Glenn's Kobe beef burger was most certainly not Kobe beef, but it was a decent pub-style burger. The mound of sturdy french fries that came with it nearly made up for the $9 price tag. The meat was sadly unseasoned, but the cloak of cheddar cheese beneath an eggy bun held it up stoically. I wouldn't order it again, but I'm not exactly the Men's Club target clientele, am I?
What the Men's Club does manage to do quite effectively is cater to its target clientele: the middle-aged men taking breaks from their home lives and the groups of young, frattish men who come in to impress each other and bump fists over bottles of MGD. Steak and shrimp nights with loaded baked potatoes. Half-priced menus on Tuesdays. Happy hour buffets with greasy finger foods. Crawfish boils in the summer. The food isn't good, but it isn't bad either.
Troy Fields
The Men's Club serves a decent pub-style burger.
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The Men's Club of Houston
3303 Sage Rd., 713-629-7900.
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On a recent Saturday night, another friend and I arrived well before the Men's Club starts charging a cover — 10 p.m. — to find the main room characteristically empty. There wasn't even a dancer onstage. My friend, a seasoned strip-club connoisseur, was bereft. Until our waitress came by, that is.
Oana was of Eastern European origin and — like the dancers — stunning. She asked for our drink orders, and my friend sputtered his out like an old lawn mower starting up. I asked to see the wine list, and then quickly gave it back when I saw the cheapest item was a $25 half-bottle of Kendall-Jackson amidst a list that had average bottles of Merlot listed at $1,050. Ordering the house wine by the glass seemed like a safer venture.
They really do gouge a hunk of your flesh on the drinks here, which seems to be how the Men's Club generates a lot of its revenue. I pondered this over an $8.50 glass of house Cabernet that tasted like room-temperature Manischewitz while our waitress sat back down with one of her regulars and resumed chatting with him, presumably for extra tips.
My friend looked somewhat longingly after her. "It's a shame she has to sit with that creepy old dude," he remarked. Then, a few minutes later, "Do you think I could pay her to just do a few laps in my living room? She smells so good." I ignored him and plowed heroically through my glass of warm, sugary wine.
Our dinner that night came out to $35, exclusive of wine. And for that, I can't fault the Men's Club. A down economy might be keeping big spenders off the main floor, but it also means that you can dine fairly cheaply here if you're a man with a big appetite out on the town.
Crab cakes were poorly constructed but filled with lashings of jumbo lump crab; these were heavily buttered, rendering the side ramekin of rémoulade nearly moot. Garlicky baked potato soup was clearly made from reconstituted potato flakes — something made even clearer when the same garlic mashed potatoes showed up as side items on both entrées — but would appeal to a certain type of unfussy palate. Salad was a steakhouse-type affair with great bunches of iceberg lettuce, bacon, tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs. And our entrées were large enough to feed two people each.
My dining companion's pork chop tasted like it had been cooked on a dirty grill, the flavor of old oil and charcoaled scrapings more pronounced than any pork flavor. But my chicken-fried steak was wonderful. I was gobsmacked. "I guess Sysco does some things right," my friend joked as he chewed a few bites of it. The soft steak inside cut easily with a fork, the nicely crunchy batter embracing it closely, never gummy, never flaky. It needed no gravy.
By the time our cheesecake arrived, I was too full to eat more than two bites. It tasted like the industrial-size cheesecakes that Costco sells, grout-thick and overly sweet. My dining companion, who I was beginning to think might become a regular, wolfed it down, then headed for the bathroom.
A few minutes later, he was back. "The bathroom attendant, this older Hispanic dude, was reading a cookbook," he reported.
"Really?" I sat up in my seat. "Which one?"
"Something by Escoffier," he replied.
"Escoffier?" I repeated, astonished. Maybe the wrong man is in the kitchen. As I ruminated on this bizarre arrangement — a bathroom attendant devouring classic French cooking tomes and a kitchen turning out mediocre steaks — a dancer finally took the stage. It was 10 p.m. My dining companion's eyes lit up.
"Is this really that interesting?" I asked as he admired the woman's long torso and flawless hair. "She's not naked. You aren't even going to interact with her. She's not interested in you."
"Well," he finally said after a long pause. "There are worse things to look at while you're eating."
katharine.shilcutt@houstonpress.com
