Guest Blogger Jeremy Aven's Take on Dog and Duck

My day began with what is usually the worst day of the year: paying the tax man! I should have known it would be a great day for a great lunch when apparently Obama somehow tripled my tax refund. I had planned to hit a regular lunch spot while I was in town with what the MPRD crew defines as the “MPSC” crowd but was pleasantly surprised when the new blogger celebrities rolled into Dog and Duck unannounced.

The Dog & Duck was definitely a regular spot while living in Charleston. Several of the items on the menu really became tried and true favorites of not only myself but also favorites of what I consider to be lunch officianados. The chef salad (with honey mustard or Dharma Ranch) is second to none and the French Dip with au jus is really unparalleled in the lunch restaurant category. What I have really come to consider Dog & Duck though is a bar with really good food and a fantastic “specials” menu (regardless of the CowYetti burger incident today). The chef apparently knows what he is doing and throws out a lot of different items that are sometimes as simple as a “Cowboy” burger or as spicy as the Desperado (spicy shredded chicken & cheese burrito with salsa. Some items also reoccur on the specials menu like the chicken salad sandwich which I believe is served up every Tuesday.

For those of you who like to order straight from the menu there are also plenty of options. The “Plain Guy” sitting next to me today had a very fresh looking YardBird (grilled chicken sandwich) that he seemed to rather enjoy. The “Healthy Guy” had the Golf Club which is a pretty nice little club sandwich but if you want to keep up with this guy you are going to have order light mayo and a water!

The “Serious Blogger” down at the end for some reason picked the sandwich that was claimed to be “Piled High”. I mean come on that is like asking for something that you know you are not going to get! You might as well have asked for the million dollar sandwich expecting the winning lotto ticket inside. When it came out it wasn’t piled so high but it did seem to be piled high with mayo that surely came from the mayo they saved from the Golf Club with light mayo! At least the restaurant was prepared with plenty of napkins.

Our final taste tester is what most of us “lunchers” are really looking for. Where can I get the most bang for my buck. Well I would suggest taking this guy with you anywhere. He single handedly deduced that the “Cowboy Burger” on the special menu was nothing more than the “Yetti Burger” on the regular menu. The only thing special about it was the extra $1 they charged you for the new name!

I don’t know if I paid any attention to the bathroom, the server, or even the price of the lunch. It’s always a great lunch by any standard when you have great company and at least get food that doesn’t break the bank or send you straight to bathroom when you get back to office!
The only thing that would have completed the lunch was the “ol MPSC work wife”! I appreciate the opportunity to hang with the local celebs while I am in town and hopefully they will invite me back for another guest blogging opportunity!

-J