Back when we were freshmen, and it was welcome week, and everyone was desperately trying to get black out drunk, there was a magical place called BBQ on the corner of 8th Street and University Ave. BBQ was a place without pretensions--just a little restaurant that dared to dream that impossible dream: financial success through ridiculously sized drinks sold to underage kids. Life was simple, then. They ignored the terror in our eyes, the furtive glances we cast at each other as we prayed they wouldn't ask for IDs, and we, in turn, ignored the infestation of rats and cockroaches. Unfortunately, the Department of Health got nothing out of this deal, and so BBQ shut down. Of course, there are two within a three block radius, but we were freshmen and our legs were really short.
Fact: all college freshmen are the human equivalents of dachshunds (Fig. 1 on the left). Like the canine, they are great hunters. After gaining the freshman fifteen and realizing that a diet
of garlic knots is not a merciful one, they shed weight over the summer, and start to resemble the shar pei (Fig. 2 on the right). As everyone knows, however, shar peis, like
weight-losing college students, are doomed to death by explosion because their
skins stretch too tight. Plus, they have loans to pay off. Nature is cruel, no
doubt about it.
In any case, BBQ at least had the excuse of having cheap drinks. Johnny Rockets, on the other hand, had nothing going for it. Overpriced, mediocre burgers in a city where it's easy to do much better than that. Basically, it's like going to Olive Garden in Times Square: $15 for romaine lettuce!?! Steal!
Ultimately, however, Johnny Rockets faced the same fate as BBQ, and the land lay fallow, until Pop's came along. Pop's has great, sturdy wood tables, a rustic feel, it's legitimated by its connection to Brooklyn, and it's avoided the curse of fluorescent lighting. More importantly, the presence of a group of men who were so manly as to be borderline gay only served to emphasize eatery's virility--the number one quality I look for in a restaurant. I went there with two friends who are starting a beef blog (Shut Your Beef Curtains is the name, and yes, the double entendre is beautifully subtle).
Sam got Pop's burger, which is just a basic burger, and Adrian got the Cholo burger (with no vegetables. All meat, no nonsense. And no, the meat was not lean) Adrian and Sam then proceeded to film themselves eating their burgers with a fish eye camera that you could wear like a headlamp. Sam basically had to put the camera over his eyes, and spent about five minutes griping about the fact that he couldn't see his food. The quality of the meat was amazing, and Adrian's had such an unexpected array of flavors that we had to have a long discussion about the logistics of their meat ratings system, and finding a control for a burger that does not fit the standard type.
Oh scientific method! How did
you get so hilarious!?!?
Because I'd eaten Swedish meatballs for lunch, I decided that I didn't want to get a burger, so, of course, in an effort to avoid eating meat, I ordered a crispy chicken sandwich. (This is reminiscent of the time I was going to get lunch with a friend and loudly proclaimed my desire to eat healthy and get a salad or something. We wound up going to a Chinese restaurant where I got fried rice with a side of fried egg rolls.) Regardless, the fried chicken was both spicy and sweet, and the sauce on the bread definitely had some mango in it--this shit was layered.
Conclusion: I should probably start taking notes on what I'm eating while I'm eating it because most of this entry was dedicated to a defunct restaurant that employed, in the eyes of the law, criminals, and to drawing parallels between dogs and college students.
No comments:
Post a Comment