You can also follow on Twitter by following MosesMichael.  That’s my Twitter account and I will be updating that whenever there is a new post.

You can also follow us via our RSS feed.

Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Cheers,

-Matt

1731 W Grand River Ave
Okemos, MI 48864-1803
(517) 347-9066

“Don’t call it a comeback, I been here for years, rockin’ my peers and puttin’ suckas in fear, makin the tears rain down like a MON-soon, listen to the bass go BOOM”

That’s right I’m back from my sabbatical.  “What pray tell were you doing?” one might ask.  “None of your goddamn business!!!11!!!!!1!11!” one might reply.  But seriously, I was saving children from burning buildings and curing diseases that plague small, cute animals (read substitute teaching and eating a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches).  When I finished with this exhausting but rewarding work I found myself to be famished, so I called some friends and we repaired to a relatively new local eatery: T&D’s Coney Grill.

As you can see this is very nice, or at least nicer, than your typical diner/”coney island”, this is probably because this is the former set of Villegas, the ill-fated Okemos bistro.  The interior is very pleasant, with subdued lighting and muted colors that don’t try to claw your eyes out with a visual spoon.  The bar, situated right by the front entrance, is fantastic, long, with great views of the kitchen and the waitress stations (dinner and a show), and makes me sad that I can’t plunk myself down and drink myself into oblivion.  Despite the obvious superiority of the bar over other seating, my party and I chose a booth/table combo, as there were three of us.

I arrived to the table late, as I was unsuccessfully trying to snap a picture of the exterior, and as I sat down the waitress approached with drinks for my fellow diners, she gave a not entirely pleasant snort of surprise and asked if I needed something to drink,  I should have seen this as the beginning of a not very pleasant pattern, but I blithely pushed on and ordered a water.  More on the waitress in a bit.

The menu at T&D’s is pretty typical for a coney-style restaurant.  And if you from around the east lansing area, you  might notice that it has a strikingly similar layout to the menu at Hannah’s Koney Island on Hagadorn.  This is because they are operated by the same owners.  In any case, the menu has the usual greek centered diner fare that one comes to expect and love from a coney island.  Gyros, sandwiches, coney dogs, saganaki, greek salads, etc…

The waitress came back and we began to order.  My female dining companion ordered, and then my male compatriot told her to skip him as he wasn’t quite ready, well neither was I, so I hemmed and hawed for a couple second during which the waitress grew visibly annoyed.  So I finally settled on a gyro supreme with a cup of their soup of the day: split pea with ham.

The soup arrived in short order and was pretty good looking.  Split pea soup is one of those things that I didn’t really trust as a kid, and have come to like as an adult, like girls and wearing pants.  This rendition was decent, but a bit too salty.  The consistancy was really good though, not quite a soup but not yet a stew, and had chunks of ham strewn about it like delicious little shipwreck victims.

Next came the gyro supreme.  Actually all three of us ordered gyros, which became a problem.  The waitress, noting each of our orders, one vegetarian, one regular, and one no onions with extra tomatoes, then set down each plate in front of the wrong person, a mistake we did not catch until it was too late for one of our poor group.  One of my friends and I figured that her vegetarian and my meat (ha) had been switched so we switched back, if only we had known that no-one had received the correct plate we might have been able to avoid the tragedy, but alas one of our number was wounded by the presence of onion in his gyro and stricken by the loss of his extra tomato.  We didn’t figure this out until I accidently ate what was probably his gyro .  My friend, who was getting his gyro wrapped up, noted the presence of onions in his gyro and explained what we thought had happen, the waitress did not act like she was very happy about the possibility of having to get another gyro for my friend or have the onions removed, so my friend very graciously offered to just pick off the onions himself and asked for a box.  As a note, it was not our fault that she set the wrong plates in front of the wrong person, but she just seemed angry at life in general so who knows what was wrong.  I really wanted to make a stop action video of us all running around the restaurant switching plates with the Benny Hill music playing in the background, but the bastard wouldn’t give us permission, so that dream died.

The gyro though, was good.  Not great, not bad, but good.  Slices of gyro meat stacked on a warm pita with tomatoes, no onion apparently, shredded iceberg lettuce, feta cheese (the clutch addition for the “gyro supreme”), and tzatziki sauce.  I enjoyed it, though this gyro shared the complant that I’ve had with all gyros, it’s too hard to get all the ingredients in one bite.  The sandwich is too big to fit into your mouth all at once, so you’re forced to either go for the top or bottom.  Well on the top you get all tzatziki, while on the bottom, all you get is meat.  There are about two prime bites of gyro in an entire sandwich, these occur when you’ve whittled away the edges enough to make it possible to score meat and sauce in the same bite, but by then the tomatoes have inevitably fallen out or there is no feta left, either way you never can realize that dream of the perfectly assembled bite.  It is an outcome I will keep fighting for.

All in all besides the service, the meal was nice and comforting, and not too dear.  I walked out with 9.56 less in my pocket and a full belly.  As a waddled to my car with a post-prandial belch brewing in my stomach, which at this point was waving a tiny Greek flag, I knew I would be back, even though this wasn’t anywhere near the greatest meal of my life, it was a good experience for a coney-island, I just hope that someone gives the waitress a hug before we get there next time.

]]> http://halftonreviews.com/2009/11/11/who-the-hell-is-this-guy/feed/ 3 http://halftonreviews.com/2009/11/08/reminder/ http://halftonreviews.com/2009/11/08/reminder/#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:02:36 +0000 Matt http://halftonreviews.com/?p=246 Just a reminder/plug:

If you’re a Pistons fan go check out Blue Collar Sports, it’s being updated again and has some good insight into the Pistons thus far.

If you’re into art and random things go check out Notalkingplz.  It’s filled with Speen’s art as well as random pictures and information.

If you’re into Books go check Rook Beviews.

That’s it for now.

-Hoob

5055 Marsh Rd
Okemos, MI 48864-1103
(517) 347-7188

Food Rating: 3 out of 5 stars – The food is good. Not great, but Chili’s has become pretty popular and all of the marketing in the world can’t cover up awful food.

Service Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars – This is generally where my distaste from Chili’s comes from. The orders are wrong, nobody seems to give a crap, and nobody seems concerned about our dining experience.

Atmosphere Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars – Gaudy. Not for me, but there isn’t anything really wrong with it.

Price Rating: 3 out of 5 stars – The food is slightly more expensive than I feel it should be, and the beer is considerably more expensive than it should be. But I did get a pretty big margarita for pretty cheap.

Overall Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars – I’m neither here nor there on Chili’s. I probably will continue to avoid them, but I’m not adverse to eating there if that is what other people want to do.

Well, I picked Chili’s because they had been pretty awful the past two times I went there. I decided to give Chili’s a third chance hoping to get a funny story out of the deal. Well, unfortunately for me and fortunately for them the third time was a “charm”.

The first two times visiting this Chili’s were dismal at best. The queso dip was cold with a nice micro-waved film on top, and several orders were wrong. We had to send the server back at least twice per visit because of missing dishes, and on a fairly regular occasion people had to ask for drink refills instead of being asked if they would like more (or, bonus, the server just brings it). The restaurant was slow during these visits, which explains, but does NOT excuse why the food wasn’t fresh, and definitely makes me wonder how the server messed up so much. Both dining experiences were pretty bad.

However, on our third venture to Chili’s they did much better. Our server still seemed like she would have preferred it if we hadn’t come in to dine, and she messed up an order, but once we pointed it out she had it fixed in a jiff.

One thing I was impressed with was a margarita I ordered. The el Presidente or some jazz. I was expecting a regular margarita with a double margarita price. What I got was a decent sized margarita, the shaker with at least another 1.5 refills in it, and a price of like $7. That is OK in my book. Super OK.

As for the food, it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. Kind of generic. People ate up with no complaints.

I ordered some steak and ribs. My steak was ordered rare, and came out pretty close to what I wanted, so I can’t complain. Wasn’t a great cut of meat, but at least they cooked it how I wanted it. The ribs were dry and tasted like generic bbq sauce. As it turns out, I don’t want my Chili’s baby back ribs.

The only weird thing going on was the chips that came as an appetizer. Maybe this is how Chili’s does chips, but I wasn’t a fan. They were thin and kind of soft. Kind of like some fried tissue paper.

Also, the saltines were soggy in the packaging. Weird.

Anyway, I won’t choose to go to Chili’s again despite this not-so-terrible experience. I will sigh and groan if people want to go there, but I’ll probably go if I can’t talk them out of it. Maybe Chili’s are better somewhere else, but it was my understanding that part of being a franchise is to offer the same service no matter where it is. So, either Chili’s of Okemos shouldn’t be part of the franchise, or all Chili’s should be avoided if possible as you run a one-in-three chance of having a mediocre dining experience, and a two-in-three chance of being pissed off. We shall see!

When one evaluates food, how is it to be done? What criteria does one use when evaluating, what is more important, what is less important? Does ambience matter when you’re having the best meal of your life out of a cart, or a shed? If it doesn’t matter in those cases, why should it matter in other restaurants where the food will undoubtably cost more, and probably have flavors that are about as authentic as possible when they’re brought to you by the good people at Sanyo? Why review at all in fact, people still go to Mcdonalds for some reason which seems to elude me (except at 2:30 on a friday night after a few rounds) they obviously care little for any sort of review at all. The question, in short, is how do we write and make it consistant, worthwhile to our readers, and avoid pseudo-culinary grandstanding (or barking at the moon made of cheese as I like to call it)

In considering these questions in many more, I came up with several criteria that I thought about using in my reviews:

In reviewing there must be a gold standard, something to compare other meals by something so ethereal, provoking, comforting and unnerving that this is what food could be that when it passes by your tongue that you think about it for years to come, so I considered thinking about each meal as if it were directly after an experience like that (for me it was a small brasserie in Brussels). How did it stack up, was it even comparable? But I doubted if this would lead to anything more than a sub-par review full of angry prose, being that I am from Michigan.

Next I thought about considering each meal in terms of its authenticity and dedication to what it was trying to do. I would do this in terms of ingrediants, local sources, do they seem like they’re trying to have a successful restaurant, or do they seem primarily concerned with serving successful food, does it hold true to the original if I’ve had it, etc…

And finally I considered a postmodern approach, evaluating each meal in the the time that it was had, using the rubric of the moment. But what good would this be to someone reading my review? How could they ever recreate my experience, and furthermore why would they want to (especially if it was a poor one). It seems like it would turn the whole process into something a bit masturbatory, at least in terms of my writing.

In the end I decided to choose a piecemeal version of all of these approaches. I decided that it is important and necessary to have something to stack my meals up to, so I will always try and keep that Venus of supper in the back of my head, but at the same time I will not discount the moment, because sometimes it can be as important as the food itself (which may have been the case in Brussels, who knows?), and I will also keep an eye out for what people are trying to do with each meal I have, are the flavors honest, are the ingredients fresh, or, bless my stars if this ever happens in lansing, local? And most importantly is the meal true to the identity that the restaurant is pushing on it?

I look forward to being a part of this venture, and I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t looking forward to kvetching about certain places. But in the end I suppose that I’m most looking forward to the quest to find a meal that will stay in my tastebuds and memories for years to come.

Good luck to you all, may your forks never rust, and your knives never dull, and spoons, well spoons can just go fuck themselves.

C

p.s. I didn’t really proof this well, so it may be edited in the future.