The other side of the tracks was usually a term that described the poor neighborhoods that were situated near railroads. It always carried a negative connotation - poor, dangerous, and not us. Even today, you see some remnants of truth in this term. Here in good ol' Champaign-Urbana, there's a train track that runs parallel to and just north of University Ave. To the south, the beautiful brick buildings of the U.'s world renowned engineering campus. To the north? Largely African-American residential neighborhoods. Some of them are government subsidized. Others are just normal middle class housing. But it's definitely the other side of the tracks for most of the students here at the U.
So why is this little nugget here at Foodgeek?
Well, there's a new bar/restaurant in town, called Tracks that is situated, appropriately enough, right by those railroad tracks, in the heart of downtown Champaign. Tracks has gotten the Foodgeek seal of approval, which was sort of surprising, given the biases that I had going in. The major thing was the location. While the old train station is a cool place to have a bar, it had been empty for the last couple years. Also, this is on a corner without a lot of parking, and multiple bars between the majority of parking spots and Tracks. I'd figure that a lot of peple would just park, and as they started to walk to Tracks, just stop off somewhere along the way and sort of forget about getting to their original destination.
But, I figured that I had to visit the place so I could get a decent review in here, and I've been pleasantly surprised at the quality of the food. So much so, that I've actually gone back a couple times to sample a little more. They actually have a pretty large menu - a handful of entrees, probably 15 or so sandwiches, a few different salads, a handful of appetizers, and a few surprisingly good desserts. You don't go to sports bars for dining experiences, but you do go for good portions, reasonable prices, and solid food. Tracks does this well.
I haven't gone after the entrees, yet, but have sampled a good number of the appetizers and sandwiches. The one conclusion that I've come to is that frying isn't as easy as you may figure. You see so many places get it wrong. Limp french fries. Heavy onion rings. Burnt food in general. Happily, I am very impressed at how Tracks gets this very simple act down well. The calamari was crispy and fun to eat. (who doesn't like eating the tenticles? Communists, I bet). The frog legs, while being a little fishy, were fried just right in a nice batter. I think that the one surprising fried treat was the potato cheese puffs. While not really a puff, but rather little fried pucks of hash brown and cheese casserole, it was so darned addicting.
Of course, for those who are somewhat health conscious, they have plenty of non-fried options. For those of you into the soup and salad sort of thing, Tracks delivers surprisingly well for a bar/grill. The onion soup isn't earth shattering, but it's solid - how can you go wrong with onion soup, a crouton and a layer of melted cheese? The chili is also good - not the absolute best in town, which would probably have to go to Crane Alley, but this is a solid effort. The salads are generally well executed, though not revolutionary. The oyster and spinach salad is very good. Slices of egg and red onion accompany cornmeal breaded oysters atop a surprisingly tender spinach salad that's dressed with a very tasty bacon vinagrette (think German potato salad dressing). The balsamic steak Caesar salad is also done well. Thin slices of grilled steak, go on top of romaine tossed in a balsamic Caesar dressing. Rich and tangy, and a little changeup from the usual effort.
The sandwiches are generally ample in size and are solid fare. The southern-style catfish was excellent. A nice cornmeal breading that was crunchy and seasoned just right covered an incredibly tender catfish fillet. With all due respect to my old friends at the Seaboat, this is probably the best southern style fish sandwich in town. The burger was a solid effort, though not transcendent. They also serve a muffuletta that is probably the best fascimilie of the New Orleans classic within 100 miles.
The desserts at Tracks draw an incomplete, for now. The banana bread pudding is excellent - caramel and pecans top a creamy bread pudding made from banana bread, all served warm. Very rich and decadent. The chocolate cobbler has been spotty. I describe is as being a medium rare brownie, topped with a chocolate crumb topping, a la mode. I'm still not sure if I like it. It's rich, warm, and chocolatey. It's also messy, and perhaps a little too sweet, and not enough of the chocolate's depth is brought out. The first time, it came looking like a mound of chopped up flourless chocolate cake, topped with a scoop of vanilla. You couldn't really tell what it was. For not, we'll just leave it as an incomplete.
Of course, that is not to say that there weren't any misses. As mentioned before, the frog legs were a little bit on the fishy side and the meat was somewhat bland (though it was fried well). The other obvious miss was the chicken wings, oddly enough. They were seasoned pretty well, but they were tiny. And that made them a little bit tough. Considering that they cost more than my catfish sandwich, it was disappointing when the server brought them out.
The other miss is in the service. The servers were all friendly, and seemed competent enough at first. But then you look around. The first thing that you'll notice is that Tracks is a pretty big place, with a good sized patio. And on the nights that I've been there, the crowds have been somewhat sparse. While I'm not all that concerned about seeing and being seen, I am concerned about this for a different reason. You end up with spotty service. Servers get bored when they don't have enough customers, so they hang out at the bar and chat with each other. So, oddly enough, if a server had 4 tables, I'd get a visit every 10 minutes or so, if I'm the only table, there's a good chance that I'll see my server only about 15 or 20 minutes. Which is fine when I'm not needing anything. But when I need another drink or a condiment that was forgotten, then it becomes annoying. I think that we may have caught our server on a bad night, but she dropped glasses on two separate occasions, which sort of jarred our attention. But she was pleasant enough to joke about it with us later when she came back to the table. One thing to note about the patio - trains actually run by every so often, so you'll be distracted then. Also, sometimes they're passenger trains, that will actually stop and let the passengers out to stretch and get some fresh air (and the engineers to use the bathroom and to get a scotch and soda). One time on the patio, some of the passengers came out, and started chatting with us while we were out on the patio. Now, I sort of dig that randomness, but that may note be the most appealing thing for everyone, so this is fair warning.
So, no stars offered to Tracks, yet. It's only been open a month, and it's still working out the kinks. We'll see what happens with the entrees. I think that if they're solid, a little tweak of the menu and a little emphasis on service, you could have a quality 1 or 1.5 star grill on our hands. Which is more than what you'd expect to find on the other side of the tracks.
-foodgeek
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Restaraunt Review: Antonio's - Thick or Thin?
Now pizza can be a dicey thing, particularly on a college campus. The University of Illinois is no different. Certainly, we have our share of national chains. We have a couple places that make good thin crust (Jupiter's comes to mind) and a place that makes a good deep dish or stuffed pie (Papa Del's is the exemplar here). And there are the "college" pizza places where cardboard, ketchup, and cheap cheese served warm passes for pizza. Of course, this isn't to say that I haven't ordered a 3 pound calzone from one of these places at 2:30am for $6 delivered. But what I haven't really had out here is a good slice of New York-style pizza here. Being a kid who spent his late teenage years near Albany, NY, it's definitely been something that I've missed.
And now there's been a change. We have a new pizza joint in Campustown. I can actually get a reasonable replication of New York-style pizza here on campus. So with that, welcome, Antnoio's. What's wonderful about Antonio's is that it's open late. Until after the bars close. And it's right in the heart of campus. That right there gives it syle points in a college town. Add in the fact that you can get a huge slice (1/8th of a 24" pie is a meal for many folks) for $1.50, and you're golden.
It's pretty fun to go in there. First, you see this big white board that lists out like 30 different pizzas. Next you notice that they have racks of like 30 pre made pizzas ready to go. You go into line, and call out what you want (or just point to the examples that are on the counter), and they go and grab a slice that's already made, and run it through an oven to warm and crisp it up while you go pay. It's a little different, a little louder, a little less civil, and a little more salt of the earth. If you're not ready to go, someone who is will call out what they want. They'll have a few guys working during the rushes so it's not like you'll lose out with the Soup Nazi and get sent back to the end of the line. It's more like working on the floor of the stock exchange. You may miss your shot now, but it'll come again shortly.
As for the pizza itself? Well, it all starts with the crust. You can watch the guys hand stretch the dough, and even let gravity do the work. You see a ball of dough turn into this huge sheet of soon-to-be pizza. What I didn't see was them toss the dough into the air. Which I'm just fine with. I think that most pizza guys will acknowledge that the toss is really more for the show than for the dough. It looks good, but doesn't really help anything.
Then, a ladle full of sauce goes on, and is spread out over the dough. And they get it right. There's enough so that you can feel the sauce (and not eat the pizza too quickly for fear of losing a layer of skin from the top of your mouth), but not so much that it oozes out of the slice when you bite in. The sauce is solid, though not spectacular. I doubt that it's made in house, but it serves its purpose.
The layer the top with cheese, and whatever toppings are needed for a particular pizza. As for the toppings, Antonio's has a blend of old school and new school. You can get all of the traditional toppings, or just a nice slice of cheese. Or, you can get some more "gourmet" toppings for a little more (they do a pretty good version of margherita (tomato, basil, and fresh mozzarella, make some good pesto pizzas, and white pizzas). They also do some interesting theme pizzas like a steak burrito pizza where instead of sauce, there is a layer of bean, cheddar, some rice, tomatoes, peppers, and steak. Now, no pad thai or peking duck pizza, so we haven't gone California, yet, which is good for a college place.
So how does it taste? Wonderful. The crust is crispy and still chewy. The sauce does it's job as an accomplice. The cheese is ample, but not overwhelming. The rest of the toppings can be overwhelming, but only if you want to order it that way It's nice now you get this huge slice of pizza, fold it over at the corners of the crust, and just start eating it from the point. No silverware needed. Here's the thing. If you want something simple and traditional, go with just a slice of cheese, pepperoni, sausage, or tomato. It'll give you the feel of what New York-style is. Then branch out and try some different topping combos.
With 30+ varieties, I haven't gone with them all, yet. But I am happy to report that so far, I've had no bad experiences, and have really enjoyed the BBQ steak pizza (steak, cheddar, bacon, onion on BBQ sauce) and the Meatcravers (sausage, pepperoni, beef, bacon, etc., etc. on red sauce) when I need to indulge the carnivore. The neapolitan pizza (spinach, tomato, feta on red) was also a good bet when I felt the need to pretend to eat vegetables.
Now some traditionalists will hold that you should only have cheese, or something traditional like the margherita. I'm much more liberal in my interpretation. Happily, Antonio's allows for both conservative and liberal thinking in pizza. They're a uniter, not a divider. After all, you can't really go wrong with stopping in, grabbing a slice or two, and not breaking the bank while getting a good meal. Particularly when it takes me back to my time back East.
-foodgeek
And now there's been a change. We have a new pizza joint in Campustown. I can actually get a reasonable replication of New York-style pizza here on campus. So with that, welcome, Antnoio's. What's wonderful about Antonio's is that it's open late. Until after the bars close. And it's right in the heart of campus. That right there gives it syle points in a college town. Add in the fact that you can get a huge slice (1/8th of a 24" pie is a meal for many folks) for $1.50, and you're golden.
It's pretty fun to go in there. First, you see this big white board that lists out like 30 different pizzas. Next you notice that they have racks of like 30 pre made pizzas ready to go. You go into line, and call out what you want (or just point to the examples that are on the counter), and they go and grab a slice that's already made, and run it through an oven to warm and crisp it up while you go pay. It's a little different, a little louder, a little less civil, and a little more salt of the earth. If you're not ready to go, someone who is will call out what they want. They'll have a few guys working during the rushes so it's not like you'll lose out with the Soup Nazi and get sent back to the end of the line. It's more like working on the floor of the stock exchange. You may miss your shot now, but it'll come again shortly.
As for the pizza itself? Well, it all starts with the crust. You can watch the guys hand stretch the dough, and even let gravity do the work. You see a ball of dough turn into this huge sheet of soon-to-be pizza. What I didn't see was them toss the dough into the air. Which I'm just fine with. I think that most pizza guys will acknowledge that the toss is really more for the show than for the dough. It looks good, but doesn't really help anything.
Then, a ladle full of sauce goes on, and is spread out over the dough. And they get it right. There's enough so that you can feel the sauce (and not eat the pizza too quickly for fear of losing a layer of skin from the top of your mouth), but not so much that it oozes out of the slice when you bite in. The sauce is solid, though not spectacular. I doubt that it's made in house, but it serves its purpose.
The layer the top with cheese, and whatever toppings are needed for a particular pizza. As for the toppings, Antonio's has a blend of old school and new school. You can get all of the traditional toppings, or just a nice slice of cheese. Or, you can get some more "gourmet" toppings for a little more (they do a pretty good version of margherita (tomato, basil, and fresh mozzarella, make some good pesto pizzas, and white pizzas). They also do some interesting theme pizzas like a steak burrito pizza where instead of sauce, there is a layer of bean, cheddar, some rice, tomatoes, peppers, and steak. Now, no pad thai or peking duck pizza, so we haven't gone California, yet, which is good for a college place.
So how does it taste? Wonderful. The crust is crispy and still chewy. The sauce does it's job as an accomplice. The cheese is ample, but not overwhelming. The rest of the toppings can be overwhelming, but only if you want to order it that way It's nice now you get this huge slice of pizza, fold it over at the corners of the crust, and just start eating it from the point. No silverware needed. Here's the thing. If you want something simple and traditional, go with just a slice of cheese, pepperoni, sausage, or tomato. It'll give you the feel of what New York-style is. Then branch out and try some different topping combos.
With 30+ varieties, I haven't gone with them all, yet. But I am happy to report that so far, I've had no bad experiences, and have really enjoyed the BBQ steak pizza (steak, cheddar, bacon, onion on BBQ sauce) and the Meatcravers (sausage, pepperoni, beef, bacon, etc., etc. on red sauce) when I need to indulge the carnivore. The neapolitan pizza (spinach, tomato, feta on red) was also a good bet when I felt the need to pretend to eat vegetables.
Now some traditionalists will hold that you should only have cheese, or something traditional like the margherita. I'm much more liberal in my interpretation. Happily, Antonio's allows for both conservative and liberal thinking in pizza. They're a uniter, not a divider. After all, you can't really go wrong with stopping in, grabbing a slice or two, and not breaking the bank while getting a good meal. Particularly when it takes me back to my time back East.
-foodgeek
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Kitchen Happenings: Chinese Ingredients
We're going to go away from restaurant reviews today, and take a peek into the happenings in my own kitchen. I think that I'm starting to feel a little guilty about my lack of ethnicity. Let me explain. In class, I've learned about how people identify themselves with their ethnicity to different degrees. Some are really gung-ho about it. I guess that I barely acknowledge that I'm Chinese (or Taiwanese - see? I don't even care about the distinction). A little while back, my friend Sarah noted that if she were to describe me, "Chinese wouldn't be in the top 5 things." And I couldn't agree more.
But darned if I'm not craving Chinese food more and more. At least neo-Middle American/Chinese-college-food. Because that's what I can pull off here in Champaign-Urbana.
My kitchen goes through phases. I have something that I like in a restaurant, or I read a neat article in NYT, or I see a neat show on the Food Network. And then I'm inspired to figure out how this cooking deal works. I've gone through classical French phases, Southwestern phases, braising phases, seafood phases, fried food phases, among many others. Recently, I've been on an Iron Chef kick. And I'm becoming more intrigued with Chinese food. Iron Chef Chen is a badass. And I want to be like him when I grow up. I've got some Szechuan heritage, so this should be in my genes.
I'm looking at how I can make dishes that aren't "name" dishes like MaPo Tofu, General Tso's Chicken (even if it's American), or Peking Roast Duck. Those have some reference point, that I'm not particularly wanting to recreate. I want to figure how I can take readily available ingredients and turn it into 1-star quality food on the fly. How am I doing it? I'm looking back at my youth.
I didn't get along so great with Chinese food back in the day. My mom made a few stellar dishes and a lot of good ones. Problem is, my young (and at the time, sensitive) palate disagreed with some of the ingredients. I never liked tofu (and I'm still not fond of it, really), fermented black beans, and other things, so lots of the condiments just never made it for me. Well, people grow up and so do tastes.
I'm now on a quest to re-discover the fundamentals of Chinese food. I want to know what's beyond Oyster Sauce or Sweet and Sour sauce. I'll give some updates as I venture more into the kitchen. Today's update? Playing around with ingredients.
I went into Am-Ko (the local Asian grocery) to get a bag of rice and some other odds and ends. That was when inspiration hit. I walked out of there with (among other things) spicy chili bean sauce, fermented bean curd, and ja jiang (jiang means "sauce", ja means fried) which is a sauce that's sort of sweet and pungent, made from bamboo, beans, and other things, fried up in a not-too spicy chili oil.
Spicy bean sauce is a very stock ingredient in Chinese cooking. And I've never owned a bottle of it. I had always made do with other ways of spicing up the food. I had always been missing something. Spicy bean sauce adds kick and depth to the flavor. There's a rich, almost earthy heat that comes through when you use it.
Another ingredient is the femented bean curd. It looks very intimidating. Essentially, it's 8 cubes of fermented tofu that's sitting in a salty, somewhat spicy brine. And it's incredible tasting. It doesn't add any real heat to food, but it gives a salty, and earthy taste to dishes that you just can't get with soy sauce. All the things that I had been missing out on.
One thing that you find in Asian food is this interplay of sweet, salty, spicy, sour, bitter, and everything else, all in one dish. How it all comes together is with some flavors that inherently span multiple boundaries. In western cooking, we tend to like things compartmentalized. We like different layers of the same theme. Asian cooking seems to throw that out the window, and encourage a holism.
So what did I do with this new found power? 2 things. The first was creating a dish that I called "fire dumplings." Essentially, I made a batch of pot stickers (sauteeing uncooked dumplings for a bit, before adding just a bit of water and covering to let everything steam and cook), and then instead of just making a dipping sauce, I decided on making a sauce and then coating the dumplings with the sauce in the pan, so you get a little carmelization going, and a little reduction of the sauce to concentrate the flavor.
What was the sauce? Well, you'll have to forgive me. I never measure, unless someone is watching. It was a little bit of my three newly found ingredients, some sambal (an American-made, Indo-inspired, garlic-chili sauce), a little soy, some ketchup, a little sugar, and some lemon juice. Just a couple of teaspoons over the dumplings, a few tosses in the pan, and bam! A prime-time appetizer. One of these days, I'll get the inspiration to actually make my own appetizers, but until then, I'll just stick with my favorite frozen ones.
The other dish was a late-night comfort food craving. Noodles in spicy broth. I had made this chicken stock I knew that I was going to be cooking with it, so I was fine with boiling the heck out of the bones, and then just filtering out whatever big bits were floating around. This was a pretty standard broth - flavored with bullion, sage, rosemary, and pepper. Nothing remotely Asian about it. But it's there for flavor. And meat flavor is international.
So what went into the broth? Some more of my new found ingredients, some soy, and some sa cha sauce - another spicy sauce, this time seafood based, in chili oil. Some chinese noodles cooked up, and into the broth it goes. Some veggies and chunks of braised beef would have made this a meal, but I was just looking for some quick food. The noodles soaked up the spicy liquid, and I got to slurp them up - almost like street food in Shanghai. Only I got to make it.
At some point, we'll dig up some ingredients to make some more variations on "traditional" Chinese food. I'll be sure to let you know how it goes. And don't let me forget to make a note of this awesome polenta dish that I made (not Chinese, but entirely awesome).
-foodgeek
But darned if I'm not craving Chinese food more and more. At least neo-Middle American/Chinese-college-food. Because that's what I can pull off here in Champaign-Urbana.
My kitchen goes through phases. I have something that I like in a restaurant, or I read a neat article in NYT, or I see a neat show on the Food Network. And then I'm inspired to figure out how this cooking deal works. I've gone through classical French phases, Southwestern phases, braising phases, seafood phases, fried food phases, among many others. Recently, I've been on an Iron Chef kick. And I'm becoming more intrigued with Chinese food. Iron Chef Chen is a badass. And I want to be like him when I grow up. I've got some Szechuan heritage, so this should be in my genes.
I'm looking at how I can make dishes that aren't "name" dishes like MaPo Tofu, General Tso's Chicken (even if it's American), or Peking Roast Duck. Those have some reference point, that I'm not particularly wanting to recreate. I want to figure how I can take readily available ingredients and turn it into 1-star quality food on the fly. How am I doing it? I'm looking back at my youth.
I didn't get along so great with Chinese food back in the day. My mom made a few stellar dishes and a lot of good ones. Problem is, my young (and at the time, sensitive) palate disagreed with some of the ingredients. I never liked tofu (and I'm still not fond of it, really), fermented black beans, and other things, so lots of the condiments just never made it for me. Well, people grow up and so do tastes.
I'm now on a quest to re-discover the fundamentals of Chinese food. I want to know what's beyond Oyster Sauce or Sweet and Sour sauce. I'll give some updates as I venture more into the kitchen. Today's update? Playing around with ingredients.
I went into Am-Ko (the local Asian grocery) to get a bag of rice and some other odds and ends. That was when inspiration hit. I walked out of there with (among other things) spicy chili bean sauce, fermented bean curd, and ja jiang (jiang means "sauce", ja means fried) which is a sauce that's sort of sweet and pungent, made from bamboo, beans, and other things, fried up in a not-too spicy chili oil.
Spicy bean sauce is a very stock ingredient in Chinese cooking. And I've never owned a bottle of it. I had always made do with other ways of spicing up the food. I had always been missing something. Spicy bean sauce adds kick and depth to the flavor. There's a rich, almost earthy heat that comes through when you use it.
Another ingredient is the femented bean curd. It looks very intimidating. Essentially, it's 8 cubes of fermented tofu that's sitting in a salty, somewhat spicy brine. And it's incredible tasting. It doesn't add any real heat to food, but it gives a salty, and earthy taste to dishes that you just can't get with soy sauce. All the things that I had been missing out on.
One thing that you find in Asian food is this interplay of sweet, salty, spicy, sour, bitter, and everything else, all in one dish. How it all comes together is with some flavors that inherently span multiple boundaries. In western cooking, we tend to like things compartmentalized. We like different layers of the same theme. Asian cooking seems to throw that out the window, and encourage a holism.
So what did I do with this new found power? 2 things. The first was creating a dish that I called "fire dumplings." Essentially, I made a batch of pot stickers (sauteeing uncooked dumplings for a bit, before adding just a bit of water and covering to let everything steam and cook), and then instead of just making a dipping sauce, I decided on making a sauce and then coating the dumplings with the sauce in the pan, so you get a little carmelization going, and a little reduction of the sauce to concentrate the flavor.
What was the sauce? Well, you'll have to forgive me. I never measure, unless someone is watching. It was a little bit of my three newly found ingredients, some sambal (an American-made, Indo-inspired, garlic-chili sauce), a little soy, some ketchup, a little sugar, and some lemon juice. Just a couple of teaspoons over the dumplings, a few tosses in the pan, and bam! A prime-time appetizer. One of these days, I'll get the inspiration to actually make my own appetizers, but until then, I'll just stick with my favorite frozen ones.
The other dish was a late-night comfort food craving. Noodles in spicy broth. I had made this chicken stock I knew that I was going to be cooking with it, so I was fine with boiling the heck out of the bones, and then just filtering out whatever big bits were floating around. This was a pretty standard broth - flavored with bullion, sage, rosemary, and pepper. Nothing remotely Asian about it. But it's there for flavor. And meat flavor is international.
So what went into the broth? Some more of my new found ingredients, some soy, and some sa cha sauce - another spicy sauce, this time seafood based, in chili oil. Some chinese noodles cooked up, and into the broth it goes. Some veggies and chunks of braised beef would have made this a meal, but I was just looking for some quick food. The noodles soaked up the spicy liquid, and I got to slurp them up - almost like street food in Shanghai. Only I got to make it.
At some point, we'll dig up some ingredients to make some more variations on "traditional" Chinese food. I'll be sure to let you know how it goes. And don't let me forget to make a note of this awesome polenta dish that I made (not Chinese, but entirely awesome).
-foodgeek
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