes before the pizza driver called us and said he was just outside the gates (it was a gated community that we stayed in) with the pizzas.  

The rest of our group had shown up about a half hour earlier expecting pizzas to be there when they go back to the house, but when we told them that we'd ordered 30" pizzas the novelty soothed any rumbling stomachs that some of us had.  When the pizzas showed up, four of us went out to meet the pizza guy at the gate.  He came out with these huges boxes and we took them into the house.  Exclamations and hollering ensued when we laid them on the counter.  

The four pizzas we got were my standard favorite of Italian sausage, pepperoni and mushroom.  That proved to be the most popular pizza of the four we got.  As you can see with the picture at right, the pizza was gargantuan.  I put the bottle of the Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale in the corner of the box to show the size scale of the pizza.  

Usually, novelty sized pizzas aren't very good.  There's an unevenness of temperature causing some parts of the pizza dough to be more cooked than others.  But with the Pellegrini pizza, I didn't get that at all.  The slices were cut into the tavern style square pieces that I like so well.  The crust was understandably more limp than what you'd probably get on a non-delivered pizza, but the overall taste was wonderful.  The toppings were plentiful, the cheese had a great mozzarella flavor to it, and the sauce was tangy and sweet.  The pizza easily passed my "Does it taste good with a beer?" test.  I stayed away from the thicker outer crust pieces and went more for the "honey pot" squares in the middle.  

And we had a lot of pizza to go with a lot of beer in the house.  The three other pizzas included on that was half mozzarella cheese and half pepperoni, a "supreme" pizza that featured pepperoni, black olives, green peppers, mushrooms and onions, and the "Pilgrim" that was more of a "meat lovers" pizza topped with pepperoni, sausage, ham and meatballs.  That pizza is the one on the left in the picture at left, the "supreme" is the one on the right.  

The sausage, pepperoni and mushroom went first, followed by a large portion of the "Pilgrim" pizza.  The saltiness of the all meat pizza was very pronounced making for a great flavor with beer.  But when it was all said and done, there was still a large amount of the half-sausage and half-cheese left in the box.  (No one had a slice of the cheese-only side of the pizza.)  And the supreme was well over half-way from being finished.  We started to combine pizza pieces in the boxes and we had just under two full pizzas remaining.  And we were stuffed.  

Then it hit us - where in the world were we going to store what basically amounted to two 30" pizzas?  The large refrigerator was already stocked full of items for breakfast and for a couple of upcoming dinners were having.  Even if we put the pieces in Ziploc bags, we still wouldn't have been able to find much room in the fridge for the leftovers.  And, besides, when would we have time to eat the leftover pizza with all the other food that we had in the house?  It was cool in the garage at night - about 40 degrees - so we just put them out there.  The next morning I took a look at the pizzas and made the executive decision to throw 'em away.  The cheese, grease and toppings had all coagulated and they weren't worth keeping.  

And it was a shame because I'll bet the Pellegrini Pizza pies would have been great warmed up for a snack at some point.  They were very good on their own - even with the sogginess that happens with delivery.   Even though they took a little too long to make then deliver, the 30" pizzas worked out great - not only because of the taste and quality of the pizzas, but because of the "Holy Shit!" factor when we first saw the size of the pizzas.  If we're back at this house again next year for the 2016 CES, we'd have no problem calling up Pellegrini Pizza to have them deliver us more pizzas.  Although it probably won't be four 30" pizzas next time.

Don Hall's Old Gas House - Fort Wayne, IN

I was out in Fort Wayne seeing one of my dealers late last year and I had some time to kill before I had the appointment.  It was just after the noon hour and I decided to go get a burger somewhere.  Doing a quick search for burger joints in Fort Wayne, I found that I wasn't far from a place called the Stadium Bar that had good ol' juicy flat-grilled burgers.  When I pulled up in front of the Stadium Bar, it wasn't there.  It had closed.  I wasn't far from downtown, so I went to Plan B - a burger at Henry's was highly recommended.  I pulled into the parking lot next to Henry's, walked up to the front door and realized that they didn't open until 4 p.m.  Somewhat exasperated, I decided to just cut my losses and head over to a place not far away that I tried to get into late one evening a year or so ago - but they had closed for the evening - Don Hall's Old Gas House.  

The Don Hall's restaurant group is well known in the Fort Wayne area.  I had a meal at Don Hall's Factory last year (click here to see that entry) and it was pretty good.  Don Hall passed away just before Don Hall's Factory opened up and his family continues to run the restaurants and catering service in the Fort Wayne area.

Don Hall's Old Gas House is located along the St. Mary's River in downtown Fort Wayne.  (see map)  It shares the same building as the Don Hall's Japanese restaurant Takaoke.  The building that houses both the Old Gas House and Takaoke was, indeed, an old gas factory in the 19th century.  Fort Wayne's street lights in the mid-1800's were lit by artificial gas manufactured in the plant.  When the surrounding area of NE Indiana was found to have vast reserves of natural gas in the 1880's, the artificial gas factory shut down.  The building was used a brewery for a number of years before Prohibition was enacted in 1919.  

In 1958, Don Hall - who owned a popular drive-in restaurant on Fort Wayne's south side - bought the building to turn it into a supper club/fine dining establishment.  He put in a bar on the east side of the building and named it the Gashouse Saloon.  In the 1970's, Hall placed a statue of Charles Louis Centlivre, one of the brewing pioneers of Fort Wayne, on the corner of the roof of the Gashouse Saloon.  Centlivre was the founder of the Old Crown Brewery, a long time brewing facility that began in the 1860's and lasted until the early 70's.  Old Crown beer was a staple in taverns in and around Fort Wayne from the end of Prohibition until when the brewery shut down in 1973.   Centlivre is depicted with a foot on top of a keg of beer, looking toward where his old brewery once stood on the west bank of the St. Joseph River just north and east of Don Hall's Old Gas House.  The statue was commissioned by the Old Crown Brewing Co. and stood in front of the brewery.  Once the brewery shut down, Hall got the statue to continue to pay tribute to one of the first brewers in what was a long history of breweries in Fort Wayne in the 19th and 20th centuries.   

It was in the Gashouse Saloon where I parked myself at the bar that afternoon.  A rather sassy and funny bartender was working that day and she came over to greet me and to give me a lunch menu.  Her banter with many of the people in the bar area told me that she would be fun to be around.  

The bar area was nice and cozy featuring a three sided bar, a couple three booths and a number of tables.  This is the point in the story that I tell you that the pictures that I took at Don Hall's Old Gas House, well, they vanished off my computer.  I had pictures of the bar area as well as the main dining room that was a step up next to the bar.  I found this picture of the dining room on the Internet.  I understand the dining room went through an extensive remodel a few years ago to restore the mid-1800's look to the room.  The place seemed to be very popular with the older crowd.  A large table of 70-ish women were having what looked like a club meeting in the dining room.  

The lunch menu at Don Hall's Old Gas House is pretty extensive.  It features burgers, sandwiches, soups (including a shrimp and sausage gumbo) and salads.  They have a smattering of some of the dinner entrees in reduced sizes for lunch appetites.  Through the week, the Old Gas House features $8.88 daily lunch specials that include lasagna, meat loaf, brisket and stuffed chicken.  

The first thing I saw I saw at the top of the burger part of the menu was their Chicago burger - a 10 ounce black angus burger served on an onion bun.  For $8.50 you can pick three toppings including six different types of cheese, grilled onions, jalapenos or roasted red peppers.  Since I had my heart set on getting a burger at the first two places I stopped, I decided to go with my old standby burger topped with Swiss cheese, mushroom and bacon.  For $8.50, I thought it sounded like a pretty good deal.

I also got a side to go along with it.  Fries, baked beans, mac & cheese and cole slaw were some of the choices.  They also had something like Hall fries and I asked the bartender what the story was on those.  "The story is they're basically homemade potato chips," she said.  "And you get a bunch of them."  I ended up just getting fries. 

Now is when I really wish I hadn't lost all those pictures of Don Hall's Old Gas House.  This was a big-assed burger.  The onion bun was soft and fresh.  The burger was thick and juicy.  The Swiss cheese was running down the side of the burger patty.  The sauteed mushrooms were thick and very tasty.  This was one of those burgers where I went, "Mmmmm..." at the first bite.  

The fries were just all right - they were typical fries, not skinny, but not like steak fries.  This was a big burger with a lot of mushrooms, a couple slices of thick bacon, and a lot of cheese on it.  Along with the very tasty onion bun, this was a stellar burger and I was going to concentrate on it and not worry too much about the fries. 

Like I say, it was an outstanding burger at Don Hall's Old Gas House.  Looking through the dinner menu made me want to go back and have a nice meal there on a future visit to Fort Wayne.  But the burger at Don Hall's Old Gas House would be worth another visit any other time.  And I thought it was a very good value.  Two for two for meals at Don Hall's properties is a pretty good record so far.