Arbitrary Criticism by Catherine Martin

Feast

2013-06-10T14:43:00.003-05:00

Like all trendy cool people, I wanted to make sure to get to Feast before they closed for good. My main goal in this was to be able to bring it up in conversations with people who had never been there - "Oh, remember the good old days when Feast was still a restaurant? Man, I had so many shenanigan there that one time I went. Oh, you didn't go? Sucks to be you..." I've been practicing my condescending stare in the mirror all morning instead of doing something productive like working on a career or beating the new Nancy Drew computer game I just installed on my computer.

The best part about Feast is that you need a reservation to get in there. Well I'm not sure if you NEED a reservation. But I got one anyway! This is something I've actually never done before. I recently watched Lena Dunham's hit movie Tiny Furniture and in it she works as a phone girl taking reservations; this made me feel like it was something I could do. If it's Lena Dunham on the other side of the phone, I told myself, answering this phone to give dramatic pause between talking to the handsome chef, then I should be able to handle the social interaction of a several second phone call between myself and a stranger. This assumption is strengthened by the fact that I also am a phone girl at a restaurant and routinely have to have several second phone calls with strangers over fifty times a night. However, at the last minute I choked. For one thing it took me more than one scroll in the internet to find the phone number to Feast, which meant that I had time to be distracted by cute pictures of cats. (Just to let you know I've been distracted in the middle of this post six times already) By the time I found the phone number, I'd already lost confidence. After all, I'd managed to be awake for three hours already without having to talk to a single person. What if that day was the day I broke a world record for longest time spent living in society without talking to a person? It's true that I was planning on going to Feast that night with a date, but Thomas would understand if I didn't talk to him all evening, if it was, you know, for fame and fortune. I'd mention him in my acceptance speech, if I ever spoke again to give one. So I went to Open Table and made the reservation there, and now I'm convinced that Open Table was only invented so that socially handicapped people like me also can eat at nice restaurants +87

Let's talk about brussel sprouts for a second here. Feast has excellent brussel sprouts, I'd like to inform everyone. I'd say third best in Houston after Uchi and then that place in Oak Forest called Plonk! stay tuned for a review next week. Since when were brussel sprouts so trendy! I don't know but they've always been one of my favorite vegetables. I've come a long way since when my mother made brussel sprouts dressed with nothing but lemon juice and butter, I now have several very complicated recipes for brussel sprouts all involving bacon or bacon grease. Anyways remember how people always used to hate brussel sprouts even though they were secretly delicious this whole time? I just want to say that I'm proud of our local area restaurants for bringing this misunderstood vegetable to the table. +13 Though come on brussel sprouts you haven't made it easy for everyone by masquerading as a tiny cabbage which I think we can all agree is the most disgusting vegetable on the planet even my fish won't eat cabbage and they'll eat garbage. (Don't worry I never fed my fish garbage before)

There is one thing I didn't like about Feast. They have those little bowls of salt on the table and you're supposed to use a tiny little spoon to put salt on your food! I think those bowls are so disgusting! Like what if someone went to the bathroom and they didn't wash their hands and then they picked up their water glass and the germs got onto the drink and then they toasted with their water glass directly above the salt bowl and then the condensation from the drink trickled at that exact moment into the tiny little salt bowl? Bam all of a sudden there's germs in your salt! ALSO there's more to my hating here, what's up with that tiny little spoon? There's no way that's as efficient for salt use as a shaker with tiny holes. What if you have Parkinson's disease? All your salt is going to get clumped into very few places and then some of your food is way way way too salty and then the rest of your food isn't salty at all but you don't dare try again because then all your food will be too salty and also it will all be covered in germs. -21 I think it's all part of one of those plans that I hear about where the chef doesn't want you to use salt because they perfectly salted the food already. Look I'll agree the food was perfectly salted, nobody here at Arbitrary Criticism (it's just me guys) is going to argue with you on that. What's more if this is the plan I like it a lot better than just not having salt on the table, now I at least feel like I didn't put salt on because I decided not to, not because I was forbidden to by some guy I never even met before. +3 This is America guys c'mon.

Haikus on the Subject of Jack-in-the-Box, Friendship

2013-05-30T13:56:00.003-05:00

Hard night studying
Melissa in the doorway
"Want Jack-in-the-Box?"

("Studying" not right -
"Procrastinating" correct.
Sometimes more draining!)

A quilt on the floor
Our feast spread out before us
Reruns of South Park

Three crispy eggrolls
Cabbage hot enough to melt
Flame retardant skin

A pair of tacos
Delicious, deep fried, greasy
Just ninety-nine cents

Carmel iced coffee
No longer available
Helped me pass college

Late nights at the Box
Laughing at the intercom
Celebrating life

Petrol Station

2013-05-28T14:29:00.004-05:00

So I don't know if you guys ever watch Drinking Made Easy, but it's not a very good podcast and they came to Houston and had a drinking contest at Petrol Station! They were there, at the bar that I am reviewing! (Though to be clear I am reviewing them as a restaurant not as a bar, I have standards guys even if I did watch Drinking Made Easy, the worst show ever made.)

When I walked in I very nearly stumbled into a guy that I recently graduated college with. The worst part of this is that never, in the four years and dozen classes we spent together, did I say one word to this man. This is pretty hard, considering the number of group projects the average member of the Conrad N Hilton College of Hotel/Restaurant Management is required to be in, but yes this particular man and I never once spoke to each other. Now, here we are, in our real lives, almost literally running into each other... talk about awkward. I want you to know that I managed to keep up my streak and neither one of us even said excuse me. I could tell from the stricken look on his face that he as well is a member of that very socially awkward group I'm in, that would rather cut off their arms than talk to another person; the sad thing is that this interaction, from us sharing an interest in attending the same bar and then sharing the other interest of not speaking to weirdos from college, suggests that we might have been friends had we ever been forced to communicate, but that time is past and now we will never have another opportunity. -13 Also I was wearing my favorite shirt that I wore to class at least a million times over the last four years and it would have been really embarrassing to talk to him because if he did recognize me it was probably because my Three Wolf Moon shirt was a dead give away.

Also what kind of name is Petrol Station guys? Come on this is America. You can't even try to tell me it's a British style pub because guess what guys? They serve AMERICAN CRAFT BEERS THERE. American, guys. They know what country they are in! This is exactly the kind of flip flopping I think we all grew to expect from John Kerry in his presidential run, not the kind of flip flopping I want from a place I'm planning on buying alcohol. -9 My understanding is that they had a different sort of scandal a few years back in which they were accused of being unAmerican; can they really afford the sort of bad publicity that comes from being called Petrol Station? I recommend a quick change to the Gas Station, but it's important to make the change in a way that doesn't force me to think this is just a further inability to stick to their guns.

I want to be clear that I kind of like the atmosphere at this place. I mean I get that the food is really not that great (I ordered the Pig Newton, what a letdown guys. "Pig Newton" is such a fun, charming name, I really expected something fun and charming in response, but just between you and me it was way too salty and then the sweetness of the fig preserves just made everything nasty. Speaking as someone with years of fig preserve making under their belt, well like one year anyway, I can criticize without losing any sleep at night. And then here's the thing about prosciutto, guys, it's amazing, the best thing the Italians every gave us after the lively news coverage of Berlusconi's constant stream of scandals. Yet this particular sandwich made me think prosciutto is gross, a hard thing to do.) And I don't really like craft beer, I don't like any beer at all don't think I'm discriminating, so that's not a huge draw for me. And I get that waiting over an hour for your food is silly, no matter how busy they are. Guys it really does not take that long to make a burger. Plus I've been reading yelp! a lot lately (only negative reviews, I don't like to read about people being happy, that's why Edith Wharton and Hemingway are my favorite writers, they can really make you depressed about your future), this is a reoccurring pattern, why don't they just hire an extra kitchen guy? I mean it seems like an easy solution. But I'm not here to tell people how to live their lives, I'm here to tell you that I think it's sweet that you go into the restaurant and then it looks small and then you realize there's a back patio and you go out on the back patio and it's bigger but still small, and then you look and realize that there's more space out even beyond that, enough space that it could be turned into a wildlife preserve for like buffaloes or whatever it is you want to preserve. Tigers, or something. Ostriches, if you're watching the new season of Arrested Development. +18 So my point is this is a bad place if you want to eat food or not run into people you went to college with or not drink craft beers but other than that it's really nice and they have picnic tables.

A Poem to Taco Bell

2013-05-21T11:39:00.000-05:00

Cheesy Gordita Crunch
I love you
your taste
your texture
your crunch.
The way that when I bite in
the Pepper Jack sauce
mixes with the packet of fire sauce
and trickles down my face
in rivulets.
You're always there
when I'm drunk
sober
studying
getting off of work
too lazy to make dinner
need something to sneak into the movies
going to the park
going on a road trip
already ate dinner but want to boredom eat
wearing my favorite shirt and want to celebrate.

You're there when
my feet hurt
my head hurts
my back hurts
I'm on my period
Dumbledore just died
I'm cleaning my room
(just kidding that never happens)
I just saw Twilight and it was sadly just as good as the book
there are no parking spots on campus and I have to just skip class instead.
I've loved you
my whole life and with
every part of my soul.
Cheesy Gordita Crunch
I love you.

Beaver's

2013-05-13T16:47:00.002-05:00

I went here on Mother's Day with my mother for brunch. It was impossible to miss that it was brunch because on the menu they handed us there were four different recipes for Bloody Marys and two recipes for mimosas. This is the kind of brunch menu my mother and I approve of. +8 My understanding is that they also serve food here.

Just kidding of course I ate the food there! Here's what else was really nice about their menu: two of their brunch items had exclamation points after them, so that you know the restaurant is really excited to serve them! The two menu items in question were their stacked enchiladas!!! and Reubang! sandwich. I know what you're thinking, a smart girl would have ordered something that the restaurant was that excited about, but I'm a college graduate now so I don't have to act like a smart girl I can simply manage, lead, synergize, etc. other people into doing it for me. Either way I loved this about them, it got me very excited about my meal, and I'm planning on using the same tactic for the next time I make dinner for my boyfriend. "We're having appetizers! of three different kinds!!! all out of a box! and no entree at all!!". (I'm very domesticated, I know you are all very jealous of him for getting to date me.)

The best part of Beaver's though was that they'd printed out all sorts of popular memes from the internet and posted them around the doors of the restaurant. There was First World Problems, a woman weeping into her hand, thinking, "I can't believe I didn't see the hostess. Now I don't have a menu." There was Good Guy Greg, smoking his joint, saying, "Notices Signs. Sees Hostess." There was my pal Philosoraptor, pondering, "If you don't see the hostess, how will anyone know you are here?" I loved this stuff! I loved it a bunch! +183 Most restaurants, I'm sure you are aware, just have a little sign that says "Please wait for a hostess" real politely. This is not enough of a precaution! Trust me I know, sometimes I'm a hostess! And I can't tell you how aggravating it is to have people seat themselves. Here's why: being a hostess is not the most exciting job in the world. All you have to do is find clean, empty tables, and lead people to them in a way that best maintains a low empty seat count. People have done this in their sleep before. So when people show up and just seat themselves! I mean come on! This is all I'm doing tonight! I cleared my whole schedule! I specifically put on my work shirt and tied my sneakers to come and be with you tonight, and for you to assume that you can do my job better than me is simply insulting. Also, I hate when there is clearly a line of people waiting for a table and someone comes up to me, the hostess, and says, "So, can I just seat myself?" That's like stomping up to a doctor's office, waiting while he puts on all his operating gloves and such, and then saying to him, so, "can I just remove my own kidney, or what?" What do you think that man is standing there for?? I'm getting a little heated here so I'll just summarize: I really appreciate Beaver's clear and thoughtful response to the major disrespect of their hostesses, and I certainly appreciate their use of First World Problems, the meme I most frequently associate with (after, of course, Foul Bachelorette Frog)

All I have left so say about this joint is that the apartments across the street at 2411 Washington look really nice and attractive, but don't fall in love because a one-bedroom starts at $1279 and ain't nobody got time for that.

Which Wich

2013-05-06T16:05:00.002-05:00

Look guys. I just want to start by saying that no matter what it seems like from the name, Which Wich does not serve sandwiches. They serve magic, and nothing but magic.

I used to work in this pizza restaurant and now that none of us work there anymore I can tell you that my manager used to break our employee food rule and we’d trade three pizzas to Which Wich every Sunday in exchange for sandwiches. And oh, my, did we get the good end of the deal. They send over their longest sandwiches, stuff them full of meats and cheeses. They’d pack us little bags with chips and cookies in them. One day it was hotter than usual and they threw in some milk shakes for us, because they thought we might want them. They thought we might want them! We didn’t even ask! We didn’t even suggest that we thought we might one day rise so high in their favor! +1857 They never put olives on any of my sandwiches and whenever we called them, they sounded so grateful to hear from us that it was as if they were the ones who were blessed, they were the ones who were receiving a great prize.

Can we talk about how awesome they are? What about that logo of theirs? Have you seen it? It says Which Wich, but the bottom of the W, the bottom half, overlaps a loaf of bread so it’s like the v shapes are the slashes put in the bread to keep it from bursting. +8! Isn’t that imaginative? I know right? Simultaneously telling us what their name is and evoking the image of fresh bread? Honestly I don’t even care how fresh their bread is, they could get it at the day old store and I’d still eat it as long as they slathered it with hummus and honey mustard. Uggh have you had their honey mustard? Which Wich is the only place I’ll eat it now because nobody will ever be as good as them again.

And their cute little conveyor oven? I know all sandwich places have them, but it’s only cute at Which Wich. I like the idea of my sandwich getting on the conveyor belt, and it’s not sure what’s going to happen to it, but it’s just glad that it gets to be a sandwich, and it’s a little self-conscious and it hopes that I like it. It’s a little bit like being a bride on your wedding day, but nicer. It goes onto the conveyor belt and then all of a sudden it’s out of sight? What happens to it? The same things that happen to our bride friend. Its cheese melts and its crust toasts, and its eyebrows get plucked and its hair combed out so it’s really nice and shiny. The vegetables get all hot and start to juice out a bit, so all the flavors run together and when I take a bite they’ll run down my chin. It puts on a really pretty white dress and it puts something old and something new, something borrowed and something blue deep inside it, hidden to where only it knows which is which. Which is wich? Heh heh heh. The meat starts to sizzle and it says goodbye to its mom and to its dad, and then it’s out of the conveyor oven and I can see it again, and it’s the most beautiful sandwich in the world. I want to cry every time I see it, but I’m the man in this metaphor, and I can’t.

Also! The cups that their milkshakes come in! Can we please go back to the milkshakes! It’s not just that they’re amazing, it’s that the cups that they come in can totally be washed and reused at your home for all sorts of purposes! You can drink water out of those cups, you can drink orange juice, you can drink any kind of liquid you want, though I don’t recommend anything too hot just on principle because the plastic just isn’t that thick! +45 Still! Even without that structural problem, they are still awesome cups! I like any sort of cup that means I can increase my material net worth and take up more space in the cabinets than my roommates! Except my roommates also have these cups, so it’s impossible to tell who’s is who’s! That’s the problem with having roommates! We have the same issue when it comes to red UH cups that we stole from the dormitories before moving into real apartments! Moving away from each other is going to be a mess! I can’t stop ending sentences in exclamation points, because I love Which Wich so much!

Finally. Did you know that every single sandwich you would ever want to get at Which Wich, can also be made into a salad? Oh my God. I don’t even know what to add on to that, except that this is my greatest fantasy in life, for someone else to constantly be at my beck and call to make salads for me whenever I want them. +98 Which Wich, you know me so well. You understand my childhood pain of having to always make the salad for everyone else, and to never have the salad made for me. You get me, like nobody else ever has. I promise to love and cherish you, as long as we both shall live.

BB's

2013-04-29T18:57:00.000-05:00

Some of you may have read less than glowing reviews of Louisiana in this forum before. Those of you who know me may have heard me call Louisiana "America's butthole", "a dingleberry", or "a crappy place to go." Hating Louisiana as I did, I refused to enjoy Cajun food in any form, referring to all of it as "sewer trash". I know, guys. "Sewer trash" is a redundant phrase. Everything in a sewer is trash. Anyways! I've been shown the light! This Spring Break my best friend from high school and I ventured into the wasteland of Louisiana, and I kind of have a different opinion of it now! I mean don't get me wrong, the air got noticeably smellier once we crossed the border and I wasn't carded once in that lawless society (which, now that I'm over 21, makes me feel like an old lady rather than lucky that I got away with something I shouldn't have.) However everything I ate there was really tasty and more importantly, I held a baby alligator, which was life-changing.

Did you know that alligators have an acid inside their bellies that completely breaks down blood and sinew? They can just eat whole animals without having to worry about what's going to happen to them later.

Anyway. So now that I like Cajun food, I sauntered on over to local favorite BB's Cafe. I assume it's a local favorite because the logo is so cute, a snoozing moon, that there's no way people could manage to stay away. The logo would just melt their hearts. +10 Also there is a BB's right next to the Velvet Melvin, where I frequently hold my birthday parties. Public service announcement: you can no longer get a fish tank for free on your birthday, you have to pay $18 for it even if you cry. If you're looking for a better deal on your birthday, you can come over to my apartment but there's no guarantee that I'll stay awake past 12:30 to hang out with you (maybe that's why people in New Orleans didn't card me - because it was barely even night time hours and I was already checking my watch and wondering aloud when we could be back to the hotel room, asleep)

Look I'm going to tell you something real here guys, something non-arbitrary. I loved the fried pickles at this place. +1798 Fried pickles is one of the things that I like to eat the most with my mother, who is another fanatic. I've tried fried pickles across town - at Hooters, at Katz's, at Studio Movie Grill, at no other places than that. And the fried pickles at BB's are hands down the best in Houston. Not only because of the delicate flaking of the batter whenever you bite into them, but also because the ranch dipping sauce that they provide is BACON JALAPENO RANCH. It is so good, you have no idea. Recently my boyfriend told me that nothing I do would ever embarrass him, and so lately I've been testing him and I did eat a spoonful of bacon jalapeno ranch all by itself just to see if it's true. Let the record show that he was not embarrassed, -5, but the bacon jalapeno ranch dipping sauce was just as amazing by itself as it was with fried pickles dipped into it. Guys I love BB's, let's just get that through our heads.

I will say though that there was one thing I found unsatisfactory. Inside the Angry Orchard's six-pack that was holding the condiments on my table (I know, aren't they so trendy and cool with their empty hard apple cider cases on every table? This didn't even make me as mad as creative recycling normally does because of the food coma I was very quickly lulled into.) there were four different bottles of hot sauces. Two of the hot sauces were Tabasco related. One was Cajun Chef. One was Crystal's, admittedly the third greatest hot sauce. NONE were Louisiana hot sauce, my favorite hot sauce every, which is named for the state that this food came from!!! -19 Come on guys, can we at least stay on theme??? Look I'm not mad about this, I'm not about to go write a Yelp review or anything, especially since all the food was perfect and didn't need hot sauce. I would however call myself at least a bit disgruntled and I will be telling all of my friends that I meet at my next birthday at the Velvet Melvin about this.

Pho and Grill

2013-04-22T16:04:00.002-05:00

This place is on 290, just right outsidethe loop. I'll agree that it's not in a neighborhood I typically associate with great Vietnamese food, but it's right by the movie theater I normally go to with my bf and the other day we needed to stop and get something before we saw Jurassic Park 3D. Have you guys seen that yet? It's awesome, I definitely recommend it, if only because Jurassic Park was the best movie ever made when it came out, and now with 3D retouching it's once again the best movie ever!!! +10 I'll admit that Ian Malcolm is maybe not my dream man anymore, ever since Daniel Craig, beefcake of the year, was cast as James Bond, but he's still a pretty cool scientist and I think we can all agree that the velociraptors in that movie are so scary!! I was just talking to my brother the other day about how easily I'm scared by movies and he pointed out that the last time the two of us watched a scary movie together I had to sleep on his bottom bunk because I was too scared; he thinks this is a funny story because I was twenty at the time but in reality this is a funny story because the movie was Jurrasic Park. Don't worry guys I have fish now that protect me from that sort of stuff so I wasn't too traumatized by the 3D version.

Anyway. Pho and Grill. So this is what's important: there are booths along the side and I know what you are thinking, wow, those must be the best seats in the house, the only thing is once you sit down you realize that they are the most uncomfortable booths ever created! What they did was they took a solid wood bench and then they sanded it so that it looked rounded, like there was padding, and then stapled a piece of fabric over it, so that it gives the illusion that it's a super comfortable, secretive booth, but in real life it's a sleeper cell of hatred and discomfort. -29 This is the biggest kind of betrayal ever, as booths are the nicest part about eating in a restaurant and these booths completely pervert everything that their breed stands for. It's mean! You know what this compares to? There's this lawn-mowing company or something, I didn't give them the satisfaction of remembering what their business is, and they printed their business cards on what looks like a hundred dollar bill; when you fold it in half, it's exactly the size of a quartered hundred dollar bill and the sides are printed so it looks exactly like one. Anyways so I'm at work, hanging out, doing my business, giving people food and taking their money for it, and I look down in the tip jar and there's a hundred dollar bill! I flip out! This is so great! One hundred dollars, split three ways... that's thirty three dollars! A fortune! I can quit my job! I start to plan what I'm going to buy with it, I think about all the tropical vacations I'm going to go on, I think about the Maserati I'm going to buy, I pick out the Swatches I'm going to buy for my parents as a thank you for raising me... I fish it out, to show to my coworkers, so they can begin to plan their new lives too, and guess. what. It's NOT a hundred dollar bill! I'm NOT rich! It's just some dumb business card for some dumb lawn-mowing business or like a bail bonds attorney or something. THAT'S what those booths did to me, again.

Look I know that sounds like a good reason to never go to Pho and Grill but I'm sure it's a nice place to go if you sit at a table. I found a hair in my pho, but it was mine, so don't freak out. This happens to me a lot because I have long hair and I rarely brush it, so whenever I wear it down all the live hairs are trying to push out the dead hairs because it's traumatic for them to have to be together in such cramped conditions, I mean it's actually pretty inhumane, if the CPS or I guess it would really be the Hair Protective Services found out, they'd be pretty peeved. But luckily I've managed to stay under their radar for this long and my only punishment is occasionally finding horse tail long hairs in my soup only to realize that it is in fact my own, and also that half of my hair now tastes like bean sprouts and broth. +18 Just keeping it for later, that's what I always say. (That's pretty gross, to be clear I never say that.)

Anyways if anyone wants to go see Jurassic Park in 3D with me please email me at arbitrarycriticism@live.com but just to let you know afterwards you may wake up to discover that I have crept into your home and am attempting to fear cuddle you.

Mandola's Deli

2013-04-15T15:31:00.001-05:00

If you guys live on UH campus you've seen this place for sure, it's just across the street from that Kroger on Cullen, where they only have half the things you need at any given time and the dog food and the cereal are on the same aisle which is really weird if you ask me, like what are the trying to insinuate here? Also the lady products are in the same aisle as manly things like motor oil and light bulbs that only men ever need (just kidding guys I have to put new motor oil in my car every six miles ain't nobody got time to wait for a man to do that for me) so that it's super awkward for both genders. So yeah Mandola's Deli is right there, it's this orange-y brick building with a picture of Italy with the Italian flag superimposed over it. I always thought it was a front for the Houston branch of the mob, I had no idea it was like a real restaurant! That regular non-mob people could go into! Turns out though, anybody can go into a mob restaurant, it's just people will look at you the whole time you eat your meal and if you overhear anything you'll end up in the trunk of your own car, floating down the river. Pretty scary stuff.

So yeah Mandola's Deli has been there for like a million years, like 38 or something. Anyway you go inside and it definitely looks like it's from an earlier era, before there were arbitrary critics running around, looking at people's table and chair sets and judging them based on what they got. Because their table and chair sets are real boring, guys. Like one step up from a folding set. Except I think that maybe the folding set is better, as maybe they look boring but at least when your roommate gets a new kitchen set off of Craigslist, you can put the folding seat in the closet until you remember to get rid of it. These tables and chairs, you cannot do that, unless it's a real big closet that I wonder if they'd consider renting out for not too much money as my lease expires soon. -14 I don't want you to think that I have a huge problem with boring tables, the only thing is, they only have four tops, so if you came in for instance with a group of eight because your friend Jess is back in town from St. Louis for the week, then you're SOL and have to push tables together in a nosy way that just draws more attention to you from the mob types that are hanging out there.

But back to the fact that Mandola's Deli has been open so long. Have you guys ever worked for a restaurant that's been open that long? It's really nice, the thing is whenever you work in a restaurant people are always trying to tell you how to do your job, you know, everyone has an opinion these days. But! Thirty eight years is older than most of the people who are always trying to be your parent and boss you around, so nobody can be a buttface to you at a restaurant that old! +29 I'm all about restaurant workers getting treated well as I'm going to be chronically underemployed for the rest of my life and will probably die at age ninety three in a restaurant, answering the phones, my wrinkled crone hands punching away at some new advanced POS system, whispering croak-y questions into the receiver. "Would you like to add a can of Coke to your order?" will be my final words as I slip into the great fast food chain in the sky. In order to make my final days as wonderful as my current ones, I'll make sure that the restaurant I'm slogging away in has been producing food for at least 10 years longer than I've been consuming it. Let's just hope Mandola's Deli is still there when I need it to supplement my Social Security checks.

Frida Mexican Kitchen

2013-04-08T15:01:00.002-05:00

I was going to start by complaining about the grammar of the name of this restaurant, but then guys I remembered that I've never proofread anything I submitted to you, my loyal followers, and I'd rather do anything than be the pot that calls the kettle black, with the wrong punctuation and probably misspelled as well. You get off this time, Frida Mexican Kitchen, but in my mind I will always pronounce the apostrophe s.

Look I think Frida Kahlo is kind of weird looking, OK? We've discussed it before. If I were a famous artist known for my self portraits, I would not have painted myself so many times with a unibrow. I would have painted myself a lot skinnier, and my hair would be shinier, and my elbows would be less pointy, and I wouldn't have this weird tan line underneath my watch, where it's not really a difference in the actual hue of my skin but just in how many freckles I have. OK but Frida Mexican Kitchen LOVES Frida Kahlo. There's a portrait of her outside the door, and there are pictures of her inside, and the tables themselves are made out of laminated portraits of Frida. They're all the same portrait too. Look I kind of like it, OK? +31 I mean that's real commitment, you know? Real commitment. I'm not even talking, like, marriage commitment. I'm talking, that restaurant married Frida, then they moved to a small island with her, and then they kicked off all of the native inhabitants, and then they burned their ships, and then they ate all of the furry animals that they could have talked to, and then they lived there with Frida for the rest of their lives without having anyone else to be with except for Frida. THAT'S the kind of commitment this restaurant made to Frida, and it's nice.

What's silly about this restaurant is, it's your typical Mexican restaurant if you ask me, kind of dark, nice salsa, that kind of stuff, not dirty, you know, but not exactly fine dining. Call me prejudiced, but I always prejudge Mexican restaurants the minute I walk in the door, you know? If they put too much emphasis on appearances then I always feel like they're just trying to trick us into not noticing how bad the food is. Don't get me wrong FMK has good Mexican food, it's not bad, I ate the fish tacos, also the salsa is good, also the queso is good, you get what I'm saying, but that kind of stuff isn't important. What I'm trying to say is, the inside of the restaurant looks like it would be a good Mexican restaurant, but then the waiter comes to your table and he's wearing a really silly bow-tie! It was so big and fancy! Like we'd taken a wrong turn down Ella and somehow ended up at Brenner's! Did you guys ever read Catcher in the Rye? And our boy Holden's got that hooker in his room, and he's imagining her at the store buying that green dress and it makes him so sad that he can't bang her? That's kind of how I felt about my waiter - I was picturing him at home putting his bow tie on, and then I was imagining him thinking to himself, man, this sucks, I hate this bow tie, and it made me so sad that he had to do that for me, Catherine Martin, when I'd shown up in sweatpants and my Three Wolf Moon shirt. -18 You know? That poor waiter! I bet he wishes he'd been wearing his Three Wolf Moon shirt too.

The best part though is that their rice and beans don't come on the plate itself, they come on the side, in these little blue pots and and you think that it's this lovely surprise, and it is, you open the top, and on the inside is the rice and beans! You can recreate this moment as often as you want by replacing the lid and then removing it again! Oh, what's in the pot? Oh! Rice! What's in the other one? Oh! Beans! I love this kind of stuff +20 Luckily I have the wonder of a child, anything can impress me if I'm in the right mood and it's hyped correctly. Like you know those fizzy bath bombs that you drop in the water and they fizz up and then at the end the water is a different color and smells nice? I love those, I could watch them for hours. Anything that changes color, really, like those mood rings that only ever seem to go to purple? They have shirts that change color in the same way, like wherever someone touches you or if some parts of your torso are hotter than others then it glows a different color, isn't that awesome? I mean I think it would be embarrassing actually, like for instance your armpits are always going to be a different color, which is gross. But my point is I love these pots.

The only thing is I liked FMK but if you guys are in Oak Forest and want Mexican food you really should just go to Mi Sombrero and eat the Tommy's Tacos, as they are the greatest things in the world.

Goro and Gun

2013-04-01T14:12:00.001-05:00

So to prepare for this review I went ahead and read all of the reviews on Yelp and Eater, because I feel like this was a controversial restaurant opening and above all, I want to always be your source of Catherine Martin's opinions on controversial restaurant openings. So, here's what I have to say about all those Yelp reviewers: You guys are poop faces, not because you said the food is bad, but because you are comparing a Houston restaurant to restaurants in San Fransisco and New York! Come on guys let's try to pull it together, let's try to have some Houston pride. Look it's obvious I have no idea what "good ramen" tastes like, I loved the way the miso ramen at Goro and Gun tasted, I'll agree with the Yelpers, the broth was very thick which was delicious, have you ever gotten full off of a thirteen cent package of Top Ramen? Nope! But this miso ramen made me so full I had to lay on my back afterwards with a warm washcloth over my face, sighing dramatically. Thanks, thick broth. If Houston, the third largest city in the United States, has no other use for it's ramen shops than to try to keep up with other cities rather than pioneer something new, then there is really no reason for us to be living here, if we're not going to come up with our own identity we might as well all move. -12 to the haters, pull it together guys, let's start talking some sense.

Look it's clear that the very best thing about Goro and Gun was obviously their drink menu. The drinks themselves were delicious (I drank the Lifer because I'm about to graduate college and am assuming I will become a Lifer at the pizza restaurant I work at; just to let you know Dad it had scotch in it and I loved it so I've developed some expensive tastes for the next time I come home) but I'm not talking about the actual beverages - I'm talking about the beverage names! The whole first page were all restaurant industry terms - lifer, short-timer, line cook, S.A., shoe maker. Underneath the names they had a brief description of what the terms meant, for the 25% of the American population who have never worked in the service industry (obviously I don't associate with this sort of person and was a little surprised to discover a restaurant who admits they exist). Even better than these is my favorite drink that I didn't order: the cookie monster!!! It has rum and cookie milk and several things that I didn't recognize; doesn't that sound delicious? For one thing what is cookie milk! I think it's what's left over when you pour yourself a glass of milk to dip your cookies in, but then after the cookies are gone decide you don't need anymore calcium for the day and will in fact die if you drink it. I never knew what to do with that milk before but now I do: sell it to Goro and Gun. +233

I'll agree though that there is a serious problem with Goro and Gun and we all need to sit down and talk about it: the bathroom. Look I'm a pretty anxious person, especially lately, just ask my roommates the other day I lost the lid to my popcorn maker and I made them all hunt for it for two days and I had a bit of a panic attack alone in my closet and the whole encounter culminated in me nearly burning down the apartment complex trying to make popcorn on the stove. It still smells pretty bad in here. These aren't the actions of a person who has her life together, let me tell you. So anyway here I am hanging out downtown, alone in this world with no popcorn maker lid, when suddenly the Lifer I drank plus the four cups of water kicks in and I have to excuse myself to use the ladies' room. I'm already on edge and then I close the door and bam! Panic sets in! The whole bathroom is painted red and it's pretty dim in there, I guess they were trying to set the mood in there but I'm going to be honest guys, I wanted to love everything about Goro and Gun but I couldn't love this, it made me too nervous, all that unrelenting red. Even the door was painted red, with no relief at all. I'm not really sure, red isn't usually like, a trigger color for me, or anything, but it just made me feel really unsafe, like some kind of ninja was going to come in on me with my skirt down and attack me or something. -12 Maybe even a different wattage on the light bulb would have made me feel less panicky, but I was not a fan of the bathroom.

Anyways let's end on a positive note. Goro and Gun apparently knew I was coming because they had placed all of these stuffed wild cats around the room, like a mountain lion, and an ocelot, I'm not really sure, I can never tell them apart unless they're at the zoo with a placard in front of them. Anyways I guess they knew I liked to fit in or something because after all that thick broth, guess what I was? A stuffed Cat! +18 Get it? Because my name is Cat and I ate a lot? Man that's some funny stuff, it really turned my night around after that bathroom incident, thanks Goro and Gun.

Lucky Burger

2013-03-28T14:52:00.003-05:00

If you haven't been to this place you should immediately go. They have the best onion rings I have ever tasted, and I've tasted a lot of onion rings. A lot. These taste good dipped in ketchup, they taste good by themselves, and they taste good if you tie your hands behind your back and eat them just using your mouth.

The thing about Lucky Burger is that it looks from the inside like it was built alongside a train, like it's in some sitcom that takes place in New York or Chicago or a major city that has a decent public transportation system. It's real small and narrow, and it has the red checked table clothes that tell you it's authentic and real (as opposed to other table clothes, which say, "this is a fake restaurant, don't eat here, it's all holograms and sugar substitutes"), and the window blinds were drawn even though it was eight thirty at night, in order to keep the glare of the train cars out of diners eyes. +21 It was really nice. Sometimes living in Houston feels like I'm living in a really big town rather than the third largest city in the United States, as I don't get the stereotypical big city activities in (riding in trains, walking decisively down downtown streets, wearing blazers while drinking cosmopolitans and discussing my kooky love life.) Most of what I do in Houston involves driving down 59 and screaming at Lexus SUVs for cutting me off, so I like to get these experiences in that match my romantic ideals about big city life.

Here's what's important about Lucky Burger: displayed right next to the cashier stand is their award from Marvin Zindler, given to them in 1998 for extraordinary cleanliness. This is precisely the sort of thing I want to see posted in a restaurant and I wonder why more restaurants don't have them!!! It's a bit alarming I'll admit that their latest award was from 15 years ago, but any bit of reassurance is good, I think it's safe to assume that there is no horse meat in their burgers +12 Can I just weigh in on this controversy? I would like to start out by saying that I love IKEA meatballs and even if horse meat had been found in a meatball that I was about to put in my mouth, I would still eat it. But I still think it's kind of sad to think about, just because when I was younger I took horseback riding lessons in Waco and there was this one horse there that was so nice and beautiful and she had sweet little horse eyes and her name was Meg and I know lots of people eat horses, like those weird Canadians and also the Dothraki (heh heh Game of Thrones reference, you guys wouldn't get it it's too high brow for you) but I don't think I could do it. Also I imagine it tastes like goat and as you guys know I hate goat.

The other thing about Lucky Burger is that they deliver! Anywhere within a three mile radius, which guess what! Counts as the restaurant I work in! +8 There's nothing I love more than someone not making me leave my home/place of work, thanks a lot Lucky Burger you're personally taking away from the amount of time I have to spend on 59 (or I guess in this case Richmond Avenue) and increasing the amount of time I spend feeling like a real city girl! +184982

In conclusion Lucky Burger is awesome and we should all immediately terminate our leases and move into their delivery zones and eat nothing but onion rings for the rest of our lives.

Whole Foods

2013-03-25T15:33:00.001-05:00

There are two main advantages to going to lunch at Whole Foods. And I'm not talking about going to Whole Foods and buying things to go back to your own home and make; for those of you who are living under a rock (or perhaps are the older school Republicans, who refuse to do hippy things even when they're really trendy; I wish I could stick to my guns like you but unfortunately I do believe in gun control) Whole Foods does indeed have a cafeteria section where you can select foods, point them out, pay for them, and then consume on premise. The first advantage to this is, of course, that you pay for your food by the pound. I think this is pretty cool just because I have this wacked out bathroom scale which seems to have been dropped on it's head as a child, and I like to weigh myself before I eat, know how much I consume, and then weigh myself again. Today for lunch for example I consumed 1.2 pounds worth of salad and quinoa (seriously guys what the hell is quinoa, I only selected it because I thought it would be cool to find out, turns out it only tasted like the parsley that was mixed into it. That's pretty sad, when you're blander than parsley. C'mon quinoa let's get it together). A quick measurement of my weight showed that I actually managed to lose 3 pounds in the time it took me to eat this salad; of course let's be generous to my bathroom scale there was also the substantial amount of exercise walking twelve feet from my kitchen table to the bathroom and back again. +32 Also, it's important to always know how manly you are, and today I was manly enough to demolish 1.2 lbs of food.

The other good thing about getting your food at a grocery store is that there are lots of opportunities for cost saving. Say you want to eat 1.2 lbs of food but don't want to pay for it. That kind of stuff doesn't fly at Taco Bell, but at Whole Foods, no big deal! All you have to do is run a few laps around the store; there are plenty of opportunities for free samples! Today I managed to get a handful of shredded wheats, an orange slice, some brioche (this word sounds as fancy as quinoa but I'm happy to report is much tastier), and a few spoonfuls of some apple thing that they were advertising for Passover. +28 Anyways, not that I've ever felt bad about my scavenging, but I did get some validation today. There was some fancy guy in a suit at Whole Foods at the same time I was, and I'm happy to report that his scavenging reached levels way above my own. I ran into this person, who seemed to have a real, adult person job with a real, adult person paycheck, no less than four times at four separate scavenging stations. He never had any groceries in his stands, and whenever we made knowing eye contact, he seemed not sheepish but cunning and calculating. I hope I can be like him when I'm a real adult with a real adult job.

It's not all pay by the pound food and free scavenging, though. There is a real problem eating in the Whole Foods cafeteria, and that's the fact that it's located in Whole Foods. There are so many cool things to buy there! All sorts of sparkling drinks and fruit juices from fruits you've never heard of! They have drinks with live cultures in them that you have to keep refrigerated, with a warning right on the bottle that there will be sediment in your drink because there is bacteria living inside it! How could you not want to immediately buy that?? Plus it's even worse than that, they have all sorts of specialty chocolates on them, and they're so covered in words like "organic" and "free trade" and "this chocolate was made by pregnant women who would have no other means of supporting their unborn children and your purchase is saving lives" and "buying one chocolate bar supports a Somalian family for six years" that it's impossible to remember that Whole Foods chocolate will make you just as fat as HEB chocolate, but by then you've already spent your whole paycheck and you might as well eat all of it. Look all I know is I went in there to buy lunch and came out with enough food to eat for a week. -16

Sushi Rock

2013-03-18T15:18:00.003-05:00

Look Sushi Rock is on Holcombe, a street I drive up and down approximately a million times a week, gloating at the fact that my zip code makes me sound rich and professor-ly. I drive past Sushi Rock all the time, let's be honest, it doesn't look like a serious restaurant. It's called Sushi Rock and it's sign kind of looks silly, it's this kind of pinkish dot with "Sushi Rock" in yellow font on top of it. It's silly guys it looks like you're going to go buy Kroger sushi. -12 Not that there's anything wrong with Kroger sushi I actually eat it all the time.

Anyways, that place is straight legit when you walk in! I'm talking hardwood floors, authentically Asian waitresses, a sushi bar with a guy who will really stand there and talk to you and make you sushi in front of you, and one of those cats with his hand raised! I'm not trying to tell you that this is the most sushi-est sushi restaurant in town, but I am saying guys, don't be fooled by the sign! +7 Look chumps the main problem I can see with them is that they don't deliver, you do have to occasionally leave your apartment if you want to eat there, but if you want you can just pick it up and return to your home and spend the evening not wearing pants, laying on your back, playing the Sims 3 and pretending like you're doing homework. +19

The good thing about eating at your house, of course, is that when I returned home, my roommate's boyfriend showed the two of us a music video that I found to be rather uninteresting. If I were at the restaurant, I'd have to sit there and listen to the whole thing. In the comfort of my own home, I was able to shout, "this is terrible Andre! Shut off that noise, ain't nobody got time for that!" and he did. +31 for being at home, suck it Andre, that band was awful.

That's the main problem. Here's the less main problem: the acoustics in that place are not that great. Or I guess I should say, the acoustics are amazing, in that you can hear everything that is happening in every corner of the restaurant, no matter how badly you'd rather not. It's so still in there that as I sat there, reading my book on the Affordable Care Act, every time I turned the page, the people sitting in the opposite corner could hear what the letters on the page were. (You're welcome for the education, fellow diners, if interested feel free to take a course with one Professor Harrell Rogers where you will learn a lot more interesting things, such as stuff about horse rumps and Beijing). -9 Imagine trying to have a private conversation in there! The only positive would of course be that if you were a private investigator, like, trying to catch people selling nuclear secrets or the like, it would be fairly simple to catch the perpetrators, save America, save the world, win the girl, etc. But I'm not a PI and the guy sitting next to me kept saying, "I'm hungry. Hit me with another one." And the sushi guy would say, "Another what?" And the guy would say, "I don't know, what do you got?" It was so frustrating! The menu was right in front of him! He could have just looked at it! Ugh I was so mad at him! I work in a restaurant and people are always calling in, and I think they want to place an order so I'm poised to take it and they ask me, "So..... what do you guys have on the menu...?" Hello it's on the internet! What do you want me to read you our entire menu? All of the possible pizza toppings? No! Not going to happen! And then whenever this chump did refer to the menu he'd say stuff like, "Do you have any flying fish eggs?" Come on, man, do you see any flying fish eggs on the menu? Also why would you even want flying fish eggs? Look I'm no fish egg connoisseur, I'll be honest. But don't they all kind of taste the same? Like someone put tiny bubbles in salt for a year and then hardened them with fish spit? Come on guys come on. I really need this guy to pull it together. It's 8:00 on a Wednesday, he really should have better things to do than that.

Anyways. Don't worry. I think that guys gone, it's OK if you want to go hang out at Sushi Rock, he won't attack you with his ignorance. If you have any recommendations for places that will deliver sushi to my home, please email me at arbitrarycriticism@live.com.

Underbelly

2013-03-11T12:43:00.002-05:00

So I went to Underbelly last week with my student organization, Texas Restaurant Association, Cougar Chapter. That's right beyotches I'm just part of clubs and organizations all over the place. I know what you're thinking, Catherine, how do you have time to be so rich and successful, and join any organization that you think you can get a free meal out of, too? Well guys, life isn't just about scrolling through the internet, in your bedroom, only wearing your underwear, until your battery gets so hot that it catches your duvet on fire. If it were, duvet manufacturers would be much wealthier. Take it from me, guys. You have to get out there and meet people too.

Which is why I found myself at Underbelly last week even though I don't have a real person job. Here's the thing is, it's very dark in there. Look I understand the concept of mood lighting, I do. But there's a difference between not wanting to watch Catherine Martin struggle to eat food in an elegant way and not being able to see your food at all. There was this one embarrassing thing that happened. My student organization had set up some sort of tasting menu to be sent to the table, and whenever the plates would be dropped off the waiter would tell us what each one was and we'd happily much away. They brought some sort of dumpling to the table and I bit into one, not listening to what the waiter is saying. I stop, chewing, disgusted. What is that marinara sauce? It is so gross and rancid, how is this a thing at a fancy dining restaurant. I shoot glances to my peers, and one says, "Yeah, I don't really like goat either."

Goat? Guys it wasn't even marinara sauce, it was just goat, and thanks to the dim lighting I would have never known and I would have come here onto my famous weblog and told everyone that Underbelly uses some gross marinara sauce, when really it turns out I just don't like goat, probably because their eyes are so creepy to look at (and also because they seem like they would be really soft when you look at them, but when you pet them, they aren't). -28

Here's what's pretentious about Underbelly. Instead of regular menu covers, they've taken the covers of old books, flattened them out, and used them as covers. The only problem is it's not like they used Alice in Wonderland, or like, Jane Eyre, good books that I like. They used textbook covers, such as "McGraw-Hill Series in Mechanical Engineering" and "Prospecting your way to Sales Success". I realize that we're a student organization, but what that means is that normally, when we go out to eat, we want to escape the horrors of having to learn things, not romanticize it. -17 At least we were all Hotel/Restaurant Management majors instead of engineering (or sales, because I'm pretty sure if I were majoring in that sort of thing I'd have to stab my heart out and then braise it with goat meat.)

You know what's cool though? Well I guess I should say creepy. I'm pretty sure that the guy who was sitting at the table next to me was the guy who writes this really funny blog, b4ttlesong. Some of you guys probably read it because it's hilarious, and I also read it, and I feel really creepy because the reason I think it was him was because he had this tattoo on his forearm that said "Come and Take It" and I know from reading his blog that he has a similar forearm tattoo. This is the creepiest way to recognize someone in a restaurant, I know. I've officially crossed a line or two. But don't worry, I didn't get up and talk to this man like a normal person. No, I scurried away to the bathroom, looked up a picture of him on the internet, and silently compared the two until I was sure that he had left and I could safely return to the table without seeming like a stalker. +12 for the presence of food writers in their restaurant. Also now we know that I can never move to LA, or any other place with a high population of famous people, because I will creep everyone out and nobody will want to be friends with me.

I guess that's all you need to know. Also I don't have any tattoos, guys, so if you're hoping to recognize me in a restaurant just look for a girl with glasses and freckles who can't handle chopsticks and that's probably me.

The Egg & I

2013-03-04T18:18:00.003-06:00

Look let's get started here, did you know this was a movie from the 1940's? Yeah. We all thought this was just a normal restaurant that served breakfast and closed at a weird afternoon hour, but turns out, it's named after a movie that is described this way: "Green Acres '40s style! Claudette Colbert hits just the right note of exasperation in this lighthearted comedy about a society girl whose new husband (Fred MacMurray) convinces her to move out to the canebreak and start a chicken farm. The finishing school graduate struggles with the hardships of rural living -- and keeps an eye out for the seductive neighbor down the road. Features the first film appearance of Ma and Pa Kettle." I didn't realize there was this movie when I ate here, but let's be honest, it's colored my feelings for the place. Mostly because I refuse to believe that there is anything seductive about a chicken farm, and I have to assume that even in the 40's making fun of rich girls by putting them in dirty settings had to have been played out. (With the obvious exception of the movie Overboard, which defies all genres simply because the shoe closet Kurt Russell builds is so awesome that I don't even know what the rest of the movie after we see the closet is about, I'm still in a daze.)(Also with the obvious exception of the third season of Simple Life, when they're interns and Paris and Nicole get into kooky situations and laughs ensue.) -14 Regardless of whether or not these people have ever seen this movie they should feel bad about it.

Here's what else I don't like about the Egg & I: the whole place just seems like it's straight from Santa Fe. They got bizarre, not really that great Chicano art on the walls, and even worse, EVERYTHING is covered in green chili! Have you guys ever been to Santa Fe, or like, New Mexico in general? I'm not sure what's wrong with them, their name has "Mexico" in it, but they cannot make Tex-Mex to save their lives, I HATE it. They put this gross green chili on everything and when they're not putting green chili on stuff, they're putting an equally gross red chili. I mean come on, haven't you guys ever been to Escalante's? Now there's a place that knows how to use spices effectively. These people in New Mexico have not. Also, it snows there. I mean come on guys, give me a break. But the worst part is, the Egg & I is not even from there! They don't even have that excuse! They're from Colorado and they put green chili on stuff! I can't stand it guys I'm never leaving Texas again, one time I ate a burrito in South Dakota and it was the worst experience of my life, I don't even know what I would do if I had to live somewhere outside of commuting distance to Spanish Flower. -31

Look it's not the worst place in the world though guys, it's not like it's Louisiana. Here's what they have available for you to put on your French toast: Smucker's brand blackberry jelly! I'm not sure if you knew this, but in an independent study performed by middle school Catherine Martin, Smucker's brand blackberry jelly is the best jelly in the free world! You can try other brands of blackberry jelly and they won't even compare, and no other Smucker's products even come close (with the possible exception of their strawberry jelly, which, I won't lie, is pretty awesome.) There is of course a small problem with this jelly in that if you make yourself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the morning, by the time your lunch period rolls around all the jelly will have soaked through the top piece of bread making it sticky and unappetizing to look at, but if you just keep your eyes close you can't even tell the difference. +7 I do have a warning to issue with this: in the basket on my table there were three Smucker's brand blackberry jellies but there were also an equal number of the sugar free variety, and I can't stress enough to you that this is not the same thing and should be avoided at all costs. It will make you weep with the sadness of a thousand bad days, and guys, you just don't want that in your life. *

That's everything that's important about the Egg & I. On an unimportant side note, their Eggs Benedict is actually really tasty but just a reminder you have to look at a menu filled with green chili to get to it, and you'll have to judge for yourselves if that's worth it.

*This blog post was unfortunately in no way endorsed by Smucker's, which would have been great and Smucker's if you're reading this, I'm willing to sell out to you. I'm very willing.

Palazzo Trattoria

2013-02-28T15:14:00.005-06:00

Palazzo Trattoria, or Tratt's for those in the know (just kidding I made that up) is located at 2300 Westheimer. I went there the Saturday before last to attend the monthly meeting of the Mystery Writer's Association of the Southwest, which I bring up, once again, to prove how cultured I am. I'm sure that you will all be able to read my mystery novels sometime in the near future, after I have finished thinking them up.

I think that Tratt's is an excellent location for a group of mystery writers for a number of reasons, starting with the artwork on the walls. I'm not sure who exactly they commissioned to paint them, because for any other group of people they're kind of gross looking. It looks like someone painted tile floors onto a canvas, and then lobbed a water balloon filled with blood at them. Did you guys ever watch the Dilbert show when it was on? There was one episode where there's a blood drive and nobody shows up but Dilbert, and they guilt him into giving, like, ten gallons of blood, or something, I saw this a long time ago, and then the people in charge of the blood drive took it up to the roof of the building and lobbed it at the pointy haired boss. It was pretty funny, that was a pretty funny show in general, I wish they hadn't cancelled it my life would have been different with the Dilbert show in it. Anyway so I think that's how they created these paintings. It's pretty disgusting if you're a civilian, but if you're me, a member of the Mystery Writer's Association of the Southwest, it's more than that - it's a visual example to us of what it would look like if someone was murdered on what looks like every possible floor tiling available at your local Home Depot. It's a wonderful tool. +19

As well, the bathrooms are a wonderful place for a murder mystery to take place. In the ladies room, the doors had a sort of opaque glass paneling in them, so nobody could look in on you while you're taking care of business (picking the lock on your handcuffs with a bobby pin; this is a murder mystery, remember? You don't have time to tinkle, the clock's ticking and if you don't find the murderer soon they'll put you away for something you didn't do) but you can keep on eye on the shadows and see if anyone has entered the bathroom. Here's how that would work: you're X, the plucky heroine, and you've escaped from the back seat of the officer's car as he detours to Palazzo Trattoria on the way to the MWASW meeting in order to give a lecture on his daily life. You have a sneaking suspicion that while the officer is "a good guy", he's been suckered in by "the bad guy" and will do anything he can to destroy you. You don't want him to get in trouble with his superiors - he keeps a picture of his dead wife on his dashboard to remind him what crime can do to this world - but you need a little bit of time to track down the real killer of the museum curator and find the millions of dollars worth of paintings before it's too late. You sneak into the bathroom and are picking the lock when the officer realizes you're gone. He knew he should have dropped you off at jail before he gave his lecture, but the MWASW was his late wife's favorite organization, and he likes to do everything he can for them, in her memory. The whole organization fans out, searching for you, and you leave the door to the stall cracked, so that it looks like it's empty. The door to the bathroom opens, and you stop breathing. You can see the dark shape of a person on the other side, and you can hear the heavy footfalls of the officer, can hear the worry in his heartbeat, not more than inches and a thin, opaque sheet of glass away from your own. He doesn't see you, however, the lighting and the glass protecting you, and after a long, breathless moment he leaves. You crawl through a ceiling tile and escape. Thanks to Palazzo Trattoria (+32), you manage to find the true killer, who happened to be implicated in the killing of the cop's wife, as well. You find the paintings, you clear your name, and you and the officer, who's emotional baggage has been lifted through your efforts, fall in love and get married.

The other benefit of Palazzo Trattoria's is that, due to the influx of intelligent, crime savvy individuals who meet there once a month, you're less likely to get mugged there than any other Italian restaurant in the city as crime is scared of what could happen to them. +8

Alamo Drafthouse

2013-02-25T15:31:00.002-06:00

So two Monday's ago I went to the grand opening of the Alamo Drafthouse in Vintage Park. I'm offering this restaurant review to you less as information and more as proof that I'm an intelligent, well cultured young woman who attends such things as Grand Openings, and rubs elbows with such famous celebrities as one Jason Schwartzman.

My brother attended college in Austin, at the prestigious University of Texas campus. (I'm only saying nice things about him because I feel sorry for him for having to live in such a liberal, drug fueled culture without the benefit of a city as large and diverse as Houston. Let's all pity him together, guys.) Anyways when I was young and restless and in high school I'd go visit him, and he told me about this place called the Alamo Drafthouse where you could eat food while watching your movie, and a friend of a friend saw Quentin Tarantino do cocaine off of one of the tables. I didn't even know what Quentin Tarantino looked like, and at the time I was living in Waco and was therefore blown (no pun intended) away by the big city antics of Austin. (It's OK to laugh guys, I've grown much since moving to Houston and now laugh in the face of Austin-ites.) Anyways so I went to visit him once and he offered to take me to the Alamo Drafthouse, after much hype, only to discover that all of the showings for that evening had been sold out. On another trip we went again, only to discover that it was closed for renovations. When it reopened, I went for a third attempt, only to find that it had been struck by lightening and was closed for the day. That's correct, guys: Austin does not, in fact, have an actual Alamo Drafthouse, but only a shell of a building that they have erected to impress out of town guests and provide some sense of comfort to the poor hippies who toil in this desolate city. We Houston-ites are so, so fortunate to not have to display such trickery, and have, in fact, several real live Alamo Drafthouses in our city. +82

Here's what was really cool about the grand opening: Jason Schwartzman came to talk about himself, and then afterwards they showed the movie Rushmore. If you guys haven't seen this movie you really should, if only because then the next time you're driving past St. John's and Lamar on Westheimer you can look at them and say, hey, look at that, those places are in a movie! This is pretty exciting as I am very seduced by the limelight, hence the fact that I have this wildly popular blog about my own personal arbitrary criticisms. +13 Plus as you probably know not very many movies have been filmed in Houston and it fills me with a great sense of city pride to see us on the silver screen. Because of this desire I'm writing a television series called Pizza Hit, about a girl who works in a pizza restaurant, which you should know is in no way based on my own extensive experience in the pizza industry because I'm way too cool for anything as mundane as that, heh heh heh. Anyways it was really cool to see this famous person so close to me, society columns should know that he arrived with a backpack and I will report that he was, in fact, double strapping. Take that, my father - famous people double strap their backpacks.

In other news about the grand opening, after spending the entire day in my cost controls class with little chance for lunch, by the time my boyfriend arrived at Alamo Drafthouse, I at least was quite famished. Seduced by anything with the words "fried pickle" in the item name, I recklessly ordered appetizers and entrees and chocolate shakes, and after this food frenzy like most college students I began to fear the total on the bill that was slowly winging it's way to my seat. But guess what, guys! They were having this thing called "training days" and because their employees were all new, everybody's food was 50% off, regardless of whether or not something got screwed up! A whole 50% off! +1890 There's nothing I love more than unexpected discounts. Especially one as large as that! My only regret is that I did not order more food!!!

Anyways check out whichever Alamo Drafthouse is closest to your home and then be filled with Houston style pride, even if you don't live in Houston, even if you accidentally got lost and live in Austin, because we're a great city and everybody loves us.

Cedar Creek Cafe

2013-02-14T15:33:00.000-06:00

Here's a fun fact guys! This is my 100th blog post! If we were in kindergarten we'd celebrate this by throwing a 100 themed party, but instead I think I'm going to join a gym. +12 (That wasn't an arbitrary approval number guys, that was the number of pounds I've gained since starting this blog.) (Just so you know I came up with this particular joke after my third blog post and have been waiting all this time to use it, so you better freaking laugh.)

I'll just go right out and say it: I think Cedar Creek is a little bit tacky. It's possible that the only reason I think this is because my friend Scott, who some of you may remember from several of my 99 other blog posts, loves it so much. As you may remember I've had a rather begrudging relationship with him and his restaurant choices; it's not that I think he's a redneck it's just that he's from Bastrop and said about Cedar Creek, quote, "It probably has the best atmosphere of any restaurant in Houston. Probably in all of Texas." -32 It's not that I think it has a bad atmosphere, it's just I don't think that atmosphere is created by putting beer signs on the wall. I get that Scott feels this way, he has pasted an enormous cardboard cutout of a beer bottle in the dining nook of our shared apartment. I don't enjoy sitting at picnic tables because no matter how the surface actually is, I always perceive them as being wet and sticky. I think that restaurants should have proper lighting on the inside. If there isn't proper wattage above my food, I assume that it's somehow doctored, like with poison, or hidden green beans.

That's the only bad thing I'm going to say about Cedar Creek. There's a large shipping crate in their outdoor seating area; I could come up with no other reason for it to be there than to serve as a hiding space for the bodies of bloggers who give negative reviews. Let's proceed to the rest of this review, a glowing endorsement:

Here's what's good atmosphere at Cedar Creek: on the ice machine, there is a picture of Ice Cube. On the tea dispenser? A photo of Ice T! This is very funny and witty, though I'll be honest, I'm only familiar with Ice T from his work in Law & Order SVU. +21 I don't want you to think I normally watch Law & Order, it's definitely my least favorite crime drama on air. Buuuut, there are only so many episodes of CSI and Castle, and my obvious favorite crime drama, Major Crimes, the Closer spin-off which has managed to achieve what we all thought was impossible - being as good as the Closer- is currently in between seasons. Sometimes I have to compromise my beliefs and watch crappy crime dramas. Personally, I think the best part of the show is Detective Stabler, who I happen to have a bit of a crush on, please don't tell my boyfriend.

Here's what else I like about Cedar Creek: there's an actual creek running alongside, and living inside said creek, there are little minnows!!! Little bitty minnows! +47 So I just bought this huge aquarium for my bedroom, it's 29 gallons, I haven't checked my lease to see if this is allowed so maybe you shouldn't talk to my landlord, either. Anyway so I went to Petco and I bought some fish, I have two angelfish, named Hamilton and Franklin, and a guaramo, named Christina, and two sharks, Sally and Patrick. Sally's really mean and she's starting to get super fat; she and Patrick are the highlight of my tank. At least they were. I mean what's cooler than having sharks that live in your bedroom? The only thing is Sally started to look kind of sickly so I looked her breed up on the Internet to see what I could do to help her out. Big mistake guys, I should have just let her starve to death without an adequate supply of leafy green vegetables, because guess what I learned! Red-tailed sharks are actually part of the carp family, and are also called "Redtail Sharkminnows." Minnows? You've got to be kidding me!! My sharks that I so lovingly plucked from their Petco aquariums, fed shredded cabbage, and bought catfish pellets for? They're nothing more than the minnows that live in the creek by Cedar Creek!

Obviously after I discovered this I sunk into a deep depression. I didn't get out of bed for hours, I just laid there sluggishly, my eyes glued to the tank, my vision blurred by tears. There was no more point to my life. All I'd wanted was to one day become a Bond villain, to be able to hang a British MI6 by his toes above my darlings, Sally and Patrick, only to have him escape at the last moment and save the world. How can I do that with a pair of carps?

In the end, it was their very weakness that made me love them more. Maybe they will never terrorize a major world power, but that just means they need me, to feed them and protect them. They rely on me to love them and stare at them through the glass of their tank. How could I deny them of this, my mother's love?

It really turned my attitude around. I love my fish, and I love Cedar Creek, because they have little bitty Sallys and Patricks of their own. Thanks Cedar Creek, and please don't put me in your bad blogger shipping crate. :)

Uchi

2013-02-11T16:18:00.003-06:00

So I went to Uchi last Wednesday night. It was a bit of a culture shock for me, guys; look I normally go to places where nobody will look me askance if I'm wearing sweatpants as even wearing regular blue jeans sometimes is too dressy for me. I'm what some people could refer to as "fashionally lazy". For the record nobody has ever referred to me as that as I just invented the term. Anywho so I was wearing a dress and it was really bizarre to be hanging out with real adults who go to real restaurants and talk about important topics (I'm not quite sure what these are yet.) It was pretty surreal for me because I've been slaving away at the lower rungs of the restaurant ladder here in Houston for three years now, and walking through Uchi I recognized a good many people as patrons of restaurants I'd worked at. That's pretty weird, guys, to see people on a peer to peer basis that normally you are, in a way, working for. +12 for equality, I suppose.

The only problem is of course that I always struggle to comport myself as an adult. I mean I have everything in my favor, guys: my mother is an etiquette teacher; I wear glasses, which automatically makes me excel in social situations; being 22 years old, I am actually an adult. Eating dinner with a group of my friends normally would exempt me from the world around me - they, being on the same level as me, would never judge me - but Uchi sets out little tasks for you to accomplish in order to eat your meal.

Task 1: when you sit down, the waiter comes and brings you a warm towel. This has only happened to me once, when Canada Air bumped myself and my traveling companions onto a later flight and as an apology upgraded us to First Class. I didn't know what to do with the towel then and I certainly didn't Google it later, assuming I'd never again fly First Class. I had no idea what to do with the towel. For the benefit of you, my viewing public, I went ahead and bit the bullet and asked the waiter - as I suppose I should have inferred, it's simply for cleaning off your hands. I mean come on guys, I should have figured that out, obviously they weren't expecting us to give ourselves sponge baths at the dinner table.

Task 2: If you just order water at this restaurant, which I always do, obviously, as a health conscious young lady (hahahahaha yeah right +2 for myself), they bring you out the tiniest cup imaginable and then a jar of water for which to serve yourself for the duration of your meal. I think this cup is normally for serving Sake in, obviously as Sake is the third grossest beverage in the world (after Guinness and Tab soda) it's important to limit the serving size. This means that either you have to remain dehydrated for the duration of your meal or you have to be constantly reaching into common areas, grasping the community jar, and refilling your own glass between sips. I'm not the most steady individual guys there's a lot of chance there for a person to spill a quart of water all over everyone's sushi, watch out for this risk when you eat here.

Task 3: Look guys here's the other thing, I've never really quite mastered sharing plates with people. I think this is a cultural thing, I really do, and my family is just not the kind that shares food at restaurants. I mean like a bite, I get, but when I order something it's because I've run a cost benefit analysis on everything on the menu, taking into account 1. how much I've enjoyed this or similar things in the past 2. would I prefer to eat this over everything else on the menu 3. does the price compare to how much I'd wanted to spend this evening 4. is there enough of a novelty to this food that I couldn't easily create this in my own kitchen (number 4 obviously counts the least because, as a lazy person, I'm pretty unlikely to recreate anything that can't easily be made by opening a can). There's a lot that goes into what I order at a restaurant and to be expected to immediately turn around and share it with everyone... while it's something I can handle, it's just not a social task I'm often expected to accomplish and I just want you guys to know, Uchi expects you to accomplish it.

I hope these instructions are helpful to any other fake adults out there who are thinking about going to Uchi and need some tips; especially with Valentine's Day coming up this Thursday. I hope you ladies take this as an instruction manual to keep your guys on lock and thinking that we are much more poised and graceful than them, it's a struggle that we all have to keep up with for the good of the gender.

D'Amico's

2013-02-04T16:41:00.005-06:00

This past week was pretty good for me. Just a recap on my life, I'm a college student and I live with two roommates, and I spent most of my time hanging out in my underwear in my apartment complaining about what I'm going to do when I graduate in three or so months. It's a pretty hard life but I don't want you to think there aren't any bright spots, and this week there were actually two: my parents and Scott's parents both came into town. Maybe you guys don't know but when you're a college student the only thing better than your own parents coming into town is the parents of someone whom you are very close to; either way you're going to get a free, hot meal at a restaurant you normally wouldn't go to, but when your friends' parents come in, you don't even have the added stress of making sure the apartment's clean. My own parents I took to the newly redesigned Hooter's on Kirby, but Scott's parents took us to D'Amico's, a nice little Italian restaurant in West U.

Here's my main criticism guys. So there are these shelves lined up at the entrance of the restaurant, lined with some of the ingredients they use in their recipes. It's kind of cute and homey and rustic, and then you look closer and there is a can of pizza sauce. These jokers are using canned pizza sauce??? Are you kidding me?? Look I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on crappy pizza chains, but I'm willing to bet that even Pizza Hut doesn't use pizza sauce out of a can. And if they do, it's at least a proprietary brand, rather than something that looks like it can be grabbed at the grocery store when you're in a hurry and can't be bothered to spend five minutes making your own! That's how long it takes to make pizza sauce, guys. Ten minutes. Look I know I have a bit more experience than the rest of you guys in working in pizza restaurants, but I'm willing to bet that there is not a single one of you out there who couldn't make something better. -14 And then to advertise it! To everyone! To just leave that can out there for everyone to see! I was ashamed to be in the same restaurant as my fake parents, someone like me taking them somewhere like that.

But it's not all bad guys come on, just don't order the pizza. Here's what I like: when Scott ordered a Sprite, they brought him a cup of ice and a can of soda. I don't know, it's kind of silly I guess not to offer free refills on soda in this day and age, especially since it's usually so much more cost effective to have soda syrup rather than soda cans, but I think it's kind of sweet. I think I like it in a can better just because whenever someone refills my glass I feel obligated to drink it, but whenever I drink too much soda, I get a headache. This way nobody can refill your Sprite when you're in the bathroom. +23 The only thing I'm worried about is what if they're tagging into the socialist mindset in NYC where they are putting limits on how much soda you can drink! What if this is some kind of regulation! I hate being regulated and even more than that I hate being regulated without my knowledge. When I was in high school I didn't even know that we had blockers on the computers for a long time because I was just hanging out, being a good kid, getting shit done, taking names, etc. Then one day I thought I'd play some tetris and turns out everything you want to do as a kid is banned, and I didn't even know for years, and I now I have to live with the pain of knowing that there were boundaries to test and I left them untested. I mean how do you think that makes me feel about myself! I had to burn my rebel flag and now when I grow up all I can aspire to be is an accountant, and not even the dirty, swindling kind. -8 to me.

There was another thing I liked. To differentiate between the boys and the girls washrooms they had portraits on the doors, a man on the men's door, the Mona Lisa on the women's door. I think it's silly because according to some art historians, the Mona Lisa is a portrait of Leonardo di Vinci AS A WOMAN. It's a picture of a man disguised as a woman on the stall of the girls room! So to me it sounds like there are two men's rooms at D'Amico's, or maybe you can use it if you're transgendered, but for a girl like me? There's nothing. You have to pee in the streets like an animal. +10 Take that women, that'll teach you to seek equal rights. Just to let all the ladies out there know, though, the bathrooms are onesies so as long as you can sneak in there without anybody seeing you you're home free to pee in privacy if you want to be a dirty liar about it (which I did, because I test boundaries, like a boss.)

If you're the parent of a close friend of mine, please feel free to email me at arbitrarycriticism@live.com and I'll put you on the schedule for taking me out for a hot meal.

Kurbside Eatz

2013-01-31T21:00:00.000-06:00

Alright guys I've come to understand the fatal flaws of food trucks. Look don't get me wrong my main problem with food trucks is always going to be the exercise inherently necessary in eating at a food truck; none of them have drive thru and they don't deliver, like my favorite restaurant Jimmy Johns, who will deliver you one sandwich just because you've already taken off your bra and put on your pjs for the evening.

Here it is, the foe of food trucks: Wind. So here's how my day happened: I was having a pretty good morning, I slept in way later than I'd intended to so I was super well rested, I drove to campus where I found a parking spot within one minute of searching for one, IN MY FAVORITE PARKING LOT. This has never happened to me before so I was pretty excited. What normally happens is I drive to campus and I start looking for a parking spot and I can't find one and I can't find one and thirty minutes go by and I've used an entire dinosaur in gasoline and I start to get really mad and so I call up my boyfriend, as if he can help me find a parking spot, and I scream and I yell and I complain and I ask him over and over again, "why do they even sell parking permits if they know they don't have parking spots?" He's used to this he'll never admit it but I assume he's on the other end playing Sonic just nodding his head and saying "I know baby" and all the proper intervals, I mean this is a pretty typical encounter he's probably got the script down by now. And then when I start to feel better about life I'll find a parking spot but I won't apologize to Thomas for disrupting his morning, it's just not my style. So here in front of everyone, buddy, I'm sorry, I really am. Anyways so yesterday morning I found one right off the bat and I'm feeling great, I slept well, I'm not stressed, just to let Thomas off the hook I start to send him a text message telling him to take off his battle gear there will be no verbal onslaught to fight off today, and I lock my car door and I close it and then I realize, #$*@ #*$#( &!(#, I've locked my keys in my car. Again. AGAIN, guys, I do this all the time. I've done this so many times that I can tell you that Jaime is the guy who will typically come if you lock your keys in your car in West U, he's really nice, he goes to UHD and he's studying business. I have such a close relationship with AAA that I can actually identify most of the people who will come service your vehicle, for an assortment of reasons, by sight and by name. Anyways so last year I got in trouble with my dad for using so many service calls that they sent him a letter demanding that he train his daughter better; I vowed that this year I would do better.

Anyways, so like I said this is a pretty regular occurrence so I've made provisions and I've printed keys to my car for everyone I live with and I texted my girl Melissa and she was on campus and she said she'd hand it over and I went to meet her and we decided to go to Kurbside Eatz for lunch before I headed on home. So I'm not in a good mood but I think maybe a taco will do me some good and I order it and I'm eating it and guys it is so freaking windy. This is it. This is the foe to food trucks. The wind was blowing the sauce off of my taco, I'm not kidding guys, I have the spotted cardigan to prove it. I mean I'm a slob but I'm not that much of a slob, my mother teaches etiquette for a living for goodness sakes. It blew off the cilantro, it blew away my napkins, I'm standing here trying to put some sustenance into my tiny, grumpy body and it's just impossible. -72 I'm convinced that the food trucks work in concert with the weather; it's this huge conspiracy they don't even have to bother making good food, they just slip the weather a twenty and it blows everything away so you have no idea if it was enjoyable or not. Look guys I'm not a fan of conspiracies, I think they're a low blow, I can't believe the government faked the moon landing, I think it's really rude that they're covering up Area 59, and I just am not a fan of this wind that Kurbside Eatz intentionally set to blow across the top of my taco yesterday morning.

So this is it, guys, your official warning: don't go to food trucks because they are smarter than us and they will alter the environment around them to steal money from poor, innocent, too-dumb-to-take-their-keys-out-of-their-ignition college students.

Moon Tower Inn

2013-01-28T16:26:00.003-06:00

I'd like to start this review by telling you how much I love the movie Dazed and Confused, which I assume is where this restaurant got it's name. (Except seriously come on guys why is it called Moon Tower INN? You can't stay there, there are no rooms, they don't even have a stable you can hunker down in and give birth to a child and start a religious revolution. Plus it's all outside so it's not like you can even comfortably squat, you know, if it's raining or muggy. You'd wake up all sweaty and your neck would hurt.) My favorite part of the movie though is Matthew McConaughey when he says, "You know what I like about high school girls? I keep getting older, and they stay the same age." Gosh that's classic. Especially because he's doing the voice overs on those energy commercials, it's all I can think about whenever they play. There's some free marketing feedback for you guys: when people hear your ads, we think of gentle, playful pedophilia. +12 It's a great movie though seriously I could watch it two days in a row, no problem.

Here's what I didn't know about Moon Tower Inn: I had no idea they were open during daylight hours! According to Yelp!, they open as early as noon some days. As a college student, I've always preferred to limit my visits to the Moon Tower to the evening, usually after I've already had a meal and am just looking to chill out somewhere that people go on bikes. (Obviously I never go there on a bike, I buy my clothing without it having been pre-worn and I don't drink PBR; look hipsters I'm not trying to say I'm better than you I'm just saying I'm eating all of your foods without the added stress of having to be ironic about it). Anyways I'm struggling to decide how I feel about this. In the darkness, MTI looks like a patch of grass with some picnic tables in it (in the new Moon Tower Inn, the movie screen is still being rebuilt; the guy at the counter told me they would be building a whole sound stage I guess so that bands can go play there too, this is pretty exciting since sometimes this is all the culture I get. However this means that I don't even have the benefit of a glow coming from the movie screen so like if there was a giant subterranean rat coming up from the depths of Houston to kill everyone there I really never would have known, be careful guys it could be a real danger.) What could it possibly look like in the daytime? It's possible to tell that they have done some renovations, for instance they are no longer some tiny crappy looking building but a larger less crappy looking building. I think they are painted a different color. Look it looks the same as it did before in the dead of night but the hot dogs are still just as good as they were before so it's OK if you guys want to show up again. +34

Here's what else I like about the Moon Tower they have all those cool draft beers but I'll be honest with you guys I'm not a huge beer drinker, I always get a headache the next morning and it just doesn't taste that great to me, I'm sorry everyone I know I've let you down. I go for the hot dogs exclusively. But guess what they sell there! They sell Mexican cokes! You know, the ones that come in a glass bottle and they're made with real sugar? So awesome they taste so much better than regular cokes +91. Anyways I love these things can I tell you something that I read? Just to clarify I read this in a newspaper, not the internet, which means it's automatically true. Anyways it said that scientists have determined that your body reacts to the sugars in corn syrup differently than it does to the sugar in "sugar", and you have less weight gain that you do with regular sugar. Never in this article did it explicitly mention to me that I will still gain weight from real sugar, which means I've been drinking Mexican cokes like they are going out of style, I'm talking once every one, two weeks. This is heavy soda drinking for me, guys. Any weight loss over this time period can easily be covered up by my constant binges on Twix and Doritos! It's so convenient plus my scale covers up absolutely everything so I will never know the truth. My point is eat at Moon Tower Inn, you'll lose weight.

Eatsie Boys

2013-01-24T18:26:00.001-06:00

As my faithful followers will know, I previously reviewed the Eatsie Boys food truck. Being a serious, professional journalist, it was my duty to return to the new, re-visioned, brick and mortar Eatsie Boys to let you know my important opinions.

I would like to start out by saying that what I think is the best about Eatsie Boys is translated very well into their new location, which is how super nice everybody who works there is. When I went and it was a food truck, they gave a whole sandwich to a mean homeless guy. This time everyone was so nice and they answered all of my nosy questions and then I told the guy at the counter, "thanks, bro," and he said, "don't bro me if you don't know me," but he smiled, and he wasn't being mean to me, we were sharing a jest about common vernacular on the streets. We were buds. +14 People open doors for you, at Eatsie Boys. People at Eatsie Boys would let you sleep on their couch, and if you stayed a couple weeks longer to leave than you'd originally told them, they wouldn't start acting rude and restless in your company and they wouldn't start hinting that you begin paying rent. They're good, solid men, and ladies, you should date all of them.

Another good thing about Eatsie Boys is that they have a dog friendly patio. Here's something you guys didn't know: I'm house sitting right now, which means that I have a dog for my own personal use, 24/7, for an entire week. She's beautiful and we like to do the things that I normally do with my own dog together, like eat French fries and watch crappy television (now that I have a house I have cable, guys; I can't wait to be a bona fide adult it seems like the best gig ever). We also go on walks and bark at squirrels and scare pigeons together, but this dog's a bit older so she's not quite as good at those things as I am and my real dog Chester is. Shout out to Chester, who's brown and lives with my parents and is the best dog ever; I want you to know, Chet, that this new dog refuses to cuddle and she doesn't sneeze nearly as much as you do, she will never replace you. Anyway Eatsie Boys respects that sometimes people are house sitting and walking around in the camouflage of being a real adult and need things to do with their new pet dog; Eatsie Boys will even allow you, for no extra charge, to take your fake dog to their restaurant (provided you sit outside) and let you pretend to all of their patrons that you're a real adult and have a real job and pay all of your bills and not just some of them. They will let you fake owning cable. They will let you falsify your area code. At Eatsie Boys, they will let you make believe whatever you want to be. +192

Look guys I don't want you to think that I have strayed into the forum of actual restaurant reviews; I'd prefer to leave that to the experts. I would, however, like to share a few words with you about their Shipley's Glazed and Confused Ice Cream. According to the employee that I interviewed, who remains anonymous because I didn't ask him for his name (so much for my burgeoning journalism career), they make this ice cream by soaking actual Shipley's donuts in their ice cream base for (I believe) at least a day. The result is that their ice cream tastes exactly like a Shipley's donut and even has the same texture as the donut glaze. Guys, it's awesome. This is just the thing emotional eaters like myself have been waiting for. I don't know how many times I've been laying in bed watching the Notebook alternatively stuffing my face with handfuls of popcorn and bonbons and thought, Man I could really go for something else... should I go out and buy a dozen donuts, or a gallon of ice cream? (Obviously you can't get both because when in the depths of despair it's impossible to have the amount of social interactions that would take place in both a trip to the grocery store AND the donut store). Now I don't ever have to make that decision again. Now I can just go to Eatsie Boys. +34

These men are visionaries, guys. They are visionaries. Any Eatsie Boys employees who find themselves single, please email me at arbitrarycriticism@live.com and I'll set you up with my most favorite female friends, post haste. \

Salata

2013-01-17T19:37:00.002-06:00

So like everyone here in Houston I'm very eager to watch Salata grow into a successful restaurant chain, mostly because, to quote Morgan Freeman in Batman, "some men just like to watch the world burn" and I'm very interested to see a franchise birthed out of the Houston Tunnels become a significant part of the United States culinary scene. +8 Houston, +8. Anyways it's a really awesome restaurant irl too so you should all go there.

I'll admit that I too was a little skeptical of a place that mostly sold salads that wasn't Souper Salad; Souper Salad sends me coupons and I can stuff my face with as much as I want for only $5.95; how can Salata compete with that? I'll tell you. My salad at Salata - which, I'll confirm, did fill me up - cost $8. Not $8.95, not $8.27, eight dollars and zero cents. Eight dollars exactly. The menu sign said eight dollars; the cash register said eight dollars. Talk about truth in advertising! This is the kind of integrity I wouldn't expect coming from a place that charges eight dollars for a salad. Hahaha man I'm hilarious. +27 Here's the other thing - they charge for chicken and seafood and avocado, but do you know what they don't charge for on your salad? Bacon bits! Guys that's all I like to eat on my salad anyway! Since you're eating so many vegetables it's OK to eat pure unadulterated animal fats! And they don't even charge you for it, I love Salata, they are made with my interests at heart.

Here's the other great thing about Salata. You go, you pick out your salad, you get your water cup, you go to grab a fork and you think, man those forks look so steel like and heavy. Then you go to pick them up, and they're just shiny silver plastic forks! They're only made to look like they're real metal! +80 I guess it's hypocritical of me to be charmed by this deceit after I gushed over their integrity in menu pricing, but I'm just 22 years old I'm infallible guys. The thing is is that I would always prefer to use a plastic fork; not because I hate the environment or anything like that, just because if you accidentally stab yourself in the lip with a plastic fork, it's not going to hurt, and I'm not exactly known for my gracefulness.

I did have one mild complaint and I don't want any possible franchisors to see this as a reason not to invest, but the thing is they make your salads in these giant metal bowls and then they toss them in these giant metal bowls and then they give you... giant metal bowls! Look whenever I go home my parents are obsessed with Food Network's Chopped, and let me tell you if they tried to use that plating Aaron Sanchez would certainly have a thing or two to say. -12 Nice try Salata but if I wanted to eat out of a mixing bowl I would have stayed at home.

If anyone is interested in giving me the start up money to open my own Salata franchise, please email me at arbitrarycriticism@live.com.