Well, that was a fine weekend. Went to the farmer's market yesterday and got a nice haul (pea shoots, Italian sausage, chioggia beets, fresh mozzarella, eggplant, donut muffins, polenta bread, cherry tomatoes). Also got to see a bit of the chef challenge. Sort of a Durham Farmer's Market version of Iron Chef. They had chefs from Toast, Guglhupf and Four Square competing with the theme ingredient being squash. We didn't stay until the end (too damn hot) but based on the prep I got to see I was most interested in Four Square's offering. Okay, maybe that was cos they had a big pile o' bacon on the cutting board. In the afternoon, Sarah and I went over to Tobacco Road to watch USA v. Ghana. Our friend D. joined us. Tobacco Road was pretty cool place to watch the game. Huge crowd, lots of TVs, even someone with a vuvuzela. And the food was excellent. I had a pulled lamb pita and Sarah had a shrimp burger. Both good enough that we'd go back even if there wasn't a game we wanted to watch. D. had a Caesar salad but I didn't get a chance to ask him how it was. Later in the game (Sarah and I got there super early to make sure we'd get a table) we got a hummus and pimento cheese appetizer. Also good (altho retrospectively maybe a bit too much food in the middle of the afternoon). And they have several local beers on draught including Triangle, Sisters of the Moon and Aviator.
Too bad about the game, though. Going in, I thought USMNT had a chance against Ghana but wasn't sure they could pull off the win. And that's about what happened. All through this year's World Cup, they seemed to be giving up early goals, digging themselves a hole that they spent huge amounts of time chasing down goals.
Not surprised to see England lose to Germany this morning, altho I was surprised to see them get beat like a drum. Sorry to see Mexico go out, altho I expected that as well.
Tonight we had dinner with an old friend who I hadn't seen in (what) eight years. He was down the road in Charlotte for a family event and popped up (okay, one doesn't just pop up from Charlotte but it's a damn sight closer to Durham than RI) and we all had dinner at Watts Grocery. As usual, they didn't disappoint. New summer menu is on now and good reviews for the trout, frogmore stew, summer pasta,chilled red pepper soup, summer berry slump, lemon coconut chess pie.
Recently in Durham Category
So you might have noticed that's there's been (shall we say) a bit of buzz about food trucks, esp. in the food geekier sections of the internets. And you might not think that Durham is enough up on the cutting edge to be part of that scene. But you'd be wrong. Food truck extravaganza this Sunday at Sam's Quik Stop in Durham. More details at the link but some of the participants will include OnlyBurger, Bulkogi Korean BBQ and Daisy Cakes.
oh yeah...
Spent most of the day laying down mulch in some of the garden beds. We only got enough to fill the back of the pickup on Saturday so that basically got me thru the bed by the back porch, the front of the bed on the right side of the backyard, and a bit of the bed up near where the old shed got torn down. Probably we'll need to get a delivery sometime this summer but at least this was a start.
And speaking of Saturday, on our way back from dumping the latest load o' bamboo at the landfill, we swung downtown hoping (1) that Daisy Cakes would be back (they were nowhere to be seen last weekend), and (2) that they'd still have some pop't-arts left. Alas, they did not. So we had cupcakes for breakfast.
What?!?
Went to the Bulls game w/ S & D last night. Very exciting game -- here's a recap from the Indy. Included two "home runs" that were over-ruled by the umpires. The first one, I think, hit the fence above the Blue Monster and I (and most of the crowd) thought it should have been a home run. In his recap, Sobsey states pretty categorically that the fence is considered in play. Weirdly enough, a similar thing happened later in the game, this time out in center field. The ball cleared the wall but not the outer fence. The umps called it a homer but after Rochester complained they reversed it to a ground rule double. Lots of booing and yelling from the crowd. Best line: "what do you have against home runs!" But the next batter pounded out into the bull (of "hit bull, win steak" fame) and that was all the runs Durham needed. BTW, we were sitting down the third base line with a good view of the bull and I think Sobsey's wrong on Chavez hitting the grass. It looked to me like it hit smack on the brisket.
Also adding the late game excitement was a looming thunderstorm. We knew it was supposed to start raining sometime last night. About the fifth or sixth inning, the wind started to pick up and it started smelling like rain. We started seeing lightning and heard thunder a couple of times. In the eighth (I think) we started feeling the occasional raindrop and the grounds crew took up positions by the tarp. Which was right near us so we got to hear them planning and following the storm. As the last fly ball was caught out in center, I looked up and could see the rain coming down. There was a moment when it was raining in right field but not in left. So we all beat a retreat but since we'd had dinner at Bull McCabe's we were parked on the other side of downtown. Got about halfway there before the skies just opened up. Probably we should have waited it out in the car but it didn't seem that bad. But it actually was one of the worst rains I've ever tried to drive thru. There were multiple times when it was raining so hard I could barely see the road. Only the fact that I was driving a route that I travel almost every single day kept it from being the absolute worst. But it's right up there with the hailstorm we got caught in driving back from Greensboro. The worst weather I've ever had to drive thru was a super-thick fog on 421 up in the mountains near Boone.
I'm getting ramped up for Copa Mundial. If you are too (or would like to be), here's a good intro to World Cup 2010 from the Guardian. I started following Spain during Euro 2008 (and, yes, I realize that leaves me open to charges of bandwagon jumping) so I'm kinda rooting for them. Altho the fact that so many people are picking them as favorites actually has me worried a bit.
Closer to home, and even more exciting, is the news that Scratch will be opening soon. Maybe as early as next week. Viva donut muffins!
Thursday night was the Durham Bulls home opener. Fun night at the DBAP even if the Bulls did lose 6-4 (and it really wasn't that close). Of course, Friday night they won 14-7. But that's not the game we were at. Ah, the joys of early season minor league inconsistency. The next game we're planning on is the one-night-only return to the recently renovated DAP. That's where the Bulls used to play back in their AA days when they were affiliated with the Braves. That should be super fun.
Also on the mad social whirl, last night we went to check out the recently opened Fish Shack. Owned by the same folks as the Original Q-Shack just next door and even if we hadn't known they were open, we could tell the minute we stepped out the car, as the smell of frying things is now competing with the smell of smoking things. I had the fish tacos. Very good! Sarah had a shrimp po' boy which also got good reviews. We were there with S. and D. who gave the thumbs up to the fried shrimp basket as well. Hush puppies and collards seem to be the same as at Q-Shack. The slaw was different -- more of a pickled cabbage than any kind of mayo-based slaw. It was super crowded so I didn't wanna take up their time asking a lot of questions about the menu. Guess we'll just have to go back and conduct further investigations. Among the intriguing items on the menu are the nicoise salad (w/ grilled fish choices), the cobb salad (w/ fried fish choices), the low country boil, and the Shark Attack po' boy (fried crawfish and Q-Shack brisket). For those interested in such things they're not yet selling beer (I assume it's a delayed liquor license, which seems to happen a lot when new restaurants are opening). The floorplan is largely unchanged from Rockwood except they removed the bar and added a half wall to channel traffic to the ordering window. At least the giant fish on the wall now have a context in which they make sense.
Sad local news, as Rockwood Filling Station has closed. They had some consistency issues over their year-and-a-half run but they were my second favorite local pizza. I give a slight edge to Backdoor. But Backdoor is take-out only so RFS was tops for dine-in pizza. It's been interesting seeing the local comments since the shut down was announced. Of course, you're never gonna see total agreement about anything, esp. a restaurant that's closed. And plenty of the things people have said spoke to the kinds of reasons why people would stop going to a resto. But it's been kinda depressing to see all the haters show up to kick the place one last time after it's gone. Oh yeah, and to remind everyone who liked it that it sucked and we all suck for having liked it. Yeah, I love the internets sometimes... I think what I mainly take away from RFS closing is how razor thin the margins are in the food biz. Even a place with a regular following and good crowds can be gone just like that.
OTOH, I hear that the space will become the Fish Shack, owned and run by the guys at the Q-Shack next door. So that's a good thing.
Also, this (which is almost as insane as the Star Wars tuna advert)
So this weekend's mostly been a festival of slacktacularity. Well, I did get one of the household tasks at the top of the list done. And reviewed a couple of CDs. But other than that, not so much in the way of productivity. Well, I did do some shopping. Including a stop at the farmer's market to get some pie from Scratch to celebrate National Pie Day. Altho why National Pie Day is not on Pi Day I couldn't begin to guess. And I suppose it all might have something to do with the mad social whirl that's been whirling (party last night, brunch this morning, dinner at Watts tonight.
Speaking of which, Watts and many other Triangle restaurants are participating in Dine Out for Haiti. If you can't make it anywhere tonight, there's a bunch of places participating tomorrow as well.
Local food blog Varmint Bites covers N&O food critic Greg Cox's top restaurants list for 2009. I've been to 12 of the top 25 (as noted in the blog post, it's actually now a top 24, as Fins has closed). And, of course, all lists like this are just excuses to debate. Breaking with standard internets protocol, I don't offer any opinion on the half of the list I haven't tried yet. Of the places where I have eaten, I'd probably drop Elaine's and Second Empire and possibly il Palio (altho I hear they've got a new chef so they probably deserve another visit before they get kicked to the curb). I'd probably sub in Jujube and Piedmont in those spots.
Noticed in comments, both at Varmint Bites and over on Chowhound, that there's support for Rue Cler as being deserving of a spot in the top 25. Several people whose opinions I respect (including some who might actually be among the theoretical readers of this blog) really like Rue Cler. But it's never clicked for me. The food's good but not enough to get past the service issues. I wouldn't say it's bad service (I mean, we've been back several times) but there's often something that's just not quite right. Plus I don't really dig the space all that much. And, yes, I'm aware that this is largely idiosyncratic. I know I've read people complaining about problems at places where I've never had anything other than great experiences and sometimes wondered how they managed to have such a bad time when I never do. It is (as the cliché goes, what it is). Anyway, when I'm in the mood for French bistro food, I think of Vin Rouge. YMMV
