Not For The Health-Conscious

DeWese's Tip Top Cafe
2814 Fredericksburg Road

(between Fresno and Hildebrand)

Mmmm. The aroma of chicken-fried steak. French fries. Onion rings. Be still, my beating heart.

Sadly, I'm one of those people who has indulged in such temptations to such a degree, and for so many years, that my beating heart may actually be threatened by more of the same. But on the other hand, I have the wisdom of the ancients saying it's okay once in a while: Ne quid nimis. (This was written by some dead guy, I forget which; it means "nothing to excess," or "everything in moderation." Take your pick.)

Today, though, wasn't my day for indulgence. I went to this greasepit because a good friend wanted to go there, and I keep telling myself that, on the WeightWatchers plan, I can eat anything I want. (I just have to write it down, and when I get to a certain point I have to stop. It's all about choices.) I didn't want chicken-fried steak, until I got out of the car and smelled it in the air. I didn't want French fries, until a plate of them wafted past me on the way to some other person's table. I didn't want onion rings, until I saw them stacked high on a plate as they came out of the kitchen. The Hell, I didn't.

But I was good. I had the vegetable soup and the sliced chicken sandwich. My friend, who is as prone to sudden death as I am, and watched the brown-and-white foods pass with as much lust as I did, went for a salad and a cheeseburger; and we sat there eating our (relatively) healthy foods while talking about ... chicken-fried steak, and onion rings, and French fries. And fried chicken. And pie.

At the height of the lunch rush, Tip Top Café's parking lot overflows. They've done what they can to alleviate the problem, paving half a lot in the back, but if you get there at a quarter to twelve, you'll probably have to park on the side street and walk. You will tell yourself that the exercise will offset the calories you're about to take in, but you know damn well it ain't really true. It's just what it takes, though, to get you to walk a few feet.

We were lucky: the peak of the lunch rush tapered off just as we showed up, and there was no line for seating. Our waitress was with us almost before we could breathe, and was remarkably helpful, patient, cheerful and informative. You kind of don't expect that kind of high-quality service in the sort of place that's likely to feature on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. And despite the numbers of people showing up to eat, we felt no pressure to finish up and move on.

There's nothing special about the dining room at Tip Top, and that's what's special about it. It is what it is, and there's no pretense about it. It's clean and well-maintained, buzzing with conversation but not loud, full but not crowded. We could talk in normal voices, no one bumped our chairs or had to slide by while threatening to spill a heavily loaded tray on us. 

Last city inspection: April 2011
16 demerits

And the food, well, it's okay. I've had their chicken-fried steak before, and their fries and onion rings, and I like them. But today's choices were just okay. The soup was a little weak in flavour, but nothing that a few shakes of black pepper and a few dashes of hot sauce couldn't greatly improve. The pasta in it was, of course, way overcooked, but it still held together reasonably well. The chicken sandwich was sliced chicken breast, baked and still juicy, served with lettuce, tomato and pickles on toasted white bread; all good quality, and I'm relieved to say that the mayo was not slathered on, but applied with a touch of sense. 

My friend's salad was stuffed into a too-small bowl and topped with so much ranch dressing that we thought it was cheese. He did not consider that a failing, so we'll not mark off for it. Everything in it was of acceptable quality, and there was certainly enough of it to satisfy. 

The cheeseburger was small. Back when the Tip Top opened 75 years ago, it would have been considered a big burger, but our steady diet of quarter-pounders and half-pounders and Wendy's Number 3 combos has altered our perception. Still, it's as big as it needs to be, and for $3.95, it's a good deal. It was well-prepared except for the bun being just a tiny bit charred from the grill. 

We did agree, though, that some day, when we're both in the weight ranges we're hoping to reach, we're going to come back to the Tip Top Café and have a brown-food orgy with some chicken-fried steak and onion rings. Maybe we'll split the onion rings.

Where "Extreme" Means "Excess"

Marianito's Extreme Tex-Mex Grill
2102 Bandera Road

(a block south of the Evers Road crossing)
Cash Only!

People in television like to pretend that their programs are without unintended consequences. They may be right, I don't know; but looking around the dining room at Marianito's Extreme Tex-Mex Grill makes me wonder. It contains, and I do not exaggerate, the highest concentration of morbidly obese people that I have seen in San Antonio (a city known nation-wide for its fat people). I'm no lightweight myself, but in that dining room, I definitely felt myself to be in the bottom half of the blubber curve.

Marianito's was* on a Food Network program called "Outrageous Food" because of its signature menu item, the Extreme Grizzly, a seven-pound burrito. Eat it in an hour and it's free; otherwise it's $24.95. Well, everyone knows that truly outrageous come-ons like that are only really meant to attract attention, and if it didn't work, people wouldn't keep doing it. So I have no qualm about this kind of binge-eating tease, though I do feel some pity for the people who are driven to take up such a lose-lose challenge.

The walls are decorated with graffiti claiming victory over the Grizzly, or more often loss, and with endorsements by a host of other customers, claiming to have come from Wisconsin and Indiana and other Ends Of The Earth for the great food at Marianito's; one person claimed to have come all the way from downtown, but I discount that one as not credible. [Imagine the appropriate emoticon here.] Another came from Kentucky with his cousin, soon to be his wife; that one, I believe. Some Pittsburgh Steelers left their mark, as did some Dallas Cowboys, and no doubt if I'd've looked further I would have found ringing praises from Spurs and Rockets and possibly some Mavericks, no doubt written on the ceiling without the aid of a stepstool. But most of the inscriptions were from ordinary folk, scribbled in what passes for orthography in this LMAO age. Having something to do while waiting for your order is never an issue at this place.

The service was good, in a casual, down-home way, as though our waiter would pull up a chair and have a beer with us when he got the chance, except they don't have a beer license. The place is family-friendly, and I suspect they feel that adding beer and wine to the offerings might attract, you know, the wrong sort. No problem, they have water and plenty of soft drinks, and let's be honest: you ain't gonna have room for no beer when you've eaten here.

The chips and salsa were on the table right away. The salsa is very much to my liking, with just the right degree of chunkiness and the perfect degree of viscosity, and an exquisite flavour blend of tomato, onion, peppers and just a hint of cilantro. The chips, though, seemed on their way to being stale. The same chips were used in the Philly Cheese Steak Nachos, and were one of two failings in that otherwise very good dish. The other failing I noted was that the assembly of the plate was uneven, so that the chips around the edge, and on the bottom, were unimproved, while others near the center and top were so loaded down with shaved meat, white cheese, and grilled peppers and onions, that they could barely support the weight.

My companion for the evening had ordered the jalapeño pepper-jack burger. Marianito's cooks its burgers well-done, which was fine with my friend; and even I, who customarily order such things medium-rare, have to admit that the meat pattie was still juicy despite being so cooked. The other ingredients were fresh, and plentiful, and the bun was soft and tasty. Kudos for the burger. And also for the steak fries, which were perfectly cooked as well, with a crispy edge and plenty of fluffy potato taste inside.

Last city inspection: December 2011
12 demerits

My burrito was less perfect. Even the baby burritos here are massive things. I ordered a Gila Monster, which turns out to be a cheeseburger wrapped in a tortilla instead of a bun. All the ingredients were good, right down to the Dijon mustard, but, my word, there was a lot of it. This thing, forlornly presented alone on an large oval platter, was at least fifteen inches long, four inches wide, and three inches high. (If my gay readers will stop sniggering, I will say that I had to have a go-box for half of it, and that it was just as good cold, the next day.) Cutting the thing into bite-sized pieces proved to be quite a challenge: it was impossible to cut with a fork, and difficult to cut with a knife. If I could have held it in my two hands I could have bitten chunks off, but in addition to the size of it, it was hot, and greasy. The tortilla was folded so thick on one side that it was practically fused into a solid lumpy seam of bread, which only grudgingly yielded to the dull steel of a table knife.

If I were not still ambitious about losing some weight, I would have loved to try the desserts here. They sound delicious. When I get thin (notice that I say "when," despite eating out so often) I may come back here and splurge on a Tex-Mex cannoli or a dose of fried ice cream. Until then, though, I'll just think about it.

* or maybe will be; the network's website lists March 12 as the broadcast date, but the restaurant already has it on their business cards.

A Disappointment.

Cristan's Tacos #3
1401 West Hildebrand

(just west of Interstate 10)

When I first started working downtown, years ago, I would commute on San Pedro. (This was before I discovered that Flores Street, two blocks west, had almost no traffic on it, and almost no traffic signals.) One of the places I enjoyed stopping occasionally for breakfast tacos was Cristan's, at the corner of Euclid Street. 

I had those pleasant memories in mind when Rick and I stopped at the Cristan's location on West Hildebrand (in furtherance of my plan to review all 26 restaurants in what I call the Hildebrand Corridor). The parking lot was an encouraging sign, being nearly full an hour before noon.

The dining room is a square with about 16 tables set for four people, and most of them were occupied. Taking a place in the back, we observed that the high noise level in the place had the same kind of cheeriness to it that we had previously noted at El Rafas, a competing restaurant a couple of blocks further down the street. Nowhere near the excessive, unpleasant, stressful, anxiety-inducing cacaphony of Rosario's or, even worse, Lüke; just a pleasingly loud room full of groups of people talking amongst themselves. No one had to shout to be heard.

Our waitress was with us quickly, to deliver menus and take our drink order; she was back fairly soon with water and coffee to take our food order. (I thought the coffee was pretty good, with a slight nutty flavour; Rick thought it was a little bitter.) Then she was back with surprising speed to deliver said food, as though they had only to move the food from one place to another. The only previous experience I've had with such culinary rapidity was when the cooks in the back didn't bother to cook the food thoroughly. That was not the case here, so I suspect that, in the kitchen at Cristan's, they have all the ingredients necessary for Tex-Mex food already cooked and awaiting only assembly. Well, if that's the case, they manage it admirably.

Last city inspection: January 2012
17 demerits

The fillings in all our tacos were good, and Rick was particularly pleased with the quality of the flour tortillas used in his tacos. The beef fajitas were cooked to the point of having a desirable crispiness about the edges, and the seasonings were done as they should be. The picadillo was moist but not greasy, and the garnish of lettuce and tomato was fresh.

I had my usual order of one machacado taco, and one chilaquile taco, both in corn tortillas. At Cristan's, both these fillings are offered plain or a la mexicana, meaning with a bandera of peppers, onions and tomatoes. Cheese is a separate option, apparently, and according to the menu all these choices involve additional expense. The fillings were cooked right, with just a little grease remaining, and the flavours were good. The corn tortillas, however, were substandard for restaurants in this city. I would not be surprised to find a plastic vendor bag of 100 corn tortillas on the counter in the kitchen, because unlike in all the other Tex-Mex places that make their own tacos, these were of uniform thickness, perfectly round and with machined edges, and they had a texture that testified against freshness. They were unable to contain the fillings, and fell apart quickly, just like store-bought corn tortillas do at home.

As I said, Cristan's charges extra for things that other restaurants include for the regular price; and Cristan's prices, even without all those "extras," are already on the high side, compared to other local taquerías. When you add the charge for the bandera and the cheese, you take your breakfast tacos out of the realm of good, cheap eats. Our bill this morning at Cristan's was (even deducting for the extra taco that Rick, unusually, ordered) was a good 25% more than what we would expect to pay locally, even for food of this quality.

That was the real disappointment.

Excursion Along Hildebrand, Part II

My friend Rick and I went to have lunch at Dirty Dogz today, the hotdog place in The Yard. Unfortunately, it's owned and operated by a full-time student who occasionally has to, like, show up at school (!) when she should be waiting behind the counter at her restaurant in case we show up, and be ready to dish up those delicious frankfurter assemblies she sells.  Well. Is there an ironic emoticon for the pompous umbrage felt by a disaffected bombast? If so, imagine it here.

So as we stood out in the parking lot, debating at the last minute where to go when our carefully considered decision has been frustrated (and that's a rare thing ... not the frustration, but the carefully considered decision; usually we decide such things on impulse), I remembered that, several months ago, I decided to peruse all the Mexican restaurants in the Hildebrand Corridor. That in mind, we headed on down McCullough and stopped at the first Mexican place that I hadn't already reviewed.

La Cabaña de Jalisco

727 West Hildebrand

(between Blanco and San Pedro)

The building is only a couple of years old, but this is already the third Mexican restaurant to inhabit it. The interior is still sparkling-clean, attractively done, with dark, rich-looking walls; much of the décor is for sale, including some amusing metal statues that would be perfect for that flea-market eclecticism certain persons near and dear to me regard as desirable for back yards. If I had been here before Valentine's Day instead of just after, I might have left with a two-foot-high juggling rodeo clown, but was just able to restrain my impulse. Seriously.

We had our choice of seating. The place isn't particularly small, but neither is it as large as it looks from outside. The first dining room is well-lit with floor-to-ceiling windows on the street side; the back dining room, on the right side in the photo, has two much smaller windows facing a side parking lot. The rear of the building, from end to end, is taken up by the kitchen; it's separated from the front dining room by a wall pierced by a couple of service windows, while in the back dining room, the separation is achieved by a partial wall. I mention this because, in that part of the kitchen, there is what appears to be a gigantic ice machine, and the noise of its motor provided an unrelenting whine to mask, unsuccessfully, the mildly irritating chatter from a commercial-laden Spanish-language radio talk show that was blaring too loudly from the speaker above our heads. 

The lunch rush, if there is one at this restaurant, had not yet started, and we were the only people there when we arrived just after 11 a.m. By the time we were done, business had picked up to a respectable level, indicating that the place has a chance of surviving the difficult first year.

I went for my usual first-visit meal, one chilaquile taco and one machacado taco, in corn tortillas. Rick chose something a little different from his usual, the tacos al carbon plate, asking for the tacos in flour tortillas. We were served chips and house-made salsa, which were on the high side of acceptable. The chips had an unusual, but not unpleasant, aftertaste; the salsa had a good flavour, though not too piquant, but was pretty thin. Not so entirely liquid that I'd call it watery, but it could do with a little more substance. 

No city inspection yet.

My tacos were also slightly better than average, and I claim high standards for these foods, so average has to be pretty good. The machacado meat was dry, as it should be, yet surprisingly tender, and the mixture of egg and vegetables in which is was cooked retained a good amount of moisture, so that the overall texture was substantially better than average. Although not heavily seasoned, the flavours, too, were good, and in that assessment I include the corn tortillas. The chilaquiles were, I thought, a little on the bland side, as the veggies had been diced so finely that they barely registered on the taste buds. The dominant flavours were simply egg, which is really the flavour of the fat they're cooked in; cheese (cheddar, in this case, shredded and applied in almost too great a quantity ... though judging from the popularity of a certain purveyor of greasy, cheese-laden burgers not far away, that might be intentional); corn, from the tortilla; and just the slightest hint of flavour (and texture) from the fried tortilla chips, the chilaquiles themselves. I would rate this chilaquile taco only average. 

Rick's plate of tacos al carbon was similarly good but not outstanding. The three tacos were served to him in  corn tortillas, even though the waitress had made a point of asking him his preference, which was for flour. Still, he was disinclined to complain, as he considered these corn tortillas to be much better than what he usually experiences. (He almost never gets corn tortillas. Take what you will from that.) The filling consisted of strips of grilled beef, pico de gallo, and avocado, all of which were reasonably fresh and flavourful. He particularly noted the presentation, which I agree was done with a shade more aplomb than is customary in a Tex-Mex restaurant. The accompaniments were also better than average, especially the borracho beans, which might be among the best of that species.

The service was adequate. When we arrived, there were two waitresses on duty. One, though, only brought us menus before returning to a table near the kitchen, where she spent most of the remainder of our visit on her cellphone, leaving the other waitress to do all the work, even after the place started to fill up. Just before we left, the two waitresses switched positions. I find it odd that restaurant employees' breaks would come just as the lunch rush begins. But then, what do I know about it?

Cabaña de Jalisco on Zomato

 

February 27, 2022: An update

In the decade since I wrote this review, I have gotten more and more attached to Cabaña de Jalisco. It started out a couple of years ago, when the pandemic hit, just because this restaurant is the perfect distance from my house for a nice walk, and because it has the best coffee I've found. The food is consistently good, and in fact is better than it was then: less greasy overall, and the house-made corn tortillas have somehow improved. The service is now much, much better than I described above, and the prices are now better than average, since they haven't gone up lately like everyone else's. That, of course, could change in a heartbeat, but I appreciate their restraint. If I were going to go to the trouble of making up a new little graphic illustration of my ratings -- which, due to changes in computer software over the years, is really more trouble than it's worth -- I'd give them a whole extra jalapeño on food, a whole additional jalapeño on service, and an extra half a jalapeño on value. It is now, to my mind, the best taquería on Hildebrand.

The Hildebrand Corridor

There have always seemed to be hundreds and hundreds of good Mexican restaurants on or near Hildebrand Avenue. Living in that part of town, they seem to be just everywhere.

They actually aren't. There are only a couple dozen or so. But being a denizen of that area, and an aficionado of mom-and-pop restaurants, especially of the Mexican variety, I intend to review all of them.

This map will track my progress, if you're interested.

Green placemarkers show restaurants I've already reviewed in this blog; check the Mexican Restaurant index page for my no-doubt erudite, snide and witty (and, of course, perfectly correct) opinions. 

Yellow placemarkers on the map show restaurants I've reviewed in a more concise, but equally cogent, style on  Urbanspoon. The Mexican Restaurant index page has links to those listings, too.

Blue placemarkers show the restaurants I haven't yet attuned my critical wits to.  Their time will come.

View Hildebrand Corridor Mexican Food in a larger map

A New Gem in the City's Crown

Bella On the River
106 River Walk

(by the Sniper Tree Gate, between St. Mary's Street and the Diversion Channel)

The final concert in the San Antonio Symphony's serial performance of all the Beethoven symphonies brought me one final excuse (for the foreseeable future, at least) to enjoy a night out downtown, and my friend Rick and I chose to spend it at Bella. It occupies the space long held by Dolores Del Rio, a strange little Italian place that managed to attract enough of a following to last years longer than its excessive crowding, so-so food, and odd floor show (belly dancing) would seem to justify. Unlike most Riverwalk restaurants, it has no presence on a city street, only the River entrance; and since it's sited a short distance away from the livelier parts of the Riverwalk, many people are unaware of its existence. Bella deserves, though, to become better known.

Last city inspection: December 2011
8 demerits (pretty good)

With its secluded location and limestone walls inside and out, it could hardly help but be charming. The interior is largely unchanged from what I remember of Dolores Del Rio, but the few changes I noted were all for the better. A couple of tables have been removed, making it at least possible for the waiters to pass by without their elbows knocking the back of your head; and the lighting is a little better. Otherwise, it maintains the discreet ambience of a romantic upscale speakeasy. A bar, with seating for five, tucked in the back corner of the dining room adds to that mystique, as does the almost-too-loquacious jazz pianist (who uses a space-saving electric keyboard; a real piano would never fit in this place). 

There sometimes seems to be no middle ground for the service staff at fine restaurants. At some, there seems to have been a decision made that stuffy formality is called for, in the grand manner of a beau-monde restaurant on the hunt for a third Michelin star; at others, the pretended familiarity of the staff is so swaddling that diners can hardly have a conversation that the waiter takes no part in. Our waiter at Bella, though, found such middle ground as exists. He was prompt, helpful, informative, casual, efficient and effective, even if he looked and dressed more like the owner's brother in law. (Which, I suppose, he may be, but as to that I neither know nor care.) 

If you're interested in a romantic dinner-date venue, you should consider this place, but I would recommend that you request a table in the back of the room, against the limestone wall, when you make your reservation. We were seated, as it happens, right next to the performer's keyboard. This was fine with us, as we were just two friends enjoying our fourth (and possibly last, now that the concert series is ended) Guys' Night Out, and the attention the performer attracted didn't make us feel exposed to the public gaze. Besides, we enjoyed chatting with the man between songs.

On being seated we were handed prix-fixé menus for Valentine's Day. At $75 per person, my first thought was that we had wandered into a restaurant far more ... um ... let's say "posh" ... than I had been expecting. But many of the items on that special menu were also on the regular menu, and if you consider the prices of the individual items acceptable, then $75 is not entirely out of line. It does include champagne and dessert, along with choices for appetizer, soup, salad, entrée and side dish. My own take on it (and remember, I'm cheap, which is why I'm generally happy living in San Antonio) was that all the prices seemed to be just a little above what I would expect to pay.

Once we started getting our food, though, my opinion on the prices at Bella had to be amended, and by the end of the meal I had reached the point of thinking that the prices charged are about right: not a bargain, even among downtown restaurants of a similar class, but definitely not excessive.

Our starters were the house salad and the spinach salad. The former was an attractive bowl of fresh mixed greens with feta cheese, lightly tossed with a delicious raspberry vinaigrette dressing, and topped with a sprinkle of candied walnuts. The dressing and walnuts together gave the salad a fine sweet edge, and the combination of textures made the salad's taste as delightful as its appearance. The slightly larger spinach salad included mushrooms and Italian-style bacon, along with chopped egg and red onion. It was dressed with a bacon vinaigrette, and my companion and I had a difficult time deciding which salad was better. Both were accompanied by a small sliced baguette loaf and rosemary-infused olive oil with roasted garlic, which made a better accompaniment to the spinach salad than to the sweeter house salad.

Our main courses were a paella and a chicken piccata. The paella was accented by herbed chicken chunks and diced chorizo, which made an excellent counterpoint to the roasted vegetables in the dish, but caused the saffron rice to lose its bright colour, coming to more of a chorizo brown than a saffron yellow. The taste was unaffected, and only the appearance suffered, slightly. (A seafood version of the dish is also available.) The chicken piccata was accompanied by shrimp, artichoke hearts and mushrooms, and the traditional lemon and butter sauce was finely done, seasoned with parsley and capers. It was served with a choice of sides; in our case, the choice was for roasted potatoes, which were done more perfectly to the proper turn than we have had recently at other fine restaurants in town.

The serving sizes were generous, and if I had not had a concert to sit through after dinner, I would have had enough food for the next day's lunch; but I knew I wouldn't be able to sit through two and a half hours of classical music with a go-box in my lap, fighting off the underfed tenants of the surrounding seats. So I forced myself to eat the whole thing.

A worthwhile sacrifice.

Beethoven Lives

I can still remember the first time I heard Beethoven's 8th Symphony. I was living in Dallas at the time, and had a car with a cassette deck, which I'd never had before. I had found an inexpensive cassette recording of Beethoven's 5th, which was just about the only piece of classical music I could name. I popped it in and listened to that, and then, of course, I had to either rewind it, or turn it over and play the other side. I don't know how many times I just re-wound the tape, but at some point I just said, "What the hell," and turned it over.

I was driving on Hampton Road, a north-south route that, back then, was pretty much out in the country. When I got close to where I was going, I was only halfway through the 8th Symphony, so I pulled over to the side of the road and sat in my car to listen to the rest of it, rather than stop it in the middle. It was that enjoyable a piece of music. I eventually came to like it as much as the 5th.

In the years since then, I've heard oodles and gobs of symphonic and orchestral music, and if I can't always name the composer, I can at least tell if a work is baroque or romantic or modern; and I have learned to tell which composers' work I like (there aren't really all that many of them). But none of the others, not even Bach or Schubert or Mozart, is as absorbing as Beethoven.

The San Antonio Symphony today completes its first "Beethoven Festival," having performed all nine of the master's symphonies in a series of four concerts over the past month. I and a friend bought tickets to the Saturday night series, and last night heard that wonderful 8th Symphony, and the 9th in the final concert of the series. I won't pretend to be able to critique the series from a technical perspective, though I have learned a thing or two about music and musical technique in my years. And I can think of a lot of things to complain about overall: the uncomfortable seats at the Majestic, which were made for people with very short legs and very numb asses; the mediocre acoustics, which kept the orchestra from filling the space with sound; some wrong notes; one of the Mastersinger soloists who couldn't really hold the long notes steady. But none of that could really detract from the magnificence of the music, or the thrill of hearing it performed live. Especially the 5th, and the 8th.

Well-Named

Feast
1024 South Alamo

(in Southtown, between St. Mary's Street and Pereida)

There's noise, and then there's noise.

The noise at Feast is a bubbly, pleasant noise. It's the sound of a room full of people enjoying themselves. No canned music, no shouting to be heard, no televisions providing an unwelcome backdrop. Just two dozen pleasant conversations going on all at once, each at a level sufficiently loud for the participants to comprehend,  and sufficiently subdued for the rest of us to ignore. The ambience of the place — the crowd, the bright white walls, the stainless-steel tabletops and clear plastic chairs, the circulating waiters — is as much like a stylish cocktail party thrown by a literary magazine to honour a famous foreign writer no one reads, as it is a trendy Southtown restaurant.

Feast is an American version of a tapas bar. The menu is divided into six categories: Hot, Chilled, Grilled, Crispy, Melted, and Mains (a sort of catch-all for dishes that are, presumably, larger; we didn't try any of those, so I don't really know). Nothing on the menu is cheap, but neither are the prices outrageous*; and in fact, when the tally came at the end, I was pleasantly surprised at how little we had spent. The individual dishes in the first five categories mostly run between five and nine bucks each; a couple go for a little more, but if you're on a budget (or just cheap, like me) they're easy to avoid and you won't feel like you've really missed out on anything.

We each chose two dishes to share. I will say right now that one of them, the badly misnamed Montasio Cheese Crisp, which consists of sweet onion and cheese on sliced Yukon Gold potatoes, seasoned with a little oregano, we sent back to the kitchen. It was revolting. It looked like a small mammal had vomited on some soggy sliced potatoes, and I thought its aroma was (I kid you not, nor do I hyperbolize) identical to the smell of a public bathroom that has been recently visited by a victim of turista. My wife disagreed about the smell, but not about the appearance, the texture, or the taste, which was that of oil and undercooked potato.

Well, these things happen. To me, though, the more important fact was that, when I expressed our displeasure with the dish to our waiter, he immediately apologised and whisked the offending plate back to the kitchen.**

No city inspection done yet.

The first dish to come out was Jack Cheese Mac: simple, homespun macaroni and cheese, and yet not so simple and homespun. It featured slightly overcooked pasta, a sort of wide cavatappi, covered in a light béchamel sauce and sprinkled with garlic bread crumbs. Presumably there was some Jack cheese in the mix, but the sauce was so rich that I didn't even notice the cheese. 

Next out was an order of stuffed poblano peppers. This was no mere chili relleno: it was four fingers of lightly seasoned ground pork (interestingly compressed with a spiral design, just like the cavatappi), wrapped in skins of poblano pepper that were as thin as grape leaves, and drizzled with a slightly-sweet sauce accented with pistachio nuts. They were a delicious blend of flavours, and I thought sure they would be the highlight of the evening.

Until the duck-breast tostadas came out. To paraphrase Martin Crane, your country and your family are to die for, but duck-breast tostadas at Feast are next on the list. An order consists of four small fried tortilla shells graced with julienned duck meat, a schmeer of yogurt (the menu calls it "spicy tahini yogurt"; I call it sour cream) and a bit of lemon-sesame slaw. The overall effect is marvellous. The flavours complement each other perfectly, and the textures — crispy, tender, chewy, moist — swirl together with brilliant sympathy. 

Last came a dish of sweet corn fritters, which we ordered to replace the repulsive cheese crisp. This dish — served in a long tray decorated with eight or ten small bundles of fried corn, interspersed with some chunks of honeydew melon, and garnished with heritage lettuce leaves and a small ramekin of tzatziki sauce — turned out to be the perfect closing act of our meal. The corn was indeed sweet, cased in light breading and fried just right. The honeydew melon ... well, I love honeydew of all the melons, but this was fabulously accented by a hint of lime juice. The tzatziki sauce, made with beets, will force me to edit my longstanding list of Five Foods I Will Not Eat Under Any Circumstances. Beets are the vegetable of the damned. I refer, of course, to all those millions of Russian serfs who subsisted on those reprehensible roots for untold generations, until McDonald's opened in Moscow. When I get to Hell, as I surely will, I have long anticipated being force-fed beets three times a day, sometimes by themselves, sometimes mixed with Brussels sprouts or viscera or black-eyed peas. Now, though, I'm not so sure: I accidentally had beets in a dish at Cappy's a few months ago, and found them not entirely repulsive. Having now had the beet tzatziki sauce at Feast, I must conclude that there are, in fact, circumstances in which I will eat beets.

One suggestion, though: It was a little disconcerting, the way the various dishes drifted out of the kitchen in no particular order, one at a time. I recommend you order things one or two dishes at a time, and keep hold of the menu. Figure on ordering at least two dishes per person; three would not have been too much food. Feast is a fabulous place to kick back and relax with friends, and you'll want to drag the experience out for as long as you can. 

* Unless you're one of those people who measures value by comparing price to the weight of the food on your plate ... in which case you should stick to places with giant chicken-fried steaks and all-you-can-eat breadsticks.

** Compare that with a similar situation at another restaurant recently visited.

Shocking News

City Council Does A Good Thing

On Tuesdays, starting next week (Valentine's Day), parking on downtown streets and in City-owned garages will be free after 5pm.


Go downtown. Find a reason. You won't have to look far. It'll be great.