Cooking For Engineers

[Dilbert]

Primanti Brothers - burgers over-piled with stuff . . . recently opened a restaurant in our area - so we went in.

This chain is famous for piling coleslaw and french fries on the conventional burger / burger-like-construction of other meats and combos . . . with cheese, optionally with a fried egg layered in as well. double meat available....

I can readily understand their sandwiches will appeal to the starving teenager crowd. At roughly $8 a plate, it's an apparent value.

For the grown up crowd, it is less appealing - frankly, it's a mess to eat. Be sure to ask for a fork when you order.

We had a cocktail, appetizer of gigantic onion rings, we each tried the signature Pitts-Burger.

The cocktails were horribly anemic - I understand the need for fooderies to control their pour, but half- or quarter- pours are really not entertaining. Stick with the beer; hard to mess that up. The Manhattan straight-up was served in a tumbler. Wonder how they serve a martini?

The onion rings arrived about 30 seconds before the sandwiches. So much for the appetizer theory. The breading was nice and crisp, properly cooked/deep fried. Regrets, the breading is spiced up past comfortable with (seemed to me) cayenne pepper. The (no choice) dipping sauce was strongly vinegar based and generally non-edible. We left more than half on the table untouched.

The sandwich coleslaw is also vinegar based vs. mayo / creamy type dressing. It's a refreshing change up, but not everyone will like it. There is a lot of it on the sandwich - you'll need the fork to shovel some of it off so you can eat the thing.

The french fries were remarkably unremarkable - especially as buried in the sandwich.

As I finished up the burger - served between slices of bread (not a roll) - I realized my teeth were chock-a-block full of gristle and sinew from the hamburger patty. Extremely unpleasant.

The bread was very good.

Primanti also serves plain old burgers, pizza, wings and a minor assortment of salads/other.

I will not be reporting on those; this eatery has been stricken from our list.....