Tilikum Place Cafe

407 Cedar St
(206) 282-4830

I don’t understand the name of the Tilikum Place Cafe. I always thought that the local Indian crap was spelled “Tillicum.” Bill Gates agrees with me because my spell checking software allows “Tillicum” but not “Tilikum.” So why don’t you assholes properly spell the restaurant’s name so I quit getting this squiggly red line underneath it?

Unfortunately for me, Urban Eats was going on, and the Tilikum Place Café was participating. In case you aren’t aware, Urban Eats is a local program here in Seattle where participating restaurants design a menu where you can choose 3 items, usually an appetizer, entrée, and dessert, for $30. It sounds like a great idea, but too bad it sucks. I’m calling BULLSHIT on Urban Eats. Urban Eats is a TERRIBLE program. The Emperor not only has no clothes, he’s walking down Main Street with a strapon hanging out of his ass. And the strapon is attached at the other end to Barbara Bush. Let me tell you about Urban Eats: the kitchens don’t like to do it. The chef at Crush comped us some appetizers once just because we DIDN’T choose from the Urban Eats menu. And even when the kitchen DOES like to do the Urban Eats menu, they don’t try very hard. The only people who really like Urban Eats are the fuckers who tip 10% and then have the stones to DEDUCT POINTS because the waiter didn’t refill their water glass in what their penny- pinching asses consider a timely manner. If you can’t afford it, save up until you can get the REAL DEAL from the REAL MENU. Fine dining doesn’t offer discounts. It’s gauche.

And so, liberated thusly from the tyranny of Urban Eats, we got stuff to eat. A cup of lentil soup ($3.50) was a delicious bounty: tiny green lentils were creamy, yet still firm to the bite, with chunks of carrot and celery. Minced parsley lightened up the flavor, and a drizzle of some kind of pepper oil sprung a subversive heat upon your tongue.

The sardine sandwich was so cute it could only have been more adorable if it were served by a leprechaun riding a Chihuahua. Large chunks of fresh sardine filets were served on a tiny baguette that somehow managed to be crusty WITHOUT at the same time shredding your gums the way a haughty Parisian will shred your French pronunciation when you ask the motherfucker a simple “Ou est le bibliotheque?” This sandwich was dressed with arugula, roasted tomatoes, and tapenade. It came with a side of pickled beets, cornichons, olives, lemon zest, and razor- thin onion rings. This was too much tanginess for me, even between bites of sandwich, because as you know the only ‘tang I like is your mom’s. And, at $9, the sardine sandwich cost about twice as much as your mom.

The butternut squash tart (also $9), had a moist, flaky crust and had in the center of it a giant mons venus of butternut squash so soft, sweet, and succulent it could’ve been apricot. The very center of this erotic pastry was veined with caramelized onion. A side salad of mixed greens played second fiddle with an evenly coated citrus vinaigrette.

The mint pea soup ($7 for a bowl) was as finely textured as suede. It tasted springtime fresh, with a mild minty top note. Scattered throughout the bowl were tiny cubes of apple or pear or something crisp and sweet, cut into such a miniscule dice that they had to have hired a fairy with a scalpel to be the prep cook. Like the lentil soup, the mint pea also had an unexpected heat. The soups at Tilikum Place Café remind me of a friend of mine from high school. He was a small, frail, quiet guy. I knew him for years and thought he was cool, but a total nerd. Then one day we were sitting at a bar, drinking. Apropos of nothing he just blurts out “Did you know that jizz burns when you get it in your eye?” He then went on to relate how he accidentally came in a woman’s eye while receiving a BJ, then suddenly began to ape the aftermath, jumping from his seat and running around in circles in the barroom rubbing his eyes and squealing in falsetto, “Somebody get me a towel!” That was the first and only time that I’ve laughed so hard I actually fell off of a piece of furniture. That story is about as fun to recount as the mint pea soup was to eat. And like the soup, that guy was secretly spicy. Moral of the story: when going down on a guy always swallow.

Speaking of things that I recommend you swallow, the grilled asparagus salad ($8) was a bit pricey but still good. Spears of really fresh asparagus were soft outside but still crisp within, dressed with a lemon oil vinaigrette that was as bright as a new penny, and garnished with a liberal snowdrift of REAL REGGIANO! This was simple yet very classy.

The grilled tri-tip steak ($19) was grilled an even medium, with a salty, crusty exterior. Usually ordering what I call the “loser steaks”-- tri-tip, flank steak, skirt steak-- is a gamble, since they sometimes have lines of gristly crap running through them. This tri- tip avoided the usual loser steak curse, and in fact was quite tasty and juicy and beefy. Accompanying the steak was a fluffy pile of silky mashed potatoes topped with batons of roasted carrots and parsnips. The whole plate swam in a comforting amniotic pool of rich red wine gravy. If you were some kind of 1950’s writer who smokes packs of cigarettes per day and only drinks two different liquids—coffee and whisky, often mixed together—this is the kind of shit you’d eat.

The grilled chicken breast ($16) wasn’t as good as the tri- tip, though I don’t know why I’m even bothering to mention that fact. After all, EVERYONE knows chicken isn’t as good as steak. Even vegans know that. While the chicken itself was juicy, it came with some weird spongy pastry things that looked sort of like hockey pucks and a rhubarb sauce that was so sour I couldn’t handle it. Whenever I got a taste of rhubarb sauce it really aggravated me. Finishing this dish was like trying to run the marathon with a piece of glass in your shoe. The pea vines that came with it were very tender and fresh at least.

Finally, a plate of 5 profiteroles cost $7. These pastry balls were so soft and flaky they were almost like croissants. They were filled with vanilla ice cream and topped with a caramel rum sauce that could actually get you drunk if you chugged a quart of it, although if you’re going to go to those lengths to get a buzz, Ny-Quil and rotten fruit will also do the job, with far less cholesterol.

Speaking of being desperate to get drunk, I think I’ll stop writing now and do that very thing. But before I go, remember this: The mint pea soup, tri- tip, and profiteroles together were together only $33, and you get to choose EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT, and YOU GET A LOT OF IT. So for all you fans of Urban Eats, I hope you enjoyed saving $3.

Verdict: Urban Eats is for CHEAP FUCKERZ. The end.

Rating: 7.5 profiteroles out of 10

Kushibar

2319 2nd Ave
206-448-2488

The first thing I noticed about Kushibar was the smell: hanging in the air was a mixture of greasy smoke and old fish that smelled like what I imagine a Viking’s funeral pyre would smell like. If you’d like a less theatrical example I’ll give you this: it smelled the way the alleys in the International District smell on a hot day. This wasn’t offensive to me; there are a million awesome seafood markets all over the fucking Cajun country that smell exactly like Kushibar: places that sell lots of seafood all day and then don’t mop the floors. Besides, with the rickety wooden porch seating they’ve got, plus all the blue neon, I’m thinking they’re trying to go for some sort of late- night back- alley Tokyo vibe. Plenty of tables were available, but we chose seats at the bar anyway to observe the action. We quickly placed our order, and the plates started trickling in.

Almost as soon as we ordered it, the Yakisoba Pan ($5) arrived. This was a sandwich of ramen noodles, stir fried cabbage, tempura zucchini, crispy bacon slices, and avocado, with mayo, on a toasted HOT DOG BUN, of all things. While this sandwich wasn’t bad, if I had one question to ask the guy who came up with it, it would be multiple choice. “Chef,” I’d say, “when you invented the Yakisoba Pan, were you: a) super stoned, b) totally wasted, c) bombed out of your motherfucking MIND, dawg, or d) all of the above?” I then wouldn’t wait for the chef to even answer, instead quickly filling in choice “d)” for him immediately (except I would never actually say the word “dawg”), because you’d have to be COMPLETELY FUCKED UP to put that much randomness on a bun.

In fact, the last foodstuff I have seen that even APPROACHED the ludicrous ingredients on the Yakisoba Pan really WAS created when someone was stoned: years ago my friends and I all sat around eating some pot brownies all night. When the munchies inevitably hit the best thing we could come up with to eat were burritos made of saltine cracker crumbs mixed with Thousand Island dressing, wrapped in flour tortillas. I personally didn’t eat one of the cracker crumb burritos, being too busy laughing at a Neosporin commercial, but I’m sure they were just as good as the Yakisoba Pan.

Next, the skewers we ordered arrived, lined up and resembling a picket fence of mediocrity on the plate. The negi ($1.50) was 3 or 4 short lengths of green onion, lightly charred on the outside and softly grilled all the way through. I wish they’d sliced these lengthwise before threading them onto the skewers; every time I bit into one, the slippery inner layers of onion skeeted out onto the floor. $2 got you the aspara, which if you haven’t already guessed, were a couple grilled slices of asparagus. Tasty, but I can grill asparagus at home, thanks, and $2 will get me HALF A POUND from the farmer’s market. The buta bara ($3) was a grilled slice of pork belly. I was hoping that they would have braised it first before grilling, so it would be all melty and yielding inside, like your mom’s crotch, but they didn’t. Instead, it tasted like a tough bland piece of thick bacon. The shiro maguro ($3) was a couple chunks of grilled albacore. This was unfortunately very fishy smelling (and tasting), like they went dumpster diving behind Shiro’s. Just as stinky was the reba ($1.50), grilled chicken livers dusted with toasted sesame seeds. The livers had a good creamy silken consistency, but they tasted the way a wet dog smells.

At this point a pause in the action allowed me, from my vantage point at the bar, to observe the kitchen action. And it was pretty goddamned, motherfucking action PACKED: the chefs skittered around, doing the soft- shoe routine that dudes who are accustomed to working quickly in a confined space with each other do. They slashed open plastic bags of ramen, scooping them up into sieves which they plunged into a roiling cauldron filled with either very rusty water or (hopefully) some kind of stock. Long skinny charcoal grills ran parallel to the bar, crowded with patiently roasting skewers. The grill directly in front of us seemed like it wasn’t in use; at least, I hope it wasn’t, since there was an ink pen stuck into it. Or maybe the ink pen was actually on the menu and I didn’t notice it: after all, everyone knows that ink is edible because it’s frequently served with pasta. Maybe the Yakisoba “PAN” was a typo on the menu, and it really read Yakisoba “PEN.” A Bic sandwich! What a great idea! You get your choice of size (fine point, medium point, or roller ball) AND your favorite flavor (red, blue, or black)!

A couple handfuls of the complimentary bowl of curried popcorn allowed me to cleanse my palette before the spicy ginger chicken ($7) arrived. This dish was awesome; a breath of fresh air after a shitstorm of disappointment. Tender chunks of chicken breast were sautéed in a flavorful ginger sauce with plenty of caramelized onions. It's subversively spicy; the heat sidles up to you like a chikan on the Tokyo subway and gropes you with its sweaty hand as if your taste buds were an innocent schoolgirl.

If I owned Kushibar I would have called it “The Great Northwestern Skewered Foods Company: Purveyors of the Finest Grilled Meats, Vegetables, and Seafoods,” but of course that doesn’t have the crisp mod “zazz” that everything in Belltown must have. I just don’t like the name of this place. “Kushibar” is a bad word, and it sucks to even have to SAY it. “Kushibar” is like “Zayda Buddy’s”: it’s one of those incomprehensible words that, if I hadn’t already seen it in print, if someone said it to me I would have to keep having them repeat it over and over again until they became frustrated and finally just spelled it for me. This is like the time a couple years ago when I got into an argument with some kids in a bookstore. I overheard them muttering something that sounded like “Sammasossa, sammasossa is so awesome.” “What’s ‘sammasossa?’” I asked. They looked at me, then turned to each other, incredulous that I didn’t know about Sammasossa’s awesome existence. Turns out they were discussing baseball legend SAMMY SOSA. I don’t follow baseball, so I didn’t know that Sammy Sosa had broken the single- season home run record. I told those little bastards to enunciate, next time. Needless to say, they heeded my request by clearly pronouncing the words “Fuck you.” Mission accomplished, at least.

Yet even though I hate the name, and most of the food stinks, I HAVE GOT to admit that Kushibar is a SPECTACULAR deal: two of us got out of there for $29 after tax and tip. That is fucking dirt CHEAP. They’re obviously aiming at the drunken last call crowd, and I have to give them credit for that because there isn’t enough late- night dining in Seattle because most restaurants are for pussies. The Yakisoba Pan is okay; it will obviously soak up lots of alcohol with its two- pronged, carb- on- carb assault. But if I were you I’d go with a couple orders of Spicy Ginger Chicken and be done with it. That’s because, if it’s 2 AM and you’re trying to head off a thermonuclear hangover, you’ve got to think strategically: which of Kushibar’s menu items will taste the best on the way back up?

Rating: 4 chikan out of 10

Fresh Bistro

4725 42nd Ave SW
206-935-3733

When I heard that this place had just opened, I thought it was called FRENCH Bistro. All day long I was skipping around, kicking up my fucking heels, a smile on my face like a leprechaun was hiding in my pants, tickling my asshole with a feather boa, thinking that an honest- to- Charles de Gaulle FRENCH BISTRO was opening up in West Seattle! You can thus imagine my disappointment when I realized that it was, in fact, run by the chumps who sell cookies at the West Seattle Farmer’s Market. Still, it would have been rude to dismiss their efforts without even trying the place, so off we went to Fresh Bistro.

I was immediately struck by the dining room’s interior. I don’t usually comment on a restaurant’s ambiance, but Fresh Bistro is OVER THE TOP. There’s too much stuff inside; too many clashing patterns like glass panels printed with bamboo, copper menus, weird lampshades that dangle like my dad’s nutsack, AND napkin rings that look like a scrunchie a robot hooker would wear (it’s obviously not a high class robot hooker), AND tiny planters of LEMON GRASS on EVERY TABLE. It’s like they wanted to be all sleek and modern, but also wanted to be “busy.” Some of you, my dear readers, are familiar with our local scion Elemental, a veritable how- to manual on the starkest of stark minimalism. Elemental takes its philosophy VERY seriously. If Elemental were a black metal band I’d listen to it ALL FUCKING DAY, even in the shower. Seriously, there are no curves inside Elemental, and EVERY angle is 90 degrees, and there are only 2 colors in the entire place: brown and light brown. Well this is what Fresh Bistro is like: it’s like Elemental and an Applebee’s fucked, and the baby that came out of Appleby’s face/ asshole, like some mythical Greek monster, was Fresh Bistro. It’s a visual riot that would drive an Aspberger’s Syndrome sufferer to commit seppuku. Plus they’ve got a cold, shady east- facing patio that won’t be much fun unless they start serving brunch, because on those brilliant Seattle summer evenings that make people want to sit outside drinking Mojito after Mojito, or whatever girl drink Sex in the City’s philosophical replacement told you to drink this year, Fresh Bistro’s patio will be in the SHADE!

Am I being too harsh? Not really, since as I’ve made clear many times, I don’t really care about ambiance. Then why complain about it for 500 words? Dude, I’m just saying.

Anyway, the food: we started with the asparagus soup ($9), which was a little fibrous but rich and creamy, especially once you got to the ball of melted goat cheese, sweet and hidden like a schoolgirl’s crush, at the bottom of the bowl. The asparagus flavor itself was bright, though the army- green color was a bit off- putting. The soup was garnished with a single tempura asparagus spear. This by itself was phenomenal: the batter was light and perfectly salted, ensconcing an asparagus spear that was still just a little crisp inside. I’d like to see these motherfuckers put tempura asparagus on the menu as a dish of its own.

The Caesar baby salad ($10) had a confusing name. It wasn’t little; in fact, the salad was a good portion. Nor did it have baby lettuce. So why “baby?” Do they think that if they sneak a cute word into each menu item, we won’t get mad if we don’t like it? After all, who besides a total psychopath would send a baby back? Not even me, although I might be tempted to sell my salad into white slavery in the Ukraine. Would I REALLY sell a helpless baby into slavery? No, but I would totally do that to your mom. Maybe Barrio could take a page from this play book and put “Magical Smiley Elf Tacos” on THEIR menu, both to justify the $11 price tag of their tacos (since as everyone knows, overfishing has notoriously driven up the price of elf meat), and to keep you from getting mad about it. But I digress; the Caesar baby salad was good, with soft leaves of Bibb or butter lettuce, glazed with a light coating of a mild Caesar dressing. There was one giant crouton, which was actually a piece of baguette sliced on the bias and all crusty with broiled parmesan and garlic. In an interesting twist, the ubiquitous Caesar salad anchovies were deep fried WHITE anchovies, with a muted fishy flavor and a crispy fried batter coating. All in all this was a solid, if non- traditional, Caesar salad with a dumb name.

Berkshire pork bellies ($9) had a straightforward, albeit misleading name. I was expecting a large chunk of succulently braised pork belly, yielding to the bite and melting its cholesterol straight into my aorta with seductive ease. Instead what you got was two perfect cubes of polenta cake, crusty outside but with a satin finish within, topped with a superfluous (but pretty) pile of shredded yellow and orange carrots. Where were the pork bellies? EVERYWHERE! There was a lot of it, strewn all over the dish, but it was cut up into tender braised lardons of soft yet chewy pork. The whole thing swam in an amazingly rich, glossy, salty demiglace, and perched on the very top was a pile of tiny amber spheres that could’ve been either some kind of roe or some kind of grain, but I couldn’t tell because the flavor of that powerful demiglace punched those tiny dots in their tiny faces. Which was what they deserved, for trying to barge in on this orgy of salty pork and creamy polenta.

The green olive and pecorino crusted halibut ($22) was as un- understandable as the Republican party platform. A filet of halibut was served atop a bed of fava beans, white beans, peas, and cherry tomato halves. Lurking on the bottom was some green eggy custard- like thing, which tasted rather watery. The halibut filet itself was juicy and tender inside, but the crust tasted like neither pecorino cheese nor green olives, although it was kinda salty, which makes sense given the alleged ingredients in said crust. The beans were okay but I thought the cherry tomatoes were bland and tasted washed- out and dragged down the other flavors.

Beef Wellington ($28) had some cutesy name that I forget, but it doesn’t matter because it was fucking AWESOME! A tender filet of medium rare beef, slathered in pate de foie gras, was wrapped in a shroud of puff pastry. The beef was so tender I thought it would evaporate if I didn’t eat it fast enough, which was why I wolfed it the fuck down. The puff pastry was flaky, doughy, and perfect, and the pate raised its voice just enough to be heard over the angelic chorus of divine virtue coming from the beef and pastry. It seems that lately foie gras is being overused; when even ice cream is made with it I think it’s time we all stood back and took a deep collective breath. After all, foie gras is a sword that shouldn’t be unsheathed lightly. Still, I’ve had lesser Wellingtons that used duxelles paste instead of pate, and it just isn’t the same. The Wellington was served in a pool of rich pan reduction sauce. Accompanying were a couple grilled young red onions. There was also a grilled mushroom, which was tender and satisfyingly meaty. It was also really weird looking: I’ve never seen such a mushroom outside of Super Mario Bros. Unfortunately, unlike the fungi commonly found in the various Super Mario games, this mushroom neither doubled my height, nor gave me an “extra man,” as my brother likes to call a 1up. The concept of the 1up is fucking weird: a MUSHROOM which gives you EXTRA LIVES. What sort of Satanic bargain did Mario have to strike in order to be provided with ANOTHER LIFE? It chills the very soul to ponder the ramifications. I prefer to think of the “extra men” as a mercenary army, chosen to be the same height, weight, hair color, and mustache thickness as the original Mario, sort of like the Rockettes. And you know times have changed when “Rockettes” triggers your spell checking software but “1up” does not. After all, who needs a row of sexy dancing dames when you’ve got Mario? Answer: obviously not anyone who works at Microsoft.

Dessert slid in under the radar with the Coffee & Cream with Sugar ($6), a cutesy name for a mocha flavored bread pudding. It wasn’t very sweet, and in fact tasted like bread that had been dipped in coffee, and to add an even deeper layer of cuteness, was served in a COFFEE CUP! How precious! Protruding from the center of the pudding was a glassy amber shard of brittle which had actual hazelnuts and whole coffee beans embedded in it. This made it look sort of like fly paper. I didn’t like this very much. Yet somehow, I liked the crème brulee ($6) even less. Normally, you may have noticed that I love crème brulee. Well, not with basil and tomatoes in it, I don’t. The menu simply said “seasonal crème brulee,” these motherfuckers didn’t even WARN me that they’d gone all faggy with it. I consider myself an adventurous eater, but after that Wellington, which was so old school you’re legally required to spell it “Olde Skewl,” I was ready for a glass of brandy and a classic end to the meal. But of course we can’t always get what we want. The crème itself was smooth and luxurious, with a good crackly sugar crust, but it wasn’t sweet enough. Plus there were cherry tomatoes on top, which leaked their limpid watery juices down into the custard below, and even –gasp!- some balsamic vinegar. Puzzlingly, despite all their proclamations of it being a “seasonal” crème brulee, tomatoes aren’t even in season yet! The sad thing is that I would’ve totally enjoyed this as an appetizer, but please, PLEASE don’t fuck with me on dessert. As a dessert it was too tangy and herbal to be an effective deal closer.

Despite my complaining about the décor (and other things), I’m actually optimistic about Fresh Bistro. The tomato- basil crème brulee shows that they’re shooting for high concept, which is sorely needed in West Seattle since Spring Hill currently has the monopoly on it. Yet they manage to pull off the Beef Wellington with ease, so they’ve obviously studied their history books and can do the classics as well. There might have been a glitch or two here and there, but they haven’t been open too long. I’m sure they’ll smooth the menu out shortly. But the glimmering memory of that utterly perfect Beef Wellington, the VERY DEFINITION of pure BRITISH STEEL, will definitely keep me coming back.

Rating: 7 extra men out of 10

Spur Gastropub

113 Blanchard St
206-728-6706

I swore I’d never go back to another gastropub after I ate at Quinn’s. Not because I didn’t like Quinn’s (actually I like it quite a lot), but because I felt like they were using the pub format to discriminate against the other systems of the human body. After all, you never hear of anyone opening a “circulopub” (which probably sells lots of blood sausage), or a “respiropub” (specializing in French calf’s lungs), or an ”excretopub.” Do I really need to get into what an excretopub would sell? Yeah, I do: excretopubs sell shit sandwiches, which as everyone knows are like life, since no matter which way you slice it, it’s still shitty.

Anyway, I was in the neighborhood so we went to Spur. We started with the baby lettuces ($9). This dish was a blatant case of false advertisement since all of those lettuce leaves seemed pretty mature to me, and not at all as youthful as the menu claimed. If they wanted to be really accurate they would have called this salad “cougar lettuces.” Still, the mix of red leaf, butter lettuce, and romaine hearts was tasty. It was dressed in a sweet vinaigrette, with toasted marcona almonds and thin slices of speck. I always hated the name “speck,” which seems a totally inappropriate description for what is actually smoked prosciutto. They should thus call speck “smokesciutto,” which is a much better name. A “speck” is what came out of the guy’s ass in Pink Flamingoes when he opened and closed his sphincter to the tune of “Surfin’ Bird” by the Trashmen. And like that scene in Pink Flamingoes, this salad was so delicious it made my sphincter open and shut in delight!

The parmesan gnocchi ($9) was also very good. These gnocchi had a rich salty parmesan flavor. They were light and fluffy nuggets, like little altocumuli clouds made of reggiano, served with a mix of sautéed green beans and carrots in a bright green sauce. The menu claimed that the sauce was “chive pudding” but I don’t believe them. This sauce was no more a pudding than anything the English call “pudding,” like “figgy pudding,” which is actually a cake, or “black pudding,” which is actually coagulated blood. And while we’re discussing pudding, I have a hard time believing that Bill Cosby would ever endorse Spur’s chive pudding, not because it wasn’t good, but because Bill Cosby hasn’t endorsed anything for years and I’m just pulling dated humor out of my ass.

The hamachi tartare ($16) seemed a little pricey for what it was: a rectangular mold of tiny cubes of raw albacore and yellow beets, topped with a thin line of radish leaves. This was accompanied by a couple crispy thin croutons upon which you could spread the tartare. This was very light and fresh tasting and not fishy at all, exactly the opposite of your mom!

The Washington chicken confit was, for $10, basically a plate of wings. They were really tender, readily falling off the bones, with a crisp skin. They wings were piled up on top of a sauce of either crème fraiche, or yogurt that had been thinned with something, or sour cream, or some other white tangy substance. Drops of a sherry reduction sweetened things up here and there, and the wings were crowned with a small pile of citrusy sorrel and scattered with a few pine nuts.

The tagliatelle ($14) was really fucking good. The pasta was very light, almost transparent, and so soft that they could only have been made in- house. Lots of oyster mushrooms provided a meaty bite, with plenty of pine nuts for crunch. A poached duck egg hid in the center like an Easter surprise, and the whole thing was topped a frothy pile of what the waitress described as “oyster mushroom foam,” but which actually seemed more like salty bubbles. The salty bubbles, while mildly distracting and unnecessary, didn’t detract from the overall awesomeness of this dish. The only thing stupid about the tagliatelle was the plate it came on, which looked like an inverted U with a dent in the center of it. Ever heard of a little something called a “bowl,” Spur? Obviously not. A bowl will change your life, bitch.

I need to pause at this juncture to tell you about Jesus. And by “Jesus,” I don’t mean some ancient middle eastern troublemaker who caused repeated disruptions to the law in some backwater of the Roman Empire, I mean Spur’s pork belly sliders. Like the real Jesus, these sliders are so good you can only save your soul by devoting your life to them. Unlike the real Jesus, you don’t have to die to meet the sliders; you just have to fork over $12. I admit that $12 is very expensive for 2 sliders. At $6 apiece, these mini sandwiches cost more than many full- sized sandwiches. Still, they’re worth every penny. Fluffy brioche mini buns were split and toasted crispy on their cut surfaces. The pork belly was silken, juicy, and so tender they fully deserved the name “sliders” because they slid right into your stomach the way I slide into your mom nightly. The pork was topped with apple compote, and the sliders were accompanied by a drizzly line of some kind of sweet bourbon honey sauce. These were without any competition the best sliders I’ve ever eaten, and I have eaten plenty of goddamned sliders because I fucking LOVE tiny sandwiches. Then again, they’d better be pretty damned good for the price.

I didn’t want to get the profiteroles ($11), but I felt like Spur was throwing down some sort of gauntlet because the profiteroles had FOIE GRAS in them! Holy fuck! Foie gras! Like a kid in a candy store, I was quivering with excitement waiting for dessert. I had visions of huge slippery tongues of rich fatty duck liver peeking out from beneath flaky pastry shells, but maybe my expectations were too high. What you ACTUALLY got was the usual profiterole pastry ball, three of them, filled with ice cream flavored with a few flecks of caramelized liver. What they probably did was take the pan they were cooking foie gras in and deglaze it with cream for the ice cream. The foie gras itself was mute, lending instead a vague meaty richness to the ice cream. The pate a choux was kind of leathery, and each of the three profiteroles were topped with a wholly superfluous dot of pomegranate syrup. I was a bit let down by the profiteroles, but I guess even something totally badass, like a clown car filled with monkeys who are trained to throw shit at and then hump the legs of the nearest Mormons, was bound to be a disappointment after the magnificence of the sliders.

I didn’t want to like Spur. I’m generally suspicious of Belltown, ever since Shorty’s started sucking major ass a couple years ago. Yet Spur won me over. It is totally fucking awesome. At first glance it seems expensive, but it isn’t too bad, since our entire bill for two came to just under $100 including tax and tip, and I probably didn’t need to blow the last $11 on the profiteroles. Between two people you should probably just get 3 orders of sliders, and be out of there for only $40 or $50 or so. But what if your friends don’t like pork? Then get new friends!

Rating: 8 porky messiahs out of 10

KFC

123 Everywhere Street
Everywhere, USA
1-800- KFC-SUXS

I have never understood Kentucky Fried Chicken. That’s because I could never understand why ANYONE would go there, given the existence of POPEYE’S. Let me tell you something about fried chicken: KFC sucks. Popeye’s rules the world with a spicy crispy iron fist. In fact, Popeye’s doesn’t just rule; its dominance of fried chicken and everything else in the world goes far beyond that. No, fuck that. Fuck what I just said about Popeye’s ruling everything in the world: Popeye’s rules everything in the UNIVERSE. This universe and EVERY OTHER UNIVERSE.

A funny thing about the universe: cosmologists think the universe is donut shaped (some of them, anyway. They can’t agree on the shape of the universe because cosmologists love to argue about shit because they’re a bunch of persnickety autistic tardos). So if the universe is donut- shaped, then what’s in its hole? No, it’s not God’s cock. Even better than that: it’s POPEYE’S. Popeye’s is clearly the best chicken in the known universe. It’s not just a fast food restaurant; it’s the axis upon which all of existence rotates.

Popeye’s dominance is, of course, why KFC is giving away chicken. Popeye’s doesn’t give away chicken because they don’t have to. KFC, on the other hand, is giving away free dinners featuring its new GRILLED CHICKEN. On the surface it seems like a great deal: 2 pieces of chicken, a biscuit, and 2 sides for FREE. Yet as we all know, things aren’t always what they seem: the “free IQ test” the guy in Los Angeles offered me was really a Scientology indoctrination seminar, and the “midget” hooker I called was really just a crackhead who put a pair of shoes on her knees and crawled around a la Tim Conway.

Still, I’m a sucker for free stuff so I dutifully printed my free Oprah coupon (more on Oprah later- don’t you worry about her) and headed down to my local KFC. Like I said, the coupon entitled you to two sides. There were two of us, and I had two coupons, so we chose 4 sides: fries, baked beans, and 2 copies of mac & cheese. We wanted a mashed potato, but there was a mix up in the drive- thru and so we ended up with double mac & cheese. Would that substitution be good luck? Stay tuned and find out!

Ah, fuck it. I hate keeping people in suspense, so I’ll just tell you now that the mac & cheese sucked. It was a violent orange color, and the macaroni had the waxy plastic texture of one of those PVC kiddie pools you can buy from Rite- Aid in the summertime that come with their own patch kit. It smelled vaguely metallic, and those of us brave enough to actually EAT the shit were rewarded with a hollow aluminum aftertaste. Basically, the mac & cheese was an insult to ALL the senses. It even SOUNDED gross: chewing it made the disturbing slurpy smacking sounds that a foley artist could use to simulate the sounds of two obese people 69’ing.

The fries, by contrast, weren’t actually that bad. They were of the “jo-jo” variety, thick cut wedges big enough to paddle a canoe with. The batter coating the jo-jo’s was light and crisp, and the potato flesh beneath was quite fluffy. Of course, I would expect no less from a place that has “Fried” in its very title! If they can’t at least make an okay French fry, then God help them. God help them, my friends.

The baked beans weren’t that great, but they weren’t terrible: too syrupy and cloying for sure, with no vinegar or mustard or ANY sour note to counter the treacly morass. The beans were mealy but otherwise inoffensive, I guess. These were the kind of baked beans grade- school cafeterias buy in gigantic cans, beans that slop all over the place everywhere and have no panache. The juice was slimy enough to use as some kind of lube, but that’s about it.

The biscuit was similarly lame. The main problem with the biscuit was that it threw into harsh relief the relative shitiness of KFC compared to Popeye’s. Popeye’s biscuits are the very Platonic ideal of pure biscuity perfection: light, flaky pastries that drip butter (or at least artificial butter flavoring) from every crumb. Popeye’s biscuits are the biscuits of Heaven’s very angels! Popeye’s biscuits are the food of the gods (and my dogs, when I’m not watching the counter). The KFC biscuit, by contrast, was dry, flavorless, and basically seemed like the kind of thing Irish immigrants eat while they’re waiting in line at Ellis Island.

I’ve put off describing the chicken itself both because I’m building up to it and because I don’t want to have to uncover the repressed memories. In fact, I’d rather be gang- raped by Satanists than eat KFC’s grilled chicken again. Did I really type “gang- raped by Satanists?” Sure I did; that’s just a normal Tuesday night. But KFC is an abomination. We got 2 thighs and 2 drumsticks. I would normally consider this to be a good omen because I love the dark meat. But of course KFC proved me wrong once again. The chicken had a glistening orange- brown skin complete with three perfectly sculpted “grill marks” that looked like they’d been designed by Roy Lichtenstein or Jasper Johns. In fact, the grill marks were so eerily precise, they could’ve been scored by a laser. Because this is what we as a society have developed lasers for: removing hair and tattoos, trying unsuccessfully to burn the paint job on a car that’s been recently treated with wax you can buy from an infomercial, and carving industrially manicured grill marks into shitty chicken.

But trust me, the grill marks weren’t the worst aspect of this meal. The skin was too thin and fibrous and tore into gummy threads like Saran Wrap that’s been microwaved too long. The meat was bland (unlike the mighty Popeye’s, KFC has no “spicy” option), and so greasy that Haliburton has a no- bid contract to mine it. And in case you think it’s odd that I’d make such a boring attempt at dated humor, then you can blame the chicken on that too: all the cholesterol in that chicken just gave me a stroke and so now all I can do is make jokes like a Jay Leno staff writer. That, and the stroke let me smell sounds, too. Somehow the “healthy” grilled chicken had more grease in it than ANY fried chicken I’ve ever tasted. How the hell is it possible?

Anyway, as usual the marketplace will undoubtedly refute my assessment of KFC’s piss- poor chicken. That’s because KFC now has the backing of OPRAH, the Hierophant of Mediocrity. I understand Oprah’s appeal even less than KFC’s. Before you complain about how I must hate Oprah because I fear powerful women, you should know that I would let Martha Stewart do whatever the fuck she wanted to do to me, provided that afterwards she could tell me how to get wine stains out of a rug and make a quick pie crust. Martha Stewart at least has an aesthetic. My problem with Oprah is that she has NO aesthetic: she seems to arbitrarily pick random things to fixate her retarded schmaltzy vision upon. Like KFC. Or Ezell’s, her local fave. I’ve got news for you, Oprah Winfrey: in my ancient homeland of Louisiana you can walk into any convenience store (south of Interstate 10, of course: only Protestant douchetards with no Joie de vivre live up north) and get chicken that’s effortlessly just as good as Ezell’s. Her book club is also suspect, in my eyes: how can you group a masterpiece of black despair like Night with the boring barroom tall tales in A Million Little Pieces? The very POINT of choosing things for dumb people to enjoy is that you’ll choose GOOD stuff. If you’re polluting your own choices with crap like The Secret, then what good are you? You may as well flip a coin when deciding which aspect of pop culture you’ll choose to enjoy! I can’t stand the whims of pure chance!

If Oprah wants to buy everyone in the USA free food, might I suggest something that tastes AWESOME, instead of ANAL RAPE CHICKEN?

Rating: 1 arbitrarily selected recipient of largess out of 10

PS I don’t usually post photos of food but here’s one I took of my meal. Please note that the meal DIDN’T actually come with a salad of arugula and shaved Reggiano with a balsamic vinaigrette and finished with Fleur de Sel de Camargue; I prepared that myself because my aorta threatened to tear itself out of my heart and squeeze itself out of my asshole if I didn’t eat something green. Note the perfectly parallel artificial grill marks on the thigh.





UPDATE 5/12/09: Complaining about Oprah, continued.

I wasn't done complaining about Oprah when I finally got too tired to keep writing last night, so here's another thing that makes Oprah Winfrey super dumb: her use of the term "Va- Jay- Jay." We grownups call it a "cunt," Oprah. "Va- Jay- Jay" is the worst thing that's happened to female genitalia since those self- loathing homosexual African fucks became so terrified of pussy that they decided to start cutting off their daughters' clits. Do you want to keep the company of uncivilized hacks, Oprah Winfrey? I think not.