Thursday, July 28, 2011

Good Food, bad company.

This is the second time my wife and I have been to this beach together so there were two places we wanted to go back to after already eating there. One is Calypso Joe’s, a Caribbean grille. We go for the burgers and slaw. The atmosphere is cool as well, it is right next to a dock where the big yachts come and go, and also it has a nice outdoors feel to it. In fact my wife wanted to eat outside, but I saw it was crowded and a long wait so I made the decision to be seated inside.

This time though, it wasn’t so fun. The food was still great. I had their Paradise Burger: Fresh Ground Beef gilled over an open flame, topped with Smoked Cheddar, Swiss and Provolone Cheese, served on a Butter-Toasted Kaiser Bun, Lettuce, Tomato, Onion, and Pickle. They have some great burger choices, but this one had the most cheese on it and you can never have enough cheese on a burger. It also came with fries and slaw. The fries are excellent, they have just enough spice on them and they give you a lot of them. I hate going to a restaurant and not getting enough fries with my meal, sometimes I want to ask the server if they ate some on the way to the table. But at Joe’s I had to force myself to finish my fries and some of my wife’s, the sacrifice husbands have to make. The slaw is the best, it’s called island slaw. I haven’t figured out what is in it, but I could eat a tub of this stuff. It has a sweet and spicy taste to it. Highly recommend it.
So the food was great, but this time the atmosphere was not. First of all Calypso Joe’s is a very casual restaurant. You could go in there wearing flip flops, shorts and a T-shirt; it is a place at the beach after all. I was sitting facing the door, I was trying to hold back my laughter, but it must have been obvious that I saw something. My wife asked what I just saw. By that time, these two girls walked by us dressed like they were going to the academy awards (I'm being nice, they actually look like the type of girls my mother would never approve of). My wife said under her breath, “OH my goodness.” One would think they were going someplace else afterwards, but they might have been 16 or 17 and they were with their parents, who were dressed very casual. So after we got a good laugh out of how these girls thought they were cover models for Vogue, we heard this horrible noise.
There was this large group of people sitting near us that had this very loud little kid about 6 or 7. Seems that whenever he felt like he was not getting enough attention he would scream. The parents were sitting on the opposite end of the table from him, so I was going to offer to knock the brat up side his head if he didn’t quit. I heard the little monster order a Mountain Dew with his meal, and I thought please do not give him sugar.  We were thankful that we were done with our meal by the time they were finishing ordering. I could tell the parents of this spawn of Satan purposely put him at the opposite end of the table where someone else had to deal with him. Here’s the thing for all you parents. Bathrooms at restaurants are used for two reasons; one is the obvious, the other is to take your screaming demon in there and lay the smack down on them. We’ll still go back to Calypso Joe’s again, just ask to sit outside.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Fresh Shrimp

WELCOME TO MY NEW FOOD BLOG. I love food so much I decided to make a separate blog just for the topic...Enjoy and Bon appetite

Day three of the edible adventure at the beach; when we travel my wife goes for the sites and the shopping; I go for the different food I normally cannot get. I’ll have to admit though on this trip I got to see something very cool, the Blue Angels practice their air show. That was incredible to see, these huge fighter jets fly within 18 inches of each other and do stunts in the air. It was truly a site to see, even though we had to put up with some kid that sat in front of us on the bleachers and thought my knees were his personal punching bags. Then there was the old lady behind us who thought she was in the plane with the pilots and had to comment on everything. According to her they were not very good pilots and the speaker didn’t know what he was talking about. Like I was going to listen to some old lady whose glasses were the size of coke bottles and I think she thought the birds flying around were the airplanes.
Now to the really good part, on the way home we stopped by a local fish market. Our quest was to get some steamed shrimp. The first market we went into was like going to a Wal-Mart after mid-night. These people acted like they had never been out in public before. We would be looking at one item when someone would just push in front of us. Not to get anything, they would just get their big, unwashed, smelly head in front of us and just stand there. Then we saw some lobster salad we thought we would try. The worker was there taking inventory or putting prices on things or just acting like she was supposed to be there. She didn’t move, I said excuse me, nothing. She just stood there holding a box. Ignored me twice after I tried to get her attention, my guess was that she was wondering how she ever achieve such a great level in her career to be working at the local fish market, serving people that smelled like the merchandise that they were selling.
We left that market and decided to try another one. Jackpot! We were the only ones in the market and the people who worked their actually wanted to sell us something. I asked for some steamed shrimp. The reply was “What size and how many pounds.” This surprised me since I didn’t know I had a choice. They had four different sizes, we asked for a pound of the medium. He put some on the scale and I laughed. That wouldn’t have been enough to feed my cat, so we got two pounds of shrimp and some French bread. We got back to the condo, went out on the balcony, and I took a bite. The clouds broke apart and the angels broke into chorus “Hallelujah, Hallelujah!” That was the best shrimp I ever had. I could have eaten all two pounds in one sitting. But because I like my wife I allowed her to have some. I counted how many she had to make sure she didn’t get more than me. (Just joking or am I) We didn’t eat it all that night; I stopped myself so I could enjoy it the next day for lunch. I was so addicted to the shrimp I was tempted to knock some kid down for his swimming goggles and see if I could find my own fresh shrimp at the beach. But instead I just laid there on my beach chair waiting for lunch to come around so I could indulge in some more tasty little critters.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Continuing on with the food saga at the beach, the second day we went to a steak restaurant.  I love steak, nothing better than a piece of meat cooked just right. Being the food lover I am; I also enjoy the sides that come with the meal. It often takes longer for me to decide what I want on the side than the actual main dish. But with steak it is an easy choice, it has to be a potato. Steak and potatoes go together like peanut butter and jelly (another favorite of mine). So one would think an ordinary common meal like steak and potatoes would be easy to get at a steak restaurant….

We went to Jake’s Steakhouse that evening. Jake was next door to Bubba’s Seafood that I mentioned in the last Blog and they were also related. I don’t know if they were brothers, cousins or what, but I was suspecting some inbreeding going on after that night. The wife and I decided that it would be fun to buy a T-shirt at each of the places we ate at. So after we put our names down with the hostess, we went to the little souvenir corner. They had their shirts, but with no prices. So we began looking around to see if we could find some help, no one would even look at us. Looking at the other stuff they had that did have prices, I decided it would be too much any ways. They had Flip Flops for $20, who buys flip flops at a steak house for $20. Maybe for those people coming from the beach and didn’t realize they have a no shirt, no shoes policy. Because flip flops cover the feet so well. So our name got called and off we went to the table.
My wife, the savvy shopper that she is, buys these coupons on-line that give you a discount on your total bill if you order over a certain amount of food. You just need to show the coupon to your server before you order. No problem, except when the inbreeding owners hire their offspring for their workers. I showed the coupon to the waitress and she looked at me like I just asked her to read the business section of the New York Times, which anything above Dr. Seuss would be above her reading level. Her response was and I quote,” We just had a meetin’ ‘bout them things, I didn’t pay too much attention to it then, so I don’t know what all that means. But order what you want.” So I followed up with asking her if it was going to be a problem to use the coupon. She told us to go back up front to show it to the hostess. Why the hostess needed to see a coupon, we couldn’t understand. Neither could the hostess, when my wife walked back to the front of the place, she was told that she just need to give it to our server and it would be taken care of. At this point we were feeling like we were in the Twilight Zone and just wanted our food.
We broke the rule of ordering something different and each got a steak. You gotta order a steak at a Steak house. We each got it medium rare and a baked potato to go along with it. They had some great rolls to snack on while you wait. This was a good thing, because the wait was a very long time. I think they had to hunt and kill the cow first, and being inbred the cow probably out smarted them for a while. So we finally get our food and I think they literally kill the cow and put it on the plate. Apparently these kissing cousins did not know the difference between raw and medium rare, but I was so hungry I didn’t send it back. Plus I was a little disappointed in the baked potato with the little packet of squeezable sour cream and the little slab of butter. We were ready to be done and go back to the condo.
She gives us the bill, I hand her the coupon AGAIN. She looks at me like I just committed a crime. I watched her get her manager that looked like it was her Aunt Mom. After counting their toes a few times, which they could do through their $20 flip flops, they came back with the bill and amazingly it was the right amount. I wanted to tell the waitress to have a nice night with her half-brother cousin, but we just left and got some ice cream. Mm mm ice Cream, God’s way of telling us everything will be OK now.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

So one of my favorite subjects to talked about is food. While at the beach last month we ate out at different places. Over the next few weeks I think I'm going to review those places we ate at. So enjoy and I hope I don't make you hungry.

The first day at the beach we were deciding on where to go eat dinner. The beach we go to does this thing in the afternoon with air planes. They do these fly byes pulling a banner behind them advertising the local restaurants. Like the good Christian I am when I see a message in the sky, I figured it was God telling us where to go eat. This time God was telling us to go to Bubba's Seafood. My wife and I had discovered we had an advantage over most people at the beach. A table for two sits quicker than a table of 4 or more. So our wait was quick. I was a little worried when the hostess ask us if we prefer inside or outside. I don't like sharing my food with bugs, so I said inside. The hostess said there was no wait for outside but there would be a wait for inside. I asked how long of a wait. She said (follow along carefully with this) “Only a minute to wipe off a table.” So again I said we would like to be seated inside. By this time a manager came along and said “Do they know there is no waiting on the outside.” Followed by another hostess that said “Their table on the inside is now ready.” That conversation wasted 2 minutes of my life.

So we get to our table and get our drinks. I have a general rule when my wife and I eat somewhere that we have never been. We each order something different so we can try each others food. One of the advantages of being married is that you get to eat off of two plates. My wife got the shrimp platter and I got the captain's plate. It was a mixture of fish, shrimp, scallops, crab cakes, and fries. All I can say is, thank you Lord for sending me there. I took a few bites of my fish to give it a try and was very happy. I then took a deep breath and went at it, looking up a few times to acknowledge my wife’s presence. It was extremely good and when we go back to the beach next year I will be reacquainting myself with Bubba again.

The next morning when we were going to the beach and we were headed toward the ocean. I notice a man over my shoulder taking pictures of me. Knowing the he was not wanting pictures of my physique, I turned around to see what he was really taking a picture of. Just a few feet from where we were standing was a shark. It was either a little 4 foot shark or a baby shark swimming in water that came up to my knees. Fearing that he knew I ate some of his relatives the night before or that I had the sent of fish on me from eating half of the ocean, I quickly got my wife and I out of the water as fast as my bloated stomach could go. I had my sketch pad on me at the time so this is a dramatization of what I saw. We went back in the water when the shark left, I kept glancing up in the sky, hoping to see another sign from God on where to go eat next.