NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 17:03:42 +0000 (UTC) X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en Xref: usenet.INS.cwru.edu pgh.food:16335 I went to Cleveland last weekend and had some interesting food. I drove up on Friday evening after work and was going to try a diner I had heard about in Middleburg Hts. When I got there I found that it was no longer there. There was supposed to be another diner a few miles further north on the same road but I couldn't find it either. It was probably out of business also. So, by that time I was starving. Our friend Rob Lake had just told me about a great Vietnamese place called Minh Anh in Lakewood at W. 52nd and Detroit. So I made tracks for Lakewood. I was disappointed about not getting to try a new diner but at this point I would eat anything, and I hadn't had Vietnamese for a long time so it was sounding very good to me. When I got to Detroit and W. 52nd I found a Vietnamese restaurant, but it was named Long Phung. It looked nice so I went in. They had an extensive menu with dishes I've not encountered before. I was most excited to see an appetizer dish of shrimp with sugar cane. The overall prices were very low but this one was quite high due to it being a particularly complicated dish. I ordered it and also ordered some bun thit nuong which is one of my favorite dishes and the first Vietnamese dish I ever ate many years ago. The shrimp with sugar cane is ground, seasoned shrimp which is formed into a sausage-like shape around a stick of sugar cane. It is then deep- fried. It is served with rice paper wrappers, a large bowl of warm water, and a plate of various items to be rolled up with it - rice vermicelli sprinkled with some chopped peanuts, julienned carrots and daikon, fresh herbs (Thai basil, etc.), and lettuce leaves. There is also a dipping sauce - nuoc cham. I asked the waiter to tell me the proper way to eat it. First you dip a rice paper wrapper in the warm water and turn it around and around until it softens enough to use as a wrapper. Then you put some of each of the accompaniments on the center of the wrapper and top them with some of the shrimp which you slide off the sugar cane stick. Then you wrap it up like a burrito and dip it in the sauce before eat bite. It was delicious! The bun thit nuong was excellent also. It consists of warm rice vermicelli topped by julienned vegetables - cucumber, daikon, carrot, Thai basil, and grilled strips of pork. It also comes with a dish of nuoc cham which you pour over the dish before you eat it. It was some of the best bun thit nuong I've had since I first tasted it back in So. Calif. 20 years ago! I can't wait to go back to this place! The bun was only $5.50 and there was a ton of it. Between the 2 dishes they would have easily fed two people. The whole dinner only cost about $15.50 with tax. It turns out the place Rob recommended is one block further west on Detroit at W. 53rd St. But it doesn't matter because the place I went to was great. But I'll have to check out the other one some time. Saturday I went to the West Side Market. I first ate lunch at Lelolai, the Cuban bakery 1 block down W. 25th from the market. I had a cubano (Cuban sandwich). Excellent! Then I checked out a new place across the street called Market 25. It has an assortment of vendors, including prepared food stands, inside. I was too full to eat anything but can't wait to go back and try some of them. There was a fajita place, a Hungarian place, a teahouse/ noodle place, a sushi place, etc. Then there is a place that sells chocolates, a pet place, a tarot reader, a candle place, a crystal/gemstone place, etc. The food wasn't too expensive but the rest of it was very upscale/yuppy price-wise. For example, the sauce place had Caribbean-style hot sauce for $6 a bottle. Way too expensive in my opinion. I finally got to the market itself and ended up buying about 5 lbs. of double smoked Hungarian bacon and some Marburger Dairy whole milk butter- milk. (This really griped me when I saw it! Marburger Dairy is up near Butler and it's very difficult to find their stuff locally, but I go to Cleveland and there it is!). I also found a place there that sells black pudding - O'Reilly's - but unfortunately they were out. She told me I could call ahead and have them save some for me the next time I go up there. I was really excited about that! But disappointed that I couldn't get it right then and there. Sigh. By this time I was very tired and my back was killing me and all that bacon and the buttermilk was heavy. I went to the produce section and got some fresh raspberries for $1 a box (1/2 pint). and then made my way to the car which was about a mile away (well, that's how it seemed!). From the market I went over to CSU for my friend's daughter's law school graduation and then from there out to Fairport Harbor for the graduation party. Lots of good food was had. Lianne's (the graduate) boyfriend grilled 2 gigantic pork loins (most likely purchased at the very same West Side Market I had so recently left). They were succulent and delicious with his own recipe of basting sauce. I even got to bring some home. Dessert was 2 cakes I had made - an orange chiffon cake with orange buttercream icing and an experimental pina colada chiffon cake with pina colada buttercream icing. The pina colada cake didn't turn out as well as I had hoped, but it was still tasty and the icing was excellent. Everybody ate it though so all was well. Sunday I stopped in Cleveland Heights (?) to try the new double diners that Rob told us about - Dottie's Diner and Sweet City Diner. Actually, it's one big restaurant with an entrance area built in between the 2 diners. They seat you in either diner depending on where there is a table available. I was seated in the Sweet City side. I ordered the Dottie's Special breakfast - 2 eggs, choice of meat, hash browns or home fries, toast, and beverage. I had noticed an a la carte listing for Dottie's Special Home Fries so I asked them to substitute them for the plain home fries. The special fries have green pepper and cheddar cheese on them. So I ordered my eggs over medium (I really like them over easy but most restaurants don't cook them long enough to completely cook the whites if you order them over easy to I always go with over medium and they are usually perfect), the home fries, the bacon, toast, and raspberry iced tea. Well, I was very disappointed in the food, for the most part, and in the service. First off, I was not given any silverware and I didn't notice until my food came, after which the waitress disappeared instantly and it took me some time to flag her down to get utensils. Also, my toast had not been buttered so again I had to wait to flag her down and by the time she brought me butter the toast was cold (actually, I think it was already cold when I got it). One of the eggs was broken and the yolk was hard. The other was okay. I like to dip my toast in the yolk so I was not to please to have a hard yolk. The bacon was the only thing that was good - in fact it was excellent - it was thick-sliced applewood-cured bacon, and I had asked for it to be cooked soft and it was perfectly cooked and quite delicious. The "special" home fries, however, were far from special and not even good. They had no flavor whatsoever. There was no brown, crispy outside. They looked like they were made from boiled potatoes which were diced and briefly cooked in a little oil, but not long enough to get them brown and crispy on the outside, and then held in a steam tray or microwaved before being served. The diced green pepper did not appear to have been cooked at all and certainly fried with the potatoes - it was very crunchy, almost raw. There was shredded cheddar sprinkled over the top but even that did not give the dish any flavor. It didn't even seem to have been seasoned with salt and pepper. And, to make matters worse, I got a wobbly table and an out-of-order juke box at my booth! Adding insult to injury. I mean these diners are supposedly newly renovated when they were moved to Cleveland from New Jersey and wherever else the other one came from. They haven't been open all that long so I would expect things to be in better shape. I will say, though, that I liked the music they were playing which was all oldies from the 60's, I think. I guess I would go back if only for the bacon, but I would be very careful about what else I ordered there. Might just order the bacon and nothing else. ;-) From there I drove out to Mentor to visit my cousin and then drove home. Spent Monday eating leftover Vietnamese food and pork from the party. Hope everyone had a nice Memorial Day weekend. Kate
Cleveland, OH