Scratch

Its not too often that I'm rather offended by a restaurant, but Scratch came pretty close. After reading a few reviews, it seemed that Scratch would be a tasty treat. Originally based out of the Durham Farmer's Market, they are famous for their doughnut muffins. They have now expanded their operation and have secured a storefront where customers can purchase their doughnut muffins, sandwiches, salads and pies on non-farmer's market days.

We were excited to go and in fact, it took us three tries to get there. They have short hours on the weekends and we didn't check before we left. So we arrived once after it had closed, once on a Sunday and found they are closed on Sunday, and so we made a point of arriving before 3 PM on a Saturday afternoon and arrived at a respectable 1:45pm on 10/2/2010.

We ordered a calzone with farmer's cheese and onions for our children to split, a roast pork sandwich, seared eggplant sandwich, two lattes (one with vanilla flavoring), peach lemonade, and two doughnut muffins (one regular, one chocolate).

The highlight of the meal was the coffee - it was fantastic. Almost fantastic enough for me to want to go back to Scratch, almost. The food on the other hand was a total letdown. Scratch makes a point of shopping local and providing essentially farm-to-table fare. According to their website "Scratch specializes in seasonal hand-crafted baking using the best local ingredients available." I've been to several farm-to-table eateries, most of which provide a fantastic way to experience local ingredients without having to gather them together yourself. This however was a different experience.

I think perhaps the downfall of the food is that they are trying to create a "wow" moment - one burst of flavor on your palate. The seared eggplant sandwich was wrapped in a pita and included a lentil salad and covered in purslane, a unique edible greenery. I normally love lentils and rarely turn down eggplant, so I figured this would be a perfect sandwich for me. My mouth was assaulted with salt. The sandwich was so salty (you could see a layer of salt on the purslane) that I felt it drying out the inside of my mouth as I chewed. I took off some of the purslane to see if removing the salt layer would help but unfortunately the rest of the sandwich was just as overly salted which made it almost impossible to taste any of the other ingredients.

The farmer's cheese and onion calzone sounded interesting. In fact, the bread around the calzone was ok, but the cheese was spicy (normally not an issue, but perhaps they should have warned customers the cheese contained red pepper) and they didn't heat it up so it was rock hard and almost chalky.

My husband actually enjoyed the pork sandwich. He said the flavors were good - his only complaint was that the portion size was rather meager and price of the sandwich was pretty high (when you order a sandwich, that's all you get - they do not include a side although they can be purchased separately).

The peach lemonade sounded great so we ordered one for the kids to split. It was so acidic that I could imagine my teeth were going to lose some enamel if I left it on there. It tasted like drinking plain lemon juice with pink coloration. A totally mouth puckering experience.

After our sandwich disasters, we moved on to the doughnut muffins. They looked fantastic and were coated in cinnamon and sugar. We split them into pieces and bit down. It tasted like an extremely heavy, extremely dry pound cake with the sugar coating on the top. How disappointing!

We decided to give Scratch one last chance. They are apparently famous for their pies as well. We ordered a slice of the meyer lemon pie. Not only was it also dry, the crust was really thick and dense (not flaky at all!). My children do not get a ton of sweets, so when they do get something good it is really a treat for them. They each took one bite of the pie and would not eat any more.

Our highlight of this trip was definitely the coffee, however this was an expensive venture. We eat out quite frequently and enjoy spending money on fantastic food. Here however, we spent almost $50 and left with heartburn and the desire to find the Only Burger truck.

Scratch
111 Orange Street
Durham, NC 27701
919-956-5200
http://www.piefantasy.com/