Lolita (Cleveland, OH)

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***** 

Over a five day road trip to the Midwest, my friend Forrest and I hit four different baseball stadiums, generally eating standard ballpark fare and breakfast at our hotels.  We had one very good meal at a restaurant the first night of the trip, in Columbus (OH), but it was dinner on the final night that was really something special.

I watched a lot of Food Network for a couple years, as it was just about the only channel with anything good on during the wee hours of the nights while I was at work with nothing to do, and every time Michael Symon was on, I would drool over the thought of going to one of his restaurants.  The man just seemed to appreciate pork in a way that no one else does, and that is my kind of chef.  So, when we arrived in Cleveland and were looking for somewhere to eat dinner, I checked out his restaurants.  Lolita, the more casual of his two primary restaurants (the other being Lola), is located in Tremont, at the corner of Literary Rd and Professor Ave.  Every day, Lolita has a happy hour menu (served only at the bar) for a couple hours, which has a white wine, red wine, two mixed drinks, a beer, and four small dishes available, with the food just $5 per plate and the drinks that or less.  This was perfect to try a few different things on the menu, so we sat at the bar, ordered a couple beers ($2 each!), and a few items off the menu.  Sadly I did not think to write down what the beer was, since it was actually pretty good, but I do remember the food!

Forrest had to step out to take a call right when we arrived, so I ordered us the Mac & Cheese (a half portion of their regular serving) and the Mussels off the happy hour menu, and the Crispy Pig Tails & Ears appetizer from the regular menu.  The Mussels arrived first, a large portion for just $5, perfectly cooked (aka not chewy), with a creamy sauce including house-made chorizo, garlic and parsley, along with a couple pieces of bread to soak up the sauce, which the bartender replenished at my request so as not to waste the remnants of the sauce after we were finished with the shellfish itself.  The chorizo was delicious, salty and savory, and the sauce was perfectly creamy, with a slight tang.  Not quite as good all in all as the mussels at Local 188 in Portland (ME), but probably top three I've ever had.

The Crispy Pig Tails & Ears arrived at about the same time as the Mac & Cheese, so I tried the pasta first.  This was the only real disappointment of the evening, as the macaroni (rotini, in this case) was slightly overcooked, the chicken was boring and plain, and the cheese sauce was nothing I could not make myself.  In fact, my own version of the dish is better.  I am glad I did not order the full portion of this, because I think I would have had a very disappointing meal if this were my entree.  It was not even that it was bad; it simply was nothing you could not get at any decent diner or at most peoples' homes.

The Crispy Pig Tails & Ears made up for that disappointment and more.  I have been describing the pig tails to my friends as a perfect combination of bacon and chicken wings; they were crisp, succulent, and fatty.  The sauce they were tossed in was a fennel-onion agrodolce, which resulted in a very slightly sweet and very vinegary flavor, which actually would be great on wings as well.  There was a salad of fried slices of pigs ear, pickled chili peppers, and the onions and fennel from the agrodolce, which was just absolutely amazing; the fried pigs ear pieces were so incredibly good they were only topped by the tails themselves, and the crunch from them was a great counterpoint to the soft vegetables and even the tender meat of the tails.  The whole thing was prepared so well I honestly can not find a single flaw, and I can usually nitpick something in every dish.  This is probably the single best dish I have ever eaten, and I would drive back to Cleveland just to have it.

We were still hungry after those three, so we ordered the Fried Brussels Sprouts (Forrest does not like eggplant, so the Charred Eggplant Dip was not an option), and they were also incredibly good, even surpassing my previous favorite preparation of these formerly hated greens at Portland's Pai Men Miyake.  Deep frying makes everything better, and that holds true for these, with the crispy outer leaves and slightly crunchy center giving it a nice contrast to the softer inner leaves.  Served with walnuts, capers and anchovies, there was a vinegar-like tang (likely from the capers) to these as well, just like the pig, and the walnuts added a nice meatiness to the dish.  The anchovies were a bit lost, though there was a healthy saltiness that could have been from them.  For people who think they do not like Brussels sprouts, they should really try these; I think they would change their minds.

Food is obviously the main thing you go to a restaurant for, but I firmly believe that people go back for service; after all, you can get good food just about anywhere, but really superlative service is honestly kind of rare.  While I was a little leery of the bartender at first, as he did not immediately provide the attentiveness that I am used to at higher end restaurants, he eventually turned it around, joking with us, talking about basketball (we were in Cleveland, after all; LeBron was bound to come up, right?) and baseball, and just generally chatting with us in a way that was pleasant and unobtrusive.  Top notch service in the end, and a really nice guy in general.

All in all, this was one of the best meals I have had, with just the one dish that was not spectacular, and two that were legitimately incredible in the Crispy Pigs Ears & Tails and the Brussels Sprouts, while the mussels were really delicious as well.  I cannot recommend this restaurant highly enough.  It is also most assuredly not vegetarian friendly, but if you are looking to break out of that lifestyle, this is the place (and the pigs ears are the dish) to do it.  Additionally, though it is not cheap for a real dinner, if you just go for the happy hour, you can get out of there pretty cheap; our meal was under $30 before tax and tip, for four dishes and four beers, a pretty tremendous value.

Curtis' All American Barbeque (Putney, VT)

I love barbeque; always have, always will.  It is unpretentious, seemingly simple food that tends to

"The 9th Wonder of the World"

involve a lot of pork, a lot of spices, and more food than a reasonable person should ever eat in one sitting, and that seeming simplicity falls away as you eat it; it is often, in fact, tremendously complex.  Curtis' All American Barbeque, in tiny Putney, VT, is a fine example of open pit barbeque, a concept that few people are used to in the north.  The meat is smoked first, then put over the open wood fire,where it caramelizes and finishes cooking, adding something just short of a char to the exterior.

Curtis does ribs and chickens, and while the ribs are damn good, the chicken is sublime.  It is not often that a person like me, who craves good pork, would choose chicken instead, but I have at Curtis'.  After all, good ribs aren't that difficult to find, or even make; great chicken though, is a true rarity, something that you can't find many places.  The skin becomes a little crispy, though not the glass-like crunch of a fried chicken.  A little smoky, tender, and surprisingly moist, it is the best chicken I have ever eaten that wasn't thrown into a vat of hot oil.  The ribs have a little smokiness to them as well, and aren't quite the fall off the bone tender that you would find in Kansas City or St. Louis style ribs, but Curtis' method, like the man himself, is from Georgia, and there's some more tooth to the meat.  I actually like this, as texture is important to me, but I have some friends who have tried it and don't love his food for that reason.  It is therefore important to go to Curtis' with the understanding that this is not North Carolina, Missouri, or Tennessee barbeque; it is entirely different.

Curtis himself, finishing a dozen or so slabs under the supervision of his pig CJ

Sauce places a huge role at Curtis', another issue for some purists, who believe that sauce should barely be involved, if at all, in good barbeque, and that the meat should speak for itself.  Well, the meat does speak for itself here, but the sauce adds to that and enhances it, with two options to choose from, a simple mild or a tangier hot.  The mild is a little sweet, with some vinegar coming through, but it's primarily a ketchup based sauce.  The hot is essentially the same, but with, obviously, more heat, and thus less sweetness, or at least the sweetness is masked by that extra heat.  It's not that hot, not even enough to give your mouth much of a burn, but it's more interesting than the mild.  It's good on everything from the ribs to the chicken to the sweet yams.

My gigantic lunch; loaded potato and "small" side of collards

This trip, I went with the loaded pork stuffed baked potato, a mountain of food that is truly scrumptious, improvable only by adding some chicken to it, though maybe that would just be too much.  A potato cooked over the wood fire wrapped in foil, it is perfectly tender without completely falling apart, split open and filled with shredded pork and topped with sour cream, chives, (real) bacon bits, shredded Vermont cheddar cheese (only the best), mushrooms, and barbeque sauce.  There isn't much to say about this other than YUM!  I added a small (a relative term) side of collards, which were fantastic.  Cooked so that the leaves are soft and the cores still with a little crunch, the collards are great as well, with bits of crispy lardon mixed in.  Normally collards are cooked until they are essentially mush, which can taste good, but again, that texture thing keeps popping up; I like a little bite, and the textural differences between the leaves, cores, and lardon is exactly where you see that complexity that I mentioned earlier.  With a bottle of water, I was out about $18.50, which isn't cheap, but well worth both the price and the 45 minute drive.

Curtis' is great for more than just its food; Curtis himself is an incredibly friendly, jovial man, who

CJ "supervising" Curtis

clearly enjoys himself and his work, spending time talking to his customers, his three (at least) dogs, and of course, his pet pig.  CJ is a gigantically fat fellow, who bears more of a resemblance to a wild boar, tusks and all, than to the pigs we eat, and he is the successor to Curtis' old pet Isabelle, who he had for 13 years; the joke he tells is that he assures the pig that he only cooks chicken, a joke he tells with relish and a hearty chuckle each and every time.

CJ eating a carrot Curtis gave my friend to feed him

Curtis' is only open seasonally, from about April to late October, and seating is available inside a large covered pavilion or at a variety of umbrella covered and open picnic tables.  Today there was a pretty decent guitarist playing and singing, which added some decent ambiance, but you're not coming here for elegance.  It is down home, legitimately good southern comfort food, and I do feel comfortable when I leave.  Make sure you bring cash, as Curtis' does not take cards or checks.  They sell some merchandise on both their website and on site, including bottles of their own sauce.  This is one of my favorite place to go, and the best barbeque I've found north of the Mason-Dixon line, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

The covered seating

******

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