Text 1476, 133 rader
Skriven 2006-05-16 21:37:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av JIM WELLER
Ärende: good things 681
=======================
 ML> The Ground Round... The menu looks like any chain menu.
 JW> And after all these years, you're surprised?

Not particularly. The chain started as an upscale Howard
Johnson's, and I went once in the '70s, found it wanting,
and didn't go back until we discovered that this place was
the only one in this particular town where the kitchen stayed
open after concert time - so it has become a mainstay for
burgers and beers after shows. Plus it was on the way from
the bus stop. But the 99, a Massachusetts chain that has an
extremely similar menu, has respectable if not inspired food.

 ML> the broccoli... the beginnings of yellow on the tops
 JW> There's no excuse for that particular sin though. Broccoli is really
 JW> cheap and plentiful. Why didn't they dump that and get more?

No excuse. See below.

 -=> Jim Weller said to Dave Sacerdote <=-

 DS> McDonalds:  I don't really care for McDonalds all that much, not
 DS> even their fries.
 JW> That's they're one redeeming quality, although they are nicely
 JW> duplicated elsewhere.

The fries are better than nothing, as I recall. And see below.

 JW> Being Canadian I patronize Harvey's when I am out into the world. They
 JW> do a flame boiled patty and have a huge selection of goodies in their
 JW> condiment bar. They used to be very good indeed but things have gone
 JW> downhill ever since they were bought out by Cara Foods. Cara started
 JW> up in the 60's as manufacturers of airline food in Canada. Dad bought
 JW> some stock when it was an IPO, took a flight on Air Canada, ate one of
 JW> their lunches and sold the stock, predicting they's be bankrupt in a
 JW> year. (He was wrong.)

Problem with commonsense investors is that the market doesn't
deal in common sense. Also he misidentified the consumer, which
was Air Canada, not the poor captive schlemazels (schlimm mazels)
eating the stuff. I'm sure Cara Foods did fine by Air Canada.

  CARA also bought out Swiss Chalet (grilled
 JW> chicken smothered with an obnoxiously sweet tomato sauce), co-branded
 JW> them and used their clout to insert them into nearly every airport
 JW> restaurant in Canada. So I will often have a Harvey burger when I fly
 JW> YK-Edmonton-Ottawa, usually for nostalgia's sake as they always
 JW> disappoint me these days. 

What's notable about the Harvey burger? Is it worth seeking out?

=

My friend Judy took me to Pierrot Bistrot for a belated
birthday dinner. This restaurant has an interesting origin -
when the Robert family decided to shut down Maison Robert
a few years ago (the parents retired when the lease on the
old City Hall expired, and the kids didn't think they could
keep up the payments on the new terms, which reflected the
amazing Boston real estate boom), the family scattered to
the winds, but after a while, Jacky, the son, just sort of
had to come back to Boston, where he started this place
along with some alumni from Maison Robert. Pierrot took off,
and as soon as its success was assured, Jacky left (on good
terms) and started yet another restaurant, Le Petit Robert,
which I also like (perhaps better). Anyhow, we chose this
place because it's near where Judy works and is accessible
by subway. And then the rains came, shorting out the generator
room in her office, but we went anyway. I threw on my ratty
old Sears raincoat (got it in 9th grade, about 40 years ago)
and grabbed the WordPerfect umbrella (the only surviving
umbrella in the place - it was free) and set off ... the 30
minute subway ride took 50 minutes, but at least the line
was running, which it wasn't when it was time to take Carol
to the airport a couple days before.

The place was almost completely empty at 6; despite our
bedraggled appearance we were given our choice of tables,
so we took a prime one.

Started off with the pigfoot salad, which was a somewhat
fancified version, the pig's foot boned out and made into
two sizable cutlets, which were then breaded and fried.
The reviews make a big point of how wonderful this is and
that you'd hardly know that you were eating a pig's foot.
Which misses the point of eating it in the first place. Be
that as it may, it was pretty good, although there were a
few bits of bone carelessly left in, and the lovely salad
of Boston lettuce had a fair amount of sand in it. A glass
of Amontillado accompanied nicely, but the wine had been
opened a long time ago - a pity that people don't drink
Sherry the way they used to, because it goes so well with
a wide variety of dishes.

Judy, who is a slip of a girl, contented herself with the
excellent crusty ficelle and less excellent very salty butter.

She had tried to put me at ease by talking about ordering the
filet mignon (the priciest thing on the menu), but I stuck to
my meal plan and had one of the cheapest of the main dishes,
the moules frites. This came as an enormous bowl of extremely
plump and mostly fresh mussels in a buttery wine sauce, sided
with a small bowl of French fries that did a passable imitation
of McDonald's. It was as much food as I could eat, and I left a
lot of the fries and gave Judy maybe a dozen mussels.

She ended up getting one of the specials of the day (all the
specials were fried, oddly enough, including a breaded filet
mignon stuffed with foie gras), a breaded halibut cutlet topped
with chopped tomato-onion-parsley stuff and sided with a small
scoop of scallopped potatoes and a couple of stalks of steamed
broccoli, one of which was ?! yellow on top. The fish was fresh,
the breading extraneous, the salad-sauce-topping tasty, the
portion more than she could eat.

With all this we had a carafe of nice citrusy-apricotty
Macon-Villages, very Frainsh.

For afters we split an apple-marzipan tart, which was good,
not too sweet. Decaf espresso (Illy) went well.

By the time we left around 8, the place was hopping. 

Food: B
Service: A- (quite friendly, but he didn't tell us all the
specials, which included Wienerschnitzel and some other
fried thing - it appears that they were teaching frying 101
in the kitchen that night)
Decor: A- (very authentic bistro, although perhaps a tad
too clean)

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