paprika Archives - Queen of the Food Age

Rutledge Cab Company

November 22, 2013

I was really excited for Rutledge Cab Company. I really wanted to like it. I mean, how could you go wrong? Chef Bob Carter! Old gas station! Good reviews! Unfortunately, despite the fact that I was desperately hoping to love it, it just didn’t really turn out well.

Yeah, basically this.

First of all, I’ll go with something positive. The service was spot on. Our waitress was really awesome and very patient with us, and made lots of recommendations (which we ignored). We started with an order of the Chicken Fried Sweetbreads (Alabama white sauce, $11). We were trying to be adventurous since neither of us had had sweetbreads before. I think I would’ve liked them a lot more had they not totally covered it in this overpowering smoked paprika.

Turns out sweetbreads are neither sweet nor bread.

Our second appetizer was the Fried Cheese Curd (Green goddess-horseradish dressing, $9). Again with the paprika. Seriously. I would’ve loved these if not for that. They weren’t very cheesy flavored as you’d expect because they’re just the curd (I was expecting it to taste like fried white cheddar bites. Definitely did not). The ones that I had that weren’t covered in paprika were delicious.

I mean, fried cheese is going to be good no matter what it’s made of.

For her entree, Tina got the BLT Benedict (Smoked bacon, English muffin, wilted spinach and tomato-bacon hollandaise, $13). She liked it ok, but wasn’t a fan of the hollandaise. I thought it tasted almost licorice-y, which was a really strange combo.

Oh look! The potatoes have some paprika on them in case you hadn’t already gotten enough paprika with your paprika.

I got the Roasted Lamb Sandwich (Havarti cheese, pickled cabbage and toasted hoagie, $13.50), which I actually really enjoyed. I thought it was really good. My only complaint was that I think they either over toasted the hoagie, or that it was stale before they toasted it. You know how when you over toast bread it gets that same consistency as styrofoam? Not my favorite. But other than that, the sandwich was delicious. The lamb was tender and flavorful, and I loved the pickled cabbage. I wasn’t a huge fan of the fries, which tasted like they’d been batter dipped before they were fried. Which seems kind of unnecessary.

It was almost like a lamb & pickled cabbage philly cheesesteak. Delish

Overall we were pretty disappointed. Thinking maybe we just ordered the wrong things, we decided to try one of the things our waitress originally recommended, the Grilled Vegetable Flatbread (Smoked onion aioli, olive tapenade, parmesan and fresh herbs, $9). I thought it was just ok, but then again, I don’t really like olive tapenade. Tina wasn’t into it at all.