Yamato Restaurtant Gainesville

Yamato Restaurant by the Oaks Mall is a Teppanyaki place. Teppanyaki, as opposed to hibachi, uses the stainless steel flat tops. You may have heard of Benihana, which is a nationwide chain serving this kind of food. Our version has been altered from its original Japanese to suit American tastes. In the end, it's kind of like this:

When done well, it can be pretty entertaining, but as I've said before, this blog is about the food.

The real problem with reviewing a restaurant that does this style of cooking is that you really are beholden to the quality of each individual chef. As this is working with a very hot flat top, you really need someone on the ball to really do it correctly. Quality of ingredients can be lost pretty easily depending on how the flattop is handled. Add in all the little tricks and such, you get a pretty difficult task to accomplish correctly. As a result, my review can't, in all honesty, be a full review of the restaurant. Some chefs are probably just better than others. If my chef isn't good, that might mean he had an off night, or I just got a newer guy. There's no pass or line for an executive or sous chef to do a quality spot check. It's just really variable.

My group of 7 went on a Sunday night where we were seated at one of the large tables surrounding one of the teppanyaki flat tops. I decided to go with the NY Strip Steak for $16, while my girlfriend went for the Salmon for $16 as well. You may recall my review of Mahzu Sushi and Grill. The Salmon being almost the exact same price allowed for a pretty good shot to get a side by side comparison. The steak was something I'd have to gauge on my own.

 Each teppanyaki meal began with a soup and salad.

 The soup was not a miso soup, but a brothy kind of mushroom soup with tempura flakes. It was alright. The flavor was mild and the texture of the tempura flakes and mushrooms mixed in gave it a little something extra. The salad was made with a lighter ginger vinaigrette rather than the more thick ginger dressings you normally see. It was also alright. They were more just there than to actually serve the meal to come in any really positive way.

When the chef brought his cart out, he went around asking the doneness we'd prefer for our meat. I said rare because I figured that's the only way to really ensure any kind of rareness considering how thinly sliced the 2 3 oz NY Strips were that I had ordered. He did not ask my girlfriend to what doneness she would have liked her salmon. This came back a bit later.

The first thing the chef started with was the rice. He made a fried rice by crisping up some rice on the flat top. He then laid out some eggs which he proceeded to cook into oblivion. He really cooked these. I'd say overcooked them as they were basically harden crumbs of eggs by the end. Considering this, I'm probably a terrible teppanyaki customer, as I'll see stuff overcooking while it's happening and become apprehensive when the chef doesn't get on top of that. He then proceeded to mix the egg pellets and the rice together seasoning it with some sauce and some dried seasoning blend. As he put the rice on my plate, my first thought: Bland. The rice just wasn't very seasoned. For a fried rice, that's not so good. Two sauces came with the rice though.

The first was the normal spicy mayo with vinegar and sugar mixture you see commonly at Japanese steak houses, sometimes referred to as "shrimp sauce." The other sauce was a kind of a sweetish soy vinegar sauce. In order to get flavor on this rice, we had to drop a goodly amount of each sauce onto the rice. Of course, the rice is probably at its best when it just came out from being cooked, but we have run into the first problem of this kind of teppanyaki. Yamato doesn't cook everything at the same time. It does rice first, then protein, then vegetables, and finally noodles. There's a several minute gap between all of these regardless of chef proficiencies. If someone ordered chicken, it's going to take 4 minutes or so. There's a pretty good reason rice dishes usually are not appetizers outside of the rare risotto. Rice is largely meant to be a filler. When done well, it's meant to accent other flavors with whatever seasoning its been hit with. This is how nigiri succeeds. Fried rice, on the other hand, is supposed to be made using leftovers similar to how Americans will make a sandwich using leftover meat from a roasted Turkey. Having this to start out the meal feels weird, but it's made worse because if you don't eat it while it's hot, you get tepid rice, which now tastes only of the sauce you dumped on it to give it some flavor in the first place.

Forced Perspective or not, that's a ton of rice.

The proteins can be broken down pretty easily. The steak was cooked rare, which as I established in my previous reviews, is really important for any place to do if they ask how well cooked you want something. It was lightly seasoned, but that's OK as a cut of beef like a NY Strip can work pretty well without that much seasoning. It was pretty juicy as a result of it being cooked rare. I have no idea why my friends got theirs cooked beyond medium rare as that flat top is killing flavor every second it cooks beyond the medium rare point. In terms of quantity I'd say I got somewhere between 6-8 oz of steak.  I'd err on the side of 6 oz. The beef looked pretty decent. I'd say of pretty solid quality.

Even with the salmon getting the benefit of forced perspective, it's still a ton of rice.

My girlfriend's Salmon was just over cooked. She got 3 cuts, all cut in different portions, so, naturally, they all cooked unevenly. Each piece didn't have skin, but they were all cooked as though they did by cooking largely on one side. One of our friends was asked how rare he wanted his tuna cooked, but the chef didn't ask my girlfriend the same question. He ended up cooking each piece well done. What flavor the fish might have had was largely killed leaving it merely the taste that salmon was used, but of what quality? No one can say. The seasoning was light again, and that may have been OK with a lighter cooked fish, but as it stood there just wasn't much flavor there. That's what happens when you cook salmon too far though.

The mixed vegetables were of an OK quality. I think they probably could have used our old friend the maillard reaction to give them some color instead of largely just getting the color from the sauce the chef hit the veg with as it cooked. Seemed like fresh veggies though.

The noodles were of a pretty good quality. I don't know which brand they used, but they did taste how good noodles should taste. Regretfully, the noodles weren't seasoned particularly much, so this was kind of an opportunity left to die. Side sauces come back into play here.

You know, that may be my biggest issue with this meal. When you flavor pretty much your entire meal with the same seasoning, no wonder it's kind of a dull experience. Instead of really trying to make each component of the dish beyond the protein just act as filler with the same seasoning, they could have embraced making the rice, noodles, and veg all part of a larger experience. This runs into my main problem though where you are basically eating stuff in order as its served if you want the food to be hot. So you have rice, your protein, veggies, and finally noodles. I attempted to see how it all worked together, so I tried each part hot as it came out, and waited for the chef to complete the full thing before digging in. The end result left me, at the end of the meal, wanting for a flavor, literally any different flavor, to just come through.

At 16 dollars an entree, I think the value is sort of there, considering you do get a lot of food of an alright quality depending on the chef and what you ordered. Personally, I'd suggest they switch up the portions though. For the so called main part of the dish (the beef, chicken, seafood, etc.) the portion feels woefully inadequate compared to all the filler. I'd rather they cut back on the filler and upped the protein in whatever way maintains the same price or cut out some of the filler and drop the price a bit. With so much carb filler  on the plate, it's like they haven't even heard of the new food plate thingy.
 
So if you're desirous of teppanyaki, I have a hard time giving a firm warning to stay away. This last experience was just mediocre. It was basically the Fridays or Chilis of Japanese food as so many Teppanyaki places seem to be in the US. If you go on your birthday, it's basically a buy one, get one, which I think may be single handedly pushing their business along by the birthday person bringing all their friends along. All the same, you go with a friend and get 2 17 dollar entrees it'll only be 17 dollars and if you split the check with whomever you brought along, 10 dollars a person (including tip) is pretty solid even on a mediocre night.


--Charles

 

What I've Been Up To

Welp, if you noticed last week, I did not enter a single review. Why? I've been in Miami with my girlfriend eating at the Japanese restaurant her parents own. It's alright to be jealous. As a result of my time there, I have undergone the dreaded shift of taste any person goes through when they spend too much time with good food, and, thereafter, must acclimate to the food they have left behind. This has a couple of results.

1. I ate way too much food in Miami. Granted, most of it was pretty healthy since it fell under the Japanese umbrella as opposed to, say, the Southern Comfort Food Umbrella. As a result, I'm likely not going to eat quite as much when I go out until I'm back on the track I was on. This will likely result in me not being able to give full reviews of restaurants as I probably won't be trying as much stuff. You can expect multiple reviews of the same restaurants as a result.

2. I'm likely going to have to kill my standards. For the restaurants I will be reviewing over these immediate couple of weeks, prepare for some pretty hardass reviews. I'm probably not even going to have sushi again until I can forget about watching a chef literally cut a piece of sashimi off a fish to give to me. For the reader, well, it's probably best to be aware that my reviews might be erring on the side of Jon Lovitz's Critic character with regards to the dishes I try (It stinks!)

3. Expect more recipe blogs. I'm trying to incorporate leafy green veggies into normal dishes with mixed success. I tend to like cooking mostly healthy food as it tends to be more satisfying to eat than the French Toast sandwich I made a few weeks ago. If you're into seeing my thought process behind creating dishes, you'll probably find that interesting. If you're just interested in the reviews, I'll still have those, so don't be too worried.

4. Fall semester has begun. Sigh. I actually really like summer Gainesville. There's usually no wait to do anything. I can get in and out of Publix with very little trouble. I don't have to worry about gameday traffic preventing me from going anywhere. I can go to the store without being decked by an undergrad attempting to gear up for their dorm room with things that sparkle or whatever. This will probably make it more difficult to go to popular restaurants unfortunately. I already know that the Indian Grocery/Restaurant I go to will start seeing a steady increase in patronage. As someone who takes a zen approach to gathering ingredients, I'm always wary of these first couple of weeks.

You should be too.

5. All the same, to the new people in Gainesville, Welcome! I hope that I will provide you with an unbiased and in depth review of local restaurants to help you know which ones to avoid and which one deserve your patronage.

Speaking of restaurants that deserve patronage, Liquid Ginger's groupon has resulted in a definite visit from me in the not too distant future, which I am quite excited about (though I'll try and reign that in to remain unbiased.)

Also, look forward to my review of where to gather food products, especially if you're interesting in getting local/organic products. I will brave downtown and the hippies to scope out the farmer's market when it gets a little cooler.

If you have any requests for reviews, just shoot me an email, and I'll be sure to consider it.

--Charles

La Nopalera

If you're wondering where the Hooters on 34th and Archer went because you need that trip to Hooters to get through the week, we probably don't know each other. That being said, if the absence of the ostentatious decor of Hooters has left you looking a bit close at the location, you'll recognize Mexican restaurant La Nopalera. Having reviewed their cross street competition in Chuy's, I figure that it can't be any worse than there. The reality is that it's not. It's substantially better. Is it good? Eh. General standards would say mediocre. Gainesville standards would say OK. The reality is that it's cheap, comes out fast, there's a lot of it, and it has OK flavor. As a result, it is the best restaurant in the SW Gainesville Archer/34th Street Area. Considering the only competition is Taco Bell, Chipotle, and the previously reviewed Chuy's, it's not a very deep field. Is it better than the best Gainesville has to offer for Mexican? No. Is it tied or slightly better than a lot of the similar places Gainesville has? Yes.

First things first. Salsa Check:

Passable.

Indeed, the salsa itself was passable. Clearly it was a blended mixture, but it certainly tasted more robust than the watery mess at Chuy's. Did it use all fresh ingredients? In this condition, it'd probably be impossible to tell for sure, but I'd err on the side of no. This is the kind of stuff that comes out of jars where the assumption is that it was fresh at one point and does have the potential (at the very least) to go bad. I don't particularly mind a thicker blended salsa if it tastes good. That's not the kind of thing that bothers me. This one tasted of tomatoes with slight hints of some other salsa elements, but it was barely there. All the same, I can live with passable, and that's what this was.

Looking through the menu, I come across one of my pet peeves of Mexican food in Florida. Whether or not Horchata is on the menu is highly variable. This both frustrates and confuses me. If you are not familiar with Horchata I suggest boning up. It is incredible.

This is pretty similar to the way I make it. Now, I know what you're thinking. That seems like a metric ass ton of work to get a drink. This is true. That's why purveyors of Mexican foodstuffs to restaurants have concentrated versions of this. Will it be as good as the kind shown above? No. Will it still fit the gap? Probably. It's basically the drink that works perfectly with Mexican food (as opposed to Margaritas that usually overpower nearly anything you can think to eat.)

So I look through the rest of the menu, and discover some kind of bait and switch items. Namely, the California Burrito they have is not a California Burrito but a San Francisco burrito. I know that likely very few patrons of this restaurant know the difference, but the reality is that it does exist. Further, their fish tacos are not the Baja Fish Tacos that I prefer. What does that mean? Well, it's served with lettuce instead of cabbage and there's no white sauce that the fish taco is traditionally served with. Honestly, I was trying hard not to let this result in me prejudging the food, but when your expectations are subverted, it's hard to deny being affected.

It seems like the main thing Nopalera is going for is their combination dishes. These are mixes and matches of the standard variety of Mexican. Enchiladas, tacos, burritos, chile rellenos, chalupas, and tamales all get mixed and matched to whatever your particular preference is. It makes it pretty convenient to review, but as my goal is to give restaurants their best shot at proving their quality, I went right to their specials. This is where you start seeing their more authentic dishes. All the same, one of my friends got the bean burrito, so I got a shot at one of their most basic dishes as well as their supposed best ones.

As an appetizer, we got the Fajita Nachos off the special. For $12 dollars, I was expecting some ridiculously good nachos.

This was the worst part of the meal. I should have trusted my better judgment when I saw that the fajita nachos came with chicken, shrimp, and beef. There's a pretty good reason that most people usually don't mix proteins in their meals. All the same, this gave me a look at the meat of their fajitas, and if their fajitas all used the meat that came with the nachos, then I'd stay away from those fajitas. The flavor of their marinade on the meat was alright, though fairly underwhelming considering the flavor profile of Mexican food. The main problem was that each piece of meat was overcooked. It's like they tried to cook the beef, chicken, and shrimp in a big pile. Considering all those meats cook in different times, that's really not something you should do. as a result, it all came out overcooked. There really wasn't much queso for these nachos as well, but the queso that did come with the nachos did, in fact, taste like it was made from real cheese at some point. It did have a slightly store bought taste as the cheese cooled, but it was a bit too complex for me to think it was just off the shelf. it certainly didn't look/taste like the kind of nacho cheese I made in my recipe rebuttal of Chuy's. The pepper and such were really just completing the notion of this being all the normal fajita stuff on nachos; however, the end result is that you should totally pass.

My buddy got the Bean Burrito for $3.

This was the highlight in terms of value. The burrito itself was large, decently seasoned, and had pretty good tasting beans on the inside. The sauce was of the more basic tomato based style, but like the salsa tasted as if tomatoes of an alright quality were used at one point. I grant that there were no super complex flavors at work here, but sometimes the simplicity of a dish can make it stronger. This is the case here. You should probably be aware that the tortillas are definitely not made there (which is a shame. Even shitty pizza places in Gainesville tend to make their own dough.) All the same, at a whopping 25% of the price of the fajita nachos, I was somewhat shocked. Honestly, there isn't a ton to say about this one, but upon checking out the other prices, this particular item is a winner.

My girlfriend got the Enchilada Suizas (a specialty item) for $9.

This one was a pretty good value too considering she got 4 enchiladas and the tomatilla sauce actually tasted of tomatillas. The chicken, like at Chuy's, was more textural than flavorful, but at the very least this chicken was not as overcooked at the fajita nachos found above. It was pretty simply prepared and presented. The cheese was OK, though for being one of the more traditional Mexican enchiladas they served, I think some Mexican crumbling cheese would have gone a long way here over the melting western cheeses they went with.

I got the carnitas for $12. It's one of the most expensive entrees, so I assume this is where they step it up.

Now, I'm trying very hard not to compare these carnitas to Carnitas Uruapan, which is where my parents took me when we visited Tijuana to get, what are widely regarded as, some of the best Carnitas in the world. And no, the one in San Diego does not count as it's run by the TJ one's brother, and he apparently does some things differently. First, you should probably know what carnitas are, you white person, you. To be simplistic, it's almost the pulled pork of the Mexican food world. Instead of shredding off the pork though, you get cubes of pork as carnitas is Spanish for "small meat." Usually that meat is then crisped up through a more direct heat process. In TJ they slow cook these pigs in these pots in this huge hearth outside the restaurant, and, when the time comes, a guy will skewer some meat, pull it out of the pot, and take it into the restaurant to be cubed up.

So how does this stack up. Well, they got the cooking part somewhat right. A fairly crispy exterior with a moist interior. The problem lied in the flavor. There just wasn't much of it. It was severely lacking. Further, with the fairly mundane guacomole and lack of the simple garnishes that make great carnitas, I think they kind of missed the boat on this one. Carnitas are tough to do right, and while it's a worthy goal to try and master them, going half assed is not going to really endear anyone who knows how good carnitas are supposed to taste. Honestly, their flavor profile was pretty similar to what you can get at Chipotle. That's not necessarily a terrible thing, but it is something to keep in mind if you're choosing whether to go to a restaurant and drop 12 dollars or get take out from Chipotle for 6 dollars. The value thing comes into play if you can't take it up a notch.


Lastly, my girlfriend and I got some of their rice and beans. $4 for rice and beans to go with a meal seems excessive considering the portions they gave and that they likely just have a vat of these made in mass quantities ready to go. The rice was relatively flavorless but had a decent texture. The beans were seasoned, but were completely uniform in consistency, which I'm not a huge fan of.

In the end, my recommendation of this place is largely mixed. Better than La Tienda? No. Mexico Lindo is a bit more authentic, but they're about equivalent. It's about the same as Las Margaritas, really, and Las Margaritas is super far from where I live, so this place will do in a pinch I suppose. If you're looking for a sit down dinner type place for Mexican, this is basically par for the course for Gainesville. Maybe a little better at some things, a little worse at other things, but mostly...about the same.



-Charles

Sweet Mel's Recipe Rebuttal

When deciding what kind of recipe rebuttal to do, I had to look at what I felt was the most offensively bad dish they had at Sweet Mel's in terms of what they offered vs. what was delivered. Without question, it was their burger served between pieces of french toast with hashbrowns, cheese, egg, bacon, and a normal burger in the center. I decided that nearly every component of what should have been an interesting burger failed to meet expectations. That's pretty bad when you're supposedly a burger place. Crappy french toast, overcooked egg, tasteless cheese, frozen tasting hashbrowns, an overcooked burger patty, and a really bad couple pieces of bacon. Bad bacon? Is such a thing possible? Apparently so.

The mainstay to French Toast in my mind has to be good quality bread. Luckily, the good people at Uppercrust Bakery set me up with a delicious French White bread. Normally, yes, I prefer a Sourdough, but French Toast made with a French Bread: sure. I think that'll do. So French Toast recipes as designed by the English were called "pain perdu,"which is French for wasted bread. Basically, this is bread that has gone stale, but can still be salvaged with the combination of a delightful custard. To be honest, I eyeballed the custard. I used two eggs and about a cup or so of milk with a dash of vanilla and just a bit of brown sugar. Custard is delicious probably regardless of the ratio, but I didn't skimp on the eggs considering I got some fresh eggs from the chickens my parents keep at their place in Tampa. Step 1 was to cut 4 pieces of white bread to let stale up overnight. I also let the custard set overnight as well.

The next step was to consider meat. I considered doing a beef patty along with bacon like they did at Sweet Mel's but, honestly, I felt like the Beef wouldn't particular match well with the French Toast. While I did like the idea of going with some good bacon, I figured I did want the meaty bite of a patty. So the question arose. What kind of meat patty would I go with? Luckily, Fresh Market has some handy dandy breakfast country style sausage meat.

Delightful. Going with the patty of pork meant a difficult decision. Should I also add bacon to this? I figured with all the other stuff going in, it might be gilding the lily. Considering the whole thing seems like a big case of gilding the lily, adding bacon could have just been a bridge too far. In retrospect, I'm not sure if I would have repeated that decision. I just don't know how much the bacon would have added considering the final product was so over the top.

So step 1 was to cook the pork patties. I wanted decent color, but I definitely do not like overcooked pork which tends to be something everyone seems to enjoy doing. So I cranked my big cast iron to medium and cooked fairly thinly pressed pork patties to a golden color. I seasoned with a bit of salt and pepper as well.

Halfway done.

I flipped them about 3 times to make sure the color was even.

Next step was the hashbrowns. I had some Idaho Gold on hand, so I figured that'd be good enough. Great hashbrowns have to be dried pretty substantially to get you the best possible hashbrowns. I did a decent amount of drying, but I could have gone farther. Ideally, you want to probably put the shredded potatoes into the fridge to dry using a similar method to drying out steak. I cooked these through somewhere between medium and medium high.

Forgive the Blurryish Soap Operaishness

As you can see, the color on the top one was pretty much exactly how it was supposed to be done. The one of the left had to be flipped another time to really crisp it up further. I used a bit of salt and pepper here as well.


Meanwhile, the French Toast had to soak up that batter. I gave each piece of toast about five minutes on each side to really soak up that custard.

So after soaking all four pieces of French toast, I put it in my cast iron with some butter at a bit past medium heat. I was worried that I was crowding the pan a bit, but it turned out to not be that bad.

I had to give the bottom left one another flip.

As you can see, a decent browning was had. They were pretty incredible though, as it was almost a custardy bread pudding. Pretty incredible.

Construction Begins

I laid a slab of some awesome local honey on the French Toast to add that delightful honey flavor to my French Toast that had relatively little sweetness in the custard. As you can see, I have the filling arranged up top.

Extra Sharp Cheddar

I went with extra sharp cheddar to cut through the creaminess already in the French Toast.

On top of all this, I did two eggs over easy making sure the egg yolk stayed runny. That went on top of the rest of the filling.

That egg yolk is ready to burst.

And then I assembled. And drizzled some maple syrup on top.

Because I wanted to, I added just a touch of Nutella to the top of the French Toast. Why? Because I had some.

Yeah, that egg yolk just burst all over it.


Was it good? Regretfully, it was way better than anything that terrible for you has any right to be. Honestly, it was super delicious. Did it all work together? Honestly, there's probably a good reason that breakfast places separate the components. As good as a French Toast sandwich can be? It's probably pretty close.

One things for sure. After having such a ridiculous meal, I have one thing to eat for the next three days.

It's a green smoothie made with fruit, kale, and lettuce. Maybe after spending the next 3 days only eating this, I'll feel like I can eat a normal meal again without any guilt.

--Charles

Sweet Mel's

I'll preface this by saying this restaurant is definitely getting a recipe rebuttal. Why? My burger was cooked medium well-well when I asked for medium rare. If you are a burger place, and you offer variations in cooking time, execute to the specifications given to you. If you don't want to read the rest of my review, I understand. If that shit bothers you as much as it bothers me, you have no reason to go there.

All I can say is, as a burger joint, their deep fried oreos were delicious.

And now proceeding with the due diligence:

To be honest, I do not like downtown Gainesville. Parking there is a pain. You commonly have to fight through the club goers to get to the good places. The random one way streets can be annoying. All the same, reviewing a restaurant requires a harmonious frame of mind. If I'm not judging restaurants on the length of time it takes to get the food, judging them on inconvenience to get to would probably be unfair. All the same, full disclosure: I don't like downtown Gainesville. Does that affect my reviews? I hope not, but that's the reality.

So I, along with 5 other people decided to visit Sweet Mel's after a play reading. The main promise of a substantial variety of burgers perked my interest. Like pizza, burgers can be a fairly blank slate by which you can make some incredible things. All it takes is using some quality ingredients and you can make a simple and delicious burger. Vary up the toppings, and you can really make something spectacular. The truly great burger places grind their own meat, which you can usually taste. As a result, I'm always up for giving a burger a shot.

The first page of the menu is basically all their varieties of burgers. There are twelve burgers, all of them around $9. My girlfriend and I were hungry so we decided to go with the onion rings as an appetizer for $6.

The onion rings were pretty good. Solid texture. Not too greasy. I'm pretty sure they used a beer batter to create a very crisp onion ring. The onion rings themselves were pretty large and had good body to them. All the same, at around $6, I really didn't feel like I got my money's worth. There just weren't many onion rings for the price. I'd say they were worth about $4. That's 150% more than what I felt they were worth. Part of the issue is that they were actually pretty good, and I did want more...just not at that price. Onion rings are cheap to make.

I ordered the Smokey Mountain BBQ. It came with BBQ sauce, bacon, onion rings, and cheddar cheese. When I was asked how I liked mine cooked, I said medium rare...so I expected medium rare. This is how it looked:

While the burger does look good, the problem is at the heart of the burger. The meat itself just isn't very good. I didn't get much of a crust on mine implying that the surface it was cooked on just wasn't hot enough to build the necessary Maillard reaction. But the main problem:

It's just grey. The burger was cooked medium well to well done. Vastly different than the medium rare I requested. Beyond that though, the meat itself tasted pretty bland. Is that due to it being overcooked? Potentially. It could have just not been very high quality beef though. It certainly wasn't grass fed, and it certainly didn't have a very fresh taste. Further, the trick most people use with burgers to put a layer of mayo or something to prevent all the grease from the burger from annihilating the bun was not to be found here. As a result, the burger basically disintegrated about halfway into the eating of the burger. Further, the bacon was overcooked, so even ol' reliable bacon couldn't be counted on to bring more than just a texture.

The specialty burger I also encountered was their breakfast style of burger. Instead of hamburger buns, they used french toast. It also included an egg, 3 slices of bacon, cheese, and hash browns.

The burger was, like my burger, cooked past medium. The bacon wasn't any more flavorful than mine. The hashbrowns tasted like more like they had once been frozen instead of the kind of hashbrowns you get at a legit breakfast place. The egg was also overcooked (seeing a theme.) I thought something that could have pulled it together was a more runny egg that could have been a sort of Eggs Benedict effect with a looser yolk. The French Toast was barely coated in the egg batter you want with good French Toast, and it certainly didn't use a good quality French bread (which you'd want with French Toast...go figure.) As you can see, there's more confectioner sugar than batter. In the end, it just didn't offer much.

Along with the burgers came the choice of a side. I got the Devil Fries, which were basically just fries with some cheese melted on top tossed with some buffalo style sauce. They kind of soaked the fries, which killed the crispiness. Instead of giving a spicy seasoning to crisp fries, melting the cheese, and then having an interesting spicy sauce for the fries, it felt just kind of half-assed. My girlfriend's sweet potato fries were OK. They weren't as crispy as they could have been, but that's the only issue I had with them.

My girlfriend and I decided to split desert. We went with the deep fried Oreos. We got four deep fried Oreos for $6. It was actually a pretty cool desert. The batter was light and tasty. That being said, I think $6 is still a bit much for 4 deep fried Oreo cookies.

In the end, Sweet Mel's seems to be more of a bar that is trying to have some food options more than being primarily a food place. Randomly during our meal, club music came on really loudly. There was nobody dancing. There were no lights or anything. It was just sort of bewildering. The food took about a hour to come out as well, while we were the only ones in the restaurant. I'll have to admit I was pretty confused by that considering burgers take all of eight minutes or so to cook and set up (if you've done any semblance of kitchen prep.) As I said, I don't tend to judge restaurants on this (probably the thing I have most in common with the Frnech besides a love of roux,) but I felt it was worth noting by its weirdness.

To conclude, I do not recommend this place. If you want a great burger, my favorite in Gainesville remains The New Deal Cafe.

-Charles

Mahzu Sushi and Grill

Mahzu Sushi and Grill. Located on Williston and 34th.

Sushi, Sashimi, and Gainesville do not go well together. There could be a couple of reasons. The main one being that we are not at the intersection of a great fish market required for the sushi places that truly excel. All the same, we're in Gainesville. Not Oklahoma. Decent quality fish is all of 2 hours away at most in either Tampa or Jacksonville. This is no Herculean task. All the same, I get the impression that sushi restaurants here largely just don't get the whole "sushi" thing. Why is that? Well, my working theory is that most of the sushi we see in Gainesville are from people that are not fully trained in it. A lot of the time I think we're seeing restaurants that want to put sushi into their menu, but don't know the effort really required to do it correctly. The better sushi restaurants require their chefs in training to just wash rice for 3 years before moving on to actual construction of the rolls. Does anyone honestly believe that is happening here? Sashimi is no less of a challenge, requiring some of the best knife work in the cooking world. Realistically though, you have an upper bound with sushi and sashimi and that is the quality of ingredients you obtain. High quality ingredients equals better quality sushi and sashimi. It's just that simple. That being said, bad knife work and spotty fish inspection can sink a sushi and sashimi place to a discerning crowd, while no amount of great knife care or fish inspection of a bunch of old and crappy fish will save your place. All the same, there's no reason to half ass just because you aren't working in the Tokyo Fish Market.

So we have an upper bound of ingredients for Gainesville, which, theoretically, should still be moderately high. Have any places in Gainesville lived up to that upper threshhold? Well, no. There's a cost component of bringing in daily fresh fish that would result in very highly priced sushi and sashimi that would likely just not work as a business model here in Gainesville. So we refocus on saying what's the best quality of sushi and sashimi we can get at the more moderate price points we associate with sushi here. The reality is that sushi must be mildly profitable here, or we wouldn't have such a high number of places that seem to provide it. At last count on Archer between 34th and the I-75, you can get Japanese food from 6 places. I'll get to those places eventually, but for now you have to wonder about the addition of one more sushi place in here when nobody seems to get it right. All the same, the addition of a new restaurant, Mahzu Sushi and Grill, at the old Green Plantains location in the Williston Publix shopping center does provide people who live in the Laurels, Campus Lodge, and The Polos a closer place to eat than the various Archer restaurants.

I'll preface by saying that the kind of sushi most Americans are interested in makes no real difference regarding where you go. If you go to a sushi place and order something deep fried and covered in cream cheese, you should probably just go where it's most convenient, and this location is, in fact, very convenient for not insignificant portion of the off campus living in the general area. If you go to sushi to get rolls where you want the fish to be just a tiny bit covered in other bold flavors, it probably won't make much of a difference to you either. A bad sushi place might take a bit longer, and your rice probably won't be as good, but it'll still come out about the same as a good place when dealing with those rolls. This isn't really a knock on any person likes those rolls. It's just the reality of the situation. What's the difference between an 8 oz sirloin steak at one place and an 8 oz sirloin steak at another if you cover it in a completely overpowering BBQ sauce? The theory is about the same here.

My girlfriend and I got to Mahzu at around 8 PM on a Monday, so I was expecting it to be fairly slow, and it was. We chose to sit at the sushi bar, which is what I prefer to do when I go to a Japanese place where I'm expecting to eat sushi. It's a new place, and I'm inherently suspicious of sushi in Gainesville, so I wanted eyes on the fish I was going to be eating for signs of what was to come. Alas, the condensation on the inside of the display and refrigeration section most sushi bars have largely blocked my view. I'd have to wait for the meal to come out before I could pass judgment on the state of the fish. I made some small talk with the sushi chef asking where he trained. New York, he claimed. One of the three cities in the US where you can be assured that if they worked at any kind of decent place, they would have been well trained. Expectation go up a touch at this.

So I looked through the menu deciding what to order and discovered a fairly pleasant surprise. The menu showed that they are dedicated to being a real Japanese place. The inclusion of toro and uni was frankly shocking. Not on the menu were a bunch of pan Asian dishes watering down the idea that they are really dedicated to their purpose of providing good Japanese food. Not unexpected, we see teriyaki, tempura, and udon (a bit more rare) dishes. The real surprising part is the Hibachi section. Americans tend to have a weird approach towards Hibachi where they seem to overlook it unless cooked in front of patrons. Personally, I don't particularly care about that kind of thing as it does always tend to come down to flavor for me. Personally, Hibachi for a large group becomes very difficult as the nature of it means all food is coming out at uneven times, and ideally you want to eat a lot of that stuff right off the grill. Here, the hibachi is done in the kitchen which allows them some better quality control. A solid focus on seafood hibachi bodes well, but they have steak and chicken as well. Further, they have Bento boxes similar to what Ichiban offers. One thing did make me apprehensive though. Seeing deep fried rolls always makes me feel a bit curious as there is, quite literally, no way to do those in keeping with the care and dedication considered in making fresh sushi. I could see this as merely pandering to customers that demand it (and from what I've heard from sushi chefs, it's a pretty common request,) so it's unfair to judge restaurants too harshly for that if they deliver on the good stuff.

Getting the measure of the quality of a sushi place is actually super easy. Here's the things you need to order: their sashimi platter, a simpler style roll, and a simple nigiri. I tend to ask what roll and nigiri they do best, as a sushi chef should not bullshit you and should know what they have fresh and what they do well. If you're a general fan of sushi and sashimi like I am, this isn't that big of a deal, but I do know that some people don't like the taste of certain fish. For those people, try to give the chef a few options and see which one they think is best (the benefit of sitting at the sushi bar though good waiters should be able to give you a good answer too.) Regarding the kitchen area of a Japanese restaurant, you can usually tell the quality of their kitchen by their fish. Chicken and Steak are hard to mess up, so I tend to pass right on by these when I'm trying to gauge quality. Salmon Hibachi was on the menu, and at a good price of $16. The recommended roll was the spicy tuna roll. Their sashimi deluxe seemed to have the best variety for me to try. As sashimi deluxe platters are usually chef choices as well, you can tell a lot about the chef from this dish.

A pleasant surprise was that the sushi chef gave us a free appetizer in the form of a cold squid salad.

The fresh flavors combined with a bit of vinegar and bit of something sweet that I couldn't quite place. It provided an excellent appetizer, and at the price of free, it approaches the null set of value. The squid combined with sweet and sour of the light sauce in a flavorful way. There were a few little extra touches to the squid as you can see, but it's clear the goal is to make the squid the star of the dish, and it did very well. An excellent palate cleanser for the food to come as well.

The spicy tuna roll was $5 and the sashimi platter was $18. Spicy tuna at $5 is a pretty good deal if you can get the tuna scraps they cut off to prepare the sashimi. Usually those little chunks are just as good, and you won't know/care if they're put in the sushi. So...moment of truth:

Is my sashimi glowing blue? Yes.

As you can see, they combined the spicy tuna roll (below) with the sashimi deluxe (above.) If you look at that you can't help but wonder...the fuck? What is all the random stuff doing near my sashimi? Sashimi is known for its simple and tasteful aesthetic. This seemed to go in a different direction. As you can see, the sashimi is on a bed of ice with a blue light underneath. I had to think this was part of the overwrought New York style of preparation. At 20 pieces of sashimi, $18 dollars is pretty much par for the course here in Gainesville in terms of cost. Some places give you more types of fish, but less of each fish. Personally, I prefer this a little better, as a bit more care seems put into it.

The spicy tuna was not very spicy in my opinion, but I tend to find it rarely is (even at good sushi restaurants.) The tuna though, was as it should be. It melted as trimmings from the tuna should. The rice had a good balance of vinegar. It was sticky without being overly sticky, which led to a pretty decent texture of the roll. Probably not the most exquisite spicy tuna I've had, but at 5 dollars it definitely exceeded expectations.

The sashimi was where the rubber met the road for me. There are two ways to tell the quality of fish before biting into it and that is the smell and how it looks. Thankfully, there was no smell, as that bodes really poorly for a sashimi dish. In fact, I think the ice bed for the sashimi was a clever inclusion to keep the fish tasting fresh through the whole meal as opposed to leaving it on a warming plate. You may hear that the best sushi chefs have somewhat cold hands. This was a pretty nifty way to maintain that bright and fresh flavor. If you're not a sashimi person, we have salmon, seared albacore, tuna, tilapia, and white tuna (escarole.) The first thing I'll say is that the cuts were excellent. I've been to other places (Dragonfly) that just mangle their sashimi. These sashimi cuts were superb. We'll go one by one. The Salmon was as good as Salmon in Florida basically can be. Salmon, as an oily fish, sometimes puts people off, but I found this salmon to be far more delicate than what I'm used to in Gainesville, which was the result of its freshness. It is somewhat remarkable being that it was probably sourced from the northeast. The seared albacore is a pretty common type of sashimi where they sear the outside and then cool it. This can be a dubious process for some sushi chefs because if the searing isn't done correctly, you'll either have a cut of fish that won't hold the sear particularly well, or it'll be actually cooked, which kills the raw flavor. This was a pretty nice version of this particular cut of sashimi, and the albacore flavor cut nicely through the sear. The tuna was of the Atlantic bluefin variety, extremely rare here in Gainesville where we normally have the yellowfin. If you have not had bluefin tuna, you are missing out something fierce. The flavor is more robust than the yellowfin variety I've had. Basically imagine the subtle flavors of the yellowfin and take them up a few notches. Granted, if I were in, say, Miami, I'd probably prefer the yellowfin because it would likely be locally sourced, but Gainesville is Gainesville, so if the salmon can withstand it's journey from the NE, apparently the bluefin tuna can as well. The Tilapia was more impressive for its cut than for its flavor. Tilapia tends to be one of the harder fishes to cut as they're pretty tough when raw, so you have to slice them pretty thinly to make work. The Chef did a pretty good job of it, but the flavor just wasn't quite there, likely dulled from the travel. The white tuna (also known as escarole) was excellent. Escarole has a bold flavor, as far as sashimi goes, but it is a delicately textured fish, so you can pretty easily mess it up if you go for the kind of slices the sushi chef was going for (it's not uncommon to see Escarole in larger sashimi chunks because it's delicate nature will hold up better to a larger cut.) The chef, barring the tilapia which should be thinner, was remarkably consistent across all his cuts as you can sort of see in the picture.


As good as the sashimi was (and it was better than the vast majority of what we see in Gainesville,) the hibachi was what I would consider a better value (and I don't even really like hibachi that much.) This whole thing was $16.

2 Salmon Filets? Hell yes.

So we have 4 components going on with this dish, so we gotta cover each one separately. The rice, despite its shape, was actually not very sticky, which was a pleasant surprised. It was pretty well seasoned too. It had a touch of crispiness, which I tend to like in my hibachi rice which means it was likely cooked on the grill and then formed into the shape. That bodes pretty well. The noodles were of a pretty simple variety. They weren't that heavily seasoned though. Mixing with the excess sauce from the salmon did the trick. The veg got the hibachi treatment as well getting cooked and sauced as well. The char was a bit lighter than I prefer when I get hibachi, but all the same, it was still pretty good. The most important part was the salmon though. Cooked a touch on the non skin side, and then largely cooked skin side down gave it a pretty solid flake. It was a touch overcooked from how I prefer it, as I tend to be a fan of the barely cooked salmon, but that tends to be how you get it at hibachi places unfortunately. For a simple, well done, Hibachi style dish, this delivered in a pretty solid way though. It's pretty no frills without egg for the rice and a lack of depth for the noodles, but if you're a hibachi fan, I'd say it gives a pretty good solid dish.

In order to try the nigiri, I returned to the restaurant to try their lunch menu. Their sushi special at ~$10 seemed like a reasonable price if the sushi was of quality with the dinner.

There were actually two more pieces of California Roll, but I ate them. The California roll was basically par for the course as far as California rolls go. The avocado was fresh, which is good, but the crab was of the fake crab stick variety that is the norm. The nigiri was well done. If anything, it was a little heavy on the fish side.

As you can see, the fish is a bit large for the rice underneath. That being said the fish was still fresh and well cut. This nigiri was made with yellow fin tuna instead of the blue fin tuna found in the sashimi (which is pretty common considering it's not just sashimi and is at lunch.) The rice was well done, but had a bit more body to it than is ideal and was a touch light on the vinegar side. All the same, the flavor balance was about right, and the lunch price certainly made it a good value.

In the end, I'd say this is probably one of the best Japanese places in Gainesville with comparative prices and superior quality with regards to most of the products put out by their competitors. Yamato edges the Hibachi in quality, but if you just want the Hibachi without the live show, this is the better option, and you can find roughly equivalent raw product with Ichiban. All the same, these guys actually seem dedicated to what they're making though, and that goes pretty far with me. If the location is more convenient for you than Ichiban or Yamato or you happen to want some of both, I'd say this is definitely the go to Japanese place.

Satchel's

Ask a UF alumni where they go when they're back in town, and they will, most likely, tell you to make the trip to Satchel's. Why? It seems more ineffable than anything. Sometimes it's because they only accept cash. Sometimes it's about the mini-hippy commune that seems to have sprung up in the back of the place. Sometimes you'll hear a person say they genuinely love a particular menu item, but usually it's more of a "Well, because it's Satchel's!" At this point, they tend to get all Jack Nicholson from The Shining on you and give you some crazy eyes.

I LOVE THEIR SALADS

Fair enough. Far be it from me to rain on your parade. Most of the talk you hear about Satchel's is the mystique surrounding Satchel's. Indeed, I feel compelled to not just stick to the food and mention some stuff because it bears mentioning. Satchel does a very good thing with his business. He treats his employees right. He's really involved/engaged with the community. He donates money he would have had to pay to credit card companies in fees to charity. He does what he can to really make sure you have a good experience. Does this mean he has a good restaurant, though? No. That means he runs an ethical business. Now, I'm sure people who want to support ethical business practices will be turned on by this (I think it's pretty cool,) but that doesn't mean the food is great. It's just the reality. Good food is good food and a strong sense of ethics doesn't make you a better chef. Now that that is all out of the way, let's get to the actual restaurant, eh?

My girlfriend and I arrived at Satchel's at 7 PM on a Saturday to meet with some friends there. I was already a bit apprehensive as 7 PM on Saturday is probably the busiest time of any restaurant. Shockingly, Satchel's was no expectation and the wait given was about 45-50 minutes. Well, I came all the way to NE 23rd so a wait less than a hour wasn't going to break my resolve to review it. Instead, I decided to wander about, checking out the locale. I quickly realized the main problem. This was Florida in mid July. Probably a poor move to have come at the most crowded time, as I don't particularly do well in hot and crowded areas. What was striking was the weird demographics of the place. While hippies were ever present as is the case with most local pizza places in Gainesville, there were families and students, wealthy and poor, old and young. Clearly, Satchel has tapped into something here, but what it is ain't exactly clear.

This album could be put on loop. No one would notice.

I shit you not, I saw a younger guy wearing a utilikilt without irony. Later, I saw a middle aged man wearing a Fleetwood Mac shirt without shame. Let's be real...there should be a little shame when you wear that. Not at Satchel's though. It's the warm, accepting embrace of Gainesville complete with the ever present hippies. I should say that I have no problems with this, as hippies are notoriously good pizza makers. One of my favorite pizzas of all time is made by the good folks at Taos Pizza Out Back in Taos, NM, which might as well be right out of a documentary about Woodstock (the one that didn't have Limp Bizkit headlining.) I'm usually pretty apprehensive if I enter a pizza place, and I can't spot Hippies or Italians. If I come across a Hippy Italian Pizza place, my expectations will be incredibly high. There's probably a marijuana joke in there.

Right behind the restaurant is a little shop filled with odds and ends that, I would guess, are to keep children entertained as you wait for your table. This is where I saw the utilikilt guy. They also have an area for someone to play music, so I'm sure if you came at the right time you'd probably get to hear a jam band laying down a crunchy groove, or whatever the hell they call it. They had a small bar area there as well with a selection of organic beer if that so interests you.

Normally,  I won't provide so much atmospheric color in a review, but I got bored 20 minutes into the 50 minute wait to get seated and started scribbling notes.

Eventually, our table was called. Luckily, the menu is there to explain why things take so long. Satchel's apparently has a small kitchen, which means that if the restaurant is crowded, you can wait as long as 50 minutes for your food. I have nothing against this, personally, but I will admit to having some confusion as pizza is supposed to be one of those types of food that can cook with extraordinary speed. I have no idea what they do to the pizza before they put it in the oven, but the prep, cooking, and serving of a pizza is a pretty quick process with the highly regarded original Neapolitan pizzas cooking in as little as 2 minutes in their special pizza ovens. Whatever though. If the food is good, it won't really matter anyway.

We decided to start out with a salad as my girlfriend basically demanded it. She had raved about the salad before, but I tried to keep my expectations in check. I didn't want to be unfair after all. At $6.50 to serve 2-4 people (as the menu recommended,) it chanced to be a good value at least.

As it turned out, it was in fact a very good deal, giving enough salad for my girlfriend, my buddy, and I. At about 2 dollars a person, a pretty good bed of red and green leaf lettuce, a basic vinaigrette, assorted nuts, diced tomatoes, some apple chunks, a healthy dusting of romano cheese, and a couple other slight touches made this a very good deal. I had heard that the salad was mixed with some form of addictive narcotic, but I felt like it was basically just a pretty good garden salad. I tend to find a fairly simple garden salad to have a pretty secure limit for what can be done with it and, therefore, a threshold regarding how good it can be before it is no longer a basic garden salad. This salad definitely hit the points necessary to be a good at what it was trying to be. It tasted fresh and the ingredient ratio was spot on as well.

The Calzones were described by the menu as "addictive," so I felt like I should include them in my review along with the pizza to come. At $12.50, I got the calzone called the Hot Rope, which came with spicy Italian sausage, green peppers, onions, ricotta, and mozzarella cheese. It came with a side of sauce as well.

The larger pictures is so you can see the sauce more easily.

The Calzone is easily enough for a full meal for one person. More likely being enough for one and a half meals. The ingredient ratio was good again. The balance was correct. The sauce was served on the side as opposed to inside the Calzone itself, which is neither here nor there for me. I tried the Calzone with and without it. Upon trying with the sauce, I came to my first qualm with the meal. The sauce they use is not very flavorful. I'd say that it's actually a bit bland. I first thought something might have been up when it came out in full blended form with remarkably uniform consistency. You can see some visible seasoning, but it just didn't have much punch to it. You will notice the crust looks strange for a normal calzone. This is actually the main thing I think Satchel's does best, but I'll get to that later. Overall, I'd say it's a little overpriced for what it delivers considering the sauce, but the calzone is well done, and I'd recommend it if you like calzones.

Finally, we come to the pizza. When I asked my friend what he liked best about Satchel's he responded, after a brief pause to consider, "The Pizza." Andy Hutchins over at the local UF sports blog Alligator Army is not shy about referring to it as the best pizza in Gainesville. But is it reallly? We got one of their "deal" pizzas: A medium 14" inch pizza with 4 toppings called "The Mama" for $18. This was a mixture of basil, sundried tomatoes, garlic, and their spicy sausage.

At about 1.25 a piece, they didn't skimp on the toppings

Thought you can't see it particularly well in this picture, the crust was of a similar type of the Calzone. What is it that gives in that particular color and body. Well, luckily, it's something I've seen and tasted before. This pizza used, at some point, a sourdough base. I don't think I've seen someone use a sourdough base for their dough here in Florida before. My taste for pizza is straight from San Francisco's Little Italy, and those places do this little trick pretty frequently as well to really add depth to the crust. This is apparently fairly common in the well regarded pizza places of New Haven, CT as well. Neapolitan pizzas are commonly made using this method. Personally, I'm a big fan. I'm tired of nearly every pizza place I eat in Florida being inspired by the usually insipid New Yorker bastardization of the Neapolitan style. To complete my pissing off the invariable descendent of a New York transplant, the Yankees suck, the weather there blows, and most of the city gives off a weird odor.

Moving on, I believe you can see in the picture that the pizza is drooping fairly substantially at the tip. Something is afoot:

Some color but no char. We can see the coloring is uneven as well. Near the center, we can see the dough is lighter, which means the pizza wasn't evenly cooked. I'm really curious to know how they cooked their pizza to get such an uneven bottom. One things for sure, it did not have a char, which really prevents this crust from being all star quality. We know they aren't using the brick ovens that get past 700 degrees to make, in my opinion, truly the greatest pizzas. All the same, the crust does have good flavor (even making that awesome crunchy sound of great sourdough bread.) I just wish the effort that had clearly gone into making the crust had been fulfilled on the cooking end.

The cheese was of good quality. It wasn't the ideal super fresh mozzarella you get at the better pizza places (ie: ones not in Gainesville,) but it certainly accomplished what it had to. The toppings were of decent quality though I do wish I had gotten a bit more of the sausage on the pizza considering how well stuffed with sausage the calzone was.

The big disappointment with this pizza was that it seemed like they used the same sauce that they used for the calzone. Pizza sauce can really add a ton to a pizza. Really, this seemed to add more of a slight tomato note with the liquidy texture instead of the more robust sauces I prefer. They likely could improve this sauce in any number of ways, but largely I just wish they would improve it to live up to the rest of the pizza.

At 18 dollars for a 4 topping 14" pizza, I'm sure some people are curious regarding the value. I've gone back and forth on this to be honest. I'm reticent to say that it isn't a good value because, honestly, it is the best pizza in Gainesville. Relatively speaking, they could probably charge more, and still make a killing. When you're the best in town, you're the best in town. Could a restaurant come along, take the same quality of crust, improve the cheese, sauce, and cooking of the pizza, and still make profit by charging less than Satchel's? As a person who is no stranger towards making pizza, I can see that as very doable. Granted, Satchel's goal isn't to bottom out prices as you can see what he does for his employees and they are still recovering from a kitchen fire that had them shut down for a while.

In the end, I have to recommend this place. It's basically that I have no choice. They have the best pizza in Gainesville, but being the best in Gainesville in restaurant terms means fairly little. As a result, it'll probably be a while before I visit the ATM and head to Satchel's again, but I do know, once I wait a hour and a half from arriving to having the food come out, I'll be able to eat the best pizza Gainesville has to offer.

-Charles