Not So Good Eats

Sometimes, it is worth wording substandard eats.

Today I wanted to take a break from work, saunter out into the unexpectedly balmy Northwestern fall day, and enjoy a good basic pub lunch. A promising prospect was the year-old pub about two blocks away that sported an interesting menu of Belgian beers and the prospect of solidly made lunch fare.

The solid part was real enough . . . as the mass of my as yet undigested substandard lunch weighing down my stomach can testify.

I had been attracted to the ham and cheese croissant in part by the menu-promise of “Virginia ham,” evoking the (in hindsight, undoubtedly unreasonable) expectation of hand carved hunks of meaty country ham piled onto a flaky croissant (perhaps one sourced from one of the wonderful neighborhood bakeries making scrumptious croissants).

What I received was a disappointment in the extreme. The ham was a single machine-cut-to within-1/16th of-an-inch-of-its-life slice of a ham-like substance (folded to produce a modicum of thickness) upon which an ever-so-slightly-thicker piece of so-called-Swiss cheese rested—at least I had been given a choice between American, “Swiss,” and “Provolone.”

The “croissant” was of that noisome sort found in airport lounge vending machines: sweaty, cushiony, unpleasant. The outer wrapping matched the innards in banality.

Accompanying the thing was a pile—and I do mean pile—of chunkily sized fries. The seasoning covering them was promising—a bit of savory bite to it—but the fries themselves were soggy, pliant, and barely tolerable.

Now, I don’t really think that I am asking too much. This establishment has pretensions to fine food—it even calls their cook a “chef”—and so one might reasonably expect a more thoughtful purchase and presentation of quality ingredients. Is it too much to actually carve out a portion of ham instead of peeling off another layer from the prepackaged slice pile? Is it too much to take that little extra touch (probably a missing second frying) that would give the fries some tooth and character?

Apparently it is. Apparently, if you serve beer (even good bottled Belgian beer) you assume your customers won’t know the difference between a well-made plate of food and an indifferent one.

It is too bad. It is also so unnecessary. Portland is a town that revels in the overall quality of its dining offerings. There are other places in town (alas not within walking distance of my offices) that manage to serve good beer (even Belgian beer of draft) and good food (the bar at Higgins comes to mind).

But as pubs go, I won’t be going back to this one. As a colleague remarked “Maybe there is just too much competition in pub fare to let a good one succeed.”