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A FOOD COLUMN BY GARY KAUPMAN
Where have all the homos gone? It’s been
years since I’ve eaten at The Country Place
(in Colony Square; 881-0144), but I’d swear
that the place used to be packed with queers,
especially at brunch. I know that this place is
loaded with memories for me: of an ex-boy
friend who craved the steaks and ice cream
pie; of a friend, now moved elsewhere, who
worked there and regularly used his credits to
treat us to bowls of pasta Milano; and of an
other friend, now dead, who craved the onion
soup and fried rolls as much as life itself.
But times have changed, and so has the
way I eat. Just the thought of a bowl of that
cheese drenched onion soup and a basket of
those greasy yeasty rolls is enough to make
my arteries ache.
But The Country Place has changed, too.
There’s new decor, though so little altered
that old friends will hardly be able to com
plain unless it is that, at prices like these, one
really deserves a white table cloth. And there
is a new menu, sporting differences more radical
than those in the decor, but hanging on to a
few of the old faves like the aforementioned
onion soup and fried rolls.
The two most visible changes are that the
host now introduces you to your waiter, rather
than the waiter assaulting you with, “Hi, I’m
Roquefort....” (Those mostly male waiters now
also wear jeans, about which you’ll get no
grief from this comer). And the chalkboard
menus, along with that horrid droning recita
tion of the day’s fare, are gone—replaced by a
laser printed list of offerings with nary a bowl
of grits in sight.
A friend and I tried brunch recently, and
although I’ve got some reservations, I think
it’s fair to say that if you like Peasant food and
if you liked the old Country Place, you’ll be
pretty well pleased with the new one.
In line with current trendiferousness, the
menu is equally divided between lighter sand
wiches and salads and more traditional en
trees saturated with fat, sugar and calories.
Among the former: an organic field green salad
with balsamic vinaigrette, a grilled tuna sand
wich on focaccia and an Asian chicken salad.
For those who don’t have to worry about fat,
there are poached eggs with andouillc sau
sage, peppers, onions and tomatoes on fried
potatoes with Cheddar and mozzarella. Or
poached eggs atop crab cakes, slathered with
Hollandaisc and a frittata packed with bacon
and Swiss cheese.
There arc also a couple of new soups. A
robust dill-laced fish broth full of fresh salmon
and sprinkled with com is satisfying as well as
easy on the eyes and the diet. Offered in com
bination with the field green salad, it’s a more
than decent way to feel well fed and self-
righteous about your eating habits all at the
same time. Red bean soup is less radical than
the salmon broth; imagine a bowl of so-so
chili mn through a blender and you’ve got the
picture. Decent, but not very original.
More fun by half is a grilled chicken breast
sandwich (on focaccia), dressed with strips of
grilled pablano peppers, grilled onions and
Cheddar and Monterey Jack cheese. Again,
nothing terribly original, but the flavors all
marry very well and the portion is filling. I’ve
got qualms about shelling out $9 for a gussied
up variation of what sells for $7.25 at Mick’s,
especially when the accompanying black bean
salad is no where near as tasty as the pasta
salad or French fries that come with the grilled
bird sandwiches in those restaurants.
A “hickory” grilled salad is pretty tasty,
too. Mostly courant veggies (a baby artichoke,
a portobello mushroom, red and green pep
pers, red onions and a fat flower of broccoli)
surround a heap of lemony cous-cous gar
nished with a Montrachet-like cheese. The pre
sentation is mighty pretty, and the smoky fla-
CONTINUED ON PAGE 38
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