Weekend @ Acme 5/3
5/3 Greetings from Carrboro, My brother taught me how to drink Mexican beer. 1) Squeeze the lime into the beer. 2) Push the squeezed lime into the bottle. And, for the fancy part 3) Fit your forefinger snugly into the bottle and invert. Now, when he did it, the lime floated to [...]
Weekend @ Acme 4/26
4/25 Greetings from Carrboro, A guy came in the other day trying to sell us tomatoes. Claimed that he grew them. Locally. Now, if you’re going to lie to us about farming, at least pull up in an old pickup and not a 1998 Chrysler Le Barron. And don’t wear a jaunty blue [...]
Acme Mother’s Day & Weekend @ Acme 4/19
4/19 Greetings from Carrboro, You know when Brody, Roy Scheider’s character in Jaws, says, “You’re going to need a bigger boat”? Well, you could say the same thing about Mother’s Day. It’s no longer just a card with puppies and a festive spray of carnations. No sir. And don’t even think about an [...]
Week @ Acme 4/11
4/11 Greetings from Carrboro, Going to the farmers’ market can be tricky. For me, that is. It’s like the old rule to never go shopping when you’re hungry. There should be one for chefs that says don’t go to the market when you’re feeling giddily optimistic. And how can you not feel that way [...]
Week @ Acme 3/22
3/22 Greetings from Carrboro, The first month that I worked in a restaurant, I watched a man eat an entire salad with his fingers. In public. He explained to his well-coifed companion that the French ate salads with their hands. By French, I knew he meant cosmopolitan, refined. And I bought it, even [...]
St. Patrick’s Day @ Acme 2013
3/16 Greetings from Carrboro, I’m Irish. Well, in name at least. No question. Hell, Patrick is my middle name. But that’s sort of where my Emerald Isle lineage begins and ends. Anything in my father resembling Irish-ness disappeared altogether when he drove across the Mason-Dixon line with my mother in 1957. Including his [...]
Winemaker’s Dinner @ Acme
2/7 Greetings from Carrboro, Sometimes things just fall into your lap. And, to be clear, I’m not talking about a wayward fork. Or the fixings on your hamburger. Not this time. I’m talking about the metaphoric lap – that magical place where luck descends. You see, we’ve got this Schug [...]
February @ Acme
2/1 Greetings from Carrboro, So, Groundhog Day. This is what passes for a jovial-outdoorsy-pastime in February – people dressed ceremoniously in 19th century garb holding a sedated rodent above their heads, the poor creature somehow imbued with wild auguring skills regarding the advance of Spring. I had a great aunt Sadie who was similarly [...]
Acme is OPEN Friday 1/25
1/25 Greetings from Carrboro, Everybody knows that Southerners are not any good at driving in the snow and ice. And why should we? It’s a lot more fun to be inside cooking. And, at Acme, that’s exactly what we’re doing. Braising, grilling, smoking, you name it. We will be open [...]
Week @ Acme 1/22
1/22 Greetings from Carrboro, So, now it’s just a subtle anxiety. A looming sense of unwarranted fear. Cupping your hands to look out a window into the cold, dark night. Checking that all your doors are bolted. Twice. Biting your fingernails energetically at stoplights. Constantly Googling your name plus “Vegas” and “cross-dressing” and [...]
