I still do love my chains but I'm reintegrating this content back into my main site, Goodies First. The reason is simple: no one reads Chains of Love (god bless the handful of you that do) and at least a couple handfuls more read Goodies First.
Renovation Realities
Applebee's franchises must remodel every six years and spend at least $200,000 per store. Does a 2009 Applebee's really look that different from a 2003 Applebee's? They all feel early '90s to me.
But now the company is planning a major restyling. The only hints given in the Wall Street Journalare "upgraded exteriors, warmer color tones and, possibly, fewer tchotchkes" and "may see the walls, traditionally cluttered with framed photos of local scenes, incorporate wall paintings or other artwork evoking the neighborhood."
Do I hear skepticism in "possibly" and "may?" Lovers of clutter and tchotchkes need not worry about the Applebee's of the 2010s.
I am, however, looking forward to the artwork that will evoke the Fulton Mall. Cell phones, glasses, wigs and sneakers?
Horsey Sauce and More
Based on the tiny rendering (pictured) on the Brooklyn Eagle’s site, this is going to be one classy Arby’s.
O'Hare Macaroni Grill
According to Fortune, airport restaurants have been benefiting from longer waits and delayed flights. Bored passengers have been looking to time-killing activities like eating.
I know this first hand because just last Sunday I found myself at Macaroni Grill, a chain I’ve never frequented, inside O’Hare. Our airport van got us there way early and our flight was pushed back nearly an hour. The food court was packed solid and that wasn’t going to cut it anyway. I demanded a drink and er, atmosphere.
I loved the faux alfresco concourse view; if you have enough house chianti and squint you might imagine you’re glimpsing ruins of The Appian Way (which I just knew would have to be the name of a chain restaurant).
Behold the Sicilian: pepperoni, sausage, fontina and mozzarella. It wasn’t half-bad for an airport food diversion.
Romano’s Macaroni Grill * O’Hare Airport, Chicago, IL
Trimming the Pork
While incidents like the recent bombings over Malay Christians using the word Allah to describe God have challenged Malaysia’s appearance as a moderate Islamic country, there are bigger issues at hand.
Namely, the McDonald’s Chinese zodiac promotion in Singapore omitting the pig toy. Chinese ladies won’t be able to accurately complete the 12-figurine set (a cupid toy has replaced the pig) and that is not right!
For what it’s worth, no Muslims complained; it was a preemptive corporate approach. And oddly misguided since Singapore is more than three-fourths Chinese (76.8%, 13.9% Malay, 7.9% Indian). Singaporean McDonald’s are halal but I don’t know how religious dietary rules apply to non-edible charms.
Gustav’s Pub & Grill
Did I love it? Not as much as The Rheinlander next door.
There are two reasons to go to The Rheinlander: fondue and Victor Meindl. Gustav’s, the adjoining cuckoo clock-free bar-centric offshoot (now a chain), only has the melted cheese in its favor.
Victor Meindl was the gangly Christopher Kimball-looking gentleman in lederhosen and a jaunty Tyrolean cap that roved around the restaurant playing accordion on our almost annual Christmas visits in the ‘80s. He was still there when I celebrated high school graduation at The Rheinlander. And he was still there when I was in my mid-20s and I thought I was too cool for him when he asked if had any requests. I brushed him off with a “No, thank you” then irrationally changed my answer to “Do you still play that Consider Yourself at Home song?” (Oliver—and Victorian England in general—always gave me the creeps) While being serenaded the confusion between kitsch and genuine love overwhelmed me and my nervous laughing turned to tears. That was over a decade ago, and the last time I saw him.
The Rheinlander wasn’t always the source of joy. In college my sister and I came along with my dad and his new family for dinner. The rotund druggie (I’m not svelte but I’ve also never been a meth addict and assumed the two went together) step-sister who wore Tasmanian Devil t-shirts down to her knees, demanded extra mushrooms in brown sauce and they actually brought her more in a little dish and her uncle got rowdy and angry when the waitress wasn’t familiar with a whiskey/beer drink he’d had in Germany while in the service. I wasn’t 21 yet and couldn’t drown my sorrows publicly but you’d better believe that when we had to spend Christmas with these folks my sister and I pillaged their well-stocked liquor cabinet (at the prompting of our step-sister who showed us where her wealthy grandparents—millionaires from the garbage business, trash genuinely—kept the booze).
Why didn’t I check in on Victor on my no-longer-recent Labor Day weekend visit? I think I was scared that he wouldn’t be there. But I also didn’t have the time to commit to a full-blown German meal. I was meeting one of my oldest friends before flying back to NYC in a few hours and The Rheinlander is only five miles from the airport. I thought I’d give Gustav’s a go once I saw online that you can simply order the fondue and that it would be happy hour.
Ah, the fondue, simple, sharp, creamy and served with a mix of pumpernickel and paler bread, none of that healthy vegetables and apples nonsense. If I’m correct this was the $4.99 version from the happy hour menu. There is a mini pot for $2.99 and you can also order add ons like sausage an pesto. As an old-timer pesto is just wrong. I’m torn on the new-to-me Dungeness crab and roasted red pepper version because that could be good if done right.
Imade fondue twice in the past two weeks and went totally classic: Emmental, gruyere, kirsch (ok, no Chasselas—I can’t even pretend to be highbrow now that you know I used Charles Shaw Sauvignon Blanc) and obviously good enough to prepare for two different sets of people. The Rheinlander’s version contains only Swiss cheese and no cherry brandy, and it doesn’t even matter. You’ll eat it and you’ll like it. This is Portland not Geneva. Wow, it’s all coming back to me; chef Horst Mager, used to (and still does for all I know) regularly appear in cooking segments on local morning news shows. It looks like he even has a self-published (Portland, always with the diy spirit) cookbook on Amazon.
The fondue is all you need to know about the food at The Rheinlander. The rest is just not that remarkable. However, I still went wild with a pre-flight repast ordering up a slew of bar snacks that I don’t recall from the original stodgier menu. Things like schnitzel fingers with honey-mustard, ketchup and thousand island. Both the fries and cutlet could’ve been crisper.
The potato pancakes with smoked salmon, chopped hard-boiled eggs and capers and sour cream were pretty good. I got these to share but no one seemed interested in them.
James picked a sausage trio (brautrust, weisswurst and smoked bier sausage) with potatoes and two types of cabbage.
What I learned from Lema, the only person I’ve known for over 25 years that isn’t family: the last time she was in the Philippines she and her mom visited a mystic four hours from Manila whom they call Angie. She made them turnaround and drive back to the city for a belt to use in a spell. Details are blurred but I think it was her dad’s belt and he stopped cheating after the ritual was performed so it was well worth it. Also, her 80-something grandfather has a 30-year-old girlfriend, which no one questions. Supposedly, she wooed him with her cooking, though I imagine his US citizenship has something to do with it. Her aunt, who had been trying to come to America since the ‘80s, was finally granted permission, got here, hated it and promptly returned to the Philippines.
Meanwhile, I’m toying with idea of going to Manila in February. Years ago Lema told me that she knew someone who had his hand outside the window of a car and a passerby chopped it off to get his expensive watch (she also has an unbelievable tale about a prostitute and a randy tapeworm). I don’t wear a watch.
The tenuous Filipino/German connection: When I ate German food in Hong Kong I ordered the monstrous pork shank like the Filipinos at the table next to me (not like the Filipinas on stage singing “We Are Family”). They stared at me in a possessive way that questioned, “That American likes lechon?” But see, it wasn’t lechon because it was German food in Hong Kong. Neither of us owned it.
Gustav’s Pub & Grill * 5035 NE Sandy Blvd., Portland, OR
Financial District Baoguette
Did I love it? For Financial District Vietnamese? Yes, it's a boon.
As far as banh mi chains go, I’m probably more of a Paris Sandwich kind of girl. But I’ll take what I can get.
When I spoke to the unstoppable Michael Huynh for this Metromix year-end trend piece, he was envisioning Baoguette as the new Subway. And sure enough the new still-rough-around-the-edges storefront in the Financial District is just a few spaces over from a Subway. Five-dollar foot-longs had better watch out.
In the nearly three years I've worked way downtown pho has been high on my list of edibles missing in the neighborhood. I think I would be more jazzed if we hadn't been barraged with so much Vietnamese food this year. It is still a novelty in the Financial District, though. My only other venture to a Baoguette, the one on St. Mark’s, involved the beef soup not banh mi and it wasn’t half bad. Now that it’s brutally cold, soup seems smarter than sandwiches. But it wasn’t to be. Pho is on the menu but isn’t being served yet. They did have some prepared summer rolls in the refrigerated case, but it’s hard to get excited over them when it’s 20 degrees out.
The brown awning with an air conditioner punched through bore the Baoguette name held in place by blue tape. The long-necked lighting wasn’t having a good time either. Inside, the dry erase board on the wall was still shiny and unsullied. Same with the chalkboards above the counter. Rows of goldenrod Café du Monde coffee cans and full bottles of green-tipped Sriracha were the only design elements to be seen.
My old hard rule about $5 lunches shifted to $6 somewhere in the recent past and even that gets broken at least weekly for a Pret a Manger salad. Even those pick-a-mix salads where short little guys toss it in a plastic container for you come in around $7. It doesn’t mean I make a habit out of it, though. But hey, I had a little Christmas gift cash burning a hole in my pocket. I could spring for the $7 for a catfish sandwich just this once.
The flavors were an untraditional mishmash (honey mustard and sweet pickles?) not dissimilar to certain swampy Thai curries. I only saw a few jalapeño slices and no obvious red pools of Sriracha, but mouthfuls were hot, a dirty spicy that was compounded by the catfish’s natural earthy taste and tempered slightly by the strands of pickled red onions and sweet cucumber relish. I liked it more than I thought I would.
The catfish sandwich is akin to Num Pang's (which I never blogged about, oddly) but in some ways is preferable to me because I like a drier sandwich and this one uses honey mustard while the Cambodian one bulges with mayonnaise. It’s hard to disassociate honey mustard from chicken fingers, but the condiment wasn’t that jarring. I only recommend not trying on candy apple red lip glosses at Sephora on the corner right before biting into one of these sandwiches.
Baoguette does serve better food than the than closer-to-my-office banh mi cart and both charge $6 for the traditional Saigon sub (though I notice it’s only $5 at the Christopher St. Baoguette/Pho Sure while the catfish is $7 at both). I’ll likely return to check in on the pho at some point but as long as it’s in the 20s outside I’ll probably just walk the one block to the cart instead of the seemingly long (lots of tourist-dodging--I’ve given up on politeness and now barge through everyone’s posing in front of the Stock Exchange photos) five blocks to Maiden Lane.
Clearly, I’m not the only one who likes appropriating The New York Times' banh mi cross section photo.
Baoguette * Maiden Lane, New York, NY
New Adventures of Old Christine
Not a particularly fresh angle either, anti-Morgan Spurlocks abound. Deshan Woods, who lost weight by eating exclusively at McDonald’s, is just one that I had time to look up. Even the Swedes got into the debunking.
There is no secret to losing weight. Reducing calories and increasing activity are tried and true (spending an hour at the gym, then eating fried chicken will not result in weight loss—I can tell you that first hand).
Almost anyone could lose weight eating fast food daily. 2,000 calories is the number typically used as an ideal for the average woman’s daily intake (2,500 for men). If you wanted to lose a modest but healthy one pound per week you would need to shave 500 calories a day off this number.
For 1,500 calories you could scarf a Whopper (670 calories) and a Cinnabon (730) every single day and lose weight (1,400 total). You probably wouldn’t stay full and would become completely scurvy-ridden and deficient in essential nutrients. So, you could also eat zero and near-zero-calorie roughage like carrots and broccoli and use the remaining 100 calories for an apple (65 calories) or an orange (85 calories).
This is assuming you are completely sedentary. 45-minutes-to-an-hour on an elliptical trainer would probably allow you a small handful of fries (220 calories for BK value menu size, 340 for a small).
Fast food isn’t a particular weakness of mine, though I am proud of my proposed miracle diet. I do like to drink, however. Why blow hundreds of dollars on those silly juice cleanses when you could drop weight fasting on seven martinis a day (roughly 200 calories each)? Everyone knows that cleansing is about getting thin not detoxing or being healthful.
Unrelated: why do people insist on spelling lose as loose?
Five-Dollar Foot Longs 105 Stories Up
Subway is hardly an adequate replacement for Windows on the World but for now the sandwich chain is the newest and only food vendor at the Freedom Tower construction site.
I’m still not clear how the whole operation works in a shipping container. Too bad it’s not open to the public.
AP Photo/Mark Lennihan