Holidays Sports Pub and Grill

On the surface these are absolutely beautiful curds, but looks aren't everything.  Being that these curds are beer battered, I had very high expectations for these curds.  When they arrived I was quite pleased with the perfect golden brown of the curds, from there it was downhill.  When I broke the first curd to check the stretchiness of the cheese I believe the words I said were "that's not a good sign".  The cheese pulled apart in wierd globs rather than with a nice uniform stretch.

The batter, while containing some seasoning was very thick and rather bland.  As with most batters that are are too thick, some of the batter wasn't fully cooked on all the curds which gives a strange consistency for the mouth feel.

These curds don't just pair well with ranch, they require it. These curds really cannot stand on their own, the breading is too thick and bland to eat these curds dry.

Now, I know that I've got a lot bad to say about these curds, but they have extraordinary potential, but are just not quite executed well.  If they just thinned out the batter a little bit, got fresher curds and maybe kicked the seasonings in the batter these could score very high.  However as they currently stand I can only give them a 4.5 which hurts because I really wanted to enjoy them and they looked so beautiful.

A & W Neenah, WI

Well this has been a long time coming for many of the followers of my blog.  Among the most popular places to get cheese curds is A&W Rootbeer Restaurants.  They are pretty standard for A&W, consistently mediocre.  All I can give them is a 5.0 out of 10.  Pretty good for fast food, but not as good as DQ.  But the rootbeer float makes up for any deficiencies.

Willie Beamons, Neenah, WI

Willie Beamons probably has one of the nicest presentations of bar cheese curds I've ever experienced.  While clearly not hand made, serving them in a nice plate with some garnishing around the rim was a touch I was not expecting and a pleasant surprise.  

Now for the curds.  I have to say for orange, breaded curds, these are pretty darn good.  By themselves they lack a little something, but due to the extraordinarily good ranch sauce, these curds can hang with the big boys.  The curds were fried very well, with excellent stretchiness.  Golden brown with the cheese melted just right.  The serving was actually very large, while the enormous plate makes it appear small, it was hard to finish even with some help.

So these curds really have the deck stacked against them in how good they could be, but they did very well within that range.  I give them a 5.5 out of 10.  While I wouldn't go out of my way to get these curds, if I was already there, I wouldn't hesitate to have them again.

http://williebeamons.com/

The Beehive Inn take 2

So this was my second time getting curds at the Beehive.  The first time the curds were a little under done and were kind of soggy.  Today, was much improved.  The batter was cooked to a perfect golden brown.  The cheese was flavorful.  The batter was a little bland, but not bad.  The cheese did not have a very good stretchy-ness to it, which I count against it, though it gave the curd kind of a chewy texture similar to what you get in a fresh curd.
 These are some of the best curds I've found in the Neenah area I'm giving them 6.5 out of 10.

Dairy Queen Gillingham St. Neenah, WI

Well to my surprise it appears that different Dairy Queens have vastly different vendors for their cheese curds.

I was expecting to get what I considered the standard DQ cheese curd of white cheese curd and battered.  I was surprised with not only yellow and breaded, but what appeared to not even be cheese curd, but rather chunks of cheese (pressed and aged) that was breaded and fried.

However I will judge these on the merits of what was presented rather than the difference from what my expectation was.

The temperature was good, and the cheese had a distinct flavor, most likely coming from the fact that it was a fully developed cheese rather than a curd.  This was a plus on the flavor.  There was however a serious knock against it in that being a full fledged cheese when melted too fast, it separated the oil from the body of the cheese.  This gave a look and texture of microwaved cheese.  While it didn't much affect the flavor, the presentation and mouth feel was quite off.

The breading was a bit thick, but was cooked thoroughly enough to no be doughy.  I would call it too much crunch, but everyone has different preference on crunch.

To give credit to the cooks, given this material to work with they did the best they could.  It was well prepared.

I almost feel bad giving this a rating as a cheese curd, because it really should be in a separate category of perhaps fried cheese, much like mozzarella sticks are, but they sell them as cheese curds, so I will have to grade them as cheese curds.


Even with the best efforts of the fry cooks, these "curds" cannot be given a score of higher than a 3, they just lacked too many of the things I would want in a curd.

Finally I would like to give a shout out to the crew that went to lunch and experimented in the Way of Curds today.  Thanks to Lindsey, Scott, Linda, Melinda and Melissa .

That's the Way of Curds today,
-Matt