Audio By Carbonatix
In this age of too little time and too much take-out, the leisurely business lunch has become an endangered species. Once in a while, associates may still manage a midday restaurant meeting. But all those things that once made noontide outings so outstanding–the three martinis, the meaty entrees, the rich desserts, the major tax deductions, the pleasant little p.m. stupors–are as out of fashion nowadays as white bread.
If you’ve a nostalgic taste for the golden days of lunching, though, I heartily recommend a trip to Treulich’s. A successful Valley steak and seafood house for more than two decades, this restaurant deserves a reputation as more than a destination for dinner. Here’s where you want to go to satisfy that manly midday craving for a Kiwanis meeting and a Norwegian sardine plate.
I use the term “manly” because Treulich’s is clearly a vestige from an era when it was okay to be unselfconsciously masculine. The restaurant environment is a compilation of dark browns, over-padded leatherette seats, exposed brick, cowboy paintings and deal-making darkness. You can smoke anywhere you like. In a particularly wonderful burst of macho funkiness, there is a magnificent western-scene-with-electric-train diorama dominating the back bar.
Of course, this is the Irish Spring era, and she can “like it, too.” I am made aware of this when my distaff dining companion praises Treulich’s as follows: “Sometimes, you get tired of going to places like the American Grill with all the polished brass, the fashionable paintings and the potted plants. This is like going home.”
In the hands of restaurant revivalists, the Treulich’s experience might seem quaint or corny or, worse yet, a stylish affectation. But what makes Treulich’s so satisfying is that it is not a re-creation of anything. This is the continuation of a tradition that has managed to flourish through the years because the sincerity of the effort remains undiminished and untrivialized.
Despite the availability of an omelet du jour, several entree salads and a rotating list of daily specials like corned beef and cabbage and braised short ribs of beef, the lord of lunchtime at Treulich’s is the sandwich. From deep-fried pork tenderloin to German sausage to tuna melt, these are hefty handfuls of nostalgic nourishment, potatoes and pickles included. Of course, beef is Treulich’s real raison
d’etre, and the restaurant turns out an especially wonderful French dip (a mound of roast beef on a crusty French roll with salty/beefy au jus for dipping) and a super steak sandwich (a tender petit filet on a French bread pedestal garnished with a couple of onion rings), both served with a tossed salad and, natch, French fries.
In my humble opinion, though, it is the Treulich’s Reuben that deserves a spot in the sandwich hall of fame. Bursting with character and corned beef, this kingly creation features not-too-thinly-sliced meat piled high on perfectly grilled caraway-laden sour rye, attended by just the right addition of sauerkraut and Swiss cheese. What’s most appealing about this sandwich is that it isn’t too fussy: The ingredients are roughly assembled; the corned beef is just a touch fatty; the bread has the slightest glisten of grease.
The plate garnishes to the sandwich are an excellent potato salad and cole slaw. The former combines the best parts of German potato salad and the more familiar picnic style by using potatoes that have been boiled in vinegar and chicken stock and mixing these in a chilled, well-seasoned mayonnaise base. The cole slaw has a sweet creamy dressing that subtly explodes on the palate thanks to a delayed reaction from a hefty dose of white pepper.
My only criticism is the omission of Thousand Island dressing. This is not, however, a fatal oversight. Just ask the waitress to bring some.
You will receive great service at Treulich’s. The professional waitresses who work here are not biding their time between modeling jobs or simply amassing cash for the continuation of their neurosurgical studies. If they are, they certainly fool you into thinking that they are primarily at Treulich’s to pay considerate attention to the wants and needs of the restaurant’s customers.
The quality of this service is underscored when, after having lingered considerably over coffee and German chocolate cake (just a little dry, probably from being stored uncovered in the refrigerator), my guest and I finally depart from the restaurant. Halfway to the car, we hear someone calling after us. Although the restaurant is extremely busy, and our waitress must be happy to have finally turned our table, she has bothered to chase after us with a leftover sandwich half in a Styrofoam box.
I can’t imagine forgetting that sandwich. I can’t imagine getting better service. I can’t imagine that our culture will ever be without the desire for restaurants like Treulich’s.
A little time travel into the future and we find ourselves lunching at C’Est Truffles. The year is approximately 1973, and middle America is discovering quiche, croissant sandwiches and feminized restaurant decor. With reason, real men weep.
Even if you’ve never actually dined at C’Est Truffles, you’ve been somewhere just like it. There’s an oversize bakery-display case, small tables with pink tablecloths and whitewashed walls crammed with uninspired, but fabulously florid, watercolors. If you look closely, everything is sort of wilting or fraying, but this actually has the effect of enhancing the shoestring sincerity of the effort.
The problem with C’Est Truffles, circa 1989, is that it comes across as an example of arrested development. It’s a place reminiscent of a postpubescent teen-age girl who still wants to wear frilly pink and white dresses. Maybe there’s a sweetness to such a personality, but the naivete is also a trifle pathetic.
What might save C’Est Truffles is legitimate food quality but, alas, there’s not much of that here. This seems the sort of operation where someone volunteers a recipe for a desired menu item, and it immediately goes into production, never to be evaluated or reworked again. As might be expected, the misses overwhelm the hits.
This is most dramatically apparent in the restaurant’s quiche, which is the first food category listed on the menu. After granting that C’Est Truffles uses dairy products in this preparation, there’s not another nice thing to say. This vulcanized, low-rise “light custard” pie tastes as if its eggs have been produced by one of those novelty-shop rubber chickens.
Even if the quiche recipe were better, though, I’d still be disappointed with the restaurant’s approach to portioning, plating and garnishing. As with just about all the food at this restaurant, carelessly torn lettuce is used to wretched excess as plate coverage. Tiny pieces of melon, orange and pineapple do not help much nor do they, in the face of the small slice of quiche offered, compensate for the absence of bread.
The particular complaint of ungenerous portions is chorused by my three guests, who like/loathe their lunches in varying degrees but who all wish there was more of the “good stuff” on their plates. The only sincere praise comes from the one among us who orders a chicken salad sandwich. The chicken mixture is creatively accented with almonds and honey, but there’s not enough of it to reach the edges of the bread and the chicken itself is dry.
Not to beat a rubber chicken, but this same tough bird also makes an appearance in the Oriental Chicken Salads ordered by two of my guests. Actually, one companion first orders a Salad Nicoise, which she expressly requests be made without any salad dressing. The kitchen goofs, however, and because there are no more nicoise ingredients in house this day, the order has to be changed.
I might not have belabored this last detail, but it is characteristic of how we are served this day. Distractedly. The restaurant owner, who is also working as our waitress, spends an awful lot of time on the telephone while there are customers in house, and the resultant delays are bothersome.
To cast this breach of manners in the most favorable light possible, I am going to assume that she is busy taking orders for the restaurant’s desserts. These are on another much higher quality level altogether. My guests and I sincerely enjoy the creamy richness of a three-tier Chocolate Decadence Cake, the moist depth of a “Lushious” [sic] Carrot Cake and the intense chocolate blast derived from one of the restaurant’s namesake truffles.
A friend has informed me that when C’Est Truffles first opened, it was solely a little pastry shop and coffee house. I might respectfully suggest that the owner consider a return to these roots. If this is not financially feasible, she can, of course, wait until the day that the banal and imitative “French” cafes of the 1970s come back into vogue.
Then C’Est Truffles won’t have to change a thing.
Finally, so as at least to acknowledge lunch in the Eighties, there is T.C. Eggington’s. When I first came aboard at New Times, representatives of this restaurant nearly assaulted me with their ambition to have me review their new lunch items. There were unrequested and openly discouraged deliveries of food to the office, endless mailings of press materials and even the insidious bribe offer of a brand new T.C. Eggington’s coffee mug.
The problem is that even though I kept the mug (if you could see the collection of handled Petri dishes that gets left around the New Times coffee room, you would not blame me for a second), I really dislike reading their menu. It’s not that I mind the actual food offerings themselves, which are entirely of a family with the fare served at restaurants such as The Good Egg and Le Peep. I just can’t stand the cloying descriptions and the insipid marginal chatter.
Is calling something a “Smoothie Shoogle” meant to activate some sort of desire? When I am told, in a description of “Girdle Cakes,” that “girdle means griddle and cake means cake,” am I happy or annoyed? When this item is further described as “homespun and panhandled,” does that mean it is plain but that I have to beg for it?
Aargh.
All right, I finally pay a visit to this place, and I realize that I have to can the hostility. T.C. Eggington’s is an extremely pleasant restaurant and, overall, they do a very nice job with their food. Ironically and unexpectedly, the restaurant itself is not kitschy at all but, rather, clean and simple and eminently respectful of human comfort.
As for the new lunch items, the basic culinary realization seems to be that the same cheesy, saucy, vegetabley stuff that can be put on top of eggs can also be put on top of chicken breasts or sliced luncheon meats, sometimes to even better effect. I am very happy with my Baja Sonoran, a huge mound of sliced turkey, cheese and Mexican garnishes served open-faced on toasted English muffins. I am surprised by the lightness of this dish in my mouth and manage to finish the whole portion plus the tangy spiral pasta salad that is served as a garnish.
T.C. Eggington’s also does a nice job with its luncheon salads. The Tuna Apple-Walnut mixture, served in a ripe honeydew wedge, is generously portioned, texturally complex and uniquely flavorful. Although the bran muffin this comes with is too sweet, too dry and too tough, it’s an appropriate notion. It just needs to be reformulated.
Oh, yeah. The Smoothie Shoogle, a fresh fruit and yogurt shake, is also very good. It’s not as sweet and rich as a milkshake, but it’s not some wimpy health-food-store version either.
My only advice to T.C. Eggington’s is to keep an eye on restroom cleanliness, to stop using the newspaper dispensers–especially New Times’–as bussing stations for the outside patio and to call a pancake a pancake. And please, no more press kits or surprise lunches.
When I need a new coffee mug, I’ll call you.
Treulich’s, 5020 North Black Canyon Highway, Phoenix. 249-0366. Hours: Breakfast, 6:30 to 11 a.m., Monday through Saturday, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., Sunday; Lunch, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Saturday; Dinner, 4 to 11 p.m., Monday through Saturday, 2 to 10 p.m., Sunday. C’Est Truffles, 4233 East Camelback, Phoenix. 840-6577. Hours: Breakfast, 9 to 11 a.m., Tuesday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday; Lunch, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday; Brunch, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Sunday.
T.C. Eggington’s, 1660 South Alma School, Mesa. 345-9288. Hours: 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., seven days a week.
Treulich’s is clearly a vestige from an era when it was okay to be unselfconsciously masculine.
