Favorite Restaurant and Favorite Dish

yakers said:
Its interesting, I live in Pasadena, CA and in a six sq block area in Old Town there are 99 restaurants, some of them really great. It gets down to deciding what dish I want rather than which restaurant. I have come to the conclusion that cost is not the issue, there is great expensive food and great cheap food. All the little ethnic Mexican, middle eastern, Thai, Chinese and a lot of others keep me searching out good cheap food on Southern California. Hey, sounds like something to do when I retire!
If you like Chinese, restaurants in Montery Park are cheap (food price).
 
Anytime I'm is SF on the weekend I love to have dim sum at Yank Sing for Sunday brunch. Favorite ritual for years. There are two now, both south of Market. I've heard the dim sum is good in Monterey Park (east of LA) too. Any specific dim sum suggestions in that neck of the woods?
 
Over the weekend DW and I had dinner out and I thought the wine, a $20 Cote du Rhone was really good. Later I found the same bottle at the nearby wino-rama for $10. Brought it home, popped the cork, waited a few hours then eagerly quaffed a flagonful...YUCK

Whats up with that!?


ps It did get much better the second day
 
From 2003 the cork wasent in the bottle long enough to have a deep red color. My buddy (rest his soul) used to say, "This wine is still in diapers". Might have been the food combination. I don;t know. These are wonderful problems to have in ER.
 
BUM said:
Over the weekend DW and I had dinner out and I thought the wine, a $20 Cote du Rhone was really good. Later I found the same bottle at the nearby wino-rama for $10. Brought it home, popped the cork, waited a few hours then eagerly quaffed a flagonful...YUCK

Whats up with that!?


ps It did get much better the second day

Could be a "corked" bottle. That is, contaminated by a chemical (trichloroanisol or TCA) resulting from the bleaching of wine corks in the cleaning process. Estimates are one in twenty bottles are ruined by TCA.
 
Sometimes its not just food that can screw up your palate. I remember doing a little wine tasting in napa and after trying a 'symphony' grape from some winery (might have been clos pegasse before they 'became' anything), every other wine tasted weird and unpleasant to us. For hours.

A few days later I bought another bottle at a grocery store just to see if that was the cause. Indeed, after just a few sips, any other wine just tasted hideous.
 
I've eaten at some incredible restaurants around the world, but I'm embarrassed to admit that my favorite is:

   Hometown Buffet

Sheesh, I may as well just check myself into the old folks home.  

But the one near us is, clean, the food is very good, there's no waiting for a waiter, no tip, reasonable price, great desserts.  Also you feel thin compared to the other patrons.  I limit myself to one salad trip, one main course trip, and one dessert trip.
 
Along those lines, has anyone eaten at a Luby's cafeteria? I think they're pretty much in the southwestern states. The food is really good and the prices reasonable. My fave is the jalapeno cornbread.
 
TromboneAl said:
Hometown Buffet

Sorry in advance Al...yours must be a lot better than ours.

We tried them twice, just in case the first time was an abberation. BTW, I love buffets/variety.

The food was incredibly over seasoned, specifically everything was very salty. I could only eat two bites of the "stuffing", it must have been 50% herbs and seasoning. High seasoning/salting of food is supposed to suppress appetite.

When I wanted any sort of "expensive" stuff like roast beef or ham, you had to wait in line for a guy to slice you off a piece that was so thin you could read 4pt text through it. The majority of stuff was "cheap", like macaroni and cheese, spaghetti and sauce, steamed vegetables, etc. The second time we went it was "seafood buffet night". The seafood consisted of some sort of flavorless white fish filet doled out one inch at a time, some shrimp the size of my little fingernail mixed into a shrimp salad at about a 1:50 ratio with other stuff, and fish sticks.

Great if you like lots and lots and lots of food for very little money, dont mind overly seasoned food, and generally cheap stuff.

Its extra special here in YC that the parents let their kids eat with no limitations and at least two sub four year olds will run by your table and hurl on the carpet while you're there. Heyyyy...dinner AND a show!

:p
 
califdreamer said:
Along those lines, has anyone eaten at a Luby's cafeteria? I think they're pretty much in the southwestern states. The food is really good and the prices reasonable. My fave is the jalapeno cornbread.

I'm guessing it's been a while since you've been to a Luby's. They were once a great regional cafeteria chain with excellent reasonably priced meals. They began to fall on hard times in the mid-90's, some say after the tragic murder/suicide that killed 25 people at a Luby's in Killeen Texas in 1991. http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/crime/spree-killers/george-hennard/

In a bizzare twist, Luby's CEO committed suicide in 1997 by slitting his own throat:
http://www.texnews.com/texas97/lubys032097.html

The chain continued to go downhill until it was taken over by the Pappas brothers in 2001. They "redesigned" the cafeterias and the chain continues to struggle. (And the food is just so-so...)
 
Matt's in Dallas. I can't get past their chile rellenos. The Dallas Morning News labeled them "the food of the Gods", and I must say I agree. The most wonderful Tex/Mex dish I have ever had.
 
(Cute Fuzzy Bunny) said:
Sometimes its not just food that can screw up your palate.  I remember doing a little wine tasting in napa and after trying a 'symphony' grape from some winery (might have been clos pegasse before they 'became' anything), every other wine tasted weird and unpleasant to us.  For hours.

A few days later I bought another bottle at a grocery store just to see if that was the cause.  Indeed, after just a few sips, any other wine just tasted hideous.

Oddly, many of us have the same reaction to your posts vis-a-vis
others posting here.

JG
 
Marshac,

(Are you still there? Damn, this is an old thread!)
We agree. The pepperoni pizza at La Fiamma (Bellingham, WA) is the best I have ever had anywhere. My boy agrees, too. I think he only eats pepperoni pizza and milk. He even tried to eat one in Tivoli, in Copenhagen. Big mistake. Danes have NO concept of proper pizza. (On the subject, if'n y'all get homesick for 'Merican vittles in Copenhagen, DO NOT go to the Hard Rock Cafe at Tivoli. We also went hunting for a taco once. Failure. The Danes thought the red sauce was supposed to be French dressing. Guess they had only seen pictures? When we lived there years ago, the best we could do was a burger at Burger King once a month.)

Uncle Mick,

Agree totally on the shrimp at Pasqual's Manale. Nice bar out front to eat ersters while waiting to be seated. Is it still there?

We had muffaletta at the Central Grocery once. Disappointed. We lived in Red Stick at the time. The best were from a little Swedish sandwich shop somewhere behind the big post office building (go figure). Really good ones from The Library tavern across the street from LSU, too. The cafeteria at the Exxon refinery made good ones, too. I bet that has been closed for 20 years now..

Favorite restaurant in Louisiana: A little Texaco gas station on River Road, south of Red Stick. I forget the name. Spillway crawfish (very large!) and the best bread pudding I ever had. The whisky sauce was smoking hot and so sweet youor teeth hurt. You could buy your tractor tires and dinner and put them on the same Texaco card.

For those who ain't been there, if you like to eat, you wil love Louisiana. Shrimp, oysters, crawfish, etc., etc. I am going to see if I can get a webcast of KBON from Eunice (www.KBON.com) now. I am missing La a lot at the moment, mourning the late, great city of NO.

Yes, I try to recreate my favorite dishes at home. Damned hard to find Cajun food some places. (There IS going to be a Jambalaya cook-off at a pub down the street here in Downtown Calgary this coming week. I hope I am not up at Ft Mac that day.) I whipped up a very popular bread pudding with genuine whiskey sauce at Xmas.

Favorite Cajun restaurant in Canada: Da-De-Ohs on Whyte Ave in Edmonton, AB.
Good for jambalaya.

Favorite Cajun restaurant in Tennessee: The Crazy Cajun, between Kingsport and Johnson City. Great bread pudding.

LRS,

Agree on Czech beer. Pilsner Urquel is my favorite bottled beer. It is ON TAP (!) at the Archer Ale House in Fairhaven (Bellingham), WA, however. The Archer is one of my all-time favorite watering holes. Another is the Ups-and-Downs, a British-style pub in Sarnia, Ontario.

Best steak: The best steak I ever had was reindeer at Hereferd Beefstow in Copenhagen.

Best barbecue: World-famous Peeble's in Auburndale, Florida. No question about it.

Best coffee: Believe it or not, the coffee out of the machine at the restaurant in IKEA is exceptional. Reminds me of the coffee in Denmark, which also was exceptional. I have never been able to come close on my own. Don't know what the secret is.

Best espresso: At the Blackwater Cafe in Sarnia, Ontario. Never found one in Seattle that didn't taste burned. They say that Seattle is not a coffee town; it is a milk town (lattes, etc.) Tony's in Bellingham is OK.

Seafood. Hard to say. Having grown up in the Pacific Northwest, lived in Florida, Louisiana, Texas and Denmark, have had some sweet, sweet fish over the years. Oysters: All-time favorite is Olympia oysters, neat. I hope they aren't extinct yet. My dad introduced them to me at the Olympia Oyster House about 45 years ago. (More recently had wonderful 'red oysters' on Whidbey Island. Big, meaty. Five to the pound, shelled, swear-to-god. Weighed them for a lark. Made terrific oyster stew. Sorry, that was at a backyard party, not a restaurant.) Geoduc at The Oyster House on Chuckanut Drive, south of Bellingham. (Maybe the experience was more memorable than the 'king clam', but it was a package.) Ah! VERY good oyster house in Seattle called The Brooklyn. Get an education in oysters there. We made a pilgrimmage there every year for years.

Mexican food: Don't go out for that much. Get it at home. When visiting Colorado, the family feeds us like kings with the authentic stuff. Tio Plutarcho grows his own peppers. It works out; I make him dyn-o-mite margaritas.

Sorry. I got carried away. I have been incommunicado for a couple of months and am catching up, too. Hi there, guys.

Cheers,

Ed
 
Back again. Didn't mean to post, meant to preview.

Best barbecue in Seattle area: Dixie's Barbecue in Bellevue, under I-405. Three Pigs in Bellevue is close. Don't bother going anywhere else. Dixie's used to be Porter's Transmission Shop. Porter is a black man from Baton Rouge originally who cooked for picnics for his church and was finally persueded to open a lunch spot which became wildly successful. The Seahawks training camp is in Kirkland next door and they found Dixie's. They are the REALLY BIG guys at the corner table. Porter got tired of people telling him that his barbecue suace wasn't hot enough, so he researched the subject and found the hottest peppers in the world. Some kind of Scotch Bonnet, I think, from Korea, he said. Absolutely toxic. He calls it, "The Man". A bunch of us used to walk there for lunch. We were Porter's beta testers. Now you can get bumper stickers that say, "I met The Man at Dixie's Barbecue". His ribs and standard BBQ sauce are just fine, thanks.

Salmon dinner: Ivar's Salmon House on Lake Union in Seattle (they are closed for remodelling until March, I think). We love to eat there and watch the water traffic and the seaplanes take off. Any Ivar's has a pretty good clam chowder, too.

If Ivar's doesn't suit you, try Ray's Boathouse on Shilshole Bay in Ballard. At Ray's, get ice cream with blueberries for dessert. As I remember, it comes with an orange liqueur on it. Wonderful.

Cheers,

Gypsy
 
REWahoo! said:
I'm guessing it's been a while since you've been to a Luby's. They were once a great regional cafeteria chain with excellent reasonably priced meals. They began to fall on hard times in the mid-90's, some say after the tragic murder/suicide that killed 25 people at a Luby's in Killeen Texas in 1991. http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/crime/spree-killers/george-hennard/

In a bizzare twist, Luby's CEO committed suicide in 1997 by slitting his own throat:
http://www.texnews.com/texas97/lubys032097.html


The chain continued to go downhill until it was taken over by the Pappas brothers in 2001. They "redesigned" the cafeterias and the chain continues to struggle. (And the food is just so-so...)


You are correct. I haven't eaten at a Luby's in over a decade. I had no idea they went through all of those unfortunate circumstances in the nineties. I'll try to keep my restaurant reviews more current ;)

Best seafood: Water Grill in downtown LA.

Best sushi: Kevin in downtown Chicago.

Best Pacific Rim: Wild Ginger in Seattle.
 
Another great cafeteria is Bryce's in Texarkana. Of course why would anyone want to go to Texarkana?
 
TromboneAl said:
I've eaten at some incredible restaurants around the world, but I'm embarrassed to admit that my favorite is:

Hometown Buffet

Sheesh, I may as well just check myself into the old folks home.


Hi Al!

Yup went there. I couldn't help staring. Almost everyone was very fat and wearing a jogging outfit (here we call 'em run suits). Only jogging they were doing was back to the trough. Ever do any "double-dipping"? Get there and pay for a late lunch then hang around while they start serving dinner. Used to eat there every Wednesday... it was FIL's favorite.
 
mickeyd,

That is exactly what I do. Gypsy engineer, remember? I don't know the names of the places in Japan and ate mostly in hotels in South Africa. Ate in the guesthouse and hotel in India. I eat in a lot of hotels.

My wife and I like to seek out the local cuisine wherever we go and do what the locals do. We like to travel.

Actually, I would like to have a few more meals with the family than I do now. I make a decent living, but it is hell on family life.

Ed
 
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