Chicken (not so) Little

Ali, Andi, and I went to The Roasting Company for dinner one night and it was fabulous. Just walking in and smelling the food was enough to make me start salivating like Pavlov's dog. This little gem of a restaurant is located on Montford Dr. and its menu is filled with a variety of Southern and Tex-Mex cuisine.

The Top 100 dish is the "Quarter Dark," which is basically a quarter of a chicken with dark meat. Not being a fan of dark meat, I edited my choice to the "Quarter White" and was much happier. It's served with 2 side dishes. On an interesting note, all of their side dishes contain no meat by-products, which is a little weird considering you're probably going to get some sort of chicken on every plate. Anyhoo, I got the squash casserole and smoked cheese and pasta salad. Andi got the chicken and rice, and Ali got the chicken and black bean combo.

Your order is taken at a bar area with a cash register and then they call out your name to pick up your food. It's kind of nice not to have a waiter - more self serve - but the ticket for a credit card still has a "tip" line on it. That always confuses me - am I supposed to tip someone just for taking my order? Anyway, our food came out in a reasonably short amount of time and it was delicious. The chicken is rotisserie so it's nice and moist and it was a huge portion. I ended up taking home half of my meal. The squash casserole almost looked like a cornbread dressing and I think it did have some sort of stuffing-like component to it. When I read the smoked cheese and pasta salad, I missed the salad part and thought it was some type of macaroni. Well, it's not - it's an actual pasta sald. No matter - it was really good. It had spinach, penne pasta, and cheese, and it was served cold. Everything tasted great the next day for leftovers too!

The second best part of the meal? TCBY was very close so we got dessert too!!  All in all, a really nice dining experience.

Pudding Parts 1 and 2

As evidenced by the title, this is a tale of 2 puddings. The first is the banana pudding at Savor Cafe and Catering. I went with Andi to this Morehead St. eatery (Ali unfortunately couldn't make it due to the hellish work day she'd had - something we all can symphathize with, no?). I parked at the Open Kitchen across the street and half expected the mean man that works there to come and yell at me. Thankfully that did not happen.


Although the dessert menu was my goal, I had to have dinner first. Darn you, rules of society! I chose the "Carolina Shrimp & Andouille Sausage Gravy over Yellow Stone-Ground Grits" and it was heavenly. Being from the South, I'm a bit odd in the fact that I don't usually like grits. The only time I had enjoyed them previously was when a classmate from Delaware made cheese grits on our Radiology rotation...strange. I chose this dish because it promised a bit of spiciness and I was not disappointed. There was enough food to make up 2 meals so that was even better. The grits were nice and creamy and the sausage was just spicy enough. The gravy made me want to lick the plate and the shrimp were cooked perfectly. Andi had the "Pan-Fried Chicken Cutlet" topped with pimento cheese and bacon. Only in the South would a dish like that make the cut. It wasn't exactly what she was expecting but she liked it.


Now, the Top 100 dish is the Banana Pudding - it's pillowy and light and comes with homemade vanilla wafers:

It was so filling but yet really light so it didn't leave me feeling too full. Besides, the shrimp/sausage/grits dish did that enough for me. I forced myself to finish it, despite not having too much room in my tummy just because it was so good. All in all, an A!


The next pudding tale is of bread pudding at Customshop. Shelly, Anna, and I ate at the King's Kitchen and then had dessert at Customshop in Elizabeth. Now, if you remember, Fran's has a superb bread pudding that really sets the bar high. Unfortunately, Customshop did not deliver. The bread pudding was GOOD, just not THAT good. Besides, it was super heavy and had a lot of extra stuff in it:

It was prety hard to eat given its small container, and there were bits of apple and walnuts in it that I wasn't too crazy about. I think the apples would have been good on their own without the walnuts. This dish would be much better on a really cold night if you haven't had a full meal right beforehand, but it's never going to be as good as Fran's. The one thing, however, that will keep me from forgetting this restaurant is the selection of naked man pictures in the women's restroom. Yes, you read me correctly. There are some strategic leaves placed in a couple of the pictures, but not all of them. It left me with a few questions: does the men's restroom have naked women pictures in it? are children allowed in the restaurant? should there be some sort of charge to use the facilities? how much time do the employees spend in the restroom on a daily basis?


I think I'm just going to leave you with that.....=0)

The Return of Charlotte Restaurant Week

I am super behind on my blogging, but I'm sure I will be forgiven. This post is about Charlotte Restaurant Week and let's not even talk about how long ago that was!

When I read that Charlotte Restaurat Week was a-comin', I knew I had only one goal - to get reservations at The Melting Pot. As soon as possible, I made said reservations online and thanked my lucky stars they were still available. We had to do it on a Sunday night because Fridays and Saturdays were already filled up, so let that be a lesson to you!

Shelly, Anna, and I went to the Midtown location and had a fabulous dinner that I still think about fondly from time to time. First off, the drinks - it was relatively close to Valentine's Day and so they had this strawberry deliciousness thing that I got - the Love Martini (made with Malibu rum, peach schnapps, cranberry juice, and fresh strawberries):
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You can't see it but there's a tag that says "drink me"

It was wonderful and gave me a nice little warm feeling that added to the happiness of the night (please don't interpret this to mean I'm addicted to alcohol).






Next up was the cheese course. We chose the Boston Lager Cheddar because it had some extra little herbs and, come on, it sounds great. The cheese course (if you haven't been there before) is served with different kinds of breads, veggies, and apples:


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Pot o' cheesy goodness

Then came the salad course. I got the house salad, which comes with "crisp romaine and iceberg lettuce, aged cheddar cheese, roma tomatoes, seasoned croutons, and sliced egg" (of course, nixing the tomatoes). By this time, I was really into dinner and completely forgot to take pictures.









Onto the next! We were in for a surprise for the main course because we assumed we'd have to order one choice for the whole table, but we EACH got to pick. Anna got the Coastal because she doesn't eat red meat. This choice included: "blackened scallops, sesame-crusted Ahi tuna, all natural breast of chicken, teriyaki sirloin, Pacific white shrimp, and spinach & artichoke ravioli." Shelly and I both got the American, which included: "seasoned choice Angus sirloin, filet mignon, Buffalo chicken, Old Bay shrimp, and wild mushroom sacchetti."


Once again, if you haven't been to The Melting Pot before, they bring out all these meats/seafood/etc raw and you cook them in a big pot in the middle. They also have fresh veggies and (my favorite) a choice of sauces. You get to pick a cooking style and we chose the Court Bouillon, which is just a nice broth that helps cook the food but doesn't really change the flavor. The sauces included a bleu cheese, sour cream, sweet and sour, teriyaki, and (my favorite) a curry sauce. You can see the remains of my dinner below:
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It doesn't get better than this

I can't remember what type of main course I've had before, but the combination of these two was great. The Ahi tuna was sushi grade, so you could just eat it raw or sear it. I'm not a fan of raw fish, so I chose to cook mine through, but Shelly seared hers and liked it. My personal favorites for the night were the buffalo chicken and Pacific white shrimp. But who am I kidding? I loved it all!


Now comes the piece de resistance (unfortunately not appropriately accented with French accents because I don't know how to do that on here) - DESSERT! I fought hard for the Original and didn't receive too much resistance. The Original is like eating a huge liquid Reese's Cup. It's milk chocolate with a swirl of crunchy peanut butter. Dessert fondue is served with fruit, crusted marshmallows (like crusted in oreos!), pound cake, and cheesecake that you just drizzle the chocolate on. I had recovered my senses enough to take a picture of this:
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Sweet, sweet happiness

My mouth waters just looking at it. It was the highlight of my night. No wonder Shelly and I (and Anna, behind the camera) looked like this:
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Clear eyes, full bellies, can't lose

Of course this was a great meal and I wouldn't change a thing. Of course I'm going to try desperately to make reservations at The Melting Pot every Charlotte Restaurant Week because we got ALL of this for $30 per person (+ the discounted drinks). NOBODY can beat that and no one should be expected to try. We're only human after all.

Seize the fork

One evening, Shelly, Anna, and I traveled to Elizabeth for dinner at Carpe Diem. If you remember my previous posts, Elizabeth also has a great ice cream shop. Also, upcoming is my visit to another restaurant in that area. I love going down there because it's easy to get to anfd there's FREE parking! Any restaurant that has that in Charlotte gets an automatic point in my book. Carpe Diem is a pretty fancy little place but we just wore our regular clothes and weren't treated any differently, so don't worry.


For an appetizer, we all had the goat cheese salad. The salad is mixed greens with wine poached onions and goat cheese mounds inside a hazelnut crust:

As you can see here, I added chicken to mine. Overall, I really enjoyed the salad. The goat cheese was delicious and I broke open the little "cakes" of it and spread it around on the salad. I even enjoyed the onions. The only thing I would have liked was something to add a bit of crunch to it. There were little carrot strings that helped, but some type of nut maybe would have been perfect to add some texture.

We also had dessert, but apparently I didn't take a picture of it, nor was it memorable enough for me to have any idea as to what it was....something with chocolate?

Overall, a delightful dinner and a good time with friends.