Captain D's

Festus, Mo.

Something came up here, or almost came up, that may affect my ability to review certain places objectively. I will try to continue, but we may have to alter our course a bit. More on this later.

The Place:
Sharing the lot with Home Depot and Tanglefoot, et al.
Generic, plastic, ubiquitous. The lighted sign towering above the place was not lit, the dim lighting inside made us think for a moment that it was closed. there were a few cars around it though and  as we pulled in we saw some people inside. There were also a couple  of cars in the drive through. Once we found the door, we went right in. The rope lined maze put us face on to a couple of posters on the wall showing some special meals. We read through them then headed toward the counter. Above it were the regular offerings, disjointed and not comprehensive. Scattered around were other photo'd menu items, here there, everywhere. I chose this place since I hadn't had fish and chip style fish in quite a while, and the weather was hot and weighing us down, burgers or steak or pasta seemed too heavy. Angel ordered first and quickly, one of the earlier specials. My train of thought exploded and I ordered without really thinking, one of the other specials. Adam was the only one of us that ordered pretty much what he knew he would going in.
The Food:
Angel had asked for the crab cake, fish and shrimp plate with corn on the cob and coleslaw. Adam got the chicken dinner with fries and slaw. I ended up with the eight piece shrimp and fish. When asked about sides I looked up at the menu, couldn't find them, and heard the counter lady tapping the counter in front of me, there it was, a small list. This selection would be my second mistake in the first sixty seconds since I stepped up to order. I asked for slaw and hush puppies. Stupid move.
The problem with that became stunningly obvious when I picked up the order. But I'm jumping ahead of the story. First we would have to wait for the order. To facilitate this we were handed one of those pager thingies with flashing lights. We gathered up our cups, poured our drinks and grabbed a few condiments and a bottle of malt vinegar. On the way we saw a couple more posters with offerings that sounded much better than what we'd ordered, these were past the place where orders were taken.
We found a booth by the window and waited. In a few minutes the pager started it's noisy and flashy orgasm. I rushed it up to the counter and was handed two trays.
We sorted it all out and I saw my big mistake. The eight piece shrimp and fish came standard with two hush puppies. The wasted side I ordered added four more to the hush puppy pile. My plate looked like an assortment of deep fried bread with a dollop of slaw. The one piece of fish, the thing I actually craved was tiny and thin in comparison to everything else. The pile of shrimp and hush puppies stood in stark, glaring contrast to my intentions of having a light meal. I like hush puppies, but two would have been fine. I really wanted more fish, less shrimp, if any.
Sure enough the puppies and shrimp were tasty, but really, really filling. I don't really like breaded shrimp very much. I prefer steamed/boiled/grilled shrimp, no breading, just with a little butter garlic and Old Bay. The fish was okay, but a little greasy.
Adam dunked his chunks and seemed to like them. The slaw was a problem though. "Is there celery in the slaw?" He asked his mom. She poked hers, I poked mine, didn't see any. "There might be celery seeds, they're tiny and have a strong celery taste." She said. This baffled me, I didn't know celery actually had a discernible taste. I said as much to which Adam replied "I guess I have  more refined tastes. I like celery by itself just not as an ingredient." This made Angel's eyes roll. She blamed me since I have the same opinion about nuts.
It was enough for him though, the rest of his slaw went untouched. I thought the slaw was fine, creamy and crisp. Angel said it was good "But it's not as good as KFC" she said. KFC's slaw is the gold standard for her. Hardly anyone's slaw measures up to that high bar.
Angel buttered up her corn and went to it like a buzz saw. I asked her about the crab cake. "The taste was okay, but it was mushy on the inside." She didn't seem too disappointed and I knew why, lowered expectations. We lived in Maryland for five years, THE place for crab cakes. Nowhere else, absolutely nowhere outside that state gets it right.
 Meanwhile I was starting to struggle, I felt uncomfortable, irritable. My meal had disappointed me and worse, it wasn't settling well. I left four puppies and three shrimp behind. I still felt I'd over done it. And here's why.
The Problem:
A few months back my doctor advised me that I needed to change my diet. My caveman style selections and habits were not rewarding me with any favors. Unlike the last twenty times I'd been told that I decided that he was probably worth paying attention to, that I'd go ahead an finally take strides to pay attention to what and when I ate.
This was quite a radical change for me, but I was/am committed. It became an adventure, a quest, a puzzle, a journey, a challenge, a dare. I started reading labels, learning about carbs and cholesterol, calories and sodium, etc. I established an area of the pantry that I would personally keep stocked with a variety of safe options. I doubled, even tripled the amount of fruits and green vegetables. I abolished sugar, enriched flour and starches (potatoes). I changed my haphazard/scavenging lunch to a measured amount of portable portions including raisins and a banana, every day. I completely gave up white bread, chips, pastries, and just about everything fried. Except for this one meal on Saturday evenings.
Its caused a problem though. I knew this going in to Captain D's, it's one of the reasons I chose fish. I didn't want a fast food burger because of my recent experiences with fast food burgers. They now make me ill, physically ill. Not critically, but they do jack up the ick factor enough to where I am useless for quite a while afterward. Even my much-loved sausage biscuits at Hardee's now have that sickening effect.
As we left Captain D's the problem manifested itself quickly. My mouth felt and tasted like I'd just had deep-fried road kill. My tummy knotted up. This may affect future choices of places to go on Saturday. I don't think I can be objective about fast food places anymore. I don't even like the look of them. One whiff of the grease and I start getting queasy.
However, I can't convince myself that this is a bad thing.
Summary:
Like I said, I can't be objective. The place made me sick. I'm sure though that it was me that was the problem. The initial taste was satisfying, I just ordered very poorly. I ordered the breaded shrimp and I don't even like breaded shrimp very much. I think some fish and slaw, and maybe a hush puppy would have been fine.
         As we were leaving Angel said to me: "I think Adam is the only person under forty in the entire place." I hadn't noticed, but a quick scan confirmed it. There were thirty or forty people eating there as we left all of them were our age or older. No kids, no teens, no young couples. I have no idea what this meant. Maybe just a coincidence, I can't be sure, just something we noticed.

The menu, broken up and spread out all over the place, made picking something very difficult. I regretted my choice immediately as I passed more offerings I was not aware of at the time of ordering.
I can't really give an opinion here, figure it out for yourself. My experience, though mostly my own fault, was lousy. 

Ruby Tuesday’s

Festus, MO

We had originally planned to return to Taytro’s Bistro in Festus, a Cajun-ish spot where we enjoyed a light lunch at back in December. As we were readying to leave, Angel offered up an alternative. Doing so aroused our suspicions. “I’m really hungry and I don’t know if that place’s dinner menu had enough stuff that I like well enough to fill me up.” She explained. She’d had a busy day that started early. With a couple of dogs in for training, another for day care and the fosters, plus her morning class for clients and a pickup and drop off, her day had been wall to wall. I on the other hand had attended a pleasant critiquing session, stopped a Walmart for HBA’s and then napped in the early afternoon. She works a lot harder than me, which is her fault for choosing a career that consists of a lot of manual labor and a considerable amount of time outdoors in all kinds of foul weather.

“Mama needs some carbs!” She added. I shrugged my shoulders, which is my casual way of hugging/consoling her.

I respected that she was hungry as did Adam so we asked where she wanted to go where there would be an ample supply of food of the kind she was sure to like. First she suggested Ryan’s, a dive of a buffet, at which I made overt gagging sounds. Then she called out Ruby T’s, I could come up with no rational objection.

On the way there we continued our philosophical discussion, this time, not just on truth, but the universality of truth. Once again we reached consensus quickly and for the last half of the drive we were all but silent.

“Aha!” I shouted, “It’s the salad bar!”

Adam looked at me with the awe and respect I deserve, but there was also a hint of befuddlement in the young man’s dark eyes. “What’s the salad bar?” he asked innocently. “Your mom wants Ruby Tuesday’s because we place our order then immediately get to go fill up a platter full of salad from the generous bar. She’s hungry, hungry now, and knows that we’ be chowing down about five minutes after we get there.”

Angel was smiling, drooling and nodding.

The Place:

Just below Lowe’s, the generous parking lot was only about half full. We walked in and were greeted by a half dozen little girls, probably in their late teens to early twenty’s, dressed in black pants and black shirts. Those also wearing black shoes made me think of them as hoodless Ninjas. Blonde, hoodless Ninjas with scary, hair-trigger hormonal issues. A gaggle of darkly-clad princesses.

We were led to a back booth, passing the salad bar to get there. I think Angel sucked in some produce as we walked by. We were seated at the dark table and handed colorful menus and asked for drinks. Tea, tea (with lemon), Coke. The lighting was so low that I could barely make out the words on the menu.

Usually I get steak, but I wasn’t really all that hungry, not having actually burned off any calories so far that day. I scanned the offerings and landed on a risky alternative. I chose my sides and waited as Angel chewed on the menu itself.

The Food:

I ordered the crab cake with ‘Blue Cheese slaw’ and onion rings, plus the salad bar. Angel, the Lobster Carbonara, and Adam the Chicken and Broccoli penne. Angel also asked for the salad bar (surprise!) Adam declined. Angel shoved me out of the way and had her salad plate half loaded up before I even got to it. She had bloodlust in her eyes, small children ran away in fright.

I forced myself to not pile things on too high, but it was difficult. If nothing else, RT’s has the best, freshest and most varied salad bar of any place I’ve been. There’s plenty of everything, several kinds of greens, different kinds of mushrooms, lots and lots of chopped bits and about ten different salad dressings. Then there’s the croutons, dark and rubbery, which Angel and Adam love , but I can’t stand.

Seated again, Angel tore through her salad like a chainsaw through Styrofoam. I maintained class and decorum, picking and cutting, dousing each bit into both of the dressings, and then savoring each bite. Whenever he thought it was safe, Adam would reach across the table and pluck a crouton from his mother's slaughterhouse of a plate. I was sure he’d mis-time it once and pull back a bloody stump.

The pace slowed as her appetite was soothed, her face faded from the violent murderous red that it had been. Calm overtook her and she relaxed.

The main courses arrived, the two pasta offerings steamy and piled high, slick with sauce and dotted with lobster and broccoli respectively. Angel lit up when she discovered chunks of bacon alongside the buttery lobster bits.

My plate contained a large, but lonely crab cake. The slaw and rings were contained in smaller ramekin-like bowls and cuddled up on the plate with the crab cake. I tasted the thing, more ‘cakey’ than crab, and even though there were large, identifiable lumps of crab, I wasn’t really tasting it. The breading had a stronger taste and it tasted of fried bread. Not a bad thing in and of itself, but crab is king, you don’t want to cover it up. Angel and Adam hunted down and picked the meat out from their pastas, they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

I then tried the slaw. I immediately decided that this dinner had already suffered its first fatality. Blue Cheese slaw sounded good, I like blue cheese, a little sprinkled on a salad, or as a second dressing. My guess is that RT’s took shredded cabbage and mixed it in a vat of pure blue cheese dressing. There was no other taste discernible other than the blue cheese. A little blue cheese is nice, but too much of it ends up tasting like stinky cheese, rotting curds. It was simply too strong. No sweetness of mayonnaise to offset it, just a mouthful of liquid stinky cheese, like moldy, fetid, death itself.

Fortunately the onion rings were just right. I made it through about three quarters of the crab cake, with the help of a couple of cheesy biscuits, the slaw was completely abandoned. As I turned the last curve on the crab cake though, I had to give up on it. It wasn’t just me, Angel confirmed it, way too salty. Crab cake doesn’t need a lot of salt or salty ingredients. Crab is a subtle taste, it can be easily overpowered, and in this case it was.

Angel and Adam seemed quite pleased though, so I just had another cheesy biscuit and watched them push pasta and meaty bits around their plates.

The waitress seemed to notice that I’d left a lot of food behind, but I chose not to complain. I was full, enough salad and bread can do that for a man, and in no mood to yell at the dolts that thought the crab needed more salt and the slaw needed more stinky cheese. Besides it wasn’t Ninja girl that had ruined the dishes, it was those tasteless, under-trained amateur robots in the back, the one’s blindly following the menu cards in front of them. (I don’t really blame them, they’re just trying to earn a living, it’s the institutionalized, carbon-copy-style food prep that I object to.)

Summary:

Sixty bucks before the tip. Not awful, had the food (mine) been up to par. I’ll just choose something else next time. Certainly not that nasty slaw, and ‘pass’ on breaded seafood. Angel and Adam were genuinely satisfied though, no complaints.

The tables were too dark, but the service was perky and quick. The overhead football games were meant for somebody else and added nothing to our experience. The background music was tame, generic and forgettable.

We’ll go back, probably. Most of the time the food is quite good, just not always.

Blue cheese slaw…What were they thinking?

Ruby Tuesday’s

Festus, MO

Sure, we’d been there before, but we decided to go and have something different. Usually I get a steak, and they make a pretty good one, but on this day I simply wasn’t in the mood.

First, we were going on Sunday rather than our usual Saturday, Adam’s new job required him to work on our normal night. On Sunday morning I woke up, Angel was already out with the dogs, as usual. I knew she wouldn’t be up for long. I’d been up most of the night myself tending to some work systems to protect them from the switch back from Daylight Savings Time. I was groggy and sluggish but still managed to trek to the Circle K convenience store to get a cup of dark roast coffee. I just can’t seem to get a good cup at home, our water just doesn’t allow for it.

So I sipped my coffee, watched CBS Sunday Morning and wolfed down a microwaved sausage biscuit. Angel took advantage of my being up and headed in for a nap. This is typical of our Sundays, her napping and me babysitting our dogs as they snooze in the warm sunny spots by the sliding door. Bailey, the grand matron of the pack, patrolled the back yard warding off squirrels, motorcycles and some unseen things.

At one point her resonant baritone bark seemed more focused, more determined, I slipped out the door to the deck to see if she’d spotted a deer, rhinoceros, or wandering vagrant. I couldn’t see what had her attention, and she broke off the alert after a few moments and continued her patrol.

The morning was warming up, the fallen leaves rustled in the slight breeze. I was just standing there enjoying the moment, thinking about how long it would be before it would be too cold to just stand out there without a jacket. Into my field of vision came a small bee. It was staggering in flight, showing poor control. It was late in the year for bees to be just flitting about, no pollen bearing plants anywhere around. Just as my mind comprehended that this was a small bee, and how it was odd to see one this late, it clumsily dived and landed directly on my face, just below my left eye. In less time than it took for me to think “Hey, there’s a bee on my face!” The critter buried it’s stinger into my fleshy upper cheek. I believe I yelped since I am prone to do such things. I pulled it away and slammed it into the ground where it disappeared into the leaves and grass, dying a slow agonizing death if there is in fact any cosmic justice in the universe. My face burned fiercely. I was suddenly fully awake.

I powered up my laptop to find out what to do, whether or not to wash/ice/medicate it. I couldn’t recall being allergic to bee stings, but then again allergies sometimes do not start until later in life. I already felt some swelling and I thought I could feel the burning poison seeping deeper and deeper.

I found a site that had pretty specific instructions, so I washed the stung area and applied an ice pack. Actually it was a bag of frozen lima beans. I kept an eye on it and for the next hour it did not seem to be getting much worse, though it had swelled and reddened and had freezer-burned into it the logo from the lima bean bag. The web site mentioned that Benadryl was recommended to stop the swelling. I knew Angel had some but I decided to wait for her to wake up before bothering with it. I also recalled that Benadryl makes her woozy. This I feared greatly. She has a much higher tolerance for over-the-counter drugs than I do. I get dizzy form M&M’s and the stronger stuff, like Ibuprofen and antihistamines, are darned near narcotic to my sensitive yet handsome system. But I had no choice, Dr. Internet said I needed to take some Benadryl.

So the rest of the day, I froze my face with lima beans, suffered the drowsiness and general mental degradation of Benadryl/lack of sleep from the night before, and checked my otherwise beautiful face in the mirror every hour or so.

By the time we were ready to go out, I wasn’t as hungry as I usually am. I was in fact a bit queasy, bitter, and melancholy.

THAT’s why I didn’t want steak. Steak is best when you are feeling good, on top of the world.

The Place:
Just down from Lowes (which sits on top of a family cemetery, but that’s another story) Ruby Tuesday’s is one of our former regular places. It’s a stand-alone and fancies itself a sports bar, though there were not many sports persons there on this day.

We were immediately seated by one of the six young ladies, all clad in black, that were hovering at the door. We were shown to a table, a hybrid, with a booth seat on one side and chairs on the other, this pleased us all. We ordered our drinks, tea, tea and Coke. And our waiter introduced himself in a lilting manner. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

We scanned the menus, I was looking for not-steak. There was plenty to choose from and in quick order I decided. Adam didn’t take long either. Angel struggled enough to send the lilting waiter away for a few more minutes. She finally surrendered to her reluctant choice.

We ordered and were brought a small plate of garlic cheese biscuits, a new item on their menu. Overhead at the bar a sports competition was underway on the ceiling mounted television set. A helmeted team of large men in green jerseys were standing around pulling on various body parts as some referees conferred on a matter of obvious universal importance in the middle of the field. Yikes, what a tedious enterprise. All the other times I looked up at it, there were only commercials for beer and large pickup trucks.

The Food:

I ordered the crabcake dinner, with a baked potato and grilled green beans. Angel asked for the barbecue ribs, baked potato and broccoli (yuk). Adam the Smokehouse burger, sans tomato and onion rings, with a side of fries. We all ordered the salad bar, because RT’s has the best salad bar in the county.

We piled our salads high with four types of greens, five different shredded cheeses, onions, peppers, cucmbers, mushrooms, slaw, apple salad, grapes, bacon, bologna, carrots, tomatoes, and our choices from nine different dressings (of which I drizzle on three, Thousand Island, Bleu Cheese and a vinaigrette.) Adam and Angel LOVE the dark, thick croutons, I don’t. Everything about the salad bar and the individual salads was excellent, fresh and plentiful. Except for the slaw which was very, very bland. We asked for another round of those cheesy biscuits, this could have been the meal in itself, highly recommended!

Crabcake:

This was not as easy a choice as it might appear. I was biased. I KNEW the crabcake was not going to be as good as I hoped, it never, ever is. I’ve had the best crabcake in the world. Nothing else has ever been remotely as good. There are those that might disagree with me on this, I do recognize that people have opinions that do not square with mine, I do not for the life of me understand why, and I certainly do not respect it, but I do recognize that such a confounding state exists.

The Captain’s Table, Solomons, Maryland.

It’s a small, old, slightly warped and weather worn restaurant on the shore where the Patuxent River meets the Chesapeake Bay. It’s behind the Day’s Inn, where I spent a couple of months back in 2001 after getting a job with the Navy at the nearby base. Too pricey for casual meals, it was a great place that Angel and I enjoyed on special occasions like birthdays, anniversaries and ‘a desperate craving for cream of crab soup’ during the five years we spent in Maryland.

If it weren’t a thousand miles away from my current residence I’d go there as often as fiscally possible. The crabcakes are perfect, the soup, simply to die for. I don’t even know what else they serve.

Enough about that though, back to reality, present time.

The Food: (cntd.)

We were served, the plates sizzled and the waiter warned us about the hotness of the plates. My crabcake was burger-sized, grilled to a lovely brown. The beans were almost charred and glistened in their coating of oil. The potato was substantial, and topped with butter, real butter and sour cream. There was a dipping sauce for the crabcake, which I tasted and scooted away. Too spicy, I like the subtlety of crabcakes, I don’t want or need to hot-wing them up.

I prepped the potato, which basically means I shredded it, peel and all, to make sure none of the dairy toppings went to waste. I tasted the beans, tender, grilled, very good. The first bite of crabcake was satisfying, not really bad at all. There was definitely crab in it, real crab, not that ‘Krab’ you see in grocery stores in the Midwest, the stuff with the curious orange striping.

Not too much breading, this is where many places absolutely blow it. Crab has a sweet, delicate taste and can be smothered by too much breading or mayonnaise, though it sings beautifully when the proportions are correct.

The next few bites were okay as well. About halfway through though I became bored and frustrated with it. I dared not speak what was on my mind. I offered Angel a bite, then another. She didn’t sense it. I couldn’t say it, but there it was. I was actually preferring the potato over the crabcake, a sin in anyone’s Bible. I’m sorry, the crabcake was too salty. There I’ve said it. The potato, even with all that butter and sour cream was not salty, the beans were not salty, it was the crabcake. I’d swear an oath to it, but I’m not supposed to declare anything too salty. I will say it wasn’t WAAAY too salty, just too salty for my delicate taste buds. It wasn’t awful, just not up to my already lowered expectations.

Angel let me try a chunk of her ribs, which she tossed at me from the end of her fork. I’m not a good judge of ribs, I find them all too greasy. But she was going crazy over them so I told her it was quite good. It’s not beneath me to lie to her (or anyone else) to keep the peace. Adam didn’t finish his burger, but not because it wasn’t good. He’d worked the night before so his sleep/eating schedule was off, and his salad had been enormous. We boxed it up and took it home.

Summary:

All in all a very good experience, even with my issues with the crabcake. I did finish it. The combination of an exceptional salad bar, those wonderful biscuits and overall high quality more than made up for a single petty weakness.

The tab came in under fifty six dollars before tip, not cheap, but the food was mostly top-drawer. The price is typical of this caliber of chain restaurants, so comparatively not bad at all. We will go back, and of all the chains around this is my personal favorite. Maybe not crabcakes again, but they’ve got plenty of other stuff to choose from.