KIng's Sandwich Shop -- still in progress

I noticed yesterday that the renovation of King's Sandwich Shop has moved forward one more step -- note the cool new logo on the east side of the building:

Here's an artist's rendering of how the new place will appear when complete:

(from August's Durham Magazine article)

Man v. Food: "Durham" mini-review

Okay, since I mocked the social media marketing folks in the last post I figured I owed it to teh Internets around the globe to at least watch "Man v. Food: Durham" and give a review. And I must say that eh, it's not the show for me. For some reason a show about a chubby guy who has an enormous appetite and doesn't mind looking stupid seems a little too familiar. I hadn't seen an MvF episode before and I doubt I'll watch one again.


On the other hand, I definitely enjoyed the Durham parts. The owners of both Backyard BBQ Pit and Wimpy's were charming, enthusiastic and had a great sense of humor. It was also nice to see the Doughman competition as I'd only heard of it before but never attended. And you can never get enough of a charismatic host saying "I love Durham" several times.
On the MvF website there's also a nice piece on Ninth Street that features Native Threads, the Duck Shop, The Regulator and a fun mini-interview with Carol Anderson of Vaguely Reminiscent. Click on the photo of Carol and Adam above to see the clip. There's also a very gracious "vlog" (people still use that term?) in which Adam is shot sitting mostly in the dark in his hotel room (?) singing the praises of every one he met in Durham.

Finally, this: in the transition shots between segments there were two shots of Raleigh. I assume this was filmed when they were in Raleigh last year, but seriously. How hard is it to shoot ten more seconds of footage from the city you're in? As proof here's a screen shot from the website. Note the CAT (Capital Area Transit) bus in the picture.

All I can say is -- thanks, Allen. (Allen, Adam -- what's the difference?)

Man vs. Social Network Marketers

[Something tells me this is not going to go as planned.*]

The next stop on my new status as a member of the media elite (for those of you with wee memories visit my wayback machine for The Nasher, Picasso and Me): I got an e-mail today from someone named Wendy from Room 214 urging me to blog/tweet about the show "Man v. Food." Honest to Freud I've never seen this show before and only barely have some memory of this guy appearing in Raleigh last year to eat 3000 hot dogs or something like that.

Anyhow, the episode Wednesday night features this wild man's adventures in eating in Durham, or so that's what the release I got said. I'm sure it's going to be a fascinating show but today kids I'd like to talk about this press release-e-mail-thing. Here are some snippets that I really enjoyed:

Durham has been called the "Cradle of Cue", so Adam starts his journey with a search for some good ole Eastern Carolina BBQ.

Oh, where to start. To my knowledge Durham has NEVER been called the "Cradle of Cue." After Googling I found that North Carolina has at times been called the "Cradle of 'Cue" (note the apostrophe, Wendy!) but Durham? Locavore? Sure. Foodie? You bet? But I doubt we'd even make the top 20 in barbecue localities in the state. We certainly get no love from my new favorite food site BBQ Jew. Regardless, if you make it all the way to the Triangle, you pick Backyard BBQ Pit?

And "good ole?" C'mon, Wendy, y'all not frum 'round here, huh? And it's eastern, not Eastern. And it's eastern North Carolina, not eastern Carolina. Catching on?

They're known for their chopped BBQ pork, which btw isn't really chopped, it's stirred (that's how tender it is!). In Adam's own words, the pork "coats your tongue like velvet".

btw? Are we under Twitter length restraints now? And, um, if it's not chopped, it's not chopped. Find me some other NC barbecue restaurant that refers to their meat as stirred. Also, the last word you should ever use to describe eastern North Carolina barbecue is velvet -- that's for fine paintings, not food.

Next up, Adam heads to Wimpy's Grill which is known for big breakfasts and big burgers.

Okay, I've had a burger or two at Wimpy's, and I enjoyed them, but they weren't ecstasy-producing. In the YouTube clip Wendy sent along the focus at Wimpy's is far more on the toppings than the ground-at-Wimpy's hamburger. Look at all those toppings! And more toppings! They're messy.

Also, they serve breakfast at Wimpy's? Maybe they do, but never in my life have I heard of Wimpy's as being "known for big breakfasts." You?

And did you know Wimpy's ...

"is a hot spot for tailgating?"


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WHERE? In that incredibly narrow all-asphalt parking lot? Or does she mean the Dukies are all grabbing some burgers on their way to the big football games? (Insert your own Duke football joke here.)

This burger is so messy Adam says, "I feel I ned to eat it in the shower".

Ned? And proper use of quotation marks?

On a more personal note, I hope you do not find this email offensive. I try to reach out to people who would be interested to know that Man V. Food is coming!

No, Wendy, I don't find this offensive at all. I do worry that in the battle of good writing vs. social media that social media seems to have the upper hand at the moment. Good luck wherever the next episode takes you.

--Steve

P.S. Oooh, that Room 214 group seems a bit, I don't know, white, don't you think?


[*On the other hand, I'm writing about -- and you're reading about -- a show I knew nothing about mere hours ago, so perhaps their job is done. Someone at Room 214 is no doubt smiling and noting the irony ... while sending someone else to pull up the clip of "Reality Bites" where Ethan Hawke defines irony so everyone remembers what it is.]

Mmmm ... doughnut muffins

Inspired by the amazing dessert maker who appears at the Durham Farmer's Market (and whose blog is growing cobwebs) I searched for a recipe for doughnut muffins. While I found several that had wildly varying ingredients (sweet potato puree! four eggs! five sticks of butter!) I settled on this one. Easy to make and incredibly delicious ... in just about 45 minutes start to finish you'll have these delectable treats for yourself. Share them with loved ones if necessary. Enjoy!

Yum O

This just in from Sue Stock's Retailing column in the N&O: Char-Grill is coming to Durham! Construction will start soon on a location in New Hope Commons and should open in the fall. Char-Grill is only located in Raleigh and Cary (as far as I know) so this is a big step for Durham burger lovers. I remember going with my brother in the early '80s to the one on Hillsborough Street when he was at NC State. You'd write your order on a little paper menu, slide it down a chute and wait for your burger to be grilled to perfection. Not sure what their source is for the meat and the only official website that I found didn't mention it (and is geared to potential franchise owners, so apparently they're planning to expand quite a bit).

[It's taken more than 30 years to get a Char-Grill in Durham; will it ever be possible to land a Krispy Kreme franchise? Sigh.]


On a related note, there's an Evos fast-food burger place opening in Chapel Hill's Eastgate Shopping Center next to Trader Joe's. I don't know much about them but they tout their meat as "humanely raised" and their salads as organic, plus the food is supposed to be lower in fat and there are more vegetarian options. According to Sue Stock in the N&O last month they opened yesterday but according to the coupon in this week's Independent they open tomorrow. Grab the coupon to get a free milkshake!

Cobbler!

Enough of these bad food posts -- here's a good one! The fam and I went to out first Wednesday afternoon outing to the Durham Farmer's Market and got a bunch of stuff, including some delish Sungold cherry tomatoes from Ben at Fickle Creek Farm and some purple peppers from a farmer whose name I forgot.

BUT -- and the key for posting, I got two pints of large juicy blackberries from Lyons Farms. Above and below are my blackberry cobbler photos. Don't you wish you had some right now?

And now the culprit turns to ....

Still following that salmonella story? To recap, it was tomatoes, then maybe jalapenos, and now it could be serrano peppers ('cause nobody can tell them apart, sez the CDC) and maybe cilantro. But a number of pesky infected people are saying that they didn't eat salsa or anything containing jalapenos. CDC food safety chief Dr. Robert Tauxe told The Associated Press that they "are quite sure that neither tomatoes nor jalapenos explain the entire outbreak at this point. ... We're presuming that both of them have caused illness."Added FDA food safety chief Dr. David Acheson: "It's just been a spectacularly complicated and prolonged outbreak." And a spokeswoman adds that for every documented case there could be 30-40 undocumented. Sheesh.

No, what we really meant was

I feel like I'm halfway through a "Law and Order: Criminal Intent" episode. Remember how in the opening segments we were led to believe that tomatoes were the culprits behind the Great Salmonella Thing of 2008? Now -- a few commercial breaks later -- we've abandoned that line of thinking (no doubt after some erudite observations from Goren and wisecracks from Eames) and now the focus is on jalapeños. Oh I see. It's always easy to attack those south of the border as suspects, eh? No doubt the tomato growers will be serving some papers for their defamation lawsuit soon.

And now to wait for the end of the show when the real killer is found: tortilla chips? Sour cream? Black beans? Cilantro? I can hardly wait.

About that.

So, you know the whole tomato-salmonella thing? You know, the one where more than 800 people have been reported to have been infected with the same strain (and countless others just at home with "the stomach flu")? Well, the delightful CDC held a press conference last Friday to announce the following finding: tomatoes may or may not be responsible.

Come again?

From the Washington Post:

"We continue to see a strong association with tomatoes, but we are keeping an open mind about other ingredients," said Patricia Griffin, a top epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"We have to re-examine the whole thing," David Acheson, a top food safety official with the Food and Drug Administration said. "We are concerned there is something out there still exposing people to this salmonella saintpaul strain." ... "Nothing that Dr. Griffin said indicates that we should be taking a serious look at anything else, but rightly that question is being asked," he said. "We need to be looking at all possibilities."

So it's definitely the tomatoes, except maybe something else is out there, but nothing indicates that there is, but we still should be looking for something else.

Want to know one of the big problems? Tomatoes from all over Florida and Mexico get shipped to Florida, dumped all together, and then "repacked to meet the customer specifications" -- so they have no idea where tainted tomatoes (if indeed there are any!) came from, and it's all our fault anyways since we consumers are asking for it.

At least we have FDA inspectors out there making sure this doesn't happen, right? Er, not really. The Dallas Morning News tells us that just a trickle of imports from Mexico are being examined by inspectors. "We have this huge growth in imports, this huge growth in trade; at the same time we have severely cut back on our regulatory agencies and their ability to do their job, especially the food portion of the Food and Drug Administration," said Jean Halloran, director of food policy initiatives for Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports magazine.

What's a poor boy to do? Head to the Durham Farmers Market (or other similar market). Or sign up for a local CSA. Or grow your own. Or a combo of all three.