Off the Map: Don't All Cafeterias Feature Chandeliers?

Cheesesteak -- Tony Luke's, Atlantic City, NJ
Tony Luke's

If past experience is any indication, we don't always do so well by trying to knock a Philadelphia Best Thing I Ever Ate dish off of our list at the restaurant's Atlantic City location (we're looking at you, Buddakan).

Well, At Least t's Better Than Camden

These results thus begs the question why Vodka would insist upon going to the Tony Luke's at the Borgata casino rather than the original South Philly franchise.

Here's a Tip: This Is Not the Borgata

The answer to this question is twofold:

1. Vodka finds herself down the shore more often than she does underneath the Walt Whitman Bridge.
2. She is hellbent on validating her theory that the best cheesesteaks actually come from South Jersey.

Cheesesteaks and, Well, People, Too

For these reasons, Vodka and her friend (who asked to be called "Diet Coke" on this blog, a moniker that was shot down immediately for not featuring alcohol), while spending the weekend by the seaside, make their way to the Borgata Cafeteria.

Guessing This Is Not the Kind of Cafeteria Which Serves Tater Tots....

Said cafeteria features a Tony Luke's counter where we can find Marc Summers's chosen REGIONAL FAVORITES dish, the beloved cheesesteak.

They Say the Neon Lights Are Bright in AC... in AC

And said cafeteria also features multiple chandeliers.  Gotta love Atlantic City decor.

This Is From Where New Jersey Gets Its "Charming" Reputation

"Diet Coke" (Vodka writes this with disdain), seemingly the only person on the planet who despises cheesesteaks, scours the culinary options before taking her place in line at Lettuce Head, leaving Vodka alone to procure the highest calorie meal known to the Borgata Cafeteria.

No Real Philadelphian Would Ever Deign to Eat at This Place When Cheesesteaks Are Available

The problem is that while Marc Summers recommends the regular cheesesteak on official Best Thing I Ever Ate documents (aka the Food Network website), he actually ate the pizza steak on the show.  This circumstance means that Vodka, for purposes of completion, is forced into ordering not one but two cheesesteaks.  To eat by herself.  Because heaven forbid she bring a friend that eats something other than rabbit food with her on this particular jaunt.

So What You're Saying Is the Usual Serving Size Is ONE Cheesesteak Per Person?!

Placing her order for a cheesesteak with Cheez Whiz and fried onions, a pizza steak (a cheesesteak with marinara sauce), a side of onion rings, and a small soda, Vodka can only hope that the highly efficient workers behind the Tony Luke's counter do not call into question why her tray has enough food to fill up a football team.

The Biggest Loser Producers Would Have a Field Day with This One

To add to the humiliation, the cashier is insistent that he address Vodka by name at least eighty-seven times during this proceeding (including forty minutes later when she returns to the counter for a doggie bag), thus shredding her anonymity as the person ordering a week's worth of food... at Tony Luke's.

Old Philly Style Sandwiches, Old Philly Style Girth

Vodka sheepishly carries her tray to a table to await the arrival of her friend's salad, which inexplicably seems to be taking a full eternity for the staff at Lettuce Head to toss together.

This Is Clearly a Very Complicated Tray of Food to Pull Off

This delay causes an especially conspicuous photo shoot, as Vodka sits alone at a large table with cheesesteaks spread in front of her, photographing them.

It's Not Easy Being the Greatest Freak Show in Atlantic City, But Vodka Is Up to the Challenge

When Lettuce Head finally manages to pull themselves together, we go about the task of eating, Vodka diving into a bevy of fried, greasy and gooey delights while her friend chomps entirely-too-happily through a whole wheat roll.

One Girl's Roll of Bread Is Another Girl's Roll of Fat

Trying the pizza steak first, Vodka is ambivalent about the addition of the marinara sauce.  Always preferring a helping of cheese rather than sauce, she finds that the marinara flavor takes over the proceedings, rendering the steak and cheese almost flavorless (a problem that is rectified by, of course, a generous helping of salt).

Cheesesteak Via Italy

Interestingly enough, when "Diet Coke" deigns to try this creation, she finds it much more enjoyable than other cheesesteaks she has had for exactly the reason Vodka is not impressed -- the marinara sauce is completely overbearing.

Much Like Its Real Housewives of New Jersey Cousins

In contrast, the regular cheesesteak allows each of its ingredients to shine -- the Cheez Whiz smothers the chopped beef and onions, all pulling together to create a runny, goopy, and all together delicious version of a Philadelphia cheesesteak.

Now THAT'S a Cheesesteak

The feature that both cheesesteaks have going for them is the roll in which they are buried.  Soft and supple, they cradle the fillings without overtaking them, and Vodka prefers the rolls alone to just about any other variety of cheesesteak she has had.  Ten points on the carbs, Tony Luke's.

Lack of Pesky Sesame Seeds = 100 Bonus Points

The onion rings are greasy and crunchy enough to be tasty, if nothing remarkable.

Ring Around the Rosie

They are clearly not meant to be the star of these proceedings; for this, we have the duo of cheesesteaks, which are worth this meal's steep $25 price tag.

Thanks for the Price Gouging, Borgata

By the end of the meal, Vodka believes she has figured out part of her friend's cheesesteak disdain: she has never been taught to consume them correctly.

Why This Process Is a Complicated Endeavor Remains a Mystery

Rather than holding the sandwich tightly with two hands -- a technique that any Philadelphia-area native knows intuitively at birth -- her friend holds the cheesesteak gingerly with a single hand, contorting her head at a disagreeable angle in order to bite in and subsequently, to force half of the contents back onto the paper wrapping.

Approximate Number of Napkins Used for This Cheesesteak Consumption

After a lesson in the art of cheesesteak eating, she no longer looks like the Arizona-grown child that she is.

Presumably She Would Find This Easier to Eat If It Came with a Side of Cactus

Though she still doesn't exactly look like she's enjoying the thing.

How Is This Possibly Not Enjoyable?!

Wrapping up half of each sandwich to bring home, Vodka finds herself parading around the Borgata with two half-eaten cheesesteaks in hand.

Nothing Like Double-Fisting Cheesesteaks Around a Casino

Classy image or not, she is certain of one point: this scenario sure beats going to South Philly.

Tony Luke's Cheesesteak: 4 stars

Off the Map: This Must Be What It Feels Like to Be Smacked

Dip Sum Donuts – Buddakan, Atlantic City, NJ
Buddakan

**So we're morons have have discovered that the Atlantic City Buddakan's donuts aren't actually the Best Thing I Ever Ate donuts.  Please see our addendum to this post about Marc Summers's actual Philadelphia choice here.**

Finally, the booze seems to be wearing off and the pain from walking into a door is starting to hit Ginger.

“This must be what it feels like to be smacked,” she surmises.  Unfortunately, our dinner at Buddakan does not help matters.  We are also smacked on our palates.

Buddakan features Marc Summers’s best dish to eat WITH MY HANDS, the dip sum donuts.  It is a restaurant with locations in Philadelphia (where Ginger has previously dined) and New York, but we decide to check off our tour itinerary at the Atlantic City outpost.

Beach a Mere Feet Away

By this point, we are already losing steam, what with the royal wedding wake-up hour and our insistence to start drinking Skinnygirl margaritas at 3:00pm.  Plus, we have Ginger’s head trauma to contend with.

We order our cocktails – the Luck (it contains ginger, so you can imagine who ordered it) and the Bonsai.  Both are just fine.  In truth, the Bonsai, which features floating leaves of some parsley-like creation, is verging on bad.

Our Cocktails Pose with Vodka's New Sunglasses

We then procure the edamame ravioli and the beef lo mein, both of which are fairly scrumptious (albeit the beef in the lo mein seems to have met about a thousand salt licks in its lifetime).

Looks Like an Easter Bonnet

Where Salt Comes to Die

Then come the Best Thing I Ever Ate dish, the dip sum donuts.  And they are not good.

Perhaps Buddakan has changed their donuts since Marc Summers ventured here, but these donuts are barely doughy and filled with a banana-flavored cream.  They come with chocolate, caramel, and red bean dipping sauces, all of which are sickly sweet.  (And we are not ones to complain about sweetness).  The sauces feel like they are with the wrong dessert; when combined with the banana cream filling, and the sugar coating on the donuts, there is nothing to cut through the sugar.  Just more sugar.  Plus, the banana cream drips out all over the plate, adding to the debacle of it all.

These Look Better Than They Tasted

Ginger makes an array of facial contortions, and we try to flag our waiter down so we can escape the memory of these donuts.  We’d take a dozen of Doughnut Plant’s peanut butter and jelly “sandwiches” before these.

Our waiter, unfortunately, is not the most attentive soul, but we don’t even have the strength to fight about the fact that it takes him 20 minutes to come back around and give us our check.  We have been beaten down, by both a door and by shoddy excuses for high-roller restaurants.

Seconds Before the Banana Cream Permeated the Sauce

Trying to make ourselves feel better, we go to the Apple store and clandestinely pull up this very blog on every iPad and MacBook available.  Guerilla marketing at its finest.  And then we retreat back to our balcony, more eager to drink at home than out at oliveless bars and parsley-obsessed restaurants.

You're Welcome, America

In truth, the best things we ate down the shore came from Wawa, not Continental or Buddakan.  Which reminds us: someone, please, bring a Wawa to Manhattan.  We will singlehandedly keep the place in business.

**While these are not the correct Best Thing I Ever Ate donuts, we feel as though we need to retain this post in order to warn the public not to eat them.  If you would like to read about the Philadelphia Buddakan donuts (which are much better), please go to our updated review here.**

Buddakan’s Dip Sum Donuts: 2 stars

Off the Map: An Oliveless Shirley Temple and Other Assorted Problems

Crispy Calamari Salad – Continental, Atlantic City, NJ
Continental

Vodka and Ginger head down the shore for one reason and one reason alone.  Not to lay on the beach.  Not to gamble our food budgets away in Atlantic City.  Not even to become reacquainted with sunscreen.

We go down the shore to watch the royal wedding.

Memorabilia Much?

Vodka fancies herself a bit of a royalist, and by “a bit,” she means “a crazed wannabe Windsor.”

Ginger does not really care much about William and Harry et. al., but she’s always up for tea and a crumpet.

As previously mentioned, Vodka had purchased half of Tea and Sympathy’s wedding memorabilia a few weeks back, and she carts it down to the seaside for royal watching purposes.

Ginger, priorities intact, travels with two bottles of wine.

After an early morning of wedding watching, complete with English Hob Nobs and Ginger cookies, we take a long winter’s nap before using Vodka’s paraphernalia for its true purpose: to drink Skinnygirl margaritas.

The Queen Would Be So Proud

We toast to Her Royal Highness, Bethenny Frankel, Princess of Tequila before heading into Atlantic City.

Which is when Ginger walks into a door.

At this point, feeling very little pain due to the dulling effect of the gallon Skinnygirl margaritas we just consumed, Ginger insists she is fine, welted face or not.

And she acts fine all the way to Caesar’s Piers.  All the way through Vodka drunkenly dropping her Le Bernardin budget on Burberry sunglasses (which, by the way, make her look like Blanche Devereaux of Golden Girls fame).  All the way to our bar stools at Continental where we want to try Anne Burrell’s Best Thing I Ever Ate WITH CHOPSTICKS dish, crispy calamari salad, as our appetizer.

Poor Photography

The only hint that Ginger is possibly suffering from a concussion comes when she begins arguing with the Continental bartender about the lack of olives in her Dirty Shirley.

For those of you who aren’t in the know about spiking childhood drinks, a Dirty Shirley is a grown-up version of a Shirley Temple – you know, the pink drink with cherries on top that you used to order at T.G.I. Friday’s in your youth in order to sound mature.

THE DRINK THAT DOES NOT CONTAIN ANY OLIVES.

Notice the Lack of Olives

Even though Ginger has ordered at least 27 Dirty Shirleys in her lifetime, she is suddenly convinced that it is an olive-based drink, and she wants her olives dammit.  While Vodka makes excuses to the befuddled bartender about the confusion, (“You have to forgive her – she just hit her head.”), Ginger finally establishes where her olive delusion came from: Continental’s Dirty Shirley contains “Three Olive Vodka.”

NOT OLIVES.

Anyway.

Vodka (for once not the troublemaker with the waitstaff) sips her Twizzle cocktail sheepishly as we await our crispy calamari salad and Ginger makes finger indentations on her growing head bump.

See the Licorice on Top? Delicious

Our salad arrives, and it is massive.  It is also sans chopsticks, a detail that we do not notice, but that therefore defeats the purpose of eating Anne Burrell’s go-to WITH CHOPSTICKS dish.  Instead, we ungraciously dive in with our forks and start eating like savages.

One Spoon Does Not Two Chopsticks Make

The first thing we notice (and clearly, we’re not noticing much, based on the lack of chopsticks), is that the salad is extremely vinegary.  So vinegary that it makes our lips tingle.  This vinegar has also seemed to make the salad extremely slippery, as the bean sprouts keep falling from our forks onto the floor (this is when chopsticks could have come in handy, Continental). The lettuce is also displeasingly soggy.

That said, we like vinegar well enough, so this overbearing ingredient does not completely turn us off.

What turns us off more is the sheer lack of crispy calamari.

Now, perhaps it’s just the proportion of the salad that is off – it comes in a humongous bowl.  This bowl could be cut in half, and the calamari would seem plentiful.  The way it stands, we have to fight through landfills of lettuce to find one solitary piece.  And the calamari itself is good, which makes it all the more disappointing that it is so scarce. However, the pool of vinegar dressing quickly abates the "crispy" part.

Let's Play Where's Waldo? with the Calamari

We both have loved Continental in the past, at the Philadelphia locations and this Atlantic City one.  But this salad is far from our favorite thing we have eaten here (the cheesesteak eggrolls come to mind as one of the best).  We do not even finish the salad, and we instead down our cocktails and stumble off of our stools, heading off in search of olives and an ice pack.

Continental’s Crispy Calamari Salad: 3 stars