Zagat Ratings

The wife and I had dinner at Maroni Cuisine Saturday night. In anticipation of that I checked out the latest Zagat ratings for Long Island restaurants. Maroni is rated as the #2 place behind Kotobuki, and both get a 28 food rating.

My review will come soon, but there is no way Maroni should be rated that high. Kotobuki either. And we love Kotobuki. We've eaten in there once but get take out all the time. We just got take out from there last night, in fact (the Kotobuki Combo and the Sushi and Sashimi Combo). But it's just sushi, for God's sake.

Anyway, this illustrates a reason why I started this blog. The losers who vote for the Zagat ratings have no idea what they're talking about. The best restaurant, by far, by FAR, on Long Island is Louis XVI, and it gets a 25 food rating in Zagat's. WTF? I would put Maroni around a 22. No more.

Newsday's Top 10 New Restaurants

Newsday recently put out its annual list of the Top 10 new restaurants on Long Island. I haven't been to any of them. I tend to wait for reputations to be established before venturing somewhere. Oh, to have an expense account to eat at restaurants...

Review: Santa Fe Grill Express

The Santa Fe Grill Express (doesn't that name seem long?) is located in a strip mall on 111 in Smithtown, a little north of the area's most famous resident, Kotobuki. (Most famous as far as I'm concerned.)

This place is a mess. At least food-wise. It calls itself "Santa Fe" and most of the dishes are southwestern. And there's the usual stuff: tacos, burritos/wraps, nachos, etc.

But one of the burritos is a "Hawaian" burrito. One of the side dishes is boneless Thai chicken wings. There's also a General Tso's wings. They are not horrible, but they are not great, and they are not southwestern. So, are you a southwestern restaurant or not? I mean I'm pretty sure I haven't seen General Tso's wings at Meson Ole.

So, the character of the restaurant is confused and unfocused. This is underscored by the decor. The colors are southwestern/Mexican, and there are lizard decorations on the wall. But next to the lizards is a dart board. And on the other wall are baseball photographs. So, are we supposed to feel transported to Santa Fe when we walk in there or some shitty little sports bar?

The food is not great. Those crappy wings are probably the best thing. I haven't been impressed by any of the burritos I've had. However, the wife makes me get her a Hawaiian one on occasion. The quesadilla is no better than one from Taco Bell, and you get to pay 3x the price to find that out. The chili is awful. The salsa they include with most entrees is inconsistent--sometimes good, but often very bland.

Other than the wings, it appears that most of the food is prepared fresh. I guess that's one thing it has going for it. But that's it. Oh, and the hours are 11 AM to 8 PM, as I found out at 8:06 last Thursday night.

1 out of 5 stars

532 Rte. 111

Hauppauge, NY 11788

Colts-Ravens Game

The enjoyable thrashing the Colts gave the Ravens the other night reminded me of a non-Long Island food experience. A couple years ago the wife and I were in Baltimore for a couple days. So, I made a point of stopping by Obrycki's Crab House, Baltimore's most famous crab place. We had beer and, I don't know, a dozen of the boiled blue crabs or something.

Yuck. The crabs were fine. I love crab. But the only seasoning I tasted was black pepper. And the price was something like $50 for the crabs. WTF? Plus, the place is in the f*cking ghetto. I didn't know if we'd be mugged on the way to the restaurant from where we had to park. Thank you, Baltimore.

Updates

Coopersmith's, on Main Street in East Islip, has closed shop. I had heard good things a few years ago, ate there, and it was awful and overpriced. So, good riddance. It is now "J.D. Page's" or something. I don't know, I just drove by there for the first time today, in a while--actually on the way to some new-agey, hippie, smoothie place, which I should blog about. They had their stupid wheat grass growing on the counter and everything.

Also, I happened to see that the Food Blog Award nominations are out. God, are you kdding me? Talk about a meaningless award. Who could possibly give a shit? Mysteriously, the Long Island Food Blog has been overlooked. The staff here is beside themselves with grief. That's the bad news.

The good news is that our "FoodTV Hotties" post has been nominated for "worst post in the history of the internet" by the Committee Against Internet Stupidity. So, get your votes in.

FoodTV Hotties

I wrote this post one day, a few months ago, and it has been sitting on my computer ever since. So, I thought I'd put it up. Warning: in what has been a long, sad history of offensive, juvenile, and profane posts, the following may be the most offensive, juvenile, and profane.

A recent issue of Men’s Health had a poll of which Food Network chefs guys wanted to bang. (Or found attractive or something.) That hideous fat pig Rachel Ray came in first, ahead of Nigella Lawson.

My first thought was: What the f*ck? I’d put Rachel Ray somewhere between Paula Dean and Mario Batali. And I’m a dude.

My second thought was: now that they mention it, there has been an increase in bangability over there at the Food Network over the last few years. Actually, I preferred the Food Network as it was in the early days. But back then their featured female chef was Sara Moulton, who, from what I can tell, is about 4 feet tall and strikes me as some nerdlinger teacher’s pet who put up her hand when the teacher forgot to give out homework. While the quality of the shows has tanked since then, the hotness of the female chefs has vastly improved. Thank Christ.

For the last few years I’ve had a crush on Sandra Lee. She’s got some older woman hotness thing about her. She also has blonde hair and big knockers. And don’t try and tell me she’s some sweet, little Suzy

homemaker, whipping up her little semi-homemade bullshit all the time. You can tell she’s some slutty, party chick. She’s always got those cocktails working, no matter what else she’s making. She’ll make some stupid candy salad thing for the kiddies and then whip up some 150-proof cocktail for mom and dad.

And hot women like her know they’re hot. A couple years ago she was dressed up in some French maid adult costume thing for a Halloween special. She was doing a segment with Tyler Florence, who was dressed like Frankenstein and

kept flirting with him shamelessly. He didn’t know what the hell to do. Pussy. She ended up asking “Am I making you nervous?” Yeah, you know what you’re doing, baby. I don’t know about Frankenstein, there, but she gave an electrical jolt to my penis.

Then there’s that chick on Simply Delicioso. OK, she’s no beauty queen, and I can’t stand the name of her show. But she’s got some sexy Latin thang workin'. And it doesn’t hurt that she has nice cans and is happy to show them off.

In fact, they seem to find their way into each shot, no matter what she’s doing. She’ll be sautéing onions or some shit, and all I’ll be looking at are her tits. God bless those cameramen.

It also doesn’t hurt that she always says “thongs” when she’s trying to say “tongs.”

Is this really an accident? Isn’t she just saying that so guys will picture her in some Brazilian butt-floss thing? Anyway, who cares? As long as she keeps doing it.

Then we come to Giada DeLorentis. I’m of two minds about her. On the one hand, she’s very cute. But on the other hand, she has zero sex appeal, as far as I’m concerned. She’s another Hobbit, like Sara Moulton. And, you know, whatever. That’s fine. Salma Hayek is no giant, either.

And Giada does have some meat on her chest. Apparently, anyway. It could

just be the push-up bra. But I don’t know. It just doesn’t all come together quite like it should. Kind of like the way Audrey Hepburn was pretty, but I wouldn’t want to nail her.

Of course, she’s another one who you know is different in person than on her cooking show. You can see her true personality come out, at least a little, when she hangs out with her loser friends on her stupid, weekend travel waste of time. You can see that when she's with them she’s some shallow, snooty, party chick. And even though she’s a party chick, she probably isn’t all that much fun to hang out with. Yeah, she'll go out to clubs and all that, but I can see her as some little princess, bitching and whining if things aren't just how she wants them. I can also see her laughing in the faces of regular guys who try to ask her out and making catty comments about other women in the room.

So, there is my 2 cents. Men's Health, take note.