New menu tasting party

With the end of the hectic movie season and Fantastic Fest we usually take a little time to make some adjustments to our menu and try some new dishes.

Today our excellent chefs John Bullington, Trish Eichelberger and Elijah Horgan prepared several new dishes for consideration in the new menus. All of us here have radically different dietary preferences. For example, I am the only vegetarian, Zack refuses to eat vegetables, Henri only eats foods that glow in the dark and Tim and Karrie are obsessed with good food. They will drive hundreds of miles out of their way to check out a good home-cooking joint. So I think together with all the managers, many from restaurant backgrounds, and kitchen support staff we constituted a decent sample of our audience at large.

The first thing I tasted was Trish's macaroni and cheese. I hadn't had macaroni and cheese in a while and of course it was that stuff from the box so it was like a revelation. Baked in a casserole with real cheese and a breadcrumb crust that was just perfectly toasted and flaky. It hit the spot like an astronaut.

Then there was John's Vegetarian Lasagna. I was expecting it to be a lot like the manicotti dishes we have offered before but it is a much more vegetable intensive lasagna than I've ever had before. The vegetables were all fresh and they weren't baked to a gooey mess at all. Chalk up another one for vegetable goodness.

I wasn't all that into the spinach and black bean egg-roll looking things. I'm not a black beans kind of guy though.

There were some amazing tofu vegetable wraps that are kind of like the wraps at Baby Greens but the tofu is baked or fried or something with this delicate crust that gives it just a slightly crunchy texture. It was the top winner for me. I'm not on a diet or anything I just like the convenience of a sandwich and the saladness of a salad. I promise I am a rough, tough manly man. I just like wraps OK?!

The heartless meat-loving bastards also ate something called a shepherd's pie, which looked like kind of a mess but was apparently beyond delicious and very good with a stout or porter, or so they say.

Pretty likely we'll see a few of these items on the upcoming theater menus within a month or so. I know I'll eat the hell out of that tofu thingy if it makes the cut.