Friday, July 2, 2010

Eating Out - New American

Going full Ludacris on these chicken and waffles.

Founding Farmers (New American)

Tucked in an outside corner of the IMF, Founding Farmers is one of the hottest restaurants in town. It couldn't be more nouveau yuppie. An LEED certified restaurant offering locally sourced organic and sustainable food items from farm gate to dinner plate with modern updates on traditional Southern favorites blah blah blah. It's about enough to make me sick. Well other than the food is some of the best I've ever had. That part does not make me sick.

We've been dying to try this place for a long time. With foodie friends in town, we dove in one evening, and this is what stands out.

Observations
  • In addition to the snobby food, they serve snobby drinks. The drink menu does not have a description of the cocktails' flavor. It describes the history of the drink and uses the word "mixologist" at least twice. This also annoys me.
  • I don't remember what everyone else had to drink, but I had the El Presidente named after Gerardo Machado. Since President Machado and I are both from Cuba, I figured this would be a great drink. It was good, but not fruity enough for me.
  • It took us almost an hour to get in (at 9 on a Monday night!), so we were starving when we hit the table. We had some fried green tomatoes and a plate of homemade chips with various dips. The fried green tomatoes were filled with goat cheese and topped with green goddess dressing (ridiculously good) and the chip dips included more green goddess, spicy pimento cheese spread, and onion dip.
  • There was a lot of passing going on around the table. Here's what the others had: prime rib dip sandwich, blue crab ravioli, and shrimp and grits. Everything I sampled was really good, but my meal was the hit of the table. Which brings us to.......
  • I had the best damn meal of recent memory. Fried chicken, waffles, a-maz-ing mac and cheese and fresh green beans. I've never had chicken and waffles before. It's like eating a chicken with extra extra breading smothered in syrup. The mac and cheese was also about 1000 times better than expected.
  • Deserts: girls split some kind of strawberry shortcake with a modern twist, I had strawberry ice cream
  • We'll go again. Just let us know when you want to go!

1 comment:

  1. If you like chicken n' waffles and you're ever in LA, check out Roscoe's House of chicken n' waffles. Of course it may not be as high class as founding farmers, but it's good.

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