Saturday, September 10, 2011

New Restaurants

Labor Day gives most people a three day weekend, a little vacation. So when these opportunities come around my wife takes a little vacation from cooking and we eat out. We decided to try some new neighborhood restaurants that we had seen while driving around.

Our first stop was a philly cheese steak place. What impressed me most was that my wife suggested this. Not only was this not the type of food that my wife usually eats, this place was also connected to a gas station. So we pull up to the place for lunch and….. it was closed. Not just closed during that time, but it had a hand written sign offering to sell the space with the equipment inside. I was a little bummed, because I like a good cheese steak. Nothing like mushrooms, onions, and peppers covered in melted cheese with pieces of steak. Even though as I get older I’m noticing that peppers do not agree with my stomach anymore. This was discovered when my wife made some cheese steaks at the house about a month ago and she couldn’t breathe for the rest of the night. This was another reason why I was surprised she suggested the place, since she was going to be stuck in the car with me for the next few hours as we shopped that day. Let’s just say she was thankful the place was out of business. She said sorry it was closed (with a smile on her face) and my thought was that it must not have been very good if they went out of business.

So we went up the street to a Mexican restaurant that we always say “We need to try that someday”, whenever we drive by it. La Hacienda means the property or the ranch. Not sure how that relates to food, but judging a place by its name is like judging a book by its cover. So we pull into the parking lot and the first thing we see is graffiti sprayed on the walls around the parking lot. This wasn’t gang signs or bad language it was pictures. You were greeted in the parking lot with pictures of Mighty Mouse, Woody Wood Pecker, and Speedy Gonzales. Again not sure what this has to do with Mexican food, but it was entertaining to see. The thing about Mexican restaurants is that the menus are basically the same. There is only so much you can do with beans, rice, and tortillas. I had a chicken enchilada, it was good. Nothing overly special about it, they do give you a healthy helping of beans and their salsa had a nice kick to it. My wife had a taco, she loved it. There was something about the shell that made it especially good. So good she wanted me to try a bite. Not of the actual taco, but just the shell. I thought that was a rip off, but I’ll have to admit it was a darn good taco shell. But then it happened, we were on the way out and my wife saw their health inspection rating, it was an 80. To me that’s a grade of a “B” so that is at least passing. But to my wife anything less than a 99 is unacceptable. Oh well maybe you should judge a restaurant by its cover.

The other place we went to over the weekend was the Journey’s End Restaurant. This was an all you can eat buffet. It was not a large selection of food, but enough to make you happy. It was comfort food, where everything was fried or had cheese on it. There are different types of people at a buffet:
The person that wanders around with their plate getting in everyone’s way, normally this person is old and looks confused.
  • The person who piles everything on their plate because they think the kitchen might run out of food.
  • The person who doesn’t care that you are standing there first, they are going to push you out of the way to get what they want.
  • The picky person who has to pick through all the food looking to see if they can find the perfect piece of meat.
  • The person with the brat who thinks it is fun to touch all the food after his fingers have been digging for gold up his nose.
I hate all those people. I like to get a little bit of everything, find out what I like, and go back for more of that item (maybe pushing a few people out of my way to get to it first). It was good food and I even impressed my wife; first I got a baked potato that she didn’t see at the buffet, then I got some banana pudding from the dessert area and topped it off with chocolate syrup from the ice cream area. I think a few of the other customers were eying my little culinary skills. That’s why you take your time at the buffet. Life is like a buffet, you never know what you gonna get.