Eat This Blog: Eggs & Corned Beef Hash, Freeway Restaurant, Toledo

Posted on 8 May 2008 under Breakfast, Eat This Blog, Restaurant Chit-Chat | 6 Comments

I love a good breakfast. Have I told you I love breakfast before? Yeah well, I still do. If it were at all possible I’d have breakfast for breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses, lunch, afternoon tea, luncheon, dinner, supper, before-bed snack, in-bed snack, a midnight snack, and even a two a.m. feeding.

This morning’s was a good breakfast. This is a Three Egg and Corned Beef Hash breakfast with the toast being replaced by a couple biscuits and whipped butter. Luna Pier Cook reader Dorothy might recognize this Corned Beef Hash as being from the Freeway Restaurant, across Navarre from St. Charles Hospital in Toledo. The restaurant’s been around since 1957, and many people I know recall eating there when they were kids. Yeah, this is real Corned Beef Hash. As the restaurant advertises it, it’s obviously “straight from the brisket”, being moist, tender and flavorful, with just the right amount of saltiness, cooked as perfectly as those three over-easy eggs.

Eggs like that make me jealous, as I need so much more practice at making them like this. I have the right pans …

Oh, and we can’t forget the restaurant’s signature “copper-topped” register counter.


Click on either image for a larger version.

Road Trip! Ohio City Pasta in Cleveland

Posted on 22 April 2008 under Photos, Restaurant Chit-Chat, Shopping | 3 Comments


Click on either of these top two images for a larger version.

What’s seriously annoying is going on a food-related road trip, getting to where I need to be, seeing mounds of fresh food everywhere … and not being able to eat any.

Yeah, that would have been today. Mountains of freshly-made mushroom ravioli … and I mean absolute mounds of the stuff … and not a single pot of boiling water anywhere.

That just sucks.

Oh yeah, the shirt the young man making the pasta was wearing had the pasta’s cooking instructions printed on the back. But could I so much as practice?? Nooooo … sorry, no can do.

What you’re seeing in these top two photos is the manufacturing kitchen at Ohio City Pasta. Located in the Old City area just east of Cleveland overlooking Lake Erie, these folks staff this facility 24/7 to keep up with orders from multiple restaurants in multiple states. You may have had some of the pasta from Ohio City Pasta in a restaurant and not even known it. And if you get a chance to visit the West Side Market in the same Old City area you can purchase their pasta for your own kitchen at home.

I’ll tell you what, this is some darn good stuff. If you can’t get to a restaurant serving Ohio City Pasta products, get over to the West Side Market on Mondays or Wednesdays and get some of your own. I’m not so sure, though, that if you ask for cooking directions they’ll give you the shirts off their backs. In fact I’ll hasten to say it:

Probably not.

Executive Chef Tad Cousino of the Frog Leg Inn in Erie, Michigan is
seen below visiting with the staff at the Ohio City Pasta stand at the
West Side Market in Cleveland.

Video: Restaurant Meets “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”

Posted on 8 April 2008 under Restaurant Chit-Chat, Video | No Comments

While the food at s Baggers in Neremburg, Germany isn’t made by machine (there are still chefs in the upstairs kitchen), after ordering your food with a touchscreen the plate is sent to your table on rails. And unlike Ian Fleming’s Caractacus Potts the system at the restaurant includes much better braking …

Greek Diner Food & A Diner Recipe for Tricolor Cole Slaw

Posted on 3 April 2008 under Recipes, Restaurant Chit-Chat | No Comments


A serving of Cod with Hashbrowns from Gander’s Restaurant here in
Luna Pier, Michigan. While the restaurant’s owners aren’t Greek (they
hail from Albania) the food is quite reminiscent of that from some of the
better Greek diners I’ve visited over the years.

The New York Times recently published an article on the demise of Greek-owned diners within the city. From the article:

(T)he immigration pipeline from Greece that peaked between the 1950s and 1970 has dried up as Greece has prospered … All that is not to mention what Peter Makrias, publisher-editor of a magazine for the Greek-American food industry, says are the two most insidious forces wiping such diners off the map — the banks and chain drugstores that are buying up those enviable roadside locations and the competition from franchise restaurants.

My family first took notice of the Greek-owned restaurants in Michigan in the late 1970s. It became a kind of game, searching out these wonderful family diners with their massive portions of good honest food, the kind of food truckers would also seek out on a regular basis. We became friends with many of these owners in the Flint area and frequented their establishments on our normal Friday evening shopping trips.

I remember a Greek-owned restaurant on the King’s Highway just west of Toronto. We were staying at the Candy Haven Tourist Home in 1982 and ate at that restaurant across the street each morning. And each morning, the owner & cook would come out himself to take our order. There were six of us traveling that trip, but the man never wrote our orders down. He cooked them up, along with anything anyone else had ordered, remembered everything perfectly, and knew afterward which plate went to which customer.

I have my own story about working working with an excellent Greek cook. I didn’t enter a restaurant kitchen until April of 1983. Frisch’s Big Boy on the western edge of Columbus just outside the freeway somehow decided I was the right person to open their first breakfast bar and operate it five days each week. We tested everything for longevity in a steam table on wheels. Grits didn’t hold out too well, nor did pancakes, or the fruit pie filling we set out as toppings. Of course, scrambled eggs, sausages, freshly-grilled shredded potatoes, and other decent things survived the hours on that table under the warming lights.

Gus Pappas was the first cook I knew who taught me real skills. A tall, skinny Greek at least 50 years old, he taught me to steam whole eggs instead of hard-boiling them to make them easy to peel. He was the first to show me halfway-decent knifing skills, how to prep a whole pineapple to make it a snackable food, and how to really taste a dish, and then make adjustments to it. When Gus was eased out of the management of that Big Boy in 1984 in favor of young MBA types, the real skills in that kitchen also went away.

Again, the New York Times article:

(P)essimists feel that the flavor Greeks have brought to diners will one day pass into memory. [Aristides Garganourakis, 57, owner of the Dobbs Diner in Dobbs Ferry] puts it bluntly: “When Greeks get out of diners, there will no more be diners.”

I hope this doesn’t happen. Diners have been around longer than the Greeks have been here. Those diners might just need to be re-invented.

Diner Tricolor Cole Slaw
Serves 6 - 8

Dressing Ingredients
3 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
2 cups Hellman’s mayonaise
1/4 teaspoon Kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
3 tablespoons finely-chopped fresh parsley

Salad Ingredients
3 cups shredded red cabbage
5 cups shredded green cabbage
1 cup peeled & shredded carrots

In a large mixing bowl, mix together all the dressing ingredients. Use tongs to mix in the shredded vegetables. Cover with plastic wrap and chill at least two hours before serving.

Pizza Hut now … Pasta Hut???

Posted on 1 April 2008 under Food In The News, Restaurant Chit-Chat | 6 Comments

Honestly, this doesn’t look like any April Fool’s joke: 

Pasta Hut Web Site

Apparently this news is now making the rounds. Me, I’m not sure yet what to think.

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