Better Creole Food

Big Easy Cafe
5170 Randolph Boulevard
   (road construction locally makes Randolph one-way northbound)

N.B.: I'm told this restaurant has relocated to a spot near Loop 410 and Walzem Road. Haven't checked that out yet. 8/8/12

After my disappointing excursion to the Southside a couple of weeks ago, in search of good N'Awlinz-style cooking, I decided to try this Northeast-side outpost of creole after reading a few mixed comments about it on Urbanspoon. Big Easy is the creation of a family of Katrina refugees who found San Antonio a better place to be than New Orleans Post Katrina. And who can blame them.

I went with a friend who was off from work because it's Good Friday. I guess a lot of people were off work, because there was almost no traffic on the drive over. Construction has Randolph Boulevard down to one lane right now, but luckily it was going in the right direction for us; the return to the freeway afterwards involved a short detour up to Weidner Road.

Neither of us is Catholic, so we had no problem ordering the red beans and rice with sausage and a link of andouille, which came with salad. Next time, though, I'll know to let him order first, so I can sample something different. After I placed my order, his instruction to the waitress was, "I'll have the same thing." Anathema to a foodie.

The salad was good: a mixed green salad out of a bag, I reckon, reasonably fresh and livened up with a sprinkle of fancy-shredded cheeses and a little seasoning that gave it a more special taste. It was served in clam-shaped white bowls that seemed — I don't know why — in keeping with the New Orleans theme, but were unsteady on the table; a problem I've noted at other restaurants as well. I don't know about most people, but I very much dislike having to hold a salad bowl down with one hand, to keep it from dumping its contents onto the table or my lap.

The red beans and rice were thoroughly authentic New Orleans, right down to the excessive salt. It was well-cooked, but not overcooked. The cooking liquids seemed a trifle thin to me; I prefer that rich, dark water that beans and sausage produce; this seemed more like the water the rice was boiled in. Still, it had the flavour I expect of red beans and rice, and the quality of sausage was excellent. The same sausage was served in a split link over top, and it was genuine andouille, with all the flavour that entails.

Last city inspection: May 2010
28 demerits

The dish went down perfectly with a big glass of swamp water, and when time came for dessert, I was primed by yesterday's enticements at another local eatery, where I nearly dislocated my shoulder from patting myself on the back, having resisted temptation. My will-power can only do so much. And so I succumbed to the offer of bread pudding with what the waitress called rum sauce, but which clearly was a far, far better concoction than that: a sugary burnished pecan praline sauce. I would have thought it could not be gotten outside of New Orleans East, the only place where I've ever had it before. Even the bread pudding without the sauce was delicious, firm but not dry, satisfying in every way.

(Just for the sake of comparison, I ordered red beans and rice at the City Diner in New Orleans a few days later. See my review of that restaurant on The Other Curmudgeon.)

Why Urbanspoon?

I've referred a number of times, in this blog, to a web site called Urbanspoon. Recently this blog took over the number-one spot on their "blog leader board," and  it occurs to me that some people might think there is some tit-for-tat or quid-pro-quo going on here. There isn't.

I've tried half a dozen ways of finding and sorting through all the restaurant options in San Antonio, including locally-owned web sites, but about a year ago I settled on Urbanspoon as the best. (I say I settled: I've actually tried a couple of others since then, but remain convinced that Urbanspoon is the best.)

First of all, places are easy to find on that site, whether by name, by price range, by neighbourhood, or by cuisine. The information is updated regularly, and kept timely by, I assume, an army of people like me who jump on the "feedback" button every time something turns out to be inaccurate. Other web sites will list places that have been gone for months.

Secondly, the listings appear to be comprehensive. I've found perhaps four or five places, all relatively new, that weren't listed on Urbanspoon, and they were up on the listings within a couple of days of my feedback.

Thirdly, the ratings (the percentage of people who "liked" the restaurant) is right up there, front and center on each restaurant's page. Yes, people are often of the ovine sort, easily persuaded that restaurant quality is directly related to its advertising budget; lots of people like Olive Garden and Jim's, and I even maintain a genuine friendship with one person whose favourite place is ... nnggaaghmmf ... Saltgrass. But even allowing for the undiscerning and careless preferences of the great mass of people, such ratings are probably the best way available for determining whether a place will appeal to you, short of actually trying it.

The rankings, on the other hand — those lists on the left-hand side of the Urbanspoon home page offering quick links to the "best fine dining," the "best casual dining," and so on — are less reliable. This is partly because they don't seem to be based on the votes each place has gotten. It seems to be the result of some algorithm taking in both the favourable votes and the total number of votes. I've noticed that the more votes a place gets, positive or negative, the better it does in those rankings. Thus, Chris Madrid's, with 1437 votes, does better in the rankings than Big Easy Cafe, with 323 votes, even though 90% liked Big Easy, while only 86% like Chris Madrid's. But then, Chama Gaúcha, the absurdly expensive Brazilian steak place, has fewer votes than Chris Madrid's, and a lower rating than Big Easy, but finishes first in the rankings.

(You might think that this sort of calculation would give an edge to national chain restaurants, that suck people in with all those expensive prime-time television ads, but it doesn't seem to. I can't tell if Chama Gaúcha is a big chain — their web site freezes up on me, so all I know is there's one in Downer's Grove, Illinois — but I know they do a lot of local advertising on TV. But for all the advertising that Landry's various formula restaurants and Olive Garden do, they don't crack the list.)

Lastly, Urbanspoon is a site that allows me to find restaurants easily in just about any city in the country, including small towns. (Try looking up Fredericksburg or Dime Box on those other sites.) I've used Urbanspoon in places from Washington State to Washington DC, and found it in every case to be reliable, thorough, and easy to use. If I seem to be favouring that site over others of a similar nature, that's why: I think it's the best there is.

Why, Yes, as a matter of fact, we can use another Italian place in town

Cipriano's Italian Café
6825 San Pedro (just south of Oblate)

When we say "Italian restaurant" in this country, we usually don't mean "Italian"; we mean "Italian-American," as in red-and-white-checked tablecloths and Mulberry Street and Chico Marx's character. The misapprehension caused by this shorthand way of speaking is generally insignificant, and serves the useful social function of keeping food snobs in a state of apoplexy, which helps keep them from disrupting our daily lives very much. For the snobs, a category which, yes, sometimes includes the Curmudgeon-About-Town —  and for those who merely know Italy, and prefer its flavours to those developed by our immigrant ancestors after they got off the boat and found that nobody, but nobody around here understood the treasure that is garlic — there are a few genuine ristoranti italiani scattered around the country, including one or two right here in good ol' San Antonio. About as many as the market demands.

The rest of us — I include myself, because I'm only occasionally a food snob — are perfectly happy to chow down on what I think of as New York Italian (pronounced "Eye-talian") food, even though it's about the same among the Italian immigrants of other places, like my sometimes-immigrant kin in Louisiana. And for that we have a number of good places to choose from — again, about as many as the market demands — and some of which even manage to excel at some particular or another.

I stumbled across another one of those good places today, a little (11 tables, with the suggestion of another small dining room beyond an accordion door) strip-center café of eight months' vintage in a vaguely tawdry stretch of San Pedro: tattoo parlour next door, faded motel across the avenue, lots of concrete, no hint of roadside landscaping since the road was widened years ago. Inside, the place has been done up pretty nicely, with a bit of charm and grace that I didn't suspect from the outside. And it was well staffed with friendly people who knew they had some quality products to offer, and were justly proud of it.

Cipriano's red sauce — let's get this out of the way — is nothing really special. It's all tomato sauce and seasonings, with a little too much oil and none of the body provided by vegetables and wine and tomato paste and hours of simmering. For some reason it makes me think of Calabria, but it's really more Napolitana. (Sorry: overcome by a moment of snobbishness there.) It's reasonably good, it coats the pasta well, and it does full justice to the excellent breads they serve. (And considering my recent run of so-so breads at Italian places, I should probably say more about that. But, uncharacteristically, I'll forbear.) If the pasta had been a little more al dente I'd've been happier with it, but it was close enough that we're talking mere seconds in the water.

One of the specials today was a shrimp salad, which my tablemate ordered. The salad was large, and loaded with all the best things: shrimp, of course, in good number, and marinated artichoke hearts and hearts of palm, and it looked fresh and sounded crispy. I can always tell when my friend really enjoys a dish, because a quietness descends over the table as conversation comes to a stop. I don't believe he said two words, except in terse answer to specific questions, until the last drop of dressing was wiped from the bowl. That, good reader, was a salad thoroughly enjoyed.

The city has not yet inspected this
restaurant.

I was pleased with my lunch, too, despite the quibbles I've already noted about the pasta and sauce. And there is one other, relatively minor, thing to complain about (and Lord knows, I like to complain). The menu refers to my dish as having "four sliced meatballs" on it. What it actually had was two meatballs, sliced in half. Fortunately, they were very well-made meatballs, not over-large but substantial, with excellent seasoning and texture and none of the cheap filler material one so often finds in ... ahem ... medium-priced Italian chain restaurants. I enjoyed them immensely, yet felt cheated at having "four sliced meatballs" in only the hypertechnical sense.

But I'll tell you what: after the soup, nothing else really mattered. The cream of potato soup with (Italian) sausage was so very good that we could have been satisfied with anything. It was, it really was, a great soup. I gave some thought to ordering another to take home, but decided that I live close enough, a straight shot of about three miles down San Pedro, that I can just come back any ol' time.

Pretty sure I will, too. And next time I'm going to save some room for dessert.

Price Shopping

Grocery prices have been fluctuating a lot lately, mostly in an upward direction. Here is a comparison of prices at  two large grocery chains in San Antonio. (I realize I'm not comparing that many items, and that most people buy a lot more processed, canned, and frozen foods than I do; but maybe this information will be useful to you.)

Product — HEB Price — Walmart Price

sweet onions — 0.98 — 0.48

asparagus — 2.64 — 2.74

broccoli crowns — 1.48 — 1.87

green beans — 1.58 — 0.97

(however, I considered Walmart's green beans to be of unacceptable quality)

zucchini — 1.98 — 1.98

small grapefruit — 0.33 — 0.54

cantaloupe — 1.48 — 1.34

fat-free milk — 2.08 — 2.08

nonfat yogurt — 1.96 — 1.96

egg substitute — 1.98 — 1.50

(I note that while I was charged $1.50 at the register for this at Walmart, the price on the shelf tag was $1.97. I've noticed fairly often that the register prices at Walmart are lower than the shelf prices.)

non-dairy creamer, flavoured — 2.58 — 2.78

cranberry juice — 2.42 — 3.18

unsweetened applesauce — 1.98 — 1.68

saltine crackers — 0.98 — 0.98

graham crackers — 3.28 — 3.28

Triscuit crackers — 2.00 — 2.48

(HEB has a house brand of these that I find to be equal in quality to the national brand; they are $1.48.)

canned stewed tomatoes — 0.50 — 0.63

Total HEB price for these items: $30.23

Total Walmart price for the same items: $30.47

These prices are from the HEB at Lincoln Heights (Broadway at Basse) and the Walmart on Austin Highway.

Big Deal....

This morning, when I checked the leader-board for San Antonio on Urbanspoon, I found that this blog has taken over the top spot. I don't know how those rankings are calculated, or even what the "Views" number it appears to be ranked by means — it doesn't seem to bear any relationship to the number of visitors the blog registers — but still, it's nice to be Number One, even if it's an empty title, and transient.


That, plus a Manchester United victory over Manchester City in the FA Cup semifinal that's about to begin, will really make my day. 

Eccezionale cucina tradizionale italiana

Piccolo's Italian Restaurant
5703 Evers Road
(between Loop 410 and Wurzbach)

The first time I went to Piccolo's, many years ago, I was impressed. It was the first Italian restaurant I'd been to in Texas that didn't use the same tomato-based sauce for every dish. Everything we had that night was excellent; everything I've had every time I've been has been well above average. If it wasn't for the fact that, to get there from my house, I have to get on two freeways and fight the outbound traffic (which, now that all that construction on 410 is finished, isn't as much of a big deal in fact as it is in my mind), this would be a regular haunt for me. Instead, with a number of Italian places, some pretty good, almost within walking distance, I seldom get out that way.

But when I do go, it's always good. It's not much to look at: it never has been, and over the years it's gone from comfortable to comfortably dilapidated. The place is small inside, and it seems like all the smaller tables are right by the kitchen door (they're not, it just seems that way), and the hard wall surfaces produce a bit of a din of conversation — though nothing like the cacaphony one finds at some of the trendier Southtown places — that sometimes crescendos to an unpleasant level. But the service is good, the staff are knowledgeable about the food on offer, and the prices for food and drink are reasonable. Plus they have exceptionally good food.

Tonight's choices were redfish Livornese, with a side of pasta with butter and garlic sauce, for the missus, and lasagna for me. We were immediately served fresh, hot garlic bread expertly made from small rolls, and they kept coming. (A blessing, and a curse....) Our wine choices arrived promptly (along with another basket of bread), as did our salads, which, I have to say, are the only part of the meal that was less than perfect. There's something about salads in Italian-American restaurants: it's almost like there is a cultural antipathy to them. The lettuce was machine-cut in strips like pappardelle, and dumped on a plate with a single thin wedge of tomato. The dressing, a creamy Italian, was tasty, but still the salad was a bore.

last city inspection: March 2011
7 demerits

The main dishes make up for that, though. The fish was flaky and tender, with a good flavour that penetrated the tomato-based sauce. It had a hint of hot pepper, just enough to give it character, not enough to distract or disrupt the experience. The butter-and-garlic sauce on the side pasta was light and subtle, providing both flavours clearly without the odious slathering of liquid dripping from the waving ends of pasta, such as one finds at certain popular national cosidetto-Italian chains. 

My lasagna was particularly good. Unlike at other places, lasagna at Piccolo's is a sort of oozy thing. That sounds weird and disgusting, I know, but trust me: it's damn good. Instead of sitting up on the plate like a Napoleon, it slumps down and spreads out until it fills the plate. It looks odd, but the taste — squisito! 

Comfort Food, Indeed

Landmark Cafe
701 Montana Street, at South Pine

It's an odd place for a coffee shop; but then, it's an odd coffee shop. 

Located on the second floor of a restored house, smack in the middle of a residential neighbourhood, the Landmark Café is definitely not the bastard offspring of Starbucks; it's more like the unplanned late-in-life child of Mother's, plopped down on San Antonio's East Side in a nice refurbished crib. There are no half-caf lattes or exotic brews here; it's a coffee shop like Jim's is a coffee shop, only much better.

It's simple food at reasonable prices — "comfort food," the waiter called it, and he's right. The breakfast menu features biscuits and gravy, eggs and sausage, pancakes, and grits; for lunch, it's soup, salads and sandwiches.

We both started with a small bowl of Loaded Baked Potato soup. The name was an understatement. We each had the thought of licking the bowl, and had we been alone in the room we might have done so. Well, Rick might have; I'd've had mine wrapped up to go, as I'm too publicly fastidious for that sort of outré behaviour. [Imagine the appropriate emoticon here.] It was rich, and creamy, and far better than any actual baked potato I've ever had. Makes me wonder what the tortilla soup must be like, but that's for another visit.

Rick went for the Montana Street Sandwich: turkey, ham and Swiss cheese with tomato, lettuce, and a chipotle mayo that is the sort of thing Weight Watchers dream about -- applied in generous quantity but with a deft enough hand that a Weight Watcher (like me, at times) could eat it in good conscience. It's the sort of sandwich your gourmet-chef mother fixed for you at home on Saturdays.

Last city inspection: June 2010
29 demerits
(listed as "William's Land Mark")

I, on the other hand, chose the Brisket Sandwich. I could have tarted it up with onions or pickles, but I had it plain: just the meat and a little sauce on delicious lightly toasted bread. My late ex-mother-in-law, who was the doyenne of brisket cooks (and mac-and-cheese, but that's beside the point), never served a more perfect brisket. 

Unusually, we decided to try dessert as well. It was late in the afternoon, nearing the house's 3pm closing time, so the two cakes on offer had been sitting out in covered glass cake-takers at least one whole day. Yet they were both still excellent. Rick's was the butter-pecan cake, a flavour I'm not wild about, but I was not satisfied with just one taste, and had to manufacture a reason*, on the spur of the moment, for a second. I went for the chocolate cake, and ooh ooh OOH was it chocolate-y. Yet neither cake was overly sweet. They were made for the house by a local woman with a deft hand and the good sense not to try to add another hue unto the rainbow.

* the difference between a reason and an excuse is that you believe a reason.

Dinner In Turkey ... Almost

Mediterranean Turkish Grill

8507 McCullough 

(in the shopping village; enter from Rector Street)

It is a phenomenon observed and reported on everywhere, and for as long as I can remember: waiters and waitresses who have given exemplary service, from the time you take a table at a restaurant until the last entrée is served, suddenly disappear, leaving you to sit waiting to complete the transaction by paying the bill. Where do they go? What do they do? Are they huddled in the back, peeking through the kitchen door, as though they feared us? Are they hiding in the walk-in freezer, out of some sense of shame? I just don't know.

Anyway, it happened again tonight, at the Mediterranean Turkish Grill, a fairly new Turkish place in town. Since I've always enjoyed the other Turkish place in town, I thought I would give it a try. It seems easier to get to from where I live, though it's not really. It's just more in a slice of town that I frequent more.

It's an unassuming little place, two units in a standard strip-center building, with four or five tables for four, and, uncommonly for an American restaurant, quite a few more tables for six or more. This is a good sign in an ethnic restaurant, for it means that it expects to get a lot of its business from members of the ethnic community, who haven't been in the US long enough for their traditional extended-family bonds to atrophy. It usually means the food is authentic.

When first seated, we were brought bread and oil. The bread was thick and fluffy, and looked delicious, sort of like naan on steroids, or focaccia without the oil. It was, however, strangely tasteless; and dipping it in the seasoned oil didn't do a great deal to help it. The oil in the dish is so deep that, in order to get to the seasonings at the bottom, you have to swirl the bread in it. You end up with a lot of oil and a little season.

Luckily, though, we didn't rely on the bread to occupy us until our main dishes arrived; we ordered Lahmacum, which, according to Google Translations, literally means "pizza." (It's listed under Pideler, which the same source says means "pita.") It consists of a tortilla-thin crust covered with a mix of ground beef, lamb and vegetables. It's not listed as an appetizer but it performs that function admirably. And at $2.85, it's also much cheaper than the appetizers on the menu.

For our main dishes, I chose Adana kebab, a grilled-meat dish that I was familiar with from my one trip to Turkey six years ago, and from my visits to the other local Turkish restaurant. My wife went with Lamb tava, which was called a casserole on the menu but was really more of a stew. Both were delicious.

The city of San Antonio has not
yet inspected  this restaurant.

Adana kebab is simply ground beef and lamb pressed into a kind of small log; it comes off the grill with a slight crustiness that gives it a marvelous texture, and the seasonings are, to my taste, the paradigm of Turkey. True, they're about the same kinds of seasonings you'd find in Greek or Lebanese food -- differences between any of the eastern Mediterranean cuisines are subtle -- but in this context, it almost is enough to transport me back to western Asia. It is served with a large pile of fluffy basmati rice mixed with pine nuts, some sliced and seasoned onion, and a German-looking serving of sweet cabbage. 

Lamb tava is served in a small crock, with rice on the side. It is a dark, rich stew, with chunks of nicely cooked lamb meat and vegetables in a thick seasoned broth. I gave some thought to offering to swap my Adana kebab, but decided to stick with what I had when I took another bite. I don't know why lamb in Mediterranean restaurants is so much better than in other places. 

After we'd finished, we turned our minds to dessert. There were four listed on the menu, and two of them had struck chords in us. We had just about decided to split a serving of rice pudding (sutlac), but when, after a long, long, long hiatus, the waitress returned, she brought the check and neither asked about dessert nor stayed long enough for us to request it. We took that as a sign from God, paid the (quite reasonable) bill, and went to TCBY on Broadway.

On Comments

I wish I knew why some of my blog posts have a link for people to leave comments, and some don't. I've been through the settings for this thing half a dozen times, looking for something that will put that link in, and keep it in. Apparently I have not succeeded.

So -- I don't expect this to do any good, but what the hell, I'll give it a shot -- if you should feel the whimsical desire to leave a comment, for a post that has no link, you can email it to me at passepartout22@live.com. Just tell me which blog post it goes to, and I'll see if I can attach it somehow. If I can't, I'll make a separate post for it.

Unless, of course, it's vituperative, ungrammatical, internally inconsistent, jejune, or irrational. I might still publish it, just for laughs, but won't feel obliged to.

Better Than Other School Cafeterias

Bernard's Creole Kitchen
8019 South Pan-Am Expressway

(actually, it's on Barlite Boulevard, off Interstate 35 South, 

between Zarzamora & Palo Alto)

The closing of Ma Harper's, a folksy, exuberantly unpretentious Creole kitchen on the East Side, left me with a hole in my culinary heart. I had already lost another favourite, a place I went to fairly often but could never remember the name of; it was always just That Place Off Walzem that doubled as a church on weekends. I don't feel the yearning for Louisiana-style cooking nearly as often these days, as I grow old (what, 49 again?) and memories of youth fade. But every now and then, well, it's just something a body's gotta have.

So it was almost inevitable that when I offered lunch to an old friend who lives off I-35 South,  I would take her to Bernard's. I had found this place listed on Urbanspoon San Antonio, complete with an extraordinarily high rating of 97% approval (with 67 votes cast, a respectable number). 

The place is on the campus of the Baptist University of the Americas, in Building Number 6, a two-storey number facing Barlite Boulevard. This is the school cafeteria. When you come in, from front or back entry, you find yourself in ... well, a school cafeteria, but without the food line. A large open room, with mix-and-match chairs and large mix-and-match tables for community seating, on a linoleum floor. 

There being no food line, we weren't sure where to go. Off to one side, we noticed a smaller dining room, similarly furnished, but where the large room was entirely empty, that one was almost full. We went in, found ourselves seats at a table for six (the smallest one available) and waited for the waiter to get to us.

Turns out, this is not how things are done at Bernard's. There is a small counter in the corner of this room, and we eventually figured out that customers are expected to place their orders there. But we sat, in our ignorance, watching the one harried young employee rush around until finally he arrived at our table with menus, and one set of utensils, to take our drink orders (sweet tea for her, swamp water for me). Some time later, about the time we thought we'd figured out how to read the casually disorganized menu, he returned. My friend ordered the "Not Yo Mama's Meat Loaf" with sides of dirty rice (at my insistence) and mashed potatoes; I ordered the shrimp po-boy, dressed, and a link of boudin.

The boudin arrived first, two links wrapped in foil like tacos on corn tortillas, well seasoned but underheated and mushy. They were soon followed by our main meals. My po-boy arrived with part of the sandwich bread missing; the waiter noticed it as he set it down on the table, and went to rectify the situation -- how, I don't know, because he was soon distracted by all the other tables clamouring for attention, and I gave up waiting on it. The missing bread aside, the sandwich was tolerably good. The shrimp were small, but plentiful, fried to a touch and tasty. The dressing was fresh and also plentiful.

My friend's meatloaf was slightly redolent of cumin, not the first spice that comes to mind in Creole cooking. It had a good texture, although slightly dry. I didn't try her mashed potatoes; they looked fine, and she had neither praise nor complaint, so I conclude that they were good but not extraordinary. The dirty rice was like no dirty rice I've ever had. A garnish of two slices of andouille was the best feature of the dish; the rice was well cooked, neither chewy nor mushy, which means that its preparation was carefully managed in the kitchen. But the seasonings, which I could not identify, weren't to my liking. They had a savory quality that belongs to vegetable casseroles or pot pies, not dirty rice. 

I see that when I cast my "don't like it" vote, Bernard's overall rating dropped to 95%. Something about the place appeals to most people who eat there, I guess -- judging from the crowd on this occasion, students and staff at the university, and a number of uniformed military. Would it be too catty to opine that they are comparing it to the food they're used to getting at school cafeterias, or maybe MRE's?

Yes, it would. But, meow.

The City of San Antonio is, shall we say, somewhat lackadaisical in its restaurant inspection information. Details like names and addresses ... well, you know. So a search for “Bernard’s Creole Kitchen” in their database yielded no results; a search for “Bernard” got me inspection results for  “Limon’s Food Center/Bernard’s Breol,” at 503 Palo Alto Road. Bernard’s used to be at 509 Palo Alto, until last year, and I can interpolate that “Breol” is bureaucratese for Creole-and-nobody-here-gives-a-damn-about-spelling.

I’ve noticed a number of times that addresses of local restaurants that re-locate never get updated on the City food inspection reports. Ma Harpers’s, for example, once my favourite local place for Louisiana cooking, used to be on New Braunfels Avenue, and according to the city, it remained there until it went out of business last year. The City never updated the address after Ma Harper’s moved to W. W. White Road years ago.

Maybe the people who would be responsible for updating information of this sort are overworked, or maybe it’s just not part of anybody’s job. After all, who the hell ever goes to the City’s web site to see how a restaurant has done in the city’s inspections? 

So, since the place listed as being on Palo Alto was last inspected just a couple of months ago, in January, and since I know Bernard’s used to be on Palo Alto, I suspect – because I’m too lazy to get in my car now and drive way the hell over to the South Side just to confirm my suspicions – that the November 2010 inspection of “Limon’s Food Center/Bernard’s Breol” at 503 Palo Alto Road, and the 27 demerits noted, was actually an inspection of the facilities at Building 6 on the campus of the Baptist University; i.e., Bernard’s Creole Kitchen. You can draw your own conclusions.

 

Update: Cerroni's Purple Garlic

Still one of my favourite pizza places, despite the slightly weird mechanics of ordering. Last time I went, I was utterly unimpressed by the lackadaisical service on offer, and by the salads, but the pizza was worth going for.

I went again last night (actually, I've been going there fairly regularly, despite the things I find to complain about), and noted a couple of improvements. First, the service was noticeably more cheerful. There seem to be a lot of high-school- and college-age kids working here, and they seem to be segregated by sex: all of the young men were in the kitchen (rather too many of them, from what I could see), while all the young women were out front. Looks like a lawsuit-in-the-making, to my lawyer's eye, but I mention it not because I think there's something wrong with it, but because it strikes me as an interesting throwback to an earlier, innocent era, when it was a common practice. 

Anyway, there was a lot of innuendo-laced badinage going back and forth over the counter that separates the two areas, but it didn't distract the staff from looking after the customers. The girl working the cash register seemed unfamiliar with the menu, as though it were her first or second day on the job, but she did okay. Soon after I placed our order, a waitress came to the table to ask if we wanted our salads first. This is the second time we've been asked that at the Purple Garlic, and I have to wonder how many people want it otherwise. Seems like they would assume, absent instruction to the contrary, that we would. Well, there in a nutshell is the descriptor for the service here: inefficient, but effective.

Last city inspeciton: August 2010
8 demerits

This time I opted for the artichoke heart and mushroom salad. I was very glad to see that they've gotten new bowls at the Purple Garlic: the old ones were always threatening to turn over from a misplaced fork-stab. My wife went with the side-salad, and was reasonably satisfied with it; my salad was large and generously made up, with marinated artichoke hearts and sliced mushrooms on a bed of shredded lettuce; though I regret not having asked for the dressing on the side; there was too much of it coating all the salad's makings. 

The pizza, as ever, was excellent. We always get a large pizza when we go here, so that we have leftovers to accompany the first soccer match of the following morning (West Ham 2:4 Manchester United; yes!). On this occasion it was a cheese pizza with black olives, roasted spinach and Italian sausage, which we liked so much that there's a danger it will become a routine order. But we know that the other ingredients are as good, and so at times I'm sure we'll vary our choices. As it should be.