Phantom Gourmet: Hash House A Go Go at Mohegan Sun
Sky-high Chicken and Waffles. Hub cap sized Pancakes. A BLT Bloody Mary. Mashed potato stuffed Burgers. Snickers Bread Pudding.
At Hash House A Go Go, the food is all kinds of crazy… and you won't need to eat for a couple days after you eat here.
Located inside Mohegan Sun, there's nothing subtle about this big, fun, 200-seat restaurant. The dining room is decorated with huge silos of biscuit mix, old farm photos, and bunches of fresh wheat, while the kitchen pumps out breakfast, lunches, and dinners, that simply shock and awe.
"The first time anybody comes in here, when they sit down and food hits their table, they pull out their cell phones and they take a picture," said kitchen manager John Powali. "It's the wow factor that we're looking for, and it's the wow factor we get from everybody."
Powali and his very busy team serve up what they call 'Twisted Farm Food', and plenty of it.
"It's like Midwest comfort food with a twist. You know everything here is big portions, small price," Powali said.
"I've never worked in a restaurant where I've seen so many people be surprised by how much food we give them," said Manager Simone Doyle. "Some people are almost offended by how much food we put in front of them."
While the easily offended might want to stay home, Doyle says everyone else is welcome, as long as they come hungry.
"You definitely don't want to come here on your diet day. It should be your cheat day."
"This is kind of not the place to eat healthy, it's kind of the place to come and eat!" Powali added.
Breakfast is totally out of control, even with something as simple as pancakes, because they're so big that they cover the entire plate.
"They're fourteen inches around for breakfast, which is probably about as big as your hubcaps," Powali explained. "It's twelve ounces of pancake batter, and then he spreads it out on the flat top, and then he actually uses a dry wall spatula to flip it, because we need something that big to flip such a big pancake."
While the pancakes are great, if you really want to go all in, the Fried Chicken Benedict is a truly heart stopping experience. Weighing in at about three pounds, it's a downright silly stack of ingredients you have to see to believe.
"It's two cups of mashed potatoes, a split fresh biscuit, spinach, tomatoes, an eight ounce chicken breast, scrambled eggs, three ounces of melted cheddar cheese, six ounces of chipotle cream sauce, pepper garnish - and that's it," described Powali.
For something a little lighter, the Famous BLT Bloody Mary is a good choice - garnished with everything you need to make your own BLT sandwich right at the table. For those who are coming off a really bad night, there's an even simpler way to start the day, called the "O'Hare of the Dog."
"We serve a 24 ounce Budweiser in a bag, which is kind of a throwback to the guys you'd find walking around on the strip in Vegas. It's also served with five strips of bacon," Doyle said. "So, maybe you're waking up, you're not feeling that great in the morning, you can only get down a couple pieces of bacon, and a little bit of the hair of the dog that bit you."
At lunch, sandwiches are a good bet, like a magnificently messy Reuben with melted Swiss and spicy mustard; a thick cut meatloaf sandwich with grilled mozzarella; or an outrageous burger featuring applewood bacon and mashed potatoes sandwiched between a pair of half pound patties.
"There's gonna be one burger patty. Then there's a layer of mashed potatoes laid right on top of that burger patty. Couple strips of bacon go on top of the mashed potatoes, and then we sandwich that in between another burger patty. So it's basically like a double decker burger. In between you're gonna get the potatoes and the bacon," Doyle described.
To wash down that big burger, the Kiwi Watermelon Lemonade is a great choice, and yes, it tastes as good as it sounds.
"It's a layered drink that's got a little kiwi syrup on the bottom, homemade lemonade in the middle, and a fresh watermelon puree on top. So it actually has the same colors as the watermelon in it," said Doyle. "It's gonna be served with a big slice of fresh watermelon on top, and it's a delicious one when you're looking for something sweet and refreshing."
If somehow you're still hungry, there's plenty more for dinner, beginning with a complementary bowl of fresh baked biscuits.
"We have one person here that's dedicated to making biscuits. She comes in six days a week and she just makes biscuits. That's her job, and she's got it down to a science," Powali said. "When we make our biscuits we make them about two to three inches tall. They're really light and fluffy. They break apart. They're probably the best biscuit you'll ever eat."
They also have what might be the best version of Chicken and Waffles you'll ever eat: a tempting tower that's kicked up with sage fried chicken and bacon infused waffles.
"First we start off with fresh a Belgian waffle that we stuff with bacon. And then we coat our chicken with corn flakes and sage, and we fry it. We stack up the waffle like a pyramid; we put the two chicken breasts on top of that; and we put fresh fried leeks, more maple syrup, and then a little pepper garnish and barbecue sauce on the plate to finish it off," explained Powali.
Of course dessert here is just as impressive as the rest of the food - either in liquid form like the S'mores Mocha, or plated up like the delicious brick of Snickers Bread Pudding.
"You have to get the Snickers Bread Pudding," declared Doyle. "It's an enormous dessert. It's our homemade bread pudding that we cook. It's got Snickers bars basically smashed up and cooked right inside of it. We top it with a couple scoops of ice cream, a little chocolate syrup and caramel, and it's a good one to share."
Breakfast, lunch, or dinner, for huge plates of twisted farm food, all you need to know is Hash House A Go Go.
Watch Phantom Gourmet on Saturdays and Sundays at 10:30 and 11 a.m. on myTV38.
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