Ordinary, Well Done

Stone Werks Big Rock Grille
5807 Worth Parkway

(in The Rim retail sprawl, off I-10 beyond 1604)

If you went to Stone Werks' original location years ago, when it was across from the Quarry on Jones-Maltsberger, and were dissatisfied with it, you might still want to check out its new incarnation of Big Rock Grilles. There are three of them in town now: the one at Broadway and Basse; one at Loop 1604 and Blanco; and this one, in the precious Rim shopping wasteland. They still do basically the same things, but they're doing it much better now.

The large, high-ceilinged dining room, tastefully appointed, is a far cry from the almost tawdry, cramped space of the restaurant's previous Stone Werks. The owners seem to have spared no expense in creating a pleasant environment, and except for the television sets in every corner, they have succeeded. 

The menu is extensive, with all the things you would find at, oh, every upscale burger joint in the Western world, and all briefly described with just a hint of pretension. Every variation of meat-in-bun dining that occurred to the creative minds behind the company, that could appeal to the post-modern suburban diner, and that could be replicated reliably, finds a niche on their list. And if you want something not listed, short of, perhaps, Soylent Green, you can probably get it: if they have it in their kitchen, it's yours for the asking.

We planned to see a film at the nearby megamovies, so we met early for lunch, just after the restaurant opened; they hadn't even had time to change the television feed away from the irritating satellite channel that tells you over and over how to use your remote; I seem to recall that channel being used as torture in some movie or other. No matter: I asked that it be changed, and it was, to something more easily ignored. In any case, because of our early arrival there was no shortage of seating — we weren't quite the only people there, but it was close. And our waiter was on us in a heartbeat, and a helpful young man he was, describing dishes and making recommendations, and admitting (and this is always important) that he didn't know when he didn't know. (And, of course, if he could find out, he did.)

Last city inspection: August 2012
8 demerts

We decided to split two burgers: the Bacon & Smoked Gouda, and the Lamb Burger. Both were good despite the prices. My lunch-mate had never, he says, had lamb before and didn't know what to expect. His verdict was that he couldn't really tell that it was any kind of different meat in the sandwich, and I can't disagree. The burger pattie did have the distinctive taste of lamb, but it was a weak and puny flavour unable to compete with the more powerful flavours of the other ingredients. A meek lamb is no match for a good bit of goat cheese, much less the exquisite flavour of prosciutto. Even a slice of red onion was a lion to our lamb. All in all, the ingredients in this sandwich make an interesting, even fascinating combination; but I don't doubt that it would be a better sandwich over all if it came with beef instead of lamb, and for at least a couple of dollars less.

The bacon cheeseburger was every bit as good as the lamb burger, though less filled with unusual ingredients. The bacon was properly cooked, to be crispy but not dry; the smoked flavour of the gouda was rich, and its texture was creamy and smooth; and the vegetables that complement the sandwich were fresh and flavourful. The beef was of a good quality, too, as was the bun, and it was just messy enough.

A Little Different

La Siberia
3018 Fredericksburg Road

(at Olmos Drive)

I went here in furtherance of my plan to review all the restaurants in the Hildebrand Corridor, that stretch of road from Trinity University to Monticello that is unusually thick, for the North Side, with Mexican and Tex-Mex kitchens. The first thing that struck me as unusual about the place is that it, possibly uniquely for this area, is not open for breakfast. (Surprising, because the sign in the front window advertises desayunos; but maybe it's an old sign.) It was thus somewhat unsurprising that they don't have breakfast options on their menu ... so, no chilaquile tacos today!

What they do have is a fairly extensive menu of Tex-Mex food, with some items not often found on menus at other places around town. I don't know the origin of the name, but I suspect it has to do with the white cream sauce used on many of the house specialties. You know: Siberia ... snow ... white ... cream sauce. Well, it's just a guess.

(photo from the restaurant web site)

The house specialty is tostadas. You can get your average Tex-Mex tostada here, but why would you? Try the Siberia: shredded chicken on a guacamole base, topped with crema, as in the picture here. 

For my meal, I chose a dish called chipotle especial. It consisted of the shredded chicken topped with another sauce, a cheese-tinged cream sauce with a hearty dose of chipotle for seasoning, served on a platter with rice, beans, corn tortillas, and totopos, the deep-fried corn tortillas that are used in tostadas. My sidekick Rick went with the beef fajita plate, also served with rice and beans, and flour tortillas.

His meal is easily dealt with. The meat was plentiful, properly cooked with peppers and onions to a slightly crunch-edged perfection. I thought the seasoning on it was a bit subdued ... understated ... weak. Still, in the universe of beef fajita meat in Paradise South, it was just a notch above average, and the quality of the meat itself contributed to that good opinion. 

My meal came with a first course of consommé, a large bowl of rice and vegetables in broth with a pleasant aroma of cilantro. Since cilantro is generally overdone, to the point where I condemn its use in my food, calling it "pleasant" is a great compliment to the cook. 

Everything on my plate was delicious. The refritos were creamy, and with none of that vaguely soapy taste that lard sometimes produces in the mix. The Spanish rice, though monochromatic, was tender and moist, with the slight flavour of chicken broth to it. (It's always best to have Spanish rice early in the day, as it does dry out; and we were there right at opening time, 11AM.) The chicken was plentiful, all white meat, finely shredded, and covered on the plate with that chipotle sauce, which was slightly thick and very flavourful. The totopos, broken into pieces, made an excellent device for transmitting the meat and sauce from plate to mouth, though the fried tortillas themselves were nothing to get excited about. 

Last city inspection: July 2012
13 demerits

The other accoutrements of a meal at La Siberia were average: a basket of reasonably good chips, a small bowl of reasonably good salsa, reasonably good coffee, and reasonably good tortillas, both flour and corn. The flour tortillas were clearly made in-house, but the corn tortillas had the uniformity that indicates machine-production. All these things were good enough to pass muster without detracting from the superior aspects of the meal.

The only complaint I have about the food, really, is that it must have had a lot of salt in it, as I have spent the afternoon craving water like a rabies victim. It's not as bad as when I lose all self-control and eat a slice of pizza from Pizza Hut, but it's still annoying. (I suspect it was the consommé.)

The place itself (which, I think, used to be a KFC store) is clean and comfortable, if unremarkable for its décor; let's call it functional and well-kept. It's not a large place, but neither is it cramped. One unusual aspect of the layout is that all the tables (all two-tops) are arranged in airliner-style: tables for four on the right, tables for six on the left. It looks odd, but I'm sure that, too, is functional.

The service is attentive and not overbearing. Our waitress was less comfortable with English than I am with Spanish, so we used both languages interchangeably. I didn't order a grilled tractor, and with that I am content. 

Prices are reasonable, about what you'd expect to pay. I noticed one dish that was more than ten bucks, but most are in the seven- to eight-dollar range.

A Better Expression

Corner Bakery Café

255 East Basse Road

(in the Quarry, at the southern end, closest to the Basin)

This sort of minimal-service restaurant is approaching done-to-death territory. Stand in line, order at the counter, and your food is brought to you at the table. National chains from Jason's Deli to Zoë's Kitchen to Pei Wei use it, as do local chains like Hearthstone Bakery Café and even single-outlet shops like Mina and Dimi's, the excellent Greek place out by Lackland. Theoretically, it exemplifies the benefits of capitalism: reduced wage and benefits costs translate eventually into lower prices for consumers.* I always wonder when those lower prices are going to kick in. I'm still wondering.

But the unremarkable prices aside, Corner Bakery Café does this type of restaurant a little better, in some ways, than its competition. The food here is well-prepared and there are many interesting choices, as at most similar restaurants. The added feature that I appreciate is that, here, the menu board shows basic nutritional information about the various dishes. I was thus able to make my choices with more confidence that I would not be surprised to find unexpected fatty additions to my lunch. It also reminded me, at the moment of crisis, that I would rather have a light, low-calorie lunch than a gigantic sandwich or other heavy dish.

The caloric information on the menu board prompted me to order a soup-and-salad trio, consisting of spicy Thai coconut soup, edamame salad, and tuna salad. It had less effect on my friend Rick — who, to be fair, is less obviously in need of self-restraint on that score; he ordered a Reuben sandwich. We also agreed to split a peanut-butter whoopie pie, because I kept my eyes off the menu board and on the display case long enough to forget the concept of will-power. Plus I deserved the reward for having been good already in ordering my main meal. Does this remind anyone else of an Aesop's fable? I have The Lion and the Lamb in mind.

As we were fixing our own drinks, the counter attendant came over and apologetically told Rick that they were "out of Reuben." I'm not going to speculate on what, exactly, that means — perhaps their cabbage didn't rot on schedule — but the upshot was he chose instead a turkey club sandwich as his lunch.

We naturally started with dessert, as Life Is Short. It was unimpressive, which was doubly disappointing, as the Corner Bakery, you would think, would excel at baking. This whoopie pie was two under-flavoured sticky, soft chocolate cakes held together by a peanut-butter-flavoured center. Now, my own experience of whoopie pies (or, as I prefer to think of them, woofie pies) comes from the forests of Maine, where they were apparently invented by people who get more than ordinarily excited about naming desserts. (I know some partisans misguidedly argue that whoopie pies originated with the Amish, but if that were true — and it isn't — no one would ever have known.) Anyway, the Corner Bakery's whoopie pie was too sticky and too chewy and too mild to be mentioned in the same breath as one you might get at any general store in Penobscot County.

The other foods were similar in their adequacy. The spicy Thai coconut soup was indeed spicy, and had a rich tomato base, but the coconut flavouring was so faint that I had to ask an employee to look at it and tell me what kind of soup it was. The edamame salad was reasonably fresh and crisp, and the unexpected serving of plain ol' green salad that I found on my plate beside it was also nice enough. Nothing special, though.  The tuna salad was a little on the dry side, but if you like a little crunch in your tuna salad (I'm not wild about it, myself) you'll appreciate the chunks of celery and red onion, sufficient to sharpen the dish without being overbearing. I would, though, have liked a cracker or a piece of bread to have with it.

Rick's panini-pressed turkey club was pretty good in flavour; sourdough bread, lots of turkey, some tasty bacon (and yes, I know, "tasty bacon" is redundant, but I like the rhythm of the phrase), and the tomato in it was juicy and flavourful. It also had a seasoned mayonnaise sauce that added just the right amount of moisture, and complemented the flavour of the other ingredients nicely. Overall, it was the best thing we had at that lunch.

Last city inspection: April 2012
16 demerits

Besides the nutritional information on the menu boards, where the Corner Bakery really excels is in the ambiance of the place. The interior is very comforting, with a high techno-chic black ceiling with old-fashioned light fixtures, large windows surrounding the dining area, café curtains, and a dark hard-wood floor to give the place the charm of a Gilded-Age bistro. The booths and tables are mahogany stained wood, adding to the illusion of grace and charm, and a room divided topped with fluted glass completes the theme. There is a deck surrounded by trees just out to the south, which, when the weather moderates, should be a wonderful place to relax. The traffic of Basse Road and, more surprisingly, US 281, are separated by only a short distance from the deck, but because of the drop in terrain and the curtain of trees, they seem invisible to customers. I made it a point to step out on the balcony and gauge the noise level from the road, and was pleasantly surprised to find it inoffensive.

* Of course, in theory, over time the relative higher profits for this type of restaurant, and the relative lower profits for the traditional type, will drive more restaurateurs to switch to the minimal-service restaurant, reducing the number of traditional table-service restaurants and creating greater competition among minimal-service restaurants, thus shaving profits and lowering prices to consumers. Maybe we're just getting to that stage.

Taking the Sushi Plunge

Osaka Japanese Steak & Sushi
4902 Broadway

(in Alamo Heights, catty-corner to the Gucci-B)

Let me make two things perfectly clear up front: One, I don't eat raw meat. Steak Tartare is proof that people will eat anything if you give it a fancy French name; and raw fish — especially the potentially lethal kind — is doubly disgusting. Two, I am no early-adopter. Not for me the latest trend, the brand-new gizmo, the current fashion. I'm almost comfortable with the idea of the Internet, but I just got a smart phone and don't much care for it, and have yet to spring for a red-velvet whoopie pie. Early-adopters are people with either, as we used to say, more dollars than sense, or a terrible emptiness in the pit of their souls.

It is thus no great surprise that I have waited until now to sample a sushi restaurant. It would not have been my choice even now, but a friend of mine who works in the hoity-toity part of Broadway wanted to do lunch, and he suggested it. I took that as a sign from God that it was Time.

The restaurant occupies what was once the Luby's Cafeteria next to the old Broadway Theater, and occupies it in truly fine style. It's a gorgeous interior, spacious yet intimate. The sushi bar is toward the back; comfortable booths line the wall and a few tables fill the left half of the room. The right half is filled with those community-seating tables you see on TV sit-coms every time the hip character goes on a date; the kind where everybody sits across from the one person in the world who makes them most uncomfortable, while a talented chef plays daringly with food and sharp knives a few feet away. The décor suggests The Exotic East, it doesn't scream it. 

The service is good, but too self-consciously reserved to really get top marks. The waiter, when he made his appearance, was unctuous, and spoke in a voice more suited to a reference librarian. He was, though, helpful in explaining the many terms unfamiliar to a neophyte, and when my table-mate asked for a fork, his gasp of disapproval was barely audible. As for me, I have stated elsewhere that I consider the fork to be one of the great inventions of Western culture, and when eating in Chinese or Thai or Vietnamese restaurants, I refuse to be reduced to using sticks; but I found sushi to be easily eaten with chopsticks. Unlike, say, a dish of kee mao or pad wun sen, sushi holds together well under the press of chopsticks. It's pretentious and patronizing to use them, but ... well, on this occasion I decided to be just that pretentious and patronizing. I still don't like those stupid spoons they use, though, with the square bottoms.

Speaking of stupid spoons, our meals began with a bowl of a fine soup of unspecified variety, a light broth with an elegantly sparse dose of scallion and some other vegetable in it, and the delicate flavour of seafood about it. It came as part of the "Bento Box," sort of a sampler that is perfect for someone who is new to the whole sushi thing. I ordered it in imitation of my more experienced dining companion.

The sushi rolls I chose were the Tiger Roll and the Philadelphia Roll. I was careful to make choices that contained no raw meat in them. The Tiger is so called not because it is made with tiger meat — I'm pretty sure you can't get that anymore, thanks to all those damn animal-rights activists — but because it is topped by a pair of sauces, one reddish-brown, one dark yellow, that are laid over the white roll in stripes and resemble, with a little imagination, the beautiful coat of a Bengal tiger. The meat contained within is actually shrimp, which is made clear (in case you forgot what the menu said) by the two shrimp tails sticking out of the ends like tiny handlebars.

The Philadelphia, contrary to first assum doesn't consist of thinly carved beef with caramelized onions and peppers; it is smoked salmon with Philadelphia cream cheese, cucumber and avocado.

The City of Alamo Heights keeps its
restaurant inspections a closely-
guarded secret, as a matter of
national security.

Both of these sushi rolls were delicious, and the best feature of them, like the soup, was the delicacy of the flavours in combination. This, to me, is where oriental dishes — and I'll include South Asian dishes in this distinction as well — have it all over occidental concoctions.

Completing the dish were two pork dumplings, called gyoza, and a small, crisp salad with just a whisper of very light dressing. There was a dash of green wasabi paste in the center of the dish, where everything else could accidentally get into it. I like a little kick to my food, but the consistency of this paste was such that I could not subdivide it into small enough portions, with chopsticks, to be really enjoyable: it was an all-or-nothing accoutrement. (I used it all.)

Lunch prices make Osaka a good value, too, comparable to what you'd spend at other types of oriental restaurants, plus you get that exquisite atmosphere to relax in.

Having finally taken the plunge and tried sushi, I'm in the mood for another long-matured trend. Maybe I'll go for a red velvet whoopie pie. I can maybe find where to get on one my smart phone.

Creative Writing? Or Just Creative Marketing?

Zoë's Kitchen
999 East Basse Road

(in the Lincoln Heights shopping center, at Broadway)

One of my main gripes about chain restaurants is that they tend to homogenize their dishes to please the mythical Average Person. Seasonings become muted, piquancy dulls. They tend to add fat and salt because, on average, people like the taste of fat and salt. Artistry may have a place in a chain restaurant's test kitchen, but if a combination of flavours or techniques is too intricate for the mere functionaries who inhabit kitchens in the field, the artistic culinary creation will never appear on a menu. It's too expensive, not only to the corporate bottom line, but potentially to the restaurant's reputation (which amounts to the same thing): if John Doe gets a spicy dish at your location in Omaha (like that would ever happen), he's not going to have it when he visits the location in Pensacola. In fact, he's not going to visit the Pensacola store, because he'll have decided that he doesn't like your restaurant all that much. And he'll tell his friends, when they suggest your restaurant for an evening out, "Can we go somewhere else instead? Because I'm not wild about that place."

So when I went into Zoë's Kitchen, in its new location at Lincoln Heights, the first thing I saw was a list of locations on the back of the plastic menu card. Ah-Ha, I said to myself, This is a Chain Restaurant. (I'm quick, that way.) I decided, like a Soviet-era court or Fox News, to give it a fair, open, impartial and unbiased trial before condemning it.

Then I spotted the little text on the menu, repeated on the overhead board (and on the web site), that says that each location's menu is different. I thought, Hey, maybe this is a different kind of chain. So I had a nice meal: my wife and I split spinach roll-ups with grilled chicken and a pita pizza. She had a Greek salad, I had a side of roasted vegetables.

No city inspection yet.

The ambiance of the place is pleasant enough; sort of a mélange of 70s colouring with 80's techno-chic. The main decoration (other than a somewhat disturbing canvas juxtaposing "grill" and "braise" with "Davey Crockett") appeared to be, and possibly were, pictures done by elementary school children on the theme of "I Love Zoë's Kitchen." The dining room was clean, except for a few un-bused tables, and airy, with a high industrial-style ceiling and large windows forming two walls. Service was of the minimalist variety; the concept of Zoë's Kitchen was copied from Pei Wei, minus the mock Asian gilt, so there is no seedy order-taking at tables here: you stand in line, order at the counter, then put a placard bearing your number on your table so the porters can unite you with your food when it's ready. The employees are a cheerful lot of college-aged kids, glad to have a job in this economy and no doubt hoping it doesn't turn into a career. Prices are about right for the type of food on offer.

The veggie pita pizza was the best of our selections. It is, essentially, a personal-sized pizza formed by loading an assortment of vegetables onto a pita bread, spritzing it with oil and scattering it with cheese to hold everything together, and baking it until the bread was just solid enough to support the toppings. Not an over-large serving (that's a good thing, by the way), but certainly enough to satisfy a normal appetite. And the blend of textures — the crispiness of the crust, the creaminess of the mozzarella cheese, the smoothness of the softer vegetables, the resilience of the onions and mushrooms — and of flavours, from the caramelized onions to the feta cheese, were both excellent, making this a dish I would gladly have again.

The spinach roll-ups were less perfect, but still good. For starters, I wouldn't bother, next time, with the grilled chicken. It didn't add anything except volume to the dish, being somewhat on the bland side, and its texture was just slightly on the dry side. The tortilla in which the creations were wrapped was just a plain ol' flour tortilla, not as good as you would get at HEB, but okay. It was filled with a tasty sautéed spinach mixture, and those slices of chicken, and grilled on a sandwich press, I reckon, to seal it closed. It did indeed hold together, but I suspect the person attending the sandwich press was distracted at a crucial point by an attractive member of the opposite sex, or possibly by some water-cooler talk regarding the ongoing London Olympic Games, because the roll-ups were overcooked. Not burned, by any means, but well past the stage of "done." The dish is served with a tiny ramekin of sauce that is meant, according to the menu, to be salsa. My wife and I discussed whether it was that, or marinara sauce, or ketchup; that should give you some idea of its appeal.

The Greek salad was a fresh concoction with all the appropriate ingredients, again not over-large but a respectable size. The roasted vegetables I chose as a side consisted of broccoli grilled in oil with mushrooms and red onion. It was about a cup in volume, which I suppose is a standard amount, but even though it was oilier and saltier than I like my veggies to be, I felt like I should have gotten more of that. 

About that line on the menu, the one that made me think I was getting something innately local: what it actually says, in the on-line version (I forget what the exact words on the plastic version were), is not that each store has its own menu. It says, 

We invite you to open our menu. Explore our aromatic, satisfying lunch and dinner items and our convenient meal options. Since our stores, just like our customers, are unique in their own way, we suggest that you enter your zip code and go directly to what is sure to become your favorite, neighborhood Zoës Kitchen. 

That's not quite the same thing. And indeed, every store does not have its own menu. I compared the menus online for this location with those from New Orleans and Charlotte, North Carolina (locations chosen at random) and found them to be exactly the same: not one single dish is added or subtracted from one location's menu to the next. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that the cook in the kitchen in Old Metairie prepares a chicken pita pizza just like the Charlotte cook does ... maybe they throw a little filé on the bread. Maybe the Charlotte cook adds in a little, I don't know, hominy. But it sure looks to me like the concept of a chain of restaurants offering different tastes in different parts of the country is just that: a concept, not a real thing. This leads me to conclude that Zoë's Kitchen is a chain like all other chains, and the food served will in some way be dumbed down. 

That's too bad. 

Funky By The Book

Somewhere on the internet there's a web site that tells you how to create a funky restaurant. There must be, because everything's on the internet, and because all the funky restaurants in the world are basically the same. You take a large space in an arty part of any town; furnish it sparsely with cheap plastic chairs and assorted tables culled from curbs and attics around the neighbourhood; put up a few posters promoting déclassé art events and counter-cultural concerts; adopt whatever the current trend in eating is — right now it's "locavore" and vegan — and hire people who would not look out of place clustering in Washington Square or Golden Gate Park late on a spring night when nothing's going on. When I happened on a place like that as a college kid, I thought it was cool. After 35 years, with nothing changed but the posters and the eating trends, it doesn't seem so cool anymore.

But I'm sure today's 20-something crowd is into countercultural coolness as much as it was back in my day. The self-appointed Arts crowd feels much the same, no matter their individual ages, as they have not ever really grown up; eternal youth, or at least the naïveté of youth, being a prerequisite for full membership in the Arts Community, other than at the Patron level.

Hence The Station Cafe: straight out of the funky restaurant manual, at 108 King William Street, near St. Mary's Street, in Southtown. Having heard good buzz about the place, I took a friend to dinner there the other night. They're open until 9, the door says, though at 7pm they were already stacking chairs on the tables. My only disappointments were that, as a culinary experience, it wasn't more interesting, and as a funky restaurant, it was so completely predictable.

The Station started life half a dozen years ago as "The Filling Station,"* in a tiny little building built to house a gas station. It took over some space in the next building, leaving the bar operation behind, and dropped the "Filling" from the name. Its menu consists mostly of sandwiches, hot and cold, and pizzas, with a few accompaniments offered to round things out. I have not evaluated their pizza; the ingredients available consist entirely of The Usual Suspects, so I will have to leave it for another occasion to decide for myself whether their home-made dough and sauce are enough to raise it above the ordinary.

Last city inspection: October 2011
A perfect score!

I did, however, try the soup as a first course. It being Monday, the soup was Southwestern Corn Chowder. Chowder is, by definition, a thick soup. This was not. So technically I suppose it's chowder-in-name-only. But on the plus side, it was damn good soup, and as long as it's good they can call it whatever the hell they want. It had excellent seasonings, and an interesting combination of textures from the corn, broth and, if memory serves (sometimes it doesn't), eggplant chunks. A cup of soup can be added to any sandwich order at a discounted price, which prevents me complaining ... sigh ... about the $3 menu price for a cup of the stuff.

That, I'm sorry to report, was pretty much the highlight of the food. The rest of it wasn't so much bad as just kind of so-so. My friend and I split two sandwiches: the chicken parmesan and the Cajun turkey. The bread used for the sandwiches is good; very good, even, and of the artisanal sort one would expect in this sort of place. But you have to do something better with it. The Cajun turkey sandwich had sufficient quantities of meat on it, and veggies, and the home-made sauce ("with 19 herbs, spices and flavorings") was interesting, but there was nothing discernibly Cajun about it. If there were traditional Cajun spices mixed in with the other stuff, they done got lost up da bayou wit' a blow comin' on, cher. The chicken parmesan was exactly what the menu said it was: a roasted chicken breast with marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese. Hard to say how good the mozzarella was, or the chicken, for that matter, because the bland marinara sauce was ladled on so thick that it was all I could taste; if that same sauce is used on the Station Cafe's pizzas, that's not a good sign. Sadly, the chicken parmesan sandwich is also an exception to the sink-sandwich rule, which says that the taste of a sandwich is inversely proportional to its messiness, and the best sandwiches need to be eaten over the sink. This sandwich had all the messiness of the best sandwiches, with none of the flavour or texture.

*There was a restaurant called that in Austin back in the 1970s; I don't think there's any connection, beyond the fact that both were located in former gas stations.