Varmint

Actually, I think that the designation of the Angus Barn as the "best" restaurant in the Triangle demonstrates exactly what y'all are trying to say. But it is incredibly important to recognize that the Independent did not name the Angus Barn as the region's best restaurant. This was based on the people's vote, and the editors' vote would never go that way. This vote is, unfortunately, representative of our suburban, chain, strip-mall culture, however. At least I'm glad that a locally owned institution such as the Barn won the vote.

This reminds me of the time two summers ago, when I discovered a stand in the NC Farmers Market in Raleigh, selling heirloom tomatoes. I was so excited, because I wanted a regular source for these without having to go to Carrboro. Most of the customers walked up, took a look at these misshapen and strangely colored specimens, and moved on. They were having trouble selling these tomatoes at the same price as the hybrid field tomatoes. I spent the next 15 minutes acting like one of those guys at the fair, trying to get people to come and try the tomatoes. They sold more tomatoes in those 15 minutes than they had the prior 3 hours. It's about educating this region, and it's in my personal best interest to do that. Educate the public, create a market for better products, and then I can rest that I'll have the good stuff available. But the big, red beefsteak tomatoes will always sell better, unfortunately.

I've moved a number of posts that focused on the overall dining scene in the Triangle to this topic. Let's keep this discussion focused on the best restaurants that exist right now. And I'll try my best to get to another one in the next couple of weeks. If anyone else visits one mentioned above, report back here (in excrutiating detail, of course).

I decided against it this week. I like the clean lines of a solid wall. The plumber is sick, so the faucets, etc. won't go in until Monday. Bummer. So far, we've spent $49,000 on this project. I suspect our final tally will come in right around $60,000. I had a quasi-budget in the range of 52-58,000, so we're close to being right on track. Plus, we got a lot more out of this. Much of our house has been completely re-wired, making it far safer. We had our workers fix a drainage problem brought about by the construction behind us. We have new speakers in the kitchen for music! We have the new refrigerator panels, which I failed to include in the budget. We have much fancier (and more elegant) lighting than I anticipated. We've added new light switches in our dining room. It's very, very cool, and this process has gone far too smoothly. Granted, much of that was brought about because of our second kitchen, which is indeed a luxury. Now I need to buy some new cookware, right?

Just for laughs, here's the old kitchen: Here's the new one from a similar camera angle: I didn't have a great picture of the old shelf.

There is an outlet at the end of the peninsula, under the overhang. You can barely see it in the first picture. I didn't want to be able to see it for the most part. As far as the granite tile is concerned, this is blue pearl from Norway. The pictures truly don't do it justice, by the way. It's fairly common, but because of its blue components, it's in the mid-level price range. The retailers around here generally sell it for about 18 to 24 dollars a square foot. However, I was able to find a local tile store that sold it for 9 bucks a foot. That was an easy decision. You definitely want a dark grout with this tile, and we went with black. It ends up drying as a charcoal color, but my guys did such a good job that when you stand a few feet away, the counters look like a solid slab rather than a bunch of tiles. I'm quite please with the small shelf around the windows. We had such a shelf previously, but the way the guys did this is a huge improvement. I'll see if I can't pull up a photo of the old kitchen for comparison purposes. Today is a slow day for the carpenters, but not for the plumber. I can't wait to have the faucets installed!

Here's some updated pictures. I don't have time to provide comments tonight, but I'll get to it soon. The countertop edging needs to be refinished around the corners, which I asked them to round off and sand down. Dishwashers, plumbing, disposals, and fixtures will all be installed tomorrow. My swinging pantry door.

Oh, I just noticed -- here's the recipe!

There's nothing pink at all with this dish. In fact, it's an unappealing gray. But my oh my it's tasty! I'm thinking that this style of pork could be used in lots of dishes, as the featured ingredient of a much more complex dish.

When I ate at Crooks Corner recently, the chef (and my friend) Bill Smith had me try his version of corned ham. To me, this dish may represent what pork is truly meant to be. Call it the crack of pork, pork essence or pure pork, but I'll just call it damn tasty. Corned ham used to be a staple on the Southern dining table, particularly at holidays. It's remarkably simple to make -- just salt a fresh ham, including along the bone made available with basic knife work. Let it sit in the refrigerator for a few weeks, soak it overnight, and roast it. You don't get a true "ham" flavor, but an unctious, juicy, over-the-top flavor of pork. Bill Smith could make this dish his calling card, his legacy. Our local newspaper even wrote a feature story on Smith's rendition. Maybe I need to corn a couple of hams for this fall's pig pickin -- or just invite Bill Smith to join me! So, has anyone made this before? Eaten it? I'm curious.

Grouting of countertops, backsplashes, and floor is complete. We installed a new wood transition strip between the laundry room and kitchen. I'm not exactly sure what they're doing today (hopefully installing my range!). The electrician will be here today, pretty much completing his work. The plumber comes tomorrow to finish his work, installing the fixtures and disposals. We'll be painting the ceiling and trim white, but the walls will be cobalt blue. We figured the blue walls (and there's not a lot of wallspace) will further bring the blue out of the granite. Much more colorful than I anticipated, but it'll be quite pretty. I'll post new photos Friday night or on the weekend. Prepare to be dazzled!!!

Comparing the Triangle to New York is sort of like comparing the UNC Tar Heels to the Boston Celtics of old. They play the same game, but ultimately, they're at totally different levels. That said, I'm very happy with our upper-level restaurants. Magnolia Grill, Fins, Elaine's, Fearrington and Nana's could all get 2, and arguably for one or two of these, 3 NY Times stars. For the size of the Triangle, that's damn good. What we miss out on is the breadth and depth of dining and food options. We don't have lots of options when it comes to, for example, great bakeries. Gugelhupf and La Farm come to mind, but beyond that, the options are limited. We can find good, but not great pizza. We also don't have anything equivalent to a true NY Times 4-star restaurant, but that's due to our size as much as anything else. We're also too spread out. Keep looking, Bryan. You might have to drive to one of the other towns in the region, but you'll find what you desire. And again, if you try to compare this region to NY, you're fooling yourself.

Eating bar has been re-tiled, and the steel reinforcements are amazing. Backsplashes have been installed, as has the trimwork around the old large windows. Swinging door is installed. They'll be doing the grouting on the countertops, backsplashes, and floor tomorrow. They'll start finishing the support beams that are over and through the eating bar. We'll get the SubZeros and range installed on Thursday. They'll do the painting on Thursday or Friday -- which isn't a lot of work (although we've yet to decide on paint color!). Heh, heh -- we're getting there! We need to get the plumbers over to take care of the sinks, disposals and faucets. And, of course, we have the dreaded inspections. Ugh. I'll get more pictures up in the next couple of days.

Our friends with whom we planned on doing this survey recently split up, so this may put a bit of a damper on the experiment. However, maybe we'll find more friends to keep this alive!

Sorry I've failed to chime in before this, but I'm in complete agreement with detlefchef. Allen & Son is the top barbecue in the Triangle, and although a bit of a hike, well worth it. Q Shack is OK, but it has too much of a "chain" feel for me.

After our breakfast at Elizabeths, I didn't think I'd be able to eat the rest of the day. How wrong I was, as after a morning at the Children's Museum (a block away from Emeril's, if you're interested), we walked over to Mother's, home of the famous debris po' boy. "Debris" is theoretically all the outside brown stuff that falls off beef roasts, along with lots of thin gravy. My 9 year old daughter surprised me by ordering half a debris po' boy, and since I was there, I ordered a full one. Ouch. Good sandwich -- damn good sandwich. Mother's always has a line out the door. You order at the counter, pay, get your drinks, and hope to find a table (one always appears just in time). Ten minutes later, your food is delivered to your table. The joint is a bit expensive, but they don't take tips, so it all works out in the end. And so, I've eaten half the breakfast menu at Elizabeths and a 2 pound po' boy for lunch, so there's no way I could eat dinner, right? Wrong again. We headed two doors down from the apartment to Mona Lisa, a local pizza and pasta restaurant. Their specialty is a white garlic bread pizza -- essentially crust, fresh crushed garlic, olive oil, and cheese. Quite simple, and quite yummy. I ordered a pasta with shrimp and andouille -- gotta keep eating that Lousiana cuisine. I also ordered a bottle of red wine for myself, seeing I had all of 25 feet to walk home. I only drank half, as they let me take the rest home with me! The next day's meals included beignets (again). We then went to lovely City Park, which is an awesome place to take the kids. They have a fantastic sculpture garden, art museum, playgrounds, and huge old live oaks that might be the best climbing trees ever. We walked over to a nearby restaurant, Fellini's, that's not worth discussing as you can find lots of restaurants like it in any town. Across the street, however, is a snowball emporium, Pandora's. Pick a flavor, or 5. For a buck, you'll get a finely shaved snowball with your choice from nearly 90 flavors. Mix and match flavors for a near infinite variety. I had honeydew, which wasn't even on the menu. The kids got sickenly sweet combinations (bubblegum and mint, anyone?). However, this place rocked. Oh, and although I didn't try any, they also sell homemade hot tamales, at 50 cents each. For dinner that night, we went with friends to Upperline. I did not take my camera, so I apologize for the lack of photos. But let me cut to the chase. The food at Upperline is very good classic New Orleans cuisine. However, the reason this restaurant is one I'd want to go to on a regular basis is not for the food, it's because of the owner, JoAnn Clevenger. This woman treats all her guests like royalty. You've been invited into her home, where she will take all steps necessary to ensure you receive the top dining experience you can. She visited our table three times, not just to see if all was OK, but to show that she really cared if we were enjoying ourselves. She talked with us, not at us. When we were nearly the last table to leave, and then hung outside for more talk, she came out and talked some more. What a lady! The day that JoAnn is no longer part of this restaurant is the day that this restaurant's significance disappears. She's that important. She is grace personified. More to follow.

I drove down to New Orleans with my 3 younger children (4, 6, and 9 years old) for their Spring Break. We arrived on Saturday, Mrs. Varmint flew in on Wednesday, my 11-year old flew in from Denver (where he was snow boarding) on Friday, and we headed out on Easter morning. When I ask each of the children what their favorite thing to do in the city, I get 4 different answers, which demonstrates that New Orleans is indeed a fun town for kids. Of course, when I ask them what their favorite food was, I get a unified response of "BEIGNETS!!!!" I'm going to start by saying something that has the potential to get me flamed in a big-time manner. I completely understand why New Orleans is such a great food town. It has great ingredients, an original cuisine, and some dishes that you just can't get anywhere else. On the other hand, and this is where I might get myself in trouble, I think that the historical excellence of creole/cajun/bayou/New Orleans cuisine has caused many places to become overly reliant on this. It seems that to some extent, creativity has been stifled, because people don't come to this city for something new. They come for the traditional dishes. They come for what this city's cuisine has been for years, and some offshoots of that. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but to me, New Orleans' culinary brilliance is also its limitation. Now I have to throw in a major caveat, one that should have prevented me from making these comments in the first place: I went to many a mid-level restaurant. I went to only one upscale place, Upperline, and that is a restaurant that prides itself on its traditional cuisine. Thus, had I gone to 10 more top restaurants, I might not have made these comments. Anyhow, this is something that should probably be part of another thread. I'll provide a lot of pictures and very brief commentary of what we ate. I'll likely do this over the course of several posts. The day we arrived, I asked the concierge at our hotel for a local place that is kid-friendly. I told them I didn't want a chain, the children were tired, and they weren't ready for anything overly new. She told me "Bubba Gump's." I groaned and decided to find something on my own. We ended up at the Crescent City Brewhouse on Decatur, and it wasn't half bad. My 6 year old ordered a burger, and you can see below that this was a nice specimen, wich a brioche-like bun. Good fries, too. Seeing this came from the dreaded kids menu, it sort of surprised Benjamin by its size. My 9 year old daughter, on the other hand, dismissed the kids menu and ordered the 10 ounce filet mignon. Sheesh. She ate almost all of it, too! The desserts didn't look all that hot, so we walked over to Cafe du Monde for our first taste of beignets. They didn't disappoint (which became very evident as we ended up there 4 times in 9 days!). Only a couple left! I noticed that when serving children, they put lots of extra sugar on them. Clara showing proper beignet eating form. Well, proper powdered sugar eating form. The next morning we took in the Gospel Brunch at the House of Blues. This is a great way to spend a Sunday with kids. The food is average at best, but the performance was excellent. And right across the street is the best record store you'll ever find. Because it was brunch, we skipped lunch and then walked a couple of blocks to the Praline Connection for dinner. This was where my kids began their introduction to the local cuisine, and it went very well. We had limas and rice, macaroni and cheese, red beans and rice, corn bread, gumbo, jambalaya, collards, fried catfish, fried chicken, meatloaf, and bread pudding with praline sauce. I'd say this was more of a soul food type of restaurant, but the waiters were great. And the limas (of which I failed to take a picture), were the best. The next morning we walked around the corner to have breakfast at Croissant d'Or. The kids liked the idea of having cake for breakfast, and I had a good ham & cheese croissant. The highlight for the kids, of course, was the fountain in the courtyard of the little boy peeing. Someone added a nice touch of putting pants (properly dropped, of course) on the statue. We caught the free ferry to cross the Mississippi, landing in Algiers. We took a tour of Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World, which is a treat for young and old alike. My kids particularly liked putting on costumes. I called Mayhaw Man, asked him where to go for seafood, and we headed to his former place of employment, Mike Andersons. Very solid crawfish bisque and a fine shrimp po boy. The kids had good catfish, red beans and rice, and fried shrimp. This was our sole trip onto Bourbon Street, by the way. We quickly returned back to the land of the elite on Royal Street! Dinner that night was take-out from the convenience store across the street, the Verti Marte. Folks, this is one run-down place. I normally wouldn't set foot in it, BUT, it has some of the best take-out food you could find. We feasted on macaroni and cheese, spinach and artichokes, green beans, salisbury steak, au gratin potatoes, broccoli with hollandaise, and other stuff I can't recall. Later that week, I had chicken breasts stuffed with smoked sausage. I love the Verti Marte. I wish I had one near me. Here's their menu, which you really can't see well. Sorry about that! For breakfast the next morning, we went to Elizabeths in the Bywater district. This place is a "CAN'T MISS" in the New Orleans breakfast scene. My daughter ordered cheese grits, 2 scrambled eggs and a biscuit. What came out was nothing less than 4 eggs. My son's french toast stuffed with local strawberries and cream cheese was huge. And what did I eat? Heh heh heh. Praline bacon. Calas. Grillades and grits. You can get fried catfish for breakfast. The table next to me ordered dessert, simply because they're so good. They had a chocolate and fig pound cake on their menu, which I now want to figure out how to make. Here's some pictures. I'll add more later.

These pictures aren't all that dramatic, and they don't really show how much work the workers have done in the last two weeks. Part of the problem is that so much of the countertops is covered with protective cardboard and tape, so you can't see what they've done. Second, reinforcing the eating bar took a lot of creativity and some time, but it'll be a great solution. So, onto the pictures. This gives you a view of the eating bar. Notice that I've cut the end corner off at a 45 degree angle. You can also see the structural steel that has been added. Note also that my low voltage mini-lights have been wired. I went ahead and stuck in the bulbs -- the actual fixtures will look a lot different with the cobalt glass "shades." This should give you a better idea of the structural reinforcements we've added. In addition, we've added more steel under the eating area, which has been covered with wood as a mini-brace. Hard to explain, but this is damn solid now. They'll lay the tile down again on Monday. A view of the far end of the eating bar and the closet door, which is ajar. A view of the kitchen from the closet area. That long counter has been tiled and the sink has been installed. I'm just not moving the cardboard off so you can see! Here's a view of the peninsular eating bar from the kitchen. This will comfortably seat 7 people! Oh, and the sink is just sitting there to keep it out of the way. My baking area. The countertops are almost done here. Notice the small area of marble that I saved from "the maze." They haven't done the grouting of these tiles yet. You also get a decent idea of the floor color. The floor tiles have been completely installed, but the grouting hasn't been done. That's to happen on Monday. A better angle of the marble work area. The wood trim on the countertop is covered with protective tape by the marble. And the granite tile backsplash has been cut, but not installed yet. A closer look at my floor. Although it appears that there's tons of work to be done still, that's deceptive. By the end of next week (which would be 8 weeks of work), the kitchen will essentially be done, except for some trim and "punchlist" type of work. They'll install the last cabinet and bookshelf, move in the updated SubZeros, install the range, do the backsplashes, finish the trim work (including baseboards and molding), grout the tiles (floor and counter), install fixtures, install cabinet hardware, finish the doors. Again, that's not a lot of work, all things considered. We've had it very easy with the second kitchen and have eaten quite well (thanks for all the suggestions, everyone!). However, now I just want to cook!

Marlene- Check page 11 of your owner's manual under the heading, "Adjusting the oven temperature."

I'm envious of your kitchen, Marlene. Only 2 more weeks before mine is done -- DONE, I said!

I'll try and get some photos in the next couple of days -- definitely by the weekend. The boys made a lot of progress when we were on vacation. The cabinets are installed, the floor and countertops are nearly done, and everything is looking great. I had the workers tear up the eating bar countertop, as the cantilevered portion wasn't as sturdy as I would have preferred. Thus, we've cut two of the corners into 45 degree angles and we're installing industrial grade angle iron (actually, steel) into the plywood decking for stability. This should give us all the support that is needed. The floor isn't done because I didn't order enough floor tiles. Four more boxes were picked up yesterday. There was one other glitch. The wall at the end of the SubZeros (closest to the eating bar) was built in a location different than the original plans. This was necessary because of the structural elements. However, my carpenter failed to mention this to me, and as a result, our bookshelf and shallow cabinet at the other end of the SubZeros was too wide. Fortunately, we found a local cabinet maker to cut them back. I'll really try to get some photos up, but I've got to work on taxes tonight!

All the L'il Varmints will be with me, and I'll have the camera!

Well, cabinet installation isn't going as quickly as expected. First, the walls, floors and ceilings of this house aren't the most square in the world. Second, this is a fairly complex installation. However, it should be completely done tomorrow. Here's where they are today. The next photos will not be posted for 11 or 12 days, after I return from New Orleans. So, I expect there will be a significant amount of work done in the interim.

The cabinets should be done today or first thing tomorrow. They then will do the tile floor. Countertops will be next week, while I'm gone. :happy:

I'm just headed down to New Orleans this weekend, and I wanted to know if fresh crawfish is available now.