Scatori's Italian Restaurant: A promise not kept

On a trip to Surfside my partner and I decided to try Scatori's Italian Restaurant. Scatori’s is a family owned and operated restaurant specializing in “Authentic Italian Cuisine and NY Style Pizza.” They pledge to bring in only the freshest, quality products & that everything menu is made fresh to order.

The waitress admitted that the pasta was not made in-house and was the dry variety. We decided to skip the pasta.

August is a great month for excellent tomatoes, I selected the Caprese Salad. The menu promised tender ripe beefsteak tomato and fresh Buffalo mozzarella stacked between fresh baby field greens and basil leaves drizzled with Italian balsamic vinaigrette. While not the traditional preparation of a Caprese salad, which should be dressed in extra virgin olive oil, never vinegar, this preparation promised most of the right stuff.

Buffalo mozzarella (mozzarella di bufala) is the cheese of choice the Caprese salad, so says Italian cuisine doyenne Marcella Hazan. Water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) milk is higher in fat content than cow’s milk. The result is an intensely creamy cheese that is velvety in texture, fragrant, sweet and savory. The perfect accompaniment to a tart ripe tomato. And a ripe beefsteak is the right tomato. Beefsteaks tomatoes are a variety of the cultivated tomato (Lycopersicum esculentum). The beefsteak is large, a pound or more, with pronounced ribbing, and kidney shaped. It is a meaty tomato with numerous small seed compartments distributed through the fruit. A ripe beefsteak is sweet, tart and yummy. Along with freshly picked fragrant basil and extra virgin olive oil, you have the perfect Caprese salad. The Scatori’s menu offering certainly listed the right main ingredients. Did the plate keep the promise?

The salad arrived looking pretty: stacked tomato, mozzarella and basil. But, the small thinly sliced tomato was round, un-ribbed, and very firm. It was not meaty and the seed compartments were large and uniform. The flavor was flat, reminiscent of the grocery store hothouse picked green industrial grade tomato. Not the beefsteak I was expecting. The mozzarella was thinly sliced, dry and crumbly. The flavor was…well, just missing, not fragrant, sweet, or savory. Certainly not the creamy Buffalo mozzarella I was anticipating.

Did this plate keep the promise-NO. Not only was the promise of “freshest, quality products” broken but this plate did not even include the items the menu promised.

Quail Creek (SC) Rum Tasting

2010 Quail Creek Rum Tasting    

One cannot live by bread alone - you must also have rum!  So a group of us got together at S&S home last week for a rum blind-tasting. This about the third time we've done this in the past 5 years. The incentive for our past tastings has usually been a visit by a friend from Columbia (SA, not SC) who brings different rums, often ones that are not easily obtainable in the US.  This time however we wanted to same "arrivedercii" to our friends who a leaving for several years in Florence (Italy, not SC).  Having just spent some time in Trinidad, they also had an assortment of rums and the rest of us did some house cleaning, contributing those bottles from the back of the closet that we'd been saving the last little bit of. For consistency we only sampled dark, unspiced rums. So that explains the rational behind the selection of rums for the night. We sampled 10 different rums and five of us rated our top five selections, the top selection getting 5 points, the next 4, etc.  Here are our notes, some other taster's impressions and our final tallies:    
A  Appleton Estate Reserve (Jamaica) Rich color and body, sweet caramel taste but with peppery overtone. (R liked this one best, giving it 5 points, but overall it only garnered 7 points for a 4th place finish)   
 B) Prichard's Fine Rum (Tennessee) light color and body, faint aroma, some smokiness. Drier than A (above) with a brandy-like finish  I thought it comparable to some of the drier French Caribbean rhum vieux that I've tasted. (My 2nd favorite, but not highly rated by the others, so it didn't make the top 5).    
C) Ron Zacapa Centenario Gran Reserva (Guatamala).  Medium body, much sweeter than A or B, with a maple sugar/ caramel aroma that I identify with many Central American rums. R thought it reminded her of one of the older Flor de Caña rums. Sweet taste lingers, but not cloyingly. (I rated it as my #3, R gave it her 2nd place 4 points, and with 20 total points it was our overall winner).    
D)  Diplomatico Reserva Exclusiva (Venezuela).  Pleasant aroma, accented with caramel and Caribbean spices, Lightest body so far, with a initial sweetness followed by a very dry alcoholic anisette aftertaste. (I gave it 2 points, overall it came in 5th with a total of 6 points).    
E)  Old New Orleans 3 year old (Louisiana).  I thought it had a light, almost insubstantial body, however R considered it heavy, "pusserlike" (which she doesn't like) with a very sharp vanilla taste (one taster said "candy corn", another "tobacco" and finally another "stale tobacco"), impressions of aftertaste ranged from "not much" to a "harsh alcoholic burn in the back of the throat." As you can probably tell from the varied impressions, this one didn't do well either individually or overall.    
F) Pyrat XO Reserve (Anguilla).  Not much aroma, rather astringent with a chemical orange (one taster said phenolic, another butterscotch) taste. Very distinct from the others so far. (I thought I recognized it and gave it 1 point for old times sake, but overall it didn't make the top 5).    
G)  Ron Medellin 12 Años (Columbia).  First impressions were a licorice or fennel aroma and taste with an alcoholic peppery finish. Medium body and color.  Not rated highly, but interestingly enough this same rum, in fact the same bottle, was our top pick in the first Quail Creek Rum Tasting. Maybe sitting in the back of the closet for all those years did not improve it?)    
H) Havana Club Añejo Especial (Cuba).  My impression and that of one friend was that this tasted like rum was supposed to. A pleasant, clean aroma, distinct, but not overpowering molasses flavor and a crisp finish with some bite. (I and one other gave it our #1 rating - 5 points, which together with 3 additional points picked up from others made this the overall #2 rum).    
I) Bacardi Reserva Limitada (Puerto Rico) I thought this was nice rum, a hint of vanilla and a smooth finish but not distinguished from the others.  Apparently others liked it better, giving it a total of 11 points and a 3rd  place finish. This bottle was several years old, when the Reserva was only available at the Puerto Rico distillery    
J) Mt Gay Eclipse Rum (Barbados). Sharp aroma (iodine), with a rough / raw taste. This was from one of the bottles with crown-tops.  It didn't get any points, so I guess this was our least favorite. 

Lands End Restaurant in Georgetown

Good food starts with fresh ingredients, well prepared and seasoned.  A good restaurant serves what is promised on it's menu.  Unfortunately, Lands End fails on all fronts.  The restaurant has been a Georgetown landmark for 20 plus years.  It closed in November of 2009.  It was reopened in May 2010 with Bobby Lance captaining the kitchen and Steve Howell navigating as general manager.

Georgetown is a seacoast town with a thriving fishing and shrimping industry.  Our area boasts fresh shrimp, oysters, flounder, grouper, spot, crab.  The farm community offers fresh seasonal melons, peaches, blueberries, salad greens.  With all of that to choose from, you would expect Lands End to include fresh seafood, fruits and greens on its menu.  The menus says it does but unfortunately our local bounty is not on the plate.

Our first post-opening visit was in August 2010.  I ordered the signature dish  "Low County Shrimp Salad" which promised creamy shrimp salad on a bed of mixed greens with seasonal fruit.  The shrimp I had in my salad was unmistakably frozen and definitely not local.  The tell-tale off-flavor of "Clorox" was not masked by the mayonnaise on the overdressed, unseasoned rubbery shrimp.  The greens consisted on one limp leaf of yesterday's lettuce.  The fruit: canned pineapple, unripe melon, including the rind, fridge dried strawberries and grapes, were neither fresh nor seasonal.  Oh, and a stale mini croissant completed the offering.  Wow, what a disappointment.

My dining partner ordered the jambalaya, one of the specials of the day.  For what should have been a spicy dish it was amazingly under-seasoned and was made with the same rubbery shrimp.  It was accompanied by a bland cole slaw and garlic toast.

A chef and staff may have an off-day warranting a further review.  This, however, was not a off-day but a business plan.  Cheap industrial products, long shelf-live  through chemistry, and a serve-it-regardless policy is designed to maximize profits at the expense of quality.  This is not a plan I wish to encounter again.  So, sail on past Lands End.

Why "Bite the Neck?"

We are residents of Pawleys Island, South Carolina.  We wanted to create a food blog about dining in the Waccamaw region of South Carolina. This includes  the "Grand Strand", from the N.C. line, through Myrtle Beach, Murrells Inlet, Pawleys Island and south to Georgetown S.C.  The Waccamaw Neck is the name given to the land between Winyah Bay and the Atlantic Ocean,  so "Bite the Neck" seemed like an appropriate and humorous name to use. Also, our friend Linda Ketron has an organization, Bike the Neck, that develops bicycle trails and encourages their use along the Neck.  The bike trails allow the intrepid foodie to exercise while traveling to delicious food venues and rowdy bars.