Virtuous burgers at Larkburger

Occasionally, I have a good meal at a restaurant but find that I never visit again. It's rarely a conscious choice, in that nothing turned me off—not bad service, not bad food, and not bad atmosphere, either. Usually everything is just fine…except maybe that nothing really turned me on, either.

That's where I am with Larkburger. Don't get me wrong, it's good stuff. When I went with MC for lunch at the Fort Collins location, the lightly seared tuna filet in my tuna burger was cooked perfectly, and complemented nicely by a toasted soft bun, fresh veggies, and a creamy wasabi-ginger sauce. MC liked her turkey burger. And we both dug the addictive thin-cut fries showered in truffle oil, parsley, and grated Parmesan cheese, which called to mind the ones I enjoyed at Big Al's Burger's and Dogs.

Still, there was something that seemed to fall flat. Maybe it was the emptiness of the place when we went, or the slightly higher price tags on the menu, or the overly sterile-feeling atmosphere—but none of that really mattered, either. It didn't hit me until I read this quote about Larkburger from Sunset Magazine: "At last, a burger joint that makes you feel virtuous." You know what? If I'm eating a burger, I don't want to feel virtuous. Chances are that if I'm going out to get a burger, I want a big, greasy, sloppy one, and I want my fries hearty instead of dainty, my meal down-home instead of gourmet. Larkburger is a great option for a healthier fast food…I guess I just don't crave a healthy burger.

Diner favorites with a twist at Sam's No. 3

My parents were arriving to Fort Collins so they could attend a reading I was giving, and I'd rented a car for the occasion. (Most students in my MFA program give a reading of their poetry or fiction in their final year, and mine was taking place the week before graduation.) As I've mentioned before, I'm not terribly experienced with driving, and after getting myself down to Denver to have dinner with ES before I picked them up from the airport, it seemed necessary to reward myself with a meal at someplace casual and low-key.

Sam's No. 3 has a few different locations, one of which is not far from ES's house. It's a restaurant that combines a Mexican menu with Greek and American diner classics, meaning that you can get a burger or chili rellenos or pork souvlaki—or that chili-cheese fries will come drowned in a spicy, salty, pork green chili rather than a red one. One order is more than enough for two people, and really, it's probably best shared among three or four.

ES was enticed to order the "One of Each" option under the Coney Island Specials menu—a quarter pound burger and a split, grilled hot dog each topped with mustard, onion, and a thin red chili. Not a bad deal for six bucks.

Wanting something lighter, I went with "Mom’s Greek Salad": romaine lettuce, tomato, slivered red onion, cucumber, bell peppers, kalamata olives, and feta cheese in vinaigrette, served with pieces of pita bread. I added on gyro meat for another two dollars, not expecting the huge pile that showed up on the plate; while it seemed like typical mass-produced gyro meat with its uniform texture, flavor, and appearance (no twirling spit in the kitchen, here), it was nonetheless good with the fluffy pita and cucumber yogurt sauce that came with it.

Thus fortified and suitably unwound from the drive, ES and I went back to his house until it was time for me to get in the car—again—to receive my parents at the airport, and bring them back to Fort Collins for a weekend in Colorado.

A giant, juicy burger with many hats at Cherry Cricket

So what makes a good burger?

At The Cherry Cricket in Denver's Cherry Creek area, it's an extraordinarily juicy half pound beef patty on a squishy sesame seed bun, along with whatever you desire from a long list of add-ons. In addition to the standard cheeses and vegetables, you can request to top your patty with salsa, peanut butter, guacamole, or sour cream; drown it in green chile; or toss it in spicy blackened seasoning or wing sauce. Standard practice among ES and his friends, too, is to never skip adding a fried egg. But it's easy to overload, so on my visit I went with a more classic version: swiss cheese, sauteed mushrooms, and grilled bermuda onions.

First, though, as part of an ongoing effort to understand Colorado's obsession with green chile, ES and I had Cherry Cricket's version, in the extra-large side portion (you're looking at about six ounces). Unfortunately, this green chile was nothing like what I expected; it was thin, lacked spiciness, and barely tasted of green chiles. (Then again, I'm not really sure what makes a really good rendition—anyone? Suggestions on where to find the best are welcome!) And there were also frings, a mixed basket of onion rings and fries, which were good enough to quickly disappear between all of us.

Then, the main event. I found my burger rather too greasy, the sesame bun so unable to stand up to the copious beef juices that the bottom half completely collapsed into sogginess. The meat seemed as if it could have been more flavorful, too, and as I ate the toppings slid this way and that, a problem of all multiple-topping burgers. Still, it's worth noting that I was alone in my struggle, being squeamish at times about getting grubby while eating; as demonstrated by the above photo, ES and his friends had no problem wolfing their burgers down—oozing yolk, running grease, glistening fingers, and all.

Stove: A favorite of Astoria

TL has been a fan of Stove in Astoria for a long time, to the point where he refused to tell other people about it so he could keep the place his own little secret. I'm not sure there's too much danger of that though—the restaurant is located in a residential area far from any train stations, so a person wanting to eat at Stove would have to be pretty dedicated. Even I never made it out there until a week ago, despite TL swearing by the honey-glazed double-cut pork chops for the past year.

I was back in New York City for the weekend in order to attend a friend's wedding (congratulations again, JF and JA!), and managed to arrive in time to celebrate JS's birthday with him the night before. Since we planning to hit up the new beer garden that night, dinner in Astoria was a natural choice.

At Stove, I passed up the pork chops in favor of a hanger steak, cooked medium rare, and with mashed potatoes substituted for the shoe string potatoes it was supposed to come with. I'm not an expert on steaks, but this one seemed full of meaty flavor, though slightly on the chewy side. It also arrived with lightly sauteed carrots, broccoli, and string beans, which were fresh and buttery.

Our side of the table split an appetizer of the Prince Edward Island mussels steamed in white wine and garlic, which was a smaller portion size than we expected. The mussels were plump and briny, and the sauce made a perfect dip for the crusty bread our server amiably refilled for us throughout the meal. We also got a appetizer special of Irish sausages encased in puff pastry: Stove's version of pigs in a blanket. The onion jam they came with was probably the best part, serving as a perfect complement to the juicy sausage and flaky pastry.

I tried a bite of the birthday boy's strawberry ice cream (the only dessert they don't make in-house, according to our server), as well as several spoonfuls of a dish of strawberries in cream. Both nicely showcased the flavor of the fruit.

In the end, I'm not sure whether Stove is worth the trek. Service was great and everything was tasty, but nothing about the place seemed unique. I felt like I was having a well-prepared meal of pretty typical grub, at a place more like a good neighborhood joint than a destination restaurant. Still, maybe I should try those pork chops….

A buffet plate to celebrate our nation

For this year's Fourth of July, I was invited to spend the weekend in Woody Creek, a small town right outside of Aspen and the former stomping ground of journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson. (We passed by the entrance to his estate, and there were all sorts of "Keep Out" signs plastered at the side of it.) WP's aunt and uncle were throwing a combination family reunion/engagement party for one of WP's cousins at their house, and any good friend of the family was welcome to come. Their house is pretty magical; not only is it surrounded by vast stretches of their own land, they've taken that land and installed a wonderland of things to play on, play with, or sit around: a rope swing, normal swings, a zipline, a treehouse, a fire pit. The actual Woody Creek gurgles right next to it, and in winter, their son creates a homemade ice skating rink in what's essentially their backyard.

As might be expected, there was plenty of food waiting on the table when RM, KS, and I arrived, and plenty more would show up all weekend. I was tickled by what seemed like some truly American and regional dishes, such as a salad of peas and shredded cheese in mayonnaise, a salad of fruit pieces swimming in condensed milk, a salad of shredded green cabbage, nuts, and broken-up ramen noodles, and a dish that consisted of baking together a mix of canned pineapple, white bread, and butter. These were recipes I had never grown up eating but which are probably common to many people's childhoods. I was glad—and also bemused—that they were part of my experience that weekend. Is it weird to say that it actually made me feel more American?

We mostly spent the weekend hanging out: at the creek, around the fire pit, on the wraparound porch. Hummingbirds flitted around us constantly, and the dogs were always ready for a game of frisbee. There were many more plates of food like this one.

Both nights we slept in tents or in the treehouse, the sound of the creek a lullaby in our ears. When finally it came time for us to leave on Monday morning, we were all tired but also all happy and relaxed from a weekend spent outdoors. A better Fourth of July would have been hard to pull off elsewhere.

CSA, Week Five: And the greens started rolling in

Once I got back to Fort Collins from my month-long stint in San Francisco, Philadelphia, and New York City, my CSA share with Grant Family Farms began. Due to a mixup with the first week of delivery, I got to take home more than five times my share from boxes that hadn't been picked up and wound up with an enormous amount of assorted lettuce, kale, dill, spinach, rhubarb, cilantro, and baby beets. Even after doling out the extras to a neighbor and to the three other people I split the CSA share with, I still had a ton in my fridge and had to come up with some creative ways to eat everything before it started going bad.

One of the first things I tried was kale chips, the idea for which I'd seen floating around the interwebs for a while now. With KS's help, I tossed pieces of curly kale with olive oil, salt, pepper, and balsamic vinegar, and then spread them out on cookie sheets and baked them at 350 degrees for about twenty minutes. (Actually, I think I left them in a little too long, because they were brown and just edging toward bitterness by the time I pulled them out of the oven, so probably fifteen minutes is better.) I added too much salt, because those great, voluminous leaves fool me every time—I always forget how drastically vegetables shrink down when they are cooked. Don't be me!

I made a chicken salad with carrots, celery, cranberries, and a lot of the CSA dill, and then realized that I could use pieces of the CSA buttercrunch lettuce as a wrap to eat the salad with.

Then there was the kale quesadilla: after braising ribbons of raw lacinato kale until soft, I piled the cooked greens between two small flour tortillas along with pepper jack cheese and caramelized onions. The earthiness of the kale went really well with the sweet caramelized onions and spicy cheese. The Feisty Foodie tried a version with simply collards and pepper jack and wasn't impressed, but the kale, pepper jack, and caramelized onion quesadilla is probably my favorite thing to come out of my veggie experimentation. For a week or two I was eating them nearly every other day.

With the ridiculously wee beets we received—five or six attached to their greens, each no bigger than a gumball—I made a wee beet salad. Unlike the last time I messed with raw beets I didn't have any apples on hand, so I just peeled and julienned the beets and added lime juice, olive oil, and a tiny sprinkle of salt. Above is the entire quantity of the beet salad I made, but turns out that it's plenty; the apple version was better.

This sandwich could be a close cousin to my kale quesadilla, since it involves cheese and greens stuffed into a carb. For this one I layered cooked, drained spinach, brie, and whole-grain mustard onto rosemary ciabatta, and then put the whole thing into a panini press until the cheese got gooey. I make sandwiches like this a lot: some kind of cheese, some kind of vegetable, some kind of condiment, some kind of bread. With all the kale, chard, and beet greens currently coming my way from the CSA, I'll probably be eating a lot more of these in the future.

Pies and patties for dinner: Little Pie Company and Golden Krust

"If you meet me in Grand Central, we can get some sour cream apple walnut pie," said TL, and those were the only words I needed to hear to get me on the train. That evening we were headed to Kooza, the Cirque du Soleil performance taking place on Randall's Island, and while I had anticipated some kind of real meal beforehand, I was totally good with the idea of eating that magical pie for dinner instead. Ever since having those slices at the crawfish boil, we'd both been wanting more.

It was so much fun to sit down in the dining concourse with a small version of the pie and to just dig in. Even though the one we got was only five inches, there was something about eating directly from a whole pie with our forks that felt so much naughtier than cutting into a civilized slice from a large pie.

Turned out we needed a bit more than pie to tide us over though, so before boarding the M35 bus in Harlem we stopped in at Golden Krust for Jamaican patties. I got the chicken version, which was fresher and flakier than some Golden Krust patties I remember eating in the past.

Bellies sated with both sweet and savory, we were ready for a night of wacky French circus-ing. Kooooozaaa!

Stand, for burgers a step above

I never thought it could happen, but I actually OD'd on Asian food by my third week away from Colorado. Between the Burmese, Shanghainese, and multiple Vietnamese meals I'd had in San Francisco; the Chinese, Thai, and Vietnamese meals I'd had in Philadelphia; and the Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese, Malaysian, and Japanese meals I'd had in NYC, I'd completely satisfied any cravings I had for noodles and rice and was totally ready for some good ol' American food.

So TL and I met up with my brother and SS for dinner at Stand, which I had been wanting to check out for a while. What's more American than a burger? The restaurant is conveniently located just off of Union Square, and so dinner marked yet another occasion of me trying to scout out a place to grub in the area.

After our server misheard our order of fried bread and butter pickles as one for an order of their "pot of pickles," we found ourselves with not one but two briny appetizers. I was pretty happy the latter arrived by mistake, because I really liked the pickled carrots and string beans. The fried pickles were great too: the sweetness and acidity of the pickle slices stood right up to the hot, crunchy batter, and they barely needed their dipping sauce of honey mustard. Despite the menu's claims, tempura-battered they were not, but I wasn't bothered.

Both SS and I went for the "Kid's Pack," which includes a mini burger, small fries, and a drink for eight bucks, and we both got pretty excited when we realized our drink options extended to a kid-sized portion of any one of their milkshakes. Above is my honey-lavender milkshake next to TL's full-sized maple-almond one; the minis are probably about half the size of the regular.

The milkshakes weren't as thick as I prefer and their flavors were a little muted, but I still liked them. I especially dug the crunchy bits of almond in TL's, and I kept stealing sips of his between mine. He didn't mind…I think.

Our burgers came out shortly after. TL went with the classic (left), which came topped with red onion, lettuce, tomato, sliced pickles, ketchup, and dijon mustard, while my brother went with the hamburger (right), which came with onion marmalade, lettuce, and a side of green peppercorn sauce. Both burgers came with a few fried pickle slices, too.

Above is the Kid's Pack in its entirety. The Mini Burger consists of a small beef patty on brioche, topped with pickles and ketchup (I added Swiss cheese for an extra dollar). I think the Mini Burgers actually suffered for their size—both SS's and mine were cooked too long (more medium than medium rare), and both were extremely salty. TL and my brother didn't have any complaints about their burgers, but SS left half of hers uneaten.

Innards shot. Not sure if you can tell, but the meat was far from juicy. I'll stick with a regular-sized burger next time.

Not only did we have the piles of fries from our Kids Packs, but we also had two other side dishes, which came out a little after our burgers. The onion rings weren't anything special, but the sweet potato fries were quite good—nice and crispy instead of soggy like so many other versions. The odd thing was that they didn't have much sweet potato flavor; had you mixed them in with the regular fries, I don't think I would have noticed too much of a difference.

I could have had a better burger, but Stand is still a decent, inexpensively priced option for the area. Otherwise, if you haven't overdone it with Asian food like I did, Num Pang is right across the street.

Philadelphia, Day 1: Reading Terminal Market, DiNic's, Miller's Twist, Capogiero, Vietnam Palace

Once in Philadelphia, the first thing TL and I did after dropping off our things was to head to the Reading Terminal Market, conveniently located right next to our hotel. I'd eaten at the market a few times before, and had been wowed by the blueberry pancakes, scrapple, and apple dumplings at the Dutch Eating Place. We arrived too late to consider eating breakfast (plus, we'd already had Chinese buns), but the perfect lunch was just on the other end of the market: a roast pork sandwich from DiNic's.

We decided to split a single roast pork sandwich in order to make room for other goodies, which they nicely gave to us in two separate baskets. I asked for the pork to come topped with sharp provolone and greens, which is the only way to eat such a sandwich. The juicy, garlicky broccoli rabe mingles with the funky provolone and the savory roast pork, becoming a whole that is so much more than the sum of its parts. We were offered little tubs of horseradish and banana peppers to go with the sandwich too, and while the horseradish didn't do much for me, the pickled banana peppers added a welcome bright note of acidity.

We scarfed down our sandwich halves and then moved on to the rest of the market. I had my heart set on a fresh soft pretzel, and we stopped at the first place we saw selling them. Miller's Twist is one of a handful of Pennsylvania Dutch vendors in the market, which are only open Wednesday through Saturday.

I have no idea how the pretzels at Miller's Twist compare to others, but I can assure you that ours was damn good—soft, chewy, salty, and slightly crisp on the outside. We watched a woman dipping our pretzel into a pot of melted butter before serving it to us, which might also account for how delicious it was. Why can't the pretzels sold from hot dog stands in New York City taste like this?


After feeding ourselves at the market, TL and I set off to explore various tourist hotspots like the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, the Magic Gardens, and South Street.

Along the way we stopped at Capogiero for gelato. I chose to pair pistachio gelato and cilantro-lime sorbetti, and while I absolutely loved the latter, the former was too rich and I got sick of it. I should have stuck solely with the sorbetti—it was tart and refreshing, with a fresh herbal note from the cilantro. TL had a kiwi sorbetti that was equally wonderful.

Our long afternoon traipsing around Philly, combined with how early we'd had to wake up that morning to catch the bus, meant that by late afternoon we were both ready for a nap. Subsequently, by the time we managed to rouse ourselves, it was almost nine o'clock and we still hadn't eaten dinner. Since Chinatown was only a few blocks away, we decided to head to Vietnam Palace for our meal.

We started with an appetizer of stuffed grape leaves, which was quite different from its Mediterranean cousins. Instead of being stuffed with minted rice or lentils, the leaves were filled with marinated beef and grilled. I wasn't sure how to properly eat this dish, but I ended up using the lettuce leaves as a wrapper for stuffed grape leaves, noodles, and herbs, rolling them up summer roll style. Things got messy when I tried dipping the roll into nuoc mam, but it was a tasty way to eat them.

I got a little ambitious with my order of the Vermicelli Deluxe, which came with grilled pork, grilled shrimp, and fried spring rolls. I was already pretty full from the stuffed grape leaves, and the bowl that appeared in front of me was downright gigantic. Each element had been prepared well though, so I was happy to give finishing my meal a shot. Not that I succeeded, but a girl can try.

We didn't do much after dinner—lazed around in our hotel room, mostly—but that was fine with me. Call me old or boring, but chilling out for an evening felt like the perfect way to spend our night.

Philadelphia:
Day 1: Reading Terminal Market, DiNic's, Miller's Twist, Capogiero, Vietnam Palace
Day 2: Ocean Harbor, Thai Chef & Noodle Fusion