Welcome back to the weekly roundup here at Eating Our Words, where the nice weather can only mean one thing: soon our faces will be exploding with pollen. Ready the hot sauce and Benadryl, bitches, it's time we taught these sinuses a lesson or two.
We started the week off right with some of the better songs about spices, and we're shocked that the Spice Girls' 1997 hit "Mustard 'N' Parsley (Only Use Sparsely!)" didn't make the list. Seriously, how tragic is it that those girls never released an album called "Allspice" while they were together?
We counted down the best ways for a restaurant to screw up a meal's ambiance, and what do you know, poop-smell rated at the top of the list. Seems obvious to us, and yet some restaurants - not to mention bars - have yet to catch on to this basic tenet. And no sooner do we publish that list then someone goes and violates the air conditioning rule. Folks, this is Houston in the summer. If your A/C is broken, you are officially closed.
Pertaining to the ambiance-spoilers, things that smell terrible can on rare occasion make you hungrier; just ask any stoner if the horrible smell of pot puts them off of any of these foods. They'd probably be pretty pleased with the food at the state fair, too, although we're pretty sure they wouldn't be so thrilled about the 75-foot grinning cowboy demon.
Members of the Austin Food Blogger Alliance are doing what they can to help the victims of the Texas wildfires, and next they're going to stop Lex Luthor from stealing all those cakes.
Katharine Shilcutt's 100 favorite Houston dishes countdown is nearing its end, so buckle the eff up. I bet number one is pho. I just have a feeling. A pho-ling, if you will.
You can make barbecue brisket in an oven?! You can, as long as you don't mind any religious statues or paintings in your house weeping blood. Speaking of weeping blood, how about a nice cocktail with fish sauce in it? If you said "Sure, that sounds great!" then please get the hell away from me.
There's a new restaurant called Casablanca. The manager's special is the Hill of Beans. I should be killed.
Those of you nostalgic for the 11th Street Cafe before its takeover by Ruggles, fear not: they seem to be mediocre-ing it up in classic 11th Street Cafe tradition. But now you get to pay more! Hooray! Suck it, customers!
Whataburger, on the other hand, has knocked it out of the park with their green chile cheeseburger, and I'm happy for them even though any special that isn't the honey barbecue chicken strip sandwich MAKES ME ANGRY.
We're still hitting up the rapidly expanding food truck market, just in case you weren't aware, and hot damn, are there ever some good food trucks out there. Anybody been to the Eatsie Boys' new ice cream truck yet? I must have it.
Finally, we looked into how to properly prepare the MREs you'll be forced to hoard once Michelle Bachmann is elected president and the world ends in a blaze of fire and idiocy. Until then, though, you can still get a kickass gingerbread cupcake. Enjoy it while you can, people! There's not much time!
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