Agrippa D.
Yelp
I'll start by saying that I am a recent transplant to this area from the Philly region, and I am now a local here. I prefer mountains and peace and quiet, but I'm still grateful for a good place to eat once in a while. Of the 5 or 6 times I've been to The Junction, I only have one complaint and one complaint alone, but it's a complaint I have every visit: their customers are egocentric, self-important tourists from New York who think their oversized flannel shirts and Carhartt beanie hats make them woodsmen...and we all know that people from New York city glom on to any possible identity that mimics a lifestyle they could never create for themselves, and then they ruin it for everyone else who actually lives that way for real.
I digress... the restaurant itself is a cool little bar and food establishment, with a concise normal menu of great local foods: venison ragout, a terrific Caesar salad, and some good drinks and deserts. Tight but cozy setting, wood stove, dark wood floors- the whole shit.
But tonight, there was a "pop-up" led by some lazy shlub who lives in Brooklyn and who, by the looks of this pop-up menu, seems to have ZERO original culinary ideas in his head at all. I paid $24 for a f*cking fried Chicken cutlet on a bed of shredded iceberg lettuce which had some capers and "milanese" sauce on it. That was the whole dish.
This tactic of ripping off the concepts that Anthony Bourdain talked about for 20 years, and that Dave Chang already did 15 years ago is so f*cking rapacious and tired and it really needs to go away. This place clearly doesn't want the locals in the area to enjoy their establishment- only the entitled, spoiled rich kids from New York would ever accept paying that price for something I've been making just as well as this pop-up moron did since I was 7 years old.
"Tastykake Chocolate Kandy Kakes are SO GOOD MAN, I DONT CARE WHAT MICHELAN STARRED CHEFS ARE DOING, THEY'LL NEVER BE BETTER THAN TASTYKAKE!...Chang and I are the same, man, I LOVE KFC MAC AND CHEESE TOO! So that's why I'm gonna BLOW PEOPLE'S MINDS and make my version of a Chocolate Kandy Kake and sell it for $12. So what if they can get a box of them at the gas station for $4.99, these stupid bumpkins just don't get, like, the MEMORIES that a Tatstykake evokes."
I could keep going like this for a while but the bottom line is I like this place normally, but I don't know why they brought this "pop-up" to sell his average food for stupid prices. New York people suck, always and forever- its not my opinion, it's just a fact that everyone else in the country knows to be true. Hopefully the restaurant will be back to normal soon...