Well, my droogs, your friend and narrator has been diagnosed bolnoy in his gulliver and given scrippiwips for prozzies and gabba gabbas.
Yeah, all that means is that I've been having daily panic attacks for the last week and a half and a friend convinced me to leave work, go to the urgent care, and get myself some pills. Because between having continued daily panic attacks and not having continued panic attacks, I've already lived through the constant attacks and I feel like I got out of it all that I could. So I haven't had much of an opportunity to sit down and punch up a whole new Bully lately. But let's catch up on a couple places we've been to and a couple places we haven't been to.
THE WIENERY, 5 APRIL
Previously the place with the soy dog that I was gaga for, the mock duck cheesesteak was bland as fuck.
No, really, that's it. Fries were good.
WHITE CASTLE, 7 APRIL
That Sunday, and I remember this, I was up early and I had an insane (poor choice of words, that) cheeseburger craving. So I wound up biking ten miles looking for a place that was open early enough that I could get a cheeseburger. I passed by a ton of Mediterranean joints, a lot of them were closed and I wasn't looking for Mediterranean anyway. But then I wound up in Nordeast and I was like, "Oh, shit, Miss Janie said the White Castle's open again!" and I biked over to White Castle and the posters in the window said they have the Impossible Burger. So I went in and ordered three.
Now, the reason I haven't been to White Castle in over a decade is because the last I went there, it gave me the shits.
This time? You know, not eating beef?
It gave me a gigantic solid shit the size of a schnoodle.
Schnoodle.
ANYhoo, as with the Impossible patty over at MyBurger, this tasted and behaved like beef, even though it wasn't beef. Which is kind of the point. Seasoned appropriately.
DOWNTOWN MARKET & DELI, 9 APRIL
It's basically a Champs Chicken joint inside a market two blocks from the office, like at the Cedar Food & Grill. Anyway, I got a cheesesteak because, well, fuck it, I'm not perfect.
It was good. They put mayonnaise on it, though. I don't understand what the Midwestern fascination with mayonnaise is. Like mayonnaise goes in tuna salad and egg salad and bologna salad and macaroni salad and coleslaw and that's pretty much it. But, OK, Champs puts mayonnaise on their cheesesteak. Wish I could have stopped him before he did it but what can I do?
They gave me a fuck-ton of fries, though. Couldn't finish them all.
Also, the market part of the joint has peanut butter Twix, aka the best Twix (and I will die on that fucking hill, @ me) so I had those for desert.
TOOTIE'S ON LOWRY, 20 APRIL
Felt good enough to get out of the apartment and I felt like seeing this Crystal Lake up in Robbinsdale (not the one in Burnsville) (yes, two Crystal Lakes). Well, there wasn't much to see, most of Crystal Lake's shoreline is occupied by people's back yards. But there was a place I passed on the way there, right about the time I was getting hungry. Tootie's. On Lowry.
I looked at the menu after I came off the lake and I saw that they have a "Philly style" Chicago beef, which was like, "OK?" and I didn't see an Italian sub but then I saw him: Reuben.
Reuben and his sheyne shvester, Rachael.
So I bike over there, walk inside, the youngest person legally allowed to serve alcohol is tending bar, behind which is a TV playing a hockey game, the floor is carpeted, the walls are wood grain, I am home, my droogs. I sit down and order a Coke and a Rachael. The young'un asks me what I want on the side, I decline the side (and still get a bag of chips), and my food is out in five minutes.
I can endorse Tootie's.
The turkey is smoked and the flavor cuts through ahead of the tangy creamsicle-hued thousand island and crisp long-cut sauerkraut. I almost wanted to ask what brand of sauerkraut they were using or if they made it in-house, because these were lloonngg shreds of cabbage and they were, as mentioned, crisp. This is probably the best Rachael I've had in... let me see... years, I think. I mean, I honestly can't - Oh, yeah, I had a Rachael from C. McGee's yesterday but I've already told you about my love for C. McGee's and, honestly, their Rachael wasn't that memorable. And I guess there was the kimchi Rachael from Ginger Hop but that's kind of a specialized aminal.
So, leading 2019 in the Rachael race is Tootie's On Lowry.
Looking deeper into their site, it appears that they even have a seasonal based menu and have a thing called Meatless Monday where they showcase a meatless dinner special every week and that's kind of cool. A place that looks like an old school, cigarette-smoke-stained dive but has a seasonal menu that offers a vegetarian option. If they have Björk and the Clash on the jukebox (I didn't see a jukebox), I could call this place home. I'd have to move to North Minneapolis but it'd be worth it. A divey place where, back in the day, old men could chomp on their cigarettes while making disparaging remarks about the first baseman and the waitresses were named Charlene and Gladys and Mack, the bartender, would have stopped you on your six order of a seven & seven and told you, "Come on, Al, don't you think you've had enough? Mabel's at home, waiting for ya, probably got a meatloaf in the oven."
And then Gladys calls over from the phone, hand over the mic, "Al? Mabel's looking for you! What do you want me to tell her?"
And then Al gets up, grumbling, pulls a couple of crumpled bills from his pocket and tries to flatten 'em out and Mack says, "Hey, hey, Al. It's alright, it's alright. You'll pay me tomorrow." And then Al stumbles out the door, fishing his car keys out of his pocket, and nobody stops him from driving because that's how things were done in the seventies.
But now they have a whole night devoted to the vegetarian option.
Go give them your money.
AND, LASTLY, ON A VERY SAD SIDE NOTE
Marissa's, my beautiful, beautiful Marissa's, is canceled. Since they renovated and restaffed the taqueria inside, the quality has gone downhill.
First time I went in there after the reno and restaff, they told me they were out of tortillas. All of the tortillas. A taqueria, inside a mercado, was out of tortillas in the middle of the day in the middle of the week. I mean, there's an aisle end cap right there full of tortillas but OK, however you want to allocate your tortilla inventory.
Second time I went in there, the dude who told me they were out of tortillas was behind the counter and ignored me as I stood at the glass under the marquee. So I got in line at the register, got up to the register, and he ignores me to tend to the guy at the glass under the marquee. And this is where I got paranoid because I was literally the only white person in there but I wasn't going to take it to that place.
Thursday, third time I went in there. He takes my order. Chicken burrito con todo. Con todo, pronounced cone toe doe, translates to "with everything". I've been ordering my burritos con todo using the words burrito con todo for years and never had a problem. This time, though, it was pretty blatant that this guy either sucks at his job or fucking hates me for some reason because the burrito comes back beans, cheese, chicken, lettuce, tomato. That's it. No rice & veg, no sour cream, no guac. And having the suspicion that this motherfucker hates me for some reason, am I going to complain?
So I texted Kafe Nasty about this and we are now two lost souls when it comes to Mexican / Latin American food on the strip. Salsa a la Salsa is gone (RIP) and Pancho's is pricey and don't get me started on Lil T's.*
Yesterday, I went to Taco Bell.
Sorry, Marissa's, it's over.
* I dated a Lil T's gal for a minute back in the day. She had a legitimate fear of space aliens.
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