Wait! Mamma needs to talk to Grandma Nems

As a New Yorker transplanted into the Gump via the witness protection program, I am at odds with which perspective to present this review. Should I go NYC "in your face" or take the southern genteel position of “If you don’t have something nice to say, then keep your mouth closed.” Which? Well, the road goes on forever and the party never ends.

I received word of a meeting called and convened with Cornbread Carp, Catfish and Norm Peterson to visit a new Gump establishment: Mamma Nems, located in the abandoned former Cracker Barrel building on the very edge of West Waugh.

The meeting was to begin at high noon but Norm arrived a bit early to put in for swift seating. The only thing swift was watching potential patrons exit the building in frustration due to the seemingly unending wait for seating while many tables lay open. Thirty minutes after Norm's arrival we were finally seated, and subsequently ignored by the "wait" staff (pun intended). After 15 more minutes rolled off the clock, Carp and Catfish were forced to leave hungry to attend other scheduled engagements. Unbelievably, and to their southern credit, these two actually left tips for the persona non grata "wait" staff.

We were finally "waited" on following Norm's demands to an infrequent wayfaring staffer. Eager to order and beginning to feel lightheaded, I wanted to try a cup of the French onion soup but was informed that they were out of it. Puzzled, I looked up at the waitress and she responded, “well, umm, err, I don’t know why the soups are on the menu ‘cause we ain’t makin’ ‘em till we’re settled in.” I'm not sure what that meant, but certainly NO SOUP FOR YOU! Norm ordered a trifecta of vegetables only (small portion of corn muffin in tow), which he seemed to like. I ordered the meatloaf & mashed potatoes with a side of squash casserole.

Oh wait, something nice to say!: the squash was good.

Being an accomplished cook myself, I am not sure how one makes meatloaf tough, but mamma & nems have sure figured out how to prepare the toughest meatloaf I’ve ever seen or sampled. Mamma & nems can also save a few bucks by removing the salt & pepper shakers from the tables, in that you would have to be a gastronomical masochist to find cause to use them. OVER-seasoned is an UNDER-statement at Mamma Nems. That's all I have to say about that.

The waitress was nice enough to notice the extent to which we had been ignored and offered a fresh round of “go cup” drinks, free of charge. Politely, we declined. Norm was left to ponder the going rate for water to go.

As I am informed by qualified LITG members who are also restaurateurs of note, new "casual dining" restaurants typically assign 3 tables per server, then go to 4 after a month or so, and then the really good ones get 5, thus more tips. Since there are more than 50 tables in the former Cracker Barrel building, each server had 10 tables each. Oops, that won't work, so we just won't seat anybody. Which way did they go? Which way did they go? [gratuitous Foghorn Leghorn reference]

I would say Plan B would have been to herd all the standing cattle to the “to-go” buffet, but that would indicate they had a Plan A, which they did not, thus eliminating Plan B. The only thing I can think is that the other 20 "wait" staff were not actually present at Mamma Nem's, but at GrandMa Nems eating lunch.

As a final blog note, the absence of pictures is by design and out of respect to the readership. Someone also needs to warn Charlotte Gaston to stay away, as she would faint at first sight of the décor.

Lunch Bowl Championship Series System Explained

The Coveted Silver Lunch Bowl Trophy

Ed. Note: There have already been questions raised about the unfairness of the LBCS rankings. Should "The Wishbone Cafe" or "LaJolla" be eligible although they serve in an area of weak franchises known as West Shorter.  Is it fair that the established Gump areas such as No-Clo or Z-Red get preferences.  Is it fair to exclude restaurants from the Northern Territories of the River Region just because they are not in Gump County?  Is it for love of money?  Is it to protect the establishment?  Well, there is a method to the madness and here, such as it is, it is....C.N.A.

The Lunch Bowl Championship Series Standings are used for:

1. Determining the two restaurants that qualify to serve the LITG gang in the BCS Gump Championship Cookoff;

2. Determining any other automatic qualifiers; and

3. Establishing the pool of eligible lunch spots for at-large selection.

The LBCS Standings are released for two consecutive weeks each year, including the final Standings on Dec. 1. The Lunch in the Gump Foundation compiles and releases the Standings each week.

This year, the LBCS Standings will once again include three components: LITG US Today Readers Poll, The Montgomery Health Department Ratings Poll and an average of six computer rankings of various lunch reviewing sites such as Urban Spoon. Each component will count one-third of a restaurant's overall LBCS score in the LBCS Standings.

Ineligible For Lunch Consideration

On July 30, 2010, the LBCS announced that lunch disasters which are no longer available for lunch or have been shut down due to health hazards and the like will be removed from computer ratings for the purposes of determining the LBCS Standings. Shadow Pup shall provide a "sniff" test also.

Each of the six computer rankings providers have notified the LBCS group that ineligible lunch dives or health hazards will still be included in the individual computer rankings during the season to ensure the integrity of their data and in fairness to other active lunch spots. But, for the purpose of determining the LBCS Standings, ineligible health hazards will be removed from each computer ranking and all others below it moved up one position.

"Basically, we will take each computer ranking, remove the ineligible dives, and move all the places below the open position up one spot. It's fair, it's consistent, it's simple, and it's transparent," said Bidgood Bob,  Executive Director of the LBCS and CEO of the Irritable Bowel Foundation.

The average of the six computer rankings is one-third of the components of the LBCS Standings. The three components are averaged to create the Standings, which include only lunch spots that are still eligible (according to the Health Department) to serve lunch in the Gump.

The US Today Readers Poll and the Urban Spoon Interactive Food Review Poll said earlier this summer that their polls will not include those dives that are prohibited by the Health Department from serving food to humans or their pets.

The first and only LBCS Rankings for 2010 will be released December 1.
A breakdown of the ranking components:

I. Urban Spoon Interactive Reviews (1/3rd)

Replaces the Zagat Poll since no Gump eateries are rated on Zagats. The first poll will be released October 1, then weekly through December 1. A lunch spot's score in the Urban Spoon poll will be divided by 2,825,000 which is the maximum number of points any place can receive if all 51,113 voting members rank the same eatery as Number 1.

II. Reader's a/k/a "Gumpheads" Poll (1/3rd)

A lunch spot's score in the US Today poll will be divided by 1,475,000, which is the maximum number of points any team can receive if all 59,000 voting members rank the same team as Number 1. .

(Better understanding the polls: In both human polls, voting members fill out their own top 10 rankings ballot. Each team receives 1-10 points in reverse order of the way they are ranked. The 10th place team on each ballot receives 1 point, 9th place gets 2 points, 8th receives 3 points... first place receives 10 points. This inverse point order is also applied to the computer rankings.

In the Urban Spoon and Gumpheads Poll, a restaurant will be evaluated on the number of voting points it receives in each poll. The number of actual voters, which can vary, is figured into the computation on a weekly basis in stating each resturant's percentage of a possible perfect score.

III. Health Department rankings (1/3rd)

The health department's rankings percentage is calculated by dropping the highest and lowest ranking for each restaurant and then dividing the remaining total by 100, the maximum possible points.

Simplifying the formula

The percentage totals of the Urban Spoon Interactive Poll, Gumphead Poll, and the Health Department computer rankings are then averaged. The restaurants’ averages are ranked to produce the LBCS Standings.

A = Restaurant No. 1 in Urban Spoon Poll with all voters = 1.000

B = Same Restaurant is No. 1 in Gumphead Poll with all voters = 1.000

C = Same Restaurant is No. 3 in Health Department Rankings = 0.920

Result: (A+B+C)/3 = Total Score of 0.9733


No more than two restaurants operated by the same family may be selected, regardless of whether they are automatic qualifiers or at-large selections, unless two non-champions from the same family are ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in the final LBCS Standings.

If fewer than 10 restaurants are eligible for selection, then the LITG gang can select as an at-large restaurant any non-Gump restaurant with a Quizno's machine that is lunch bowl-eligible, has been reviewed at least nine times on a blog and is among the top 18 restaurants teams in the final Urban Spoon standings subject to the two-restaurant limit noted above and also subject to the following:


•1) if the health department rating is below 70, the place must be disinfected and

•(2) from the restaurants ranked 15-18, the LITG gang can select only a team from a location that has fewer than two restaurants within the same city block in the top 14.

Note: in order to participate in a LBCS cookoff, a restaurant

•(a) must be eligible to serve food to humans not confined to hospitals under the rules of the City of Montgomery Health Department and, if it not an independent local eatery, under the rules of its franchiser and

•(b) must not have imposed sanctions upon itself for unhealthy fare or for infractions of the rules of the Health Department or its franchise.

•(c) must not be sniffed out by Shadow Pup for a relative in the freezer.

US-TODAY 2010 LUNCH BOWL CHAMPIONSHIP OPEN FOR VOTING....

Best lunch in a bowl series.

Montgomery--The editors of LITG announced today that voting for the 2010 Best Lunch in the Gump poll is now underway.  Posters and fans of the World's No. 1 Blog on lunching within the confines of downtown Montgomery, Alabama, a/k/a "The Gump," are invited to submit their rankings of the top-ten places they have lunched in the Gump during 2010.  The votes will be tallied and published December 1, 2010, with much fanfare, pomp and circumstance.

Rules: (1) The nominee must serve lunch; (2) It must still be open; (3) It must be physically located within the Gump (see Glossary for definition); (4) The voter must have personally eaten there in 2010 and (5) the nominee must either have been reviewed at some point on the LITG blog and/or must not be a national chain restaurant (we do not like them).

How to vote: Please list as many as ten of your favorite places to have lunch in the Gump in order of preference. (For those of you from P-Vegas, this means your favorite should be listed as number 1 and you do not have to list 10 but you can't list more than 10).  Unlike in Perry County, you can vote only once. Also unlike Perry County, your votes will remain anonymous.

E-mail your list to Shadowpup@lunchinthegump.com on or before November 30, 2010.

Note: Do NOT send a list for best schnitzel or best Indian restaurant or best lunch under the Tojo line.  This is "Best Lunch in the Gump" regardless of cuisine, price or presence or absence of table cloths or metal cutlery. In other words, for you Stateys in the audience, the place you would go if you were on an unlimited expense account and had two hours for lunch.

The highest ranked eatery will receive the much coveted "Best Lunch of the Year" award from LITG and perhaps a visit by the entire LITG entourage if you are lucky (or you buy off the Carp---just kidding.  Do you read me FBI? SERIOUSLY, just kidding!).

Cecil Carp Hits Rock Bottom as Questions Continue....

(Finebaum Network)--As if highly acclaimed blogger Corn B. Carp did not have enough problems already, over the past week there have appeared highly trustworthy internet postings quoting annoymous sources and others who only contradict themselves every other day, that Corn B. Carp's father, the Rev. Cecil Newton Carp, was shopping great reviews from his son with at least one local sports bar in Montgomery: The Rock Bottom American Pub.

In what appears to be one of the finest examples of internet journalism, EFPN.COM (Eating Food Programming Network) reported that Cecil Carp had approached a friend of the owner of the Rock Bottom American Pub and said "It will take a lot more than a free lunch to get my son to write a favorable review of that dump." The source, who refused to be named, said the conversation was recorded and reported to the Federal Blogging Investigation Agency (FBI).

A representative of Rock Bottom American Pub first said they knew nothing about the contact with Rev. Carp, but later was reported to have turned the matter over to the Alabama Restaurant Association and the Montgomery Health Department. No review of Rock Bottom American Pub was ever posted on Lunch in the Gump where "Cornbread Carp" is a frequent poster. Lunch in the Gump is recognized universally as the world's most popular blog specializing in reviewing restaurants in downtown Montgomery, Alabama, affectionately known amoung locals as "The Gump." Urban Spoon, a national restaurant rating web, lists Lunch in the Gump as its number one blog.

When contacted for comment, the younger Carp referred questions to his attorney, Reginald T. McLucid, who issued this statement: "The idea that my client would even consider eating at such a dive, much less writing about it, is preposterous." McLucid is currently defending Mr. Carp against allegations he was involved in a "Food For Publicity" scheme related to a favorable review of The Green Papaya which was posted on Lunch in the Gump.

The Rock Bottom American Pub has consistently received unfavorable reviews on other restaurant review web sites, according to a representative of Urban Spoon, who also requested to remain nameless. "Perhaps Rev. Newton thought they would be desparate for a good review from the best blog around," the representative speculated.

From the looks of the dried crab claws and non-existent lunch crowd witnessed today at Rock Bottom American Pub, there appears to be a flock of patrons staying away from the establishment either because of the quality of the food or the recent scandal. It was noted that the menu did contain references to cornbread.

The editors of Lunch in the Gump, when contacted for comment, said that as far as they were concerned, their beloved "Cornbread Carp" was still eligible to post on the blog and would remain an author with authority to post. Attorney McLucid could not resist a parting shot: "The internet news media has hit Rock Bottom. The truth will eventually come out despite them."

Folsom Grill: It only looks like a prison.

  

Look for the sign on Monroe Street.
It's on the opposite side of the building from the Folsom Grill.


Deep in The Gump, in a state office building opened in 1958, on the back side of Goat Hill, state employees and the occasional outsider all cherish The Grill in the Folsom Administrative Building. Why do they cherish it? It's convenient, the staff is pleasant, and you can get something to eat.

It is a place to find sustenance. It has rules ("Crackers are free with salad. $.10 per pack otherwise"). It has specials ("Tuesday Breakfast Special. 1 sausage. 1 biscuit. $1.10). It has two salad bars side by side (No explanation). It has styrofoam boxes and plastic cutlery. It was redone in 1990, after existing for 32 years in its original condition (formica tables, plastic booths). It was flooded in the last few years. It endures. At age 52, it ranks up there with Chris's Hot Dogs and the Farmers' Market Cafe for longevity in The Gump.

Monday through Friday, one can enter The Grill on the first floor of the Folsom Building and get breakfast or lunch. A "breakfast special" will bless one with eggs, sausage or bacon, grits, a biscuit, all in a pristine styrofoam box, with coffee, for less than $4. The box will be heavy in your hand, laden with carbohydrates, some protein, and some grease. Or, one can order a la carte, and get eggs with crispy sausage patties you can eat like a cookie, cheap.


Breakfast from the Folsom Grill.
$2.35.
(Did that sausage just wink at me??)

 For lunch, one can make a salad or visit one of the three serving stations for meats (something fried is always available), overcooked vegetables, and bread of some type. During breaks (which seem to last all day for some), one can find coffee, tea, and conversation in the seating area.

This is just basic Gump home cookin', folks. You will find something you like, or at least something you can tolerate, satisfy a rumbling stomach, and suffer little damage to your wallet. I ate there about 3 times a week for 17.5 years, and I survived.

I drank much coffee, listened to many stories, suffered much cigarette smoke, and watched the people go by, every weekday afternoon from 1972 to 1989. I went back last week to get some breakfast (see above).

The Folsom Grill is a non-profit cooperative, operated by an anonymous group of state employees. It keeps on going.

Clash of the Dives! All City Coney Invades Chris' Hotdog Territory

[Ed. Note 11/26/2013: Gone the way of the DoDo Bird.]

The LITG Gang is a pretty tough crowd. The other day I invited them to join me at the new "All-City Coney Island Eatery" for a review of this "new" eatery (which opened Oct. 26) and the first response I received was: "Where is that greasy spoon?" Well, it is located at the corner of Madison and N. Union in the building here that former "sh*t hole" "Tokyo" was located. Tokyo was not favorably reviewed by this crowd previously. See prior review here. Why the new proprietors list "formerly Tokyo" on their menus is unclear. The interior of the place certainly has not changed much:

Statey's wait for their Coney Island dogs.

I was originally attracted to this place in order to defend the turf of our beloved Gump icon: Chris' Hot dogs. Loyal readers are familiar with our affinity for that good ol' reliable dive by our past posting and our April Fool's Day spoof about its closing. I was fully prepared to rant about this "interloper" who dares to upset the hot dog balance of power in Gump City with an array of Coney Island dogs and burgers. Alas, my two "Coney's" took the wind out of my negative sails. The service was quick, pleasant and the No. 1 special (which includes two Coney's, fries and a drink for about $6) "to go" was actually pretty good.

The No. 1 includes 2 Coneys (shown here without optional kraut)

I would never suggest that the dogs are better than Chris' and I cannot comment on the burgers, wings or breakfast options because I did not try any of them. However, knowing as I do that normal digestive systems do not allow one to lunch at Chris' more than once a month and in light of the demise of Doyle B when a Chris' dog ate through the lining of his immense stomach, I guess I would have to admit that it might be a good thing to have a choice of dogs in downtown. Competition is usually good, isn't it? Maybe? Is this Gump big enough for two excellent hot dog joints (not including the "Hot Dog Guy" on the corner of Tallapoosa and Commerce)?

So, if your stomach still hurts from your last Chris' hot dog but your body yearns for more tube steak, you might give the All-City Coney a try. Let me know what you think and we shall see if we, in the future, go off on the formerly Tokyo sh*t hole. So far so good?