| rev:text
| - I can't believe I am doing this. I feel shaky hovering my cursor over the 2-stars. But I do feel, "Meh. I've experienced better." And I am sure this is going to make some people angry, and maybe even I will get banned from coming back, but you have got to hear me out.
I will preface with this: I -- and my boyfriend included -- have zero issue in paying for quality. I shop my farmers markets, eat mostly organic, cook--homemade/from scratch almost 90% of my meals when I am in town, and I moved to Charlotte from one of the most expensive cities in the country (Virginia + Washington, D.C.). I'm used to a $4 cup of coffee and in fact, I enjoy the "organic bitter kind" because I'm not drinking pesticides. I read a ton of culinary publications, stay on the trends, and am totally cool with the slow-food movement and love when places take pride in what is coming out of their kitchens.
With that said, I also take pride in what I fuel my body with, and live a gluten-free lifestyle. While this isn't always sexy, gluten truly makes me NOT sexy, so I can't eat it #sorrynotsorry
Flashback to Sunday. My boyfriend and I decided to give our new corner grocery a shot for more than just coffee ... this was my third time at Lincoln's.
The staff here has a certain swagger about them, coming from Futo. And with good reason. You filled a serious void in the lack of alternative cuisine here in Charlotte; and I thank you for that.
And we were hoping you were going to do the same with Lincoln's but we just didn't see void filled that when we had our breakfast.
The sign at the entrance facing South Blvd. states "inclusive" -- insert praise hands emoji -- I am so thrilled to be in an environment that is all-welcoming no matter what your age, ethnicity, background, and social status.
But how about us that like to drink half-caf and are gluten-free? You don't offer decaf and according to one of your baristas "probably never will..." and I get it, you want to make bread from scratch. I respect that. But if you can't, or don't want to, there are great bakeries that can. I just in fact picked up an incredible sourdough loaf by Simple Kneads, made in Hanover, NC. One of the better gluten free breads I've enjoyed. Otherwise there are a million recipes on GF bread. Want to stay trendy? Hemsley + Hemsley and Zen Belly should do the trick. Are you inclusive when you are legitimately excluding a huge margin of the population that does this for either dietary restrictions or lifestyles (lookin' at you, January Whole30 peeps)...(I drink too much to do Whole30)...
We go to order and it looked like the egg whites and poached chicken breast was gluten-free. I just made a mention of it, and I got a confused almost-eye-roll from the cashier. And then the barista-back was like, "ugh, yeah that's like the ONLY gluten free thing we have here." Really? Do I need your commentary?
The boyfriend ordered to shirred egg cup.
My dish was an excellent price for the portion-size. A true health-nut dish, this was topped with a little salsa, some avocado, and a few cherry tomato halves. After a morning at MADabolic down the road, this is the fuel my bod needs.
Justin's breakfast had a nice presentation, but I noticed how small the bread was cut. You couldn't cut it on a bias, instead you cut straight down to have a teensy tiny 2-pieces of toast? Whatever.
I took a bite into my pure-protein breakfast, and the temperature difference of the eggs and the avocado/tomatoes was night and day. The avocado had such a chill to it I wondered if it was frozen? And the tomatoes were ice cold, too. I would have much rather preferred blistered tomatoes as the avo was cold as it was.
Justin started to eat his breakfast and I reminisced about my younger years when my mom made us soft-boiled eggs and we would use their European egg cups to slice them open.
A few bites in and we were both kind of like, eh.
He then started complain about salt. I have had Benton's bacon before (yum!) and I was like, maybe it's that? And well, it wasn't. He had one egg in his egg cup, and the grits were over salted to him and almost inedible.
He left breakfast hungry (which he never does--I am def the "eater" in the relationship). One shirred egg with some grits, probably 2 tbls of bacon in the bottom and tiny boring-cut sourdough glutinous bread did not fill this man up. He came back and reheated up a piece of fried chicken and some gravy leftover from the night before. Finally, I wasn't the only one eating more HA!
Walking out, I noticed the few salads in the case that looked good if I need something quick and healthy in a pinch. The Tuna Nicose salad looked to be the best, but was also missing egg -- one of the most traditional components in the Nicose salad.
I don't know what else to say, y'all. But I'm hoping that they can redeem themselves soon so that they can validate that swagger. I'm all about some confidence, but you gotta be good enough to back it up when you walk and talk.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)