Omnivore - Friday lunch and dinner report
Is a lamb chop adequate consolation for missing bollito misto?
Brad Lapin, my regular Friday lunch date, is too Catholic to eat meat on Fridays. So, in order to sample the special of bollito misto at La Pietra Cucina this week, we moved lunch to Thursday, and his partner Eric Varner joined us.
Unfortunately, Chef Bruce Logue had delayed offering the Italian classic of boiled meats until Thursday night. So we were forced to eat this special of a thick lamb chop over gnudi and a parsley-based salsa verde with capers and some anchovy. I also had half an order of ravioli and a mocha-flavored dessert that was something like a cross between a flan and pana cotta. I ate all that to console myself for not gettting the bollito misto.
I note that the Buddha of food also showed up when the bollito misto was unavailable.
You’d think with a lunch like that, I’d skip dinner or content myself with some celery and a rice cake. But Wayne was hungry and needed food desperately, so I joined him at The Flying Biscuit’s original location in Candler Park. It was an instant hit when it opened in 1993 with its creative but homey cooking and cathead biscuits. Then, two or three years ago, it was sold to a franchise operation and quality started to teeter.
Last night’s meal was not good. The problem is a failure to change with the times as much as anything else. Wayne ordered a dish that featured three eggs scrambled with chicken sausage, pasta, spinach mushrooms and cheddar cheese. It was not pretty. He ordered an oatmeal pancake for his side. It was tepid and thick, topped with an unpleasantly glutinous epach compote.
I chose salad — a ridiculously gigantic salad — with some grilled chicken over field greens with rosemary-roasted potatoes and blue cheese. The chicken was good enough but the greens were absolutely sopping wet with the dressing. My whole-wheat biscuit was stone cold and crumbled into bits when I took a knife to it.
Service was great. The ambiance is still cozy but almost creepily from another era. And — come on — get a restroom door that actually closes.