stay in the shallow end

Sunday: Appetizers at McGrady’s: More post kickball appetizers. Fried things and $4 pitchers of Yuengling for everybody!

Monday: Lunch at Timberlake’s: Everytime I’ve walked by Timberlake’s, the sign on the front of the store beckoned me in. I just knew it was a place that I would love. I finally make it in today and sit down at the counter, and so far it’s everything I dreamed of. I asked for a pastrami on rye with kraut and mustard and I’m disappointed for the first time. The ingredients were nothing special, just bagged loaves of bread and deli meat. The sandwich tasted exactly as if I’d made it myself. Now on to the good part: I also got a chocolate malt, and this was delicious. Ridiculously thick, super malty, and enormous. My previous downtown mall milkshake of choice was the mint chocolate chip at Chaps, but this is up there. It’s nice to have choices.

Tuesday: Dinner at Amigo’s: I had a coupon for the Fajitas, so I ordered the chicken and steak combo. They tasted just like cheap mexican fajitas. I made a mistake. Next time I’m going back to the Chili Verde.

Wednesday: Lunch at St. Maarten’s: This was an excellent meal. The sausage Poboy special was a piece of spicy sausage, onions, peppers, and cheese. I topped it with some Tabasco, and I was very impressed. We also ordered the frizzled onion appetizer, which was thinly sliced onions batter-fried and tossed with a buffalo wing sauce. I dream about food like this. Too bad they were both specials, as I may never have them again.

Thursday: Dinner at Christian’s: I had a slice of Spicy Chicken. Now that I’m working above Christian’s, I’m really apprehensive that the opening of new locations will impact quality. That would suck.

Friday: Dinner at Orbit: Chicken wings. Extra hot and extra crispy. If you don’t know Evelyn, she’s a bartender at Orbit and one of my favorites in town. When she’s around, I know that my hot and crispy request will make it to the kitchen. When she’s around, I know I’m going to have some damn good wings.

Saturday: Lunch at Marco and Luca: I start working downtown, and Marco and Luca raise their prices by 50 cents.

Sunday: Appetizers at McGrady’s: We are the champions of kickball! To celebrate we ate lots of fried macaroni and cheese. Ease said she would blog about it, but then she did not. Ease also said she had Chron’s Disease, but she actually doesn’t. Ease is a liar who is awesome at kickball.

Monday: Dinner at Texas de Brazil: I’d been waiting all week for this. Texas de Brazil is a Churrascaria (Brazilian steakhouse). They barbecue huge skewers of meet and the servers run around the restaurant with them. You get a little disk on your table that is green on one side and red on the other. Turn it to green, and the servers come over and start hacking off pieces of meat on to your plate. In addition, they have a massive salad bar with fancy foods like sashimi grade seared tuna, which I ate a ton of. I’ve been to other Churrascaria’s before, and I’ve had excellent experiences. Unfortunately, compared to my other experiences, Texas de Brazil doesn’t match up. We decided to go there because they sent out a 50% off coupon, which brings the price down from $42/person to $21/person if you go before 6:30 or after 8:30. I don’t know if it’s because we went at 8:30, but the quality of the meat was just not up snuff. They were dragging the same skewer of pork tenderloin around the restaurant the whole time we were there, and after a half hour, it looked all shriveled and dried up. There was nothing tender about it. Most of the other meats were also overdone, and you had to specifically request extra rare pieces. For me the highlights were: top sirloin (their speciality), spicy sausage, bacon wrapped chicken. The disappointments were all entirely due to their being overcooked: bacon wrapped filet mignon, pork tenderloin, lamb chops, and leg of lamb. It was still well worth $21, but at $42, I’d have been pretty annoyed. I still walked out of there in a coma, so mission accomplished, I guess. They sent out another coupon for September, so Kate and I may head down there again with Michael (who was supposed to blog about this meal) and Elizabeth (who was supposed to blog about this meal also).