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Review content:
Go north, to the wee old railroad town of Tomball, a town of no more than 10,000 people, and you will find something that resembles a burger; sure, it is a patty of beef sandwiched between two buns, but is unlike any burger you have every witnessed - it is a burger piled high with slices of chicken fried bacon. Yes, the bacon is battered and fried. Only that is not enough fried. We need a fried egg to top it off. ""Too much,"" you say? Bah! Then LIFE itself is too much for you! As my boyfriend so aptly put it, ""It's only right because it's so wrong.""
From the Chef that brought molecular gastronomy to Houston, or rather, attempted to do so, comes a menu of Texas traditional cuisine as you've never seen it before. Randy Rucker, most recently of Rainbow Lodge and the Tenacity Supper Club series, has teemed up with his mother, Bootsie herself, to create a menu of familiar dishes prepared in most unfamiliar ways. The trip out to the country, with its ample farmland and unregulated kitchens, has brought out a new element of authenticity in Rucker's cooking. The food is beautiful and complex, but no longer focused on technique and presentation - that part appears to come just naturally. Instead, the menu's strengths stem from its use of local and seasonal ingredients applied to dishes that seldom see such attention to detail: the burger, the Monte Cristo, even pickles. It's as though someone sent a well-seasoned southern grandmother off to apprentice in a European Michelin-starred kitchen for a year. Odd? Perhaps. Yet, it not only works, it thrives.
If we are, indeed, witnessing a food revolution in this Country, this is it's foundation.
Anxious to try Bootsie's but not necessarily as excited about driving up to Tomball, I stopped in the restaurant during an odd hour during a business trip that had led me to Hempstead. Around 3 or 4pm the staff was just beginning to arrive for dinner service, but Bootsie greeted us enthusiastically and a young girl immediately begin to tend to us (do you remember when hardworking teenagers used to be the norm at restaurants? refreshing). She doted on us happily throughout the meal, filling adorable mason jars with what was an obvious fresh-brewed sweat tea and never passing judgement at the fascinating amount of fried that my boyfriend and I proceeded to consume.
After snacking on complimentary house pickles, so delicious even the pickle-hater gladly ate them, and an appetizer of fried oysters, our mouths quite literally dropped when the burger arrived. Playfully named, ""The Mother Rucker,"" it is a balancing act of two patties, stacked high with fried bacon. It presented a daunting but inviting view. First bite revealed a delicately pink, rare perfection; so rare that the juices ran down my chin with a deliciously violent passion, intertwining with drops of yolk in a single, sublime act of messiness. Does it sound like I'm telling a love story? I am.
Though I gave the burger my all, and gladly would again, it got the best of me. You do not finish the Mother Rucker. The Mother Rucker finishes you.
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