http://www.roadfood.comRestaurant reviews from the most memorable local eateries along the highways and backroads of America.en-us(c) 2009, Roadfood.com. All rights reserved.30Royers is a vintage café on the square in the small town of Round Top (population 81). Bud Royer has described his menu as “sophisticated comfort food.” In fact, no one category of cuisine begins to describe this kitchen’s boundlessly creative bent. Some of the choice things to eat are grilled pork tenderloin topped with peach and pepper glaze, crabmeat-and-shrimp-stuffed jalapeno peppers, a huge BLT sandwich made with grilled shrimp, and a boneless quail stuffed with grilled shrimp and wrapped in bacon. Entrees come with a choice of downhome vegetables that include black-eyed peas, mashed potato casserole, and creamed corn … or, for a few dollars more, one of Round Top’s creamy pasta dishes. Among the available seafood meals is "OMG!" grilled Gulf snapper crowned with sauteed shrimp or sided by pasta. (OMG is the menu's shorthand for "Oh, My God!" to indicate the best dishes in the house.) If you know Royers Round Top, then you know that we haven’t yet mentioned the single item that has made it a beacon for food pilgrims from coast to coast: pie. Bud (who goes by the moniker Bud the Pieman) offers big country-style classics with ribbons of baked fruit oozing out over the edge of knobby crusts as well as several pies of his own design. We believe the pecan pie, made with giant halves of Texas-grown nuts, is the best anywhere – a perfect balance of toasty nut flavor and syrupy sweetness. And the chocolate chip pie, loaded with pecans and super-chocolaty -- really more a huge, thick cookie than a pie -- is nothing short of devastating. Royers is so deeply into pies that the menu threatens to charge customers fifty cents extra if they do not get it a la mode. "It is so wrong to not top your pie with Amy's ice cream!" If you are a group of people (i.e. two or more), consider a pie sampler for dessert, which is a choice of FOUR kinds of pie with ice cream. If you are not able to come to Round Top, the café is set up to mail-order pies anywhere in the U.S.; and if you really, really like pie you might consider enrolling in the cafe's Pie-of-the-Month plan, which ranges from six pies delivered every other month for a year to Pie-of-the-Month-For-Life! Serious as the cooking is, Royers is a brash and silly sort of place. There was a time when the walls were available as a writing surface to be covered with graffiti from staff and customers, i.e. “Please don’t tell my mother I’m a lawyer. She thinks I play piano at a local bordello” and “Practice safe eating: use condiments.” The walls have been retired, and now customers are invited to add their bons mots or doodles to the Napkin Art Gallery. Note: although reservations are NOT accepted, if you call ahead the day you plan to eat at Royers Round Top, your name will be put on a wait list for priority seating. http://www.roadfood.com/Reviews/Overview.aspx?RefID=371Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:06:00 GMTFinding Hannibal's, in an unstylish East Side neighborhood of port industry and housing projects, is a challenge. It looks more like an unholy bar than a Holy Grail, its low-slung dining room lit with a random array of bare bulbs and fluorescents, its seats a hodgepodge of upholstered chairs, banquettes that resemble automobile bench seats, and a few stools at the order counter. It appears forbidding, but Jane and I were made to feel at home; actually, we were treated more like family than customers, enjoying a constant back-and-forth joshing with the staff about how we were enjoying the various items we ordered. Wanting to try everything on the menu, which includes such soul standards as smothered pork chops and fried whiting, but also expands plate-lunch possibilities to include peppery shrimp fried rice, we overordered and plowed into a meal of turkey necks, shrimp fried rice, okra stew with pig tails and crisp-fried shark, all sided by clove-accented braised cabbage and followed by sweet-sweet sweet potato pie. Hannibal's is open for three meals a day, with breakfast offerings that include shrimp and grits, and liver 'n' onions with grits and toast. It also is known for its "2 buck sandwiches" of ham, bologna, sausage, or lunch meat. Don't ask me to explain why, but somehow the bologna on white with mayo and tomato (the latter is 50 cents extra) is really, really good. http://www.roadfood.com/Reviews/Overview.aspx?RefID=6830Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:58:00 GMTIn August, 2009, when I visited the St. John River Valley in Maine to attend the annual Muskie Derby and Ploye Festival, old-timers directed me to Dolly's (formerly Una's) for chicken stew and ployes. From the road, Dolly's doesn't look all that special; and the menu, at first glance, appears to be a roster of straightforward diner cooking. But next to the cash register is a hot griddle and a pitcher full of ploye batter, ready to pour. Ployes are a farmhouse tradition around here: crepe/pancakes made with buckwheat batter, served as a side dish for mopping up supper's gravy or in a stack along with maple syrup or molasses at breakfast. Dolly's ployes are butter-yellow with a faint green tinge created by the buckwheat (which is botanically an herb rather than a grain) and they arrive three by three too hot to handle. They are a just-right companion for the kitchen's marvelous Acadian chicken stew, which is crowded with large pieces of meat, nuggets of potato, and little free-form dumplings plus a measured scattering of herbs. Waitress Bernice Michaud, who has been at Dolly's for a quarter century, asked if I had ever tasted the kitchen's creton. "Huh?" said I, never even having heard of creton. Bernice hurried back to the kitchen to fetch a ramekin full, then stood watch in eager anticipation as I spread some across a hot ploye. Similar to pate, creton has a foreboding visceral appearance and is as rich as fatback, but Dolly's version is bright and flowery, a refreshing burst of unexpected spices, including cinnamon. "Everybody has their own little secret for the creton," Bernice said with mischievous glee in hopes she would have the opportunity to refuse to reveal what goes into Dolly's. http://www.roadfood.com/Reviews/Overview.aspx?RefID=6828Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:55:00 GMTBairrada was my first Portuguese restaurant experience and it still remains my favorite. The original restaurant was a small, humble establishment compared to its current location – which is 3x larger to keep up with demand. Thankfully, the quality has remained intact. Bairrada serves Portuguese-style BBQ of spit-roasted chicken and meats on long iron skewers. I have been ordering the same dish since my first visit in 1992: the spit-roasted chicken dinner. The meal includes a plate of salad, a plate of half rice and half homemade french fries, a plate of homemade potato chips, and one roasted chicken. It is plenty for two people. Before cooking the whole chicken, the chef splits it down the middle, folds it apart, and then flattens it between two large, grated-iron clamps to hold the meat together. The tightly clamped chicken is then positioned on an open rotisserie fueled by coals. The BBQ chef attending the chicken sprinkles oil and salt as it slowly cooks to crispness. When the piping hot chicken arrives to your table it is sectioned into the various parts – each of which has a salty and crispy exterior and tender juicy flesh. These hand-size pieces of meat are so addictive you will literally lick the bones dry. Just when you think the meal can’t get any better, the homemade potato chips arrive. These medium-sliced treats vary between fully-cooked, crispy chips and ones that have a mild crunch and a soft interior. They don’t need additional salt if accompanying the barbecue chicken. Be sure to arrive very early if you wish to avoid the lines. Tables are filled before 6 PM during dinner service.http://www.roadfood.com/Reviews/Overview.aspx?RefID=1462Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:45:00 GMTThe Narrows is fancier than most Roadfood restaurants – rack of lamb or chicken Oscar, anyone? – and it is pricier – dinner easily can set you back $30 or more – but we would be remiss not to include it here as a service to all in search of great crab cakes and the less-appreciated local love, fried oysters. Both are serious destination eats. These are the crabbiest possible crab cakes, meaning they taste like all crab and nothing but the crab, just minimally spiced and containing only enough filler to help the big, heavy white lumps of meat remain spherical. At the first touch of a fork, the sphere will fall apart, offering up bite-size forkfuls of glistening-moist inside meat as well as pieces from the outside that have facets that are light brown with a crisp edge. The oysters, known to Chesapeake Bay connoisseurs as white gold, are fried in a cornmeal veil, just enough to shore in all the juices that erupt as soon as teeth pierce the meat within. Although the place is quite deluxe, it is in no way snooty or off-putting. Located on the water of the Kent Narrows, it offers diners an opportunity to look out at pleasure boats as well as working fishermen coming in with clams, crabs and oysters. For those far away who desperately crave a real crab cake, the Narrows offers "Crab Cake Express" service: crab cakes ready to cook and crab soup packed in dry ice and shipped overnight. http://www.roadfood.com/Reviews/Overview.aspx?RefID=6825Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:38:00 GMTSonora is north of the Mexican state of Sinaloa, after which this little trailer is named, but the frankfurter you'll get here is a classic Sonoran hot dog: wrapped in bacon and grilled, the all-beef dog sucks in porky flavor to become nearly lascivious. The line-up of condiments is immutable: chopped tomatoes, grilled onions, yellow mustard, a green ribbon of hot jalapeno sauce, and a luxurious web of mayonnaise. On the side, as with every Sonoran hot dog, you get a roasted guero pepper, which is like a light-skinned jalapeno. What's different about El Sinaloense is the bun. It is the same capacious, fluffy roll that holds all of Tucson's best dogs (easily, two at a time if you're really hungry), but instead using it simply fresh, El Sinaloense grills it. A certain degree of fluffiness is sacrificed, but in its stead you get a bun with crusty-rich patches all around the outside (a distant cousin of the grilled split-top typical of New England). The bun, combined with onions that are cooked soft and caramel sweet, makes this the most unctuous possible Sonoran hot dog. The accompanying guero pepper looks like others, but delivers little heat. Instead its thick walls pack bright, fruity vegetable essence that is welcome contrast to the porky-beefy-oily nature of a bacon-wrapped hot dog. Dining accommodations consist of a few seats at folding tables under a tent behind the cart where the hot dogs are made. There are other El Sinaloenses around Tucson (based on this one's name, we'd guess at least two). El Sinaloense 3 parks in a lot on 12th Avenue just up the road from Oklahoma St. http://www.roadfood.com/Reviews/Overview.aspx?RefID=6821Sun, 01 Nov 2009 06:37:00 GMTOn the subject of loosemeats, people from Arizona don’t know squat. Myles Kass, proprietor of Bob’s Drive-Inn, a Le Mars, Iowa, restaurant started by his father in 1949, tells about some Phoenicians who came through town a while ago to visit The Blue Bunny Ice Cream Factory and asked him for hamburgers. He was irate. “Can you imagine? I tried to convince them that if you come to this part of Iowa, you don’t want a hamburger; you want loosemeats. I honestly believe there isn’t anyone in town who hand-patties a burger any more.” In case you are from Arizona or any one of the other 48 states where loosemeats is unheard of, know this: a loosemeats is a sandwich of ground beef that is cooked loose – unpattied – and served sauceless. Compared to a hamburger it has a higgledy-piggledy character, but there is nothing scattered about its satisfying taste. It is customarily dressed with pickle, mustard, and a slice of cheese; and like grits, it is a food spoken of with singular/plural ambivalence. Usually one sandwich is a loosemeats; a batch in the kitchen or a bowlful without the bun are loosemeats. You will not find loosemeats on the menu that hangs above Bob’s order window. That is because it is listed by one of its several aliases, a tavern. At many restaurants that serve it, loosemeats is called something else: tavern, Big T, Charlie Boy, or Tastee. When Roseanne Arnold opened her Big Food Diner over in Eldon out Ottumwa way, journalists unfamiliar with Iowa cuisine made a fuss over the fact that her menu did list loosemeats, a name that to outsiders sounds vaguely taboo. According to Marcia Poole, food writer at the Sioux City Journal, folks in Siouxland were righteously angry about Roseanne calling it that. “The other side of Des Moines, it should be called a Maid-Rite,” Marcia told us, referring to the eponymous name for the similar sandwich and the Maid Rite Restaurants that serve it, mostly between Des Moines and Dubuque. “Loosemeats are ours alone.” At Bob’s Drive-Inn, they don’t even offer a hamburger. If you want beef, you get loosemeats. Bob’s loosemeats are definitive. Browned, strained of fat, then pressure-cooked with sauce and spice, then drained again, this meat is moist, full-flavored and deeply satisfying. Each sandwich is made on a good-quality roll that Myles Kass secures from Le Mars’ own Vander Meer Bakery. If you don’t want loosemeats, or if like us, need to sample every good hot dog that exists, you must get a couple of franks at this fine place. The hot dogs are ravishing natural-casing beauties with a real snap to their skin. They are made by Wimmer's, a vintage-1934 sausage maker in West Point, Nebraska, and they are some of America's greatest. Root beer is house-made; and fruit shakes are made from real summer fruit.http://www.roadfood.com/Reviews/Overview.aspx?RefID=1255Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:57:00 GMTCarol P., we owe you, big time! Carol, an old friend from the days Jane and I wrote for Connecticut Magazine, recently wrote to tell us about Bereket, which she dubbed "Connecticut's best-kept secret." Carol described it as "laughably inexpensive, outrageously good, extremely fresh," praising everything from the sigara borek appetizer (feta cheese and parsley cooked in a filo dough wrap) to four-star rice pudding. When I first went there for lunch, I came away glowing with the joy of having a newfound restaurant I want to eat at again and again. In fact, I returned for more the next day. I love Bereket's humus, served with fine, warm pita bread. The familiar chickpea paste is here uncommonly rich but also bright with a refreshing shot of fresh lemon juice. I ate plenty, yet brought home enough of the $4.99 appetizer for a couple more meals. The spicy lamb meatballs known as kofte are available in a wrap or a full dinner. I chose the former and got four patties of expertly seasoned lamb still glistening hot off the grill, all nestled in a crisp salad inside the wrap. This is a very large and very, very delicious meal. When I first visited, the rice pudding and baklava were still cooking. The only available dessert was kadayif, the pastry that looks like shredded wheat but turns out to be delicate, superfine dough mixed with unconsciounable amounts of sugar and chopped walnuts. My square was cut from a fresh pan, still piping hot. I would be tempted to use the word "sinful" to describe how over-the-top delicious it is, but I will not, for Bereket makes a point of serving only food that is halal (virtuous according to Islamic dietary law). http://www.roadfood.com/Reviews/Overview.aspx?RefID=6816Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:58:00 GMTWeikel’s is a good candidate for the least-likely place to find exemplary Roadfood. It is a convenience store attached to a gas station, and at first glance when you walk in, it looks like any other quick-shop highway mart: lots of soda, candy, pre-fab sandwiches, and sundries for sale. But stroll to the left and there is the bakery case. Actually, several bakery cases. And in these cases are some spectacular pastries, made on the premises by expert bakers. Here you find cinnamon rolls, strudel, cream cheese pound cake, pecan sandies, and cookies of all kinds, plus a repertoire of a dozen kolaches. The kolache is Weikel’s specialty, the shop’s motto (on the highway billboard): We got’cha Kolache. Kolaches, a Czech-ancestored little pastry that is like a Danish, but with softer, sweeter dough and with better blobs of filling in the center, first got popular in the Texas Hill Country, but now are found throughout much of Texas. There are countless variations, but if you are a first-timer, we recommend the Old World classic -- poppy seed. Other traditional varieties include prune, apricot, and cream cheese. Weikel's has more good-looking cakes and pastries on the shelf than we ever have had appetite to sample, but we must recommend one more specialty of the house: Weikel’s pig-in-a-blanket. It is a taut-skinned, rugged-textured kielbasa sausage fully encased in a tube of tender-crumb bread that is finer than any hot dog bun we’ve ever eaten. http://www.roadfood.com/Reviews/Overview.aspx?RefID=492Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:54:00 GMTThe most colorful source of great boudin we know is a small place on a two-lane road north of Opelousas just outside Mamou, the epicenter of Cajun culture and self-proclaimed home of the mardi gras. Simply getting to T-Boy's Slaughterhouse is a joy, up from the swamplands of the south into the vast prairies of Evangeline Parish where cattle and horses graze and native zydeco music sets the cultural beat. Once you arrive, you are in for a true taste of country life. Paul "T-Boy" Berzas, owner and butcher at T-Boy's Slaughterhouse, apologized when he showed us around the work area in back one day at noon because he hadn't yet had time to hose viscera off the floor. Up front, the little grocery is blood-free and clean, its cases filled with sausages and meats from the smokehouse - including paunce (stuffed stomach) and tasso ham - its walls festooned with signs advertising such T-Boy deals as the "100 lb. Special" of beef, pork, sausage, rice and boudin for $154.99 and two bags of smoked pork bones for $2.50. T-Boy, who got his name because he was the youngest of nine, hence "Petite Boy," eventually shortened to T-Boy, puts a full measure of liver in his boudin, which is so damp and dripping-good that it cries out for contrasting crunch. That need is perfectly filled by a brown paper bag full of hot cracklin's – pop-in-the-mouth squiggles of deep-fried pig skin. (T-Boy's has a second location in Eunice.) http://www.roadfood.com/Reviews/Overview.aspx?RefID=6815Wed, 28 Oct 2009 06:14:00 GMT