Hamtramck Recipe: Poor Man's Peirogi

Okay, I'll be the first to say that ,y waistline is by no means the smallest of the bunch. One reason is probably this delicious dish. I'm not sure who first created it, but it has been in my family for years.

1 16oz Package of your favorite pasta (we always use either rotini or elbow macaroni)
1 16oz Tub of Cottage Cheese (Small curd is usually better)
1 small onion
4 tbsp Margarine or butter

Prepare pasta according to box directions, cook until al dente. Drain pasta and return to pot. Dice onions evenly and add to hot pan with margarine. Saute until golden brown. Add into pasta with full container of cottage cheese. Mix well until fully blended. Add salt or pepper to taste.

This dish will definitely pack on the pounds, but it is well worth it. I wish I had taken a picture of it before finishing, but it was too good to wait!

Another great variation to this recipe is to make this dish, but substitute the cottage cheese for steamed and buttered cabbage. When steaming the cabbage, be sure to add a full stick of margarine and cook until tender. I also add some garlic and pepper to the cabbage and some sauted mushrooms. This variation is just as delicious, but make sure to take some anti-gas first!!

Golden Hill Reopens: Great Food ... Not So Great Atmosphere

Golden Hill Chop Suey has officially reopened on July 28. The restaurant has retained its original menu and added a couple of new options. This is the first asian style restaurant we've had here in Hamtramck since the amazing Thai Bangkok closed a few months ago.

Let's start with the positive. The food is great. The has just the right combination of saltiness and sweetness. It reminded me of the Thai restaurant when I first tried it. I had the sweet and sour chicken combo, and Julie had the sesame chicken combo. With each combo you'll get fried rice, your selected entree, and an egg roll filled with sprouts, cabbage, and shrimp.

The prices are reasonable, and the portions are huge. You could eat for days off of one meal.

Now, for the negative. The restaurant has absolutely no atmosphere. If anything, I'd say it has a very negative vibe. The customers in line while I was inside were very unruly and quite uncivilized. I could tell that the employee was annoyed, but he did not want to say anything. Probably to avoid confrontation. There is no music to listen to while waiting the 15 minutes or more for food. There aren't even any interesting pictures on the wall, save for old corporate advertisements for food not sold here.

In summary, the Golden Hill Chop Suey is like the prodigal son. It left in haste, and was welcomed back with open arms despite its shortcomings. It is a welcome addition to Hamtramck's numerous restaurants.

What's The Point?

This post is a bit delayed, so please forgive me. I recently worked our store's customer appreciation day, and let me just say that it was a complete disaster. Why? Allow me to elaborate.

#1) Our manager gave flyers for our $3.99 large pizza to every doorstep and car windshield in a 3 mile radius. Most of our customers that day were not regulars, they were simply random people who just happened to find the flyer. Worse yet, I haven't seen most of them since.

#2) Our store's lobby was packed with people all day. Literally from around 12am to 12pm. There was no room to stand and the store was so loud that when we called out the names of customers to come pick up their orders, our voices went unheard.

#3) With so many orders, pizzas were constantly shoved into the oven. If you were to order on that day, you would have gotten one of two types of pizza: well-well-done or not done at all. Plus, the oven was backed up for most of my shift. This caused a lot of burnt pizzas.

#4) We only have two hot-boxes in which to store orders waiting to be picked up. On that day, it was impossible to find a place to put every order. Both boxes were filled to the max, so we ended up just putting boxes on the counters, which made for cold pizza. Plus, the full boxes made for high humidity which in turn made for soggy pizza and soggy cardboard.

#5) This may be a direct tie in with the above, but it was near impossible to locate an order at any given time. Tickets were mixed up and pizzas were everywhere This made for a lot of angry customers who were waiting for over an hour.

#6) The store was deadly hot. The crew, including myself, was working in a constant 95 degree atmosphere. Combine that with the crowd in the lobby, the non-stop sound of ringing phones and the smell of burning pizza. It was like our own little slice of Hell.

There are many more things that I can rant about, but it is nearing my bed-time and I must sign off soon. In conclusion, is there a point where a super special deal like that offered on our customer appreciation day starts to work against itself? The answer is yes. In my own humble opinion, we lost more customers on that day then we could have gained in a week's worth of normal business operation.

My friend Chuck presented the following idea for our next customer appreciation day. It is as follows:
Instead of honoring random people who will most likely never order again, why not honor those who are already paying loyal customers? Instead of passing out flyers to every house in our area, put out a special reciept to a week's worth of customers that allows them to come back on a certain day and recieve either a free pizza or a heavy discount on their order. Thanks, Chuck, for presenting this idea. It seems that common sense is no longer all that common.

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