Flatcaps Vs Tacos

It was Saturday night and my house was essentially out of food. My friend Josh dropped in and we talked restaurants. He didn't want burgers, didn't want Italian, and hates sushi. Your best option under such circumstances is usually tacos. For food blog purposes, Chipotle and Moes aren't a thing. No point reviewing big chain food you can get anywhere in the country. For food purposes, Taco Bell isn't a thing. Because it isn't food.

We decided to give the Lucky Taco a try.

The Lucky Taco opened as a restaurant in 2014 after years as a successful food truck. The restaurant is on the site of the now defunct Brass Key, which was a Manchester institution going back almost as far as Shady Glen. This is a sin for which Josh refuses to forgive them. But he will eat their burritos.

Saturday nights is $5 margarita night, so I opened things up by ordering one. This gave Josh the opportunity to low key make fun of me for ordering a margarita. But, as my usual liquor of choice is single malt Scotch, I was happy to drink it anyway.

It had blood orange in it and it was tasty.

We decided that if a Tex-Mex place is going to be worth it's salt, they had better do a good job of chips and queso. We asked the waitress about portion sizes and, determining a single order could feed both of us, started with that.

The result was excellent. In the opinion of a couple of elitist gentlemen wearing flat caps, the Lucky Taco cooks know what they're doing. We decided to move on to buritos.

I went with a pork carnitas burrito, which is a delicious combination of shredded pork, beans, rice, tomato, salsa, guacamole, and cheese.

Josh had a  Newport chicken burrito, which, in addition to chicken has, guacamole, pepper jack cheese, bacon, chipotle mayo, lettuce, and tomatoes.

Here he is looking slightly intimidated to eat it.

The bottom line here is that, if you have to replace an old school Manchester institution with something new, best for it to be with a place like this. This is head and shoulders above other Tex-Mex I've had in town, and isn't that much more expensive than the aforementioned Moes or Chipotle. They're fairly small but all the wait staff was genuinely friendly and the atmosphere in the restaurant and attached cantina was warm and inviting. I would definitely recommend this place and will definitely be returning.

Simple Risotto

So why the hell would you listen to me about making food? I slice open my thumb and have food accidents. Reasonably, you probably shouldn't. But a person you should listen to is Amanda Freitag, and I'm using a slightly modified version of her recipe, here. I highly recommend her book, The Chef Next Door. It's designed for home cooks with little to no experience and has improved my cooking skills immensely. In short, when I do what she says, 95% of the time it turns out awesome.

So. If you too would like awesome food, try this:

You will need:

4 cups of Chicken or Vegetable stock.

 Amanda has a recipe for making stock and Anthony Bourdain would give me serious side-eye for using store bought stuff, but if I'm making this, I'm typically in a hurry. Also, I hardly ever make chicken, so the prerequisite 5 pounds of chicken bones just isn't something I have. Amanda also basically says, hey, it's your kitchen, use store bought stock if you want.

4 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter and a Large Onion

You can get away with one tablespoon, but one thing Bourdain does approve of is adding a fuckton of butter to your food.

1 Cup Arborio Rice

 Actually, there are three kinds of rice that can be used to make risotto. Arborio is one of them, but there is also Vialone Nano and Carnaroli.

Salt and Pepper

I'm breaking with tradition here, but I added a cup of shredded Asiago at the end.

 

 Before you do anything else, chop and peel the onion:

Pour the stock into a pot and heat it over low heat. Melt the butter in another pot, again over low heat.

Add the onion and a pinch of salt. Saute until translucent, making sure it doesn't brown.

Add the rice and stir to coat it with butter.

Add a cup of hot stock to the rice. Stir and simmer over medium-low until the stock is absorbed into the rice. Repeat this process until the stock is gone and the rice is cooked. Pour in the Asiago and season with salt and pepper.

 Serve!

I Need A Space Pun!

This week I'm reviewing the Cosmic Omelet. There really should be a pun of some kind to go with a name like that, but I can't summon anything above the level of dad jokes, so I'll refrain.

With menus like this, I suspect they'll be happy to make some for me.

Speaking of dads, mine was having a birthday, so I decided to bring him along for the ride. As breakfast places go, the Cosmic Omelet is arguably the most famous in town, and has been since I was in high school. When people wanted to know where my parents' house was, I'd use it as a reference. When most of the town lost power in the October 2011 snowstorm, this place was miraculously open and provided warmth, shelter, wi-fi, and most importantly, hot food to the surrounding community. Not gratis of course, but we were glad it was there. It's also the kind of place that is popular enough with locals (and large enough) that if you live here, you are very likely to run into someone you know.

A couple people came over to wish Dad a happy birthday. The waiter did too, because he was nice like that.

As you might guess, the omelettes here are awesome. Also, there are a ton of options. You could eat here every morning for a month and not have the same omelet twice, and that's not including the ability to fully customize your own. There's also the usual breakfast staples of French toast, pancakes, Eggs Benedict and the like. I've never had them and know no one who has come here and not gotten the omelettes.

If you come for lunch and aren't feeling omelety (why would you come here if you did not like omelettes?) they also have a full range of wraps, sandwiches, burgers, and quesadillas. No idea how they are, either.

This time around, I went with Steve's Irish Omelet, which is made with corned beef hash and American cheese. I confess that this is my usual go to when I come here.

White toast and hash browns make things perfect.

Dad, likewise a creature of habit, ordered Joey's Cosmic Omelet without looking at the menu. This has sausage, hot peppers, mushrooms, cream cheese, and cheddar. I'm not sure how I feel about cream cheese in an omelette, but it's good enough to make Dad a repeat customer.

Look at him being all healthy with his wheat toast. 

In summary, this place is always a good eating experience, even if, like at Shady Glen, I am a creature of habit here. In fact, if you're looking to have the ultimate townie dining experience, you could do no other than the Cosmic Omelet for breakfast and Shady Glen for lunch. It's not the former's fault that they spell omelette wrong.

Next week: more experimentation! Hopefully with less slicing of appendages.

Adventures in Food Catastrophe

In my introductory post, I said I would write about falling on my ass while making food, knowing that it would inevitably happen. I had planned to make a post with an easy risotto recipe, but this is more epic and takes precedent. So, I give you:

What Not To Do With...

Tomatillos

An Onion

Eggs, Chopped Basil, Butter, and Olive Oil

Begin by watching chefs chop things up on TV. Note that they work much, much, much faster than you do. Decide that you could stand to work a little bit faster, even though you wouldn't be that fast.

Next, slice open the top of your thumb.

Cover it with a paper towel so you can continue cooking while bleeding

A side note...I have never had tomatillos before and they are really, really tasty! I had a few slices raw, and I could eat them like that all day. But, back to the recipe for disaster:

CHOP. UP. THIS. ONION.

Chop up peppers of I forget what variety but they start with 's'. No, not serranos. Another kind. Take two tablespoons of butter and a splash of olive oil and heat it in a pan on medium heat. Crack four eggs. Throw in the onions once the butter is melted and set a timer for eight minutes. Two minutes into that, throw in the tomatillos. Wait another two minutes and add the peppers.

Notice that's nothing's browning like it should be. Cook for about thirteen minutes total and add the eggs. Scramble the fuck out of the entire mess and let cook for two more minutes. End up with this:

 If I'm honest, it tasted decent. Not feed it to somebody else decent, but...I made this, need breakfast, and don't feel the need to add ketchup decent. The tomatillos add a lot of flavor, and I look forward to more successful experiments with them in the future.

Much Wow. Such Restaurant.

Center Perk is a small breakfast and lunch place on Main Street, across from the Mary Cheney Library (and Center Park, which surrounds it.) The first time I heard about it, I thought the name sounded like...

...but it turns out I was living under a rock in the 90's, and Central Perk was the name of the coffee house in Friends. Hopefully no one gets sued for a copyright violation.

 Despite the name, Center Perk is not Friends themed. I was pleasantly surprised to find it filled with old Manchester Americana.

This makes for a nice segue from my last restaurant review, Shady Glen, itself a piece of old Manchester Americana. There are photographs from early 20th century baseball games as well as photographs and illustrations of Main Street from the same era.

Center Perk is a seat yourself place and at 7:30 on a Wednesday morning, there was plenty available. Most everyone there was a regular, or at least, they all knew each other's names and didn't need menus to order. A few Yelp reviews complain of long wait times and inattentive servers, but I found the opposite to be true. I was in and out in about 40 minutes, everyone was friendly, and food came quickly.

I ordered raisin oatmeal pancakes with a side of corned beef hash.

The corned beef hash was good and the pancakes were quite possibly the best I've ever had. It would never have occurred to me to mix oats in there, but apparently this is a thing everyone should do. Just as a head's up, though, if you want Maple syrup to go with your pancakes, it'll cost you a dollar extra. All in all, though, an excellent experience. I will definitely be coming back in the future.