Random Taste for Thursday 6/1/17

And so it continues ... a brand new set of tastes for 2017 ...

 here's the TWENTY-FIRST of FIFTY tastes of FLORIDA 

(coming to you on sequential Thursdays.  All.  Year.  Long.)!

Establishment:  Shake Shack
Location:  Boca Raton
Meal:  Lunch
Drink:  fountain Spr-oke (half sprite, half coke)
Appetizer:  n/a
Main:  Shack Stack (plus Bacon)
(cheeseburger plus a crisp-fried portobello mushroom filled with melted muenster and cheddar cheeses, topped with lettuce, tomato, and ShackSauce™, plus bacon)
Side(s):  Cheese Fries (plus Bacon)
(fries topped with special blend of cheddar and american cheese sauce, plus bacon)
Dessert:  Glades Donut Frozen Custard
(vanilla custard, the sugar monkey's glazed cake donut, peanut butter sauce and chocolate toffee)Server:   Dante (order-taker)
Website:  https://www.shakeshack.com/
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/shakeshack/

If ever there was a reason for me to believe in destiny, finding myself at a Shake Shack for this ongoing series would suffice.  Some of you outside of the area may know of the expanding chain (that started in NY), but, as of the time of the meal, this location was one of just three in Florida (more are promised).  As to that reference to "destiny", regular readers know that I love me a higher quality burger joint ... one that isn't afraid of the bacon ... and one that takes just as much pride in its ice-cream-style desserts.  In this case, the establishment got on the radar because we were seeking the closest thing we could find locally to the best frozen custard we ever had (shout out to Kopp's in Wisconsin!), so keep on reading to see how the Troy-score shows that we weren't disappointed (and how this is now the best reviewed burger joint of them all).  

(A  bit of housekeeping:  due to publication delays, this review is being retroactively slotted to June 2017 but posted in September 2018 for a meal that was actually eaten and photographed in July 2017.)

AMBIANCE:   8/10 (it was like this:  walk in -- order your food -- and wait to be called [because everything seems to be made to order] in a pleasant enough space with big booths and a full view of the bustling kitchen ... I couldn't quite place the overall smell, until it hit me that it smelled just like the fast food restaurant known for its flame grilled burgers [which isn't a pejorative statement -- just something that makes sense since their grill is out in the open] ... one point is lost because the wifi was working in fits and starts that day, and the second one comes off the top because it was 90 degrees and we would have sat outside except management hadn't turned on the overhead fans to make it comfortable)

FOOD:           9.5/10 (here's the smartest thing ever -- they have a non-meat option [a two cheese filled portobello mushroom fried perfectly to be crispy on the outside and oozey-gooey on the inside] that they encourage meat eaters of a certain ilk [i.e. me] to stack on top of the cheeseburger, in effect exponentializing the taste, all served on a piping hot bun with other fresh toppings  ... the crinkle cut fries were appropriately crispy [at least underneath the two-cheese sauce] ... and that frozen custard dessert had chunk after chunk of peanut butter ... the [rare for this series] half point deduction is because the sandwich seemed to be missing the cherry peppers [and it's only a *half* point, because I'm not sure that I really missed them, tastewise]

SERVICE:      9/10 (the order taker was outgoing and super-smiley [especially when affirming that my request to add bacon to everything was "a good choice"], and every employee with whom we interacted before the visit was over was similarly friendly ... the one point subtraction comes from the length of time we waited for the dessert [ordered separately after the meal])

BACON:         10/10 (lookit -- they let me add it to the burger AND they let me add it to the fries [where it was big chunks and not crumbles or bits] AND they probably would have let me add it to the ice cream if I had remembered to ask them to do so ... so how could they *not* get a perfect score in this category)

BONUS:         10/10 (+3 for choosing to always have at least two cheeses in the mix whenever cheesiness was on the menu [for instance, stuffed in the portobello or ladled over the fries], +3 for having the foresight to merge the meat-eaters dish with the non-meat-eaters dish to create one mega-eaters dish, +3 for highlighting the fact that pregnant girls shouldn't drink [in giant signs behind the counter as if the area was dealing with some kind of epidemic of bad-choice-making from the younger crowds] and +1 for being a place to which we will most definitely return [especially now that we know that one is planned for our hometown of Ft Lauderdale])

TroyScore:  46.5 out of 50 -- aka 93, an A

Random Taste for Thursday 3/2/17

And so it continues ... a brand new set of tastes for 2017 ...

 here's the EIGHTH of FIFTY tastes of FLORIDA 

(coming to you on sequential Thursdays.  All.  Year.  Long.)!

Establishment:  Maggiano's Little Italy 
Location:  Boca Raton
Meal:  Dinner
Drink:  Coca-Cola
Appetizer:  Warm Rolls (and half a plate of butter)
Main:  Steak and Ravioli
Beef medallions and mushroom ravioli al forno
Side(s):  Grilled Asparagus and Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Dessert:  n/a
Server:   Sarah
Website:  http://www.maggianos.com/
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/MLIBoca/

The one who makes the rules is also the one who gets to break the rules (and don't worry ... this isn't a political post).  When this series kicked off at the beginning of 2016, the rules were "one NEW place (at which I've never before eaten) each week (each year)".  Moving here from Chicago as we did, it is true that there was at least one other time when we dined at a place named Maggiano's (in Skokie) ... and it's also true that we were very familiar with the Lettuce Entertain You culinary empire (as anyone who has eaten out in Chicago must be).  What we didn't appreciate was how far across the country they had expanded ... so when we were the lucky recipients of a gift card from someone with a Chicago connection and we went looking as to where we could use it down here, we were surprised to see an option for Maggiano's up in Boca.  Long story short ... we're going to get a "dispensation" from the rules and we're going to qualify it for this series and we're going to document how it earned the Troy-score below (and how it became the highest scoring Italian establishment so far in this series):

AMBIANCE:   8/10 (without a doubt, it's a great big beautiful space, with a stylish bar directly in the center and several well appointed spaces/rooms all around it -- and we got there at the beginning of the dinner rush, so by the time we left the place was packed with a good number of large sized groups [living up to the Italian family stereotype] ... the problem [and the reason for the docking of *double* the points] was the loud table of young ladies taking a break from working the streets [or so it seemed by their appearance] that was gathered two spaces behind us as seen in the background of the accompanying photo -- and although it's not the restaurant's job to control their rowdy customers [especially those with a cackling "look at me" hyena laugh], all signs pointed to those noise-violators as being family members of the staff OR staff members themselves because the servers were hanging there instead of serving)

FOOD:           9/10 (I always love me a dining experience that starts with an overflowing basket of warm bread and when it came to the main meal, everything was delicious that I ordered -- from the steak medallions with the crunchy onions on top to those creamy ravioli "baked in the oven" [aka al forno] ... the point lost is directly linked to the four pats of butter served with the rolls [and captured in that photo] as I was unaware of any butter ration and we had five people in our party to devour that pile of scrumptious warm bread so four little pats were definitely not sufficient)

SERVICE:      8/10 (I felt a little sorry for our server Sarah, because any friendly expertise she was exhibiting was overshadowed by two rude food deliverers, for whom dropping off the meals at our table of five was clearly a task in which they wished to no longer be involved, and by the table at which we were seated being without a pepper mill, for which we went on a mission to claim it from another spot)

BACON:         9/10 (just because the special I ordered didn't include bacon doesn't mean there weren't plenty of opportunities to have it featured in many different ways on the menu [and for those of you who get caught up in double negatives, that means bacon was everywhere] ... and it wasn't just any bacon but an "imported"-from-Wisconsin Nueske's bacon that could have been wrapped around shrimp or served on a bruschetta or added to the carbonara ... all that said, it was disappointing that the crispy pancetta "flakes" on a salad ordered by another person in our party were either too crispy or too tiny as we were all but convinced they were artificial, which explains the deduction of one point in this category)

BONUS:         10/10 (+3 for us arriving there and getting a parking spot just a few minutes before they closed down the lot for valet only parking, +3 for an interesting bogo concept where you could order two pasta dishes -- one to eat at the meal and a second complete one to take home for lunch the next day, +3 for using the asparagus as a dam to separate the steak sauce from the ravioli sauce on my plate, which warmed my heart as I don't always like things touching and +1 for being a place to which we will most definitely return so long as we are up in that area so that I can order more menu items that come with that bacon)

TroyScore:  44 out of 50 -- aka 88, a B