FALL DOWN DRUNK FOR GREENVILLE

Today was time for our annual trek up and down Main Street in Greenville for the festival Fall For Greenville OR as The Cafe and Then Some calls it "Fall Down Drunk For Greenville". We found a free parking space just off River Street (I hate to pay for parking!) and made the trek to the festival. The weather was nice (mid 70s) and this really brought out the people (as you can see in the above photo). Not quite as many restaurants participated in the event this year and the city compensated by not having any booths in the last block of North Main and several blocks at the end of South Main.


Our first purchase was a crab cake with maque choux from Soby's . I've had some items from Soby's New South Cuisine at the Saturday morning farmer's market that I thought were just okay. Their crab cake is not just okay, but superior to just about any you will find around this area.


Next we got a nice surprise when we tried the Black Angus meatloaf with caramelized onion and mushroom ragout from Two Chefs. I say a nice surprise since, for some reason, I always think of Two Chefs as a sandwich/bakery shop. I love a good meatloaf and this was certainly a good meatloaf, one of the best I've had in a while.


After two good choices, we hit a slight bump with our next choice. While they weren't bad, the crab fritters with dipping sauce from Brown Street Club paled next to our two previous dishes.


After three main dishes, of course it's time for dessert, and oh how lucky we were with our first choice. Beignets with carmelized peaches from Sassafras Southern Bistro. We were hesitant about ordering these, since they really didn't look like the beignets we eat in New Orleans. The good news is they tasted like real beignets and were almost as messy to eat. This is the type of dessert that stays stuck in your mind, long after you eaten it.


Brown Street Club redeemed theirselves with our next dessert choice, Bakers Boubon Pecan Pie. With just enough bourbon in the pie to make give it a faint liquor taste, this was a great dessert. It would have been our favorite, IF we hadn't already had the beignets.


With a few tickets left, we decided to try Fried Bourbon Bread Pudding from Smoke On The Water. The bread pudding was good, but unlike Brown Street's pie, the bourbon sauce for the bread pudding was too strong and made what could have been a good dessert just so-so. We had two tickets left and there's not much you can get with two tickets at Fall Down Drunk For Greenville, so we gave those away as we headed back to the car, where I remarked "I'm still hungry".

Hans and Franz Biergarten

Our original plan on Saturday was another visit to Carolina Cafe. When those plans didn't work out, we decided to go to Oktoberfest in Greer, since last year we had a great Reuben sandwich and a few other good items there. This year turned out to be a bust, since the Reuben people didn't have a booth and any booth that had anything that looked interesting had L-O-N-G lines. We decided to hike on back to the car and go somewhere else. The "else" turned out to be Hans & Franz Biergarten, a German themed restaurant located just off the intersection of Highway 14 and Pelham Road and this turned out to be a wise decision.


Instead of entrees we opted instead for a couple of appetizers. We both started with Hungarian Goulash Soup: paprika, cayenne pepper, bell peppers, spiced up tender chunks of beef, and potatoes in a tomato based soup. This was served with two pieces of generously buttered bread slices. The soup turned out to be more of a hearty stew than a soup. It had such a great taste, we both cleaned our bowls. The spices were just enough to make the dish interesting and leave a slight tingle on your tongue. I also must give a special nod to our great waiter, James, who had the good sense to put the soup orders in first for us, instead of having everything come out at once.


For my other selection I chose Frikadellen: German meatball made of finely ground beef, pork and spices topped with tomato/curry sauce and mustard and served on a pretzel roll with homemade fries. This not only had the appearance but also the taste of a great meatloaf (and I've eaten a lot of meatloaf over the years) I challenge anyone without a super large mouth (i.e. Julia Roberts), to be able to put the top roll on this sandwich and be able to open your mouth wide enough to bite through it. As for myself, I had to use a fork and knife to eat this delicious sandwich.


My wife chose the Reuben Sliders: homemade corned beef (which really makes a difference in preparing a good Reuben), a sweet sauerkraut, and of course cheese and dressing, which were also served with homemade fries. While odd being served on small buns instead of rye bread, they were better than a lot of poorly made Reubens with rye bread we have eaten. The fries on both dishes were served with a mustard/mayonnaise/spice dressing that was delicious. As a matter of fact, everything was so good, to paraphrase Arnold Schwarzenegger "We'll be back"!