Take off......to the Great White North

My parents began taking me to Northern Michigan more than thirty years ago. Over the last three decades, I have witnessed the more heavily touristed areas of that part of the state become saturated with development. In many ways, I would suppose vacationing in a developed area defeats the whole purpose of traveling long distances for a rustic outdoor experience, but everyone has their own definition of "roughing it". Visitors to Boyne City or Petoskey nowadays will find little difference between these towns and say the affluent Detroit suburb of Birmingham. Okay, maybe the “Up North” cognates are cleaner.

Since the advent of the Bay Harbor development project just south of Petoskey, the ultra rich from literally all corners of the globe have descended upon Little Traverse Bay, and brought with them a demand for high-end wine, cheeses and other foodstuffs. So when The Wife and I venture North for a weekend, we can rest assured that copious amounts for awesome goodies can be found. If one’s looking to stock one’s cupboard, fridge, and wine rack with the finest of staples, it’s as easy as a trip to Esperance in Charlevoix, Symons General Store in Petoskey, or Toski Sands Market in Harbor Springs.

Despite the new-found good fortune of the vacationing gourmet food consumer, in the case of Bay Harbor, local community leaders have come to realize that drawing in individuals with such vast wealth can sometimes be akin to Faustian bargaining. Such was witnessed a few years back when the seasonal “residents” of Bay Harbor attempted to seize a major section of public roadway between Charlevoix and Petoskey under the pretext of “imminent domain”; all for the sole purpose of turning it into their own private airstrip, for use mostly during the summer months. It didn’t matter that Petoskey, Charlevoix, and Harbor Spring all had existing airports capable of supporting the traffic of as many Lear and Gulfstream aircraft that Bay Harbor’s rich “cottagers” could throw at them. These rich bastards wanted the convenience of being able to step off of their private jets, into a golf cart, and be whisked away to the comfort of their living rooms all in under ten minutes. So what if the run-of-the-mill work-a-day local resident would now be forced to drive an extra ten miles out-of-route in order to make the usual trek between Charlevoix and Petoskey. Fortunately, the year-round community objected so vociferously, that the scheme never developed past the planning stages.

To make a pendulum swing in the exact opposite direction, the once rustic Charlevoix has since been invaded by hordes of hippies and check-cashing Socialists; and individuals representing the Green Party now hold local public office. So I suppose as much as I find their ilk as kook-ridden as any lot, the everyday vacationer, like myself, can rest-assured that elements of former Skull and Bones types aren’t going to invade, wall-off, and stage Eyes Wide Shut styled sex orgies in the little vacation community that I grew up loving so deeply and so dearly. In this case, the old adage of “enemy of my enemy is my friend” rings loud and true.

Since the early 1990’s over-development has more or less drawn many “non-traditionals” into Northwest Lower Michigan as permanent residents, and has really served to siphon certain erstwhile elements of “yokel” out of many of the locals. One community that has yet to be hit full-force by over-development and over-saturation is the still-quaint town of Bellaire, located roughly 35 miles south of Charlevoix, and about 20 miles west of Mancelona. Typical of Northwest Lower Michigan, there is little industry in the area aside from tourism. The main attraction that has traditionally brought in Down-staters has been Shanty Creek Resort. With two ski areas for abundant winter enjoyment, and several golf courses for the summer golf crowd, Shanty is to Bellaire, as “The Mill” was to the town of Charlestown in the movie “Slapshot”. It was amidst this resorty backdrop that a few local entrepreneurs boldly staked their claim to local culinary legitimacy.

Let’s say you’ve just spent the whole of a chilly winter day shredding the hell out of nearby Shanty. I’m talking skiing the way I ski: arrive right before the lifts open; disregard a lunch break; and ski like a psycho until 4:30 when the lifts close and the ski patrol rancorously throws you off the mountain. Sure, I generally skip lunch on a ski day. I paid my sixty bucks to ski, not eat over-priced cafeteria food. So naturally, once the skis are locked into the car’s roof rack, I’m pretty ravenous. The perfect antidote for this kind of animal-like hunger is a trip to Toonies Fish & Steak on Bridge Street. Don’t let the “Fish & Steak” portion of their name deter a price conscious consumer. It’s not as upscale as one might think. Toonies may have some higher quality items on their menu, but they’re a diner through and through. And a GOOD diner, nonetheless. In my humble opinion, the perfect post-ski meal is none other than a menu item known as “The Angry Mountain”. Toonies starts the Angry Mountain with half-pound bacon cheeseburger. Fresh lettuce, tomato, and onion are added in, as would be customary on any proper burger. But what sets The Angry Mountain apart from the normal burger is the bun. In place of a bun Toonies uses two grilled-cheese sandwiches. All of this is held together by a large steak knife, used in the manner of a railroad spike, right down the center of the sandwich. What you come away with is a huge and deliciously satisfying burger, with plenty of food to spare. The first time I ordered The Angry Mountain, my cousin’s husband and I split one and we easily took it down. So as I said earlier, it’s potentially the perfect post-ski meal. Toonies also has a pretty legit selection of quality microbrews on tap, to round out the experience. Toonies doesn’t disappoint.

                                       The Angry Mountain.  Pay no attention to the table clutter.

Now if one is in the mood for the ultimate in on-site craft brewing, a trip across the street to Short’s Brewery is a must. Joe Short had been brewing beer for years prior to deciding to market his quality brew to the general public. Short’s various brews are available for purchase throughout the state of Michigan, but like any beer, the experience is never the same until you actually come to the source and have a fresh pint drawn right from the tap. Michigan has several prominent craft brew outfits: Dragonmeade, Bell’s, and Arcadia are just to name a few. Short’s Brewery ranks right up there with any of these aforementioned micro brewers. With upwards of 15 rotating styles of beer to choose from, they have something for everyone. Growlers are always available if you’d like to take a larger quantity of your favorite selection back to the cabin. Short’s has a limited menu, but it’s menu is loaded with great choices. The veritable star of their culinary offerings would be of course their pizza. With inventive (and sometimes confusing) names like “The Stallion” and “Mutilated Lips”, there are many different varieties from which to choose. To cut to the chase, Short’s pizza is arguably the BEST pizza that I have ever had, this side of the Atlantic. This is no exaggeration or faint praise. I am truly hard pressed to recall a better pizza that I have found in any other North American pizza establishment. Their thin crust is the anchor of this masterpiece; but cheese, sauce; and toppings all come together in a culmination of catamount pizza bliss. If you’ve just skied the whole day, and then meandered your way down to Short’s for a pint and a pizza, that’s a day that is nearly impossible to improve upon. And although Short’s servers might sometimes be semi-aloof, a simpering hipster waitress is a small sacrifice when faced with the reality that you’re about to experience maybe the most outstanding pizza anywhere.

If you’re traveling through Michigan’s northern Lower Peninsula, and are looking to avoid the hoi pollois, the hippies, and slowly-developing urban sprawl, Bellaire is definitely the place. Arriving thirsty and with an empty stomach is obligatory.

Chew on THAT!
T.S.G.

Another Pesky Mosquito

Who is Amanda Obney?  That’s the big question on the table.  Although the name may not ring a bell to most of you, she is in all actuality the California woman who is suing Taco Bell (owned by YUM Brands)  for “misleadingly” using the word “beef” to describe the ground beef filling used in their tacos and other products.  Here’s what is known about Taco Bell’s new shadowy nemesis:  She’s from Orange County, California.  She’s a huge fan of frivolous lawsuits.  She hates Taco Bell. 

Her claims, vis-à-vis her vulture-like attorneys is that Taco Bell’s ground beef only contains 36% beef.  The rest of the mixture, per Obney and her pack of legal hyenas, consists of “grain products”, “binders”, and other “extenders” (the former terminology was taken directly from the pages of her lawsuit).  Taco Bell has countered by saying that the actual beef portion is upwards of 88% pure beef, and that some grain-fillers and spices are indeed used.  But this is only to preserve the “taste” and “texture” of their product.   

When news of this lawsuit broke, the general tone among many of my PETA/Vegan slanted friends and acquaintances (vis-à-vis their respective Facebook pages) was something to the effect of, “See!  I told you it was garbage!”   But seriously, for the rest of us, I think the reaction varied from, “So what”, to “Yawn”, to “A law suit?  What a waste of time and money”.  Leave it to The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart later that evening to uncannily sum up the ridiculous tone of this litigious fiasco by stating, “64% grains; 36% beef? What a relief!  That’s not nearly as bad as what we had previously feared Taco Bell was putting in their tacos.”  (Paraphrase)

Okay, for those of you that have followed this blog from the beginning, you’ll know that I don’t recommend fast food.  Although I eat it periodically, I try to avoid it as much as I can.  Good health aside, if you eat a Whopper and a large fries on a daily basis, you’re doing your soul a huge disservice.  Your approach to food is no different than Remy’s father in “Ratatouille” when he haphazardly utters, “Food is fuel”.  But that said, fundamentally speaking, what you put in your body is entirely your own choice.  And unless you have a serious health issue, and are under a doctor’s care, you’re free to eat whatever you want (within reason, of course).  I’m the last person to advocate using the court system to sue, or restrain, or litigate anyone away from a food choice that merely poses an individual health risk; or is a health risk that can be controlled and limited through moderation, exercise, and common sense.  I don’t agree with anti-tobacco lawsuits, and I certainly don’t agree with anti-food lawsuits.  Especially when we know that every adult consumer knows full-well what they’re putting in their body.

Ms. Obney joins the ranks of Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me) and various other zealous crackpots in yet another attack on the nation’s fast food industry.  An industry that only exists because people in this country are lazy, and refuse to take the time to grocery shop and cook for themselves.  In my mind, if you’re too lazy to open a can of soup, or peal an orange, or open a carton of skim milk you deserve to be morbidly obese and in poor health.   This isn’t a case of a prison inmate suing the prison system over meal quality.  Obney, like the rest of us, does have copious other food choices.  And based upon the fact that she’s not requesting any money in her lawsuit, I’ll confidently conclude that she has deeper ulterior motives.  Those motives undoubtedly involve forwarding some kooky, activist, proselytizing philosophy.  I'll go out on a limb and say it; she’s probably some variety of militant vegan.  Think that’s a capricious, scattershot assumption on my part?  Well, you don’t see Mario Batali suing fast food chains, do you?  And unlike more level-headed approaches to obesity and nutrition issues (like the one being used by Jamie Oliver of Jamie’s Food Revolution), instead of attempting to change the way people think about food, Ms. Obney et al would just simply choose to abruptly cut off the flow of schlocky food at the source. This in itself, only succeeds in leaving the hapless, food-inept masses with fewer food choices.  In my estimation, that’s like denying a welfare lifer their monthly government check, while simultaneously leaving them without the skills or the know-how to find stable, gainful employment.  This type of half-baked solution to the problem only makes the afflicted person suffer worse.  

Wanting to leverage or eliminate ANY part of our existing commercial food chain, simply because one feels it’s “immoral” is no different than attempting to force children to pray in public schools, or forcing women to wear a burka in public.   The universalizing mentality that these militant anti-food-establishment kooks have is really no different from the mindset of those Operation Rescue crazies who block the doors of abortion clinics.  What’s next?  Picketing in front of Taco Bell with signs that read, “God Hates Fat-Asses!”?   If anything, the actions of Obney and her ilk are proof-positive that when a practicing vegan is not also a practicing Buddhist, they can get pretty damn annoying.  Instead of this “bombshell” making me recoil away from Taco Bell, if anything, it makes me want to go out and buy a dozen tacos just to exercise my freedom of choice and to further piss off these lunatics in the process.  Because when it comes down to it, all that Obney and the people who champion her goofy actions are doing, is stepping on a person’s individual right to make a choice for themselves.  When nutrition information is readily available (like it is in the case of ALL major fast food chains), one cannot credibly field the argument that people lack the tools to make an informed decision on what they should be putting in their bodies.  Unless of course you’d also like to couple that with the arrogant assertion that , “People are too stupid to make the right choices on their own, so we smarter, more enlightened people need to make choices for them”.  If that sentiment sounds like a ludicrous, elitist, and condescending mindset, you’re right, it certainly is. 

Does Amanda Obney think she can “scare” the fast food industry into “healthening” up their menu offerings?  Sorry to break the news to you, Mandy; but YUM Brands and all of their fast food cousins have deeper pockets than you do.  They can drag this out longer than you can.  And in the end, all you've done is made a bunch of lawyers richer.  And if Yum Brands’ market share does happen to shrink in this country because of this lawsuit (which it won’t) that wouldn’t matter anyway.  They’d make up for their sales losses by expanding into a rapidly developing Chinese market.   If Ms. Obney dreams of becoming the Eric Brockovich of the fast food industry, she’s nothing short of a certifiable nut-case.  

So thanks, Amanda Obney (whoever the heck you are) for helping to invigorate our ailing economy by keeping dozens of bottom-feeding, notoriety-hungry attorneys employed.   Thanks for working to erode our freedom of choice by wastefully using the courts as your proselytizing sledge hammer.  And thanks for being soooooo much smarter than the rest of us poor slobs.  I suppose expecting you to take up a crusade that holds true usefulness and intrinsic value to society was just a little too much for us to ask of you this time around.

Chew on THAT!

T.S.G.

The Art of Happiness - Glutton Style

Can money buy you happiness?  Sorry altruists.  According to recent news articles, research has shown that richer people are generally happier than their poorer counterparts.   So if you’re not a recent lotto winner, a trust fund brat, or a film star can one find a path to happiness without limitless amounts of cash?  I think so, and it’s as easy as a quick trip to the grocery store.

Method One - Buttered Popcorn with Chardonnay

Gather together the following items:

-A popcorn popper (an air popper is my preferred popping device)

-A small bag of un-popped popcorn.

-One stick of SALTED butter (Yes, a FULL stick.  Plan on using ALL of it)

-A large bowl.

-A bottle of oaked Chardonnay (chilled).

This “method” is so painfully easy that even the most pathetically inept among us can’t possibly screw it up.  If you can pop popcorn and melt a stick of butter, you’re well on your way to forgetting all the problems that had been recently piled upon your shoulders.

Step One:  Pop the popcorn.  I prefer an air popper, because I don’t like the way oil undercuts my enjoyment of the butter. You could use anywhere between ¾ of a cup to a full cup of un-popped corn.  The less corn you use, the greater the buttery-ness of the finished product.      DO NOT substitute microwave popcorn for the real thing.  When you add in the wine later on, the effect will be a completely unfulfilling crash-and-burn.  The popcorn’s merely a delivery device for the butter, but it’s still important.

Step Two:  Melt the butter.  You can use either a microwave or a stove-top; the choice is yours.  Once the butter has melted pour it over the freshly popped popcorn.  Stir to ensure that the butter is mixed evenly.  DO NOT substitute margarine, Benecol, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, or any of the other fake butter replacement products in place of REAL butter.  Again, if you do, expect an epic fail when the wine is introduced.  If your wife or girlfriend is against animal products and steadfastly forbids the use of butter in your household, have her pack her things and leave.  Maybe go as far as having the locks re-keyed as well, because I’d imagine that she’s probably a crazy lunatic who doesn’t take break-ups well.  In the long run, she’ll only make your life miserable, and if she’s mercilessly controlling what you eat, she probably mercilessly has your penis in lock-down mode, too.  Be a man and do yourself a favor and find a chick who isn’t a controlling psycho.  So what if the next girlfriend’s a tad on the chunky side from having a normal diet.  Small butts are over-rated. 

Step Three:  Add iodized salt to taste.  For me, less salt is more.  But even a little bit is needed for balance.

Step Four:  Open your chilled bottle of oaked Chardonnay and enjoy the frack out of what you’ve made.  Oaked Chardonnays are the best choice.  The buttery oak will pair nicely with the butter in the popcorn.  There are many good choices:  I like Cupcake Chardonnay (about $12 a bottle).  But if you’d like to spend more money Stag’s Leap, Ferarri-Carano, Marques, and Kistler are great choices.  Any sparkling wine that is 100% Chardonnay will work as well.  If you’ve never previously had popcorn and vino together, you’ll be stymied at how you’d overlooked this awesome, simple, happiness-producing combination.  Pop in a nice romantic Blue Ray like “Predator” and you’re all set!  

Method Two - Pancetta-wrapped goat cheese with Barbera

Gather together the following items:

-A sleeve of soft goat cheese.  Most decent supermarkets carry it these days.

-A pack of pancetta.  It’s a cured, marbled Italian sliced meat, that crisps up like bacon when cooked.

-A non-stick frying pan with a spatula (tongs will also do, it’s your choice).

-A nice bottle of Barbera.  Both the Italian and California varieties will work equally well.

Note:  As you may have already gleaned from Method One, there are no substitutions or shortcuts.  Alter my directives at your own risk.

Step One:  Remove the goat cheese from the wrapper and cut it into half-inch “medallions”.

Step Two:  Wrap the pancetta around the goat cheese medallions and place them in the refrigerator.  Chill for about an hour.  The chilling process is optional, but it helps to keep the cheese from melting prematurely when you place it in the frying pan.

Step Three:  On medium-high heat, add the pancetta-wrapped goat cheese to the frying pan.  Brown them for about 60-90 seconds on each side.  The pancetta should crisp up nicely.  Caution:  If you fry them too long, or if the pan isn’t hot enough, the cheese will melt, and ooze all over the place.  It’ll still be edible, but the final presentation of the dish will be ruined.

Step Four:  Sit down and enjoy what you’ve cooked with the Barbera.  Vieti and Montevina are good choices.  But most others will work.    

If you’d like, add in a nice side salad.  This is a really, really rich, decadent dish, so you might need the salad to cut some of the overpowering richness.  I generally max out after I’ve had three of these, but its so effing good.  Seriously, good.  Dirty-sex-in-the-elevator-at-work good.  It’s life changing.

Here's a photo of the completed dish.  I'd have posted photos of the other ones, but they aren't as visually interesting.

Method-Three - Crispy-fried portabella mushrooms with Pinot Noir

If you’re that previously-mentioned castrated guy who doesn’t have the guts to kick his ranty Whole Foods psycho girlfriend to the curb and get on with a life-worth-living, this is an effective animal-products-free alternative to the two previous dishes.  The portabellas have a nice mouth-feel, and are often used in vegan cuisine in place of meat.   And remember the rule of today’s lesson, children:  NO SUBSTITUTIONS.

Gather together the following items:

-A large portabella mushroom cap (pre-sliced is just fine).

-All-purpose flour for dusting.

-Sea salt.

-Olive oil for frying.

-A medium to large frying pan and a set of tongs.

Step One:  Slice the mushroom cap into long slices (unless you purchased the pre-sliced version).

Step Two:  Heat the olive oil in the fry pan.  It should be about ¾ to 1 inch deep.  ¾ of an inch should be plenty, though.  You’ll know when the oil’s hot enough, because when you flick small amounts of water across the oil, it’ll bead off.

Step Three:  Liberally dredge the sliced portabellas in the flour, and add them to the hot oil.  They should be fried on each side for about two to four minutes, until crisp on the outside and cooked all the way through.  Experiment until you get the hang of it.  Don’t expect the flour to stick to the shrooms, like the schlocky, artless deep-fried button mushrooms you’d order at TGF McFunster’s.  That’s not what we’re aiming for.  There should be a light crust on them only.  This is “crispy-fried”, not batter-fried.

Step Four:  Placed the fried shrooms on a plate that’s lined with paper towel.  Add the sea salt and let the shrooms briefly drain and cool.  Serve hot (If they’re allowed to cool off, it deadens the impact).

Step Five:  Enjoy your shrooms with a nice Pinot Noir.  Virtually ANY brand or terroir will work.  If you want to go cheapy-cheapy, drink a bottle of Smoking Loon Pinot Noir ($10.99).  It’s quite good.   On the higher end, I’d go with a Pommard from Burgundy (Upwards of $50, but worth it).  Make sure you open the wine at least an hour before you plan to drink it.  As with most red wines, oxygen is needed.

The Wife and I will often fry up a batch of shrooms on a Friday evening, and stand around in the kitchen eating them, chatting, drinking vino, and scarfing down fresh-baked bread and cheeses as well.  Cheddar, brie, and milder blue veined cheeses are great matches with the Pinot.

Wine Buying Notes

For those of you who are relative novices to wine buying, not all wine gets better with age.  The Chardonnays and the Pinot Noirs that I recommended should be fairly young.  If they’re five years old or more consider avoiding them, as that they might have peaked.  If they have a screw cap and not a natural cork, avoid them if they are older than four years.  I often look for Pinots and Chards that are even younger than this (i.e. one or two years old).   Barbera would probably be drinkable up to six or seven years old.  The Pommard, however, is quite tannic and can be enjoyably consumed well after eight to ten years old.  Do bear in mind that in may need to be decanted a few hours ahead of consumption.

So in summary, these are a few of MY personal “methods” for achieving happiness.    They’re relatively cheap, simple, and easy; and they work.  If you try all three, and they don’t put a dent in the funk that you’re under, I’m sorry Chief; you might be needing help beyond the scope of my abilities.  But I’m truly confident that the “prescription” that I have personally written for you will work juuuuuuust fine.  Eat happy, live happy!

Chew on THAT!

T.S.G.

Area Pizza Show-Down

So it’s a Friday night in Bay City, and you’re starving for a good pizza, and you want to support a local business.  Who do you call?  Fellow food blogger Jason Baker (of www.iatemichigan.com fame) and I have once again been at it.  We spent an entire evening sampling home-delivered pizzas from six different pizza parlors from around the city.   Those pizza establishments included Brooklyn Boyz Pizza, G’s Pizza, D’Angelo’s, Eudici’s,  Roma's Pizzeria, and B & C Pizza.

For uniformity purposes, all of the pizzas that we ordered were topped with exclusively pepperoni and bacon.  We also took into consideration accuracy of each restaurant’s  projected delivery time by ordering each pizza to be delivered at the exact same time.  That way we could throw an entertaining mind-fuck at the delivery drivers when they all arrived at my house simultaneously.    Yes, I’m a sadistic bastard.

Other categories that we took into consideration were price, quality of toppings, cheese, sauce, crust, size, and overall taste.  Just so everyone knows, all of the establishments evaluated were reasonably equal in employee courtesy from the moment that our order was placed to the moment that it was delivered.  The levelness of the playing field ended there.

Eudici’s Pizza

Eudici’s was quite standard, and unremarkable.  Not bad pizza, but simply very average.  About the only higher ground that Eudici’s held over the other five local pizzerias was that it was quite timely, and reasonably priced.  If you’re looking for a spectacular pizza, Eudici’s isn’t the place.  But as I said, they’re quick and offer good value.

Brooklyn Boyz Pizza

Pizza was invented in Italy during the later part of the 19^th century, as a type of savory pastry in honor of Italy’s queen.   It was a simple combination of ingredients, with huge patriotic implications.  Those original ingredits (cheese, tomato sauce, and basil) were selected to represent the red, white and green of the Italian flag.  It was later brought to America (the New York City/Connecticut area) by Italian immigrants, but its popularity didn’t completely take off until after World War II when repatriated GI’s sought out this tasty snack which they had dined on while fighting in Italy against the Nazis.  From then on, pizza’s rise in the American culinary scene was meteoric.   The ownership of Brooklyn Boyz hails from New York, so the name Brooklyn Boyz is quite fitting.

 I found Brooklyn Boyz’ pizza to be quite impressive.  The price, size, and timeliness of delivery were excellent.  Their sauce was top notch; a tad garlicky for my wife’s tastes, but very appealing to me.  Their toppings and cheese could stand some improvement.  But overall, their pizza ranked quite high.  I strongly recommend them.

Roma’s Pizzeria

Roma’s is a tiny neighborhood restaurant that I have been driving past for as long as I can remember.   Sadly, I’d never bothered to give them my business.  Only now do I understand the full scope of how I’d erred.   Including Roma’s in the survey was Jason’s idea, and I’m quite pleased that he had suggested that we sample their pizza.  As I understand it, Roma’s is owned by Italians, and it is nestled in Bay City’s South End, amongst a small pocket of residents who are also of Italian heritage.  So if Italians are eating there, the staff must know what they’re doing.  Roma’s didn’t disappoint.    I found them to be best overall in quality of toppings, and crust.  They were second best in the categories of cheese, and sauce; and I found them to serve up the best pizza offering off all of the six pizzas that we sampled.    I give them a recommendation of the highest order.  Seriously, this was great pizza.  And I’m not just saying this because I’m afraid that they’re going to come to my house and put a severed horse’s head in my bed while I’m sleeping.  Roma’s knows pizza!

                                                                                                                                                                  

D’Angelo’s Pizza    

A relative newcomer to Bay City’s take out scene, D’Angelo’s has a lot to learn in quality, and they have nowhere else to go but up at this point.  I hate to be blunt and negative about our experience with their product, but I see no need in paying credit when credit isn’t due.  D’angelo’s pizza was the most expensive of the six that we surveyed, and with the exception of quality of cheese, they were in the bottom-three in all the categories that I considered.  I found little value in ordering their product, and although I would perhaps try other menu items that they have to offer, I can’t say I’d go out of my way to eat their pizza.  Well, maybe if it were free.  But otherwise, I found better pizza choices available.

G’s Pizza

For those of you who travel to Tawas or other towns in Northern Michigan, G’s pizza is famous and well-respected.  I have previously enjoyed their pizzas at their Tawas location, and apparently other folks do as well, as that it’s generally considered a must-visit for vacationers passing through the Tawas area.  I had however previously found their Bay City location to be rather unimpressive for some inexplicable reason.  G’s occupies the building that once housed Bay City’s “famous” Terry & Jerry’s Restaurant, a very basic, overpriced Italian eatery run by non-Italians.  My wife and in-laws used to love Terry & Jerry’s, but I personally (as an Italian myself) found it to be edible, but barely passable in the authenticity department.  Eventually, the owners retired and decided to sell their business off.   Terry & Jerry’s 2.0 quickly tanked when the new owners bunglingly decided to cut corners and replaced fresh ingredients with pre-packaged Gordon’s Foods schlock.  Shortly thereafter, G’s moved into the location.  I went off on that tangent in order to foster my argument that the building must certainly have some bad mojo attached to it, and mediocrity is the greatest that any restaurant that operates out of that location could hope for.  What other explanation can be mustered to explain why the Tawas location gets their pizza  so right, and the Bay City location gets theirs so wrong?

So with that, G’s pizza was the second most expensive of the six.  Although I would rate its toppings second best to Roma’s, it was dead last in every other category.  It was even last in delivery timeliness.  All of the pizzas that we surveyed were ordered within 10 minutes of each other, and were under the same constraints of a busy Friday evening.  Yet G’s found a way of completing their delivery in nearly DOUBLE the projected delivery time that their order-taker gave me.  What arrived was a small, greasy mess that was truly unappetizing and disappointing.  I may enthusiastically dig into their product when I’m in the Tawas area; but Bay City?  Never again.

B & C Pizza   

Fewer pizzerias in our community are as famous or storied as B & C Pizza.  Their pizza was the one that I anticipated the very most in the run-up to this culinary experiment.  So many people love and believe in their pizza, that it approaches “religion” in the mesmerizing hold that it has on folks.  Me being the person that I am, I had no problem testing the decades-long hype of B & C’s pizza supremacy.  Their price was very low in comparison to the others (second lowest after Brooklyn Boyz), and their cheese was by far the best of all pizzas surveyed.  Delivery timeliness was average, but due to the fact that they have such a huge demand from their rabid customer base, I can cut them some slack in that category.  But in the category of overall taste (at the risk of invoking cries of “heresy”), I would rank them only THIRD-best (behind Roma’s and Brooklyn Boyz, respectively).  Their crust was excellent, but the quality of their toppings and sauce could stand some improving.  Overall, I felt that their pizza was significantly more salty than it needed to be (largely because the toppings were overly salty), and that was probably the single-biggest criticism that I’d have for them.  Overall, it was a good solid offering, but not the best available. 

So in summary, Roma’s pizza was by far the best tasting, and the most impressive of all the pizzas tested in this survey.  And although far from authentic, they were relatively in-the-ballpark with the style of pizza that I have had at various times while traveling in Italy.  Brooklyn Boyz also comes with a very, very strong recommendation.  As far as overall value, they might be the best bet for the cost-conscious consumer.  How can one go wrong with a pizza that was second in taste, and first over all in price, size, and timeliness of delivery.  In the immortal words of Kazakhstan’s Borat Sagdiyev, “I like!!!”.  

One of my former college roommates once made the claim that there’s no such thing as “bad pizza”.  If this experiment proves one thing, and one thing only: bad pizza can indeed be found.  But good pizza….now that’s nothing short of happiness in a box; delivered right to your door, no less.   

Chew on that!

T.S.G.

We dun been corn-holed!!!

Those of you who follow the media’s culinary pundits and food celebrities will be abundantly familiar with the ongoing feud between Travel Channel’s food personality Anthony Bourdain, and Food network’s host of “Semi-Homemade Cooking”, Sandra Lee.  Bourdain (chef-at-large, travel host, and hugely respected culinary author), began said feud with Lee (untrained amateur), by stating publicly in 2007 that Ms. Lee was, quote, “Pure evil”.   In more elaborative terms he was quoted as saying:

“This frightening hell spawn of Kathy Lee and Betty Crocker seems on a mission to kill her fans, one meal at a time.  She must be stopped.  Her death-dealing can-opening ways will cut a swath of destruction through the world if not contained.”

The crux of his rant was that Lee uses a disproportionate amount of pre-made, pre-packaged staples and items in her recipes (generally a 70% store-bought/30% fresh ingredient ratio).   Per Bourdain, due to the high concentration of preservatives and additives in these store-bought ingredients, her recipes yield a “cuisine” that is significantly unhealthy, and markedly LESS healthy than even the fattiest traditional-styled cooking.  He goes on further to say:

“This is simply irresponsible programming.  It’s only possible use might be as a psychological warfare strategy against the resurgent Taliban, or dangerous insurgent groups. A large-racked blond repeatedly urging Afghans and angry Iraqis to stuff themselves with fatty, processed American foods might be just the weapon we need to win the war on terror.” 

Obviously, this kind of celebrity-on-celebrity derision and ridicule sent shock waves through the foodie community, resulting in ironic laughter and general agreement from most of us who are dedicated, conscientious consumers of quality food.  At the heart of Tony’s salvo is his belief that items processed in a factory and larded with preservatives and additives are the scourge of quality eating.  And aside from Tony’s crack about Sandy’s “rack”, I don’t think he’s at all out of line in saying what he said.  Lee is peddling methods that insinuate that factory-made short cuts are an acceptable substitute for quality.  She is enabling her viewers in the art of shitty “cooking”; and her methods are wrong.  Patently and disgustingly wrong.  If Bourdain is insinuating through his “rack” comment that looks are the sole proponent in landing this former homemaker, serial divorcee, and collector of rich husbands and boyfriends her television spot, I can see where he’s coming from.  Lee’s shtick is utterly artless, in my estimation.  And no matter how comely the pitch-man (or pitch-woman), “shitty” is still “shitty”, and it will always be “shitty”.

Perhaps the most ubiquitously-listed ingredient on the product labels of the various pre-made icings, and boxed cakes, and salad dressings, and marinades, and soup mixes in Lee’s putrid arsenal is high fructose corn syrup (hereafter known in this article has HFCS).  This dietary anathema is the focus of today's article.  

HFCS is a corn-based, chemically synthesized sweetener.  Its taste and properties loosely mimic those of traditional cane and beet sugar.  Due to its markedly cheaper price over sugar, it has gradually gained a foothold in the processed foods industry, and has basically replaced real sugars as a sweetening ingredient in everything from sodas, to snack chips, to frozen dinners, to ketchup.  Even sliced bread has HFCS in it.  Shipped to cost-cutting, consumer-forsaking food manufacturers in 55 gallon drums, this sticky mess is nothing short of the Frankenstein of food additives.  And if it’s diabolical creation can be compared to Frankenstein, its effects on the health of the general public could almost be compared to the Chernobyl disaster.  All literalistic confusions with my analogy aside, this is not to irresponsibly insinuate that cancer or radiation sickness are risks to those of us consumers who ingests HFCS.  But rather, with relation to the way that HFCS has blotted out the presence of real sugar in the majority of the foods that we consume, I firmly believe that we are in the midst of a culinary nuclear winter, and we need to recognize the Faustian bargaining that processed food producers have made with the corn industry (A.K.A “Big Corn”).  Big Corn’s impact vis-à-vis HFCS on the gradual ramping up of the pigs-at-the-trough feeding phenomenon in this country since HFCS’s introduction into the American food chain is blatantly obvious to those of us who travel overseas, or even venture across our northern border into Canada.  The obesity disparity between Americans and our counterparts from other developed nations is staggering and is an utterly shocking phenomenon to behold. 

Now you might be saying to yourself, why would an amateur food writer who lionizes “gluttony” be railing against the onset of chronic nationwide obesity?  Well, for those of you keeping score at home, I’ve never held that a person should eat himself into a dire health condition.  I merely stand for the indulgence in, and the consumption of, the best quality foods and ingredients available.    I lionize immersing oneself in food cultures like that of the French, or the Italians, or the Japanese (and many others) where chemistry-experiments-gone-wrong aren’t generally turned into food additives.  And by comparison, these aforementioned cultures have a far skinnier average population, and a much longer lifespan.  So if one is going to enjoy food (and there’s nothing wrong with an occasional brief bought of gluttony), I zealously believe that what you jam into your pie-hole needs to be outstanding, and one shouldn’t settle for cheap, cut-rate quality. 

With HFCS, one cannot get any “cheaper” or more “cut-rate”.  But unfortunately, in our culture, one will invariably be finding one’s self in a situation where preservative-ladened fast food must be consumed at some point,  But let’s make no mistake, what personally makes me happy in life can’t be found on the menus of any of the big box types in the “TGI McFunster’s” pantheon of eateries.   Aside from the prolific In-N-Out Burger, I glean nearly no enjoyment from any of the big box schlock-on-the-wall joints.  And when I do eat fast food, it simply serves a “fuel”, and “fuel” only; and it is not generally a source of enjoyment.

There are volumes of articles on the ill-effects that HFCS wreaks on a person’s health, and everyone outside of our borders is more or less aware of these effects.  America is basically the only nation on the planet where HFCS is used on a large scale.  In fact, most countries have BANNED it.  Only through leverage and lobbying by Big Corn and the pursuit of fast cash by food producers has HFCS been able to invade the American food chain.   I am not in any way attempting to claim that cane or beet sugar is any type of “heath food”, because it is not.  It carries with it its own set of health risks and ill effects. Let me just briefly say that as opposed to traditional sugars, HFCS has been scientifically proven to be loaded with empty calories, metabolizes differently when ingested, and does not imbue the normal feeling of “fullness” on the consumer with the same alacrity of traditional sugars.  Ergo, one is apt to eat a whole bag of snack-chips as opposed to a third of a bag.  One might be able to easily down two sodas instead of stopping after the first one.   From the standpoint of processed food producers, this is a gold mine.  In HFCS, food and beverage companies not only have a cheaper alternative to traditional sweeteners, said “cheaper alternative” enables their customers to graze on even greater quantities of product.  Who could argue with “cheaper” AND “generates additional revenue streams”, right?  Well, for me personally, it all comes back to the fact that from a taste standpoint, HFCS sucks.  Like I said above, “shitty” is still “shitty”, and it will always be “shitty”.

Among various friends and acquaintances, I had heard rumblings and grumbling about HFCS for years.  But I first became truly aware of the crummy taste of HFCS while shopping last year at the local Sam’s Club.  In a back corner of the store, between the displays of bottled water and large distribution sodas, we found a few stray cases of what appeared to be Coca-Cola in small glass bottles.  The anomalous glass bottles instantly piqued my curiosity, as that plastic bottles were now the beverage industry’s receptacle of choice.  Glass hadn’t been used by the beverage industry on a large scale in years.  Upon closer examination, I realized that this was actually Coke from, of all places, Mexico.  I instinctively examined the English-language nutrition label that had been hastily glued to the side of the bottle.  Sure enough, the sweetener was honest-to-God cane sugar.  Not a single gram of HFCS was to be found anywhere on the ingredients list.   Without a single iota of hesitation, a scooped up a case of it and placed it in our cart.

Upon arriving home, I un-capped a bottle and poured it into a tall glass filled with ice.  What crossed my taste buds was something that I hadn’t experienced in years.  It was lighter and crisper than any Coke that I had tasted in a long, long time.  It was less bitter.  What’s more, it was much, much more refreshing.  I shook my head in disbelief.  “This tastes like…..my childhood”, I thought.

Over the next few months, I stayed away from any and all HFCS-sweetened soft drinks.  When PepsiCo introduced cane sugar-sweetened Pepsi Throwback and Mt. Dew Throwback, we bought a twelve-pack of each.  When age-old Michigan favorite, Faygo Beverage, released various limited addition sodas sweetened with cane sugar, we began to regularly buy six-packs of these.  We gradually eliminated all of the HFCS-sweetened beverages in our house, and it tasted simply awesome.

Granted, my wife and I aren’t huge soda drinkers.  I might have 1 or 2 bottles a week.  My children are allowed one bottle a week.  Maybe slightly more if we eat out at a restaurant.  So I hope I didn’t paint a picture that we were swilling pop the way secret-handshake fraternity pukes guzzle Natural Light.  Because let’s face it; soda is the equivalent of liquid candy, and daily consumption of it (irregardless of the sweetening agent) is a guaranteed recipe for poor health.  

Earlier this fall, I was traveling to Connecticut for a wedding.  Some rough turbulence on a previous flight had left my stomach in knots.  So between flights, I decided to grab a Pepsi to help settle my ailing gut.  Naturally, American airports only stock the standard HFCS sweetened variety of soda, so HFCS it was.  I think the difference in THIS Pepsi and the cane sugar sweetened Pepsi Throwback that I had been drinking at home was instantly recognizable.  For a moment I did a double-take, and actually re-examined the bottle to make sure I hadn’t accidentally grabbed a Diet Pepsi or some other low calorie alternative.  In comparison to Pepsi Throwback, the taste was markedly bitter, and the mouth-feel was heavy and ridiculously over-the-top.  To paint you a picture, if Mexicoke and Pepsi Throwback are analogous to drinking soup, HFCS Pepsi is analogous to drinking gravy.  Instead of making me feel refreshed, it made me feel generally lousy, and sorry that I had even put the corn-swill in my mouth.  Food shouldn’t make one say, “Jeez, why did I ever do that?!?!?”  They should make you say, “That was great!   That was sure worth it!!!”   Since I had the express knowledge that there was indeed a better version of the same beverage out there, the former was exactly how HFCS Pepsi made me feel.  Specifically, I felt let down and cheated.

Curiosity abound, I repeated the experiment the next day while traveling up to New Haven by train.  This time I selected a bottle of Coca-Cola.  The results of said experiment was virtually the same as when I drank the HFCS Pepsi.  It tasted bitter, heavy, non-refreshing, and generally “blech”.  I didn’t even drink 6 ounces of the twenty-ounce bottle, before I pitched the unfinished bottle in the nearest trash receptacle.  Fortunately, a few hours later, I caught a burger at Louis’ Lunch in New Haven, and washed my meal down with a cane sugar sweetened Foxon Park grape soda, and once again, everything was right with the universe.

This got me thinking.  Under controlled conditions, say perhaps the controlled conditions of a good old fashioned blind taste test, would the results be the same?  So enlisting the assistance of fellow local food whore, Jason Baker (who writes the food blog www.Iatemichigan.com); and his lovely wife, we set out to prove or disprove my theory of cane sugar supremacy.

The various sodas that I selected for this experiment were as follows:

1)      Mexicoke vs. Coke

2)      Pepsi Throwback vs. Pepsi

3)      Mountain Dew Throwback vs. Mountain Dew

4)      Limited Addition Faygo Orange, Grape, and Redpop vs. Regular Faygo Orange, Grape and Redpop.

I figured this list gave us a good variety of beverages, and it included ones that were of nationwide distribution along with those of regional distribution.  My wife graciously volunteered to serve as the proctor of this blind taste test; and sequestering herself in our pantry, she ensured that all of the sodas were poured away from our prying, biased eyes.  All that we saw of each sample was a small plastic cup labeled “A” or “B”. 

I’m sure some of you are thinking, don’t these lame-ass fracking people have anything better to do on a Friday night than sample soda pop?  If it’s any consolation, when Jason and I got done testing the above-mentioned sodas, we went ahead and pounded a bunch of craft beers.  Maybe there’s a beer tasting article in our collective futures, I dunno.

The results of the taste test were in some cases predictable, but in a few cases they were completely unanticipated and shocking.  As far as the large-release sodas that we sampled, the existential differences in quality between cane sugar and HFCS were instantaneously apparent.  Cane sugar won the day easily.  If this had been a prize fight, HFCS would have been brutally K.O’d in the first round.  In the case of the colas, the differences were so pronounced that HFCS might have even died back in the locker room following the fight.  Mountain Dew Throwback was the clear winner over its HFCS counterpart.  As previously stated, the results of the colas were the most blatant and staggering.  Just as my experiences a month earlier while Back East, HFCS Pepsi and Coke were bitter, thicker in mouth feel, and heavy.  They were proven a ridiculously inferior product by this taste test, and I really feel that PepsiCo and the Coca-Cola Company should be ashamed of themselves for releasing such schlock onto the general public.  

Faygo’s sodas were a different story.  Faygo is legend for those of us who hail from Michigan.  Although once wholly owned and managed out of Detroit, it is now a subsidiary of National Beverage Corp, which owns a number of other regional “bargain” soda brands and energy drink brands.  Despite its popularity in Michigan, some smaller, independent retailers within the state refuse to stock it due to its lower price, and lower profit-generating capabilities.  Despite said low price, it’s still a great product, and hugely nostalgic for folks of my generation.   An occasional bottle of Faygo is admittedly one of my guilty pleasures, whereas I could normally care less about Coke or Pepsi products.  What can I say, for some reason, Faygo just turns my crank.

With regards to the results Faygo’s its taste-test yielded; I found all versions of Faygo to be very similar to one another.  Between the orange, grape, and redpop, I only selected cane sugar as the better-tasting soft drink in ONE instance.  That was in the case of Faygo grape.  My other two picks were the HFCS versions.   Here’s what I found so amazingly stupefying: Faygo Redpop has been my life-long, hands-down favorite.  For me there’s simply nothing better, and no other type of soda (regardless of the brand) speaks to me like Faygo redpop.  I was in utter disbelief when the results were revealed and I found that I had chosen the HFCS version of redpop as the more appealing or the two.  To Faygo’s credit, their good folks did a great job of creating a product that tastes incredibly similar to the old cane sugar version.  As stated above, cane sugar grape easily bested the HFCS version; but in all honesty, when it came to the orange and the redpop, Jason and I were confounded by the similarities between sample A and sample B.  They seemed virtually the same.

As a side note, The Wife noted that the cane sugar version of the grape left a bright PURPLE head in the cup when poured, whereas none of the other sodas (cane sugar or otherwise) presented a head that was so non-standard.

All in all, I found this to be an interesting experiment.  I guess it proves a few things.  First of all, real sugar generally DOES taste better than HFCS (at least in sodas, it does).  I suspect that this is just the tip of the iceberg.  I implore you all, in the name of decency, to pay no attention to the propaganda commercials with which Big Corn has been blitzing the television air waves.  They can call HFCS “corn sugar” if they like, but smart folks know it for what it is:  schlock.   If they can somehow get an intelligent person to believe that it isn’t cheap, cost-cutting schlock, then for their next trick, they should convince us all that the word “gullible” isn’t in the dictionary.  No worse off than cane sugar?  Cracker, please…..

Secondly, although it may be considered “welfare pop” by some snobby types, Faygo really makes a great product.  They are obviously committed to sustaining a good tasting product, and a consistent product.  Let me go out on a limb and say that this reflects that perhaps Faygo holds a greater regard and appreciation for its customer base than the large-release soft drink companies.  I guess when I think about Faygo’s “Boblo Island” commercial from when I was a kid, it’s clear that they’ve really made good on their erstwhile claim that “Faygo remembers”.  How often can you say that something is still “as good as it used to be”?   And as a final side note, Faygo grape, orange, and redpop all go great with vodka as well.   But that’s a different article for a different day.  Happy soda-drinking!

Chew on that!

T.S.G

                                                                                               

It Was Sort of Like "Supersize Me", Only I'm Not An Asshole.....

Recently, while channel surfing I landed on a program on Food Network that ran a story about a Manhattan restaurant, The Wall Street Burger Shoppe, that was offering the ultimate luxury hamburger.  The burger was 100% Japanese Kobe beef, topped with seared foie gras, shaved black truffles, and sprinkled with genuine gold leaf.  Yes, I did indeed say “gold leaf”.  One could buy this ultimate luxury lunch splurge for a whopping $175.  All things being equal, that’s not an unreasonable price for all of the items that WSBS has gathered together to make this burger (the gold leaf itself was worth about $25).  But who the hell can afford a burger like this?  What’s more, who’d want to eat it every day for lunch, or even more than a few times a year, for that matter? 

This got the wheels in my head turning.  My hometown of Bay City, Michigan is a modest community filled with Average Joes.  It’s mostly populated by non-pretentious, value-focused restaurant-goers.  Our sometimes-rustic natives are unschooled in the virtues of foie gras and black truffles, and they certainly lack the hoi-palloi gumption to crave them on a burger.  And if you were to call them on the carpet about this, they’ll probably smash you in the mouth and tell you they’re damn proud to be this way.  With this same local proletarian mindset, I decided to go out and sample a number of the most highly touted hamburgers in the city, and report back to you good folks with my results. 

After narrowing down my list of candidates vis-à-vis an informal poll that I conducted amongst my friends (facilitated by Facebook), I arrived on the following candidates in this comparative study of local hamburger offerings: Rudy’s Red Lion, Muscle Beach Drive In, The Hub Bar, The Rathkeller Bar, Bay City Bill’s Bar & Grill, The Char House, and The Bier Garten.  I purposely eliminated any establishments that were part of a chain or a franchise, so therefore places like the restaurant at The Doubletree Hotel and Harvey’s Grille and Bar were not considered.  Not to sound like some hipster douche, but part of the criteria was small-town authenticity.  My wife and I debated the authenticity issue while we discussed some of my findings for this article, and she held zealously firm in her belief that a “bar” would eventually yield the best burger.  As that (in her opinion), “bar burgers are the best”.  Well, Sweetcheeks; we’ll see about that.  If you’re right, you’re right.  And just so all of you know, I generally have no problem admitting that my wife is right.  In the end, everybody wins, and I don’t have to sleep in the garage.

Let me start by throwing out my obligatory disclaimer to deflect any shrill outcries from PETA kooks.  Yes, o’ Angry Ones.  I understand that red meat is unhealthy.  I understand that most ground beef comes from factory farms, and factory farms are bad for the environment.  I also understand that hundreds (maybe thousands) of heads of cattle had to be first “mistreated”, and then “tortured”, and then “murdered” so I could conduct this survey.  I also understand that in each burger that I ate, the ground meat might have consisted of the ground up “parts” of up to one hundred individual cows.  Guess what?  I….don’t…..care.  Not only do I hope that many, many cows had to die in my search for an awesome hamburger sandwich, part of me hopes that loan sharks snuck into the meat processing plant under the cover of darkness and threw one of their delinquent debtors into that self-same industrial meat grinder.  Because when it comes down to it, cows and deadbeats taste delicious.  What did you expect me to do?  Write a piece on soy burgers?  Frack that.  Actually, it would be pretty easy to do.  Here goes:  Morningstar Farms' Veggie Burger tastes slightly LESS shitty than ConAgra’s Garden Burger.  Done!  Why would anyone in their right mind want to constantly subject themselves to eating consumable cardboard, anyway?  Soy is FILLER.  That’s all it is.  It tastes like shit until you pile on truckloads of spices and seasonings and sauces and marinades; and although it’s touted as being “heart healthy”, it has its own set of unsavory side effects.  Beef may kill you before you hit 60 (like it did to both of my grandfathers), but unlike soy products it’s not medically proven to cause early-onset dementia, or exacerbate existing prostate conditions in men.  Nor does it inflate men’s estrogen levels, deflate the male sex drive, or give dudes man-boobs.  Yes, I said “MAN-BOOBS”.  Okay, maybe if I gained 100 pounds from eating red meat, I might get man-boobs, but I wouldn’t get man-boobs simply because I made red meat part of my diet.  Only excessive red meat consumption MINUS an exercise regimen can cause the onset of man-boobs in omnivores.  But for you dudes who make soy a regular part of your diet, I’m sorry to say this, but a training bra might be in your future.   No thanks, Alexandra Jamieson.   Anyhoo, sorry for that little scenic detour through Rantyville: bring on the beef, bitches.

As I mentioned above, I was looking for “authenticity” in my quest for local burger supremacy.  The standard for which I was using in judging this gathering of grilled steer flesh was a childhood memory.  When I was a little boy, my parents would take me to a local family restaurant and grease pit known as White’s Restaurant.  Eating there was nothing short of an amazing experience.  I generally always ordered the same thing: a cheeseburger and an order of onion rings.  For me, as a nine-year-old boy, there was no meal more rapturous than a burger and rings at White’s. This much idealized shard of my childhood was my culinary spirit guide and compass point when weighing all of the tastes, and textures, and flavors in this crowning of King of Burgers and Lord of The Onion Rings.   Now, on to my findings! 

Rudy’s Red Lion Diner

Perhaps one of the most popular (and hyped) area eateries is Rudy’s Red Lion.  Rudy’s customers are numerous and fiercely loyal.  I give the good folks at the Red Lion credit for cultivating something out of nothing.  It’s not an easy thing getting hundreds of folks excited about what you do, and Rudy’s Red Lion has succeeded.  I dropped by their establishment on a late Saturday morning, and the place was very much jammed with diners.  Since I had previously resolved to critique each of the various area restaurants’ “marquee” burger, I selected Rudy’s alpha dog, the Half-Pound Stuffed Burger.  It was a pretty standard burger, only it was stuffed with mushrooms, yellow peppers, and mozzarella cheese.  I also ordered their quite famous onion rings.

Overall, I found it interesting in concept, but the burger itself was rather average in taste.  Although I enjoyed it, I probably wouldn’t be too compelled to order it over a standard cheeseburger the next time I dropped by the Red Lion.   I used six criteria in judging each of the seven burgers in this sample.  Meat, cheese, bun, grilling, freshness of toppings, and overall taste.  Each category could yield up to 5 points.  Overall taste was weighted with double the points.  Therefore, a perfect score would equal 35.  Despite being relatively average in most areas, I did feel that Rudy’s bun was the most perfect and most pleasing part of the burger.  Despite the fact that the burger was stuffed with cheese, shrooms and peppers, the meat somehow turned out a bit on the dry side.  Total burger score: 24

The onion rings, however, were a different story.  Rudy’s rings are indeed the real deal.  Crisp, golden, made with large onion slices, they embodied all of the qualities that a classic diner onion ring should possess.  The batter was perhaps a bit too paste-like, which I personally didn’t find as visually appealing as the golden translucence of a traditional onion ring, but the taste was really on-point.  I evaluated them in terms of size, batter, onion quality, and overall taste.  Like the burgers, each category could yield up to 5 points.  Overall taste’s values were doubled, for a possible perfect score of 25.  Rudy’s rings received a total onion rings score of 21.  Quite respectable in my book

Rudy’s combined burger/rings score was 45 out of a possible 60 points.

The Rathskeller Bar

The Rathskeller, known affectionately as “The Rat”, serves burgers that are famous throughout the city.  Many of the folks who voiced input in my search for the area’s best burger gave heavy, heavy praise to The Rat.  “Their burgers are ridiculous”, eagerly mused one of my friends from high school.  So armed with my appetite and a fistful of dollars, I strode into The Rat, and ordered their burger tour de force known as The House Burger.  This burger was every bit as massive as Rudy’s stuffed burger.  Topped with cheese, lettuce, tomato, crisp bacon, and green olives, it is not only a site to behold, it’s quite fabulous to eat.  I’d definitely order it again.  The only complaints that I had was that my tomato could have been fresher, and cut more symmetrically.  Also, the mixture of the bacon and the green olives yielded a degree of saltiness that I thought was simply a bit too unwieldy and unbalanced.  After about halfway through, the saltiness became a bit much.  In short: hugely enjoyable, just a tad too salty.  Total burger score: 26. 

Had they had employed fresher toppings; the score would have been higher.  Perhaps I caught them on an off day.  Unfortunately, The Rat only serves chips with their food, and rings weren’t available.

Muscle Beach Drive-In

This establishment is situated in Bangor Township, near the Bay City State Park.  To be completely honest, I didn’t even know they existed until people suggested that I include them in this survey.   I ordered their flagship, the Stuffed Cheeseburger and a side of their hand-dipped rings.  The burger is stuffed with onions and mushrooms, and overall is pretty outstanding.  The only issue I had was that it was majorly messy to eat.  The contents of the burger gush all over the place when you eat it.  This is not one of those hold-the-steering-wheel-with-one-hand-and-eat-with-the-other-hand type of burgers.  You really need to be seated at a table to enjoy it.  Now THAT was a tasty burger!  Total burger score: 25.

Muscle Beach’s onion rings were simply amazing.  They were everything that I remember White’s rings to be.  Light, perfectly battered, huge, crisp; and amazingly executed.  In my estimation, they ran the table in all categories, and I gave them a perfect score of 25.

Muscle Beach’s burger/rings combo combined for a total score of 50 points.

Bay City Bill’s Bar & Grill

Nestled in the heart of Bay City’s South End (a.k.a. “Little Krakow”), Bay City Bill’s might be one of the city’s best kept secrets.  If you were to say to someone from across town, “Hey, meet me at Bay City Bill’s for a couple of shells”, their response might be a vacuous blank stare.  Needless to say, any self-respecting Southender knows of this little hole-in-the-wall, and that they grill a burger that will punch you in the taste buds faster the lightning-quick hands of Murray Sutherland.  I ordered their Cheeseburger Deluxe and a side of rings.  I initially didn’t know if they sold onion rings, but upon inquiring while I placed my carry out order, the bar tender enthusiastically exclaimed, “Oh yes!  They’re homemade”.   

Based on her enthusiasm, and the positive buzz that I had heard about Bill’s burgers, the short car ride from my office to Bill’s to pick up my order was a very anticipatory one.

Let me put this plainly.  Bay City Bill’s did not disappoint.  Bill’s Cheeseburger Deluxe is a perfectly executed, perfectly balanced sandwich.  Every part of it was fresh and tasty and amazing.  Although I didn’t award it a perfect score, it was certainly a good enough burger to garner a respectable 30 points.

Bill’s homemade onion rings were also similarly good, although not nearly as good as Muscle Beach’s “miracle rings”, they were every bit the equal to Rudy’s.  Total rings score: 21.

Total burger/rings score: a front-running tally of 51.

The Char House

Along with White’s, the Char House had been a place during my childhood, that my parents took my sisters and I frequently.  Prices were reasonable; they had good service and food quality.  They also had a menu that was appealing to young children.  It had been literally 18 years since I last set foot in the Char House, and as I walked though the front door, I saw before me a place that had been seemingly frozen in time.  The layout was the same.  The pictures, and decorations, and wall hangings, and nautical kitsch were just as I had remembered it.  Nothing had changed a bit.   Surprisingly, the old place had been very well kept up, and nothing appeared to be at all run down.  As I sat in the lobby and waited for my carry-out order I silently hopped that their cheeseburger and onion rings circa 2010 were as tasty and lovingly made as they were way back in the late 1970’s. 

Arriving home, I was pleased to find that their legendary Char Burger was indeed it’s reliable old self.  Large in size (probably a half pound), hand formed my the grill cook (you could tell because it lacked the perfect symmetry of pre-made burger patties).  Cheese quality was a tad boring, and the grilling left the meat a little dry, but overall it was a very nicely prepared burger.  The bun was grill-toasted nicely, and its toppings were really, really fresh.  It was a good effort at a standard burger.  Although it may have invoked much nostalgia, I found it to be just standard-good.  Not bad, and teetering somewhere in that void between “good” and “pretty good”.   I gave it a total 24 points, which puts it in the same class as the burgers from Rudy’s Red Lion.

The onion rings were a different story.  They were not homemade as they had been during my childhood, and were simply frozen food-service rings.  I guess in some ways one can never truly go home again.  They received the lowest possible score for onion rings: An abysmal 5.

Total burger/rings score for The Char House:  29

The Hub

This place is a long-standing Bay City watering hole, and it’s a place where my friends and I have consumed many, many cold brews.  My father-in-law’s cousin owns The Hub, and she and her husband are sweet, sweet folks.  Despite their best efforts, service at The Hub can sometimes be hit-and-miss.  Many of us simply stopped going there after our favorite bar-maid (Ruby) moved up north to the sticks to be with her boyfriend.  Thus, leaving us at the mercy of her replacement, who (for confidentiality purposes) shall from this point forward go by the nom de guerre of “The Troll”.  I cannot take credit for tagging her with this moniker.  Credit for that stroke of genius goes to my best bud “The Major” (obviously his identity it being concealed for his own protection).  The Troll’s charm lies in the fact that she has turned crummy service into a veritable art form.  She could easily be called the Michael Jordan of shitty waitresses.  Gruff and quick to annoy, she might bring everyone else’s drinks, but conveniently forget yours.  And this is simply because she didn’t like the way you placed your order.  Or when bringing your drinks to you, she may choose to slam the tray of drinks down on your table, and cause all of the bottled beers to foam over from the force of the concussion.  I don’t know how she manages to pull off this incredible feat of physics, but it’s a great trick.  A great trick, so long as only drinking four-fifths of your beer isn’t an issue.   I could recount many more riffs from her collection of greatest hits, but burgers are the focus, not her antipathy toward bar patrons. 

On the whole, The Hub’s food is relatively good and quite cheap.  I probably wouldn’t have added The Hub to this list of burger joints, but quite a few people suggested it, so I figured it couldn’t hurt.  Their burgers are relatively simple.  Portion size matches the price.  Overall, it was a very standard, average, no-frills burger.  It was significantly out-classed by all of the other burgers in this survey.  It wasn’t bad, per se.  It was simply nothing to write home about.  I gave it a total score of 19.

The Hubs onion rings were frozen (just like The Char House’s), so they received an automatic score of 5

Total burger/rings score:  24

Bier Garten

I had originally not planned on reviewing the burgers at Bier Garten, but the evening prior to completing the first draft of this review, two of my hockey team mates vehemently insisted that Bier Garten has the best burgers in town.  And really, how can one ignore that much zeal and enthusiasm?

Selecting their Bier Garten Burger, the burger on the menu that was named after establishment, I figured that I’d made a safe choice.  What was served up was a less-than-impressive burger, and unquestionably the LEAST tasty burger of the seven hamburgers that I sampled.  The meat was average, and rather dry.  The bun was untoasted, and rather boring.  The toppings (tomato, lettuce, and green olives) were perhaps the one and only strong point with this burger, but overall, I was not terribly impressed.  It’s total score was a measly 18.

Sadly, despite the “anonymous” posting on Trip Advisor that Bier Garten had amazing onion rings, just like The Char House and The Hub, Bier Garten’s rings were frozen.  So, they get the big 5.

Total burger/rings score: 23.

In Bier Garten’s defense, they do feature a number of Michigan microbrews by Bell’s and Dragonmead on draught.  But as far as burgers are concerned, Bier Garten failed to impress.

Recap and Summary

As per my evaluation, the rankings of the various “flagship” burgers that I sampled would fall as such:

1)      Cheeseburger Deluxe (Bay City Bill’s)

2)      House Burger (The Rathskeller)

3)      Stuffed Cheeseburger (Muscle Beach Drive-In)

4)      Char Burger (The Char House)/Half Pound Stuffed Cheeseburger (Rudy’s Red Lion) –TIE

5)      Bacon Cheeseburger (The Hub)

6)      The Bier Garten Burger (The Bier Garten)

I would evaluate the various accompanying onion rings as follows:

1)      Muscle Beach Drive-In

2)      Rudy’s Red Lion/Bay City Bill’s - TIE

3)      Bier Garten/The Hub/The Char House -THREE-WAY TIE

And here are the rankings for the burger/onion rings combination:

1)      Bay City Bill’s

2)      Muscle Beach Drive-In

3)      Rudy’s Red Lion

4)      The Char House

5)      The Hub

6)      Bier Garten

So in summation, some of the burgers that I sampled delivered the goods and did not disappoint.  Others left me rather disappointed and confused.  I found much nostalgia in The Char House’s burger, and in Muscle Beach’s previously-undiscovered onion rings.   In the end, my lovely wife’s reasoning won the day.  The top two burgers that I sampled were indeed from area bars.  Strangely, the bottom two were also from bars.  I’ll leave it to her to figure out this anomaly.  Perhaps the most amazing hidden gem that I uncovered was none other than Muscle Beach Drive-In.  I think overall they might be the most impressive in the totality their offerings.   Even though it has nearly been a week since I’ve eaten there, their remarkably perfect hand-dipped onion rings continue to haunt me, and I find it increasingly difficult to resist their gravitational pull with every passing day. 

Among my top three burger picks, you’ll find that they are all very much in the same class of excellence.  Between Bay City Bill’s, Rathskeller, and Muscle Beach Drive In, one really can’t go wrong with any of them.   And since all of these establishments are spread out around the city, one is never too far away from some basic, simple, unforced American culinary bliss.   Their burgers may not be topped with luxury items like black truffles or gold leaf, but in my over-fed estimation, they’re easily as good as gold.

Chew on that!

T.S.G.