Poole's Diner doesn't rank with the Triangle's best

A lot of people swear by Poole's Downtown Diner.  I've heard multiple people call it one of the best restaurants in the Triangle.  Ashley Christensen, its owner and chef, runs a group of local restaurants and was the 2014 winner of the James Beard award for Best Chef:  Southeast.  The last time I went, I was unimpressed, but that was years ago, so when I found myself across the street from it after eating Big Gay Ice Cream and only forty-five minutes before it was due to seat people, I decided to give it another try.

I remain unimpressed. 

The food our group sampled was uniformly good, but never anything more.  Nothing was exceptional.  Whatever culinary chops earned Christensen the Beard were nowhere to be found in our meals.  Again, the food was good, and it was on par with many above-average Triangle restaurants, but it was not in any way a stand-out.  The heirloom tomatoes in our salad, for example, were nothing like the flavorful beauties I've eaten at multiple other area restaurants; these were as bland as what you'd find in the discount area at any local grocery store. 

To be fair, my expectations were high.  Given Poole's reputation and Christensen's award-winning status, I was expecting a meal on par with that of the Triangle's top restaurants, places like [ONE] and Panciuto and Herons and the Fearrington House restaurant and so on.  What I ate was food on par with the middle of the second string of local establishments. 

If you're looking for a good meal, Poole's will definitely do.  If you want a top-drawer local dinner, though, try the four I've mentioned or any of the other best of the Triangle restaurants I've reviewed in the past.

Al Pacino's hair is alive

and it's mutating rapidly. That's the only theory that can explain all of the many transformations his hair underwent in the course of 88 Minutes, the entirely mediocre movie a couple of us saw tonight. The course of the plot was predictable, which in and of itself is not a huge problem--provided the ride is good. The ride just wasn't enough fun to make up for the weak plot, and Pacino's hair kept distracting us from everything else. The amount of gray, its apparent length, its style, whether it was straight up or flat--pretty much everything about it varied from scene to scene.

To his credit, Pacino tried to keep up with his hair. He used his entire arsenal of muted emotive expressions; for the most part he kept his insane emotional looks in the drawer for this one. I would have preferred the insane looks, because they might, just might, have been able to upstage his hair.

If you're a hardcore Pacino fan, buy the DVD. If you love him and are mad about at least two of the supporting actresses, then shell out for a ticket at the theater. If you're none of the above, give it a pass.

The dinner at Poole's Downtown Diner before the show was far better than the movie. Greg Cox, our local food critic, had awarded it four stars (out of a possible five), and for the most part I thought our meal justified his rating. Our appetizers, main courses, and all but one side were top-drawer, with strong tastes whose only consistent flaw was an overuse of lemon. The mac au gratin with Cabrales bleu cheese was a superb sample of its type and is a dish you should not miss.

The one course in which we all disagreed with Cox was dessert. In keeping with its diner location, the menu--which is available only on two blackboards on opposite walls and ends of the room--offers only pie for dessert. We tried all three of today's pies, and their crusts were all bad: thick, hard enough to get through that you had to lean on your fork, chewy, and not very tasty. The pie fillings were also all weak, sad second-rate ends to a first-rate meal.

More and more, we find good, very good, and even great meals ending with mediocre desserts. That's one food trend I'd love to see end.