Hey guys. When I was getting this blog registered, I checked the interwebs to see what other Tulsa food blogs existed. I stumbled across a string of bullshit disguised as a blog called TulsaFoodBlog.com. Here you can read the blogger extolling the virtues of such temples of blandness and corporate greed as Cheddars and Camille’s Sidewalk Café. I was trying to come up with a good vehicle to attack the chain restaurant issue. Man, did they give it to me. Cheddar’s and Camille’s are fan-fucking-tastic examples of my point about the state of dining in the city. Let’s dispatch Cheddar’s first, shall we.
In their blog about Cheddar’s, TulsaFoodBlog has the gall to actually say “Who wants to pay $15 for a meal, when you can get the same quality for $8?” Yeah! I mean, like, who wants to, like, pay for something as unnecessary as, like, flavor, texture, service and food with a soul? It’s much better to shovel cheap shit down your gullet than pay for something lovingly put together by a local artist, right? “But,” you say “their onion rings are, like, stacked so tall!” And I say they taste like what they are: over-salted (yet somehow still bland) loops of flash frozen cellulose. TulsaFoodBlog would have you sit down, pack it in without time to notice that it sucks and not complain because “hey, it’s cheap shit”.
Listen to me: Don’t hand some uncaring corporation your money so they can turn the crank on the shitty food mill and order another 2 cases of frozen steaks and chicken fingers and a swimming pool sized vat of ranch to cover the taste of low quality crap. Crap that is assembled with the same amount of love that a father has for a little girl born in one-child-only China.
Fuck Cheddars! And that whole “Miracle Mile” of restaurants that churns out “food” that all tastes like caulking compound. That whole strip of road should be carpet bombed. And if a friend ever says to you, “Hey! Let’s meet up at Cheddars, man,” kindly inform them that not only are they not your friend anymore but with friends like them who needs enemies. They are trying to poison you.
Ok so Cheddar’s is an easy target. Camille’s is slightly more complicated (only slightly though). The issue is complicated because they are local. The company was started here in town in 1996 by an ORU drop-out and his wife (I’m not even remotely going to touch on how awful ORU is for the Tulsa mental environment, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt since he did drop out. See? I can be generous.). Does anyone remember where their first location was? Oh you guessed it! Camille’s was formed in that jejune abyss that we call Woodland Hills Mall. Classic!
I like to think of myself as the consummate Tulsa supporter. I support a good many local businesses even though I never really have a cause to buy their products. But I have to draw the line at Camille’s though. And here’s why.
I have eaten at Camille’s before. Not the Woodland Hills location, but the one on Cherry Street that occupies the space that used to house the wonderful and amazing Sound Warehouse. I will give Camille’s the benefit of saying that at least they aren’t trying to somehow disguise crap as “gourmet”. They are a “get in, eat your shit off of a plastic plate, and get the fuck out” kind of place. That’s what fast casual is right? However, this lack of pretension is also their undoing, in my mind. I can get behind someplace that puts out food that isn’t great as long as they are trying. Camille’s wants your money. Now!
Chicken Caesar Salad wrap? That sounds like an assburger, hold the burger. I've made more interesting creations while sleep eating. Add in a soda and a pickle and it sounds like a meal fit for an inmate. Camille’s serves the same Sysco, Ben E. Keith, US Foods prepackaged crap that they are serving over at Cheddars, but Camille’s serves it cold. With a veritable crapucopia of lame, quasi-stale ingredients, you too can overpay (even though it’s cheap) for cold corporate-produced shit made by the poor marginalized drones that are behind the refrigerated display case. I’m not going to hate on these people. I have worked those kinds of gigs before. Get out while you can, guys. Get a knife and go to work in a real kitchen.
To make them that final pitch black shade of evil that we all know they really are, Camille’s has inked a deal with the Devil. Who else could I mean when I say the Devil? I mean that individualism destroying, hyper-consuming Conrad-esque Heart of Darkness: Wal-Mart. This is not really a let down. Camille’s sold out a long time ago. I mean, they did start in Woodland Hills Mall. So they hit the ground running with absolutely no trace of soul. But the Wal-Mart deal cements in my mind that they are clearly marching under the banner of Sauron and all the minions of Mordor. My favorite quote from the douche bag who dreamed this crap up is from The Journal Record 3/6/07:
“My first goal was to be a millionaire by the time I was 40 years old.
That was pretty easy,” said the 45-year-old former Oral Roberts
University business student.
That is for fucking sure not the person you should trust your pallet to.
Camille’s has made the moral choice on this one pretty easy. They are perfect examples of what wrong with food in Tulsa and the country as a whole. Camille’s is more about “branding” (whatever the fuck that really means) than they are about food. They have become a lumbering dinosaur feeding on people’s willingness to settle their standards for something fast and cheap. I mean your standards must be pretty god damned low to eat something scraped out of the back room of a fucking Wal-Mart. So maybe we, the conscientious food lovers of Tulsa, should form a Frankenstein-esque mob of villagers with torches and pitchforks and go invade Frankenstein’s lab and slay “The Creature” as it rises from the slab to destroy us all. Oh, their address is:
8801 South Yale, Suite 400
In their blog about Cheddar’s, TulsaFoodBlog has the gall to actually say “Who wants to pay $15 for a meal, when you can get the same quality for $8?” Yeah! I mean, like, who wants to, like, pay for something as unnecessary as, like, flavor, texture, service and food with a soul? It’s much better to shovel cheap shit down your gullet than pay for something lovingly put together by a local artist, right? “But,” you say “their onion rings are, like, stacked so tall!” And I say they taste like what they are: over-salted (yet somehow still bland) loops of flash frozen cellulose. TulsaFoodBlog would have you sit down, pack it in without time to notice that it sucks and not complain because “hey, it’s cheap shit”.
Listen to me: Don’t hand some uncaring corporation your money so they can turn the crank on the shitty food mill and order another 2 cases of frozen steaks and chicken fingers and a swimming pool sized vat of ranch to cover the taste of low quality crap. Crap that is assembled with the same amount of love that a father has for a little girl born in one-child-only China.
Fuck Cheddars! And that whole “Miracle Mile” of restaurants that churns out “food” that all tastes like caulking compound. That whole strip of road should be carpet bombed. And if a friend ever says to you, “Hey! Let’s meet up at Cheddars, man,” kindly inform them that not only are they not your friend anymore but with friends like them who needs enemies. They are trying to poison you.
Ok so Cheddar’s is an easy target. Camille’s is slightly more complicated (only slightly though). The issue is complicated because they are local. The company was started here in town in 1996 by an ORU drop-out and his wife (I’m not even remotely going to touch on how awful ORU is for the Tulsa mental environment, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt since he did drop out. See? I can be generous.). Does anyone remember where their first location was? Oh you guessed it! Camille’s was formed in that jejune abyss that we call Woodland Hills Mall. Classic!
I like to think of myself as the consummate Tulsa supporter. I support a good many local businesses even though I never really have a cause to buy their products. But I have to draw the line at Camille’s though. And here’s why.
I have eaten at Camille’s before. Not the Woodland Hills location, but the one on Cherry Street that occupies the space that used to house the wonderful and amazing Sound Warehouse. I will give Camille’s the benefit of saying that at least they aren’t trying to somehow disguise crap as “gourmet”. They are a “get in, eat your shit off of a plastic plate, and get the fuck out” kind of place. That’s what fast casual is right? However, this lack of pretension is also their undoing, in my mind. I can get behind someplace that puts out food that isn’t great as long as they are trying. Camille’s wants your money. Now!
Chicken Caesar Salad wrap? That sounds like an assburger, hold the burger. I've made more interesting creations while sleep eating. Add in a soda and a pickle and it sounds like a meal fit for an inmate. Camille’s serves the same Sysco, Ben E. Keith, US Foods prepackaged crap that they are serving over at Cheddars, but Camille’s serves it cold. With a veritable crapucopia of lame, quasi-stale ingredients, you too can overpay (even though it’s cheap) for cold corporate-produced shit made by the poor marginalized drones that are behind the refrigerated display case. I’m not going to hate on these people. I have worked those kinds of gigs before. Get out while you can, guys. Get a knife and go to work in a real kitchen.
To make them that final pitch black shade of evil that we all know they really are, Camille’s has inked a deal with the Devil. Who else could I mean when I say the Devil? I mean that individualism destroying, hyper-consuming Conrad-esque Heart of Darkness: Wal-Mart. This is not really a let down. Camille’s sold out a long time ago. I mean, they did start in Woodland Hills Mall. So they hit the ground running with absolutely no trace of soul. But the Wal-Mart deal cements in my mind that they are clearly marching under the banner of Sauron and all the minions of Mordor. My favorite quote from the douche bag who dreamed this crap up is from The Journal Record 3/6/07:
“My first goal was to be a millionaire by the time I was 40 years old.
That was pretty easy,” said the 45-year-old former Oral Roberts
University business student.
That is for fucking sure not the person you should trust your pallet to.
Camille’s has made the moral choice on this one pretty easy. They are perfect examples of what wrong with food in Tulsa and the country as a whole. Camille’s is more about “branding” (whatever the fuck that really means) than they are about food. They have become a lumbering dinosaur feeding on people’s willingness to settle their standards for something fast and cheap. I mean your standards must be pretty god damned low to eat something scraped out of the back room of a fucking Wal-Mart. So maybe we, the conscientious food lovers of Tulsa, should form a Frankenstein-esque mob of villagers with torches and pitchforks and go invade Frankenstein’s lab and slay “The Creature” as it rises from the slab to destroy us all. Oh, their address is:
8801 South Yale, Suite 400
Tulsa, Oklahoma 74137
Maybe the writers of the TulsaFoodBlog.com will be there playing the role of Igor defending their master’s diabolical creation. I can’t remember if Igor had had his tongue cut out as punishment for theft, but the writers of that blog obviously have had a tongue-ectomy if they could possibly recommend either of those places to anyone, for anything, save a place for BB gun target practice.
Ok, enough. I think I have made my point. And it’s a point that I hope that most of you already knew. But it’s a very important one. The first step to getting people into local restaurants is to get them the fuck out of chain restaurants. Obviously, this is a much bigger issue than the two shit holes that I mentioned. It is McDonalds and T.G.I. Fridays and P.F. Chang’s and Red Robin and The Cheesecake Factory and Fuddruckers and Abuelo’s and Carrabbas and Macaroni Grill and Zio’s . All of those places are not worth your time. We have to know better. So just don’t go to them.
Alright that’s enough from me this time. I’ve got a lot to work to get done so I can make my first million before I am 40. Suckers!
Cook free.
Maybe the writers of the TulsaFoodBlog.com will be there playing the role of Igor defending their master’s diabolical creation. I can’t remember if Igor had had his tongue cut out as punishment for theft, but the writers of that blog obviously have had a tongue-ectomy if they could possibly recommend either of those places to anyone, for anything, save a place for BB gun target practice.
Ok, enough. I think I have made my point. And it’s a point that I hope that most of you already knew. But it’s a very important one. The first step to getting people into local restaurants is to get them the fuck out of chain restaurants. Obviously, this is a much bigger issue than the two shit holes that I mentioned. It is McDonalds and T.G.I. Fridays and P.F. Chang’s and Red Robin and The Cheesecake Factory and Fuddruckers and Abuelo’s and Carrabbas and Macaroni Grill and Zio’s . All of those places are not worth your time. We have to know better. So just don’t go to them.
Alright that’s enough from me this time. I’ve got a lot to work to get done so I can make my first million before I am 40. Suckers!
Cook free.
Cook well.
Cuisine pour Le Vie!
6 comments:
Camille's got started by two people that worked at Woodland Hills Mall who wanted a healthy option for their lunch - instead of the greasy and artery clogging choices at the Food Court. It just so happens, America agrees that obesity and unhealthy habits are a big problem. I commend Camille's for at least being a part of that realization. As much as I despise Wal-Mart, I have to give them SOME kudos for realizing that fast food does not have to be unhealthy. I would be much happier if there was a Camille's on every street corner instead of McDonald's.
Maybe food shouldn't be fast. Maybe food should be good. I want a different restaraunt on every corner, not the same one. I want to taste tulsa and what we are about, not the same lame bullshit that every other city has. And if you beleive some bullshit romantic story about how some down-on-his-luck college dropout wanted to make the mall safer for dieters, then I have some news for you: Now they are working on a string of hotdog/hamburger places called Coney Beach.
You know, I was really looking forward to reading this blog. Tulsa food is the thing I look forward to most when I return home, however, when reading this I was really dissapointed. You spent paragraphs hating on Camille's and Cheddars?? Really? Yes, I eat at Camille's and I like it. Fuck me, right? Sure, Camille's might not be a restaurant that says a lot about the Tulsa Food Scene, but what does the fact that David, the owner, is an ORU drop-out or that they started a deal with Wal-Mart have to do with their food? If you're blogging about food, write about the food. Have you actually ever had a chicken caesar wrap, because I couldn't tell if you were just insulting it because it was actually shit, or if you just deemed it an "ass burger-hold the ass" because it was from a chain. I guess if you're going to waste time bitching, your next post should be about why the hell El Rio Verde is now charging for chips...
I would like to have you as a reader. There are great things going in food right now in town (and I will get to them) but I sat down to write about food in town and that was the first thing that came out. And no I don't have to eat a caesar anything to know that it is shitty. A caesar is what you order when you don't know what you want.
As for Rio Verde charging for chips...unless sombody's grandma is slaving in a prep kitchen pounding masa flat, cutting and frying them I wouldn't remotely pay for them. If they were made fresh in the restaraunt everyday, then pay for it, and gladly. Fried Masa is a thing of beauty.
The bottom line is that there will always be a demand for fast food. That is not to say that people want only fast food. In today's world we have responsibilities and obligations that do not allow us to sit down for dinner every single night. I love local Tulsa restaurants, but I have a problem when someone wants to blog just to bitch about how horrible corporations are the devil. If something tastes good and can be made efficiently than what's wrong with that? If you blogged about the local restaurant scene including names of the restaurants you DO approve of, maybe people would eat there. This was just a long rant on what NOT to eat. I am only saying that if you want people to support local, then give some suggestions and why its a better alternative.
If you want food that is quick and really killer, I suggest you dig into a fabulous book called Fast Food My Way by the amazing and incomparable Jacques Pepin. It’s full of really awesome salads and the like that would be really great for taking to work or other such environments where you can't really cook (no heat).
I am not writing a restaurant review blog. I was using those two places of examples for what I see as the biggest problem with the Tulsa food scene: laziness of pallet. I will talk about other restaurants as the blog evolves. However, I will never give a rating or any other such garbage.
Continue reading and you will see what it is that I am advocating for the Tulsa food scene.
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