Brushing up against fame at the Good Stuff Eatery
This past weekend on the night of my birthday (Woohoo, another year closer to death!), I joined in on an expedition to a new restaurant in Washington D.C., the Good Stuff Eatery. The friend that I went with is a local food review blogger and pretty thoroughly covered the food, so I shall cover the experience.
Coincidentally, a day before we headed to the Good Stuff Eatery, I was listening to Elliott in the Morning, a local radio morning show. Elliott was interviewing Spike Mendelsohn, a contestant from Top Chef who was opening up a burger joint in the local area. Lo and behold, the mentioned burger joint and the Good Stuff Eatery are one and the same, so I already knew a bit about the place before we went there. In particular I knew that I wanted to try the Blazin’ Barn Burger, which is inspired by the Vietnamese banh mi submarine sandwich. At work we get banh mis fairly often and they’re very good — think of a normal sub, but with pickled vegetables, jalapeno peppers, seasoning, and different sauces.
The Good Stuff Eatery was crowded, as one might reasonably expect for the opening weekend of a restaurant created by a celebrity chef. An old guy was managing the line outside the door (after which you had to wait in another line to order food). And, on a rather significant note to the two Top Chef fangirls who were amongst our number, Spike was there behind the counter, packing hamburgers into bags and chatting with customers.
I’d never heard of him before the Elliott in the Morning interview, so I didn’t develop a sudden outbreak of shyness like my friend over from The DC Dish. She was at first too afraid to even talk to him, and had me take a covert picture of him (which she didn’t put up on the blog, I see!). Meanwhile, I was chatting with him about the music selection in the restaurant, which was quite good — in the time I was waiting in line I heard Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here and some other classic rock. He revealed to me the secret of his music: the classic rock station on XM satellite radio.
This brings me to an interesting point: fame is situational. If you are well aware of someone who is famous, it is a Big Deal when you actually meet them. If you haven’t really heard of them before, it’s not a big deal. The awe factor of meeting someone famous comes directly from hearing about them repeatedly, coverage in the media, appearances in television shows, by reading their novels, whatever. If you merely hear that someone is famous without any reinforcement to back that up (as it were), it doesn’t affect you. So I didn’t feel a sudden outbreak of nerves when talking to a guy I’d just heard of a day prior, but the two fangirls who had seen a whole season of him on Top Chef understandably felt a bit different about it. Now if we were to run across, say, Neil de Grasse Tyson, I bet our roles would be reversed. But I return to the restaurant.
My shy friend eventually wanted to take her own picture of Spike, but Spike said he’d only pose for a picture if she came behind the counter and posed with him. I even offered to take the photo, but she refused! What a missed opportunity. Luckily, the other fangirl with us dared to go behind the counter with him and so we took the photo of the two of them, right behind the meal preparation area and in front of the grill. Judging from the smile on Spike’s face, I’d say he was enjoying it; after all, what’s not to like about taking a picture with a cute fawning fellow redhead?
As for the Blazin’ Barn hamburger that I ordered? It was gristly and unevenly cooked! Everyone else’s burgers looked really good, but something was simply wrong with mine. It managed to taste good in spite of that, but parts of it were alarmingly pink (I’m not one who typically eats undercooked hamburger meat), and the gristle was very strange. I don’t know what grade of meat they were using, but they could’ve gone one or two letters higher. Still, I would recommend the restaurant. The prices are reasonable considering what you’re getting, and I’m hoping that they manage to iron out their consistency problems (no one else in our party got a bad burger). I’m going to put it down as a result of an exceptionally busy and harried opening weekend.
Next time I go there, I’m definitely getting Spike’s Five Napkin Burger. The Blazin’ Barn burger was good, but the other guy with us got the five napkin one, and I was positively salivating over it. It used a special hamburger bun that was even more delicious than the one mine came with, and it has a whole fried egg on it. Yum. If you’re in the D.C. area, check this place out; if you’re not, but you ever come visiting, ditto.
July 15th, 2008 at 22:13
That “old guy” was his dad, I believe.
July 16th, 2008 at 10:12
Too bad your burger wasn’t so good; maybe if I find myself in that area I’ll try the place, but there are so many good restaurants in & around Annapolis that I don’t tend to look elsewhere for the most part. :)