Biscuits, Bacon & Butter

RESTAURANT: Clinton Street Baking Co.
DATE: April 8, 2014

LOCATION: 4 Clinton Street New York, NY 10002

Considering I am not a morning person and it takes me at least 20 minutes to even roll out of bed, the thought of making breakfast or even sitting down for a bowl of cereal is almost an impossible feat... not that I don't enjoy a good breakfast, I just I cherish my sleep time even more.  So I was really anticipating this month's food pick... instead of our usual dinner, we were going to have brinner - breakfast for dinner.

I'm just going to jump right to the main entree first before I give my take on the starters & sides.  I ordered the Chicken & Waffles.  I never tried this odd but interesting pairing of chicken and waffles, so I thought I'd try out this Southern/Soul classic.  I liked the chicken, loved the waffles - but nothing to blow my mind on the whole chicken AND waffles concept.  The chicken was a nice crunchy fried chicken with moist meat but sadly, it just doesn't beat Popeyes.  It even reminded one of our friends of the hot lunches on the styrofoam tray from junior high school.  I was given a green bottle which I believed was supposed to be the honey-tabasco, but I didn't taste a single ounce of flavor with it, let alone any spiciness, no matter how much I kept trying to pour on.  (It wasn't until after dinner I saw there were red tabasco bottles at the other end of the table... fail!) 

However, when it came to the *waffle... Oh my nosh!  I'm almost at a loss for words trying to think of the best way to describe the warm, brown, toasty, crispy perfection of this buttermilk goodness.  And just when I thought the waffle couldn't taste any better, the flowing maple syrup created pools of syrupy sweetness in every nook and cranny.

The food connoisseurs that we are in tasting all sorts of foods (or maybe we're just greedy gluttonous fatties), we ordered a smorgasbord of food to share for the table:

*Buttermilk biscuits - Buttery bliss... Probably one of my favorite eats at the table from the small plates, this definitely is not just your can of Pillsbury.  And the best thing is, they keep replenishing the empty plates with more warm, toasty biscuits!  It's soft and melty enough but not overly crumbled, so you can slice it and add a spat of butter (or 2!).  While it doesn't NEED any more butter, it is just extra tasty goodness with it.  As one of our other blog tomatoes recommended, "butta is betta!"

*Sugar Cured Bacon -  Mmm, sweet bacon!  I really liked the bacon, I wish we ordered more so we could each have more than one strip... what a tease!  The flavor and texture was well-balanced to my taste.  I like my bacon just done where it has that fatty pull and isn't overly crispy and almost burnt.  I unfortunately was unable to get a photo, since the bacon was divvied & gobbled up so fast!

Truffled Brussels Sprouts - I actually enjoyed this one even though my other eating cohorts weren't overwhelmed with this.  I could smell the aroma of the truffle oil from the other end of the table, the wafting scent led us to discuss the different kinds of truffle oil.  (I learned that white truffle is the more coveted and precious-like-gold of the truffle oils.)  The shredded/slaw form was an interesting twist, a great way to trick a kid (or even an adult) into eating more of their vegetables.  Perhaps it's from years of watching Full House that had conditioned to me to always think *blech* whenever I hear brussel sprouts, but in actuality I don't have any chagrin towards this veggie.

Fried Green Tomatoes - I'm always searching for a great fried green tomato, but so far no place has beaten my first fried green tomato experience at Dino's BBQ.  However, fried goods with a dipping sauce can fool me enough that I'm not going to complain.

Lolli-pop Chicken Wings - A nice and fair dish, but nothing extra special or new to my taste buds.  The hot sauce was good but as far as the chicken goes, I'm just more of a wings and dark meat kinda person than chunky white meat.  The menu lures you with the novelty of this appetizer by calling these drumsticks "lolli-pop".

Crispy Idaho Potato Skins - Standard long spuds with cheese, sour cream, jalapeno & scallions.  It wasn't anything better than what you could get at a bar or maybe even a TGIFridays, but since nobody else cared to polish up this dish, I'm not going to pass up potatoes!  Despite all the fixins', it lacked some pizzazz.

For 'dessert', we ordered a plate of the *chocolate chunk pancakes with warm maple butter.  At first look, I was disappointed because I thought it was just bits of chocolate pieces sprinkled on TOP of the pancakes rather than infused into the pancake itself.  How wrong I was!  The chocolate is baked into the pancake.  And I was pleasantly surprised when I took my fork to slice & share the pancakes, the chocolate chunks immediately melted and smeared into the stack.  What made the chocolate pancakes taste even better was the excess cream I swiped from somebody else's dessert, the banana cream pie.  As for that banana cream pie itself, I don't see how that was a pie.  It is banana cream pudding & cream filling, but it seemed more like graham cracker crumbles instead of a crust.  Womp womp.  But one dessert fail was another dessert's topping, so score!  Banana cream + chocolate chunk pancakes = *thumbs up*

Bottom Line: Stick with the breakfast basics.  Biscuits, bacon, waffles & pancakes are where it's at!

Happy Noshing, Jeanne

If you want to read more about Clinton's Baking, check out Esther's review here.

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