Welcome back to the weekly roundup here at Eating Our Words, where we're still looking for a bakery that can fit "Sorry I Never Finished College and Quit Going to Church and Swear Too Much In My Articles and Am Generally a Huge Disappointment to You" on a Mother's Day cake. Hey, maybe these guys?
We started the week off with a dinner that centered around beer, which is obviously the best way to start any week. You could even chase that meal with a durian smoothie, as long as you don't mind your breath smelling like an open grave.
If you need somewhere unique to eat around the University of Houston's main campus and are for some reason sick of Creamburger and Frenchy's, we found another place you can try.
Houston only has three Costco wholesale stores last time we checked, but if you're heading out to one, check out our list of what to grab first. We left out "gigantic crate of entirely too many sour straws" because really, that should be obvious. If your needs run towards the more exotic, don't worry; a Phoenicia Market is opening downtown and will provide a veritable "United Nations of foodstuffs," which of course is way more effective and useful than a League of Nations of foodstuffs.
We started a column on Coke alternatives for beating the heat this summer, and just in case you forgot, Robb Walsh is counting down his 100 favorite Houston dishes and is now up to #46. Not only that, but his new book will be released on May 10 and we're gonna party up like DMX on May 16 at the West Alabama Ice House, where the bartenders are hot, the dogs are plentiful, and the impromptu games of Horse are always worth checking out for a laugh. Oh, and they serve beer there too.
In more serious news, nobody really knows for sure how the oil spill will affect Gulf Coast seafood, but we're hoping that, thanks to BP's environmentally friendly brand of oil, all those dolphins can finally get the torque they've always wanted without that pesky engine buildup. We joke because the reality is actually quite sad. Shit. Now we're depressed. Hey, let's cheer up by checking out Katharine Shilcutt's Food Fight: Iced Coffee, which is - no lie - one of the funniest articles we've read in quite some time, which, among this gaggle of word-clowns, is really saying something.
Need easy tapas? WHOOMP, there the Spanish-style appetizer is. You should really start preparing some of them, because you're about to get jealous when you see where we've been eating this week. Honestly, can you believe we get paid to do this? Or this, for Christ's sake? "Iron Bartender", now there's a superhero we could get behind. Come to think of it, Tony Stark probably could have been a bartender, but WHOOPS, somebody spilled a big bottle of dork all over this paragraph.
Hungry in the morning and wish you didn't have quite so much gosh darn money jam-packed inside your wallet? Whole Foods can help you on both counts. Okay, so they may be pricey, but at least they're pricey due to their premium ingredients, as opposed to being pricey because "Fuck you, you have to eat here, sports fans!"
Good news: Houston food is finally getting some love from the rest of the country, so maybe we'll postpone seceding for another month or two. It's because our unique urbanite attitude combined with our Southern hospitality that makes us do stuff like cook Mom pancakes on Mother's Day.
Finally, if you're one of those people who likes to get Christmas shopping done way, way early, here's a fantastic stocking stuffer for the professional alcoholic in your family. Bottoms up! But seriously, get help, Uncle Ray.
