Kau Greensboro

 

Located at 2003 Yanceyville Street in Revolution Mills in Greensboro, Kau is a combination steakhouse restaurant/bar/butcher shop. It is open from 4-10 Wednesday to Friday, 11-10 on Saturday, and 11-9 on Sunday. Indoor and patio seating are available, and there is also a private dining space. Brunch is available on Sundays.

 

A labor of love for Natty Green’s/Old Town Draught House vet Kayne Fisher, Kau occupies a beautifully repurposed industrial space. The scope of it – multiple bar areas, hand-cut Braveheart Prime steaks, etc. – makes it seem out of reach for all but the most special of occasions, but it needn’t be. As my wife and I found out, it also makes for a fantastic weekend lunch spot.

 

Kau understandably likes to play up its meat offerings, but there is a lot more than just steak and chops on the menu. An impressive assortment of apps, salads, sandwiches, burgers, tacos, and bowls makes for a very tough decision. Upon the recommendations of our server, we went with a collard dip starter, a pretty bird sandwich, and a meatloaf sandwich.

 

We hadn’t long to wait for our food, and Ashley did not steer us wrong. The collard dip featured three kinds of cheese (cheddar, parm, and cream), bacon crumbles, and thick, warm pieces of housemade pita. It was deliciously cheesy, and it felt like the absolute apex version of a classic spinach dip. The meatloaf was a bit loose, which led to some interesting sandwich structural integrity challenges, but the flavors (a bit sweet, a bit smokey) were excellent. This is as strong a challenger I’ve seen to the meatloaf sandwich GOAT (Morgan’s Tavern in New Bern) in years. The pretty bird’s chicken too was smokey and flavorful, and it paired very well with the sweetness of the roasted red peppers. The lemon aioli was understated, and balsamic might have been a better pairing. Both sides – a refreshing tomato-cucumber salad and thick-cut, parmesan-and-herb-laden fries – were quality.

 

Kau was not a cheap lunch (the dip was $12 and the sandwiches were in the teens), but it was a lot more reasonable than the steakhouse cachet would suggest, and the food was absolutely worth it. I don’t get out to this side of Greensboro very often, but Kau may very well hasten my return.

Bistro 1605

 

Located at 1605 North Main Street in High Point, Bistro 1605 serves sandwiches, soups, and salads for lunch on weekdays. Sandwich specials and soups change regularly. Limited outdoor seating is available.

 

Bistro 1605 is a result of Alexandria’s Hamilton Street Bistro moving into the former Cork and Grind location. While I never got to try the old restaurant, I was curious about the new. I stopped by a little before noon on a Friday to find the establishment very busy, a testament to Alexandria’s loyal following. As much as I wanted to like this place, however, it just didn’t strike me as anything special.

 

Positives first: Alesha is a friendly and welcoming presence, and the staff here seem hard-working and personable. Though the menu is fairly limited, several items – a crostini and a spinach/hummus/red pepper/quinoa wrap – held appeal.

 

I ultimately went with the day’s special, an Italian sandwich. It took a while to arrive, but given how busy – and new – the bistro was, I’m inclined to cut them some slack. While the sandwich featured a good amount of meat, it was oddly sweet due to the choice of pepper. Banana peppers and a dash of oregano would have been a welcome remedy. Like a few of the other sandwich offerings, the Italian clocked in at $12 with a bag of chips included. Some of the salads reached ambitiously into the teens.

 

I may need to give Bistro 1605 another shot after they are fully up to speed at their new location, but initial impressions suggest a place that will serve you neither a bad lunch (and there is something to be said for that consistency alone) nor a particularly memorable one.

Queso Monster

 

A Durham-based food truck, Queso Monster serves up Mexican fare including tacos, nachos, and quesadillas. An accompanying trailer, Elote monster, offers elote on the cob or in a bowl as well as lemonades.

 

Queso Monster and Elote Monster usually draw fairly long lines at events, and so when I happened upon them without an extensive queue at a food truck rodeo, I decided to give them a try. The menu offers a good deal of flexibility, boasting choices in proteins (traditional meats, shrimp, or veggies), spiciness levels, and styles. Unexpectedly, they also offered red/juicy and quesobirria quesadillas. The “elote” side of the business offers the titular street corn, with or without a dusting of tortilla or red hot chips. Lemonades range from single flavors such as peach or strawberry to multi-berry bonanzas, and a few are available as horchatas instead.

 

I ended up with a birria quesadilla, tortilla chip-dusted esquites (elote bowl), and a mojito lemonade. The folks running the trucks were friendly, and, even by food truck standards, very fast. The quesadilla, which included broth, chips, salsa, and, of course, queso, offered quite a bit of food for $14. Less justifiable was the $5.50 charged for a regular-sized lemonade.

 

The food was, by and large, satisfying. The quesadilla offered tender meat and a tasty — if cilantro-heavy — broth. The tortillas were a bit greasy, however, and will have you missing La Sinaloense’s version. The torti esquites were thoroughly addictive. It may be just corn, sour cream and spices, but damn if the execution wasn’t spot-on. The confusingly-named mojito lemonade had about as much in common with a mojito as a sea horse does with a stallion, but aside from being very sweet, it was still a refreshing drink on a June day. I appreciated the amount of fresh fruit (berries, pineapple, and kiwi) included.

 

Had I been standing in long lines eagerly anticipating what awaited me, I likely would have walked away from Queso Monster and Elote Monster slightly disappointed. But thanks to fortuitous timing, I was able to enjoy it for what it was: good though not flawless Mexican food and drink.

Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers

 

In 1979, the National Basketball Association’s revenue and attendance are dwindling. Dr. Jerry Buss (John C. Reilly), a chemist turned real estate tycoon, overextends himself to buy the once-proud Los Angeles Lakers with an eye on returning the team to its former glory. To do so, he plans on drafting Earvin “Magic” Johnson (Quincy Isaiah), a flashy 6’9” point guard coming off a college championship season, despite the presence of incumbent guard Norm Nixon (played by Nixon’s son Devaughn) and the reservations of the team’s coach, franchise legend Jerry West (Jason Clarke). Buss, never one to accept limits, has his bookkeeper mother Jessie (Sally Field) use a few accounting tricks to stay ahead of creditors and taps overlooked and underappreciated Claire Rothman (Gabby Hoffman) to increase stadium revenue. But will Buss’s pluck and Johnson’s talent be enough to overcome trouble on and off the court?

 

Adapted by Max Borenstein and Adam McKay from Jeff Pearlman’s nonfiction book Showtime, Winning Time (named such since it aired on HBO) is both wildly entertaining and wildly inaccurate. Take its abuse of dramatic license and occasionally uneven pacing out of the equation, and it’s a stylishly watchable production full of both humor and heart.

 

Admittedly, that style isn’t for everyone. McKay, who directed the pilot episode, took the fourth wall breaks and asides to the audience that he used in the Big Short and made them a staple of Dr. Buss’s character. However, this bit of comedic gimmickry does not wipe out the show’s dramatic stakes, which often extend far beyond a mere game. Characters battle addictions, self-doubt, and even death itself. It helps that the show’s production values are high, offering a period music/fashion/palette combination that seems Scorsesian at times.

 

Winning Time was made without the participation of the actual Lakers, several of whom were miffed at their portrayals. In some cases, it isn’t hard to see why. Several characters are exaggerated to cartoonish proportions. Those that are written as three-dimensional, on the other hand, are generally well-acted. Reilly is magnetic as Buss, playing him as half visionary, half sleazy hustler. Field adds a touch of vulnerability to a sharp-tongued granny role. Hadley Robinson as young Jeanie Buss (currently, the Lakers owner) functions as the family’s moral center. Isaiah captures both Johnson’s almost-perpetual smile as well as the drive and the doubts that lay beyond it. Solomon Hughes, a college basketball player turned academic in his first acting role, faced an unenviable task in portraying Lakers captain Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He comes across as one-dimensionally aloof in the early episodes, but Hughes is adept at capturing his leadership, intelligence, and competitive fire later on. Perhaps the best supporting turn, however, belongs to Wood Harris as bruising veteran forward Spencer Haywood. Harris, who was pushing thirty when he played a high schooler in Remember the Titans, is again far too old for the part, but he does such a good job of capturing the addiction-addled Haywood’s inner demons that you hardly notice.

 

That said, there are plenty of things in Winning Time that you do notice that you wish you hadn’t. West is introduced as drunk, angry, profane, and full of self-loathing over his championship losses. While he eventually mellows out as he transitions from the bench to the front office, it’s still a far cry from the more cordial mentor figure that many of his real-life colleagues describe. The Nixon-Johnson rivalry is transparently inflated only for them to have an equally transparent “come together and win” moment later on. The same cheap dramatization goes for the team’s coaching carousel. In short, West recruited unheralded Portland Trailblazers assistant Jack McKinney (Tracy Letts) as his replacement, and McKinney in turn recruits his friend, Shakespeare-quoting Paul Westhead (Jason Segel) from the college ranks. McKinney installs an up-tempo offense, the team takes off, McKinney gets hurt, a panicked Westhead tabs floundering color commentator/former Laker Pat Riley (Adrien Brody) as his assistant, McKinney recovers, and suddenly, there’s a bitter rivalry for the coaching job. The contention may make for a good television conflict, but they also serve to make McKinney look spiteful and Westhead weak. At least Brody captures Riley’s famous intensity.

 

Winning Time is primed for a second season, which makes sense as there are plenty more stories left to tell. What follows has the potential to be as entertaining as what has aired so far, but a little bit of nuance and grounding can go a long way toward winning over skeptics.

We Own This City

 The Baltimore Police Gun Trace Task Force, a plainclothes squad led by hard-charging Sgt. Wayne Jenkins (Jon Bernthal) is given broad powers to get guns and drugs off the city streets. However, the task force becomes a haven for corrupt and brutal cops as Daniel Hersl (Josh Charles) batters civilians, Momodu “G Money” Gondo (McKinley Belcher III) covers for a drug dealer, and the entire squad illegally lines their pockets with confiscated money (and, in Jenkins’ case, drugs). Justice Department civil rights attorney Nicole Steele (Wunmi Mosaku) attempts to investigate the department but is stonewalled while police commissioner Kevin Davis (Delaney Williams) lacks the clout to implement the changes he knows are necessary. Told as a series of flashbacks through the recollections of indicted GTTF officers in custody, We Own This City explores how things went so wrong for so long.

 

A spiritual successor to The Wire, this miniseries adaptation of Justin Fenton’s nonfiction book brings back some of the same talent behind (writer-producers David Simon and George Pelecanos created the show) and in front (Williams and Jamie Hector play significant roles while Tray Chaney, Domenick Lombardozzi, Jermaine Crawford, and Chris Clanton appear in smaller parts) of the camera. But whereas The Wire was already a fairly cynical show, We Own This City manages to paint an even bleaker picture of institutional rot.  

 

From the ominous drums (interspersed with sirens and gunfire) of the theme song to the update text that displays during the final episode, We Own This City pulls no punches and offers no quarter. The corrupt cops end up in jail after turning on each other, but that comes far too late to help anyone they’ve hurt. Davis is made the scandal’s scapegoat and ousted, only to be followed out the door later by his replacement and the mayor who fired him (both on tax evasion/corruption charges). Steele is pushed to the point of resignation when she suspects that the incoming Trump administration will sideline her investigative efforts. Sean Suiter, a former GTTF member turned homicide detective, dies under mysterious circumstances (officially, suicide made to resemble being killed in the line of duty) before he can testify. Don’t expect a “Bubbles comes up from the basement” moment here.

 

While this overwhelming sense of futility can make the show hard to invest in, We Own This City is undoubtedly well-crafted. Bernthal, the erstwhile Punisher, as a violent hothead does not strain the imagination, but he does an excellent job of giving Jenkins layers. From the Baltimore accent to the faux-affability to the pettiness, insecurity, and delusional narcissism, it’s a fully fleshed out portrayal of a deplorable human being. No less impressive is Hector’s work as Suiter. His guilt-ridden performance is a night-and-day contrast to his earlier turn as The Wire’s lead antagonist (icy druglord Marlo Stanfield).

 

The unrelenting bleakness and nonlinear structure can make We Own This City a challenge, but its sobering look at wide-ranging systemic failure (from Black political leadership to white supervising officers on down) makes it vital.