Taco Tuesday #1: Blue Rooster Food Company

Time: 2:30
Hunger Sauce Levels: [8.5]
Destination: Blue Rooster Food Company

Whattup everybody. Welcome to the first edition of Taco Tuesday, a culinary adventure throughout my general locale, currently the city of Portland, Maine, where I go and review food the way it should be reviewed, through engorging on far more than any one person should in a sitting, then reporting the nitty-gritty details back here so you can make an informed decision of where you want to go eat at 130 am on a Friday night (Saturday morning?) nahmean. Since this is the first posting of Taco Tuesday, I figured we'd start at one of my favorite spots in town, Blue Rooster Food Company. Blue Rooster bruh. Blue Rooster has a little something for everybody from freshly made hungryboy sandwiches, variously accoutrements sprinkled on top of some naturally cased dawgs, and specialty tater tots. The type of tots that Napoleon Dynamite stuffed into his cargo pants zippered pocket 'namsayin. Toss in their house sides of fried cauliflower and brussel sprouts (if you don't like these you should stop reading this until I move because son, Portland's got a sprouts fetish), and you've got a decent meal ahead of you. Did I mention that they also serve home-brewed iced tea and lemonade? Spoiler Alert: They have home-brewed iced tea and lemonade. You're welcome. All of these options, and none of the sandwiches or dawgs cost more than $10, which in my (financial) stash is a big win, and should be enough to tip the scales for you if you were worried that this was another spot solely for extorting the tourists meandering through the Old Port.

this what this place looks like b

Before we get to what I ate (which was delicious), I'll paint the scene for you: it was finally the first days of actually spring in Portland, not one of these single days of high-50s temperatures followed by a snow dusting, but legitimately spring weather. Sun's out, high pressure system making sure the only clouds that can be seen are big, puffy sheep-looking cumulus motherfuckers that everyone enjoys; people have started creeping out their security chain-locked doors to learn whether or not it's safe for us to be outdoors without irreparable damage to their insides. I stroll into Blue Rooster sporting a roiling stomach so loud that people stared; enjoying the simple decorations of a blue cock doing various activities such as jumping rope, riding a bike, or lounging in a hammock; ready for whatever would be placed in front of me. 

See, I told you it was good enough to eat. I did it.

Today's menu included the Das Boot dawg; a hot dawg wrapped in bacon, with a touch of celery salt, and sporting sauerkraut and spicy brown mustard on top. This dawg, yo. I've never eaten something so phallus-like so quickly in my entire life except that time I bought a box of Lick-a-Color ice pops on an April, 20th a few years back. Just like a Reuben sandwich, Das Boot's ingredients (sans bacon & hot dog) are almost inedible apart; combined they transform your taste buds into the crowd watching the closing Run The Jewels set from Coachella, which is also a never before heard song. So yeah. This dawg is good. To pair with this dirty, dirty dawg I enlisted some health and wellness into my meal by getting a side of brussel sprouts, then ordered the chefs to deep fry them, toss them in Caesar dressing & parmesan cheese, put a lemon wedge on the side, and top it all off in pangritata just so I would stay regular 'nahmean. For all of those who are too lazy to google what the fuck pangritata is, I've done it for you, and it is literally "poor man's parmesan." Pangritata is one of the only foods still in existence that reminds the eater of their socioeconomic situation in the name, and by reading the ingredients, I think that even the name is a little overboard. Take some bread crumbs, douse them in garlic and 'herbs' (probably plague rat leftovers...or whatever you can get with WIC these days), and then deep fry it until it tastes like what a poor person thinks a rich person eats. Boom. Pangritata. Mic drop. Since I wanted to avoid being too healthy, I balanced all the latent nutrition in the brussel sprouts by getting the other house-special: the tater tots...or more specifically, it was the Tot-tine, Blue Rooster's take on poutine, but instead of french fries, we have tater tots...see how that happened? But to just describe it as "poutine with tots *YAWNNNN*" would do this Canadian diet-staple a grave...y injustice. See what I did there? These tots are fried to perfection - I never once detected a cold spot anywhere in my tots - adding a liberal splash of housemade gravy (an aside: the amount of restaurants that don't make their own gravies truly baffles me...it's the natural juices that are getting leaked out of whatever you're cooking...why buy it in a can? blech get your head out of your sous chef's ass bruh) and then checkering the rest of the plate with local Pineland Farms cheese curds. It was a viscous, creamy cardboard boat of food, and I loved it.

this is the prettiest it's going to look...before the fate pictured above...

The food is arguably not even the best part about this. Just like ISIS' motto is "Location, Location, Location" the proprietors of Blue Rooster felt similar. Not that they needed to senselessly murder the surrounding population of their restaurant for being culinary infidels, but they chose a damn good spot to be open for late nights on Friday and Saturday; adjacent to Amigo's Family Restaurant and Tavern. Think of it, you can meet the love of your life at Amigos while enjoying some flat PBR draughts, pound 2 more once last call happens, then topple out the door, make two rights, and you will shortly be gormandizing with carbs galore, staving off the incoming hangover you'll undoubtedly have the next morning.

4/5 thumbs up