Issue 195
News: Derek the Restaurant Critic.
Normally, I do not review restaurants. Normally, I'm just content to eat whatever the menu has that fits within my tastes. However, I recently (twice, as a matter of fact) got dragged to a restaurant so horrible that my experiences simply demand that I have to do so. That restaurant is the Chicago Diner. The restaurant's major sell is that it is a vegan restaurant which apparently manages to use vegan cuisine to mimic diner cuisine to the extent that it is indistinguishable from the real thing. However, is it? The fact is, that it's not. To test and see if this is possible, I ate a "bacon" cheezeburger. (sic) To analyse both of the major meat components, the "burger" was made out of seitan, which is essentially a fancy word for dough. The fact is that it tastes like it, with a lot of spices that are, in theory, supposed to help it taste more like beef, but, apart from failing, that will not sit well with your intestines. As for the bacon part of it, it tastes like nothing. Simply put, it has no taste, and I mean this in the sense that Jean-Baptiste Grenouille had no scent. I had to force myself to eat the entire thing, due to my being malnourished to the point where my own faeces would have been equally appetizing if the smell could be neutralized, but there was no point whatsoever wherein any part of the burger tasted like bacon, cheese, or beef. However, we can probably lay this down to the fact that making dough actually taste like meat is impossible, but this does not excuse their other crimes against cuisine. Both times I was dragged there, I ordered a side of Mashed Potatoes, and somehow, even this was really off, particularly due to it looking neither like a potato nor mashed to any particularly meaningful degree. The taste itself was bland, different from the flavour I'm used to with potatoes in its sheer lack. After the Bacon Cheezeburger fiasco, I decided to order a salad. Surely if there's anything that a vegan could make palatable, it's salad. And yet, I was wrong, especially with what passed off as ranch dressing, tasting like a sub-par variation on the dill dipping sauce that is served with vegetable platters that are supposed to be sold for parties. Of course, the serving staff are kind, as you can expect from people who seem to be incapable of that most basic of human thought processes: rationalising the death of other beings for one's own desires. All that said, would I recommend it? Well, on the condition that you have no sense of taste whatsoever, or all the common sense of Madeline Bassett, then I would. If you don't fit those two criteria, I would guess that it would be the best argument for eating meat, especially human (or at least veal, which is supposed to taste exactly like human flesh). By contrast, if you're looking for a vegetarian restaurant that doesn't decieve, try Sweet Tomatoes. It makes no pretense of claiming that anything in it is supposed to taste like meat, and, for what it's worth, its food actually tastes good.
Quotes:
"Vegetarianism is harmless enough, though it is apt to fill a man with wind and self righteousness."
- Robert Hutchinson
"Veronica forces herself to go through a great deal of labor and preparation just to make her food taste more like meat, with weird-ass spices from around the world sprinkled atop "exotic" (and mandatory) sauces, curries, fungus, Boca burgers, textured vegetable paste, Tofurkey, and other processed blends of soy and gluten."
___________Rotten Library on Eating Disorders.
"It was like good, fully developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted. It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal. It was mild, good meat with no other sharply defined or highly characteristic taste such as for instance, goat, high game, and pork have. The steak was slightly tougher than prime veal, a little stringy, but not too tough or stringy to be agreeably edible. The roast, from which I cut and ate a central slice, was tender, and in color, texture, smell as well as taste, strengthened my certainty that of all the meats we habitually know, veal is the one meat to which this meat is accurately comparable."
___________William Seabrook on Menschenfleisch.
"In a post-apocalyptic world, one man is transported from the microwave dimension to feast upon the remains of those who once lived. Rated R."
_______________Meatwad
Normally, I do not review restaurants. Normally, I'm just content to eat whatever the menu has that fits within my tastes. However, I recently (twice, as a matter of fact) got dragged to a restaurant so horrible that my experiences simply demand that I have to do so. That restaurant is the Chicago Diner. The restaurant's major sell is that it is a vegan restaurant which apparently manages to use vegan cuisine to mimic diner cuisine to the extent that it is indistinguishable from the real thing. However, is it? The fact is, that it's not. To test and see if this is possible, I ate a "bacon" cheezeburger. (sic) To analyse both of the major meat components, the "burger" was made out of seitan, which is essentially a fancy word for dough. The fact is that it tastes like it, with a lot of spices that are, in theory, supposed to help it taste more like beef, but, apart from failing, that will not sit well with your intestines. As for the bacon part of it, it tastes like nothing. Simply put, it has no taste, and I mean this in the sense that Jean-Baptiste Grenouille had no scent. I had to force myself to eat the entire thing, due to my being malnourished to the point where my own faeces would have been equally appetizing if the smell could be neutralized, but there was no point whatsoever wherein any part of the burger tasted like bacon, cheese, or beef. However, we can probably lay this down to the fact that making dough actually taste like meat is impossible, but this does not excuse their other crimes against cuisine. Both times I was dragged there, I ordered a side of Mashed Potatoes, and somehow, even this was really off, particularly due to it looking neither like a potato nor mashed to any particularly meaningful degree. The taste itself was bland, different from the flavour I'm used to with potatoes in its sheer lack. After the Bacon Cheezeburger fiasco, I decided to order a salad. Surely if there's anything that a vegan could make palatable, it's salad. And yet, I was wrong, especially with what passed off as ranch dressing, tasting like a sub-par variation on the dill dipping sauce that is served with vegetable platters that are supposed to be sold for parties. Of course, the serving staff are kind, as you can expect from people who seem to be incapable of that most basic of human thought processes: rationalising the death of other beings for one's own desires. All that said, would I recommend it? Well, on the condition that you have no sense of taste whatsoever, or all the common sense of Madeline Bassett, then I would. If you don't fit those two criteria, I would guess that it would be the best argument for eating meat, especially human (or at least veal, which is supposed to taste exactly like human flesh). By contrast, if you're looking for a vegetarian restaurant that doesn't decieve, try Sweet Tomatoes. It makes no pretense of claiming that anything in it is supposed to taste like meat, and, for what it's worth, its food actually tastes good.
Quotes:
"Vegetarianism is harmless enough, though it is apt to fill a man with wind and self righteousness."
- Robert Hutchinson
"Veronica forces herself to go through a great deal of labor and preparation just to make her food taste more like meat, with weird-ass spices from around the world sprinkled atop "exotic" (and mandatory) sauces, curries, fungus, Boca burgers, textured vegetable paste, Tofurkey, and other processed blends of soy and gluten."
___________Rotten Library on Eating Disorders.
"It was like good, fully developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted. It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal. It was mild, good meat with no other sharply defined or highly characteristic taste such as for instance, goat, high game, and pork have. The steak was slightly tougher than prime veal, a little stringy, but not too tough or stringy to be agreeably edible. The roast, from which I cut and ate a central slice, was tender, and in color, texture, smell as well as taste, strengthened my certainty that of all the meats we habitually know, veal is the one meat to which this meat is accurately comparable."
___________William Seabrook on Menschenfleisch.
"In a post-apocalyptic world, one man is transported from the microwave dimension to feast upon the remains of those who once lived. Rated R."
_______________Meatwad
posted by DerekAxe at 6:59 PM
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