Metal head visits
A real critic for real food!
The Story Behind it all...
They call me Pig Master J. Well, actually, nobody calls me that. Flashback to a year ago when I bought an electric smoker from the Home Depot. A few weeks later they sent me an email asking for a review of the smoker. Since I liked it, I figured I’d write one. When you start a review, they ask you for a name to go along with it. I smoked ribs and pork butt in it so I thought I’d use a BBQ type of name. Pig Master J was born. I told the story to DJJD at work, we both work at the same company for almost 20 years now. He had the idea of me writing reviews of the different food places I go to and he’d put them on his Metalicave website. I do like eating and I do like talking about the good food I’ve found. I’ll share that here and I’ll rate each place with a 1-5 belly scale. 5 bellies being the best.
First up, I recently went to Habit Burger Grill in Bridgewater NJ. I know there are a lot of burger places now. A ton of them in fact. Most are the same and most have pretty good burgers when compared to McDonalds, Burger King, and Wendy’s. Wendy’s being a notch above the other two. Habit Burger just opened up at this location so I thought I’d try it. It’s a brand new site and it was immaculately clean inside. Very new looking with no dick heads initials in the tables yet. I do like my BBQ burgers so I went with that. It’s cooked when you order so there’s a little wait but that’s to be expected. There was a really nice selection of drinks besides your typical soft drinks. Mixed lemonades and such. I went with the strawberry lemonade. They also had a small fixings bar with various peppers, a nice touch. Now to the burger, it was a bacon BBQ with fried onions and cheese lettuce tomato, hold the pickle, heh! The burger was about average size and about $2.00 cheaper than I’m used to from one of these burger chains. I’m taking to you Shake Shack!!! It had a good fat to lean ratio. Good flavor with not a ton of salt like Smash Burger. God that place can put you into the hospital if you have high blood pressure to begin with! A real disappointment was the bacon. I had a couple of pieces on it and they were cooked well done, not raw but they were not freshly cooked. They were noticeably cooler than the burger. They must have been sitting in a tray and they didn’t even make an attempt to make them hot. A real turn off. Fried onions are fried onions. If you screw them up, you might as well close your doors. I also had the fries with it. They were typical, a lot like Wendy’s but salty as hell. Ended up scraping the salt off. I want the burger to put me in the hospital, not the salt! My wife had the fried tempura string beans. If you like green stuff fried then you’ll like those. All in all it was ok. Better than some but not a place I’d go out of my way for. I liked the price. I liked the flavor but the cold bacon was a strike. My wife thought her burger was small too. Size is so important, go figure. So my rating for this burger is three bellies. You won’t hate it but you won’t be drooling to go back again! Next up…pizza!
A Tale of Three Pizzas
Pizza. I don’t know anyone that doesn’t like it. It’s great right out of the oven. It’s great even after its been sitting in a box on the floor for hours. It’s great out of the fridge. You can have it plain or put the most bizarre toppings on it. Either way it is awesome. One thing though, pizza is like porn. Everyone has a preference and it can be bizarre. So saying a slice is the best you’ve ever eaten is not going to mean the same to someone else. Having said that, I’m going to talk about three different pizzas today.
The first is in NYC because when you talk about a NYC style pizza, shouldn’t you go to NYC for it? So I did. The place is called Joe’s Pizza at 7 Carmine St, NYC. One thing I like about some of the places I go to is they’re good old fashioned neighborhood joints. As comfortable as worn out jeans. Nothing fancy. Just comfortable. Joe’s is that. No chairs just stand up and eat at the counters or a table. They move you in and out fast. If you see a line, and you will, it goes fast so don’t get discouraged. You can get toppings but I just went with plain cheese. It was a very good slice of New York style pizza. A very good slice. Great sauce, great crust, great cheese. And since I was so hungry when we got there I attacked it and promptly burnt the hell out of my mouth with the cheesy napalm fresh out of the oven. But remember, pizza is like porn. I thought it was a great slice, I got a second with sausage, but not everyone is going to love it. It is a great example of New York pizza and I would go back again. And that is the best recommendation I can give. 4 bellies!
The second place is Pizza Town USA on RT 46 Elmwood Pk, NJ. Again, a classic drive up style building. A working man’s pizza place. Straight out of American Graffiti look. It was started in the late 50’s and it hasn’t changed at all. Once you try a slice you’ll see why. It’s a perfect slice of New York style. Maybe just a tad thicker crust than Joe’s. It has the perfect taste you look for in pizza. I made sure it wasn’t on fire before I chomped down, once burnt twice shy. It’s not a neighborhood place like Joe’s, it’s on the highway. But you’ll feel like you’ve been eating there since you were a kid even if it’s your first time. Two words of advice. First, know that there are three windows to order from. Make sure you go to the right one, there’s a sign above them. If you’ve ever eaten cheesesteaks at Pat’s or Geno’s you’ll know what I mean. Second, get an order of zeppoles. They are perfectly greasy and loaded with a butt load of powdered sugar in a paper bag for mixing. Just awesome. 4 bellies.
The third place is a chain called Mellow Mushroom on Rt 37 Toms River NJ. They are mostly found down south in the Carolinas into DC. But there is one in NJ. It’s a chain like a Fridays and it serves beer and drinks. They have a lot of tv’s so it’s a good place to watch a game. This pizza is a much fluffier crust, not quite deep dish, and they have a ton of toppings to choose from. We went with the Funky Q Chicken and the Mighty Meaty. We were so hungry when we got there, it was a long day, I would have eaten the napkins. We went with the pepperoni bread for starters. Real good and a nice start. They have a lot of good appetizers but we were going to have two pizzas so we didn’t want to fill up on snacks. They’d make for a great day of football watching though. Both pizzas were really tasty. I like a chewier pizza , pizza is like porn, but you may like a thinner crust, which you can ask for! They have gluten-free options too. You’ll have a ton of options and plenty of size choices too. I liked it. Was it the best pizza ever? It was good enough that I would go back. One thing is, they didn’t heat back up very well. They’re much better fresh. They also have a card they’ll punch for you so you’ll get a free pie after a number of visits. It’s a great place for pizza and I think you’ll be seeing more Mushrooms pop up as they make their way north. All in all, a good solid 4 bellies.
Next up: Breakfast!
Breakfast. It’s not just for Breakfast anymore. Case in point, The Clinton St Baking Company in lower Manhattan. We’ve tried to get into this restaurant in the past. But the wait was excessive. The good news is they’ve finally finished the expansion and now there’s triple the seating. There can still be a wait but it is well worth it. The difficulty now is deciding on what to have. On this trip there were three of us. So we got some different meals to mix and sample. We went with the Brioche French Toast topped with caramelized bananas and roasted pecans along with a cup of warm maple butter. That sound you just heard was my stomach rumble! Every bite is just heaven from the perfectly cooked toast to the sublime toppings. But wait, there’s more. We also had the pancakes topped with bananas and walnuts also served with warm maple butter. These aren’t your mothers pancakes. They’re a normal size, nothing silly like being served on a pizza tray. But there seems to be so much more to these. They’re dense without sacrificing fluffy. Three of these will fill you up no problem. But wait, there’s more. We had two sides. Home fries and sugar bacon. You have to have the sugar bacon. I could have eaten three helping of this alone. The home fries are just home fries, nothing really special but tasty. We all agreed that if we had just gotten two main dishes for the three of us it would have been enough. Especially if you get the sides. You must have to get the bacon! There are just so many things on the menu that you’ll have trouble deciding. Looking at the other tables around you will just make things more difficult. It all looks so so good. My next trip there I want to try the Fried Chicken and Waffle with honey-tabasco sauce and a crispy Belgian vanilla buttermilk waffle and, of course, warm maple butter. But, if after all this you still aren’t moved, there’s lunch and dinner food there too! But wait, there’s still more. They have awesome baked goods too! There’s just not enough time. You can already see I’m giving this 5 bellies! Enjoy.
