Restaurant Review: Cheddar's

Nearly every week for over 5 years, I've met my grandmother for lunch or dinner. It's the highlight of my week every time, because my grandma is AWESOME. She's in her mid-80's, volunteers regularly, lives by herself upstairs, does crossword puzzles like she's channeling Will Shortz, knits roughly 62.4x faster than I do, sponsors a child in a 3rd world country and writes him letters in Spanish, reads at least 1 book per week, goes visiting people younger than herself at the nursing homes to read to them, and still makes time for her youngest granddaughter every week. I could and should and probably someday will write a blog about what I've learned from my weekly lunches, but this particular blog was inspired by the meal I had at our most recent dinner.

Cheddar's is, by most people's standards, a very middle of the road, American eats establishment. Middle priced, general American-style menu, nestled right in there alongside Applebee's, Fridays, maybe a notch above Chili's (two notches lately, anyone else feel like Chili's has gone downhill lately? or have my standards just improved with adulthood? I digress). HOWEVER. As I have periodically patronized the Cheddar's in my area, their menu, food preparation standards, and staff have gotten better and better.

My favorite dish at Cheddar's is their Asian Salad. It sounds standard enough, most places have an Asian salad nowadays, but Cheddar's Asian Salad stands tall above the rest, and not just literally.

[Photo source: www.thedallassocials.com (via Google Image)]

Not only is this a low guilt meal, - - - - - No, I'm going to skip the cliche, commercial-sounding review of the obvious and just describe this dish. It has crunchy, crispy wontons layered between a cold, dark-leaf, crispy shredded lettuce salad, tossed with diced mango, cucumber, spicy relish, grated carrots, tomatoes and grilled chicken breast, dressed with an Asian vinaigrette with chopped cilantro, and lightly drizzled with a thicker, salty sauce. 

It's not just about what's in this salad, it's about how they work together. First, of course, there's the taste- most important, and then the texture. The sour, tangy dressing with the slightly spicy, bitter cilantro (but just the smallest sprinkle- I'm not a member of the cilantro-loving camp, but I really like Cheddar's' use of it here), the cool, quenching, crunchy cucumber (again, not usually a fan of cucumbers but I like them in this salad!) with the slightly sweet, super crunchy carrots, juicy fresh tomatoes and the soft, sweet, aromatic mango pieces- all of this finished with lovely surprise bursts of spiciness from the infrequent bits of relish smattered throughout. The grilled chicken is well-cooked, never dry, and sliced thinly, adding a touch of smokiness and a welcome soft, al dente bite you can only get from properly cooked meat. The method they use to slice the chicken and toss it in with the salad, rather than laying it on top, allows easy fork-fulls and perfect bite-ratios (when you have a little bit of everything on one fork for the best bite). The wontons work perfectly, with the touch of oil from frying mellowing out some of the acid from the dressing, and the unimposing, super crispy starch converting me from croutons forever. All of this finished with the lightest sprinkle of some kind of salty Asian sauce that puts it over the top. 

[Phone photo of my dinner more than half eaten, I dug in before I could stop and get a photo of it fresh]

All the best elements: Sour, Tangy, Crunchy, Acidic, Sweet, Cool, Quenching, Bitter, Juicy, Soft, Smokey, Spicy, Aromatic, Salty- and most of all, Satiating. I usually make two meals of it. 

The cherry on top is that the salad comes with a warm, honey-butter drizzled croissant, which in all my professional experience I am willing to bet is baked freshly in-house.

Anyway, Cheddar's always has excellent food, and while I could make this stupidly long, suffice it to say you'll get your money's worth on pretty much every menu item except the chips and queso- queso is a little too thick and bland, chips are stale about 40% of the time. Still worth checking it out for a date, whether with your significant other or your grandmother.

No Wrong Way To Eat Chocolate

Dear Suzy,

How do you taste chocolate the "right" way? Are there steps I can follow?

Curious,

Augustos  in Germany

Dear Augustos,

As I said in the title, there is no wrong way to eat chocolate as long as you're using your mouth to eat it and it's not atop something poisonous or taboo to eat, but there is certainly a right way to taste it. I'll list the steps first, and then I'll add a little information about selecting and appreciating chocolate to its fullest.

1) Read the package. Chocolate is just like wine or coffee, the geographical origin of the beans makes up a big part of the flavor. If you know that the chocolate you are tasting is from a tropical region, you may be more susceptible to picking up the fruitier notes. Alternately, you may choose to remain in the dark and make a game of it- try to guess the origin based on the flavor.

2) Break off a piece- if it "snaps" or "clicks", it is probably a couveture chocolate. Couveture is much higher quality than the alternative "coating" chocolate, which has added chemicals that allow it to set up at room temperature after melting without tempering it. There is so much to say on this topic I'll save it for a future blog (if interest is shown), but for now, snapping is great.

3) Take the piece between bare finger and thumb, and gently rub the chocolate with your thumb 2 or three times. This just barely melts the surface with the friction of your fingerprint, releasing a stronger aroma than it otherwise would.

4) Take a Whiff. Close your mouth and smell the aroma you just released.

5) Place the chocolate on your tongue- DON'T CHEW YET! Close your mouth and allow the chocolate to begin melting on your tongue. 

6) Take in very small amounts of air, making a "sts-sts-sts" sort of short sucking noise, like you're tut-tutting someone. This allows for your whole mouth to perceive the aroma of the melting chocolate.

7) Suck on it a bit longer, still allowing little bits of air into your mouth. Then finish eating it as you please.

There are some really simple tips to finding excellent chocolate. There has been an awesome increase in the availability of many brands of quality chocolates from all kinds of origins and percentages. Go to your local grocery store and find the chocolate section. An easy method is pricing: the price will usually reflect the quality. Next, look to see if the bar advertises it's origin on the packaging- most of the time, lower quality chocolates won't bother. 3rd, if the package has a percentage displayed prominently on the package, you have good odds at it being a couveture chocolate, or at least a higher quality coating chocolate. I encourage you to try this tasting method with a few types of chocolate- try 3 of similar percentages from very different origins (I recommend an African, European and one South or Central American origin for best variety). Then try a few different percentages but high quality. 

A lot of people are adamant that they "hate" dark chocolate because they've only ever tasted pretty low quality coating chocolate. This is an opportunity to re-set your preconceptions about what you thought you liked. Now instead of "I only like dark chocolate" I can say "I prefer dark chocolates from tropical origins, because they're fruity- the ones from places like Germany and Switzerland are darker and almost woody flavor, and not my favorite. I usually don't go for lower percentage 'milk' chocolates, but I've found that I enjoy milk chocolate from Madagascar because it has a nice honey flavor". 

I want to thank "Augustos" for writing in his question, and once again I encourage all of my readers to write in their questions about life, the universe, and everything. You can contact me by clicking the "Email Us" button on the right-hand side of the page, or opening a new email and sending it to asksuzyadvice@gmail.com. Thanks!