Okay, I am going to try this, though I really have no idea what I am doing. Please feel free to not read, as it is likely not informative. If this doesn't suck complete and total ass, or maybe even if it does, I will try it again with maybe the Irish pub we hit up in Chicago or Manny's, since it rocks the fucking hiznouse. Anyway, here we go.
Damon's Grill
Multiple Locations--including Sheridan Rd., Williamsville, New York
Lets be honest, no one is going to publish their dissertation on the diversity of Damon's menu. To put it in the discourse of Henry Ford: "You can have anything you want, as long as it's grilled meat. It would be a disservice to this establishment, however, to dismiss it from a simple examination of its menu. There's nothing wrong, after all, with a good slab of grilled chicken, beef, pork, or fish. Potentially we should proceed from the glossy page into the strangely inticing doors.
Admittedly, you will rarely find alot of diversity in the construction of your local Damon's restaurant. Most likely, your branch is located either in the parking lot of a movie theater-shopping complex, amidst the Applebee's, TGIFridays, and variously franchised tex-mex joints, or at the end of a medium sized strip mall. Fine architecture is rarely an issue for businesses which corner up to establishments whose martinizing can be done at astonishing speed. If Damon's isn't your stop of choice after a trip to Bed Bath and Beyond, you may not imagine it to be anything at all beyond Chili's or any other "specialty" franchise, where the area of expertise remains a thinly veiled disguise to pass off everyone else's mozzarella sticks as "San Jose Fried Cheese Straights" since they come with a "special southwestern sauce." What could be more special, after all, than replacing bulk marinara sauce with a gourmet mixture of cayenne pepper, cumin, and mayonnaise.
Alright, maybe I am giving you too little credit. Maybe, some Saturday night, while you were waiting for your showing of Master and Commander, you stopped into Damon's to get a bite, but decided not to wait the 25 minutes. I suppose the lobby didn't encourage you to return. Trust me however, there is a reason. Indeed, the reason the lobby and bar which you enter upon opening the thick wooden door to Damon's is so monotonous is one of the three best reasons to miss Russel Crowe's first 15 minutes of Australian babble. For your consideration:
1) The "decor"
I am well aware, thank you, that it is not often that a place already described as monotonous gets any significant snaps for "decor." Never fear, I say, scare quotes to the rescue! Follow your host or hostess away from the bar and towards what tends to be the far wall of the restaurant. Now you understand the necessity of the standard mahogany bar, green booths, and hanging televisions. You needed something, no matter how meager, to prepare the unknowing consumer for the transition from the serene and typically suburban row of Subways, pet shops, drug stores, and shoe repair shops into the projection TV orgy already in progress on the other side of that wall.
Four, count em, four, televisions the size of, oh, I would estimate, about Delaware, grace the far wall in question. As you will likely soon learn, Damon's is the offical restaurant of the NFL Sunday Ticket, the satellite package which allows you to view every professional football game every Sunday. This is the reason why; for the price of that aqua-disaster you spent the night before enthralled by you can spend your afternoon cheering for any NFL team you want on the television you have been telling yourself would someday be in your price range for the last 10-15 years. Sick of missing those pass interference calls, its alot easier when Lawyer Milloy's full sized hand yanks the life-sized jersey of David Boston to adequately complain about the complete and total incompetence of today's refereeing. Not a football fan, well then, how did you escape from Gitmo. Just kidding, assuming that you are neither a football fan nor a terrorist, you can still live vicariously through the throngs of sports junkies around you. The hopes of at least 8 distinct groups of people peak and collapse every several minutes amongst the chicken sandwiches and tossed salads. This is what all those Budweiser commercials have been trying to instill in you (I told the "Born on date" was a scam), crystal clear views of the athletic accomplishments of others, everywhere you look.
Its not just football, obviously, its pretty much everything. When you as a restaurant have made the decision to cover your primary wall with TV screens you are kind of forced into going for the gusto. Damon's occasionally fills with mulleted drunkards and children in black t-shirts when, once every month or so, they air professional wrestling pay-per-view for the rubest of the rubes. The brain trust in the kitchen is still trying to figure out how to get more huge men in tight costumes on the wall without starting "leather night."
The kicker to all this televised goodness, its at each individual booth and on the end of every table. Even assuming your local watering hole has a couple big-screen tubes, this is what seperates Damon's. A speaker at every table, complete with two knobs: volume of course, and screen select. If you haven't had the misfortune to attempt to watch your favorite team play your favorite game while listening to a completely different event, you may not understand quite how vital good audio is to a television experience. Try this one: imagine that you have to fill in both for the music behind Kristi Yamaguchi's long program and Scott Hamilton's commentary differentiating the toe-loop from the sow-kow. You WANT the speaker on that wall, you NEED the speaker on that wall.
2) The ribs
Look, I think that we, you and I, we have established quite a rapport here, so I again refuse to lie to you. Damon's ribs are not THE BEST I have ever eaten. Depending on where you live, lets say, Tennesee or Kansas City, there may well be a little smokehouse owned by a man who one day decided to take his love of meat and his Grandfather's dry rub and open a matterboard shack on the edge of town. I don't mean to trash these places, seriously. The best barbecue in the world rarely comes from a $200,000 custom made smoker. A hickory fire and a metal grate tends to be the only real equipment you need. As a piece of advice entirely distinct from my recommendation of Damon's, any time you find a BBQ restaurant smaller than a drive-through coffee place make absolutely sure you stop. But I digress...
While Damon's ribs may not be the world's best they are good. They are better than good, they are world class ribs. I haven't had the good fortune to make my way to the Jack Daniels' BBQ competition, but I am quite certain you could put a rack of Damon's finest in with the ribs waiting to be judged and not finish too far down. If you watch judges at BBQ competitions you will see them pull off a piece of the meat, the thickest part, and hold it up to their eyes. You probably know too much about ribs if you already know where this is going, but the judges are looking to see what happens when they squeeze the rib meat. The best ribs, cooked slowly at exactly the right temperature for just long enough, won't emit any fat when they're squeezed. What hasn't melted off is so thoroughly combined that just the pressure of your fingers won't split it apart. Give this a shot with your next plateful at Damon's, I'm sure you will find the same thing that I did, 100% pure meaty-delicious love.
I am not intending to forget the sauce of course, no one who truly enjoys a baby-back rack ever could. Damon's regular sauce has only the tiniest bit of kick to it, so it may not be what you South-Easterners and your vinegar sauces are used to, but its smokey and sweet and unlikely to offend even the most bland Iowan palate. Nonetheless, even BBQ snobs amongst you won't be disappointed. This is not even to go into the new sauces Damon's has premiered recently, including a Carribean Jerk that you won't likely find at your neighborhood grill hut. If you need your ribs to be packed in stryrofoam and soak the brown paper bag that you carry them out in with grease, Damon's probably won't do it for you, but if you want a solid rack while you watch the game, this is as good a place as any.
3) Menu Creativity
It will be hard, I know, for me to talk you into sitting down at Damon's Grill by convincing you that whoever is behind the place has some pretty impressive ideas for new food items. After all, someone came up with the cheese stick didn't they. Potato skins didn't deep fry themselves. While I suppose this is true (either that or you've got some damn talented potato skins) once everyone and their maternal great uncle twice removed is serving the same deep fried jalepeno poppers your claim to fame has lost some of its je ne sais quois.
Now, Damon's executes these tried and true appetizer sensations as well as anyone, though I have no intention of distinguishing it from Applebee's based on a side order of pre-cut fries. What does deserve mention is the, now somewhat famous, Onion Loaf. Thankfully, at least from my perspective, not a throwback to the processed meat loaves of deli counter fame, the Onion Loaf at least seems to live up to its name. Take a good amount of small, thinly sliced onions, give them a light coating of batter and somehow get them to fry in the shape of a small loaf of bread. The result isn't incredibly different from anyone else's onion ring, but has a strong corner on the crispiness market. A couple slices of Onion Loaf, maybe with a dot of your favorite condiment, is a good twist on this bar and grill staple.
If you don't plan on following up your tear-jerking appetizer with the afforementioned ribs, Damon's most creative offering should be your dinner. As Slavoj Zizek said, in commenting on a book by his colleague Alenka Zupancic: "the only sign of real respect is envious hatred-how is it that I did not come upon what the author is saying." If Damon's is for you, even a quick look at the menu will have produced this reaction from one specific item, the Big South Burger. Damon's does its burgers well, a solid slab of ground beef well grilled, but nothing gimmicky (trust me friends, we will get to gimmicky burgers, ohhhhh, we will get to gimmicky burgers). To take this burger to the next level someone at Damon's beat me to the punch with this brilliant decision: "you know that burger we have, instead of just serving it, why don't we cover it with pulled pork first."
The old addage goes, if you only do one thing, make sure you do it well. That is not to say, of course, that you shouldn't do multiple things well. We might add to this the addage of today. We live, after all, in the world of the Sharper Image and SkyMall catalogs, where the only thing better than a talking goldfish bowl is a talking goldfish bowl with a built-in clock radio. If you do two things well, put one on top of the other. While our lives may be only marginally improved by a toilet brush with built in Palm Pilot, the Big South Burger is fantastic. The less often one is required to choose between a cheeseburger and a BBQ sandwich the better in my opinion. While you may not favor Damon's regular sauce for your ribs, there is no doubt that it suits this western-ized cheeseburger to a "T."
There is a great risk, of course, that if either element were sub-par the textures simply wouldn't work, stringy pulled pork or a grisly burger destroys the whole deal. But the success of this sandwich is only further proof that Damon's might want to consider particle board walls on which to hang their massive monuments to our Sunday past time. For some, barbecue shack flavor with strip mall accessability may even beat the classic one-two punch of beef and pork, but it certainly doesn't go as well with a pint of Bass Ale or an Onion Loaf.
-----END REVIEW------
So there we go, sorry, if you read the whole thing and it sucked a nut, as it may well have done. I will take a little distance from it before I evaluate the mamma-jamma myself. Anyway, feel free to feed-back if you wish. Comments and email are both a to the g. Keep on rocking in the free world.
Peace,
MB-K
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