Sriracha + Bruegger’s bagel + Boo~Kies’s = Win

Sriracha + bruegger's bagel + Boo~Kies's = Win

Dilemma:

1. Bruegger’s Bagels – Doesn’t have “real” bacon or eggs.
2. Boo~Kie’s – Doesn’t have bagels
3. Sriracha Hot Sauce – Elevates sandwiches

The obvious solution is to combine a Bruegger’s bagel (wheat pictured) with an egg / bacon / cheese  from Boo~Kies (shown with optional hashbrown), with Sriracha (AKA Rooster) sauce.

This is a winning formula… all for around $3.50 (plus a bottle of Sriracha, $3.99 @ City Market).

Unfortunately this post is a little tardy, Boo~Kies’s cart appears to be done for the season, hit him up next spring.

Pulcinella’s – “Pizza ai Funghi” (Mushroom Pizza)

Pulcinella’s Ristorante is a fairly new Italian restaurant at 100 Dorset street in South Burlington Vermont sandwiched between Small Dog Electronics and Eastern Mountain Sports (EMS). The history of the Pulchinella character is on their website.

Pulcinella’s – South Burlington, Vermont

Pulcinella’s – “Pizza ai Funghi” (Mushroom Pizza)

Woodland mushroom sauce, scallions, Parmesan & Asiago cheeses, these ingredients on a 13″ whole wheat crust result in a great pie. It’s almost a flat bread a la American flatbread. There are a TON of mushrooms on this pizza, the sauce is rich, and has some acid (balsamic?). The whole wheat gives the crispy crust a nice texture and compliments the earthiness of the mushrooms. The pie is a little rich and would be better alongside a second pie, so that you could alternate slices to cleanse the palate (the first couple bites are awesome, I think my taste buds started suffering from mushroom fatigue). The cheeses have a slight bite, which help with the flavor balance. Despite my best effort I couldn’t finish this pizza in one sitting (this pizza is good cold).

At $13 before tax, this pie kind of blows my lunch budget, but it’s unique, yummy and there were left-overs.

Mexicali – “Chile Relleno”

Mexicali is a Tex-Mex restaurant in Williston Vermont, on the back side of Best Buy.  Mexicali has great margaritas and an awesome salsa bar:

Mexicali – Salsa bar

Mexicali – Chile Relleno

I was introduced to Chile Relleno at Penny Cluse Cafe, I’m using their version as a reference of what I like. I like the presentation of this plate, but taste-wise I think their could be some tweaks. First what is Chile Relleno?

Chile Relleno consists of pan or deep deep fried pablano peppers, which are quite mild and have a nice flavor. Typically the peppers are stuffed with at least cheese, and finally covered with some sort of sauce / salsa.

In Mexicali’s version, they stuff their pablanos with chicken and cheese. I love the fact that they went for something beyond cheese for the stuffing, however they used chicken cubed chicken breast. Chicken breast is healthy, but the texture and flavor is wrong for this dish. Shredded seasoned chicken would have been a much better choice. Additionally the sauce was a little bland (a suprise considering the yummy salsa bar options). Finally I didn’t like the eggy-breading, it concealed the sublte pablano flavor. The side of beans were good, but the cornbread missed, too sweet and moist.

At $11, I would order something other than the Chile Relleno at Mexicali.

Papa Frank’s -” 12″ Anchovie Pizza “

Papa Frank’s is well known for their inexpensive Italian food in Winooski Vermont. It’s even less expensive if you use the %10 off coupon from their website.

Papa Frank’s – Winooski Vermont

I had a longing for anchovie pizza and I like Papa Frank’s pasta, so I called in an order.

Papa Frank’s Pizza Box – I love the fact they have their own custom boxes.

Papa Frank’s – 12″ anchovie Pizza

In the upper left hand corner you can see the molten cheese flow, forming a new cheese mass. Once in a while I have a craving for anchovies, something about the texture (bones?), saltiness, and feeling like you’re eating “authentic pizza”. Papa Frank’s crust passes the chewy / crispy litmus test. However the crust in the middle is very soft, I think the sauce may contain too much water as evidenced by the volcanic cheese. This resulted in me folding the pizza in half to eat, which unfortunately means you are getting 2X the amount of anchovie in every bite (very salty). So this pie, while a great value is not great for anchovies. (You must come to Papa Frank’s for lunch / dinner for their pasta, great value. My non-cheese-eating friend loves their hand made meat only ravioli.)

With the %10 coupon the pizza was ~$7.50

Dino’s – “Spinach and Cheese Roll”

Dino’s has two locations in Burlington Vermont, one in the Burlington Town Center AKA Square Mall AKA Burlington Mall and the other in a new spot (formerly Monaco’s) in the ONE (Old North End). Normally I wouldn’t go to Dino’s unless I had business in the mall, so I was glad to see they had a more convenient second location. Their pesto pizza and sandwiches are pretty good, but my favorite thing to order is there spinach and cheese roll.

Dino’s – Burlington Vermont

Dino’s – Spinach and Cheese Roll

Dino’s friendly cook informed my that this was going to be the best “Pizza Roll” ever. I was psyched to find out that he made the roll fresh (unbaked dough), likely due to volume concerns the mall location has the Pizza rolls standing by ready to be re-heated. So I would recommend calling in your order to this location, as it took a few minutes for the roll to bake.

The cook was right, the aroma of freshly baked rolls filled up my car as I was driving back to work to eat my lunch. The in-house made tomato sauce to dip the roll in had a nice balance of sweet and  acid . One caveat, I couldn’t figure out why one half of the roll had %90 of the spinach of cheese, I realized that the pizza roll was stored vertically and the molten contents had obeyed gravity. So if you’re traveling with your coveted pizza roll, make sure it’s lodged horizontally. I like eating these rolls, because it tastes good, is fun to eat, and is definitely healthy.

These rolls are steal at $5.50 with tax.

Cheese Traders, “Brie & Bread”

Once every couple of months I like to make my way over to Cheese Traders on Williston road in South Burlington Vermont.  They have a tremendous selection of often inexpensive cheese, and a huge wine room down stairs, as well as many interesting snacks or cooking items.

 
Cheese Traders – Right next to the Alpine Shop on Williston Road

Cheese Traders – Cheese Shelf, this is about 1/2 the selection of cheese they have, at the end of the row, there is a sample counter where you usually can sample 4 cheeses or sauces that they’re selling that day.

Cheese Traders – Brie and Bread

For lunch I grabbed half a loaf of fresh, slightly crusty (when I go back I’ll get the name of the bakery) wonderful bread. I also grabbed some fromage d affinois Brie, there is a nice write-up here about the cheese. I learned something new about Brie when looking up this cheese online, there are three main varieties: Brie, double cream Brie, triple cream (Brillat Savarin) Brie. These three classifications, refer to the cream content of the cheese, nice write-up about it here.

The fromage d affinois was a little rich for my taste, I think I prefer single cream Brie. The bread was excellent I tore off hunks to spread the Brie on, and the rest of the bread was good the next day in the toaster. Both the bread and cheese came to under $6, and there was plenty left over for the next day(s).