French Fry Diary 559: Writing and Onion Rings

It's been a couple years since I've been to Bahama Breeze. I've been there more than a few times, sometimes it's good and sometimes it's bad, but always, above it all, the Island Onion Rings are awesome. They are, with their coconut shavings and Panko bread covering among the best, period.

When my friend Marni got sick, she passed along the doorprize she won at Women 2 Women to The Bride and me, that doorprize? A free Happy Hour at Bahama Breeze, woo hoo! So we scrambled together and asked a whole buncha folks, but Tuesday being the middle of the week, and a blizzard looming, and a variety of other reasons, only a handful of folks showed up. Most of them were my writer friends.

Having just talked about inspiration and motivation over at the South Jersey Writers Blog this week, it was a topic heavy on my mind, and the company of writers is always a strong motivation to write and get work done. So amongst a barrage of appetizers, and those fabulous Island Onion Rings, we settled in for an evening of writing chat, made new friends, and just in general had a good time.

It was close company and good food. Fran Metzman, Terry Mergenthal, Maryliz Clark, her husband, Jim Knipp, his wife, and The Bride and I had a terrific time. And Jim, just for the record, those O-rings tasted just great after reheat in the oven at home. Trust me, you regret not taking them.

I have to say that Bahama Breeze in the Cherry Hill Mall went above and beyond to make us feel welcome, serve us perfectly, attend to our every need. The chef even came out and chatted with us, and we talked about how the onion rings were made.

Stuff like this goes a long way toward future visits. Our wait staff was perfection. It will be a very short time between visits to Bahama Breeze next time. Recommended.

French Fry Diary 440: Houlihan's

The original plan was for my buddy Ray and I to go to the new pub attached to Aloft up in Mount Laurel, called Miller's N.J. Ale House. Once we arrived and saw the ridiculous amount of people outside the restaurant carrying those fancy table-waiting beepers, we decided to look elsewhere. I drove around and around, almost driving Ray to madness (no restaurants there, unfortunately), until finally we settled on Houlihan's in Cherry Hill, in the Wegman's shopping center where the Garden State Racetrack used to be.

I really didn't know what to expect. The first and last time I had ever been to Houlihan's, was when it was at the Cherry Hill Mall, on a very bad double date from well over two decades previous. I'm going to guess that things had changed. If nothing else, Ray was a better dining companion.

This new Houlihan's was a bit of a maze once inside, and it was very dark. Restaurants that are dark always make me nervous. Is there something they don't want me to see, or worse than that, see clearly? I shouldn't have worried. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the menu however. It was as big as a Sears catalog. Seriously, sixteen pages. It not only could stop a frigging bullet, but it also would've made Chef Gordon Ramsey crazy, as he is always an advocate of a short, concise one page menu.

However on one of those sixteen pages was a wonder in itself - a frites bar - six different types of fries. Oh boy, says the fry guy. They had Disco Fries, more or less a Jersey specialty, but these sounded more like Canadian poutine. Also Parmesan Frites, Truckstop Fries, Pickle Fries (made from pickles, ick), American Fries, and Sweet Potato Fries, topped with cinnamon sugar. Hmmm… cinnamon sugar. I'll have to try that next time I make sweet potato fries at home.

The waitress was very nice, and said everything was made from scratch. So after I ordered my usual, the burger and fries, I asked for onion rings, not on the menu. I know, I was being a pain in the butt by doing that, but I was in the mood for onion rings. She said they didn't do onion rings, but offered up onion straws. That was cool, but… Is it just me, but if you make everything from scratch, why would onion rings be a problem?

After a relatively short wait (although it was kinda long considering how few people were in the restaurant, but they do make everything from scratch, so…), our food arrived. The burger was fairly good, and served on an egg washed challah soft roll, which made for an interesting contrast to your average burger.

The French fries were natural cut shoestrings, deep fried but not too greasy. The problem with them was the same thing I contended with at The TapRoom & Grill - pickle juice fries. There were two big pickles on the plate next to the fries. Just not my thing. The onion strings were really just very thin deep fried onion rings and strings for the most part. Tasty.

After a two decade hiatus, I would definitely come back to Houlihan's, if only to try the rest of their frites bar, but seriously, all kidding aside, it was a good dining experience.

French Fry Diary 345: Bobby's Burger Palace

Bobby Flay knows French fries, other people's French fries. His own, not so much. Remember those great fries from Balthazar that he talked about on "Best Thing I Ever Ate: Totally Fried"? Well, apparently he knows where to go for good fries, but not how to make them himself.

Bobby's Burger Palace opened up at the classy new Cherry Hill Mall a few months back. It is settled in between Bahama Breeze and Seasons 52, so it's dead center in the valet parking zone. In other words, if you're going to BBP, be prepared for a serious walk cuz you can't park anywhere near it.

This was a night out for The Bride and me, and we invited my buddy Ray to come along. Ray had been to the BBP in Eatontown before and was not impressed. In the words of my friend Ray, "It's not a burger worth waiting in line a half hour for." Well see. He also said the place looked like a 1970s Burger King threw up, and I gotta say, he's absolutely right.

So, stand in line, big menu on the wall, order, sit and wait some more. We sat at the counter, not much choice there. Notably Bobby's Burger Palace has Fresca. They get extra points from The Bride for that. But they also get minus points for the anti-bigger people seating. No chairs in the place are movable, in other words, no chair can be pulled out. I think for a place that sells fast food, gourmet or otherwise, that's a serious faux pas. Condiments included yellow mustard, ketchup, chipotle, jalapeño, and the mysterious burger sauce. Oddly the shakes came first. Isn't that dessert? Weird. The food came quicker than I thought though, but not all at once.

I got just a plain burger as usual, but I got it 'crunchified,' in other words with potato chips on top. Now I applaud the attempt, but I've been putting potato chips on my burgers since I was a little kid. Just piling them on doesn't work. You have to lay them on, cover the whole burger, not just the middle. Also Bobby just uses regular sub-standard store brand potato chips. You need to use flavored chips like barbeque and a quality brand as well. The chips on the burgers done Bobby's way was not a treat and will not bring new folks into the chips-on-burger family. I dumped my chips off after a few bites.

The burger was very good though. Well, mine was at least. Ray had complaints. He got the Bobby Blue Burger, which purports to have blue cheese on it. One would expect, as Ray would, it to have crumbled bleu cheese on the burger, but not the case. It's a bleu cheese sauce, not quite the same thing.

The fries on the other hand, were not good. The Bride suspected they were the last of a batch, very hard and stuck together. They were pretty terrible actually, like at the end of the night at Five Guys. Way too crunchy, overdone, and just bits and pieces. Looking at the fries of others, this seems to be the standard. Now when I asked our waiter if this was the way the fries usually are, he told me yes. Still, the website showed quite tasty looking fries, that bore no resemblance whatsoever to anything I saw in the restaurant the night we went.

The special BBP fry sauce was just some type of salad dressing. Ray had the sweet potato fries and described them as bland. Not good for Bobby so far. We did like what we saw when an order of onion rings went by - gigantic. They looked awesome. Maybe next time, cuz I will be back for the burger, but definitely not the fries.

I remain puzzled. If Bobby Flay thinks the best most perfect fries in the world are from Baltthazar in New York City, why not produce something similar at his own restaurant? Those at Bobby's Burger Palace are not recommended.

French Fry Diary 320: Bahama Breeze 2011

It's become tradition to meet up with friends from college and their families in the week after Christmas. Sometimes all of our schedules sync and we all get together, and sometimes it's just a few of us. This year, it was just The Bride and I with Dom and Cindy and their kids. You might remember they were on the last Disney Cruise with us. We got together again for dinner at Bahama Breeze in the Cherry Hill Mall.

They, like me, have a thing for the Island Onion Rings there. It was the first thing we ordered. It had been some time since I'd been to Bahama Breeze, so I'd forgotten how really big an order you get, so we made the major mistake of getting two, for the six of us. Yeah, we took a lot home. If you look at the image of the Island Onion Rings accompanying this blog entry, it's worth noting, that picture was taken after we had started eating - yeah, there were a lot more onion rings than you see there.

What makes Bahama Breeze's Island Onion Rings so good is the cocoanut shavings they mix in with the Panko bread crumb covering those gigantic slices of onion. The cocoanut adds an extra sweet kick that almost makes them addictive. I say almost because you can fill up on them rather quickly. And for the record, they reheat very well, baked in the oven later at home. Still the best reason to come to Bahama Breeze.

For my entrée, that I barely had room for, I got the Breeze Wood-Grilled Chicken Breast, replacing the regular veggie accompaniment with French fries of course. The chicken came soaked in a thick citrus butter sauce, that was at first cloying, but had a delicious aftertaste. I really enjoyed it, and it even tasted good on the pretty standard natural regular cut fries.

All in all, it was a great meal with old friends. Good food, good conversation, a terrific holiday get together. We should really do this more often.

French Fry Diary 259: The Capital Grille, Cherry Hill NJ

My good friend Ken came up from Kentucky to spend some time with us here in the wretched state of his birth, New Jersey. My job, while he's here, is to ruin his diet. Also, because he'll let me. The problem sometimes with doing French Fry Diary is that many of my friends and family are on diets, and they won't/can't come out to play with me when it comes to reviewing fries. So, sometimes, I save the big ones for when Ken visits. Such was the case with the Capital Grille at the Cherry Hill Mall. We decided to go there for a late winter lunch and see what we could see.

The Capital Grille is a very ritzy place, various ceramic animal heads and a few birds of prey around a classic wood decor and an onsite wine reserve and butcher shop. Regarding that last bit, our server Christopher, who was very friendly and informative, says TCG specializes in dried aged beef. And extra points for Christopher - he didn't discriminate against us in t-shirts and jeans as opposed to everyone else there in office suit attire. We felt very out of place, but he made us feel at home.

I ordered, go ahead and guess what I ordered, folks, yes, a burger. Even in a classy restaurant, this catastrophically picky eater and fast food junkie still goes for the burger. This was a wonderfully rich chopped sirloin burger, but still a burger. Bread came and included a crispy flatbread that tasted a bit sweet. The burger was superb (dried aged beef, remember?), one of the best burgers I've had in a while, but that's not what you're here for, you want to hear about the favorite fried food, right?

The French fries were regular cut natural cuts called Parmesan Truffle Fries. Now truffle is one of the Holy Grail ingredients when it comes to fries, both truffle oil and truffle salt. The third in the triumvirate is of course duck fat. These fries were cooked in a garlic truffle oil with Parmesan and shaved parsley. They were very crispy, possibly deep-fried - very very good, but underneath it all they weren't that special. On the other hand, Ken said they were best fries he'd ever had, and that the spices made them. I thought they were great but if anything the truffle oil might have overpowered them a bit.

So despite the difference of opinion on the fries, my trip to the Capital Grille, and my first encounter with truffle oil, was a terrific lunch with a great friend. Good food, good conversation, good times.