Asian Express (Mill Run)

Asian Express is a little Thai/Chinese restaurant in the Mill Run Shopping Center. You can't see it very well from Fishinger Road, so you'd never know it was there unless a friend told you about it. And I, Caspar Fine-Burger, am that helpful friend.

I first heard about Asian Express from a friend whose father had just opened a store next door selling video games and pogs.* The pog store is long gone, but Asian Express remains, because they serve very good food at reasonable prices with friendly service.

I stopped in today for a plate of cashew chicken with an egg roll and a Pepsi, for a grand total of $6.62. As I waited, I looked around the restaurant and remarked at how little it has changed over the years. Seven booths, original art on the northern wall (from the owner's daughters, perhaps?), photos of specialty dishes in an illuminated sign on the southern wall. The prices appear to be the same as they were in 1994. Soda is still 75 cents. The floors, trays, and tabletops were spotlessly clean. This led me to take the exceedingly rare (for me) step of putting a dollar in the TIPS jar at a serverless restaurant.

Five minutes later, my piping-hot order was ready. The menu cautions that the cashew chicken is "Thai Spicy" style, which means the brown sauce is considerably spicier than you'll find at most strictly-Chinese restaurants, and instead of chopped celery, there are lots and lots of onions. The chicken was lean and fully cooked, with nary a bit of gristle or fat to be found (are you listening, Cajun Big Easy?). The cashews were fresh, too - nothing ruins cashew chicken like cashews that are starting to turn.

The fried rice was flavorful enough to be tasty by itself, though it's better when mixed with the spicy brown sauce. The egg roll was a bit chewy and maybe a little heavy on the ginger, but still enjoyable.

So now you've been told about Asian Express. Come early or order to go (remember, there are only seven booths), but you'll get a lot for your money.

* What are pogs? http://www.badfads.com/pages/collectibles/pogs.html

Cajun Big Easy (Mall at Tuttle Crossing)

[no spots due to nausea]

I really should have known better than to stop at the Tuttle Crossing food court for lunch. But I'd just picked up a Valentine's Day gift for Mrs. Fine-Burger and needed a quick bite, and the friendly Cajun Big Easy counter guy called out, "Hey, you like chicken! Try a free sample!"

Why, yes, sir, as a matter of fact, I do like chicken. And the little morsel he handed me on a toothpick was promisingly good. So I ordered a bourbon chicken platter with rice, sweet corn, and mashed potatoes, and a big Coke to wash it down, and found a seat at a counter facing the Cajun Big Easy storefront. I was intrigued by Mr. Big Easy's sales pitch and wanted to see how many of my fellow mall patrons would be drawn in. It's easy to ignore a hollering perfume-counter lady or a cellphone-kiosk guy, but who's going to refuse free chicken?

As I watched, I took my first forkful of chicken and rice. Mild and sweet with a hint of garlic. Not bad. Then I took my second forkful, which turned out to be nothing but chicken fat and gristle. Oops. Should have been watching my plate instead of watching the chicken salesman. My instinct was to spit the whole fowl mess back onto my plate, but my mother raised me not to be uncouth in a public dining area, so I chewed it as best I could and gulped it down.

I warily examined the pile of chicken and rice and found that about one-third of the meat was inedible. After I scooped that portion off to the side, I was able to complete the meal, though any pleasure I might have derived from it was long gone. Which is a shame, because the remaining chicken was tasty, or would have been if I hadn't been fighting nausea induced by swallowing parts of a chicken that were never meant to be eaten.

The sweet corn and mashed potatoes were unremarkable. If you'd just had your appendix out and a hospital staffer brought you Cajun Big Easy sweet corn and mashed potatoes, you'd consider them very good.

All in all, not the best way I've ever spent $7.62. Next time I'm hungry at Tuttle, I'll avoid the Big Queasy. Instead of free chicken, perhaps they should give out free Mylanta.

Bewley's Breakfast Buffet (Dublin, Ireland)

"Make sure you have the Irish breakfast," said more than one person who found out I was headed to Ireland. Well they were all wrong. This blog is about greasy food in the Dublin, Ohio area. But given that I was able to sample greasy food in Dublin, Ireland, I thought it important and relevant to our readership.

The breakfast buffet at my hotel was not a continental breakfast. It was in an actual restaurant and was fairly high-end, costing about $16. It just wasn't any good. Apparently the Irish don't do waffles, pancakes, or French toast, which is fine as I'm a bacon-and-eggs guy myself. They also don't do much in the way of fruit. I can't recall ever complaining about every item in a buffet, so this will likely sound whiney, but it's well-deserved. We might as well go by section:

Bread
Scones, soda-bread, and sliced white and wheat breads were available. I enjoyed the scones with a bit of strawberry jam, and the soda bread wasn't bad. The white bread was big and fairly tasteless (probably not as sugary as ours) and not particularly edible for me without jam or an egg on top (more on eggs later). Bread was the best part of the menu.

Meat and Potatoes
The meat and potato station contained bacon, sausage, eggs, and strange stuff like whole mushrooms. I tried the scrambled eggs despite the fact that they were sitting in water. They'd have been edible were they not incredibly salty. The bacon and sausage were what I was looking forward to, but the bacon was quite unlike ours. Looked more like Canadian bacon and very fatty. Not terribly tasty either. The sausage looked like regular links, but were a bit lighter in color than what we typically get. Now, I know that we don't want to know what goes into sausage. I recognize that a lot of nasty stuff goes in there. But there's a pact between us and the sausage-makers. We don't ask how they make it, and they make it taste good. The Irish have no such agreement, however. I think I got a sausage filled with butt. I know some use natural casings. I don't think mine was ever cleaned out in the first place. It tasted like the original filling.

Fortunately, they did offer fried eggs, cooked to order, which proved to be my salvation. Fried egg, on toast, with a shot of fresh-squeezed orange juice (not bad) and some awful coffee became my repertoire. Each day I added something else to try. Something never included the next day.

Fruit
I'm not really sure what some of this stuff was. There was a bowl of apricots in syrup, and another bowl of fruit salad, again in heavy syrup. Finally, there was a bowl of a completely unidentifiable red fruit (in heavy syrup). I tried only the fruit salad, which was too syrupy to eat much of.

Cereal
This should have been safe. The cereal table held half a dozen large open bowls of cereal, including corn flakes, rice krispies, and various other healthy-looking varieties. However, the milk sat out in pitchers, and was just about room temperature by the time it hit my bowl.

Overall, breakfast was an exasperating experience: food, food all around, but nary a bite to eat. I should note that while I didn't particularly enjoy "traditional Irish" fare while I was there... nobody actually eats that stuff anyway. There is good food in Dublin, but you've got to look for it.

McDonald's (Tuttle Crossing)

Folks, the reigning Arches champion in the Dublin, Ohio area is still the 161 and Frantz location. However, I do believe the Tuttle Crossing franchise could give it a run for its money. I visit this one often as it's closer to work and the food is always pretty decent.

In the fairly recent past, I would regularly hit the drive-thru for an artery-clogging two double cheeseburgers (that's four patties) and a medium fry for a bargain $3. But I never exactly felt light on my feet after eating such fare, so I've decided to dial it back a bit. Yesterday I went with what is fast becoming my favorite meal: the #10 Crispy Chicken meal.

I'm not sure when the Crispy Chicken Sandwich got "revamped" to use marketing speak, but it's a quality mid-day treat. Past whole-breast chicken sandwiches always had an inordinate amount of gristle. However, none could be found on my Tuesday sandwich (or the previous example I had last week at the go-to location). This sandwich is quite tender, with a lightly-spiced crispy outer layer that seals in the juices nicely. It sits upon a premium honey-wheat roll, adorned with lettuce, tomato, and a generous dollup of mayo: exactly what I like in (on) a sandwich.

So the sandwich was top-flight, but I couldn't give the restaurant four stars because the fries were lukewarm. Now this is not usually a problem with this location, but I've got an obligation to our lard-loving readership to tell it like it is, and the fries weren't all that.

Otherwise, Tuttle is a nice location. The seating area seems small, but it's creatively configured to hold more people than you'd think, with plenty of nooks and crannies to give a little more privacy than the airplane-hangar arrangement common to most fast-food places. The two TVs in the joint were tuned to a daytime soap rather than the typical ESPN or CNN, which I thought strange, but not so much as to make me lose my mind and start eating at TGI Fridays or something.

You'll do well to avoid the drive-thru at peak hours, as I swear it starts to form a spiral around the building. I guess the mall shoppers are the laziest folks around, because there's never more than a few people in line if you actually walk inside. "I can wait here all day, so long as I don't have to get out of my bucket seat. And I'll take the salad... watching my figure"

Kentucky Fried Chicken (Mill Run)

There's a whole class of American businesspeople today who seem to make a great living going from company to company implementing bad ideas. Take Kentucky Fried Chicken, for example. Once upon a time, they had a well-known brand name and a famous founder, Harland Sanders, who served as their corporate symbol. For millions of Americans, the white-haired guy in the Matlock suit with the string tie symbolized tasty chicken at a reasonable price. There are folks out there who salivate like Pavlov's dog at the mere sight of the Colonel. Take my aunt Mary — please.

Faced with stagnant sales, the suits decided to ax the Colonel and drop the well-known "Kentucky Fried Chicken" name for the acronym "KFC." Great move, guys. I'm sure the problem wasn't related to customer service or food quality. It had to be that "provincial" name and "out of touch" senior-citizen corporate symbol. When the changes didn't send sales skyrocketing, the marketing folks brought back a pseudo-hip cartoon version of Harland Sanders who danced around his cane in TV ads chanting "Go Colonel! Go Colonel!" Another big swing and a miss.

About a year and a half ago, the corporation decided that maybe replacing a tried-and-true name and beloved cultural icon hadn't been such a great idea after all. So they brought back the Colonel and the name "Kentucky Fried Chicken," and to announce this, they built an 87,000-sq-ft likeness of Harland Sanders in the Nevada desert, large enough to be seen from space:
http://www.kfc.com/about/pressreleases/111406.asp

Here's a thought. What if the company had taken all the money that was spent on rebranding the stores from "Kentucky Fried Chicken" to "KFC" and back, and all the money that was spent on salaries and consulting fees for the marketing gurus behind switching and unswitching names, and all the money that was spent on the giant Colonel in the desert, and spent it instead on staffing and food in the restaurants? Maybe the resulting improvements in customer service and food quality would have provided the desired bump in sales.

I know what you're thinking: old Caspar has way too much time on his hands. And you're right. I plenty of time to stand around and ponder fast-food marketing strategy while I was waiting for the folks at the Mill Run KFC to feed me lunch.

It started when I had a hankering for a Max & Erma's buffalo chicken sandwich, but didn't want to spend $13 (with tip and drink). Maybe the Colonel could satisfy my craving and still give me plenty of change back from a ten-dollar bill.

Things looked good when I walked into the restaurant - there was just one customer ahead of me. He ordered a bucket of chicken and a couple of side dishes. Somehow it took a full five minutes for the cashier to prepare this simple order, during which time several more diners came in and lined up behind me.

The drive-thru girl had no customers, so she came to the counter and took my order. "What a nice touch," I thought. I ordered the Buffalo Stackers meal (two small Buffalo chicken sandwiches, potato wedges, and a drink) with a side of cole slaw, for about $6. She then made my sandwiches, put them in a bag, and forgot about me.

The cashier finally assembled the bucket of chicken and sides for the first customer, then took the next customer's order. This time she completed the order in about four minutes, then noticed me standing there and asked if I had been helped. I explained the situation, which resulted in a huddled conference between the cashier and the drive-thru girl, who still hadn't had to serve a drive-thru customer. A few minutes later, I had my meal, along with some complimentary little chocolate pudding cup for my trouble. As I took my seat, I noticed there were now seven or eight hungry customers in line. I suspected the last guy in line would give up and leave before he was fed.

The food, once I got it, wasn't bad. The Stacker sandwich consists of a chicken strip on a mini-sub bun, slathered in your choice of sauce. The Buffalo sauce was surprisingly good and the chicken was lean - a reasonable facsimile of a Max & Erma's sandwich after all, on a miniature scale. Both my sandwiches came with piles of lettuce outside the not-quite-fresh bun. KFC Stacker: some assembly required. The potato wedges were crisp on the outside, soft on the inside, and well-seasoned. The cole slaw was unremarkable, but wasn't bitter or warm (the cardinal sins of slaw). I wasn't hungry for the "consolation" chocolate pudding, but ate it anyway out of a sense of obligation. After all, nothing mitigates an unreasonable wait like free dessert.

So there's really nothing wrong with the Mill Run KFC that hiring an extra staffer couldn't fix. I'm guessing better service would stimulate sales of fast-food chicken better than rebranding the stores or building gigantic images of the Colonel in remote locations. I did notice a sign on the wall in official corporate KFC colors and typefaces that said "WANTED: CUSTOMER MANIACS!" Do they really need maniacs staffing the stores - or just sufficient quantities of people of average intelligence? Something tells me the wrong-headed thinking at KFC isn't going away anytime soon.