Phantom Gourmet: CJ's Great West Grill And Cactus Jack's In New Hampshire
MANCHESTER, N.H. (CBS) -- If you like your food big and your flavors bold, then this is the place for you.
At CJ's Great West Grill in Manchester New Hampshire, and Cactus Jack's in Laconia, a spunky chef named Nicole Barreira is serving up taste after taste of good ol' American eats.
"It's just an amazing melting pot of basically the best cuisine America has to offer," Barreria says.
So there's Southern style ribs, Texas-sized steaks, Cajun Jambalaya and plenty of Tex-Mex.
"The menu is so diverse and just melds across so many different regions that it has something for everybody's palate," she said.
Decorations that celebrate America just as much as the food are found all over the dining room.
And CJ's bar is a great spot to grab a beer, watch a game and snack on everything from fried pickles to house-made jalapeno poppers.
"We use fresh jalapeños. We have a cream cheese blend that we stuff them with every single day. And then what is really unique about them is that the breading is actually a corn bread breading. So it's got a lot of sustenance to it," Barreira says. "It just has a really cool mouth feel. Its nice and golden brown on the outside. It's house seasoned and then you get that real cool creamy filling with a little bit of hint from the fresh jalapenos. It's a super popular dish."
In fact everything on the menu here is popular because Chef Nicole relishes the challenge of cooking the foods you know and love, in new and delicious ways.
"When people dine with us we want them to leave and say- wow. I've had that dish before or I've never and that dish before but either way it was really unique and really exciting," she said.
Watch Phantom Gourmet on Saturdays and Sundays at 10:30 and 11 a.m. on myTV38.
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