REVIEW: St. Hubert

My first food review as a Kingstonian is St. Hubert's Chicken.  I know I know I should've done something a little better, but as a Swiss Chalet aficionado I was curious to see what the stinking French have been going on about all this time.  From what I gather, St. Hubert is the Quebec version of the Elvis Chalet (named that by my uncles because legend has it whenever Elvis Presley was in Canada he'd crush 3 or 4 full chicken dinners in one sitting).  St. Hubert has a few locations sprinkled around eastern Ontario and the Maritimes, but the vast majority of their restaurants are in fucking Quebec.  I've met people from Quebec who swore up and down that St. Hubert was waaaay better than my beloved Elvis Chalet.  I tend to take whatever a Frenchman tells me with a grain of salt, mainly because they've been so dead wrong about almost everything, especially their choice of shitty hockey team.  So I decided to get some delivered, and see how it compares to Swiss Chalet.

The meal comes to you in this lovely cardboard box, while Swiss Chalet comes in this plastic thing.  If you're one of those holier-than-thou environment people I am sure you think that's just swell.  The problem was those ribbons around it were impossible to cut.  I broke my scissors when I sat on them one day back in London before I moved, and I have never bothered getting another pair, and all my kitchen knives are as dull as fuck, so it took me a few hacks to get at er.

So here we go, I ordered my go-to Swiss Chalet order, the Double Leg dinner.  The first thing I noticed was the two things of gravy, apparently that's standard, you don't have to pay extra for a second.

BUN:  Swiss Chalet's bun is way better, this is just a toasted Wonder Bread brand hamburger bun they give you, not to say the St. Hubert bun tastes like shit or anything, you can't really fuck up bread, but I definitely prefer the Swiss Chalet bun.

FRIES:  First I should say that you can't judge fries that have been delivered, it is absolutely impossible to make delivered fries as crispy and hot and delicious as fries you get in the restaurant.  That being said Swiss Chalet wins the fry category,  St. Hubert fries were nothing special, they were like what you'd get in any cafeteria. Swiss Chalet puts a bit of effort into them, and they are still OK when you get them delivered. I am sure these fries would have been way better in the restaurant, so I don't think it's fair to judge.

COLESLAW: I got a small thing of shitty coleslaw that I'm never gonna eat in my fridge, does anyone want it?

CHICKEN:  The chicken was delicious, they gave me two decent sized pieces, and it was moist and the skin was nice and crispy.  It's hard to tell if I like St. Hubert chicken better than the chicken at Swiss Chalet.  Based on memory, I think the Swiss Chalet was a bit more seasoned than St. Hubert, but what the fuck do I know.  Maybe an actual side by side taste test is in the cards, but that would be kind of going all out for this stupid blog.

GRAVY:  Hands down Elvis Chalet wins this category.  The gravy at Swiss Chalet is the nectar of the Gods, I think they should set up fountains of Swiss Chalet gravy around town instead of useless water.  All that being said St. Hubert gravy was still pretty god damned good, it went really well with the chicken, and it saved the fries.  

Overall, the edge has to go to Swiss Chalet, I don't know if it's because I've eaten there my entire life and have been there dozens of times, and I've only eaten at St. Hubert once, I guess I am set in my chicken ways.  I will definitely order it again, mainly for one thing though - free delivery, plus they take debit on delivery.  Swiss Chalet is stuck in the stone age only accepting cash and charging a ridiculous surcharge for delivery.  It's pretty dumb that there is a Swiss Chalet down the street from me and they'll charge $3 to deliver but the St. Hubert is on the other side of town and they don't charge shit.

I'm not sure what the next place I will review will be, if anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears.  Leave a suggestion in the comments or hit me up on twitter @didhenley.  Big Brother 15 starts next week, and I'll be posting weekly reviews starting after the first episode!  Rumour has it Rachel's sister is gonna be a houseguest this year, uggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhh, hopefully she is not as fucking annoying as Rachel is. 

Review: King of the Pigs

Long Live the King!  After a couple of weeks of hype, we finally made our latest stop on our culinary tour of London at the King of the Pigs.  For the first time there was girls on our trip! All that meant was that I had to watch my table manners, and keep the poop and blue waffle jokes to a minimum.  There really wasn't much conversation during dinner because we were all completely focused on the deliciousness in front of us.  When we were creeping the menu online they had different Meals for 4 or 2 that had whole chickens, ribs, fries salad, and we planned on ordering that, but when we got there that wasn't an option on the menu so we all got individual meals.  When I went to the King of the Pigs years ago it was this little hole in the wall in East London with a bunch of old Portuguese guys (or as my Uncle Pat says Portu-goose) hanging out watching soccer, I think they were a little pissed off that us Newfies were invading their hang out.  Since then it's undergone some renovations and looks a lot nicer, but these greasy old Portuguese guys remain. Thankfully the food was just as good as I remember.

The meal started off with fresh bread and black olives.  The bread was awesome, it could because I was starving and that was the first thing I ate all day, but you could tell it was fresh.  As for the olives, I wasn't sure if I liked them or not and hesitated at first, but hey it turns out I like black olives, how about that.  I ordered the chicken and back ribs, as seen above.  The best part about this meal is there was not one vegetable to be seen.  The fries were crispy and hot, lots of places half ass their fries, but not KOTP, plus they had malt vinegar on the table which was a welcome bonus.  Despite being called the King of the Pigs the chicken was the star of this meal.  Don't get me wrong the ribs were good, but I have definitely had better.  I'm a bit of a rib snob because my Mom makes the best ribs in the world, so any other ribs are mere mortals.  There is your standard BBQ sauce on the ribs but the sauce on the chicken was incredible, I would bathe in this sauce if need be.  I'm at a loss at describing it, it must've been covered it olive oil and some magical dry rub was put on it.  Next time I go I am just going to get the chicken and fries.  The prices are extremely reasonable too, Bobby ordered a Chipotle chicken sandwich and fries, and it was $8 (tax included)!  A Big Mac combo sets you back $8.12 at McDonald's (yes I know the exact price with taxes for a Big Mac combo) 

BONUS REVIEW!:  After dinner we went to Boston Pizza for a few drinks and dessert and to watch the Leafs (literally) kick the snot out of the woe-begotten Sens.  For a chain Boston Pizza has really good food, I've never had a bad meal there.  Despite my size and love for food believe it or not I am not a huge dessert guy, I would choose to  have 2 dinners as opposed to a dinner and dessert.  Unfortunately for me, too much dairy makes me bloated and farty, but I do love ice cream.  This panookie from Boston Pizza was great, it was a giant warm chocolate chip cookie (tasted like a Pillsbury one) with a scoop of vanilla ice cream with some chocolate and caramel drizzled on it.  It was very good, however taking a big swig of beer right after eating ice cream is the grossest thing ever.  The Leafs-Sens game was pretty entertaining, watching that wuss on the Sens getting knocked the fuck out by Frazer McLaren in a room full of people was pretty awesome.  You don't see knock outs like that in the UFC most of the time. 

Well that's it for another review, we have a few ideas for our next stop, we're going to all you can eat pancakes at the Golden Griddle, I've never been to Tony Roma's apparently the ribs there are really good.  The Works and Relish are on the list too.  Stay tuned later tonight (or tomorrow) for my first weekly Big Brother Canada review.