These are easily a favorite around here. They are not good for you, but yum. I always make way more than we need and they’re always gone, so if you’re looking for a new way to do potatoes this St. Patrick’s day, you won’t be disappointed with these.
- 5 lb bag of russet potatoes
- 4 tbs butter
- 1/2 c sour cream
- 1/2 c heavy cream
- Small red onion, minced
- 8 oz block of sharp cheddar, shredded
- 1 lb bacon, cooked & chopped into bits
- 3 tbs fresh parsley, chopped
- Salt & pepper
Turn your oven up to 400. Wash the potatoes and use a fork to poke holes in each one several times. Place them directly on your oven rack and bake them until they’re soft – about an hour. Remove the hot potatoes from the oven with an oven mit and allow them to cool on a rack or cutting board until they are cool enough to hold with your bare hands.
Cut each potato in half lengthwise, and scoop the flesh being careful not to rip the skins. Put the potato flesh into a large standing mixer bowl. Set aside half of the cheese and half of the bacon bits, then mix everything else with the potatoes, taste it and add salt & pepper. Don’t let the idea of mashed potatoes get into your head – the mixture should be very thick or it will all melt out of the potato skins when you bake again.
Scoop the potato mixture back into the empty skins and arrange them in a baking dish or cookie tray. Return the potatoes to the oven just until the filling starts to brown, about 15 minutes. Take them out again and put the rest of the bacon bits and then the cheese on top. Return them to the oven and bake them until the cheese is melty and slightly browning.
A couple of notes: I hate pre-shredded cheese. It’s covered in starch to keep it from sticking together in the package and it changes the texture of everything. If you’re rather buy shredded cheese, whatever, no big deal. Also, these can be made a day or two ahead of time and refrigerated, you just have to bake a little longer to bring them up to temp. Also, also, I like to wrap them individually and freeze them for an easy side on another day.
Enjoy!
The lighting is horrid. We sat in a booth along the wall. The can lights from the previous establishments are still in place and they are just so bad (actually, there are very few notable changes). They are all in the center of the room; so there is no lighting whatsoever over the booths that line the walls, which casts a huge shadow if you’re at a booth, and causes the place to look like exactly what it is – a poorly lit basement. At the same time, if you’re sitting in the middle of the room at a table, it’s very bright. I also have a very serious aversion to drop ceiling tiles. I don’t understand why we should stop considering aesthetics once we reach the tops of walls. In addition, while there was no music, there was a concert going on upstairs in the German House; so it was still quite loud in an indistinguishable base sort of way. This might be at the core of the problem with each attempt at this basement business over the years. It’s really just not a good place for a restaurant when that large of a distraction is taking place during the times when you are supposed to be doing the most business. I realize that many people will not be bothered by this, but if you are a stickler for atmosphere, this is not the place for you.
I ordered a cocktail which was called “the thistle.” I cannot complain at all about the size of this drink or the amount of alcohol it contained. It wasn’t as complex as the ingredient list led me to believe it would be, but I suspect this might have been due to the small and quick melting type of ice cubes used.
On to the dishes. We ordered a few things, starting with the pork belly steam buns which sounded so nice, but in reality were almost completely devoid of flavor. The combination of the soft steamed bun, lightly cooked fatty pork and mayo made for a mushy texture throughout. The “togarashi mayo” was the most interesting element of these mini sandwiches. 
You can see that the presentation leaves something to be desired as well (the lighting makes it worse). Next came the fried rice balls with similar results. The equally exciting list of ingredients including kim chi, cheese, spicy pork and garlic mayo left me feeling cheated. I will give them that they were fried perfectly. The texture was lovely, the appearance, the crunch was wonderful. The complete lack of flavor once you bit into them caused us to almost not believe our taste buds. We kinda look at each other and ask “really, that’s it?” We then ordered some chicken wings on the 
recommendation of our server. They were good. They were crunchy on the outside, tender on the inside and the sauce was decent (we tried a couple kinds and both were pretty good – very sweet but not really spicy), unfortunately they didn’t wow me, and by this time we were asking ourselves why we should spend any more money there, which is when we left to go have another drink elsewhere.
We ordered drinks first – wine and beer all around and a craft cocktail to taste. We chose what we thought was the most bad-ass one on the menu: the Spanish Harlem. Let me preface this by saying that these lovely ladies enjoy whiskey of all kinds and generally drink it neat, so the issue here is not toughness. We thought – r
ye, mezcal, vermouth, lemon – awesome, what could possibly go wrong? Unfortunately only 2 of 5 liked it enough to have more than one sip and 0 of 5 would order this again. The words “cleaner,” “gasoline,” and “bacon” were used. I was happy with my malbec, but there are plenty of other options.
Our suspender-wearing server was knowledgeable, polite, prompt and sufficiently indulgent of 5 women more interested in talking that focusing on the menu. All of the food plus 6 drinks ended up costing us each a little under $38 plus tip, which I thought was very reasonable for the experience we had. I will not order another Spanish Harlem, but I will go back.
