Steak, SeafoodVero Beach, FL1 photo
Cooper's Chop House, Vero Beach:
Filed from my office chair somewhere in Indian River County by Hambone McGillicuddy, who has just eaten a double-cut lamb chop and has some things to say about a pet owner.
Here is how the evening began. My wife Mrs McGillicuddy, our children, and I decided at 7 PM on a Saturday during Snowbird Season in Vero Beach we should go out to dinner. We tried one place — full. Tried another — full. Tried a third — "we can seat you at nine-fifteen, sir." Reader, my children's blood sugar does not operate on a nine-fifteen schedule. My wife's patience does not operate on a nine-fifteen schedule. And so, having exhausted our options and most of our goodwill, we pointed the car toward Royal Palm Pointe and landed at a place called Cooper's Chop House and Seafood.
Before I go any further I need to address the sign. Cooper's Chop House. There is a dog on the sign. A dog head, more precisely. I am not here to tell a man how to run his restaurant, but a casual reader might conclude, as my eight-year-old did aloud and with genuine concern, that the establishment serves dog. I am pleased to report that they do not serve dog. They serve cow, sheep, fish, and assorted vegetables, all of which are prepared with considerable skill, but no dog. I would like this clarified on the signage. I would also like it noted that I am not the first person to make this joke and I will not be the last.
Now. A brief word for the Vero Beach historians in the audience, of whom I am one, if "historian" is a word we are applying generously. The building at 30 Royal Palm Pointe has been a sit-down restaurant since sometime in the Reagan administration. Old-timers will remember it as Bergen's. For more than twenty years after that, it was Mr. Manatee's, a casual island-themed grille that closed in 2023 when the owner retired. Cooper's Chop House took over the space shortly after. That means this building has been continuously slinging seafood and steaks for better than thirty-five years, which in Florida makes it functionally a historical landmark, which in turn is the only reasonable explanation for the fact that THEY HAVE NEVER REMODELED THE SEATING. I am not complaining. I am observing. The benches in that dining room have been there long enough to know your grandfather by name. The booths have opinions about the Iran-Contra affair. There is something comforting about a dining room that has not been focus-grouped to death, and something deeply Floridian about a restaurant that changes owners and concepts every decade or so without anyone bothering to update the furniture.
The food, friends, was very good. I ordered the double-cut lamb chops and a salad, and the lamb arrived pink in the middle and charred properly on the outside, which is how God intended. The salad was a salad, which is to say I ate it because a man of fifty must eat salads now. Mrs M ordered the salmon, and Mrs M is a woman who has opinions about salmon, and Mrs M was pleased. The kids — and I say this as the father of children who once ordered a hotdog at an Asian restaurant — had steak, regular fries, truffle fries, and macaroni and cheese, and there were no leftovers. The macaroni did not survive long enough to be photographed. The truffle fries had one child declaring to the table, I quote, "these are the best french fries of my ENTIRE LIFE," which at her age is a serious claim though admittedly not a long sample size.
Service was attentive without hovering. The waitstaff answered questions, brought refills, made eye contact with my children like they were actual people. The manager drifted by to check on us. The kitchen moved quick. For a restaurant that inherited a fifty-year-old dining room and a four-decade reputation for casual island seafood, Cooper's has repositioned the place into a legitimate chop house without losing the "we are in Florida and we are not going to pretend otherwise" energy. I would come back. I will come back. I would in fact come back TOMORROW if my family weren't already discussing Publix subs for the ride home.
And now. A personal matter.
There was a dog parked outside the front door of Cooper's. An actual, literal, four-legged dog, tied to a post directly beneath the signage that features a cartoon dog. Cute little thing. Scraggly. The kind of dog that looks like it has stories. As we approached, my daughter, a known and unrepentant dog-petter, reached out a hand, at which point the owner — seated twelve feet away, sipping something fruit-colored — said, and I am paraphrasing gently, "Don't pet her. It makes her bark."
Sir. SIR. You have brought an un-pettable dog to a restaurant with a dog on the sign and positioned her in front of the only entrance like a furry tollbooth operator. What was your plan here. What was the vision. Was the goal simply to greet, with mild contempt, every customer at a dog restaurant. Upon approaching your untamed beast you then shame man, woman and children alike who approached your barking problem? Because if so, congratulations, you expertly executed your ruse. My eldest daughter pulled her hand back with caution and a glare and we traversed back to the car.
I would like to register for the public record that this is not how one does a dog at a restaurant. I hope your key lime pie was dry. I hope your golf cart gets a flat on the way home.
Otherwise, Cooper's: four out of five gilded arches. Strong recommend if you, like me, find yourselves shut out of every other place in town on a Saturday night in season. Bring the kids. Bring your wife. Don't bring a dog you don't want petted.
Hambone out.
Cooper's Chop House and Seafood. 30 Royal Palm Pointe, Vero Beach, FL 32960. Phone (772) 907-5771. Open daily 11 AM to 9 PM. The sign features a dog. They do not serve dog.
BBQ, Mac&CheeseAsheville, NC2 photos
Reconnaissance Report: Because I Ain't Been Yet
Filed from a hotel room in Asheville by Eggtoots McStank, who did NOT eat at Daddy Mac's on this trip — a failure I blame on a late flight, a short nap that became a long nap, and the questionable decision to eat a gas-station hot dog at three in the afternoon — but who has, instead, spent the better part of an evening doing a review of the reviews.
Here's the setup. I kept hearing about this place. A woman at the car rental counter mentioned it. A guy at the brewery brought it up unprompted. A gentleman in line at the bathroom at the Biltmore said, and I quote him loosely, that if I did not eat at Daddy Mac's Down Home Dive I might as well drive home and take up a new hobby. Possibly pickleball. And yet, through a combination of poor planning and the aforementioned hot dog, I did not make it. I am filing this dispatch as an act of contrition.
Rather than lie to you and pretend I ate the burnt ends mac, I have instead done what any responsible critic would do: I have read every review I could find on Google, Yelp, Tripadvisor, DoorDash, and three blogs run by women named Blair. I have synthesized. I have triangulated. I have prepared, for you and for me, a briefing document that will be my north star when I return to Asheville for what I am already calling The Daddy Mac Expedition.
The stats. Four point six stars on Google, across three thousand one hundred and ninety-five reviews. Reader, that number is unnatural. That is a score you see at places with ninety reviews, not three thousand. Three thousand is enough reviews to regress to the mean of mediocrity, and Daddy Mac's has refused. Refused. The address is 161 Biltmore Avenue, downtown. The place has its own parking lot, which in downtown Asheville is roughly equivalent to owning oceanfront property. Owned by a man named Dave McFarland. Built on the recipes of his four grandparents, which the restaurant itself, with no apparent embarrassment, describes as "steeped in family tradition and pickle juice." That is the best tagline I have read all year, and I have read many taglines. The Asheville location opened in October 2021 — their second location, after Farragut, Tennessee, which means Asheville got the beta version ironed out. Open until midnight Sunday through Thursday, and one in the morning Friday and Saturday. In a town where the good kitchens shut at 9 like a Baptist's liquor cabinet.
Now let me walk you through what the people say. The Burnt Ends Mac. Writer after writer, cross-platform, the name keeps coming up like a rumor in a small town. Macaroni. White queso. Brisket burnt ends. Pimento cheese. Pickles. Cheerwine BBQ sauce. A crust made of crushed BBQ kettle chips. Friends, I did not know I needed this dish until I read about it eleven times in a row, and now I feel like a man who has been denied a crucial early vaccine.
The Bar-B-Cue-Terie Board. A portmanteau that should not work and somehow does. Wings, pulled pork, brisket, baked beans, coleslaw, potato salad, collards, homemade pickles. One reviewer reported needing a nap immediately afterward. This is the review I trust most, because a post-meal nap is the highest possible endorsement of a meat-heavy board.
The staff. I have never seen a restaurant get its servers named by first name this consistently. Logan. Mindy. Kelly R. Ellie. Gabe. A manager named Jason keeps showing up giving tourists local tips like he's a concierge with a meat thermometer. One server chased a woman into the parking lot to return the credit card she'd left behind. Another organized a wedding-party pickup like air traffic control. These folks are not messing around.
Other consensus favorites include the pimento cheese, the fried pickles, the Mac Daddy nachos, and the Nutter Butter Nana Pudding. The Nana Pudding has layers of crushed Nilla wafers, homemade banana pudding, whipped cream, and Nutter Butter cookies crumbled on top, and reading about it made me briefly forget my own address.
Now the complaints, because I will be fair and I will be thorough. One: the Burnt Ends Mac doesn't have enough burnt ends. Several reviewers feel the dish is called Burnt Ends Mac but is really Mac With Some Burnt Ends. Fair critique. Counter-argument: it still costs around twenty bucks and appears to feed two grown men. Two: the parking lot entrance is confusing. Apparently the driveway configuration has caused people to attempt curb-hopping maneuvers. I will be watching for this. Three: the live music is loud. One reviewer could not hold a conversation. Another reviewer considered this a feature. You will know which camp you're in.
And then there is the one negative review I cannot stop reading. A gentleman on Tripadvisor absolutely lit the place up. He said the brisket had the texture of a chuck roast. He said the pulled pork did not resemble any cut of a Boston Butt known to man. He said the beans tasted like they had been soaked, and I am paraphrasing gently, in dishwater. He signed off with a single declarative sentence that I will be thinking about for the rest of my natural life: "Typical Asheville in the 21st century." Reader, I do not know what is typical about Asheville in the 21st century, but I now desperately want to find out. This man should have his own column. I would read every word.
Now, the review that justifies the whole trip. One Tripadvisor reviewer noted, almost in passing, that while eating dinner at Daddy Mac's they watched a bear stroll by on the sidewalk outside. A bear. On the sidewalk. Outside the restaurant. I have eaten at approximately four thousand restaurants in my life, and I have seen exactly zero bears at any of them. If Daddy Mac's has a bear, I have no further questions.
Based on my exhaustive study, here is how the Daddy Mac Expedition will unfold. I will arrive around 6 PM on a Friday. I will be told there's a 25-minute wait, during which time I will order a bourbon at the bar and strike up a conversation with a local who will tell me about a better restaurant somewhere else, which I will ignore. I will order the Bar-B-Cue-Terie Board, one Burnt Ends Mac, and the fried pickles "just to have something to snack on." I will order the Nutter Butter Nana Pudding "for the table," which is what a man says when he intends to eat the entire thing himself. A bear will walk by. Probably.
The bottom line is provisional, pending actual consumption. I cannot in good conscience issue a star rating for a restaurant I have not eaten at. What I can say is this: if the reviews are even 60 percent accurate, Daddy Mac's Down Home Dive is the kind of place that justifies a return trip to Asheville all on its own. It is scratch-cooked. It is sports-friendly. It is family-friendly. It has fire pits on the patio. It is open late. It has a parking lot. It has, on at least one documented occasion, a bear.
Next trip. I eat at Daddy Mac's the night I arrive. No more hot dogs. No more long naps. I'll draft the itinerary myself.
Eggtoots out.
Chicken, Fast, Fries, Sweet TeaAsheville NC1 photo
An Eggtoots McStank dispatch, filed from a booth at the Chick-fil-A on Merrimon Avenue, Asheville, where a woman named Miss Darlene called me "sugar" and I nearly wept.
Now listen here, y'all. I have been to Chick-fil-As in parking lots from Sarasota to Scranton, and I am fixin' to tell you plainly: the Merrimon Avenue location, Asheville, North Car'liner, is operatin' on a different spiritual plane. I did not come here. I was called here. The double wraparound drive-thru line is not a line. It is a pilgrimage route.
Let us address the holy trinity, one by one.
I. The Sweet Tay
In these parts, it is not "tea." Ain't no such word. It is tay, and it is swate, and if you order it any other way a woman behind the counter will look at you like you asked for a garden salad at a tent revival. The tay here is poured over crushed ice in a cup the size of a flower vase. It is sweet enough to strip the enamel off a '72 Chevelle and twice as dangerous. You will drink it. You will feel the sugar enter your bloodstream like a freight train with no brakes. You will ask for a refill. They will smile and say "my pleasure," and they will mean it, which is the part that gets you.
II. The Waffle Fraahs
The waffle fraah — pronounce it right or don't pronounce it at all — is a feat of engineering the Pentagon could not replicate on a budget of twelve billion dollars. Crispy outside. Fluffy inside. Little holes for sauce retention. Friends, when I say these were hot, I mean I picked one up and dropped it back in the sleeve like a man handlin' a spark plug on a August afternoon. The Chick-fil-A sauce is a substance that should, by rights, require a federal permit. Honey, mustard, barbecue, and black magic in a ratio known only to a select few.
III. The Chickin'-Slingin', Church-Goin' Ladies of Chick-fil-A
And now, reader, we arrive at the matter.
I do not wish to overstate the case. I wish only to say, as a married man of fifty and a regular tither at my own small congregation back home, that there is a particular kind of Southern woman who works the front counter at a Chick-fil-A, and she is a wonder to behold. She has been up since five. She has already taught Sunday school, ironed her husband's good shirt, and prayed over three different casseroles. She remembers your order from last Tuesday. She calls you hon, sugar, baby, and honey-child — sometimes all four in a single transaction — and she does not mean a single one of them in a way that would trouble your mother. She means them in the way a mountain means a sunrise.
Her hair is in a bun. Her name tag says something like Miss Darlene or Miss Sue-Ellen or Miss Ruby-Jean. She is sixty-two years old and she moves behind that counter like a point guard in her prime. She calls out orders in a voice trained on a church choir and carried over forty years of hog-callin' at family reunions. When she hands you your bag, she looks you in the eye, and a young man of weaker constitution — I will speak plain — could be swept clean up in the glory of her eminence and find himself, by Wednesday next, standin' in the second row of the Merrimon Avenue Baptist choir, a hymnal in his hand and a casserole dish in the trunk of his car, havin' no clear recollection of how he arrived there but a powerful sense that things are, at long last, lookin' up.
I say this with reverence. I say this with my hat over my heart. I say this as a man whose waffle fraah basket was refilled without me havin' to ask. These women are the backbone of Western North Carolina and they are sellin' chicken sandwiches at a pace that would shame a Detroit assembly line. God bless every last one of 'em.
The Chicken Sandwich Itself
Oh. Right. The sandwich. Two pickles. Buttered bun. A chicken filet that snaps when you bite it. It is exactly what you know it to be, and that is the highest compliment I can pay a piece of food. Consistency, friends, is its own miracle.
Closed on Sundays
And I will remind you, as they will remind you, they are closed on Sundays. This is not negotiable. This is not a suggestion. If you want a waffle fraah on the Lord's Day in Asheville, you will need to take it up with a higher authority than the manager.
The Bottom Line
Five out of five gilded arches. Go hungry. Go humble. Order the number one meal, large, with a sweet tay. Tip the jar. Look Miss Darlene in the eye when she hands you the bag and say "thank you, ma'am," like your grandmother taught you. You will leave a better man than you came in.
Eggtoots out. 🐔⛪🍗
FastAsheville NC
An Eggtoots McStank dispatch, filed with ketchup-stained hands from the front seat of a rented Nissan, Biltmore Village, North Carolina.
Friends, fellow travelers, and assorted ne'er-do-wells — I have news from the front lines. The McDonald's at 35 Hendersonville Road, Asheville, is not a McDonald's. It is a manor house that happens to sling McNuggets. Half-timbered English Tudor exterior. The sort of joint where you half expect a butler named Reginald to bring you your Filet-O-Fish on a silver tray, and, reader, I am only barely exaggerating — a cheerful young woman brought my tray to the table on a rolling cart, asked after my wellbeing, and topped off my Diet Coke without being asked. A player piano was playing in the corner. A PLAYER PIANO. I nearly tipped it.
This is the closest Golden Arches to the Biltmore Estate, and the only fast-food establishment in America, as far as I can ascertain, with a sanitation rating of 99.5. Ninety-nine point five! My own kitchen does not rate a 99.5. This McDonald's would host a state dinner if asked.
But I did not come for the Tudor beams. I came for the demon hunters.
The HUNTR/X Meal: A Review in Four Movements
For those of you who have not been kidnapped by an eleven-year-old and forced to watch KPop Demon Hunters on Netflix four consecutive times, here is what you need to know: there is a girl group that fights demons, there is a demon boy band that fights back, and McDonald's has decided that all of this cross-promotes beautifully with deep-fried potato cylinders. I, for one, salute the audacity.
The Ramyeon McShaker Fries arrive in the classic red sleeve with a foil packet of seasoning you dump in and shake. Soy, garlic, sesame, a whisper of chili. Reader, I will tell you the truth: these taste like the fries you meant to have. The regular fry is a fine fry, a workmanlike fry, but the Ramyeon fry is a fry that has read a book. It has traveled. It has opinions about jazz.
The ten-piece McNuggets are, and I will not lie to you, ten-piece McNuggets. They are exactly what they have always been and God bless them for it. The upgrade is the sauce situation. The Hunter Sauce is a sweet chili with enough backbone that it does not slide off the nugget like syrup off a waffle, and the Demon Sauce — a mustard the exact purple of a bruise or a cartoon villain's cape — is genuinely surprising. There is heat. There is tang. I dipped, I reflected, I dipped again.
The "toy", such as it is, is a small pack of collectible photo cards (HUNTR/X on one meal, Saja Boys on the other) plus a Derpy access card with a QR code that unlocks app content. Is this a toy? No. Is it a piece of laminated cardstock that my kids fought over in the parking lot for eleven consecutive minutes? Yes. Verdict: functionally a toy.
The Derpy McFlurry, a limited-time soft serve with wild berry sauce and little popping berry pearls, is — and I say this as a man who has opinions about soft serve — properly good. The popping pearls are the move. They burst. They startle. They delight. My wife took one bite and narrowed her eyes at me, which is how she signals that something has exceeded expectations.
A Word On The Limited Window
The promo runs through Saturday, April 26. That is five days from the posting of this dispatch, which means if you are reading this from a couch in Peoria thinking eh, I'll get to it, you will not get to it. Get to it.
The Bottom Line
Would I drive across the country for this McDonald's? No. But if you are at the Biltmore — and if you are in Asheville for any length of time you will be at the Biltmore, it is the law — swing through the Tudor-arched drive-thru on your way out. Order the HUNTR/X Meal. Shake the shaker. Tip the piano.
The man at the next table was eating a Big Mac with a knife and fork. I did not stop him. Who am I to judge a man in his castle.
Eggtoots out. ⚔️🍟
