Hey, Pairesta

You were right, and I should have heeded your advice. We tried to get reservations late last week for this coming Saturday and they were already booked til 9:30. So, back to The Grape!

Hey LazBro I just got a Facebook message from the guy who owns Meteor Hamburgers in Wylie; he wants some Observer love. Have you been? If not...uh...wanna go try it for me?

This morning I was overcome with a powerful urge to try this place and was rearranging my whole week's worth of cooking to accommodate a trip tonight and ..... derp, they're closed on Mondays. I will be trying this place this week though. 

El Flamboyan in Wylie is legit. Home cook-style Puerto Rican cuisine in a humble strip center joint tucked behind a seedy gas station. When we got there it was one dude running front of house, taking orders, bringing drinks, AND running the grill. He was busting ass, and still the food came out quick.

We over-ordered, especially since Mrs. Snape doesn't have much of an appetite right now, but we couldn't help it. There was so much we wanted to try. We got tostones, maduros, alcapurrias, cheese empanadas, yucca chips and my entree, pernil asado, which in this case was Puerto Rican slow-roasted pork shoulder. The highlights for me were the empanadas and my pork shoulder. The pork was immensely flavorful, but so different from smoked pulled pork. Salty, a little sweet, fragrant with citrus ... and moist but not remotely greasy. In fact, nothing was greasy. The empanadas were filled with, I think, just cheddar and monterey jack. Really straight-forward. But the combination of that pleasantly chewy melted cheese and crispy, bubble-pocked pastry made for one of the best "grilled cheeses" I've had in recent memory. The two empanadas were technically Mrs. Snape's entree, but her pregnancy senses told her not to eat them, so Baby Snape and I shared them. Score!

The maduros (sweet platiains) were fruity, sweet, soft and delicious. The tostones were satisfying, especially dunked in the small cup of garlic oil the chef brought us. Though they needed salt, and they were not any better than what I've made at home. The alcapurrias - a plantain or yucca-based masa dumpling stuffed with meat and deep fried - was our least favorite. The flavor was good. Hearty, rich. But the dumpling had an unexpected and distressingly wet mouthfeel that wasn't greasy, but wasn't altogether satisfying. I don't know that we'd order it again.

Prices are great, with most appetizers at 2-3 bucks. Entrees and sandwiches from 8-12. And even though it was a one-man show, everything came out hot, fresh and fast. 

We'll be back. (Especially to try the guava pastries they have up at the register and make in house.)

The new Shake Shack opens in Plano today. It's in "lunch distance." Going to give the crowds some time to die down (should two weeks do it?) and then finally try this NYC institution. 

Let's see where it lands against In-N-Out, Five Guys, Whataburger and Smash Burger.

Oooo, jealous. Based on food alone, Neighborhood Services is probably my favorite Dallas restaurant - not counting the shameful list of places I haven't been - so I always watch what Chef Nick is up to with great interest. The seafood-focused Montlake Cut is never going to viable with Mrs. Snape in tow, but Town Hearth is much more our style and has been hot on my radar.

Man, fuck crinkle fries. I hate it when places try to get cute and serve french fries a new way. Just stick with the basic, McDonald's thickness and length style french fries. It's perfection. Ive never had fries any other way that are better.

Kent Rathbun lawsuit updates
www.dallasobserver.com/restaurants/kent-rathbun-barred-from-using-the-nickname-chef-with-no-name-9361203

arguments if it should be called brunch or lunchfast. 
Whoever suggested lunchfast is clearly the monster in this battle.

EDIT: Well pairesta absolutely nailed the TLDR while I was writing this. His summary seems 100% spot on. But here is the long, boring version.

So, here is my understanding of it...and, uh, remember, I'm an anonymous internet pseudonym here.

First off, Kent, as creative as he is, is not good at business. Like, he knows what people like to eat, and he is a tremendous people person/TV person. But the lawsuit filings make it pretty clear that he needed a business partner to handle the money side of things. When he partnered with Hyde, it was because his old partner had died, and Abacus was gonna go under if it didn't find a buyer in 30 days. So he didn't exactly have much choice when someone showed up and said "I'll buy in." It was that or bust.

For the rest of this post, I'll refer to Hyde as Lord Business.

So things went OK for a while. After two years, Lord Business came up with a strategy of aggressively marketing the Rathbun name statewide or even nationally - sorta like how there is a "Stephan Pyles" restaurant in San Antonio now. They rolled out that catering van with a giant picture of Kent, new website, stuff like that. In order to do this, Lord Business had Kent sign over the rights to use his name and image in the restaurant biz. Now (1) Rathbun says he signed this under duress, being told that it was necessary for Abacus to not close down, and being told, don't worry, the things that worry you about this are addressed in a clause so you're good. (2) Lord Business says he had the doc for a few months, looked it over with his family, suggested changes, and signed it freely. Either way, fair to say that Rathbun signed it, and that doing so was ... kind of a dumbass decision.

After this, they started opening new restaurants like Blue Plate Kitchen, but expenses were off the charts, Rathbun has really nice taste in kitchen setups, and they had some disputes about money. Blue Plate and one or two other places went belly-up. In 2015-16, they found a possible escape route: an airport concession company started talking with Kent about opening up a Kent Rathbun restaurant chain in DFW and other airports. The next time Kent and Lord Business had one of their occasional money spats, Kent offered to buy him out and become sole owner of the company. Lord Business declined. Kent quit.

Then it became clear to Lord Business that the airport people were still negotiating...with the newly unemployed Kent. And that the Augusta Fancy Golf Tournament I Forget The Name Of, which has an annual dinner catered by Kent, quite understandably wanted it to be catered...by Kent. That's when everyone called their lawyers.

My totally un-lawyerly read on the situation is that Lord Business is being totally absurd when he accuses Kent of having a Super Shady Evil Scheme to build his own independent business empire (after all, they're also accusing him of being, essentially, financially illiterate - some of the insults in there are so, so cruel). And the copyright-on-your-name thing seems unreasonable and unenforceable. And duh people want to hire the chef, not the chef's name. But at the same time...it doesn't sound like Lord Business had a predatory scheme to deprive the Legoverse of Kent's awesomeness. And it sounds like he had the right to get peeved about their business partnership. Just that this "name rights" crap turned a messy but understandable divorce into a carnival sideshow of stupid.

If you need a substitute anniversary date...

Wanna hear about dem arepas!

-

It's no longer being kept secret so I can do some bean spilling: I'm gonna be a judge at the "Iron Fork" event next Wednesday night at Fair Park. Yes, it's an Iron Chef knock-off with a secret ingredient. Chefs are Aaron Staudenmaier (Lovers Seafood) and Eric Dreyer (Fearing's), host is John Tesar, and the judges are me, a Whole Foods rep from Austin (they supply all the ingredients), and Misti Norris.

I get a discount promo code for friends if anyone wants to spend their Thursday morning hung over.

Do it, Badger! Make me this thread's biggest loser!

Leslie Brenner just nuked The Mansion.