Extra Helpings: One Hell Of A Reuben At Twig's Diner

By now I should have realized that you should never judge a book by its cover. While I certainly didn't go out of my way to avoid it, until a longtime reader and frequent commenter suggested I try the food at Twig's Diner, it just wasn't on my radar. Which was ironic because while I've known about this tiny little restaurant for at least two decades, had I known what was happening inside I would've already been a long and faithful follower. The original suggestion from my reader was to check them out on Sunday morning for breakfast. While they do serve breakfast during their hours of operation (7 AM - 3 PM every day), when I stopped by today in the early afternoon I was feeling in more of a lunch mood.

Twig's Diner was located at 334 31st NW, Barberton, OH 44203 and can be reached at 330-825-1016. Not surprisingly, there was no website associated with the restaurant at the time of this writing. There was a small eight car parking lot to the north side of the restaurant with ample overflow parking in a larger lot directly across the street. Parking in the small lot was the easy part. Backing out directly into a busy street when I went to leave was fairly tricky.

Here was a shot of the outside of the diner:


The place really does look tiny from the outside, but once inside, it felt much bigger. Seating forty-five guests at a time, the inside was decorated with hats, fifties memorabilia, and lots and lots of photographs of happy Twig's customers. Here was a shot of the lunch counter / entrance to the kitchen:


Attached to the wall next to my table was the following card:


I'm always leery of walking into a restaurant that has miscellaneous tchotchkes randomly strewn throughout the interior. At Twig's Diner, however, I began to understand more about Twig herself (who wasn't there, by the way) through her choice of decorating aesthete. Fortunately, it was nearly dead when I showed up for a late lunch so the floor manager (who also acted as my server) was able to fill me in on the story of Twig's Diner. It seems that Twig was actually just one of several previous owners of this space. Thirteen years ago Ernie, the previous owner, had spruced the place up a bit and put out a "For Rent" sign in the window when serendipity struck. Twig, a seasoned professional in the food and bartending industry, just happened to drive by the building and decided to fulfill a longtime dream of having a little place all to herself. She threw caution to the wind, opened up her eponymous diner, and thirteen years later I now had the opportunity to see why my reader had so enthusiastically endorsed the cuisine.

Here was a shot of the menu my server left at the table:






When I asked my server for recommendations from the menu, she whole-heartedly suggested the breakfast items from the menu. I indicated that I wasn't really in the mood for breakfast right now (it was 1:30 PM after all) and she immediately jumped to the back of the menu where she pointed out the reuben sandwich, titled "One Hell Of A Reuben." Clearly amused by the good humor in the naming scheme, I went on to ask what the soup of the day was. My server prattled off two or three until she came to the final one, lasagna soup. I've heard of stuffed pepper soup, but never lasagna soup. When I pushed her a little further, she basically confessed that one of yesterday's specials was lasagna. Rather than throw it away, they re-purposed it as a soup. Wholly intrigued by the notion of lasagna in soup form, I immediately ordered a cup of it.

Shortly thereafter, this arrived at my table:


I filled my soup spoon with some of the soup and brought it to my nose. The rich smell of long-simmered tomatoes and beef filled my nostrils. I took a bite and was rewarded with ... lasagna! The usual suspects were all there: Noodles, beef, ricotta, tomatoes. In addition there were some thinly-chopped carrots that while cooked through, clearly had not been in the original lasagna the day before. My guess was that the cook started the soup by sauteeing some aromatics, carrots and onion before adding the lasagna "base" and additional broth to essentially make a soup out of it. The soup was hearty and delicious and had I not decided to order a sandwich and a side, I could've probably been happy just eating an entire bowl of it. The garlic bread that accompanied the soup was grilled nicely, but it lacked a nice garlic edge to each bite.

When I was about two-thirds of the way through my soup, my sandwich platter arrived:


I decided to go with the One Hell Of A Reuben and to substitute the homemade onion rings for the fries for an additional $2.59. I'm so glad I did. First, here was a side shot of the reuben sandwich:


Built as a double-decker sandwich, the corned beef was tender and amazingly juicy. I had to make sure I ate the sandwich over my plate as juicy literally gushed back onto my plate. The sauerkraut and swiss cheese were nice, but the real flavor standout was the "special sauce." It turns out that Twig's was making their own 1000 Island dressing for the reuben and it was a beautiful combination of tangy, creamy, and sweet; a nice foil for the strong flavor of the corned beef itself. One of the nice things about Twig's reuben was that the salt was nicely controlled and not too overpowering. Between corned beef and sauerkraut, sometimes too much salt can be an issue. Not here.

To accompany my sandwich, I opted to go with the homemade onion rings:


Make no qualms about it, these were excellent! Probably on par with my other favorite homemade onion rings at Michael Symon's B Spot restaurant in Woodmere. The onion inside the ring was nice and meaty, but cooked perfectly until they were tender and sweet. The exterior batter was crispy, not greasy, and a beautiful thickness. The ratio of the batter to the onion itself was also nice; each bite rewarded me with a nice blend of coating and vegetable. Clearly this was an onion ring to be reckoned with. The only infinitesimally small criticism I had was that while there was salt in the batter, I could tell that they hadn't been seasoned after they came out of the deep fat fryer. They were a hair shy of being seasoned perfectly to my taste. At the same time, on the several occasions that I've had the rings at B Spot, I think they may be just a hair over-seasoned. I will say this for certain: I think these may be the best homemade onion rings in all of Akron and Canton and they give B Spot's a run for their money, too.

I intend to return to Twig's Diner very, very soon. Having now tasted the delicious food available on the lunch menu, I plan to sample some of their very unique and delicious sounding breakfast foods, too. I've been looking for a place with a good version of biscuits and sausage gravy and wouldn't you know it, Twig's has it on their menu and all of it is homemade. In addition, every day three kinds of pancakes are available: Plain, wheat, and sweet potato. On certain days of the week, additional flavors are also available. Belgium waffles, corned beef hash, omelettes, Twig's seems to have what you crave for breakfast. Well, at least what I crave.

Twig's Diner is now solidly on my radar scope and I hope that I can turn as many of my friends, family members, and readers on to it as I can. Highly, highly recommended.

The Lenten Project, Week 1

I decided to start off the first week of The Lenten Project with a trip to the southern most establishment on my fried fish docket, Our Lady of Peace located in Canton, Ohio. While I was familiar where 39th Street NW was located, what really surprised me was that the church seemed to appear right in the middle of a completely residential and quite frankly, unusual spot for something so large. There was street level parking in front of the church, so I took advantage of it.

Our Lady of Peace was located at 1001 39th Street NW, Canton, OH 44709 and can be reached at 330-492-0622. As I was to soon discover, there was additional parking closer to the entrance of Alumni Hall (which was where the fish fry was taking place).

Here was a shot of the church from 39th Street NW:


To the immediate left of the church was this sign:


If you are standing in front of the church, there was a road just behind the above sign and another road just to the right of the church with a One Way indicator on it. If you take the One Way road, it will take you to the lot just behind the church. Sadly, there was no way of knowing this except to discover the fact after I had walked down the road to the left of the church. However, doing so gave me the chance to take a snapshot of the menu:


Another matching menu of wall-sized proportions was located inside the main venue. When I got there today around 5:15 PM, it was busy, but I didn't end up waiting more than five minutes before someone took my order. You order and pay for your food at the entrance. The person will mark up a ticket with your order and then you move to the cashier to pay for it. Once paid, you select any table you wish with an opening and sit down. Within minutes, a young girl came over, introduced herself, took my ticket and my drink preference and was off to fill it.

While I waited for her return, I had some of the Norcia bakery bread that the menu had been advertising:


The bread had been pre-sliced and placed in this basket with individual pats of butter and margarine. While the bread was nothing to write home about (or to wax endlessly on a food blog about), it was your typical Italian seedless bread.

Within a few minutes, my hot tea arrived:


While bottled water was $1, tea, coffee, and glasses of water were free. With my tea came the small cup of cole slaw (apple sauce was the other choice) that came with my fish dinner:


While it may not seem like a tremendous amount of cole slaw, for the size of my impending meal, it was perfect. Consisting mostly of shredded cabbage, there were a few tiny cubes of carrots in there as well. Based on the flavor and the creaminess, I'm guessing that the dressing consisted of a mayonnaise and sour cream base. It was decent cole slaw; nothing stood out about it.

After a few more minutes, the remainder of my meal arrived. Here was a shot of the two pieces of fried fish:


Had I known how ENORMOUS the fillets of fish were, I certainly would've ordered only one. These suckers were massive. The fillet in the rear actually covered the Styrofoam plate from one end to the other. The smaller fillet towards the front was also large and I would've been completely happy with just one of them. Besides the length of each fillet, the thickness also worked well, too. The fish inside was tender and juicy and was cooked perfectly as it flaked easily. The fried batter coating was just thick enough to provide some nice textural contrast to the softness of the fish inside. The only thing that I could criticize was that the fish was just a touch oily for me. There was no oil residue on the plate, but if you brushed you finger up against the crust, you came away with a slightly oily residue on your fingertips. I know that some people like that, but I figured I would mention it. Also, it should be noted that everything was fried in trans-fat free oil.

Next up, the pierogi:


Sadly, these turned out to be a commercially made pierogi that had been combined with onions sauteed in some butter. I didn't see any boxes and I didn't ask, but they basically reminded me of Mrs. T's frozen pierogi you can get at any local supermarket. The onions were decent enough, but they hadn't been sauteed long enough for some of the thicker pieces to lose their "crunch." The family sitting at my table thought that these were the "bee's knees." I didn't have the heart to tell them that they could just go and pick this up at the local Giant Eagle or Fisher's.

Finally, since Our Lady was offering macaroni and cheese, I decided to add a side for only $2:


While the pasta had some nice chew to it, the cheese sauce tasted closer to what I used to do in college before I discovered the "blue box" from Kraft. I used to cook my macaroni in boiling water until it was to my liking, drain the water off, and then threw in a huge hunk of Velveeta processed cheese food product. I would stir this until it melted and distributed itself throughout the macaroni. Et voila! Macaroni and "cheese." Like the cole slaw, this wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible either.

One other tip I'll pass along to you, gentle reader. While ketchup was already on the table, if you want tartar sauce or cocktail sauce, you must request it from your server. They are kept under refrigeration and must be retrieved when your order is being assembled. By the time I got up to leave at around 5:45 PM, the place was seriously hopping and the line to get into the hall went out the door. Overall, I thought that the fish was excellent, the pierogi disappointed me, and the macaroni and cheese was passable.

The Lenten Project, An Introduction

As has been evidenced by several of my previous posts, I love a good fish fry. Even more, I love a good homemade pierogi. Admittedly, some of my readers may not be from an area of the country with a strong Eastern European influence and knows what a pierogi even is. The easiest way to think of it is a pasta that is usually filled with potatoes, cheese, sauerkraut or some combination of those ingredients for savory, sweetened cheese or prunes for the sweet. These are then either boiled and served with butter and sauteed onions, or are cooked by sauteeing them directly in the butter.

My favorite preparation is actually a combination of both. I first gently boil them in water until they float to the top of the pot. I remove them with a slotted spoon into a dish. Once I've finished cooking my pierogi, I then take a tablespoon or two of unsalted butter and melt it in my skillet. I cook the butter until the foaming subsides and the butter solids begin to brown (this is called beurre noisette, or hazelnut butter). I then toss the pierogi into the brown butter and continue to flip them in the skillet until they are crispy on the outside. Plate them up with a little bit of sour cream and they are DELICIOUS. And highly addictive.

One thing that northeast Ohio has at this time of year are plenty of Lenten fish fries. Although I am not particularly religious myself, I have decided that after looking over the list of local fish fries compiled by the Akron Beacon Journal, I would venture out into the cold white world and bring you some insight into which locations had the best fish and best pierogi. Because the original list had some forty plus names on it, I decided to narrow it down to the locations which advertised pierogi being available. There may be other locations offering them, too, but I had to work with what I found on the ABJ's website.

My plan is to visit one or two of the locations each Friday and then write up my thoughts and post them by the following Saturday morning. If all goes as planned, I will visit eight different locations over the next five weeks. Hopefully by the final Friday in Lent, March 26th, you will have enough information at your fingertips to satisfy your own craving for fried fish and pierogi. In an unusual move on my part, I am actually going to list the locations and dates that I will be visiting each establishment so that if any of my gentle readers out there wish to join me, I would be happy to share a meal and some great conversation with you!

This list is courtesy of the Akron Beacon Journal with bolded time brackets indicating when I am planning on attending:

February 19th, 2010

Our Lady of Peace
Alumni Hall
1001 39th Street
Canton, OH
330-492-0622
Hours of Operation: 4:30 - 7:00 PM


February 26th, 2010

Peninsula United Methodist
1575 Main Street
Peninsula, OH
330-657-2567
Hours of Operation: 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM, 5:00 - 7:00 PM


St. Mary Church
340 North Main Street
Hudson, OH
330-650-0722
Hours of Operation: 5:00 - 7:30 PM


March 5th, 2010

St. Joan of Arc Church
8894 State Route 14
Streetsboro, OH
330-626-2446
Hours of Operation: 4:30 - 7:00 PM (early dinner)

Knights of Columbus Mantua
11845 State Route 44
Mantua, OH
330-274-2576
Hours of Operation: 5:00 - 8:00 PM (late dinner)


March 12th, 2010

Our Lady of Grace
1088 Ridge Road
Hinckley, OH
330-278-4121
Hours of Operation: 4:30 - 7:30 PM


March 19th, 2010

Slovak J Club
485 Morgan Avenue
Akron, OH
330-786-9972
Hours of Operation: 4:30 - 7:30 PM (early dinner)

Queen of Heaven Church
Parish Life Center
1800 Steese Road
Green, OH
330-896-2345
Hours of Operation: 5:00 - 7:30 PM (late dinner)

All of these dinners and one lunch run through March 26th with the exception of Our Lady of Grace in Hinckley which ends on the 19th. For those Fridays with two dinners listed, I will probably plan on arriving at the first location pretty early in the evening (between 4:30 - 5:00 PM) and arriving at the second location later in the evening (7:00 - 7:30 PM).

If you want to contact me to join me for dinner, feel free to email me here.

Szechuan Throwdown, Mapo Dofu Battle

What started off as a casual lunchtime stop at a local Chinese restaurant ended up turning into a somewhat unplanned and lopsided battle. I had been looking for a place to have lunch and based on the comments on this Yahoo Maps site, China House seemed to be the place to go. Given that it was only a ten minute drive from my current location made it all that more appealing. While I certainly wasn't expecting the level of authenticity of a place like Wonton Gourmet, based on the comments, I did expect good Americanized Chinese cuisine.

Located at 4031 South Main Street, Akron, OH 44319, China House can be reached at 330-644-8288. At the time of this writing, no website could be found that was associated with the restaurant. Since the restaurant was in a retail outlet strip, there was plenty of parking available in the lot serving the myriad of storefronts.

Here was a shot of the front of the restaurant:


Once inside, I quickly realized that the restaurant was definitely more of the Americanized Chinese dining experience. I grabbed a menu and began looking through it for something a little more ambitious than General Tso's chicken:


To my surprise, the restaurant was selling Mapo Dofu. For a moment it occurred to me that this restaurant might just have a glimmer of hope. Having had my fair share of Mapo Dofu in the past, I knew it was a flavor I enjoyed when done well. I went ahead and ordered it "ma la," which was the equivalent of asking them to make the sauce both spicy and numbing (in true Szechuan style). The person taking my order nodded at me in seeming acknowledgment of my request, took my money, and indicated that it would be brought out to me when ready.

After a few minutes, my rather substantial lunch arrived:


And a shot of my steamed rice:


After a small snafu with the person bringing out my lunch (I was asking for chopsticks and the older gentleman who brought my lunch out spoken absolutely no English), I dished myself up a plate:


A few observations about my lunch today. Mapo Dofu can be completely vegetarian, but most often it is served with pork. The pork is usually ground and it is in a decent ratio with the tofu. More of a tofu with pork kind of dish. I've had it spicy and not spicy and the amount of chili oil will cause the color of the sauce to vary from brown to reddish. If you like tofu, especially large chunks of tofu, then this version was for you. Sadly, while I dig tofu, it felt completely out of balance with the amount of pork strips that were present. The tofu itself was very Plain Jane and really added nothing to the dish except bulk. Additionally, the "sauce" that the tofu was literally swimming in was neither spicy enough nor very tasty. Honestly it tasted to me like it was simply thickened soy sauce. This had none of the complexities of a good Mapo Dofu. Since I was hungry, I did end up eating about half of this and simply threw the rest away.

The Mapo Dofu Battle arose because a day or so later I found myself at a restaurant in Hudson called Tai Wah. Tai Wah was located at 5835 Darrow Road, Hudson, OH 44256 and can be reached at 330-342-0888. Again, no website could be located at the time of this writing.

I have known where Tai Wah was located for some time. It wasn't until recently, however, that one of my readers brought it to my attention. While she originally recommended the Thai cuisine (specifically the curry), it was when I discovered that Mapo Dofu was on their menu that the concept of a battle between the two restaurants started to formulate in my brain. But, of course, I am getting a little ahead of myself.

Here was a shot of the exterior of the restaurant, nicely tucked away behind the Zeppe's:


Once inside, I could immediately tell that Tai Wah was a more upscale joint than China House had been. While I'm sure they served take-out occasionally, the bulk of their business was clearly in-house dining. The dining area was split about evenly between tables and booths and I requested a table near the back of the room so that I could inconspicuously take photos without bothering other patrons.

While the menu has several different pages, for whatever reason I decided only to take a photograph of the page with the spicy Chinese food items on it:


Tai Wah's version was clearly much more expensive than the one I had eaten at China House and I wondered if it the taste would live up to the price. At nearly $13, I hoped that at the minimum, at least I'd have leftovers that I'd want to take home with me.

I started out with a pot of green tea:


My waiter informed me that my spice level options were mild, medium, and hot. Knowing that Mapo Dofu was a Szechuan dish, I asked him if there were any heat level options above hot. He informed me that he could ask for it extra hot and bring out some chili pepper flakes in oil so that I could adjust it myself. That seemed like a reasonable solution and he went off to place the order.

About fifteen minutes later, he returned with this enormous platter of food:


Studded with lots of chili peppers, I knew that this was going to have a nice spicy kick to it. Along with my platter came my steamed rice and chili oil:


I dished myself up some of the rice and gently layered on the Mapo Dofu on top of the rice, making sure to spoon some of the liquid directly onto the rice. Here was a shot of my dinner plate:


Where China House's version had been swimming in nasty, flavorless brown sauce, Tai Wah's was brimming with the flavors of chili, ginger, and garlic. I also appreciated the restraint that Tai Wah used in the amount of sauce that came out with the dish. It was enough to make the dish interesting and paired excellently with the rice, but not so much that it overwhelmed everything. It was also nice to see a lot more pork than what I had received at China House. That being said, some of the pork was nice and tender and some of it was a tad bit chewy. While there was no numbing sensation from Szechuan peppercorns, there was plenty of burning from the assortment of nearly whole chilies that had been thrown into this dish.

Even as hungry as I was, I was only able to finish about 1/3 of my Mapo Dofu before asking my waiter to box up the remaining rice and tofu. This version was definitely coming home with me for a snack later on and probably lunch the next day. You most certainly got your money's worth at Tai Wah, although I have to question the extremely large portions ... why not just offer a half-portion at half the price?

Having had both restaurants versions of Mapo Dofu, it was obviously clear that Tai Wah won without any problems whatsoever. Not to say that Tai Wah has the best Mapo Dofu that I've ever had, but theirs was decent enough. Do I think it's fair to compare two restaurants that are obviously geared towards different types of customers? Absolutely. I ate both dishes at the respective restaurants and I could easily have gotten both orders to go. Based on my experience today and the suggestion that I give their curry a try, I definitely think a return to Tai Wah is in order. While I know I can't judge China House's entire menu on simply one item, my gut tells me that I'm probably going to have a similar experience with the rest of the food there. While I was initially excited to see a more Americanized Chinese menu with Mapo Dofu on it, if it isn't going to be executed well, then why even bother putting it on there? Trust me, no one who thinks that Chinese food only consists of egg rolls, General Tso's chicken, and crab rangoon would even know what they were missing.

However, if you are on the lookout for a good Mapo Dofu, check out Tai Wah on Rt. 91 just north of Terex Road. Better yet, share a couple of dishes family-style and you'll help to keep the cost of your meal to a reasonable level.