The Lunch Break Chronicles

That's my score sheet, which is surprisingly void of wing-sauce thumbprints.

The bellies are full ballots are in, and the votes are tallied from yesterday’s LBC Wing Crawl, and there is one clear winner: Brickhouse Bar & Grill.

About a dozen chicken chompers participated in yesterday’s crawl, grading the five restaurants  on four criteria: Meatiness; Flavor; Texture; and Atmosphere. The scores ranged from 1 to 5, in each category, with 5 being top marks. Here’s how the scores shook out:

• Seaside Tavern: Meatiness – 3.83; Flavor – 4.5; Texture – 3.83; Atmosphere - 4.67
• Tiernan’s: Meatiness – 3.79; Flavor – 3.57; Texture – 3.71; Atmosphere – 3.57
• Bobby V’s: Meatiness – 4; Flavor – 4.4; Texture – 3.7; Atmosphere – 4
• Bradford’s: Meatiness – 4.1; Flavor – 3.1; Texture – 2.8; Atmosphere – 3.4
• Brickhouse: Meatiness – 4.18; Flavor – 4.81; Texture – 4.63; Atmosphere – 3.9

Here’s the rundown, complete with comments from some of the crawlers.

Seaside Tavern: Seaside Tavern took home the top score for atmosphere, which it seems can be summed up by the tavern’s wide array of recreational activities in the back room. That’s just pure calculus, according to Richard B’s score sheet, on which he wrote, Wings & shuffleboard = Happiness. They also have a wide array of sauces. For the record, we tried the Feather Ruffler, which was a basic buffalo sauce with hints of black pepper.

Tiernan’s: The wings here were a little on the tangy side, even though we ordered them with the medium sauce. It was good, don’t get me wrong, but when I order buffalo-style wings I’m looking for more of a bite than tang. N. Wilhelm, who is one of four Buffalo, N.Y. natives who joined the crawl, noted that while the taste is good, there were only three flavor options. Compared to the 18 choices at Seaside, it was a little lacking.

First stop: Seaside Tavern

Bobby V’s: There’s no disputing that Bobby V;s has some of the best finger foods in Stamford for watching the big game. When Syracuse is playing a basketball game, you’re likely to find me there. But while just about everyone was more than pleased with the flavor, the blue cheese left a lot to be desired. Sean B. commented, Good sports. Watery blue cheese. Yeah. That sums it up.

Bradford’s: The first wing I had from our plate of 20 was dry. And I’m not talking coulda-been-saucier dry. I’m talking did-this-wing-evaporate-or-something dry. But I gave them the benefit of the doubt, especially given that I like Bradford’s for an early evening hang out in the summer. The next wing (from the exact same plate) was perfect. As Julie H. put it, The cooking was inconsistent. Some were perfect, others were dry or undercooked.

Brickhouse: There were two things that rally excited me about the wings at Brickhouse: the first was that they were perfectly sauced and flavorful; the second was that they were half off, because of the Sunday Funday special. Seriously, how do you fight with that? Claire W. summed it up pretty well with her comment: Amazing flavor. Yes, I’ll be back, but this time with room enough in my stomach to eat more than just a couple.

Just made it to Tiernan’s – our second stop on the wing crawl. Next up is Bobby V’s at 2 pm, followed by Bradford’s at 3 and Brickhouse at 4. See ya there?

-Maggie

After taking your responses and the city’s geography into account, an official wing itinerary has been created for this Sunday, Aug. 21. Below you’ll find our schedule, as well as price info. Don’t freak about having to buy a bucket o’ wings at each place. There will be plenty of people willing to pool for the course of the afternoon.

The Lunchbreak Chronicles’ first Wing Crawl will include the following stops:

• 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. at Seaside Tavern, 891 Cove Road. Seaside, which is often called Jimmy’s, has 18 different sauces, which means we’ll have our hands full reviewing this stop. Plus, who doesn’t love a good Sunday afternoon round of shuffleboard? Wings are $9 for 10 wings, plus other large sampling sizes.
• 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. at Tiernan’s, 187 Main Street. This is the first of four stops that are all within walking distance of each other, so find a place to park your car and roll up your sleeves for a saucy Sunday. Wings are $7.95 for 10, or $11.95 for 20.
  
• 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. at Bobby V’s, 225 Main Street. The wings here are really crispy, and they serve ‘em up with homemade blue cheese. Wings are $6.99 for 10, or $13.25 for 20.
• 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. at Bradford’s Grill & Tavern, 83 Bedford Street. Bradford’s hosts Sunday Funday every week, which means they’ll have Happy Hour prices. Wings are 50 cents each.
• 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. at Brickhouse Bar & Grill, 244 Bedford Street. The owner, Danny, assured me these will be the best wings we try all day, but I think we’ll be the judge of that. Wings are $8 for 10, $14 for 20 and $21 for 30.

When you show up, just ask for me, Maggie, and I’ll give you your official score card, where you’ll mark your scores for texture, flavor, meatiness, atmosphere and overall experience.

May the best wings win!

ABOVE: A Rico’s pepperoni and black olive pizza in the Hearst Connecticut Media Group’s tasting lab.

8/16/2011

To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, now we are engaged in a great pizza war, testing whether this city, or any city, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

By now you are all well aware of the running feud between Colony Grill, a Stamford institution, and newcomer Rico’s Pizza and their very good (and nearly identical) offerings.

I assure you, aside from the nocturnal heartburn that hits me after consuming a hot-oil pie from either establishment, they are not quite the same.

The rumors of a Colony “imitator” spread quickly, but I didn’t think much of it until Colony took out an ad in The Advocate and reporter Jeff Morganteen began to investigate. The schism produced a backlash against Colony and clear sense that a segment of Stamford feels the restaurant has been dealt a well-deserved comeuppance. And so began my quest to get to the bottom of this.

The first day I tried to obtain a pie from Rico’s only to find that an extremely large takeout order has been placed (reportedly by Steven A. Cohen’s hedge fund).

Patrons, including the entirety of Stamford Fire and Rescue’s Engine Company 3, waited impatiently for lunch as employees scrambled around trying to churn out pies.

Subsequent reports from varied sources suggest that Rico’s has made the Colony-esque move of taking the phone off the hook during busy flurries of pizza ordering. Obviously, I don’t fault Rico’s for being busy and I have, indeed, successfully ordered pies on three occasions, herein lies the issue.

From the numerous conversations I’ve had with people on both sides of this debate, the chief concerns Stamford’s pizza-eating public have with Colony are service, the lack of delivery and their inability to process credit cards.

For me, these are non-issues.

Don’t get me wrong, I eat a lot of pizza — too much really — but I can’t remember the last time I had one delivered to my house. I was probably in high school. This may make me an anomaly but it brings into focus the deeper issue: the role of the bar pizza in contemporary American society.

Let’s get this straight: Colony, while a unique Stamford treasure, serves a bar pizza.

Debate the definition if you will, but the generally accepted parameters of such a pie relate to the thinness of the crust, the copious presence of grease and the use of not-necessarily fresh ingredients.  More importantly, however, the bar pizza is characteristically served in a bar.

This is where I see the inherent fallacy of the delivery argument, and it is two-fold.

My experience with Colony pies has taught me this: they don’t travel well.

The implications of the second law of thermodynamics would suggest that a pizza and its surrounding environment will reach an equilibrate temperature at a rate relative to the thinness of the pie. A Colony-style pie stands no chance against Fairfield County traffic.

Admittedly, my experiences with Rico’s have involved takeout which on all occasions has resulted in a somewhat limp crust, more so than with a takeout Colony pie. This can be attributed to the relative lack of oil in Rico’s crust.

While not ideal, it is the way the vast majority of Rico’s customers will consume their product. Trust me, you wouldn’t want to eat-in at Rico’s — not that it’s not new and clean and well-lit, but it would be akin to eating in a strip mall Dominoes. And this is Rico’s intent as their business is clearly focused on takeout and delivery.

But one must consider the external variables of pizza enjoyment; proximity to low-quality kegged beer, multiple high-def television screens and decades-old Formica slick with grease. My apartment has none of these things.

Getting to the crux of the issue, this environment begets service issues that some are mischaracterizing as rude.

If you have no expectations of being treated like a pampered Fairfield County diner, things go swimmingly at Colony: you order your pizza, you laugh when your friend inquires about salad options, you eat and then you pay your bill when you can finally wave down a bartender.

And you pay with cash.

If a piece of currency that can facilitate a transfer of pizza and/or pizza-related services was held to be so fundamental to our way of life it was written into our constitution before the inalienability of our rights to express personal and religious freedoms, it’s good enough to buy a sausage and hot-oil pie with.

Aside from the legally tenuous allegations of intellectual property theft, Rico’s is doing an excellent job with their pies. But not the same pie, as many are claiming.

While eerily similar, Rico’s tastes like Colony on an slightly-off day. With a crust that is less crisp, having near identical toppings and even perhaps a better sauce, it is not the same experience.

To Lincoln, “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” but in this case I welcome it — if only for a shorter wait at Colony.

–CP

Image by jefflphoto via Flickr

I can’t be the only one thinking it’s about time that someone in Stamford organized a Wing Crawl, now can I? There are pizza crawls and bar crawls all the time, but Stamford also has a whole host of places with saucy, succulent wings, and we at the LBC think it’s about time we compared and contrasted.

Here’s the catch. There are so many places, that we’re looking for a little bit of help narrowing down the list of wingeries we’d like to visit. That’s where you come in. Vote  using the link below for (up to) five places you’d like us to include on our all-day chicken chomping tour to help us narrow down the list.

Which wing joints do you want to see on the LBC Wing Crawl?

Then mark your date books for Sunday, Aug. 21, Wing men and women, ’cause that’s when it gets real.

And don’t be afraid to spread the word. Here’s the Facebook invite.

Bar Rosso opened on Spring Street earlier this year.

I’ve popped into Bar Rosso about a handful of times since it opened on Spring Street this June, just to grab a glass of wine or a cocktail with friends at the end of an evening. Their wine by the glass list is pretty extensive, which should come as no surprise to Stamford sippers since it is owned by Mary Schaffer, who also owns Napa & Co. on Broad Street.

Monday night, I finally ventured in for dinner. I was a little bummed that the weather wasn’t being cooperative enough for us to sit outside for our meal, but the inside is so beautiful (much improved since the location served as the home of Bennet’s steakhouse) that I couldn’t pout for too long.

I skipped right over the pizza section of the menu (mainly because it’s a brick-oven kind of place, but since it’s only a couple months old, I had a feeling the bricks would lack the flavor of the older pizza establishments in town) and opted for pasta instead.

I’ve gotta say the truffle & ricotta gnocchi, which they serve with braised pork and a farm fresh egg on top, was awesome. Definitely my favorite of the night, making me wish I had thought to order it so I wasn’t forced to snag bites from my friend’s plate when he wasn’t looking…

I had the bucatini & clams, which they served over pasta in a white wine and garlic sauce. It was simple, but good. And the waiter pointed out that you could tell all the pasta was homemade at the restaurant: like snowflakes, each strand was unique.

They have tons of Italian bar snacks at Bar Rosso, but to be honest, the pasta dishes were so huge, you can totally skip appetizers and still struggle to make a dent in the dinner-sized portions. Especially if you want dessert, which — trust me — you do. We were celebrating a birthday, so we had the pine nut tart with cappuccino creme and cinnamon gelato. At first it seemed silly to enjoy gelato at Bar Rosso when Stamford’s new gelato spot, Volta, is literally next door, but after one spoonful, I was too happy with the dish to think about being silly. In the New York Times’ review of Bar Rosso, the reviewer says the tart is too sweet for his taste. I admittedly have a ridiculously overactive sweet tooth, but I thought it was perfect.

Long story short, I’ll be back from more than just a glass of wine.

Mike Phillips is something of a superstar in the specialty coffee world. After winning the World Barista Championship last year, he left Intelligentsia, a leading specialty coffee roaster in Chicago where he was a training guru, to start Handsome Coffee Roasters in Los Angeles.

But in the meantime, he’s taking a road trip and will be pulling a guest barista shift at Darien’s Espresso NEAT* on Saturday and there’ll be some sort of coffee tasting/pairing event Thursday at 8. I’m short on details at the moment, but if you are into coffee, you should be excited.

Stay tuned for updates…

SEE MIKE IN ACTION:

–CP

*FULL DISCLOSURE: I occasionally work here when they need a hand on the weekends.

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Shake Shack

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Shake Shack at Madison Square Park. (Flickr/ajdecandis)

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Shake Shack at Citi Field. (Flickr/slgckgc)

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Shake Shack near Times Square. (Flickr/shinya)

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ABOVE: Shake Shack food porn, via Flickr.

SHAKE SHACK: 1849 POST ROAD EAST, WESTPORT

7/15/2011

Shake Shack, the NYC burger joint with a cult following among both tourists and locals, officially announces it will open their first store in Connecticut on Wednesday.

The highly anticipated Westport opening comes none too soon for burger fans in Fairfield County who have experienced the shack in the city. Hopefully the lines won’t be as long as the ones that snake through Madison Square Park, where the original establishment is located, but I’m not holding my breath.

–CP