Dirty Frank’s

Dirty Frank’s is a brand new place downtown on 4th Street just south of Main. I’ve been looking forward to Dirty Franks opening up for a while… I should have known better. Opening up for evening and late night hours two weeks ago this week is the first for lunch service.


Today a coworker and I went to the Dirty for lunch. We arrived shortly after 11:00 and there was plenty of street parking (albeit before the lunch rush.) The decoration is slightly odd with a mix of late 70’s early 80’s rock band paintings and roughly the same period baseball player paintings. All appeared to be done be the same artist who did not waiver in style so everything, while an eclectic mix, seemed to fit.


Here’s where it all went downhill for me. I had two hotdogs, an Ohioana which comes “topped with spicy corn relish (sweet corn, pickle relish & jalapeno blend), & a dash of celery salt” a Chili dog that is served up with “coney sauce, fresh onions, yellow mustard, & sharp cheddar” and an order of fries topped with cheese sauce and bacon bits. The hotdogs were underwhelming to say the least. The Ohioana’s spicy corn relish did not have any spice at all. The coney sauce had a weird flavor to it as well. I’m not sure if they put sugar in it or just an incredible amount of tomato paste but something tasted off to me. While the dogs lacked flavor the fries were over cooked and way over salted. The cheese sauce on the fries was the best part of lunch. My friend had a similar experience, tasteless hotdogs but he ordered the tater tots… which were undercooked and mushy.


On a positive note the service was great. Initially, my fries did not have cheese and bacon bits as ordered. The waitress not only brought me a new order but knocked them off my bill completely. The prices were reasonable, $3 dogs and $2 fries, this was nice to see.


Over all Dirty Frank’s seems to be similar to another crappy downtown lunch spot Cinco, the food is bland and the only saving grace is the cheese sauce.

Why did I do that?

Sometimes…. a lot of times I don’t know why I do the things I do.

Example: This is a slice of cleverly named Periodic Pizza from the equally cleverly named Atomic Café at COSI. Despite its failing school district lunch appearance the pizza is actually very good. In fact, where this to be served at a bar in a combo meal with a pitcher of beer and jalapeno poppers I would say it was the greatest ever. The only problem is I have never had Periodic Pizza without feeling extremely sick shortly after. Yet, I keep going back.

Today I walked downstairs and actually thought about the pain lunch would cause me and STILL chose to go ahead pound this thing. So here I sit, stomach in knots, it sure did taste good though.

Could I really be this dumb? Ehh, probably.

That's Dumb

Sometimes I do things just because they are stupid. I touch hot plates, I swim after eating and I make things like White Castle Casserole. My wife was at a wedding this weekend leaving me home alone and that is prime time for putting dumb ideas into action. This weekend I thought it might be fun to make a casserole…. out of Whiteys. It ended up being surprisingly good and certainly classed up the little burger (sort of) into what I feel would be a fun and acceptable party offering.

So here are all my ingredients:
• 16 White Castle burgers
• 1lb. bacon
• 10 eggs
• 1 can cream of mushroom soup
• 1 onion
• Cheese
• Dry mustard
• Garlic powder


My initial plan was to build this in a 9X13 baking dish but I didn’t have enough Whiteys for such a large container. 16 is plenty but I may or may not have but definitely did eat 5 on the way home. Shifting gears to an 8X8 dish used 9 tightly packed burgers leaving two for the cook’s treat!

The first step was to mix the eggs, cream of mushroom soup, dry mustard and garlic powder. After arranging the bottoms of my burgers in the dish pour about a third of the egg mixture over them and let it sit.


I slow cooked the bacon which rendered off a great deal of fat. Leaving the fat in my pan I tossed in the chopped onion and more or less fried that dude in bacon grease. It smelled AWESOME!


Cover the bottom of the Whiteys with the cooked onion and 2/3 of your chopped bacon. Return the lids and cover with another 1/3 of the egg mixture.

At this point I let it sit in the refrigerator for most of the day. Once you are ready to cook cover with cheese and bake at 350 for about an hour.


You will notice you have left over egg mixture and bacon. I whipped up a pretty mean scrambled egg dish with all of that. Again, cooking it in the bacon grease was insane!

White Castle Casserole baked nicely and I think the egg fluffed it up and made it feel a little lighter… which could be the reason I ate the entire thing. I used both American and cheddar cheese on top, next time I will stick with cheddar only.


Now I know I stated above that it classed the Whitey up. That was a lie. It’s still White Castle. However, I do feel that with a few small adjustments listed below, this absolutely is something fun to take to a party or tailgate.

Things I would do differently:
• Buy more White Castles
• Add peppers and maybe a few other veggies in with the onion. This might make the whole deal more appealing to people other than me
• Add cheese only for the final 20 minutes of cooking... like any other casserole. I don’t know what I was thinking, the cheese cooked far too long here
• Add more pickles and maybe even a little yellow mustard

Grilled Pizza

One of the most fun things I’ve done lately is grill pizza, it’s easy and you can really go nuts with the combinations. I started with Trader Joe’s pizza dough which came highly recommended from my sister. I cut the dough in half to better fit my grill. I would probably recommend this no matter how large your grill as it makes handling much easier.

Start with a hot, well oiled grill on high heat and just toss your dough directly on the grill. I use my grill more than most people and am very familiar with the hot spots. I like to cook the dough over the hottest place on the grill at first. It only takes a few minutes to cook.


Once flipped, I move the dough to the front of the grill which is much cooler. After dressing your pizza up close the list and let it cook. The slower longer cooking on the flip side make the crust crispier and allows more time for your toppings to heat.


In this case I used things I already had on hand. Pesto base with spinach, broccoli, edamame, black olives and sharp cheddar. My wife loved it! We also made a buffalo chicken pizza. I’m thinking Mexican pizza might be in order for Cinco de Mayo!

Xtreme Garlic Hummus

The other day I was talking with a friend of mine, he was telling me how he never likes to see food thrown out. Not like a regular person mind you but to such an extreme he will eat expired dairy products as long as they don’t smell. I on the other understand that the expiration date on dairy products is unflinchingly rigid. After our conversation I was feeling a bit wasteful so this post is for you John!

Last week I attempted to make hummus. It’s really not that hard chick peas, tahini, garlic, olive oil, cumin and what ever else you want to put in. I took stock of my ingredients and realize I didn’t have any cumin, I know it’s critical but I decided to march on. In lieu of cumin I opted to double the garlic… yes, I know that is not a substitute but it was Saturday afternoon and I guess I had cracked open the beer a little early.

I went through al the steps and it looked really good, nice color, great texture. The only problem was after a few dips my mouth was on fire with garlic. This taught me two things 1.) there IS such thing as too much garlic and 2.) my wife laughing at me when I ask for a kiss is not fun.

I put what I’ve dubbed Xtreme Garlic Hummus in the fridge and didn’t think about it until the next night when I was making my lunch for work on Monday. Instead of mayo and mustard I used hummus. The overwhelming garlic flavor actually played very well on my sandwich. For the last two weeks hummus is the only thing I’ve used and I’m planning on mixing up another batch this weekend.

I had a huge garlic mess in my hands but I made it work!

Creole Kitchen

I heard about this hole in the wall Cajun place, Creole Kitchen, on the radio the other night and decided to check it out. Hole in the wall was an understatement for sure. I drove around for several minutes trying to find it, there is no sign other than the writing in the window and even that is extremely difficult to see but the effort really paid off.

There is no dining area, take out only and is in a less than desirable par to of town. As you can see it’s extremely small but does have a fairly thorough menu. I had the crawfish etouffee which came with two sides, I chose macaroni & cheese and red beans & rice. Every bit of it was awesome! Crawfish etouffee was very spicy bit the heat didn’t overwhelm me and I was still able to enjoy the crawfish of where there was an impressive amount. The red beans & rice was very good and the macaroni & cheese may have been the best I have ever had! Although I am certain it would rival the BigMac for calorie content.

As I said above, Creole Kitchen has a nice menu and I am looking forward to trying a few other things. Check out their menu.

Creole Kitchen

1052 Mt. Vernon Plaza, Columbus, Ohio 43203

Veal Gremolata

I wanted to try a few new things this week and veal was on the list. Getting my wife to try new things can be difficult, I have to be careful. Veal is one of those things she was very if-y about. She was hesitant at first but came around and actually liked it. Here’s what I did:

Ingredients:
2 lemons
¼ cup parsley – finely chopped
4 cloves garlic – minced
1 ½ lbs veal scallops
¾ cup white wine
4 tbs butter
3 cups brown rice

Prepare gremolta:
Grate the zest from the lemons and squeeze and strain the juice. In a bowl mix together zest, parsley and garlic, set aside.

Cook veal:
When I ordered the veal at the butcher counter he cut it thin, ¼ inch, but I wanted it thinner. My solution was a 1x4 board which I keep for various uses in the kitchen. I laird out the veal with plastic wrap top and bottom and lightly pounded each slice underneath the board with a hammer. They came out nice and thin! Salt and pepper scallops. In a frying pan add 1 tbs of butter. Add veal in a single layer and cook, turning once, until brown, about 2 minutes. Transfer to a plant. Repeat with butter and remaining veal.

Prepare sauce:
Melt remaining butter in the same frying pan over medium-high heat. Add hal of the gremolata and cook, stirring constantly, for 1 minute. Add the wine and stir, scraping up the browned bits on the pan bottom. Cook sauce until reduced by half, about 3 minutes. Stir in 2 tbs lemon juice and season to taste with salt and pepper. Return veal to the pan and simmer to 4-5 minutes. Sprinkle remaining gremolata and serve over brown rice.

I had a good bit of veal left over but it made awesome sandwiches for lunch!