WV Gourmet

Fathead’s is a great bar/restaurant on Pittsburgh’s South Side.  Not only does Fathead’s have an insane beerlist, their staff is knowledgeable about beer, AND they have great bar food.  It’s pretty much the greatest place in the world. 

The food:  They have an extensive menu of sandwiches (or headwiches, as they call them) and burgers, as well as generous sized appetizers and chicken wing flavors.  On my most recent trip, I went with an appetizer of five wings and the Double D.  For the wings I went with Fathead’s Original (their version of the classic Buffalo sauce).  They were very big and meaty with a crispy exterior and a good dose of very spicy Buffalo sauce.  My sandwich headwich was the Double D, which the menu describes as follows:   “Shaved Steak grilled with onions, mushrooms & hot peppers on top of hot sausage & pepperoni.  With tomato sauce, provolone and parmesan cheese.  Buy two, who wouldn’t want a pair of Double D’s.”  This sandwich was every bit as big, unhealthy and DELICIOUS as it sounds.  I did not capture a photo of it because it was so large that you couldn’t fit it into a single picture.  I’m not kidding, it was bigger than my oversized head.  It came with homemade chips, which were also very good. 

A delicious mug of Brutal Bitter

The beer:  Even if Fathead’s didn’t have exceptional bar food, it is well worth the visit for the beer.  They boast 42 beers on tap, many of which are rotating selections.  Forty of those taps are devoted to microbrews/imports, while one is for Lite Beer From Miller and the other Yeungling Lager.  They also always have one beer served on cask.  For those of you who don’t know about cask conditioned beers, they are a rare treat which you can learn about here.  On this particular visit, Rogue Brutal Bitter was on cask, so I started off with that.  It was slightly warm (as a cask beer should be), had a great full mouthfeel with assertive, yet somewhat mellow hops.  I followed this up with Great Divide Fresh Hop Ale - a very assertively hopped pale ale from Colorado.  The grapefruity bitterness of this beer paired well with the fatty Double D.  I then tried a sample of the Sierra Nevada Brown Saison, which had nice raisin and funky flavor.  I closed out with the Oskar Blues Ten Fidy Imperial Stout.  Why is this beer called “Ten Fidy”?  Because it is 10.5% alcohol by volume.  This is one hell of a strong and tasty beer, with strong roasted coffee and dried fruit flavors, but also a strong hop character, in other words a damn fine beer.  

A lilliputian selection of taphandles.

After finishing the Ten Fidy, I went back to my hotel, turned on the TV and was asleep before 8 p.m.  The combination of a long day, some good football, the Double D, and some damn fine beers had worn me out.  I awoke the next morning, refreshed and ready to go to Pamela’s Diner for pancakes, but that is another story.

For a few short years, I lived in Pittsburgh.  I have made several trips back up there in the seven years since I moved away, but there are some places that, until recently, I had not been to since 2002.  One such place is Wings Suds & Spuds, located in Moon Township.  On a recent trip, I went there with my old pal Big Mike (a veteran of Wings Suds & Spuds) and Rob (a Wings Suds & Spuds virgin).

Wings Suds & Spuds has pretty much the best Buffalo style wings in the world.  They have other things on the menu,  but I have only ever had two things there: wings and fries. 

A half pound of delicious curly fries.

I will discuss the fries first, since they are brought out as an appetizer.  There is only one size order of fries: a half pound boat of fresh cut curly fries.  You will find two bottles on your table to accompany your fries.  One is a bottle of ketchup, the other is a squeeze bottle of white vinegar.  As usual, I doused my fries with vinegar and salt, put a little ketchup on the side and dug in with my plastic fork and made quick work of my half pound of fries.  Big Mike took it up a level and ordered a side of cheese sauce for his fries, which he also made quick work of.  Rob, being a Wings Suds & Spuds virgin, did not order any fries. 

Then came the wings.  They have many flavors, but for me there are only two: traditional hot and hot garlic.  On this evening, I went with traditional, but there are two modifications available on the menu, which I always make: “extra hot” and “extra wet”.  “Extra hot” is pretty obvious: extra hot sauce is added to the mix.  “Extra wet” means that they are served up in extra sauce.  I love lots of sauce.  The non-extra wet wings come to you swimming in about a quarter inch of sauce, which seems pretty excessive compared to the measly doses of sauce you get at other places.  The extra wet wings come to you in about a half inch of sauce, which makes for an excellent dip if you still have any fries left over.  The wings themselves are big.  I mean really big, not like the sparrow wings you get at some places.  These things may have been pulled off an emu.  They are cooked until the skin is crispy, which is more than I can say for some places.  The sauce has the perfect balance of hot and vinegary.  Big Mike, a native of Buffalo, has proclaimed this his favorite wing place in the Pittsburgh area, and I don’t disagree.

The place is tight and the parking lot is tighter.  I have never been there when it was not crowded, but it is worth the drive out of the city and a little wait.  The beer selection is nothing special.  I think it is pretty much Bud, Bud Light, IC Light, and Yeungling, but you don’t go there for the beer, you go there for the wings.  Another added bonus is that they have a fantastic piece of art on the wall.  Their logo is a chicken in a tracksuit, running while carrying a pitcher of beer and a tray of wings.  They have immortalized this logo in the form of a carpet mural, which hangs on the wall of the dining room.  Regretably, I did not snap a picture of this piece of art.

I used to frequent this place with The Bundick Brothers, who would always invoke the Bundick No Wipe Rule, whereby you could not use a napkin until you were finished eating.  It added a little extra excitement to the consumption of spicy, saucy dead chicken parts.  Upon my most recent visit, there were no Bundicks in attendance so wiping was allowed. 

Behold, the extra hot, extra wet.

I have now been to the Buffalo Wild Wings at Southridge.  My review is in the form of a series of haikus (or is the plural of haiku simply haiku?)

Crispy and large wings

Mango habenero sauce

Good but needs more sauce

For the side order

Undercooked buffalo chips

Ketchup was not Heinz

Service was spotty

Food came out at diff’rent times

But the beer was cold.

Growing up in Logan County, I ate at Morrison’s Drive Inn at least 800 million times in my short life.  No trip home is complete without a trip to Morrison’s Stollings, WV.  In fact, I really don’t consider it Christmas Eve without a lunch trip there.  I was visiting my parents last week and slipped over to Stollings with Mom to get some delicious Morrison’s food. 

The Chicken Liver Basket

Mom went with the cheeseburger basket.  The cheeseburgers at Morrison’s are served on toasted buttered and white bread, and wrapped in cellphane.  I believe they do this to prevent any flavor from escaping.  It comes with standard burger toppings: pickles, mustard and a big ol’ piece of onion.  It’s pretty much what every cheeseburger aspires to be.

The Cheeseburger Basket - see how the cellphane locks in the flavor.

I would be remiss to not mention the hotdogs.  Morrison’s makes some great hotdogs.  That’s all I’ll say, since they were previously praised by the WV Hotdogs guy. 

They also sell beer, which they will bring to your car.

The Morrison's Menu

I was driving through Kentucky recently to visit some friends and had to stop off and get something to eat, so I went through the McDonalds drive through.  I was planning on getting their rip off Chic-Fil-A sandwich (which isn’t as good as Chic-Fil-A, but a good effort, nonetheless), when I saw that this McDonalds was in the test market for the new McAngus, or whatver they call their “premium” burger, launched to compete with the Hardees Thickburger and the Burger King something something angus burger. 

I had high hopes for this thing, and had wanted to try one ever since I first heard about it.  While everyone else in the fast food business has been launching a higher priced, “premium” burger, McDonalds has seemed to be sitting this one out.  When I heard that they had developed one, I assumed that the folks at the McDonald’s taste labs had been working their balls off to come up with something that would knock the ass off the current champ, the Hardees Small Thickburger.  I don’t include Five Guys in this, because they are higher priced - sort of like comparing Panera and Subway, sure they both sell sandwiches made on bread made in the store, but one costs a little more and tastes really good, and the other is Subway.  Anyhow, back to what I was talking about.  This was a big burger (one third pound), which I’m not that big a fan of.  The quarter pound size is more or less the perfect size for a burger.  Oh well, it looked really good.  The toppings looked good, and hell the onions (which typically suck at Micky D’s) were actually good (I think it was a nice big slice of a red onion, but don’t quote me on that).  This is a burger and no amount of quality condiments can save you from a lackluster piece of beef.  This was not all that great.  It was somewhat more beefy in flavor than the standard McDonalds burger, but the texture was dry there was something somewhat off about the flavor.  I’m not really sure how to describe the off flavor, but there was something a little shitty about it.  In the end, it was kinda good, but kinda shitty.  The fries were excellent, as awlays.

*Adendum: I subsequently learned that the McAngus has been released wide and you can get it at the McDonalds restaurants in Charleston, but I strongly advise against it.

There is quite a lot of garlic on this burger.

Although Fat Patty’s, a relatively new burgers-and-beers joint on the corner of 20th St. and 3rd Ave. in Huntington, conjures up images of vast, dripping, slabs of meat, it’s the imaginative toppings that really make the place memorable. The garlic-slathered meatslab to the right is the “Vampire Killer,” but other offerings include a Hawaiian-themed pineapple creation, a pepper-packed patty, and a delectable cajun-blue-cheese-bacon combination.

Despite the appetizing appearance of the sandwich, it’s a shame that the garlic seemed to be of the pre-prepared, out-of-a-jar variety rather than fresh: it has none of the sharpness and aggression that characterizes quickly cooked garlic. There’s still plenty of body, but it’s lacking the bite. It’s not going to worry any vampires.

On balance, though, it was a happy enough sandwich. I enjoyed the hefty chunk of red onion, and a generous helping of the other fixings, and the bun was generic but not too understated as to be overwhelmed or soggified by everything else. Decent, but I think I’ll opt for one of their blue cheese offerings next time. (Update: I did go back, and the “Black and Blue” is indeed absolutely delicious, removing my last reservation about this joint.)

But that’s not the best thing on that plate.

No, leave this place without ordering onion rings, and the Manson family will drive to your house and molest your cat. They’re that good. Just dark enough, with a pleasantly beery batter and a tasty core: some of the best around. Perhaps they’re frozen, but I’m inclined to doubt it.

(Hey, Patty’s, if you’re out there, how about doing BK’s “Mildly Upset Whopper” right?  I think you’ve got the ingredients and the attitude to make it work.)

If you go, go early. They were packed by 12pm on a Monday, and although their wait staff were obviously overstretched, they did a creditable job keeping up with our drink refills (no, not beer, although Patty’s full bar will doubtless be happy to satisfy any cravings you have in that direction). Despite the busy-ness and our onion-ring substitution, we were in and out in well under 45 minutes; just right for lunch. I’m already plotting an early evening return for beers, wings, and rings: Fat Patty’s is an easy recommendation.

Friday night, I put on my kevlar and waded my way through the downtown Charleston, WV transit mall to go to Rio Grande (or Big River in English). I could write about the food, but I’m not going to say much about that. It’s your basic local Mexican place where for a twenty dollar bill, you can get a belly full of pretty decent Mexican/Tex-Mex food AND have enough margaritas to float a battleship. I’m not going to write about the service, other than to say that the folks there are very quick to get your food to you. I’m going to write about the art, specifically the cockfight mural, which I have given the name: Little Jerry and El Guapo.

In this work of art, you will note that there is no audience, only the roosters and their trainers.  Mano y mano.  Pollo y pollo.  This is a pride match, not unlike the fight between Rocky and Apollo at the end of Rocky III.  Don Eduardo, whom you see in the forefront, taught Marcelino everything he knows about cockfighting.  Now, Marcelino and his young up and comer Rooster, Little Jerry, are engaged in a vicious cockfight with Don Eduardo and his prized rooster, El Guapo, who has a 73-0 record.  Little Jerry is closer to the viewer.  El Guapo has the upper hand right now, but you can see the fire in Little Jerry’s eye.  This is far from over.  There is no money on the line.  There are no spectators.  Just two men and their cocks, fighting for pride.  Who will win?  I don’t know.