Gays, Grannies and Gagging....Palm Springs Edition

I only like to blog about meals when something funny happens. Like say, if you arrive to dinner in a limo to a restaurant that has performance posters outside, or you dance with an 85 year old man, or end up puking outside the limo over your mom’s lap. So when all three of those happened in one night I knew this was one for the blog.

Guest Bloggers + Sign of the performer...

The setting was Palm Springs over Easter, where we were the only non Gays or Grannies (props to Megan for the perfect description of PS) enjoying the place. Knowing that we would all be too sauced to drive home, we got a limo to take us to and from “The Nest”, http://www.gotothenest.com/site/. Notice that their slogan is “After 5 Life Begins Here.” It should actually read, “After  65, new boobies and a face lift, and 4 martinis, Life Begins Here.” 

Snapshot of the 50+ year old crowd

We were greeted by a hostess, no younger than 60 with a deep voice and boobs that looked like someone had slapped them right below her chin—you could tell that this place was going to be entertaining. We sat down around 7, which was late for those folks, and immediately ordered drinks. Little did I know that peer pressuring one member of the group to drink the martinis I liked would end up with quite an adventure… We ordered snails and artichokes which only a few of us would try—glad the sickling didn’t try one—throwing up a snail could scar you for life. 

Esgargot

For some reason I was feeling uber-butch, so I ordered a 16oz ribeye while the other two girls split a shrimp pasta (thank God I already have a boyfriend, otherwise I would be Screwed). 

Sad that I looked at the steak more lovingly than I would at a human....

 The two men ordered the fish, and Mrs. Smith ordered Frog Legs (again, I LOVE peer pressure). The steak sucked, but I’m pretty sure the cook prob fell asleep halfway through cooking it, seeing as 7:30 is past the grannies bedtime. The frog legs legit tasted like cat but were fun to eat because I love eating weird things. The best part about the meal were the rolls (some of us should have had a few more, not going to mention any names, ABBY). 

Sickass Frog Legs

The best part was after dinner. We were escorted to a table in the piano room/bar and immediately woke up. Have you ever seen a sea of women over 60 that have DD’s and they don’t shake when they move? IT. IS. AMAZING. I cannot wait to accidently poison my first husband, use his money to buy a new bod and move out to the California desert. My first stop will be the Nest. Sadly, my crush from the bar will be longgggggggg gone by then, but I will find me another rich hotty over 80 and trick him in to marrying me. I know Abby and Taylor are already fighting over their Michael Douglas look-a-like. 

This guy has to be related to Michael Douglass. And he was not ashamed to hit on a girl next to her dad...

At one point in the night, it was my birthday and the piano player was playing “Sweet Caroline,” and I found myself dancing with a friendly fellow named Murphy who was pushin 83, but danced like a swan. The night ended with us piling back to the limo followed by a session of road-side barfing. I was a good friend and noted that “It must be food poisoning” and quickly changed my mind as soon as we got out of the limo. Moral of the story: Palm springs= Fake tittays + old men and a hell of a good time.

Murphy, my date for the evening :)

A Stripmas Story

Holiday Office parties always go one of two ways: The first is the awkward cocktail hour and hors d’ouevres with uncomfortable small talk and introducing your significant other to a bunch of people you wish you didn’t even know, the second is the good kind—a dinner where a bunch of people who legit like each other (because 5 of the 11 share the same last name), where no subject is off the table. Such subjects include: Christmas (or Hanukah for one dude) plans, stripping, favorite cupcake flavors, semi anti-Semitic jokes, pimps, jokes about half the office blacking out after dinner, followed by half of us blacking out. Thus went our company’s annual Christmas party at The Palm, a NYC restaurant that has inhabited the same lot in downtown Dallas for forever.

If you haven’t been to The Palm, you must. The caricatures on the wall make it interesting from every angle. My particular favorite is Chester Cheetah, while Dad’s (my boss) thought that Big Dick Harvey or someone was just too funny. UNCOMFORTABLE. 

Half-n-Half (BACK OFF)

Once we plopped down, they brought out calamari and half-n-halfs. For you skinny bitches out there, any time you hear half-n-half at a nice resty, it means half fried onions, half fried potatoes. In my case, I don’t care how they are prepared—I would eat a fried finger if it were brought out with a dipping sauce. The calamari is maybe the only thing that sucks—it has no flavor and smells kind of like a dirty fish tank. Yum. So everyone orders salads/soups/etc., none of which I wanted. After I saw that everyone had ordered something I decided that I didn’t want to look like a doosh (and God forbid I miss a course), so I ordered Lobster Biqsue. Welp, I don’t like Lobster. Or creamy soups.  So ordering a creamy lobster soup was prob not my smartest choice. By the time it came, however, I was on my 2^nd-ish glass of wine (4^th), and decided that I should use their jalapeño cheese bread as a spoon to dip in the soup. I. am. HUGE. 

So for dinner, I decided to go light and just order a small steak. A small, bone-in 24+ ounce ribeye. JK, I split it with my mom. By the time it came I had already tried adjusting my belt on my dress to be looser, but I ended up just looking like a creep touching my boobs. Fail. The steak was fine, nothing to call home about. The real winner here is the fact that they give you bibs (if you’ve eaten w/ me, you probably have noticed that I don’t have great coordination and spill everything), and they crack the lobster and crab for you. What greater gift to a fatty then having someone do all the work, tie a bib on you, then tell you to dip your fish in melted butter. Besides giving you crabs, the waiters here would make the perfect husband—they make sure you always have enough wine to tolerate them, they do all the hard work for you, and they offer you drawn butter like its water. In fact, they find it odd if you don’t request more. A man who wants you to be drunk and fat=JACKPOT.  We also had some light sides including fried asparagus, fries, shrooms, and cheesy potatoes.

The "small" Surf-and-Turf (NY Strip and Lobster)

Then, one of my fellow fatnip’s ordered a “dessert sampler,” which came with a huge choco cake slice, carrot cake, crème brulee, tiramisu, and some other chunky kid item. And she ordered TWO of them. WOOF. I don’t love dessert, but when I came to around 8:30 and realized that I had eaten the entire sugar shell off the crème brulee and started going in to some type sugar shock/red wine coma at the table.  When one of our co-workers suggested that a fellow should dance for us, we decided it was best to leave and went on our merry ways (Had it been our other co-worker, I would have stayed for a private dance).

Crab Legs and Butta

I just got grossly full from writing that, but still can’t stop thinking about what to get for lunch…SUGGESTIONS?

 (If only I lived in Austin, I could get a lovely steak at the Yellow Rose, while they wrap Christmas presents for free....)

Fries 'n Shrooms

Fried Asparagus

The. Blog. Is. Back. ALLRIGHT!!! (Dun dun na nuh, uh, uh)

My biggest pet peeve is when comebacks don’t get enough media attention—there are few things that are as important as a celeb or group of celebs second go at fame. Some second time attempts that didn’t get their fair share of excitement include….

1)      1) Cheetah Girls 2 (Which, if were being honest, should just have been called: “Watch Raven Symone get even fatter while eating/singing/being a doosh at the same time”). Just because Sadam Hussein was executed and Brittany Spears was caught without panties and got divorced, doesn’t mean that the weirdo mixed race fivesome shouldn’t have had their fair share of the spotlight in 2006. Don’t even get me started on how Cheetah Girls 3: One World was overshadowed in 2008. Why can’t anyone take Galleria, Chanel, Dorinda, and Aquanette seriously? 

2)       2) Lance Bass going gay on the cover of People. No shit, Lance Bass—pretty sure the entire “Digital Digital Get Down” song was you going gay—you guys only use the term “girl” once, and the song was about you cybering with Neil Patrick Harris. Anyways—people paid attention to him for 5 minutes, then forgot all about him. 

3)       3) Any finally, lest we not forget, Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2. Opening night in 2004, I was at the Highland Park Village theater with a coke/cherry slushie and popcorn. And alone. My fellow Baby Geniuses fanatics (all 8 of them) laughed nonstop for the entire 88 minutes. Babies, talking chemical equations and sneak attacks, while wetting themselves is funny, no matter what anyone says. Also, the fact that Scott Baio and Jon Voight are overshadowed by “actors” who poop their diapies is amazing.

All of this is to get you HYPED UP. I figured if BACKSTREET’S BACK, the BLOG is BACK TOO.

BSB returns to the scene and you guys get excited for 10 minutes until you see Miley sucking on a bong. DON’T LET MILEY MAKE YOU FORGET ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD! BSB IS HANDS DOWN THE GREATEST BAND OF ALL TIMES.  I vow to make 2011 the YEAR OF THE BLOG and The year of the Boys. I am going to make Kevin (if he comes back to the beloved band), Howie, Nick, Brian and AJ proud. So be ready—because it’s going to be better than watching back-to-back episodes of the Suite Life.

Seasons Eatings,

Mrs. Caroline Dourough (you BSB-ers will understand that)

Torchy's > Babies

     If I had to choose between being loved or eating queso, you all know what I would decide. I would rather be an un-loved fat chick with 10 Bengal Cats, then to not be able to eat the beloved dip we Texans devour 2-3 times a week. Now, when it comes to Torchy’s Taco’s (formerly of Austin, now moved to Dallas), it is a greater extreme. If someone held up my sister’s baby (see adorable photo) and a bowl of Torchy’s queso, I’m embarrassed/saddened to say, the queso would prevail. I’m sorry, Adriane, it is just THAT good.

 Torchy's Queso= More delicious than this babay

     Torchy’s Tacos is Pei Wei meets Chuy’s but better than both. Ordering at a counter has two advantages to me: 1) You don’t have to awkwardly split up the check and write your name on the back of a receipt (I hate you anyways if you are the girl that makes people do that), and 2) You get to make up ANY name you want to have them call when your order is ready. 

 Baja Shrimp on the left, Trailer Park on the right.

     My suggestion is to pay in cash, because they knew my name because I paid with my credit card. Next time, I am going to use a horribly embarrassing name, most likely Brucey Ruth, since that is one of my friend’s real life names. I got the shrimp taco and the trailer park taco. Both were good, but next time I would order myself my own bowl of queso and a trailer park taco—it is basically a chicken finger with hot peppers and lettuce. Oh, and jalapeño ranch, because ordering a fried chicken taco isn’t embarrassing enough. Go to Torchy’s. Get Queso. It’s better than anything else in this world. 

 

Except sour candy and Eatzis. And Dallas.

Roadhouses (Tillman’s and otherwise)**

Simply put, Tillman’s Roadhouse is the shit. Awesome atmosphere. Awesome food. Awesome wait staff. Before I get in to the stories/food details, let me just list what all our lardass table ate.

They bring you out truffled popcorn and peanuts to start (A-MAZE-ING) then Todd sent us over two starters:

1) Trio of Fries: parmesean black pepper Kennebec fries, chili dusted purple Peruvian fries, and smoked salt scented sweet potato fries, served with homemade spicy ketchup and horseradish pickle mayo (of course I decided it wasn’t mayo, it was aioli, so I tried it).

2) Fried housemade bread and butter pickle cup with spicy brown butter

Then, we ordered, and all went really, really light......

1) Me: Chicken fried hanger steak with garlic whipped potatoes; bacon braised green beans and charred poblano gravy.

2) Crawford: Grilled PGA beef ribeye with truffled goat cheese tator tots. (Not as good as everyone elses…Should’ve ordered the Venison Frito Pie idiot.)

3) Dad: Chipotle BBQ smoked pork ribs with white cheddar mac-n-cheese. (They were amazing and he gave me a bite and tricked me in to eating a piece that was only fat…I wasn’t upset)

4) Megan: Off the Hook special (WEAK ORDER): Some striped sea bass with veggies. Almost made her leave the table. (Don’t go to dinner with our family and order non red-meat or pork. It’s just mean). Actually, its prob against her religion or something in her culture to eat meat.

5) Lauren: The Landy Burger—sirloin foie gras burger with Madiera aiolo, arugula, goats milk gouda cheese on a house baked Kaiser bun and goat cheese tator tots. (I think she ordered it saying “I’ll have the lady burger thinking she was sounding skinny”—sorry La, fail.)

6) Josh: same as me

7) Me again: Side of white cheddar mac-n-cheese (STOP JUDGING IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY)

So—we dove in, and ordered our 3rd and 4th bottles of wine, and everyone was in awe. The chicken fried steak was the most fat, delicious thing I have ever eaten (and I have eaten a lot of fat, delicious things), and I quickly scarfed down my mashed potatoes before anyone got a chance to try them. Seriously, it was 5 of my favorite nouns/adjectives on a plate: BACON, potatoes, FRIED, steak and GARLIC. Oh, and my number 1 favorite thing: gravy. Sweet Jesus I just sounded like that fat girl Nikki Blonsky (Tracy Turnblad) from Hairspray (and now the “star” of the ABC Family original series, Huge). Sidenote: Nikki Blonsky is Hungry and Mad

       Everyone enjoyed their meals—how could you not, the main ingredients were butter and red meat…seriously, my dream come true. Once we all were drunk on red meat and wine, we decided that we would be kidding ourselves if we didn’t order dessert…Little did I know, my starving sidekick Lauren had already ordered the Tableside S’mores and the Cookie tower…Please listen to these descriptions, they don’t even do the desserts justice..
S’mores Tableside: Orange, maple and coffee marshmallows, cinnamon grahams, dark chocolate bark.. (The bring you your own tableside fire and skewers and you get to do it yourself! Legit, and lots of fire.

And then Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip cookie tower with banana ice cream, chocolate icing, and chocolate sauce.
After we finished, the worlds most uncomfortable/akward/sexually inappropriate convo took place. Let’s just say my dad and boyfriend are going into business together and leave it at that. If you weren’t there then ask someone, it was amazing. **


GO TO TILLMAN’S. It is delicious. Don’t eat all day then go, and have zero shame. They also have games to play while you wait…

Solid food blogging group...
(minus the ending "Roadhouse convo and exiting problems)

Why is it called Mexotopia? There are no waterslides or roller coasters. FAIL.

           When we pulled up to Ricardo Avila’s new restaurant, “Mexotopia,” I had a good feeling. There in the car in front of ours, was Mr. and Mrs. Fatty McButterpants unloading their fupa’s and trekking towards the door. Any place that these fatty’s go must be worth trying. Only problem was that it was pouring and Megan was able to dash past them (natural born athlete, number 23, HP Scots Soccer), and I got stuck between their combined wide loads. So, 20 minutes later I was soaking wet and ready for a marg. 

 We were greeted by Ricardo himself, who was very friendly and handed me a stack of 4 bar napkins  (ya, Ricky, cause that’s going to be enough to towel my 120 square feet of body mass). They told us which table to sit at and we had chips and salsa within seconds. Their salsa tastes kind of like Mattito’s but better—spicier and saltier. We ordered queso (duh) and it tasted exactly like the queso that I blogged about when I reviewed Avila's so I’m not going to write about it again. So we ordered, I got Tricolor Enchiladas (one chicken w/ tomatillo, one sour cream chicken and one soft cheese taco) and Megan got Brisket Gorditas. 

The margaritas were on special for HH so we got the house marg at $5. It came and the first sip was rough—a little strong but the ice melted and made it better. While we were waiting I asked for a house margarita, but frozen and the dude looked at me like I was smoking crack. “Uh, we don had de froden ones” and it took all my will power not to say “Well, do you have a blender in the back? Do you have the same ingredients as what was in my glass? Then just throw it in there Pedro, geez.” I kept quiet and declined the second marg because Mr. and Mrs. Fatsh*t were sitting directly in my eye line and I was afraid if I was rude to the waiter who was refreshing their chip bowl every 6 seconds, they might eat me.

             

   Our food came pretty quickly and looked good. The sour cream sauce was actually really light and delish. Megan liked her brisket gorditas, but “really wishes they would have taken some of the meat fat juices and mixed it with salsa so I could have some gravy.” My friends are dainty. Besides the lack of meat-fat gravy, our only complaint was the rice and beans. I’m pretty sure that Duke sold the secret recipe for Bush’s beans because that’s what we were eating—tasted like Bush’s Grillen’ Beans—not really what I was looking for in mexi-beans. The rice was bland lost its flavor after a few chews, much like Strawberry Splash Bubblicious. 

                All in all, decent, but I would choose Mico over it any day. The name of this restaurant promised more than it delivered. I figured I'd black out or at least get to ride some cool rides. I also got stuck behind the Fatsons on the way back to the car. In the rain. And they were carrying their leftover dessert.(I bet this restaurant would be a hit in Houston).

                

Here's where Ricardo and his team must have learned the secret recipe. Shit, secret's out dude...

Sfuzzi kind of Sucks

 Dad and Mar being NERDS

 I got over to my dad’s house last night and suggested several restaurants. I suggested Sfuzzi, the newly re-opened Italian restaurant on McKinney, and he proceeded to try and pronounce it for the entirety of the car ride to no avail. Once we got there, we had them seat us inside because it was hot as balls outside. Mistake #1. If you walk in to Sfuzzi and they start to lead you to a really cute table tucked away to the right, stop. Turn around. And quickly leave the restaurant. The 5 of us sat down and immediately started sweating. Now sweating during meals is completely normal for my family, but usually after several rounds of meat dishes and 6 loaves of bread. But the sweating started as soon as we hit the benches. Turns out, we were sitting directly behind the pizza oven. Woof. So we ordered wine, martinis and calamari and waited a while for it to come out. I guess they ran out of wine glasses or were just trying to be “trendy” but the wine came out in a double shot glass. Nothing makes cheap wine taste better besides imagining it as a shot? Mistake #2.
 
Actually, that would be mistake #3, mistake #2 would be the fact that our waitress was wearing hot pink faux ray bans inside on top of her head—as  if walking towards the pizza oven required some type of protective eye wear. The calamari was okay—we ate the whole thing because it really isn’t in our nature to leave any remnants of fried food—I know, I know, there are starving children in Africa, but they probably wouldn’t like calamari, so we finished it out of goodwill.

                 

Then we ordered, and that’s when the waitress lost a few more points. (Mistake #4) Ya, we get it, when we order an extra large pepperoni pizza, a veal chop with pasta, chicken parmesan with spaghetti, a caeser salad, fettuccini alfredo and a sausage pizza we seem large, but stop judging us bitch, cause we would also like a side order of double fried French fries and some more bread. Also, we are running low on olive oil, so spruce that up too.

                Then she laughed. BIG MISTAKE. Don’t laugh at our family, it is almost guaranteed that we will either make you incredibly uncomfortable or try to eat you. Both are a possibility, both have happened.

                So we sat in our booth baking for about 15-20 minutes when they started bringing out the smorgasbord. The pizza was giant, and smells delicious and overall everything looked great. So I dug in to my caeser salad and was not impressed. I am a firm believer that Caeser dressing shouldn’t be super creamy, especially if its homemade, and this one definitely didn’t seem homemade. The fettuccine alfredo with peas and vegetables was just with peas, and a little too thick for me. Also, I was sitting across from my sister who would take a bite and let the sauce get stuck on her mouth like a glob of mayo, so we know that it repulsed me. My other sisters chicken parmesan was okay, but I prefer the Lean Cuisine version—and it’s about 12$ cheaper. The star of the show was the ‘za, it was delicious and the perfect amount of crust/grease/cheese. You could even pull the layers apart and eat a thing layer of pizza and then a thin layer of bread and since I heart carbs, this was perfect. The sausage pizza sucked and tasted like an onion farm mated with old sausage. Just bad. My dad’s veal was awesome and it came with a huge arugula and parmesan salad. By the time we got up a few nasties were sweating so bad that we had to run out of the restaurant as to avoid embarrassment. Ya, as if we could avoid embarrassment after ordering 50 entrees and cleaning the plates.

Mistake #5 (and in my dad’s case, a fatal one) was the fact that they forgot our French fries. Only a true Fatty McButterpants would mention this after gnawing the last bits of veal directly off the bone (I guess I am my father’s daughter). The sad part was, the tone of voice that he used when mentioning it to our waitress was forgiving—like he really was “too full” to eat one more bite, but the small tear (or sweat) drop proved that he was disappointed with the no-show of our double fried French fries.  

One last note—Mistake #6: being directly situated next to the dooshiest bar in uptown, Renfields Corner. 





Legit Veal Chop
Sucky Chicken Parm