Weekend Assignment: Rewind to #312

Weekend Assignment #312: Write A Culinary Review.


Your reviews can be about a favorite restaurant, or a specific item on a menu. Packaged foods, or something you created yourself. It's all up to you. Your take on it can be positive or negative, hey, it's your opinion! :)


Extra Credit: Write one paragraph about the WORST thing you have ever eaten.

Well. You all know that I am about as gourmet as a five year old. In any given restaurant, I am likely to order the same thing over and over. So I will give you a menu item on which I have sold a ton of friends and colleagues. It comes from Stonewood Ale House, a Bar and Grill in Schaumburg. I am something of a regular. Some suburbanites will know it as “that place that used to be the Voodoo Lounge”.

It is called a Crispy Chicken Wrap and it is as it sonuds. “Crispy coated chicken with bacon, lettuce, tomato and honey mustard dressing. Wrapped in a tomato tortilla.” Of course, “crispy” means fried. But that really is required for two reasons:

1. Joy has tried it with grilled chicken and given it a thumbs down.

2. My friend Dee asked the waiter about the recipe and discovered that the batter – the “coating” – is Cap’n Crunch cereal. You can’t beat that.

Of course, I can’t live without going all high maintenance on everything, so I order mine with no tomatoes. I also substitute the pasta salad that it comes with for the house-made potato chips. I figured that if a restaurant bothers to make its own chips, they are probably good. I was correct. Incidentally, I also apply that rule to macaroni and cheese.

The worst thing I have ever eaten must have something to do with broccoli, but my worst restaurant experience was on one of my first ever business trips.  My then-boss shamed me into trying something.  Oysters Rockefeller.  I told him that I don't like oysters and he said this was totally different - all fully cooked and stuff.  So I tried it.

That was the last time I ever let anyone talk me into trying something new.