Lisa's Culinary Atrocities

     Ah, a beautiful Saturday morning after a eventful evening out with friends; sun shining and tummies ready for sustenance, we decide to brunch at Steuben’s.  This was indeed an excellent idea!  The coffee, rich and black, lit our sleepy olfactory bulbs with it’s promise of “it’s gonna be a lovely day”.  We both ordered egg-in-a-hole: a thick and slightly sweet piece of texas toast, both crunchy and soft, with a perfectly cooked egg cradled in its center.

The egg yolk, with just the right amount of yolky goodness, made the toast almost custard like. This was topped with a bloop (yeah, a bloop) of Hollandaise sauce.  All of this rested oh-so-invitingly on a heap of ham and homemade shredded hashed browns.  The food was so real…you could taste the no-skimp attention that went into it.  Oh, glory…truly delicious.  I can’t recommend this enough and look forward to going again and again and again.

After brunch we decided to scope out a few food trucks that are in town for the Food Network’s Great American Food Truck Race.  I must add here that having come from Portland, OR, I have been absolutely spoiled by it’s 450 (excellent) food carts.  I really REALLLLY hope Denver catches up and embraces (…allows) this wonderful food cart/truck phenomenon to flourish. Sigh.

In Steuben’s parking lot was Korilla BBQ from New York.  The camera crew recorded the line that was quickly forming in front of the not yet open truck.

Nothing on the menu screamed for our attention so we decided to move up the street to eyeball our other choices.  We ended up in front of Marczyk Fine Foods (yum) where Lime Truck from Irvine, CA and Hodge Podge Truck from Cleveland, OH were parked.

The line in front of Hodge Podge was small so we decided to order their Truffle Mac-n-Cheese: cheddar, local goat cheese and truffle oil.  We’re always eager to expand our internal mac-n-cheese data base and knowing that our local goat cheese is excellent, we figured it would be a great addition to such.

Thinking it would only be 15 minutes, we waited in a small gaggle of eager flip-flopped foodies and watched the camera crew do their thing.  After half an hour we joked that they were growing semolina in the truck and hunting for truffles in City Park; the only thing keeping us going was the “experience” and my child-like anticipation of being enveloped in the delicious flavor of a food that we both adore.

After an hour we noticed that people who ordered waaay before us were getting their food. I politely asked where our food was; we were next.  Excited and now hungry after having burned off our brunch during the wait, our name was called—I walked up, peered at the blessed offering and my excitement morphed into wondering where the hidden camera was.  Was this what we waited an hour for in a sea of toes that desperately needed pedicures?  Was this even worth the small firing of recognition in my brain as to what mac-n-cheese is?

What looked like generic macaroni, barely coated in what aspired to be a reconstituted powdered cheddar sauce one day, was topped with a few specks of what might be tomato and herb, but only under an electron microscope. I am a scientist and can test this out! (I was just told it was paprika, who knew? Well obviously Robert…but you know what I mean.)

In all honestly, Kraft is far superior, and Kraft with some truffle oil, oh that would definitely be better.  Now, I could have easily forgiven the overcooked and inferior pasta if the sauce was remotely like cheese, or even had a flavor…any flavor.  If you concentrated, the thin sauce hinted at truffle, but was nearly masked by a peculiar tinge of rancid oil.  I am aware that this is harsh but seriously, you are going to serve this to the public, across the country, on national television?  I wouldn’t have served that to anyone, and I do mean anyone.  Does Cleveland lack taste buds? I know very well that it does not.  For $7 I would either expect 6 boxes worth of prepared generic mac-n-cheese or, say, something with some CHEESE in it…you know, the kind that gets all stretchy when you melt it.  How did this truck get into this competition? I am certain they will not win. Sorry. 

~Robert didn’t hold back on how he felt… 

Guess you could say we were disappointed, but the experience was nonetheless fun.  Certainly inspired a passionate blog post for both of us—scathing, and I feel a little bad, but I am being perfectly honest and wholeheartedly would expect the same in turn.  Pretty sure my turn is coming ;). 

Thank goodness for the leftovers from this morning’s exceptional brunch. Mmmm…Steuben’s…I love you.  Yay, Denver.

After working a long-a** day at work and on my blog, I decided to do a little internet food browsing and found the blog

Food Carts Portland  (A Guide to Food Carts in Portland Oregon)

I think this will seriously have to be a new project for me.

They don’t have an image I’d like to use so how about this from my own library:

Nothing to do with Food Carts, but it is me in Kauai, where I am, in my white skin and wee mind……