Lunch at the museum

Thursday, November 29, 2012 Museum Cafe http://jcsm.auburn.edu/cafe/index.html

If it’s ambience you’re after, upscale tableware, light and lucious brunch-style fare, even lunch music if you time it just right, the Museum Café at the Jule Collins Smith Museum should be on your list. 

The menus are posted on their website a month or two at a time.  We chose this week because of the vegetarian option.  I ordered the mushroom quiche with citrus and avocado salad and honey vinaigrette.  The quiche was well-prepared, cooked to a firm but smooth consistency.  The crust was the best part, as it often is!  The salad of baby greens included grapefruit and feta along with avocados.  The dressing was a little on the sweet side.

Anne had the chicken salad panini which came with a side of chips.  "The salad had tender chunks of white chicken and was quite tasty although a little salty.  The bread was great, just the right texture and not too crispy as is sometimes the case with a toasted sandwich.  Served on the side was a pickle which looked like the typical dill pickle many places serve beside a sandwich.  However, my tastebuds got a bit of a surprise when I bit into it -- it was neither a dill nor sweet pickle; it tasted a bit like "bread and butter" pickles I've had before but not exactly.  I have to mention the muffins the museum serves as you wait for your meal.  We didn't ask what kind they were but I think they may have been pumpkin.  I could have easily eaten two but Julie didn't offer me hers!"

Many weeks the museum has offerings that are “almost” vegetarian, or could be with slight variations, and this is one suggestion we have for the Museum Café.  Offer the croque monsieur with or without the ham, for example, or the turkey-pear-brie panini with the turkey optional.  Possibly the café would accommodate such requests, but if posted on the menu, guests might feel like they’re not imposing.

During our visit, flute and guitar music from the adjacent rotunda was at a perfect volume to enjoy without interfering with conversation.  If you want your visit to coincide with lunch music, keep an eye on this link: http://jcsm.auburn.edu/cafe/lunch_music.html.   We can’t think of a better way to impress an out-of-towner!

Hamilton’s hamiltonsonmagnolia.com

Wednesday 11/7/12

My husband Scott and I have been to Hamilton’s on Magnolia a few times for dinner, and we’ve recently re-discovered it for lunch, especially on days we expect downtown Auburn to be quiet.  The service is quick and attentive for a full-service restaurant, but with parking meters ticking down from sixty minutes outside, there is little time to linger.

I pushed my love of carbs aside (after I knew for sure Scott would order fries) and ordered a salad.  Now, even though I’m primarily vegetarian, I don’t really love salads.  They're different at Hamilton’s, though, and even the house salad is based on baby greens and with no mention of cucumbers.  

I chose the most unique salad option on the menu, Basil and Peaches.  This salad of baby greens is topped off with grilled peaches, queso fresco, pickled onions, and spiced pecans.  The basil is in the vinaigrette.  Nothing about this salad was boring, and the only thing I left on my plate was one unwieldy sprig of frisée.  I could have eaten the spiced pecans by the handful, and our cute and perky server mentioned that she had in fact done that, and soon regretted it due to the abundance of cayenne pepper.   She’s right - the pecans are best eaten one or two at a time along with the other salad ingredients, especially with the cooling effect of the queso fresco.   My least favorite ingredient of the salad, though I believe I can acquire the taste and will try again, was the grilled peaches.  They had a pleasing firm texture, but a definite smoky grilled flavor that I couldn’t quite reconcile to the sweetness. 

Scott ordered shrimp tacos with a side of fries.   The skewer of tacos boasted big chunks of avocado and tomatoes.  The shrimp was nicely grilled and not too big, so that the tacos could be eaten in small bite sizes.  I helped with his generous portion of fries, of course, only in the interest of the blog.  Yeah, right.

I hope the below pictures do our dishes justice, especially my excellent salad.

 

 

The Hound

After eating at a relatively new restaurant at lunch one day, we thought how neat it would be to eat at every restaurant in Auburn.  Then, we thought it would be fun to share our experiences with others and this blog was born.  

The Hound is located just off South College in downtown Auburn, behind CheeBurger, CheeBurger. They describe their menu as “over-the-top American” and indicate that they source their produce and meat locally which is important to us.

Individual tables and large tables for communal eating are available

Scanning the menu for items not meat-centric, as we frequently will, we found that The Hound offers several interesting salads – Roasted Beet and Gem Salad are two that looked very appealing and weren’t based on boring iceberg lettuce. The soup of the day was creamy minestrone, which Anne ordered with her half-sandwich, the Off the Hook catch of the day, Mahi-Mahi. The server returned to explain that the lunch special was Soup and Salad or Salad and Half-Sandwich and the sandwich selection didn’t include the Off the Hook, so she changed her order to the Off the Hook sandwich and house salad. "The Mahi-Mahi sandwich was ok but nothing to write home about," Anne mused. "The ciabatta bread was a bit too crispy for my taste and the fish seasoning was a bit bland. The house salad however was better than many with a good mix of lettuces, tomatoes, carrots and cucumbers. I should have ordered the dressing on the side however since they used more than I would have."

Mahi-Mahi sandwich and house salad

I eyed the Roasted Beet Salad but got distracted by the Veggie Burger, made of beets, mushrooms, black beans, and quinoa, and of course I couldn’t pass up the hand-cut shoestring fries. Anne always agrees to eat some of them to reduce my calorie intake, but her willpower is better than mine and she often stops after one or two. The veggie burger was unlike any I’ve had and that’s saying a lot. The beets gave it the appearance of a rare beef burger, and it was somewhat loosely formed (not over-processed, in other words) with whole black beans still visible. It was quite tasty, served with lettuce, tomato, onion, and mayonnaise, and the fries were crispy and light.

Veggie burger and hand-cut shoestring fries

The Hound is a meat-lovers establishment – pork rinds, sausage samplers, and meatloaf sandwiches head off the selections - so we were duly impressed at the other available options. Our server was attentive but the food delivery was a little slow. If we had not been on our lunch hours, we would have passed the time with one or two of their well-varied international selection of beers on tap.

We like The Hound (the name reads BLOODHOUND AUBURN on our bank statements, and we much prefer the name without blood in it). Though decorated outside our tastes, with antlers, skins, and bullets, the atmosphere is for the most part in keeping with the food, and certainly was well-kept and clean. We give The Hound ***2.5 tiger stripes  (out of four)***.

Visit the Hound's website at  http://thehound-auburn.com/