No Dishes to Wash

I am getting more and more amazed at this little Stark St strip!  In 10 years this is going to be THE new neighborhood, mark my words.  Country Cat is located at the corner of 79th and Stark, where Dickson’s Drugs used to be for many, many years.  Which I was sad when Dickson’s went out of business, because I loved the Post Office there.  Anybody go there?  They still hand weighed your packages on a (gasp!) non-digital scale, and still had “licky” stamps.  In fact, I just saw the younger girl who used to work there walking on the street yesterday… funny coincidence.  ANYWAY, back to the subject at hand. I wish I had ordered a drink today, but since I had imbibed plenty of wine this weekend I was abstaining… but they had this delish sounding drink called an Old Fashioned Iced Tea, it was Russell’s Reserve Bourbon, muddled orange and cherry, topped with sweet tea.  If you’ve tried it, let me know how it was.  Caleb ordered the Heritage burger (which our friends Shaun and Zina had a bad experience with, so I was going to tell him not to, but he was on the phone while we ordered, so… cest la vie!)  but the burger turned out great.  And even better was the onion rings with it!  Really similar to the Sayler’s onion rings, but better.  I had The Farmer’s Market Vegetable Soup, and the House Prosciutto, Brooks Cherries and Green Bean salad.  I had to ask, how do you manage to make prosciutto here?  (I’m amazed at how many places have in house stuff like that now, like Nostrana’s mozzarella.)  I was introduced to the owner and chef Adam, who told me he takes his “little” 68-70 lb pigs, and has just one big ham from them.  Then, (if I have this straight) that lil’ ole’ ham sits in a salt brine under pressure for a month.  The pressure is necessary to get the blood out and the salt in.  So then it is slathered in a layer of lard and hung for 10 months.  So the prosciutto I ate tonight was 11 months old.  Good to know.  He said a lot of italian prosciuttos actually use a 48 month process.  We sat outside tonight, and my only gripe is… get some comfortable chairs!  The outside chairs were really horrible to sit on… I will be sitting inside next time.  We were the only couple outside for most of our meal, so Brianna our waitress wasn’t overly “hanging around”, which was nice.  She left a jar of water at our table, so that was good, less trips for her.  Oh, I could have used a little more salad, it was a pretty small portion (a very gourmet portion, you could say)  but at the same time, I think it was meant to be an appetizer, so that could be it.  Maybe they need to offer a dinner size salad????  I’ve had brunch here before too, and the skillet fried chicken was really good.  I would like to come back again for brunch soon. (Hint, hint, Caleb.)  They also have a bar menu available from 5pm-6pm and after 9pm nightly.  Located at 7937 SE Stark St, open daily 5pm-close, Sa-Su brunch from 9am-2pm.  Chef Adam Sappington is definitely bringing the class of the Montavilla neighborhood up, but don’t expect to pay usual Montavilla prices.  Then again, this is NOT your usual Montavilla food!