Bac Asian American Bistro

2661 West 14th Street
Cleveland, OH 44113
(216) 938-8960
www.bactremont.com/


by Beau Cadiyo

Note: the full review is available HERE.

I ate at Bac Asian American Bistro last week for a "soft" opening in exchange for not reviewing it just yet (which I really wanted to do). Without going into the food details, I really recommend that you go there yourself to make your own judgments! Among other things, Bac has Kobe burgers and Bahn Mis; I'll be posting a review as soon as I can get back during normal business hours.

Becky’s

1762 E 18th St
Cleveland, OH 44114
(216) 621-0055

by Beau Cadiyo

When I was in the eighth grade my father decided that it would be a good idea if he got me a book of dirty jokes. Even at 13, I was struck at the stupidity of some of the jokes, even in the golden age of Beavis and Butthead farting their way through America. One particularly stupid joke that has stuck with me all these years involves two old men sitting in a park debating about whether it's better to have a really satisfying shit or an orgasm. They see a prostitute that they're both acquainted with, and one suggests that they ask her. "No use," the other man says, "She's had more experience with one than the other!" In my pubescent haze of hormones, it was clear to me that an orgasm of any kind beat sitting on the toilet and smelling yesterday’s groceries.

I’ve been thinking of that joke recently because my dumps have been really unsatisfying. I've been eating a lot of salad and chicken-vegetable soup, occasionally with bread rolls from La Mexicana, and I would have expected this diet to leave as easily as it came in. Regardless, when I sit down on the toilet, it feels like I'm pushing icing out of an icing bag, and I'm never sure when I'm done. Tea and coffee don't help, nor do healthy doses of rice and beans or fruit.

Luckily for me, I met Frank McGarvey at a mixer, and he and his friends invited me to Becky's. (Full disclosure: he is the owner’s son.) I had trouble finding it, as there wasn’t a neon sign on the front or people loitering around outside. Parking was tight, too, which struck me as odd in an area which otherwise looked abandoned. I walked in behind a shorter, older, homeless-looking man, and we both went to the bathrooms in the back. As soon as he entered, he warmly greeted a much younger man in a suit, as if they were drinking buddies, and they chatted awkwardly as men peeing are wont to do.

Back out in the dark bar, work groups conversed around big tables, students laughed and sang along with the jukebox, cops wandered in and shook hands with patrons, a couple on an early date gazed at each other across a table and this writer viewed the scene with bemusement. It felt like a perfect island bar, sans tiki torches: dark yet light. It was helped by the old, original wooden bar, scarred from years of service, and eclectic decorations; one of the bartenders works in theater doing sets, and she brings in bits and pieces from old plays.

Frank McGarvey walked in from the street to join me, and shook twenty hands before we ordered. I got the Becky Burger with Muenster cheese; he ordered chicken tenders, potato skins, sauces and a sirloin steak sandwich for himself.

The chicken tenders were tender, with a hard crust the likes of which I’d never had before. The potato skins were made fresh and had real cheddar, which formed oily pools, and bits of bacon, as if they’d been made by someone’s mother for a high-school study session. The scooped-out potato parts were also cooked and served as half-chips, half-fries, which were amazing in the jerk sauce.
Then I started on the curly fries. It’s been a while since I had curly fries; the last time I can definitely say I had them was when, that eighth-grade summer, my mom dropped Frank Wilcox and me off at the Parkway Plaza mall to meet some girls near the food court. These were similarly amazing, but instead of being seasoned with a newfound freedom, they were washed down with delicious beer.

When I first picked the burger up, I said, “Woaholy shit.” In my hands it was bigger than it looked on the plate, and dense, and just plain heavy. While other places put a square of cheese on top, Becky’s places a giant slice on and melts it so that the cheese completely encompasses the patty like a protective layer. The meat was cooked to a perfect medium; the lettuce was crisp, the tomato cold, the onions pungent and sharp, and the jerk sauce, which I dripped onto the meat, was spicy and tangy and salty and delicious. “You need to bottle this,” said Frank Gasparos about the sauce, and Frank Mcgarvey said that they were thinking about selling it at the West Side Market.

What they shouldn’t do is sell the building, which CSU keeps trying to buy. CSU probably wants to use it for development, or raze it and put in a parking lot. Instead, CSU should buy the land around it and then build a U-shaped graduate student dorm around Becky’s. Students will have a friendly, safe place to go, and Becky’s will do even more business. Maybe CSU can think of the social life of its students and put in a few other bars or restaurants, to help the area thrive and turn it into a social hub – the kind a college close to a major metropolitan area should have. A parking lot, or admin buildings abandoned at night, would only contribute to the decline of the area; it’s already virtually dead as it is, and somehow Becky’s is still doing well. The tented field across the street doesn’t help.

I walked out at 8:40 p.m.; everyone that I’d seen when I came in was still there, at the tables or bars, and it looked like more people had joined them. I drove home, content, and found Frank Hoxha waiting for me at my house; she really likes it when my breath has the primal odor of charred meat and/or alcohol.

The next morning, I shat, and realized that Becky’s had made it glorious. Comparing the two at my age, I still prefer orgasms; however, while my morning excretion wasn't better than those of the previous evening, it was pretty damn satisfying, and that goes for Becky’s itself. We'll see how I feel when I'm sixty.

The Counter

12117 Ventura Blvd
Studio City, CA 91604
(818) 980-0004
www.thecounterburger.com/studiocity/

By Sandwich Koufax

Writing reviews about sandwiches is proving to be harder than I thought it would be. Spearheading the Los Angeles expansion of The Cleveland Sandwich Board seemed like it was going to be so easy. I eat sandwiches all the time (seriously, all the time). I’ve been quoted as saying that the meaning of life is “the pursuit of a better sandwich” and when Beau told me I’d be able to include Cheeseburgers in my missives to the Midwest it felt like the work was already done. All I had to do was sit down and let the descriptions flow and the greatest city in Ohio would begin to learn about the dining options available to a native San Diegan who has converted to the Los Angeles lifestyle. But then I sat down to write about the burger I ate from The Counter and I was stumped. Is my experience as a diner affected by my perspective as a critic? Can I just say that my burger arrived woefully undercooked or does it need to be directed through some sort of prism? These are the questions I wrestled with while writing my first review.

My burger at The Counter arrived woefully undercooked. I asked for it Medium Rare and received it Rare. Ordinarily I wouldn’t complain, but cooking things quickly seems like it might be a problem at this establishment as my colleague’s grilled cheese sandwich arrived with the cheese un-melted, which basically means he ordered a cheese sandwich. (Side note: my colleague is a “Food, Inc.” disciple and does not eat meat at restaurants. This is a craze currently sweeping Los Angeles; I’d be curious to know if it’s spreading).

The burger is a “hot item” in LA at the moment. It seems like there are two or three “must eat” burger joints that have sprung up recently and The Counter is at the top of a lot of people’s list. The Counter’s gimmick is that when you are seated you are given a checklist of everything you can order on your burger. You select your patty, your bun, your toppings, your sides and everything else you could imagine. All told the number of combinations is impressive. For the unimaginative you may also choose a burger that is pre-organized. As I understand it The Counter got its first big jolt when Oprah ate there (Note: this is a rumor I heard, I will not spend a moment verifying it).

Of the LA “hot burgers” (Note: I’m not quoting anybody) The Counter is my least favorite. Ignoring the aforementioned undercooking, I found the meat had very little flavor and the truth is that given so many options it is incredibly easy to go wrong. Sometimes the freedom of choice leads to you combining sun-dried tomato spread with pickles and croutons. I also found the checklist approach to ordering to be impersonal. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve always enjoyed the feedback process while ordering. There is nothing more satisfying than a waitress saying something like, “good choice.” Who is going to take the time to scan a checklist and give someone feedback? Certainly not the waitresses at The Counter.

All that being said, I feel like perhaps the pressure of knowing I was going to be writing about the experience tainted the whole thing. I love cheeseburgers, but throughout my consumption of this particular cheeseburger I found myself planning what I would write about it. I can’t honestly say that my feelings about it weren’t affected by my new approach to burgers in general, which leaves me feeling like my reviews aren’t pure. Perhaps it would be best to eat somewhere and then have someone force a written review of it. We could enlist all of America as food critics much like we’ve enlisted them to Jury Duty. Upon exiting a restaurant there would be a chance, one in a ten million, that you would be randomly selected to critique your experience. We might get some differing opinions, but at least the reactions would be pure and untainted by knowing they must be shared upon completion of the meal.

Tom Selleck, Waterfalls, Sandwiches

My female sibling who is junior to me in number of years lived sent this to me. It is a collection of pictures of Tom Selleck with waterfalls and sandwiches. I love my female sibling who is junior to me in number of years lived.

Other Blog

I just started reading Bacon Laser. I don't know that I've ever endorsed a blog before, but this one - with sandwich-references throughout - bears endorsement. The author, a Clevelander, has some really great lines, such as:

(On mayo-based tuna salad)"Looks like something you would scrape off the wall of a bathhouse."

"The resulting recipe is the greatest discovery since the polio vaccine. So f*ck you, Dr. Salk."

"So, bring home this chicken. Cut off some of the white meat, enough to make a sandwich later. Set aside."

"Once the mixture above has carmelized, take the pot off the stove (with the ingredients still in it) and fill it with about 8c of water (Christ, when will we go to the metric system?)."

READ IT NOW!!!

Pittsburgh - Primanti Bros. and Doublewide Grill

Primanti Brothers Restaurant and Cigar Bar
S 19th St & E Carson St
Pittsburgh, PA 15203
(412) 381-2583
www.primantibrothers.com

Double Wide Grill
2339 E Carson St
Pittsburgh, PA 15203
(412) 390-1111
www.doublewidegrill.com

by Beau Cadiyo

Bite: Quantity, not Quality.

“What you have to understand about Pittsburgh is that food is much more about quantity than quality,” Edward said. “You’re not going to get a good meal here like you would in Cleveland, even if you go into a ‘gourmet’ restaurant.” We were sitting in Primanti’s on the South Side, which Ed had recommended over the original restaurant in the Strip District. “We could go there, but last time I went it smelled like raw sewage. Besides, they do really well on consistency at each one, so it’s going to be the same. And (the South Side) one is less crowded.” That surprised me – the bar was busy when we entered, and people waiting to jump on our stools when we left.

If you’ve never been, South Side buildings are often trashy and dirty. They are packed close together, on unusually narrow, oftentimes one-way streets. Traffic is congested, parking spots are few and far between and apartments stack up on top of street-level businesses in a muddle. Somehow, that means that the South Side is prosperous and thick with people, both locals and tourists, and fosters an atmosphere of excitement and safety. For twenty-some blocks, restaurants and bars compete with restaurants and bars – I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an extended area so densely packed with places to eat and drink. According to Edward, though, not many of them were any good. Pittsburghers like lots of fatty food, and they don’t mind it if it doesn’t taste good as long as there’s lots of it. Frank Hoxha noted that this attitude was reflected in waistlines, which tended to be larger than anywhere I’ve ever seen, with the exception, perhaps, of a popular Dairy Queen I once ate at in rural Nebraska.

We sat down with Yuenglings, and shortly afterward two massive sandwiches arrived. Ed and I split a Jumbo Fish and Cheese and a Pittsburgher. Before picking up his half of the Pittsburgher, Ed asked for the hot sauce, bottles of which stood sentry about the bar. I handed it over, and he said, “Just so you know, you’re going to need this, too.” My first bite confirmed it: the entire sandwich, despite being stuffed with fried fish, American cheese, coleslaw and fries, was bland. It was more than bland – it was absolutely devoid of taste, as if some secret ingredient was added to the sandwich that sucked all flavor out of it. Each bite of the fish sandwich required more and more hot sauce. I added some honey mustard dressing from a plastic pouch and it barely registered against the blandness. The Pittsburgher was just as tasteless, and required even more hot sauce.

While they were tasteless, though, Ed’s suggestion made me question my paradigm of how to judge food. I’ve long analyzed food by taste, texture, aroma, heat, balance, etc. – really, all the things one might use to judge “quality.” Quantity, though, is also important, especially from an evolutionary perspective. After all, food must nourish us with life-sustaining calories and nutrients. The diet of Pittsburghers, if the Primanti sandwich is any indication, was meant for an industrial lifestyle with exceptional physical activity, and the French fries on top of the sandwich made it easier for working people to eat a full meal while on the go. The Fourth Earl of Sandwich would have approved. At the same time, these sandwiches were meant to nourish a lifestyle that no longer exists for many Primanti’s patrons. The investment managers, lawyers and hipsters all around us were scarfing down giant portions adapted to a particularly physical lifestyle, but are not living that lifestyle – thus, their rotundity.

What, then, is the ideal for modern man? It certainly isn’t the Food Pyramid – that’s the ideal for the sugar lobby and other special interest groups which have corrupted the FDA and made its recommendations a joke. I’m still trying to figure that one out. All I do know is that with a food paradigm of most people looking for taste, texture and presentation, Primanti Brothers fails; with the paradigm that food is meant to be big, fatty and bland, all in order to nourish an active lifestyle, Primanti Brothers succeeds in epic form.



Ed’s housewarming party was that night. Frank Novotny, the editor of a weekly paper which used to reimburse us for our reviews, was there, and she said basically what Edward had: when it comes to food, nothing in Pittsburgh can compare to Cleveland, but what Pittsburgh lacks in quality, it makes up for in quantity.

The next day found us at Double Wide, an old gas station/garage which had been converted into a grill. Oil cans were made into lampshades and gas signs dotted the walls in between giant flat-screen televisions. An elevated living-room area, with two couches and a TV, took a place of honor near the front door, and looked exceedingly inviting to those at the table with hangovers (Frank Koehler had been drinking until 6 a.m. for two days straight). A chipper Frank Tsai joined us late; he had been hopping around the Strip district, and while he liked it, he had gotten lost repeatedly and had nothing good to say about the city planning. “I know. Where would you have put those three rivers?” Edward said, with only the slightest hint of sarcasm.

Again, we were in for obscenely fatty food; Frank Hoxha noted that many of the patrons lived up to the name of the diner. I ordered the turkey burger, hoping that it would be both tasty and healthier. Of course, we were in Pittsburgh: the turkey was creamy and soft, almost raw, and yielding without resistance to my teeth like mashed potatoes. Like Primanti’s, it was both tasteless and served in massive portions – my burger was at least 5 inches high, including the bun, and the patty was probably 1 inch thick. I’d originally ordered the home fries, but I switched my order to French fries, which was lucky, as the home fries looked crappy and were in unusually small portions. The French fries, on the other hand, were passable as such. They certainly could have used some barbecue sauce.

I went to take a dump in a narrow stall, and thought to myself that many of the patrons wouldn’t even fit in it. Then we walked back outside. Even though it was raining, the bars and restaurants still had plenty of patrons inside, and the streets were at least buzzing, if not bustling. Cleveland has the advantage in food, but this part of Pittsburgh has the advantage in livelihood. It struck me that so much of the development going on in Cleveland is either houses, apartment buildings or townhomes, and none of it is mixed use buildings with businesses on the street and apartments up top, like in Little Italy, Coventry or certain parts of downtown and Lakewood. Where it does happen, much of the space is devoted to streets; the one or two-lane roads in the examples above are so much better for getting around on foot, if not by car. If we could only get these going, the area around downtown Cleveland would be hopping; if University Circle did this, they’d reap the rewards thousands of times over.

And if the Browns could only have a winning season. Well, we beat the Steelers. Perhaps we’ll get some good city planning in place, and perhaps 2010 will be our year on the gridiron, too.

New Sandwich

Anyone else interested in going to this?