hard rock cafe (MoFo 25)

Hard Rock Cafe was the first theme-based restaurant. Although when it opened in 1971 in London, England, narry a guitar or gold record graced the walls of the hamburger place By the time it's first American restaurant opened in Los Angeles in 1982, it had made not just a  name for itself, but gave birth to a trend that has been duplicated since then. 

It all began when Eric Clapton donated Hard Rock Cafe one of his guitars. Not to be outdone, Pete Townsend offered one up soon after, with a note saying "Mine's as good as his! Love, Pete." Thus began the collective legacy. Today, Hard Rock Cafe, complete with 130 or so stores, 4 hotels, 2 casinos and 2 concert venues, and a museum, is owned by the Seminole Tribe of Florida... quite a history!

One of their most popular menu items is the Hickory-Smoked Pulled-Pork (or Chicken) Sandwich. It comes with marinated cabbage and creamy cole slaw. I made a tofu-gluten seitan for this. It is served on a ciabatta roll with extra sauce on the side. It is, in fact, quite good and not all that difficult to make, even with the making of the seitan. The only catch is that you have to make the seitan, the marinated cabbage and the creamy cole slaw the day before serving it, as all three have to sit over night. If you ask me, it just makes the day of the meal that much easier for the cook since most of the work will have been done already.

When you are ready to eat, spin some tunes and stock up on the napkins. It's worth it, even if you have never been to a Hard Rock Cafe.

 It's not like they have a monopoly on music.

Hickory-Smoked Pulled Seitan Sandwich

Creamy Cole Slaw

(coming)

MoFo update

Update of failure. I blame it on my husband. When you tell someone they will fail, they just might. I asked him to check on the contents of the oven and as he walked upstairs to report his findings, he flat-out told me it was a bust. The dish wasn't  even done, yet, but when someone portends its demise, it is a foregone conclusion that the end has been foretold. Thus, after another two hours of cooking, it was evident that he was right.

I will retry with this particular restaurant replication later since I have a feeling I know what went wrong, but I don't wish to divulge the name of the place in case I ... well, fail again.

I typically would not blog about something like this, since I hate terribly to admit defeat, but I don't wish to be removed from the MoFo feed and I know they insist that we continually post, otherwise what is the point of Vegan Month of Food? I am sure, however, that the good folks at MoFo HQ had other blog posts in mind besides failed recipe ones.

Will write soon; it has been a long day.