Welcome back to the weekly Eating Our Words round-up, where the food is well-prepared, plentiful and, more often than not, weird as all hell.
To start with, Robb Walsh introduced us to the concept of a Wal-Mart supermercado, which might not go over as well as Wal-Mart is hoping, because the main competitor to the Hispanic-style Wal-Mart is the regular Wal-Mart. After some quick tacos and a tall, frosty mojito limonada, J.C. Reid chronicled the triumphant return of Felix's chile con queso, a Houston staple that has been sorely missed since Felix closed, but is now available at El Patio.
Robb explored some German food in Fredericksburg, including some adorably tasty rabbit sausage. You bastards were once again able to guess Where We Were Eating without too much trouble (Sunflower Bakery), and Robb was lucky enough to be among the first to sample a new all-natural diet cola, which blows regular diet cola out of the water by somehow having an aftertaste that is even worse. Nikki Metzgar provided us with a home-grown recipe for Mom's Fuzzy Melon and Dried Mushroom Stir-fry, which was not only delicious, but also gave me the opportunity to talk to God for a couple of hours. He told me not to worry so much, which was a big relief.
Katharine Shilcutt regaled us with some vintage '80s food commercials, which made us all fondly remember back to the days when just seeing the Noid would have us huddling in the top of our closet with a knife for hours on end. In other news, the country is sliding into economic depression, which will soon mean Cormac McCarthy-esque bands of cannibals roaming the burnt-out streets, but in the meantime, you can get some darn cheap hot dogs at the upscale Yapa Kitchen Cafe.
St. Arnolds held its first annual Beer Olympics to celebrate its 15th anniversary, which went less like an actual Olympics and more like a drunken adult version of Double Dare.
Robb broke in our new list technology with his list of the ten best burgers in Texas, and things went smoothly enough, except for the fact that a few of you couldn't find the link to get to the next item in the list. Rather than apologizing, we will be making this into a regular feature, Where's the Link? There are no shrimp and no barbies in this week's featured Cafe Bite, which focused on Houston's new Australian franchise, Trios Downunder.
Robb's favorite color for summer wines is pink, but that doesn't make him any less of a man. Speaking of surging manliness, J.C. stepped up to the plate and tried some goat brains masala at Indika. As carnivorous as I am, it still creeps me right the hell out to even imagine eating something that some critter used to think with. Lazy readers, insert your own fava beans and chianti joke, I am simply not having it.
Things got substantially more appetizing when Katharine was invited to a fried chicken contest, and chowed down greedily upon the offerings of some of Houston's best cooks, not that we resent the shit out of her for not inviting us. In this weeks Cafe review, the burning question of What's a salumeria? was finally answered (it is a type of wood tick). Next up, Tomato Fest at Bayou City Farmers Market, where we learned that John Denver was right about home-grown tomatoes, man. Plus: get ready for local color if you sample the all-you-can-eat seafood at the Monument Inn, where Robb was set upon by fishermen, crabbers, bird watchers and a guy with a blunderbuss. They'll need more than that if they want to come between Robb and seafood, though.
Paul Knight spent an iffy seven bucks at the Poppa Burger hamburger stand, and in a move that was pretty much inevitable, a restaurant announced that it was closing via Twitter. For further shock, Robb managed to find some paella that isn't absolutely mediocre, which I still find difficult to believe. Katharine took her Delorean (and her camera) back to Huston's Drugs, a.k.a. the soda fountain that time forgot, where she narrowly avoided altering her own timeline and canceling her own existence.
The Texas town of Dublin celebrated its 118th birthday with an extensive Dr Pepper festival. It's the only place left where you can get Dr Pepper sweetened with sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup, which makes it the single greatest soft drink in the entire world. It even has its own Wikipedia page.
We figured you'd probably be kicking yourselves if we didn't remind you about the upcoming events, so consider yourselves reminded. We do this all for you, you know.
