Saint Lawrence Gridiron 2: Gridiron Harder

Food trucks making the jump to "brick and mortar" restaurants has become something of a trend lately.  I can think of four so far this year.  Unfortunately, about half the time they seem to junk the trucks when the restaurant opens, which surprises and saddens me.  I mean things are just starting to get more interesting for the truck scene, and we're losing some of the better trucks!  Still, there was one that I've known for a while now would not survive; the limitations of truck cooking were simply too confining for the imagination and ambition of the man running the show.  Since the title of the post kind of gives away who I'm talking about, let's just get on with it, eh?

Letting the food speak for itself. Mostly.

I've talked extensively about how badly I suck at this blog thing.  You might not agree, or may even never have noticed.  I do think I do a good job of faking it after all, and every time I say that I suck I invariably get at least one IM, e-mail or Facebook comment assuring me that it's not the case.  To those people, I'd just like to point out that I POSTED LESS THAN A DOZEN REVIEWS IN THE ENTIRE YEAR OF 2012.  And trying to maintain anonymity while snapping off a quick pic or two, often in less-than-ideal lighting, before digging in so I can actually enjoy the food at its prime means that those pics often turn out badly.  Still, I'd like to think that I'm gradually improving as time passes, and as we approach the fourth anniversary of this little project's life I've noticed a pretty drastic oversight on my part.  See, once I've written about a place, I'm kind of "done" with it.  I may still go there (though I mostly feel driven to move on to the next new eatery, I get sentimental about certain places), and even take a picture or two, and sometimes I'll even post those pictures on Facebook.  Well, it's occurred to me that a lot of the people who read my reviews here might never see those pictures (especially with Facebook's increasingly idiotic algorithm bullshit).  I don't often do follow-up reviews, so basically at this point I'm putting those pictures where a couple hundred people might see them if I'm lucky before they get sucked into the void and buried.  And unforgivably, I'm also guilty of this behavior in relation to events like the Food Truck Rally, where I've taken to just posting on Facebook rather than doing yet another website review and therefore have tried things from newer vendors there that I've never given the courtesy of writing up here.  That's just not fair to me, the restaurants involved, or the people who are searching for information someplace other than Facebook.  So, here's a bunch of pictures I've taken over the past year or so, all dishes I enjoyed, from eateries that are still in business, and captured in not completely horrifying images...

Wanna Cluck Around?

Saint Lawrence Gridiron

Friends and readers, I feel I need to come clean about something here, something that I've never really kept hidden, but which may not have been stated clearly enough: I am a meat lover.  Voracious, unrepentant and insatiable.  This is not to say that I don't love fruit and veggies, but if the world was ending in a few hours I wouldn't be throwing together a salad for my last meal.

All sarcasm aside, I've gone on at great lengths about my favorite places for a protein fix, whether it's pulled pork from Big Daddy's Barbecue (opening an actual restaurant soon!) or Greg Lamm's (formerly of Brick 29 Bistro / B29 Streatery, now at Red Feather Lounge / Bittercreek Alehouse) unique and challenging interpretations of classic comfort foods.  Today I want to talk about someone else, a man who makes classic meat dishes sing, and who works in protein the way Picasso worked in paints.  Which is to say that the guy is creative and his food is really good, ya dig?