Love/Hate: Watching No Reservations

Love: Watching Anthony Bourdain, or anyone for that matter, eat delicious looking foods from other countries. I love food, a lot. Problem is that I'm not any good at making any, and I'm pretty cheap so I rarely want to go spend money on it. My solution is simple, watch other people eat food on TV. Bourdain goes around the globe and does exactly what I want to see, he goes to the places where great food comes from and eats it. Perfect.
Hate: Bourdain's narration telling me how each of his trips is like an out of body experience and how he constantly considers leaving his cool New York City lifestyle to relax in a small hut somewhere on an Asian island. It happens every freaking time! I get it, travel is cool. Seeing people live differently than you do is crazy, but I'm tired of hearing you yap about the same thing in every episode. Stop talking and EAT SOMETHING.

This Week in Food

This Week in Food

Some of the food that I've enjoyed over the last week...well couple of weeks. In case you are curious, starting from left to right starting on top, Torchy's Taco's September special taco the "Mr. Pink," Hyde Park Bar & Grill's famous french fries (Meh), some delicious special from Magnolia Cafe that I could resist eating before I snapped a pic, and last but not least a $3 pizza from Pizza Patron.

A gift from Japan: Boss Coffee

This June my girlfriend Emmy went on a two week trip to Japan and when she returned home she gave me a tiny little can of Boss Rainbow Mountain Blend coffee. Today I finally popped it open and tried the Japanese beverage.

Apparently Boss coffee is huge in Japan. You can buy it in vending machines all over the place, and there are billboards every where promoting it. The best thing about the ads? The company's spokesman is Tommy Lee Jones. That's right the academy award winning American actor is the face of a Japanese coffee company. (Check out the commercial below)

Enough distraction though, back to today's tasting. I poured the drink into a coffee cup to make sure it hadn't gone bad in the months that it spent aging in my parent's refrigerator. The liquid looked...well like coffee. Smelled like coffee too. Tasted a lot like you're usual iced coffee. The coffee itself was a little bit stronger than most coffee drinks but packed a pretty standard punch as far as flavor was concerned. Would I drink it again? Yes, but just because I do what Tommy Lee Jones tells me too.

Red Lobster & gluttony

Endless Shrimp at Red Lobster may seem like a good idea when you see the commercials on TV, but when all is said and done it is ultimately a grave mistake. Restaurants like Chili's and Red Lobster are one of my guilty pleasures, I hate that they are big corporately run chains and that they hurt local economies but boy do I love their cheese biscuits.

Today was a pretty successful day for me so when I got text message from a friend seeing if I wanted to eat at Red Lobster tonight I decided it would be a nice way to celebrate. The day finished and by eight I found myself seated at the location of S. Lamar. Myself, and three other friends, decided to order the limited time only endless shrimp. After enjoying a salad and some biscuits the waitress arrived. We each had our own little army of dead shrimp looking up at us.

Three hours and around 100 shrimp later I found myself here on my bed clutching my stomach hoping the pain will end soon. In all seriousness though the shrimp tasted fantastic. Each time we ordered more we got to choose from teriyaki, cajun, coconut, garlic, and hand battered. I tried all but hand battered and was, at the time, happy with my decision to spend the $15 on the special.

Do I regret my decison? Yes. Would I do it again? In a heart beat. What can i say, I'm a glutton for...well...gluttony.

More Highland Mall love

I actually wound up at Highland again this afternoon and saw these posters that pretty much summed up why I love the place. It feels like the past.

Sea Dog Raspberry Ale: Raspberry or Mustard?

A few weeks ago I turned 21 and since then I’ve been slowly dipping my feet into the pool of alcoholic beverages. So far I’ve been pretty unimpressed. Beer tastes pretty gross. Didn’t really like white wine. But I’m still trying things.

Today I was at Central Market and I saw a bottle of Sea Dog’s Raspberry Wheat Ale. I figured regular beer tastes kinda gross…but throw some raspberries into the mix and maybe it’ll taste better? So I bought it.

After a few hours I popped open the bottle and poured it into a glass. I did a surprisingly good job of pouring into the glass, there was a good amount of head and the beer was a nice shade of amber that looked like John Hammond’s fly cane in Jurassic Park.

I couldn’t smell any particular flavors at first so I took a sip and definitely didn’t taste raspberry. The first flavor to hit my tongue was spicy deli mustard and then a pretty standard beer taste. I was surprised. I thought it would be a lot sweeter. It wasn’t the worst beer I’ve ever tasted, in fact it wasn’t bad at all but the raspberries on the bottle had me hoping for something else. The mustard taste eventually went away towards the end I started to taste the raspberry.

Maybe it was my imagination, in fact it probably was, but by the last couple sips of the glass the raspberry almost overshadowed the gross beery taste that still grosses me out.

I still don’t like beer but this bottle was halfway decent.

This Week in Food

If you follow me on twitter (twitter.com/proctoranderson) you know that I love to upload pictures of food that I make...and pretty much food I eat. Here are four things I've eaten this week.

Trashy

Today I had the best taco of my life.

Around four my girlfriend Emmy and I decided to stop at Torchy's and grab a quick bite to eat. Torchy's is my favorite place for quick food that's under $5. Emmy ordered the baja shrimp taco on corn and I got a trailer park on flour.We where really hungry and it took longer than usual for our food to come so by the time it came out we where more than ready for the sweet taste of tacos.

As soon as the tacos hit the table my hands went to work. I grabbed the back half of the taco with my right hand and craddled it so I could catch anything that fell out the back of the taco and used my right hand to guide it to my mouth. Usually the trailer park is just a good taco. Fried chicken, queso, and green chilis all melted to together. Today's was phenominal.

After finishing up Emmy and I went back to the front desk and we each ordered another to go, drove home, and enjoyed.