Loretta's Last Stand, Like For Real, The Last Time I Would Ever Go There

The wait at Sweetcheeks was an hour forty five, just slightly longer than we were willing to wait. 

All day, all week really, I daydreamed of pulled chicken smothered in sweet barbeque sauce, hearty mac and cheese, savory potato salad, and shoveling buttery honey biscuits into my mouth until I fell out of my chair.

But it was not to be.

The next logical option seemed to be a trial run at Loretta’s Last Stand, the new southern fried chicken bar that replaced La Verdad on Lansdowne Street. 

We walked in and were slapped in the face with a faint mirage of the old woman hand rolling tortillas behind the take-out counter, peacefully enveloped in the smoke of slow cooked pork. 

La Verdad was the best taco stand this side of Maria’s Taqueria within Boston city limits. Its unexpected closing left a gap in the Lansdowne Street pregame street food and made decent Mexican fare that much harder to find in our meat-and-potatoes city.

Enter Bob’s Country Bunker...

The low country, low culture ambience was well done, if you’re into that. Bare wood floors, country music decor, and plenty of available stage-side seating. The rest of the experience was underwhelming.

Decent barbeque wings and overly battered fried green tomatoes gave way to fatty brisket drowned in a mysterious brown gravy. Flavorless coleslaw and dry potato salad were paired with a burnt dinner roll passed off as a biscuit. 

The southern fried chicken was edible, juicy and well cooked, but the batter would have a hard time holding up against Colonel Sanders, never mind Virginia’s on King. The final straw was the uncooked sweet biscuits that tasted like droppings of raw batter from the bottom of the carnival floor.

Oh, and after being cooly warned that our table would be taken away at 10:00pm, we weren't quite sure whether to stop eating mid-mouthful or let the bouncer dance with our dates. 

As the Garth Brooks cover band started checking levels, we were literally the last lonely table in a farting sea of flannel and cowgirl boots. I’m surprised they let us keep our forks.

With Loretta’s as your alternative, an hour forty five in line at Sweetcheeks is well worth the wait. 

The mistake was ours. 

What kept me from wallowing in a pile of self-pity and remorse is that Loretta sounds somewhat like Toretto, which got me rather excited for the Fate of the Furious.