Those Funny Food Critics

I'm back from my business trip to Leesburg, Virginia and I return with the knowledge that even the occasional snooty food critic likes to play a good joke every now and again. If you've never been to Leesburg it is one of those places that grows on an exponential basis. When they put in a new road going anywhere (and I mean anywhere) it is always a four lane with a median because they know that in another year it will be flooded with budding new commerce and strips of ridiculously over-priced townhouses. Leesburg is the type of place where people get their houses appraised every year just because they want to and they don't go out and buy new cars, they order them over the Internet and have them delivered to their homes. Personally, I love to visit the place because I get plenty of interesting restaurant choices. Last year, I went to the Tuscarora Mill and could not have been happier with the food. However, this year I had to dine alone and the Mill really wasn't a place where you felt good about yourself eating alone. So I went online and found a few places but I quickly narrowed it down to Johnson's Charcoal Beef House because it had better reviews than any other restaurant. The Washington Post put it on it's recommended list and the Observer Online had nothing but good things to say. It seemed Johnson's Charcoal Beef House had it all: local flare, small diner appeal, and great food. Plus it was pretty close to the hotel.

The first thing I noticed when I pulled up to the place was that they had actually changed the named to Johnson's Charcoal Beef House & Crab. I didn't really know what to make of taking a name with such local history and sticking "& Crab" to the end of it but I did get an odd feeling in the pit of my stomache. Two minutes later, I entered the establishment and my very first instinct was to leave but I couldn't as every eye in the place was on me. Most of the patrons were over the age of seventy and appeared to still be living through The Great Depression while the others had a look of almost desperation in their eyes. I could tell that a few of the children had been recently crying. Johnson's Beef House had the sort of "local appeal" you can only find in a really bad cult right before they all put on their purple shoes and drink the special lemonade. But as awkward as it would feel to eat there, it would feel even more awkward to leave so I slowly walked up to the bar and took a seat. A few seconds later I was greeted by what appeared to be a hobo just coming off of a good drunk. I learned quickly that he was my waiter as he did all of the waitery stuff by polishing the counter with a greasy rag before handing me a glass of water that had been sitting beside the coffee behind him. I thought that was quite charming as I kindly pushed the water away. The menu was an old plastic menu that somebody had hot-glued inside of a heavily-padded brown binder that I think the hobo pilfered from one of the garbage bins out back. Still, I was optimistic as the worse the place looked the better the food was going to be because what other reason would patrons keep coming to Johnson's when there were literally a hundred new restaurants going up every second? As I looked over the menu I remembered the Chronice critic mentioning that Johnson's signature, or most popular, steak was the porterhouse and so I figured I couldn't go wrong with that choice (in retrospect, I should have paid attention that he--the critic--ordered the "& Crab" and avoided the steak). As I waited for my steak I tried to take in the diner, hoping that maybe I would start to get a feel for it's history and charm. Maybe they would have a picture of some famous person who had dined there in it's rich past or an award from where they might have won some sort of steak grilling competition. But there were no pictures or awards on the walls, there were just guns, guns, and more guns. I started to wonder why a diner would be full of so many guns but just then I noticed an old man in the corner booth eyeballing me over his paper. I didn't like his stare, it was suggestively violent. I turned my eyes from the gun-laden walls and returned them to the task of pretending to read the two-day old copy of the USA Today's Sports section until my steak arrived. A few minutes later I got my steak and I was quite pleased. It looked about as delicious as a steak could look. I quickly took a bite and realized that Johnson's Charcoal Beef House must age their aged beef in an entirely different manner than any other beef house on the planet. You see, where as most slaughter the cow and then age the beef in order to better bring out the tenderness and taste, at Johnson's they age the beef while it is still in the cow! That is not easy to do becuase by my estimation, my porterhouse probably came from a cow that had been roughly sixty three years old when it was slaughtered or "finally taken off of the ventilator," as I like to put it. Getting a cow to live that long is nearly impossible and doing it time in and time out....well, you just never hear of such a thing. After about two bites and a complete lack of any steak sauce to help me get enough courage to take down another mouthful, I packed my steak into a to-go box, paid the hobo, and promptly left. I spent the remainer of the evening laying on my hotel bed as my empty belly grumbled and my brain toiled with ideas on how best to get back at that bastard at the Observer. I haven't thought of anything yet but I have a barely eaten porterhouse in my fridge that is just full of possibilities.