Recently in Food & Drink Category

Debbie and I decided to head downtown after church this morning and try the new brunch at the Basin Burger House. It was our first visit to this relatively new, locally-owned restaurant.

We accidentally tried a new restaurant tonight, and it was a pleasant experience. OK, perhaps "accidentally" isn't precisely correct. We decided to eat Thai food and when we got to the restaurant we found it was closed (for a "family emergency"). So we decided to drive a few miles down the road to try out the new Indian restaurant, Shahi Tandoor, located in the sumptuous (*ahem*) Grand Texan Hotel, which used to be called something else, something less grandiose but just as forgettable. 

This could be pretty cool...a new website that shows the menus and hours of Midland restaurants. MidlandMenus.com currently has information for about thirty restaurants, as well as a [small] handful of reviews. I assume the coverage will increase over time, as that's just a fraction of the eateries we have access to in the Tall City eateries we have access to in the Tall City.

Last night's dinner at Poehi's was quite pleasant, with the combination of a open-air bayside table (where we watched an enterprising pelican gulp down his own fresh seafood) and good food. I had a pretty straightforward fresh salmon fillet, grilled with olive oil, but the real star of the meal was my salad, of all things.

It started with a thin bed of field greens, on top of which four thick slices of beefsteak tomatoes -- the kind we can't get in Midland -- were laid out in a row. The tomatoes were topped with a combination of blue cheese sprinkles, shreds of bacon, and drizzled balsamic vinegar. That alone would have made it a good dish, but then each tomato slice was adorned with a French-fried onion ring, which elevated the dish into the realm of greatness.

Compliments to the chef for a delicious bit of simple culinary imagination!

The last few times I've gone to the supermarket, I've bought Central Market's "Herb Garden Spring Mix" instead of lettuce for our salads. It contains a wide variety of greens and a few different herbs, but the most distinctive flavor of the mix comes from bits of fresh dill. And every time I take a bite of a sandwich or salad with that mix, I immediately start thinking about dill pickles, past and present.

It's probably because we're just rubes from the country, but we were amazed to discover during our recent visit to Santa Fe that there are [at least] two stores in the downtown area that specialize in selling olive oil and balsalmic vinegar in a wide array of flavors. We spent quite a bit of time in Oleaceae (the store name is the plant family that contains the olive tree, as well as being an extremely challenging word to type), a small shop on Old Santa Fe Trail (it's actually part of the La Fonda Hotel, adjacent to the candy store and knife shop, if you're familiar with that particular block).

Have you noticed that some restaurants have become rather stingy with their oven time?

First, it was IHOP, doing away with their iconic warm syrup, forcing us to us the decades-old, occasionally mislabeled communal dispensers. Now, as a kid, I was always amazed at the bounty of available sweet and sticky substances to be found in those containers - who doesn't love dollar pancakes drowned in a combination of pecan and blueberry syrup? But that sort of thing lost its appeal roughly four decades ago, and now all I desire is a simple maple-like flavor delivered in a form that will actually melt the solid lump of butter atop the short stack. But, no, even that simple pleasure is now denied,*

And then there's Cracker Barrel, which has apparently adopted a strategy of combating global warming by serving its breakfast muffins cold.* (And without butter, although that's a perverted blessing given the inability of the muffins to melt it.) Does anyone really prefer their blueberry or apple bran muffins unheated?

C'mon, folks. Life's short and hard enough without making us suffer these basic indignities.

*In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that warm syrup and heated muffins will be provided, but only upon special request. But that's sort of like ordering a bottle of wine with dinner and, oh, by the way, do mind also uncorking it for us?

When we arrived for our usual Wednesday evening interlude at the Rankin Highway Starbucks, we were greeted by a barista wearing a lobster on her head. I tried not to stare, acting as though this was a commonplace occurrence in my daily routine, but curiosity finally got the better of me.

Why are you wearing a lobster on your head?

My boss told me I had to wear it until I sold ten of these. She pointed at something in a rack in front of the register. So far, no one has felt sorry enough for me to buy one.

She was referring to the little packets of Via, the company's new "instant coffee" (although they use the more refined term, "microground"). There had been a flurry of ads about it a while back, but I hadn't seen any lately and hadn't given it any serious thought.

Well, I'll help you out; add this one to my bill. I handed her a three-pack of the bold Italian Roast, good for three cups and at $1 per cup, a better deal than their in-store brew.

I fried up a cup of water yesterday afternoon and dumped in the contents of a packet, and was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. In fact, I think I prefer it to the in-store version, which is usually strong to the point of bitterness. Via was smooth, and was plenty bold without overdoing it. I recommend it.

However, I'm still on the fence about wearing the lobster on my head.

We enjoyed a DiGiorno pizza last night, a Thin Crust Supreme supplemented with extra mozzarella and pepperoni, if you must know. And while it was quite tasty and a completely acceptable and less expensive alternative to a restaurant offering, it was also square.

There were some logistical issues of fitting it on a round serving platter and figuring out how to slice the darned thing, but the shape also raised an issue that should be of paramount importance to every serious pizza aficionado: assuming the area is the same, do you get more crust from a round pizza or a square one?

I'm sure there are manifold websites devoted to explaining the relationship of the circumference of a circle to the perimeter of a quadrilateral shape, but I chose to do it the old-fashioned way, with a slide rule and abacus. Ha ha, just kidding. I used Excel. (I wanted to use my iPhone's calculator but it doesn't compute square roots. At least not like I want to compute them, with one touch of a key.)

And, of course, what I found shouldn't surprise anyone. By choosing a square shape for its pizza over a round one, DiGiorno has effectively caused the amount of crust to be...oh, look! A baby bunny!

You didn't really think I was going to deprive you of the joy of figuring this one out for yourself, did you?