On a half-date-night, we went back to a place that I seem to have missed reporting on previously, the little old brick schoolhouse turned restaurant called Brick Ridge in Mt. Airy, MD. It was a partial date-night because Tony had to leave to go get our son from soccer practice while I had dessert. Dessert was deconstructed lemon pie. The “deconstruction” is a neat idea for any dessert if you have a little creativity to pull it off. You take all of the parts of the dish, and separate them on the plate. If you have time, you could write a whole cookbook of fun meals you could deconstruct – I don’t have time so feel free to borrow my idea.
You can click to enlarge the photo, but the chef took the idea of lemon pie with blueberry topping and separated it into a pool of lemon curd with graham cracker crumbs across the top (to represent the crust), a pile of fluffy custard (that would be mixed with the lemon in a regular pie) and a scoop of homemade blueberry ice cream in the center.
Brick Ridge serves classic and contemporary menu items that represent the diverse foods and cultures that have shaped American cuisine. They achieve this by committing to the ambitious undertaking of featuring a different state each week!
The state for this week’s menu is Ohio. So in addition to the regular menu, there is a state-inspired drink, appetizer, entrée selection, and dessert. The featured appetizer was a sauerkraut bite with sausage and cheese. Everything was very finely ground and then fried like hush puppies and served with mustard sauce on a bed of arugula. Last time we were here was during New York week and the appetizer was reuben bites, which were great and would have made a nice lunch.
One of the Ohio entrées was pierogis served with a picked red cabbage and spicy sausage, making a great flavor combination.
The other entrée was city chicken but not like we’ve made before. The pieces of meat were individually fried and then put on the sticks afterward. It was served with a saucy rice, almost Asian style, mixed with sliced vegetables and mini brussels sprouts. The owner said that city chicken was summer fair food that started in Pittsburgh. I’m from southeastern Michigan and had city chicken a lot growing up but I’ve never seen it at a fair in my life and the Pittsburgh that claims city chicken wasn’t in Ohio last time I checked. I ordered it anyway just to compare it to my own Hungarian city chicken (which is not chicken, remember), and it was good for a one-time try.
Here are pictures of the restaurant from 1892 when it was a schoolhouse (the kids are so cute in their little outfits!) where one teacher taught 20 to 30 students ranging in age from 6 to 20 years; and now – or at least during the week they were apparently featuring food from Arizona. It’s a green and farm to table restaurant that always tries to support local farms and wineries, and the owner has installed his own $20,000 wind turbine for power!
