RTP-area local music and culture

[grady <grady AT ibiblio.org>]

kevin maxwell farmer wrote:

> as a general rule, i'm always willing to pay a little extra for food
> made by someone passionate about the craft. i mean, jeez, ross, $9 to
> support the very fine efforts of somebody whose mind practically jumps
> right out of their face talking about duck pastrami? where else you
> gonna find that?

I wholeheartedly agree with you, but since the Mad Scientist of Meat 
presumably generally remains somewhere in the back of the house curing 
ducks, the face-to-average-customer of the place is "loud, 
intermittently-smoky and temperature-unregulated tavern," not "here's my 
brain, let's talk about meat!"

Hence my earlier skepticism. Perhaps the new menu comes with more 
precise keywords to attract the foodies (one thing I've learned in my 
recent travels is that the old set of keywords has definitely been 
bastardized beyond all usefulness by dilettantes and/or persons simply 
not up the the task of delivery) and/or a little flipbook animation of 
Andy ranting about pork?

And, to answer your somewhat rhetorical question, The Barbeque Joint, 
assuming you can actually make it there at a time when sullen mophead 
boy isn't manning the register. ;-)

Before this converts into an inadvertent pile-on, let me state again in 
simpler language [oops, well, nevermind the 'simpler' part] the following:
1) Federal's beer selection alone makes it stop-of-choice when looking 
to curl up with a pint in downtown Durham, and I applaud them for it.
2) Federal's food, while heretofore of anonymous origin, has always 
gotten raves from Durhamites, and I have actually *not* generally 
applied the Durhamite-rave-discount to them, even.
3) I have never eaten a meal prepared by Andy Magowan that was anything 
short of delicious, and this includes his stints working in the kitchen 
at one hippie-supermarket or another, where he was hampered by a variety 
of factors, including said market's unstated goal of omitting all salt 
and making everything taste the same.
4) Not my fault that in the first X months of its existence, most/all of 
the ranting about the joint from Durhamites has been of the "finally, a 
place for us!" variety, and not specifically about the food.

xo

Ross