Between The Buns

November 23, 2013: the Doctor Who 50^th Anniversary. So, we headed to Between The Buns sports bar, hamburger and hotdog restaurant in our hometown downtown to celebrate! It was my daughter MJ’s idea, a supreme Doctor Who fan. And no, there is no connection between the restaurant and Doctor Who... at least as of this particular dimension’s writing. She just wanted an excuse to check out the new eatery and Julie was all for it, as was I.

 

At 6 Elm Street in historic downtown Potsdam, NY, the location is a neat, old, stand-alone building. Formerly a Masonic temple, it has large roman columns framing the main entrance frontage and was recently last occupied by La Casbah Moroccan food restaurant. I had only eaten there once (it was delicious!) before the Julie/Mom Project and don’t remember much at all of the interior downstairs. The upstairs had been renovated into a nightclub for live music and dancing. I went up there on several occasions only for Science Café community event presentations before those found a more appropriate home in the Civic Center.

 

Only the downstairs is currently used for regular seating. I think the upstairs is used for small private events. The walls and ceilings are covered over with “tin” paneling with metallic copper color paint on it and the exposed utility pipes. A triplet of interior passageways to a seating area off the bar room are ornately shaped with peaked curves. The copper-effect paint is accented with real copper paneling on the bar surface and a few other small areas such as the frames of the passageways. Overall, it is a pleasant, bright effect.

 

This is not your ordinary burger joint. Creative hamburgers and hotdogs is descriptive of the menu, which also includes a few specialty French roll sandwiches, salads and appetizers. All meals come with fries, a small side of coleslaw and house made bread and butter pickle slices (upon request). Though one can choose to eat the burger or dog held in hands, my experience is they are too loaded with their character toppings for this to be less than a totally sloppy, if still delicious, experience.

 

Julie got The Cuban specialty sandwich of house-roasted pork, bacon, bread and butter pickles with Swiss cheese and whole grain mustard. MJ ordered the Mac-N-Cheese hamburger, which is no longer available as of this writing. House made, creamy macaroni and cheese was pan-fried to top the burger patty along with a rosemary tomato sauce and real bacon bits. Mom (that’s me) also ordered a now defunct sandwich. The “Fish Sandwich” was composed of a patty of ground ahi tuna, seared with a black sesame crust and topped with pickled ginger and cilantro slaw and wasabi vinaigrette. A nice touch on the specialty sandwiches is a skewer to hold them together made of bamboo with a cute curly end.

 

Burgers are cooked to order doneness as red, pink or brown. MJ got hers brown. She likes well-done meat which is a good, safe preference. I ordered my ahi burger pink, as well-done sort of ruins the flavor and texture of fresh ahi. But truly, the fish was almost certainly not fresh, unless it was “fresh frozen”, a laughable term that has picked up in popularity in recent years. I am spoiled from my time in Hawaii where ahi tuna was caught offshore every day and we ate it raw with special seasonings as an appetizer called poke (pronounced poe-kay). I enjoyed my sandwich here, seared as it was with black sesame crust. It apparently wasn’t popular enough to keep on the menu and has been replaced by a southern style “Po Boy” sandwich of battered fried crabmeat with remoulade sauce (which I have since tried and it's yummy).

 

I am the only one who chose to have the side of coleslaw, though we all enjoyed our fries. I specifically made sure to get our sample of bread and butter pickles (which were a topping on Julie’s pork sandwich). The girls love pickles. These were heavy on cinnamon flavor and quite sweet with no onion as I generally associate with bread and butter pickles. They are very good, uniquely thick, wavy cut and crispy.

 

As for beverages, this is a bar, so I had a large mug of local beer, St. Lawrence Brewing Company’s Switchback Ale. It’s lovely, unfiltered pale ale and has become the mainstay of why I frequent Between the Buns as a regular now. More on that toward the end of this blog... the Mom Project, ha ha ha. Julie got a Sierra Mist, the brand they have here of her favorite flavor of soda pop, lemon-lime. It came served in a large, clear plastic cup with a straw. MJ’s favorite soda is root beer. This came from the bar in a bottle as the locally famous brand Saranac, presented with an ice-filled mug.

 

Not on the menu are desserts, but the waiter let us know they had a couple of options available. I cannot figure how I failed to write down what the option was that we didn’t choose, but I did manage to scribble what we did order, chocolate chip cookies. These came out as not just any old cookies. They were warm on a plate and drizzled with chocolate syrup. Mmmmmmmmm... I am not a big dessert fan, but these were delicious!

 

As we were enjoying our meal, MJ had her nose in a book (one with real paper pages, which she likes for the way they smell, among other things), I was writing in my spiral notebook for this blog and Julie was looking it over and talking to me as I consulted with her over various notes to take. A woman came up to us and said how she just had to express how refreshing it was to see people actually reading books instead of being absorbed in electronic gadgets!

 

Now really, MJ was the only one reading a book, but it’s true that many people who are absorbed in electronic gadgets are actually just reading e-books. It’s also true that Julie loves her electronic gadgets, but hadn’t brought any with her so she could immerse herself in the experience of what we were doing. It’s also possible that if I was typing my notes into some electronic gadget instead of writing with a pen in a spiral bound notebook, the woman may not have been inspired to approach us. But it was fun to hear a strangers’ impression of our behavior. And it’s a testament to how technologically challenged I am that I have no clue what electronic device would be most suitable for taking notes at a tiny restaurant table or how to use any such thing. I consider it a huge life accomplishment that I know how to write in cursive and type with fingers other than just two thumbs to use a word processor to compile my writing into a form that I can download to an internet blog site!

 

As any reader can tell from the first line of this blog, I have blown off the writing of this piece in typical Mom fashion! I have a thousand excuses, but I really had told myself that I was going to go straight home from our visit and write it up. However, I started the Julie/Mom Project as a no-rules thing. Something to inspire and enjoy, not to create unnecessary pressure out of a fun thing. And so it is!

 

The picture of Julie/Mom in front of Between The Buns was taken in November as the weather was getting cold, but it could easily have been taken not too long ago this spring. It is late May now and it finally feels like summer is on the way, though spring feels like it has just barely arrived here in the North Country, New York State. So, between the visit I just wrote about and now was winter. Between the seasons, Mom has been back to the Buns many, many times. The Mom Project at my new neighborhood hangout is just a few blocks walk from my house on Potsdam’s uneven sidewalks.

 

I blame my procrastination in writing this up on my frequency of visits... it’s like the visit was never over, so how could I write it up? Just an excuse for laziness, but here is what I discovered for my winter-long efforts: what a pleasant place to sit and read while enjoying tasty craft beer on tap! Maybe catch a sporting event if you don’t have cable TV at home? There’s a friendly manager who chats with you about local history and culture.

 

I am adding old photos of the building to the end of this. The original structure at the turn of last century was a mercantile, I have been told. Sometime after it was willed to the local Masons, the roman columns went up and the turret with the spiral staircase came down. It’s an interesting evolution of architecture. I wish I could remember more about the interior from its previous days as La Casbah. Apparently, the hardwood floor had been painted green. It was sanded and refinished for it's present use.

 

I noticed a few menu changes besides the fish sandwich. The Hangover isn’t listed, though one bartender insists they can make it if I wanted it. I noted it as a burger topped with applewood bacon, a sunny-side up egg and creamy cheddar. I haven’t been in the namesake state of being since coming here to inspire ordering one of these yet, but I’ll keep this in mind should the occasion arise.

 

I’m not sure what happened to the Mac-N-Cheese burger MJ had. Mac-n-cheese by itself had been on the menu at our initial visit under “Warm-Ups” but disappeared along with soup du jour and Pickled Goodness (b-n-b pickles, fire cracker carrots and marinated olives). But I swear I once saw someone having mac-n-cheese with something else that may have been a daily special. I hadn’t done a full accounting of the menu in my notes in November, so I have no objective idea of what all has been removed, switched or added.

 

There are some really unique assemblages such as The Saint and The Stoner. The former is a burger on fresh greens and roasted red peppers, topped with sweet chili pepper cream cheese mousse, shaved prosciutto, braised duck and balsamic reduction. I had this one and it was absolutely fabulous. The latter is a burger topped with swiss cheese, french fries, Michigan sauce, a hot dog and coleslaw. Yes, those are all toppings. I have never had this one and doubt I ever will.

 

And in case anyone is wondering about the namesake of these burger sandwiches, “Stoner” is short for “Sandstoner”, which is the mascot of the local Potsdam High School. Potsdam, NY is historically famous for it’s distinctive sandstone that is incorporated into so much local architecture as well as exported. I know readers that aren’t from here needed to know that. I mean why else would someone name a burger topped with a Michigan hot dog, french fries and coleslaw, “The Stoner”?

 

So, nearby St. Lawrence University’s mascot is a “Saint”. In town, Clarkson University’s mascot is a “Knight” (two burger patties, ham, mozzarella, banana peppers, fresh greens, red onion, chipotle mayo). And State University of New York at Potsdam is a “Bear” (turkey, ham, pepperoni, melted mozzarella, cheddar, swiss, banana peppers, red onions and b-n-b pickles). Acknowledging our local places of education and sports with these names, they are.

 

Last but definitely not least is the addition made at the turning of spring: 25 new beer taps! This is definitely the Mom Project part of this place, though truth be told, I still go for the Switchback pale ale. I have tried all of the varieties they have that are in my preference of styles and enjoy many of them, but I love a good pale ale and I have found one in a very local product. My favorite time is when I happen to arrive when they have just put on a fresh keg of Switchback. The unfiltered yeast is all stirred up from moving around and it looks as thick as a latte. It is so very yummy when it is like this.

 

So, that is that. A bit lengthy, but I could blather on even more with my pent up, winter long experience of this place. I had to go away to work for several weeks just after they got the new taps in. Now that I’m back in town for at least a little while, I think I’ll go down tomorrow and catch some first round French Open tennis and a couple of mugs.

6 Elm Street ca. 1949, copyright 2014 Potsdam Public Museum

From a postcard I bought locally. This was before it was the Masonic Temple, early 1900s.