Hot Food By Calvin
Augusta, Georgia
I have never been so disappointed as I was today.
For weeks, Diane and I had talked about eating at Hot Food By Calvin. The anticipation of the "Best Soul Food in Town" was great, the place came highly recommended by "Brother Al" - a part-time black minster from North Augusta who, from the looks of his girth, knows how to enjoy a good meal. Seeing the catering van from Calvin's racing all over town only strengthened the feeling that Calvin himself held the keys to our culinary salvation in the great restaurant wasteland.
Today, Calvin taught us that there is no light at then end of the tunnel....no salvation...nothing to satisfy our quest for a meal that doesn't make you want to "return fire"...worship the goddess...Buick....Ralph...Call The Walrus...Yodel in the porcelain canyon....I think you get the point....
This place....This Wretched, Cursed Place....Damn you Augusta, for you truly are Culinary Hell!
I ordered the Philly Cheese Beef Sandwich...$4.50 for shoe leather mushed with uncooked bell peppers...I almost broke my tooth trying to gnaw through what I can only guess must have been brisket at some point in history....ancient history...
Something caught my eye....something small...moving, then stopping....I am not sure if the roach on the wall was signaling us to run...it just kind of stood there, wagging its little antennae at us for a few minutes...retreating back into the putrid grease that dripped down the counter....
Diane...she went the safe route.....ordered fried chicken...cole slaw side...fried green tomatoes...cornbread....uh huh...
Glad to report that the chicken was actually pretty good. This was the one and only flash of hope in an otherwise horrific meal. Cole Slaw...straight from Sam's Club....The Cornbread....let me take a moment to speak to the cornbread.....I sampled the cornbread (trying to get the shoe leather taste out of my mouth)...this was a mistake. I chewed...and I chewed...and I tried to wash it down with some tea....and I chewed...this little chunk would not disintegrate....it was like I had a mouth full of corn flavored cement....this was the worst cornbread...and mind you, cornbread is tough to screw up....this was the worst cornbread I have ever contemplated. I personally did not know that you could make cornbread this bad...this is a new benchmark for what NOT to do....
It was at this point that Diane and I had our epiphany: With Augusta being the lowest plane of the culinary inferno, things are inverted here..."best" takes on new levels of bad here. There and then, we pledged that if folks claim, "Its the best in Augusta!", there is no way in hell we will even drive by it on the street.
Then came the fried green tomatoes. Green....not really....more black on the outside...greenish on the inside...fried...oh yes, they were fried...the gallon of grease in each slice let us know that they were, indeed, fried...
Dear God/Allah/Yahweh/Budda/Krishna/Your Higher Power Here...please don't make us ever repeat this...whatever we did...we won't do it again....we promise.... |
1 responses:
Our letter to Hot Foods By Calvin
Did you forget your philosophy?
My husband & I paid you a visit yesterday.
To start with the place was just plain dirty! The table cloths were crusted with crud under the plastic top - which was greasy and smeared in it's own right. I ordered coffee and the scummy goo that was all over both of the creamers was a rancid yellow...no idea what petre dish that grew in but it might be the next cure for the common cold. Then of course there was the roach that came out of the wall between the kitchen and dining area midway through our meal and just kind of stared us down...we realize this is Georgia and roaches are a part of life...I've just never seen one quite so bold before.... But in spite of the unsanitary conditions we decided to stay and eat anyway - heck I've eaten in the Barrios of Juarez Mexico and it hasn't killed me yet.... But then there was the food....
We don't mind waiting for home cooked food - but after 45 minutes I'll admit we were getting a little restless. My husband had the Philly Steak... the meat was sort of flavorful - when he could finally gnaw through the leather belt like texture. The bell peppers were raw - just chucked on as sort of an afterthought. The whole mess was mushed together and soggy with grease from the meat. Just nasty looking and tasting.
I ordered the fried chicken, slaw, fried green tomatoes. The chicken was passable - hot, crisp & juicy...which would have been great if the grease it was cooked in wasn't so stale and funky. The slaw...runny and flavorless - did you buy it from Sam's Club? Now the fried green tomatoes........ shame on you! They weren't really fried they were saturated in that same funky grease and blackened beyond recognition .... and also arrived about 10 minutes after we'd finished the rest of the meal. I guess the special torching they got required takes longer than cooking regular fried green tomatoes hmm? Oh yeah and the cornbread muffin... that was an experience unto itself. I had NO IDEA cornbread could be so incredibly bad. Rock hard and...sour? I don't mean like buttermilk sour I mean like nasty kitchen sponge sour....
Now service...what service? The young girl who waited on us obviously had her mind on other things because she kept disappearing - like completely gone. My husband got up and refilled his tea glass himself a couple of times because after our food hit the table she disappeared for good.
Please keep in mind that we avoid chain restaurants whenever possible and search out the little Mom & Pop places whenever we can. We don't look for fancy decor or fussy service. What we want is to eat somewhere that is tolerably clean, has well prepared food and reasonable service. However Hot Foods By Calvin seems to offer none of the above. After reading so much about your restaurant as a "Best Of" we had rather high expectations. Instead we had an experience which literally left a bad taste in our mouths....
Diane & David Daniel
"My philosophy is this: Work hard. Be prepared for anything. Let your customers know you care. Stay clean. Be creative and keep coming up with new ideas. Serve it up fast, fresh, hot, and tasty -- and low-fat and low-salt. Do your best. Presentation is as important as preparation. And learn."
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