One of the most English of pastimes is the search for the perfect restaurant when travelling. Contrary to received wisdom this is not directly related to a desire to partake of an excellent meal, but rather related to a particularly English desire to outdo our compatriots. When Morrissey sand “We hate it when our friend’s become successful” he probably had in mind a friend who had improbably found the perfect vegetarian restaurant in Stoke but was refusing to share the exact address.
Similarly when we travel the idea of perfection is some backstreet trattoria or bistro serving only a sheep’s trotter recipe that has been handed down over the generations accompanied by wine made from grapes solely sourced from the window box of the owner’s great aunt. The other condition is that there must not be any other English people present at the said trattoria so that we can smugly describe it as a hidden gem known only to the locals, thereby scoring a big one in the endless and tedious game of English one-upmanship.
Underlying the rules of this game is of course the assumption that foreigners cook better food than we do. And let’s face it for a long time that has been a one-way bet, and even with the sheer wonder of restaurants from every corner of the globe in London, we love to talk about how great the food is wherever we travel.
Truth is that restaurants overseas can be great and they can be bad. Its about choices. You can make some good choices abroad and some very bad ones, just the same as in Stoke or Peckham.
On a recent trip to the U.S. I made what looked like a couple of slam dunk choices: pick the best looking local diner and the best rated local steakhouse. Diners and steakhouses. In the U.S. What could possibly go wrong?
Well indeed at first nothing did. The morning brought a trip to the Moonlite Diner just inland from Pompano Beach, i.e. just back inland from an area which is really nice, into an area that is not quite as nice. But they have one up on the nice area: they have the Moonlite Diner.
It is pastiche of a railroad diner, but it’s a great pastiche as you can see. And to be fair, the nod to the Instagram worthy design – tin roof, silver skin exterior like the original ex-railway carriage diners, vinyl booths etc – has not tempted them from the path of being first and foremost a proper diner. The working kitchen that you glimpse as you enter is full of cooks in stained whites who would definitely bristle at the fancy title of “chef”.
But they know how to cook. Central to the excellent breakfasts are eggs over easy, done in that soft yet cooked way that only Americans can. When I try to do them at home I end up with something that is best described as “accidental omelette”. Served with crispy bacon and juicy sausage links. And hash browns the proper way: all water expunged from the shredded potato and onion before frying to a crisp and scooping epic portions onto the plate. All for about twenty bucks with juice and coffee. What a start to the day, albeit you may need a lie down before continuing with your plans.
Beyond breakfast, their burgers are proper diner burgers. Now am I the only one who suffers from sliding issues when eating a burger? By this I mean you hold it and the meat, lettuce etc just slides out. I don’t know, maybe it is just me. I am a messy pup. But they must have people like me in mind here because like alchemy they use the grease from the excellent meat patties to fuse the potato bun, beef patty, sauce and cheese together so that it is transformed from an assembly of ingredients into one solid thing. Which is handy because (a) they are delicious and (b) I can eat them rather than just distribute them about my person.
So, Moonlite Diner. Great looking, great food, great value, great choice.
Then it went wrong. Looking to celebrate something, my colleagues and I booked Morton’s The Steakhouse in downtown Fort Lauderdale. Steakhouses are a U.S. institution, always popular with crowd pleasing if expensive menus. Morton’s is one of the biggest and best regarded of the upmarket steakhouse chains. Would our luck hold?
Would it heck. Although to be fair, it did not start too badly. While the décor was black and heavy in the the German brothel style, the French onion soup and lobster bisque were passable. From there is went downhill.
Scallops, those tenderest of molluscs had clearly spent time in a blast furnace before being wrapped in tasteless hard bacon that had never been near any type of pig I’m aware of. Decent building materials no doubt, but like concrete and lime plaster essentially inedible. Crab cocktail was a small bowl of cold slimy hunks of white flesh that looked suspiciously like chicken mini-fillets from Iceland but tasted worse.
One of the four main courses was edible. It was not one of the steaks. It was a rack of lamb and frankly having seen it I don’t believe the girl who told me it was “ok”. I wouldn’t have put it anywhere near my mouth. On the other hand the steaks were even worse. Two New York strips and a 12oz fillet. All cold and having been cooked in a near impossible way: the first centimetre near the surface had been exposed to temperatures similar to the surface of the sun and had therefore melted into some sort of plastic that was impossible to cut or consume, while the interiors were like Uranus: dark, icily cold and very unappealing.
Believe it or not, the sides were even worse: creamed corn that looked and tasted like baby vomit, gratin that was made from warm cheese and uncooked potato slices, spinach so oversalted as to be inedible and a baked potato that was rock solid and cold.
In the interests of being even handed, the chocolate mousse was very nice.
Albeit I can now see why Morton’s is so expensive. You simply cannot cook food this bad accidentally. It take the time and effort of a few very expensive specialists to turn top notch ingredients into car crash food. This is not something for have a go heroes or confident amateurs. Years of practice are needed to expertly produce food that is this truly, utterly, completely awful and chutzpah beyond belief to charge their prices for it.
The bill came to a smidgen under $800 for four.
Life is about choices. You’d have to be out of your mind to choose this place.
The Moonlite Diner, 6201 North Andrews Ave. Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33309 – www.moonlitediner.com
Morton’s The Steakhouse 500 E Broward Blvd, Suite 127, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33394 – www.mortons.com
