The Unvegan » Bacon

Victory Dinner at San Francisco Saloon

The Unvegan — Mon, 21 May 2012 16:00:58 +0000

Go Bruins?

After my team posted a huge victory in our rec basketball league, we decided to grab some burgers to celebrate. This led me to San Francisco Saloon, which is not located in San Francisco at all, but rather in West LA and has been serving LA since 1934. The place is more sport bar than saloon and actually has a good sports bar vibe. The burgers are named for LA and San Francisco sports teams like the Giants and the Trojan, with a few non-sports names like Hickory to join them.

Of these, I liked the looks of the Bruin the best. I’m not sure why this was chosen to represent UCLA, but it came with avocado, bacon and jack cheese. All burgers came with lettuce and tomato, so I ordered mine without such things and then chose fries from my side choices. Then, since they asked, I ordered it medium rare.

Be true to yourself.

What arrived looked like a sports bar burger should. The bun was topped with sesame seeds and a toothpick impaled each half of the pre-halved burger. Bacon and cheese protruded beyond the confines of patty and bun, waiting for my attack.

I was a little sad to find the burger cooked pretty thoroughly throughout. Typically, I would not have cared about this at a sports bar, but usually a sports bar doesn’t ask me how I want a burger cooked. As far as taste went, that was pretty much the only thing to complain about. Everything else was spot on, with the bacon being the real highlight of the meal. The fries were a good side, but nothing overly impressive. If there was anything to complain about aside from the fully browned burger, it would be the price. It isn’t terrible by LA standards, but its also priced at the gourmet burger level rather than its actual sports bar level.

I guess basically, San Francisco Saloon, don’t try to make your burgers into something they aren’t. Your bar and burgers remind me of great sports bars I’ve been to in other places, but they don’t try to dress things up to be bigger than themselves. Now that I’ve been I know what to expect. But for unsuspecting patrons like I once was, I want a bit more of “what you see is what you get.”

Delivery Upgrade at Lago D’Argento

The Unvegan — Fri, 11 May 2012 16:00:58 +0000

...and in case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening and good night.

My buddy, DCo, is a bit of a pizza snob. It works out well for me, because he likes to point me in the direction of awesome new and old pizza places. Recently, he told me about a new place called Lago D’Argento over in Silverlake. It took a bit of convincing, but finally I had a real reason to go to that part of town and decided to make a run for pizza while there. I invited another buddy, Jeff, to join and we checked the place out.

I was happy to find a good few pizza options on the menu that weren’t just the basics. One of these was called Good Morning and was topped with Serrano ham, fried egg, Vermont cheddar and some pesto and Jeff and I decided to split that. But we weren’t done there – we also went with their version of a meat lover’s called the Carnivore. This pie had salami, fennel sausage, crispy bacon and Wisconsin mozzarella. If nothing else, this place knew the states to get cheese from.

Before going any further, I should note that upon my first bite of pizza at Lago D’Argento, it was clear that this was not the kind of place for pizza snobs. If you’re looking for classic Italian pizza, do yourself a favor and don’t be fooled by the Italian name of the place. If, on the other hand, you are a huge fan of American-style pizza, this place might just be for you and you should keep reading on.

Basically, when you break it down, the dough is nothing special. Think Dominos pizza, but fancied up a bit. Sure, I know that doesn’t sound very good, but also realize that the ingredients are many levels above “fast food” pizza. While I love the fact that I’m seeing fried eggs all over the place, this was the first time I saw it on a pizza and they kept it nice and juicy. Good Morning could have used some more sauce to add flavor and actually impress me, but it was still an interesting pizza that I was glad to have eaten.

Yes, I am an obligate carnivore. What of it?

The Carnivore was a definite step up on that. Damn, meat is just so good. Each of the meats worked in delicious harmony with each other, but it just felt unfortunate that they weren’t on an equally good dough conduit.

So here’s the deal…when it all adds up, Lago D’Argento gets the job done. It’s a level up from regular delivery, but fails to be much of a worthwhile enterprise. And again, if you’re a pizza snob, you really shouldn’t have even read this far into this review.

Burger Aid at Salt’s Cure

The Unvegan — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:00:22 +0000

Why are there pickles on this plate?

My continued quest for amazing burgers took me to a place called Salt’s Cure in West Hollywood. At this particular intersection, only one of the corners lacks burgers, as the other two are populated by Fatburger and Astro Burger. And while Salt’s Cure isn’t strictly a burger place, a quick look at the high priced menu on the wall when I walked in all but guaranteed I would be eating their burger.

Shoulder of pork and elbow of fiancee.

We began by ordering one of their homemade pretzels and a plate of cheese and meat to join it. We went with all three cheeses on the menu, two of which were creamy and the third was blue-ish. As for the meat, we chose the pork shoulder, which turned out to be prepared as a cured meat dish. Not exactly the pork shoulder I was accustomed to seeing, but it certainly fit the bill of the restaurant. These were also served with homemade bread sticks (the crunchy sort), homemade raisin bread, plus some walnuts, raisins and a fruity jam. Basically, it was an awesome spread, except for one thing – pickles. Never before had I seen pickles on a cheese plate and I hope to never see them again. These unwanted veggies ruined at least two slices of bread with their juices (fortunately the fiancee ate those) and generally turned the assortment ugly. Luckily, the cheeses were delicious, as cheese tends to be, and the pork shoulder was also quite stellar. It wasn’t overly salty or seasoned, but cured in a way that released the natural flavor of the piggy in a really delicious manner.

Just look at that bacon girth.

As for the main course, I went with their Bacon Cheeseburger. At 17 bucks, this clocked in as the cheapest entree and was topped with lettuce and onion, with a side of homemade fries. I ordered mine without the lettuce and onion, and was pretty surprised when the burger arrived and wasn’t the size of my head. Not that the thing was small, but for some crazy reason I still associate price with size. I guess I’m just old fashioned like that. The burger was topped with one thick slice of bacon and the white cheddar cheese was oozing down the sides of the guy. I must admit that the burger was quite thick and had been perfectly shaped to fit the upscale poppy seed bun.

This picture is so grainy and that burger is so cheesy.

As far as the taste breakdown, the burger was definitely awesome. The cheese and bacon were both of the highest quality and flavor. The meat itself had been cooked to more of a medium than medium rare, but was still impeccably juicy. So juicy in fact that I feared for the life of the bun. Fortunately, these fears were unfounded, as the bun held up strong against the onslaught of burger juice. The meat also had a nice, thick grind to it and had clearly been pressed into a perfectly round shape. I’m always torn when places do this. I know it makes the burger easier to cook and fit into a bun, but it also sometimes makes me feel as though the burger had been sitting in the back for a while rather than being made just for me. Nonetheless, the burger was great.

Then there were the fries. Quite often, homemade fries wind up in strange sizes and uneven cooking (likely due to the strange sizes). As opposed to the burgers, it seems to be better to have uniformity to fries. At Salt’s Cure, though, the fries were nicely sliced into crunchy-on-the-outside and soft-on-the-inside pieces. This made me a happy man, and they also lived up to their name by seasoning the fries with just the right amount of salt.

The burger at Salt’s Cure was definitely one worth having. I loved the place’s stress on doing things in-house or local, but they were not without flaw. For one, their menu was incredibly limited. Sure, the meaty options were there, but seriously there were only like 5 entrees and the burger was the only one under 25 bucks. And that brings me to my next issue. Yes, the burger was delicious, but $17 delicious? Not quite. It was absolutely worth the visit, I’m just struggling with finding a reason to go back.

Jeff Francoeur: Unvegan Hero

The Unvegan — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 16:00:44 +0000

Look forward to bacon.

The great thing about this whole Unvegan Hero/Unvegan Villain thing is that there are so many opportunities to praise Detroit/Michigan athletes and knock down their rivals. But when I found out a little something about Jeff Francoer, I knew I had to give a rival his due.

Francoeur plays for the Kansas City Royals, who happen to be in the same division as my Detroit Tigers. But while we are division rivals, the Royals haven’t been relevant in as long as I can remember. Plus, KC is home to some of the best BBQ in the world, so it gets a few points there. Anyway, this is more about Francoeur, who has brought unvegan delights into baseball in a most interesting way.

It began last year, when visiting Oakland, that “Francoeur tossed a ball wrapped in a $100 bill into the elevated bleacher seats above his outfield spot, instructing fans to use it to buy bacon or beer,” according to the Washington Post. This day became known as bacon Tuesday.

This year he gave the section their own personal pizzas (hopefully without veggies). Veggies or no, these gestures have made Francoeur a popular man in Oakland, despite the fact that he comes from the opposing team.

As for me, if he were playing against my team, I would have a hard time choosing between bacon and a W. I guess I would just hope that losing a game wouldn’t stop Francoeur from making baseball a much more fun and delicious game to watch.

So for your staunch support of bacon, pizza and beer, Jeff Francoeur, you are a true Unvegan Hero!

(via The Washington Post and @dvdheyman)

Pickled by The Greasy Wiener

The Unvegan — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 16:00:19 +0000

Hot dogs lurk in this Brisk truck.

On the way to basketball one night, I stumbled upon what appeared to be a food truck festival in a high school parking lot. I am nothing if not a man who takes advantage of such opportunities, so I pulled up and saw what they had to offer. A few of the trucks I had seen and eaten before, but some were new to me. One of these, freakishly painted as a Brisk iced tea ad, had just what I was looking for. Called The Greasy Wiener, this trucked dished out…well…hot dogs, with a side of sexual innuendo.

The dogs were apparently made with a home recipe and were all beef. They came with some pretty basic options and I went for The Berkowitz. This was a bacon-wrapped dog topped with chili and cheese. For good measure, and in a veiled attempt to sabotage my basketball skills, I also got chili cheese curly fries.

Where's the hot dog in here?

Within a few minutes, my name was called and my meal was ready. I took one hard look at my hot dog and nearly vomited. Not only was my hot dog topped with onions, but an entire pickle spear threatened the very existence of my dinner. There had to be some mistake, and in fact the mistake was completely in me, because the menu clearly stated that every dog was served with a squirt of mustard, onions and a pickle. I was sad, but undaunted as I set to work undoing the wrong that I had unknowingly committed against myself. I was mad at the truck, but mostly I was mad at myself. Eventually, my hot dog emerged from the vegetable carnage and I set to work.

I quickly realized that this hot dog was awesome. In the New Jersey style, the hot dog had been fried, which made it a bit wrinkly, but also juicy. It had that snap I’m always looking for in a good hot dog and the bacon was beautifully crispy. Although I had lost a fair amount of chili and cheese in removing the veggies, I could still taste them both and they made me happy. Surprisingly, they had a very good salt balance and had just enough flavor to complement the hot dog rather than overpower it.

Stay stiff, my fries.

The same went for the fries. Although they hadn’t been ransacked by veggies and pickles, the cheese and chili worked great together. The use of curly fries was a nice touch for a couple reasons. 1) Curly fries are awesome. 2) Curly fries are typically crispier than normal fries, and this held true here, so they were able to contain the chili and cheese without getting soggy. The cheese sauce was also not your usual nacho cheese, but a “truck made” mix that was a bit cheese wizzy, except as I said before it wasn’t too salty.

So once I got over my huge ordering mistake, The Greasy Wiener served me well. I don’t support the whole onion and pickle thing, but I do support the rest of what they are doing. I also don’t know if I support the fact that the truck seems to be sponsored by Brisk, but I suppose you do what you have to in order to keep slinging fried hot dogs in the streets of LA.

Eating the Old West at Tinhorn Flats

The Unvegan — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 16:00:42 +0000

But really, it's not gimmicky.

There’s something about a gimmick that alienates people. You go to Hooters and while they have good wings, a small part of you feels dirty because it was a gimmick that brought you in in the first place. Many times I drove by Tinhorn Flats in Burbank and wrote it off because it looked like an Old Western saloon, which to me screams out gimmick. Little did I know that Tinhorn had been around since 1939, which makes it one of the oldest things in LA. If it was simply a gimmick, it never would have lasted these 70+ years. So when my coworker encouraged me to check it out, I roped in the troops at work to head east on Magnolia – straight for the Old West.

Having your own beer is awesome.

We headed out to the back of the place and took a seat at one of their picnic tables. Before checking out the food selection, I ordered myself a Tinhorn Blonde, which is their signature beer that may or may not be brewed specially for them by the Karl Strauss Brewing Company. It was a pretty good beer that hung kind of on the sweet end for a blonde, but had a crisp finish.

For my main course, I made my way to their burger menu. This consisted of a solid variety of bar burgers, from Western Bacon to their most creative Mushroom Blue. Needless to say, nothing here was gourmet, but a truffle burger with some sort of snazzy aioli would have felt way out of place here. Cowboys don’t eat that shit. Blue cheese was as fancy as it got and as fancy as I would have wanted it to be.

Brings back memories of 1939.

I chose their Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger, which differed from the regular bacon cheeseburger by adding Swiss cheese and doing away with stupid toppings like lettuce, tomato and onions. Basically, this burger was made for a man like me. There was no “how would you like it cooked?” at Tinhorn, so I hoped for the best while kind of expecting the worst. It came to the table with a fatty knife stuck through it like a toothpick and looked quite delicious. The bun was classic sesame seed and was just big enough to contain the huge patty that had clearly been formed by hand in the kitchen. The bacon was stellar, perfectly crisped without getting burnt and pretty much all you could ask for in burger bacon. The cheddar and Swiss cheese melted well together and the patty itself was delicious, albeit a bit dry. It felt like the only thing the burger was missing was BBQ sauce, but when I didn’t find any in the array of condiments on the table, I settled for a blend of ketchup and steak sauce. I would have asked the waitress, but service was a bit lacking. It was a bar first and foremost, after all.

The steak fries made for a nice side, with a bit of seasoning on them. I had had the option to upgrade to onion rings, which I turned down, but was able to try one or two from someone else and can vouch for them being damn good. The best part of all this was the price. Tinhorn offers all of their sandwiches, salads and burgers for $5.95 at lunchtime on weekdays, which is a goddamn steal. Seriously, I’ll a burger like this at that price any day. Sure, I wouldn’t complain if the burger was a little juicier and the service was a little better, but the value was undeniably amazing. I left the place knowing that if they kept things up like that, they could easily make it to 2039.

Meat Stacks at Smoke Shack

rgspiegel — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 17:00:14 +0000

Chili? In Wisconsin? In February? Shocking!

Here we have a long-awaited new guest blog from none other than @RGspiegel. Catch more of his writing here.

Disclosure I: David Marcus, one of the owners of Smoke Shack, is my second cousin.
Disclosure II: I’m starting a movement such that cousins are classified only as first or second cousins. How much better is that than trying to figure out your exact relationship to your dad’s first cousin’s son with somethingth-cousin-somethingths-removed? A lot.
Disclosure III: Smoke Shack was legitimately awesome.

Now that my and Unvegan’s journalistic integrity are squarely intact, I can begin the review of my glorious Saturday lunch at Smoke Shack, a BBQ restaurant that opened up about a month ago in Milwaukee’s third ward.

Due to my aforementioned relationship with one of the owners, I was an early “liker” of Smoke Shack on Facebook. As a connoisseur of hardcore food porn (when I really need to get in the mood I watch clips of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives), I’ve been regularly excited to see that Smoke Shack has been putting up some exquisite-looking food for more than a month now and my anticipation was palpable.

We started off by ordering a bowl of chili (with beef brisket and jalapeños), candied bacon with sweet potato fries, and Kansas City rolls (pulled pork and Monterey jack cheese inside egg roll shells). “Will that be all for now?” the server asked. My dad made sure his friends didn’t want any other appetizers. For the time being they didn’t, to which I said, “Damn, I wanted you guys to say you wanted the wings.” (I had chosen everything else.) So they ordered the wings, too.

These appetizers are on a roll.

All of the appetizers were really good. The best of which being the Kansas City rolls, dipped in the ranch that I had asked for with the wings. Trying to come up with cogent words to adequately describe how good they were is turning my brain into Homer Simpson’s and I wish a 140-character made-up jibberish word connoting carnal satisfaction would suffice as professional and be understood by the masses. Just trust me on this one. The wings were really high-quality chicken but it would have been awesome if they could have been tossed in any (or all) of Smoke Shack’s four BBQ sauces–Carolina Gold, Kansas City, House, and Texas.

For the main course, we ordered a four-meat sampler plate, which consisted of house made Berkshire sausage, beef brisket, pulled pork, pulled chicken, and a side of baked mac and cheese. The sausage — spicy, succulent, crispy on the outside, and chewy on the inside — was simply amazing and a competitor with the pulled pork egg rolls for being Smoke Shack’s biggest differentiator. The mac and cheese probably needed a little bit more cheese but it’s not as if it was irresponsible.

A sample of beauty.

The rest of the sampler platter was amazing and seemed to get better with every bite. After sampling each of the meats individually, I asked for a hard roll and made a dominantly dominant sandwich consisting pulled pork, pulled chicken, beef brisket, and the mac and cheese. I topped it with a mixed combination of all four BBQ sauces. This sandwich confirmed by former roommate’s rule of life that everything that tastes great tastes great together. That’s just science, I suppose.

And a sweet finale.

For dessert, we split beignets (kind of like French donuts) and pecan pie with whiskey ice cream. Like a good neighbor, the waiter was there with a glass of milk. Both desserts were outstanding and as I ate them I imagined and tried to mimic the ear-to-ear, teeth-fillings-and-upper-gum exposed grin coupled with eyes WIDE open that my late grandfather would have had as he took his first bite of the warm, gooey pecan pie. When everyone was full to the brim and there was about a quarter of the pecan pie left, I had to finish it in his honor; there’s no way he would have let it go to waste. Someone had to be the humanitarian.

At this point, my impending food coma was in a square battle with my Diet Coke. (After four of them had been served in mason jars, I told the waiter to cut me off.) Diet Coke won the first round as I was able to walk back to my hotel but as soon as I got back to my room, it was clear that the food coma had just been biding its time.

It was the best kind of food coma, though, the kind where you have to find the precise right spot on which to lie on your side, re-positioning the food in your stomach so you’re not putting pressure on the points that are the fullest. I woke up about two hours later, still full, and ready to take on the rest of the day.

Holy Donut Buns at Da Burger Boss

The Unvegan — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:00:21 +0000

Oh my God the bun is on backwards!

Da Burger Boss is part of the newer wave of food trucks and while they aren’t brand new, they’re still plenty new to me. Their schtick is naming burgers after mob terms like The Strongarm, The Collector and so on. It’s an interesting schtick that has produced some interesting-looking combinations, but the sole reason I found myself waiting for Da Boss was to partake in The Patrolman.

You see, The Patrolman is no ordinary burger. Sure, it’s filled with a half-pound patty, bacon and blue cheese dressing, but after that the burger goes in a frightening and exciting direction. First is the cran-apple reduction, which is not crazy on its own, but when you throw in the grilled glazed donut bun, things get goddamn nuts. Yes, I said a grilled glazed donut bun. I was unsure of how any degree of this would be pulled off and figure it was worth the 9 bucks to find out.

A nice medium rare cook also made me happy.

And find out I did. The first thing I wondered was how it would stay together. For starters, this wasn’t some soft, melty Krispy Kreme donut, but a thick grocery store-style breakfast sweet. It was still wildly inadequate at holding together a burger, especially when you throw the donut hole in the mix, so the make up for it the burger was wrapped in paper. Nonetheless, this was nothing less than a mess to eat.

The next thing I wondered was how I would handle the sweetness. Not only was there donut, but also fruit reduction to consider. And the truth is that the sweetness was a bit much. There was certainly a lot of savory between the bacon, patty and blue cheese, but this was not enough to counter the fruit and donut punch. My suggestion is to either swap out the glazed for old fashioned donuts or to drop the fruit. I can’t say whether either would work, but I do know that either way would be less sweet.

I had to move it from a tray to a plate because IT COULD NOT BE CONTAINED.

But who am I kidding here? Is The Patrolman really seeking out the perfect blend of burger balance? Oh dear I hope not. This burger represents America and our undying dream of gluttony and excess. In that regard, this burger is a major success. Yeah, I can get finicky with the details, but in the end, Da Burger Boss delivered a pretty good, juicy burger and topped it with an obscene bun. And I annihilated it. In other words, it was glorious.

I should also point out that Da Burger Boss in no way invented the glazed donut bun. This was something I had heard about before and Da Burger Boss is simply the first I had ever actually seen.

Tonto and the Lone Burger

The Unvegan — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:00:37 +0000

What's that you say, Kemo Sabe?

One benefit of getting married is the tastings. Not so much tasting food that the guests will eat, but traveling back and forth between Arizona and LA to plan things, and knowing there will be food in need of eating. On my most recent foray into the Grand Canyon state, we went out to dinner at a place called Tonto Bar & Grill in Cave Creek. Tonto is quite the popular place, with an outdoor patio looking out onto a golf course and an old Western eclectic interior. The menu ranges from some fancy salads to super fancy steaks, but somewhere in the middle there is burgers. And having gone at least a couple days without crushing a burger, I felt it was time.

The Tonto Burger is essentially a build-your-own burger, starting with either a corn-fed or grass-fed patty. I’m not sure what sort of crazy person would choose corn-fed over grass-fed, especially with them costing the same, but I suppose it’s possible. So over course I went with the corn…er…grass patty, then topped it with sharp cheddar, avocado and bacon. I noticed that lettuce, tomato, pickle planks (yargh) and crispy fried onions were included for free in every burger, yet for some reason in my head, I decided that I had to mention them in order for them to be included. Stupid, stupid unvegan. It was a mistake I hope to never make again, because when my burger I arrived I found a lot more than I bargained for.

Yes, all those dastardly vegetables were found in between my buns and my face immediately turned from smile (“We’re eating at a place named for the Lone Ranger?!”) to frown (“I’ve made a huge mistake…”). But the gods weren’t entirely angry at me, because I found that the pickle planks (yargh) were actually quite dry and their juices didn’t destroy my burger from the inside. Yet, where I took solace in the light pickling, I was saddened to find that they used shredded lettuce in true Southwestern fashion. It was quite an effort to get this burger ready for eating, but when I did I found it a truly enjoyable burger. The patty had been cooked to a perfect medium rare and simply could not be contained by the bun. The sharp cheddar was as expected, as was the avocado. The bacon, though, was not the usual applewood smoked or regular smoked bacon, but a pepper bacon. This was an interesting twist that added a little something to experience. But if I may, I’d like to get back to the bun, which was not only too small for the burger, but also not thick enough to contain this meaty monster. Midway through, the meal became a battle to keep my food together. It was a worthy battle, though, and in the end I won.

Was it a groundbreaking burger? Not exactly, but it was still pretty tasty. If you find yourself in Cave Creek in need of a burger, you won’t go wrong with Tonto. But you may want to be smarter than me and order yours without and of those preposterous vegetabled.

No related posts.

Winter Grilling at Coppertop

The Unvegan — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:00:15 +0000

Just like out back.

In dire need of lunch at the base of Breckenridge, I skied on over to Coppertop Bar & Grill to meet up with the fiancee while she was on a little break from ski school. Realistically, very little is expected of ski mountain food. The restaurants have a captive audience, jack up the prices and provide more warming and high energy foods than truly good food. So when I moseyed on over to the food area at Coppertop, my expectations were quite low. But wait…did I just see a dude walk by with curly fries covered in cheese sauce? Scratch that, my expectations hit the roof.

So the first thing I did after choosing to go with a burger was ensure that they could hook me up with those same cheese-doused fries and they certainly could. They didn’t disappoint and even told me they could throw chili on top. I didn’t want to overdo it, though, so instead I doubled up on cheese by ordering a bacon cheeseburger, with pepper jack cheese. I was impressed that they were actually grilling up each burger as they were ordered and didn’t have a whole set pre-made. Plus, they were actually grilling them…with real fire, which was also pretty sweet.

Cheesey meets curly.

Soon enough, all was ready and I got busy with my foodstuffs. I found the curly cheese fries to be everything I had hoped for. The beauty of topping curly fries with cheese is that they are especially resistant to sogginess, and in fact the cheese began to get a bit gnarly and cold before the fries buckled.

As for the burger, it tasted exactly like I would expect a summertime grill burger to taste. You know, the kind you eat on Labor Day over at your buddy’s place while knocking back a Silver Bullet. In that context, it was a good burger and probably better than usual considering the 0 degree weather outside.

On the other hand, this burger and cheese fries cost me something like 20 bucks, which is about double what I would pay for such food in a normal marketplace. But alas, Coppertop had a captive audience and while their prices were wildly inflated, I certainly can’t complain about the taste of what I ate.