QUICKVIEW: Fairlawn Cafe - +++/$$

I'm a huge fan of breakfast. Breakfast is the only meal of the day where you can eat almost anything and call it fair. Just think about. French toast loaded with sweet cream cheese. That's not a freaking meal, that's a dessert that you're masquerading as a meal. But at the same time, it's equally reasonable to eat a 12oz porterhouse, which is also not a meal; it's three meals.

So, yeah. I go out to breakfast a lot and love making it. It is in this breakfast-loving mindset that I happily present to you the Fairlawn Cafe. It's a small, nondescript shop in a proto-stripmall in suburban Lincoln. The outside is easy to miss, but you can easily spot it on weekends by the huge crowd of cars vying for the small number of parking spaces.


The inside is dense and quirkily... quir... quirkishly... uniquely appointed. It reminds me of Julian's on Broadway, just without the tattoos, Cloves, and pretentiousness. There are very few spaces to sit and the tables are small, but they make use of what sidewalk they have to wedge in a few more tables during the summer.

Service was a bit slow but very friendly and attentive. They have a large number of aesthetic flourishes that combine to form a sense of distinction, for example, you receive chilled water in a capped bottle, and orange juice is brought out in a wine glass with an orange twist. Very simple stuff, but it's nice to see a cafe adding a little flare to otherwise pedestrian tasks.


The menu is enormous. The kitchen is apparently dedicated to the proposition that all ingredients are created equal, and can be combined in any way imaginable... and put on the menu somewhere. A whole page for various french toasts. A whole page for eggs Benedict. A whole page for omelettes. And multiple pages for sandwiches and other breakfast foodstuffs. The menu alone would have been impressive, but they also have multiple signs both inside and out displaying specials and more menu. Smoothies, salads, sandwiches, you get the picture. If you even remotely like brunch food, you'll find something here that you like.

And about that food, it's delightful. High-quality ingredients combined with inventive breakfast ideas like the tiramisu french toast. It had coffee-flavored sweet cream cheese. Very good and sporting an excellent price. My friends followed my french toast lead, because, duh, french toast is, like, totally the best food ever. For example, french toast is good, french toast with pan-seared apples, cranberries, brie, and walnuts is even better. Their standard breakfast offerings are exactly as you would expect, but prepared well. Eggs, toast, and very soft but spicy home fries. I like my home fries super-crispy; these were more like broiled potatoes, but the tasty seasonings made them enjoyably different. They serve dinner and lunch-type stuff, which I have yet to sample, but I have no reason to espect anything other than good to very good.

So after a single trip, Cafe @ Fairlawn (or Fairlawn Cafe, I'm not sure which, really) is one of my favorite breakfast places. It's right up there with T's. And if you live nearby, they deliver! That eliminates any reason whatsoever to not give them a shot. A great selection of excellent food and good prices, including a few recipes that I've seen nowhere else, really makes this a winner.

For those interested, Fairlawn Cafe has very little presence on the web, so I've uploaded a number of their menu pages to my Picasa gallery.

UPDATE: Here are some more photos of their available french toasts and crepes.



Fairlawn Cafe: +++
Price range: Entrees- $5-$10

893 Smithfield Avenue
Lincoln, RI 02865-3534
(401) 365-1385


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Hours
Monday & Saturday 7:00am to 2:00pm
Tuesday through Thursday 7:00am to 4:00pm
Friday 7:00 am to 7:00pm (serving dinner)
Sunday 7:00am to 1:00pm

QUICKVIEW: Asia Grille- +++ / $

Asia Grille was a treat during some wanderings up north-ways. Another sign of how the quality of Chinese food is increasing in Rhode Island. The inside is sparsely decorated and well designed. It's very airy and large. Service is quick and friendly and the bar always seems hopping. The menu is as large as you would expect of a Chinese place, with the usual suspects: sweet & sour, shrimp, pork, General Tso's, etc. Everything is very well made and easily the match of my favorite place down south-ways, Pagoda Inn. In fact, the consistency of the quality exceeds them. I'm not as big a fan of the crab rangoons, here, as I am at Pagoda, but other things are better, like the beef teriyaki. Take-out is fast and servings are large. Asia Grille is the best Chinese I've had in the northern part of the state.

Asia Grille: +++
Price range for two: $15-$30

http://www.asiagrille.com/


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Asia Grille
622 George Washington Hwy (Lincoln Mall Plaza)
Lincoln, RI 02865
401-334-3200

REVIEW: Fred & Steve's- **** / $$$$

The old Lincoln Park is certainly making a go at being a true destination. Still, knowing the previous clientèle for which what is now Twin River was known, namely those who are 9.5 million years old and those to whom dental hygiene means little, I did not enter with high hopes. Aside from the same old clientèle, Twin River and its selection of restaurants impresses.

As was the case with Fred & Steve's. A very good restaurant that offers decent prices ($20-$35 for a steak) on excellent meat in e-freakin'-normous portions. And would you expect anything less? Afterall, Fred and Steve are both ex-football players, and they are not a group that is known to mess around when it comes to meat. Or any food for that matter.

If you remember Twin River back in the Lincoln Park days, Fred & Steve's design and may catch you off guard. It's nice. Something Lincoln Park never was. In fact, it's damned nice. The wait staff is well-dressed and perfectly professional. The tables are perfectly dressed. The lighting is very well done, giving you a romantic atmosphere while also keeping stuff well-lit. The warm, wood tones of the dining area are also very pleasing. I felt that the classical music playing didn't match the underlying tone of the place. While it's very up-market, it can't go TOO far up, considering the football jerseys on the wall. Minor quibbles. The seats are very comfy, and the benches were the cushiest I've felt. I honestly sank six inches into the bench. I half expected to feel some old person shove a token in my butt, thinking it some remarkably stinky slot machine on the gambling floor below.

Moving on to the important stuff, meat, I had what I do not consider the best filet I've ever had, but it was far and away the largest. It was larger than my fist. It was perfectly cooked and was a very good cut. Certainly worth the money. Passed around my party were a number of a appetizers and meats. The appetizers, true to the rest of the experience, were huge. If it's only two of you, I'd recommend getting one, two if you want to take some home. The asparagus was well-cooked but a bit too peppery. I like it when they let me season my own veggies. The oysters were very tasty but were nothing special. The corn was good, as was the broccoli and the cheese souffle. Still, none of it was amazing. It's obvious the stars of the meal were the meats. Everything else needed only fill a supporting role, and they did so well.

Filets, rib-eyes, they were all perfectly cooked examples of good cuts. Very good all around. And, again, the servings are bleedin' enormous. And on a lighter note, my girlfriend thought they had the best Midori Sour she's ever had. So if you wanted a drink recommendation, there it is. The wine list is adequate, but it's obvious that wine snobs are not being catered to. This is a place for meat lovers and that's about it.

Fred & Steve's would have probably gotten the nod as best steak house in Rhode Island not too long ago, but unfortunately for them, Providence Prime recently opened its doors and I think that they beat Fred & Steve by a field goal in most areas. They can still hold their heads high, knowing that they're at least better than the big-chain invader, Ruth's Chris, and much better than competing football-oriented steakhouse, Shula's. With Providence Prime closer to me, I don't feel too motoivated to go to Fred & Steve's. For me, it's about 40 minutes away while Providence and all its meat is 30. The old jocks have stuff to offer, to be sure, but not really enough to draw my attention from Providence. But if I was in the neighborhood, though, I would never hesitate to go and get what is, even at these prices, a good value for great steak.

Fred & Steve's: ****
Price range for two: $65-$120

http://www.twinriver.com/dining/fredandsteves.cfm

Twin River
100 Twin River Road
Lincoln, RI. 02865
401-475-8400

Hours
Monday & Tuesday Closed
Wednesday & Thursday 5:00PM to 9:00PM
Friday & Saturday 5:00PM to 12:30AM
Sunday 1:00PM to 8:00PM

REVIEW: Fadó Irish Pub- *** / $$

The old Lincoln Park is certainly making a go at being a true destination. Still, knowing the previous clientèle for which what is now Twin River was known, namely those who are 9.5 million years old and those to whom dental hygiene means little, I did not enter with high hopes. Aside from the same old clientèle, Twin River and its selection of restaurants impresses.

While Fadó does not impress as much as its Twin River roommate, Fred & Steve's Steakhouse, it was still a good restaurant. Entering, I was struck by how large it was. It seemed to continue onward in all directions. The layout borders on labyrinthine. The bar is enormous and it had a vast selection of beers that any brew-lover will certainly enjoy. It's obvious Fadó fully embraces its niche. They are pushing themselves as a true Irish pub, with all the trappings one would find in a European counterpart, including an obsession with soccer. If you like soccer, this is a dynamite place to go if you like strikers. If there is a single game on in any deep, dark part of the world, it's probably on their TV's.

We were seated promptly in a cozy little corner near some wall-mounted knick knacks. It was fun-enough, but the whole junk-on-the-walls motif, to try and somehow drive home the fact that this place is just another neighborhood haunt when in fact it's a chain, has been driven into to the dirt by TGI Applebee's.

The seats were uncomfortable and my dinner partner's bum found itself falling to sleep on a number of occasions. It also took a very long time for our server to apparently become aware of our existence. I'm not sure how one forgets about customers, but they managed. Once she did, though, service was prompt, if not a bit strange. They are all older than you would expect, as was the clientèle. I, 25, and my girlfriend, 23, were the youngest people in the room by at least a decade. The average age of the wait staff was probably in the late forties or fifties. Moreover, everyone working there seemed to be bored, or drugged. Not bad, just strange. Our waitress apparently had a nervous breakdown halfway through our dinner, necessitating help from another server. She explained that she was helping out our original waitress with the work load. What work load? I think we were her only customers.

We got a three-cheese toastie which was the best grilled cheese I've ever had, and we both got corned beef boxties, which are potato pancakes cooked crepe-style and wrapped around corned beef and cabbage. Very good but unbalanced. I'm not going to knock a restaurant for giving me a healthy serving of meat, but I really would have liked some cabbage in there. There was almost none and the very salty corned beef overpowered the rest of the boxty. The French fries were tasty. Very crisp and well seasoned.

None of the desserts were very impressive, considering the bakery downstairs. The Black & Tan brownie is decent, but its party piece, the Guinness ice cream, isn't very Guinness. It's basically vanilla ice cream with the faintest hint of Guinness that is immediately lost upon biting into the very chocolaty brownie. The chef's dessert of the day is perpetually chocolate cake. The bread pudding is very good and really the only dessert worth considering.

In the end, the star of the show is the rustic charm of the food and the prices. Fadó intelligently doesn't try to outclass its ambiance with its food. Instead, it allows its food to simply be cheap, tasty, and provide just the right kind of sustenance for a night out with other Manchester United fans. All in all, good place, just not a place I'd seek out unless I was really hankering for a boxty.

Fado Irish Pub: ***
Price range for two: $25-$45

http://www.fadoirishpub.com/

Fadó Irish Pub
100 Twin River Road
Lincoln, RI. 02865
401-475-8500

Hours
Closed Monday & Tuesday
Wednesday & Sunday 12:00pm - 11:00pm
Thursday through Saturday 11:00am to 12:30am