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There are a few food items which I'm almost obsessed about: Meatloaf, Meatballs, and Reuben Sandwiches. If any of these show up on a restaurant's menu, there's a 99 per cent chance I'll be ordering them.
The Reuben Sandwich at Karrie's Deli and Pub, which is billed as "The Best In The Upstate" is for once truth in advertising. I've remarked before how is shouldn't be hard for anyone to make a good Reuben. It's a sandwich with just a few ingredients: corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and 1000 island dressing on grilled rye bread. The only secret to the sandwich is using the right combination of each item and using top level ingredients. Unfortunately, most restaurants have trouble doing this, but not at Karries'. Without hesitation, I can state that this IS the best Reuben In The Upstate.
You get to pick one side with your sandwich: I chose macaroni salad which was mighty tasty and pictured in the photo above. Even better was my wife's choice of potato salad with pieces of bacon mixed in....the bacon as our old TV pal Emeril would say "Kicked It Up A Notch".
The only warning I would give about Karrie's is go hungry or just order a half sandwich, since the sandwiches are larger than what you usually receive in this area. I think if you go once, you'll be thinking about your next visit as soon as you leave.....I know I am!
What's wrong with this restaurant:
1. The greeter/seater left us hanging while he wandered off looking for a table for us. He made us feel we were sort of a bother to him, not a good way to be welcomed into a restaurant.
2. Our server would be better off seeking a job in another field other than food service. The minimal effort she put forth on serving us and busing other tables was way below standards.
3. The floor of the restaurant was dirty with food scraps from the time we arrived until we left.
4. Pricing for this type of meal was excessive (10.00 for a meat and 2??). Luckily we had a coupon (buy one get one) making 10.00 for both of us acceptable.
5. Even though they have servers, you have to fetch your own drinks (This of course leads to unsanitary conditions, i.e. we noticed children playing with the tongs for the lemon slices).
6. Food arrived at the table lukewarm, whether this was due to the kitchen or the fault of our server not picking up the food fast enough is undetermined.
7. The crowd appeared to be mostly yuppie type families with children not kept in rein (not the fault of the restaurant, but still not your typical clientele for this type of restaurant).
8. Even though the restaurant wasn't huge, the noise was near din level.
9. The booths were big hard benches, probably to make sure customers don't linger, enabling the restaurant to turn tables faster.
What was right with this restaurant:
1. Even though the food should have been served a little hotter, it was all tasty and cooked good. I have to give Southern Fried Green Tomatoes props, since they could easily serve a lesser quality of food to the type of customers they seem to be attracting and probably get by with no one complaining.
Final Verdict:
With a 2 for 1 coupon, the meal was worth the price. Without a coupon, I would definitely recommend you spend your food dollars elsewhere.
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".
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"!
If you had invited me to a Beatles' themed restaurant, I would probably have passed, since anytime I hear "theme restaurant", I always think more time is spent on the theme than the food. In the case of Mean Mr. Mustard's Cafe in Hendersonville, NC, I couldn't be more wrong. We were in Hendersonville last week and since our first choice had already closed for lunch (for some reason our schedule and restaurants in NC always seem to be out of synch), I vaguely remembered reading some positive remarks about Mean Mr. Mustard's and we headed downtown to find the restaurant.
Located down a side street in Hendersonville (133 4th Ave East), we found that they were open for breakfast/lunch 7 days 8am-2:30pm and Thursday -Saturday evenings 6pm-8:30pm). Luckily it was around 2pm on a Friday when we got parked and made it to the restaurant. There are lots of Beatles decorations on the walls and the background music is all Beatles' music , plus most of the menu items have either a Beatles' connected name or another music related name. Instead of like most themed restaurants I have eaten at, the food here was the star, NOT the decorations. We had such a great meal that day, we returned the following week, eight days to be exact....I just realized that made it "8 Days A Week"!! Since I didn't have my camera on the first trip, this review is going to be a combination of our two visits.
Last week, my wife had "The Walrus Chicken Salad Sandwich - diced chicken breast with red grapes, almonds, raisins, and cilantro served with tomato and greens on fresh baked focaccia bread". This was a very good chicken salad sandwich, but we would only rate it very good and nothing that would make you return right away. However, my choice turned out to be the winner (usually my wife chooses the best meal) when I reluctantly ordered "The Grand Funk Reuben" - corned beef, swiss and mozzarella cheese, and sauerkraut served open face german-style on thick, homemade rye bread with authentic brandied Russian dressing". I say reluctantly, because I love reubens, but the words "open face" really threw me off. Well friends, I'm here to say that this was probably the best reuben that I have ever had in this area. It was so good that is one of the reasons we went back for the second time.
On the second visit, we decided to split the reuben and try another item and we chose "Frankie - the good american version of the reuben, with chicken sausage, saurekraut, and swiss cheese on rye, topped with mozzarella cheese and a mean mr. mustard sauce". To be honest, we never could decide which of these sandwiches was better. Although they have some similar flavors, there are enough differences to make each of them unique. I would really have a hard time deciding which one to order next time. Which brings me to what I AM going to order next time - While waiting for our order we saw several orders of French Toast arrive at other tables...NOW...that's all I have on my mind. It comes either as "French Toast Cordon Bleu - egg dipped thick slices of house made bread, stuffed with ham and swiss cheese, then grilled golden brown with choice of grits or home fries" OR "The Full Monte (plain without ham and swiss)".
On the other hand, the hush puppies - 12 for $2.25 were priced right and mighty tasty. The potato salad also tasted homemade and was quite delicious.
