Comfort food – Page 9 – The Saboscrivner

Chain Reactions: Waffle House

“It is indeed marvelous. An irony-free zone, where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts. Where everybody, regardless of race, creed, color, or degree of inebriation, is welcomed. Its warm yellow glow a beacon of hope and salvation inviting the hungry, the lost, the seriously hammered, all across the South to to come inside. A place of safety and nourishment. It never closes. It is always, ALWAYS faithful. Always there FOR YOU.”

Those were the wise words of the late, great Anthony Bourdain, from his Parts Unknown episode where he visited a Waffle House restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina.

The man did so much for broadening people’s views about food, between his brilliant books, like Kitchen Confidential and A Cook’s Tour, and his fascinating food shows, like No Reservations and Parts Unknown. He encouraged us to experiment and try new things in new places with new people, to step out of our culinary comfort zones, challenge our sensibilities, and open ourselves up to new, potentially life-changing experiences. As a food blogger, he is one of my greatest influences, in terms of his unique voice (both his writing style and his soothing TV show narration), his curiosity and empathy, and his sense of adventure.

Bourdain knew a good meal when he saw it, whether it was five-star fine dining or some dirty, dangerous dive halfway across the globe. I always appreciated that he spoke so highly of Waffle House (https://www.wafflehouse.com/), that ubiquitous-yet-humble chain of 24-hour Southern diners, and highlighted it on his show.

I also unironically love Waffle House. It is practically synonymous with a “greasy spoon,” and sometimes infamous for unsavory late-night antics. But the truth is, you can get a delicious, hearty, affordable meal there at any time of the day or night, prepared right before your eyes in an open kitchen. I am lucky enough to live near the best Waffle House location ever — always spotless, fast, and friendly no matter when you show up, with impeccable, satisfying, soul-nourishing food. Scoff all you want — if you’re still skeptical, that just means you’ve been denying yourself one of the greatest comfort food experiences to be had in the South.

I’ve been composing this Waffle House review and compiling photos for months, over the course of several separate visits with my wife. But today was Anthony Bourdain’s birthday, so it felt like the right thing to do to go back tonight, to reminisce about the life and legacy of one of the greatest foodies of all, to indulge our senses and think about all the entertainment and education the man provided us over the years. We were also joined by some members of the Orlando Foodie Forum presented by Tasty Chomps, a Facebook group that has also broadened my culinary horizons and introduced me to some amazing new friends. It felt right to commune with these fellow foodies and Bourdain fans, and to talk and laugh and share food with them, tonight of all nights. We learned all the right lessons.

Even if you aren’t familiar with the glory of Waffle House, you may have heard of their flawless hash browns and all the different ways you can order them:

Smothered with grilled onions
Covered with melted cheese
Chunked with grilled smoked ham
Diced with grilled tomatoes
Peppered with pickled jalapeno peppers
Capped with grilled button mushrooms (more for y’all!)
Topped with Bert’s chili
Country with sausage gravy

I am perfectly happy to eat my hash browns straight up with ketchup, but I do love them smothered and covered as a special treat. My wife prefers hers plain, as usual. Tonight one of our dinner companions ordered hers covered, chunked, and peppered. (I hope you’re writing this down, I’m gonna test ya later!)

The All-Star Special is a bargain and also a challenge: fried eggs (you can get them in other styles), accompanied by smothered hash browns (dig the grilled onions) and buttery white toast. Tonight I was feeling like a big shot, so I got cheese on my eggs with a specific purpose in mind:

A picture from an earlier visit, this time with no cheese on the eggs, and thicker grilled and buttered Texas toast, superior to the white toast:

We both love their very crispy bacon, which is my wife’s go-to breakfast meat at any time of day:

You can choose between bacon, sausage, and ham for this All-Star Special, or pay a slight upcharge for a large cut of rich, salty, bone-in country ham, bursting with far more flavor than the “everyday” ham. The country ham is my new favorite. Obviously the texture is totally different, but it always reminds me of prosciutto, one of my favorite foods in the whole world.

As if that wasn’t enough, the All-Star Special also includes a plain waffle, which I believe is made with Golden Malted waffle and pancake mix, the best commercial mix I’ve ever found. It isn’t the hardest thing in the world to make waffles or pancakes from scratch at home, but I buy that mix now to try (in vain) to recreate the perfection of a Waffle House waffle. The outside is always crispy, the inside is always fluffy. Anyway, if I ordered this one in the photo, it would soon be doused in syrup:

Here’s a waffle topped with peanut butter chips, from another visit. You can also get chocolate chips and even pecans. They have even offered peach waffles in past summers, which is a pro-tier move from this Atlanta, Georgia-based company. I’m looking forward to peach waffle season.

Grits! Not my favorite, but my wife sure loves ’em with some butter and salt. We all know that no self-respecting Southerner would make instant grits, but I’m not sure if these are “real” or instant.

And she turned me onto the grilled, split, soft and buttery biscuits, which she likes instead of toast, with a little butter and jam. You can also order a biscuit sandwich with eggs, cheese, and the breakfast meat of your choice.

This is another one of my favorites, the Texas sausage, egg, and cheese melt, on grilled and buttered Texas toast, with added grilled onions. I like mustard on my eggs, mmmm hmmmm. Pure breakfast perfection at any time of day (or night), but I hate eating in the morning. We’re much more likely to go there for dinner.

Tonight, another one of my adventurous friends ordered something I’ve never tried before: the new Cheesesteak Melt Hashbrown Bowl, which is pretty self-explanatory: a large order of hash browns covered with melted cheese and topped with cheesesteak and grilled onions. Everything a growing boy needs, it’s the breakfast of champions, even at 8:30 on a Tuesday night.

But Waffle House is about so much more than just breakfast food! I actually love their burgers.

This is my standard: the $2 double “original” Angus cheeseburger that comes with two patties, melted cheese, and grilled onions on a grilled, buttered bun, with pickles and a packet of delicious WH Sauce, which is similar to chipotle mayo. (It is a Heinz product, and I wish they sold it in bottles!) It’s very much like an old-school diner burger, like the burger you imagine being served at a diner in a Tom Waits song. It is better than just about any fast food burgers. DID I MENTION IT IS $2? It may be the best $2 you’ll ever spend on food.

Again, a better photo from a different visit. I think American cheese is the ultimate cheese for burgers and grilled cheese sandwiches, for how nicely it melts. Yeah, come at me, bro.

Here’s one adorned with that WH Sauce:

And here’s tonight’s burger, pre-WH Saucing, side by side with one of those wondrous waffles. Don’t worry, they don’t serve them on the same plate, but we had six people at our tiny table, so I was trying to consolidate:

One day they were out of burger buns, so I asked if they could serve the burger on grilled Texas toast. They happily obliged, and I think it was even better — kinda like a patty melt. Pardon the blurriness.

My wife swears by Waffle House’s grilled pork chops, always with her beloved hash browns. These have supplanted eggs and bacon as her standard order, although she still loves the grits, waffles, and biscuits too. They are surprisingly tender, juicy, flavorful, bone-in pork chops. Ask for the “seasoning” — it is just a salt and pepper blend, but it adds a unique touch, and they aren’t the same without it.

Chops ‘n’ browns:

More chops ‘n’ browns:

And if you decide you want picante sauce for your hash browns, eggs, sandwiches, or burgers, I love that the brand is Senora Jackie’s Casa de Waffle. This was old news to us, but our table-mates got a real kick out of it.

Waffle House usually has good sweet iced tea, and I like my iced tea like I like my women: sweet, strong, cool, and with lemon. But usually I’ll get a vanilla Coke or vanilla root beer there, on top of all those other carbs. They actually squirt real vanilla syrup into the fountain beverage, which makes a nice difference. I can’t speak for the coffee, since I rarely touch the stuff.

Waffle House restaurants all have another beloved feature: a jukebox, loaded up with pop hits, golden oldies, and a surprising number of novelty songs written ABOUT Waffle House. Fun fact: Waffle House even has its own record label! I rarely indulge with the jukebox, which is odd, because I love foisting… uh, sharing my musical tastes with others. But tonight I spared our new friends and the stalwart staff, lest I be tempted to queue up some Tom Jones on repeat.

And one more fun fact about the Waffle House I think you should know: it is often the first business up and running again after hurricanes and other natural disasters! Because it stays open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) refers to the “Waffle House Index” in terms of the severity and impact of the disaster. According to this transcribed National Public Radio interview, “If a Waffle House is closed because a disaster is bad, [FEMA calls] it red. If they’re open but have a limited menu, that’s yellow… And a completely open, full-menu Waffle House is green.” A Waffle House spokesman said “If we’re opening up quickly, that’s a good sign that community is going to come back quickly. If we are on a limited menu, that’s probably because we’re – have some utilities out, so it’s going to take a bit longer for that community to come back.” So as we edge in those scary Southern summer months that occasionally bring hurricanes, maybe pay as close attention to your local Waffle House as you do to your favorite telegenic weatherperson.

The world is certainly not the same without Anthony Bourdain, and I think about him whenever I try a new dish, visit a new restaurant, or explore a new city… and also whenever I end up at my friendly neighborhood Waffle House. Tonight, over a late dinner with my winsome, wondrous wife — the person I love most in the world — and some really great new foodie friends, Bourdain was on our minds and in our hearts. That fellowship, the fact that I found my way onto a local food forum on Facebook, the fact that I started this blog just over a year ago and bother writing about food at all — I can trace all of it back to him. So on his birthday, a year after we lost him, I mourned and celebrated the man, I ate good food with good people, and I thought long and hard about how lucky we all are to be able to do that.

Chain Reactions: Maple Street Biscuit Company

Despite living not too far from Oviedo, I almost never drive all the way east to head out there. Every time I do, I’m always amazed by how much the area has been developed, with so many new restaurants popping up. One of Oviedo’s newest neighbors is the Maple Street Biscuit Company (https://maplestreetbiscuits.com), a small chain that was founded in Jacksonville, Florida, and has since expanded into six Southern states (Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Texas). Despite being a chain, it has a very “down-home” Southern feeling, with everything in the bright, spacious dining room made of wood (or wood veneers).

Maple Street Biscuit Company specializes in fried chicken sandwiches made with fresh, white meat chicken breasts on fresh-baked biscuits, but they have lots of other options. They make their jams and jellies from scratch too, which is not that common anymore.

I ordered the Squawking Goat sandwich, which includes fried chicken breast, a fried goat cheese medallion, and house-made pepper jelly on one of those fantastic biscuits. I loved it. It was awesome. They were generous with the pepper jelly, ladling it on all over the plate, so it was definitely a sandwich to eat with a knife and fork. I thought the goat cheese “medallion” was quite small, but it was so delicious, coated in seasoned bread crumbs, that I craved more.

My wife ordered the Sticky Maple sandwich, with a fried chicken breast and pecanwood smoked bacon on a biscuit, with real maple syrup from the Bissell Family Farm served on the side. (They usually pour it right on.)

We had meant to share the Smoky Mountain Mac n Cheese, a $4 side of macaroni and cheese made with three different types of cheese and topped with a crunchy cheese cracker crumble, but then I think my wife remembered she isn’t the hugest mac and cheese fan. More for me, I thought! But the portion was very small, so it wasn’t that much more for me after all. Still, it was rich and cheesy and gooey and tasty, so how can I complain?

Also pictured above is the iced cinnamon pecan biscuit they were gracious enough to include with our order because it was our first visit. It was delicious — much more of a dessert that something you should eat for breakfast, but I feel that way about most breakfast pastries (muffins, doughnuts, danishes, Pop-Tarts, and their ilk). The icing was very fresh and very thin, like you would find on a cinnamon roll or a good cheese danish.

My wife studied the menu in advance, and she knew she wanted the house-made ganache hot chocolate with steamed milk. She tasted cinnamon and said it reminded her of Mexican hot chocolate, which she always loves.

I rarely drink coffee, but I love anything with vanilla and maple flavors, so I couldn’t turn down an iced maple vanilla latte. Of course it was more like a dessert than anything else, but that’s how I like my coffee (like my women): sweet, smooth, and cool.

And finally, because we didn’t have enough carbs and sugar already, they had fresh-baked cookies near the cash register, where you place your order, and we couldn’t resist trying the lemon blueberry cookie. I was surprised my wife suggested it, since I love anything with lemon and with berries, and she usually doesn’t, opting for chocolatey sweets instead. And I think she liked it, but I definitely liked it more. It was obviously very freshly-baked, extremely soft, still warm, and delightfully lemony. We ripped into it so quickly, I almost forgot to photograph it, as you will be able to tell:

Maple Street Biscuit Company closes at 2:00 most days and stays closed on Sundays, so it isn’t the easiest place for us to get to. Still, I’m glad we were finally able to try it. I don’t know when I’ll be able to go back, but I definitely would return to get that Squawking Goat again, and maybe I’ll ask for extra fried goat cheese next time. I’d get that cookie again, too!

Theo’s Kitchen

It feels like a while since I wrote my last review here, and I have a few more in the pipeline. But this one is about a hidden gem here in Orlando, on Curry Ford Road: Theo’s Kitchen (https://www.theoskitchen.com/). It’s in an older, nondescript shopping strip near a Winn-Dixie supermarket, and you might not know it’s there at all unless you’ve been hipped to its existence. Consider yourselves hipped.

Have you ever craved really good, crispy, tender, juicy fried chicken, but also been dying for Greek food? Has that ever happened to you too? Well, you’re in luck, because Theo’s serves what has to be my favorite fried chicken in the Orlando area (The Coop is very good, don’t get me wrong, but not quite as consistent as it used to be), plus they have a whole menu of Greek specialties, when you can’t decide or when you just want to treat yo’self and have it all.

I’ve been to Theo’s twice this summer since discovering it, once again thanks to the local gourmands, connoisseurs, and aficionados on the Orlando Foodie Forum on Facebook. On my first visit, I met a fellow Foodie Forumite there, a really good guy who is always visiting and recommending restaurants around town. I’ll name him if he’s okay with that, but for now, better safe than sorry. GREAT guy with good taste and a never-ending thirst for adventure, culinary and otherwise.

On that visit, I ordered a gyro (because there’s no such thing as a bad gyro, am I right, you guys?), a chicken thigh so I could sample the legendary fried chicken, and an order of onion rings, because THAT’S RIGHT, THIS IS ANOTHER INSTALLMENT OF RING THE ALARM! (AIR HORN!) My friend ordered the gyro king (same thing but with feta cheese added), a Greek salad, and chicken and rice soup. The gyro was very good, and the onion rings were the kind I love, with a nice beer batter coating, the ideal thickness and consistency.

My friend seemed to love all of his food, and the salad was definitely beautiful.

I don’t mean to downplay any of that, but the chicken thigh was excellent. The crispness was so perfect, but it was almost all in the skin, rather than a heavy, greasy layer of breading or batter. It was very moist and juicy. There wasn’t a lot of seasoning on the chicken — The Coop and even Popeye’s season their fried chicken more — but it didn’t need it, seriously. Theo’s website says “Our Special method of broasted pressure frying in peanut oil makes your Fried Chicken light, evenly cooked and full of naturally delicious flavors.” (See https://www.theoskitchen.com/menu.)

Wait a minute, Mr. Saboscrivner, Sir, you might be thinking. “BROASTED”? Is that a typo? How unlike you! Is that even a THING? No, I promise, I copied and pasted that directly from the Theo’s Kitchen website and cited my source (always cite your sources, folks), but it is a thing. It’s essentially fried chicken that is also pressure-cooked while it’s fried, prepared in special equipment made by the Wisconsin-based Broaster Company.

Because I am a serious food blogger and a researcher by trade, I dug a little deeper to investigate broasted chicken, since now I’m invested, and I’m sure you are too. Here’s a 2004 Washington Post article all about broasted chicken:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/food/2004/04/21/this-chickens-not-roasted-broiled-or-fried-its-broasted-good-luck-finding-it-though/63ba6fe5-6af4-45bc-b0c3-8a8b26d8ea87/

And a shorter Atlas Obscura article, for the “TL,DR” crowd (although I can’t imagine any of them would still be sticking around my blog!):
https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/broasted-chicken

So anyway, it was awesome. I’ve never had fried chicken quite like it before, but I think it cracked the code for the perfect blend of flavor, freshness, texture, and lack of heavy, nasty, slimy greasiness.

I went back to Theo’s Kitchen more recently with one of my co-workers, who was kind enough to treat me to lunch, even though I had every intention of treating him that day. What a blessing it is to have good co-workers, since that can make or break so many jobs. He ordered a two-piece meal with a breast and a thigh, with some nice, crispy, crinkle-cut fries, and an order of fried mushrooms, which I cannot eat (but I was nice enough to take a picture of them for you).

I had another spot-on perfect broasted chicken thigh:

Also, because I was craving pasta and haven’t had this in years (not since my beloved Patsio’s Diner in Casselberry closed), I ordered pastitsio, which is like a Greek version of lasagna. It is a casserole of uncut ziti noodles and a rich, tomatoey sauce with ground beef and what had to be a fair bit of cinnamon. (This makes sense, because I love Cincinnati-style chili, originally a recipe of Greek immigrants that is made with cinnamon and served over spaghetti.)

The pastitsio even came with one of their beautiful Greek salads, and they were very generous with the feta:

So Theo’s Kitchen is a casual little place in a strip shopping center that looks like hundreds of others, the kind of restaurant you could drive by every day and never notice, or live your whole life in a city and never know about. It is an open room with lots of little tables and natural light from a big glass storefront window overlooking the parking lot. Maybe not anyone’s idea of a “sexy date night” restaurant, but a fine choice for any occasion. It has it all! Greek food? Check. Greek food is good, and often healthy, and there aren’t a ton of Greek restaurants. Fried chicken is good, and not healthy at all, but it’s dry and disappointing too often when you get it from fast food chains and supermarkets. Not so at Theo’s Kitchen, where you get the best of both worlds.

Baltimore, Part 2: Dangerously Delicious Pies

When you’re a grown-ass person, you can choose to have dessert for dinner if you want to. Normally that isn’t my ideal meal; I like some sweets, but I’m more likely to crave a good sandwich (almost everything is better in sandwich form), pasta, or salty, crunchy snacks. But when it comes to desserts, my favorite might be PIE. I’ll take pie over cake any day; I love pie, and I’m sad that for the most part, pie isn’t hip or cool or popular. There was a time in the U.S. when pie wasn’t just for Thanksgiving — and true confession time, I think apple and pumpkin may be the most boring, pedestrian pies, and Thanksgiving dinner is boring and bland in general. But that’s a hot take for another blog entry!

There were times past when you could take a date out for coffee and pie after a movie, or convince more people to attend a voluntary meeting if you promised punch and pie. Those days are gone, and what desserts are en vogue now? We’re left with trendy cupcakes, crumbly dry nibbles of cake buried under mounds of sickly-sweet, greasy frosting; macarons, tiny pastel burger-looking things that still look much prettier than they taste; and biscotti, a cruel joke against anyone who likes cookies.

But pie is comfort food, nostalgia, hope — all the good parts of America with none of the bad, the most pastoral of pastries, equally at home cooling on a farmhouse windowsill or resting under a glass dome in a lonely big-city diner straight out of an Edward Hopper painting. I even fulfilled a lifelong dream I never even knew I had earlier this year, when I volunteered as a judge in the American Pie Championship, right here in Orlando. That was an experience I’ll never forget or regret, even though I got stuck with the apple pie category and never need to have apple pie again.

So needless to say, I was thrilled when two Facebook friends alerted me to the presence of a pie restaurant right here in Baltimore, where I’m spending the next few days! Dangerously Delicious Pies (https://www.dangerouspiesbalt.com/) was founded by Rodney Henry, frontman of Baltimore rock band The Glenmont Popes, and apparently quite a baker as well. The restaurant has two locations in Baltimore, and they specialize in sweet AND savory pies! The menu is huge, almost to the point of intimidating, but I figured I’d get a piece of savory pie so I could feel like a functional grown-ass person and have more than just dessert for dinner, but follow it with a sweet slice.

I took a Lyft ride to the scenic Canton neighborhood location with an old friend and one of her work colleagues. It was a cool, funky little restaurant, with walls painted red, some rock ‘n’ roll decor, and a glass case teeming with gorgeous, tempting pies. All savory pies are $7.50 per slice, and quiches and sweet pies are $6.50 per slice. Every pie is baked in a 10″ pie pan, and they are cut into six equal, generous slices.

My friend selected the Hot Rod Potato pie: kind of like potatoes au gratin with potatoes, roasted peppers, cream, cheeses, onions, and bacon. 20180714_192934_resized

Her colleague had just flown into Baltimore and was hungry enough to order two slices: the Cannonball (bratwurst, onions, and peppers roasted in Heavy Seas Loose Cannon beer) and the Polka pie (Kielbasa, sauerkraut, potatoes, and cheese). They were kind enough to let me try theirs, and I did the same.

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I think I panicked from the seemingly-limitless options, because I chose the sausage, tomato, and fennel pie — good, but not as great as all of theirs. I love tomato-based sauces on pasta, pizza, salsa, you name it, but this had chunks of stewed tomatoes that were a little too large for my liking. I think it came down to a texture issue for me, as I’d rather have a smoother sauce without huge chunks when it comes to hot, cooked tomatoes. But my pie included both sweet and hot sausages, and it still tasted really good. It could have used some cheese, though — either melty mozzarella or provolone, or even a gooey white American or cream cheese to balance out the acidic, chunky tomatoes.

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All these pies had the same crust — fork-tender, flaky, buttery, a little salty, chewy yet also crispy, not really sweet. It was a really solid pie crust that got thicker and a little dryer toward the back. Like a lot of dry pizza crusts, I wasn’t too tempted to eat the outer crust pieces, but the tops and bottoms were terrific.

The pies all came with complimentary sides of either a vinegar-based cole slaw with poppy seeds, or a simple side salad. I opted for the cole slaw, which was great, except for the poppy seeds that got lodged between some of my teeth all night. I still contend they need to develop an app that warns you about visible food caught between your teeth.

For her sweet pie, my friend went with the house specialty, the Baltimore Bomb, a vanilla-custardy chess pie with Berger cookies, a local delicacy similar to New York’s familiar black and white cookies, melted and swirled into the custard filling. Berger cookies are smaller than your average black and whites, but they’re comparable “cakey” cookies, covered with rich, thick chocolate icing. It was in the same kind of flaky, buttery crust as the savory pies, but it was almost a sweetness overload.

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I had a much easier time choosing my sweet pie, especially after studying the menu in advance: the Pineapple Right Side Up pie, white chocolate maple chess pie topped with brown sugar and pineapple. As I write more on this blog, you will learn that I love anything with pineapple and anything with maple, but it’s very rare for a dessert to include both flavors. Needless to say, it was delicious, but also ridiculously sweet and rich. I would have liked a little more of a pineapple upside down cake taste mixed throughout (that’s one cake that I’ll always love) and a little less of the rich custard, which was extremely “eggy”-tasting in both sweet pies. And normally I love chess pie!

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Anyway, it was an awesome dinner, a unique restaurant, and a great value. None of us had any regrets, even if I don’t feel like I chose the best savory pie option. I’m so glad some of my hip friends hipped me to the existence of Dangerously Delicious Pies, because I came across as so cool recommending it to my other friend and her friend. Now I can say that almost everything is better in sandwich form AND pie form.

This place opens at 10 AM during the week and 9 AM on weekends, and stays open until 10 PM most days, and midnight on Friday and Saturday. You could literally have pie for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and I strongly recommend you try that at least once.

To quote FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks, one of my favorite fictional characters of all time from one of my favorite shows of all time, these were some damn fine pies.