Revisiting Korean

So tonight's blog post is going to be a lazy one on my part.  I revisited my good friends at Kimchi's in Katy and decided to sample a new dish for you to broaden our adventures into the cuisine of Korea.

The dish this time around is known as Bi Bim Bap, this was actually the first Korean dish I ever read about as sort of a quintessential plate.

As you can see this dish is an explosion of different flavors, and once again in one those ridiculously hot bowls that continues to cook the food as you eat.  I opted for the beef, and it is combined with some bean sprouts, carrots, cabbage, and an egg, all served up on a bed of rice.

As you can see, you once you get all those flavors mixed up every bite is loaded with all sorts of hearty goodness.

My favorite Korean ladies even found my weakness.  Sauces, how can you resist the sweet and the spicy?  Sauces are a magical thing that is kind of like sprinkling unicorn tears on buckets of sunshine.  Basically, pure awesomeness.

Here is the real hidden surprise of the rice bowl, as you mix it up you get some nice crispity crunchity cooked rice that adds a whole new texture and flavor into the dish.  Maybe it was my mom's cooking as I grew up, but I have a certain liking to burned foods once in a while and this is no exception.

Operation Overload

First and foremost, please allow me to apologize to those loyal readers of mine for a lack of recent activity.  I have been busy and brain dead lately so what writing I started was not worthy of a posting.

Now on to the food…

Today’s adventure leads us to Burger Tex Grill, a small corner in a strip center that is rather unassuming and one that I have driven by for nearly a year before ever actually stepping foot in there.  It is located at Barker Cypress and I-10 on the north side near the Bally’s gym. 

As you can see the operation is fairly bare bones, the menu contains just a few items, but as with many themes in this blog, I am perfectly fine with the concept of doing one thing and doing it right.

Even the numbering system for your order is about as simple as it gets… yes that is a number written on my cup.

The food is about as simple as everything else seems to be here in the restaurant.  A cheeseburger and fries does not get much more basic than that.

Fortunately, there was a bar of condiments and let’s just say I might have gotten a little out of hand.  Of course you have the basics of onions, lettuce, and tomatoes but that is not where I lost my self control.  I bypassed those for jalapenos, pico de gallo, and then two crock pots located at the end of the cold bar.  Grilled onions and queso were too good to pass up and next thing I knew I had this pile of awesome.

Sure the burgers were decent, the ingredients were ok, but all the flavors combined helped to cover up whatever bad flavors there might have been.  Basically, I just pummeled my taste buds into submission and told that they would enjoy it.  The queso covered fries certainly didn’t hurt either.

Amazing Amazon

During my time in Houston I have heard endless rants and raves about just how good Churrascos, Americas, and the other Corduarestaurants are.  Unfortunately, as a 24 year old male these restaurants tend to lie outside of my price range.  Then I caught word of a cheaper restaurant in that family and of course I had to give it a try.

Amazon Grill definitely jumps out at you as you drive down Kirby just south of 59, the banana yellow exterior alone is enough to make you stop and investigate this place further.

The interior is no exception to that rule either, for a counter service restaurant the furniture is trendy and even the duct work is artistically designed.

One of my favorite features of this place was the plantain bar.  How could you resist a serve yourself fried plantain bar?  For those of you who don’t remember me talking about these in the past, these are a substitute for tortilla chips when in this form.  They are sliced thin and perfect for dipping in the variety of sauces.

And sauces this place had, there were about 3 different salsas and even some rich chimichurri, what I like to think of as South American pesto.

Now comes the real food, we will start with mine to get it out of the way.  I ordered the Plantain-Coconut Shrimp, basically coconut shrimp with plantains creating the crispy crunchity exterior.  It was served up with a side of sweet chile sauce and I opted for a side of yuca fries (note that these are not made from yucca plants that you see in the deserts of Texas and other regions, but rather from the plant we know as cassava).  The shrimp was average at best and the sweet chile sauce was lacking, the best part of my meal was the fries but thankfully I had another meal to fall back on.

That is where the delicious Mixed Grill dish came into play.  This amazing plate is chimichurri grilled beef tenderloins, grilled chicken, and achiote grilled shrimp.  If the meats weren’t good enough for you this dish is served up with some cilantro rice, escabeche vegetable (personally one of my favorite Latin sides, basically pickled veggies with loads of flavor), and some roasted plantains with some crema fresca.  All in all this is an amazing plate and enough food for two making the $13.95 price tag a great bargain.

My addiction to plantains also mandated a side order of roasted plantains (note here they are called maduros in case you are looking for them on the menu).  They certainly didn’t disappoint someone who was jonesing for a fix.

Just Peachy

I have often driven by the signs along I-45 between Dallas and Houston luring me off the highway with the promise of peaches, but until recently I have resisted.  However, on my recent return from Dallas I gave into my weakness and decided to stop in the little town of Fairfield, Texas and visit the Cooper Farms store.

Upon pulling up to the place you might wonder to yourself “What have I gotten myself into?” You will find yourself in the parking lot of an Exxon station in which all of the gas pumps are labeled peaches instead of Exxon…  Quite an interesting scene, but do not let the exterior trick you, head on inside and admire the awesomeness that is the Cooper Farms roadside stand.

Of course they have what you came looking for, more peaches than you could ever want in your life.  I do not claim to be an expert on fruit by any means, but I think I caught these peaches too late in the season; they were hard and small so I will not pass judgment on them for that.

There was also a wide variety of other vegetables including beans, potatoes, squash, tomatoes, and just about anything else you could want.

Not to mention a lot of nuts.

The real star this day though was their line of goods.

The pies were amazing; I picked up a peach pie, a soft sweet pocket of heaven that I probably could have eaten 100 of it I set my mind to it.

Fortunately, I didn’t and saved room for some peach ice cream. Definitely a good call to make on this warm fall day, and definitely a good way to break up the 4 hour drive down 45.

Big D Brews

Today we are continuing on my Dallas adventure today to a brewery restaurant that can be found throughout the country.  Gordon Biersch is located at the area known as Park Lane, a development of shops and restaurants located just off of 75. 

Your option for beer at this place is one of their brews that they make in house or Bud Light so we decided to sample some of their selections.

First Kevin ordered a Hefeweizen, as you know from my previous posts this is not one of my favorite styles of beer, it is simply too sweet for my preference.  This beer was definitely a good example of Hefeweizen, so if I was more of a fan of the style it would have been a good call.

My first beer option was Märzen, a Bavarian lager crisp and cool like a true lager should be. The American lager (what you get when you order a Bud for example) is a diluted version consisting of rice rather than heavier grains so it is a nice change to kick it Bavarian style. 

My second beer was a Czech Pilsner, a bitter brew that was full of flavor.  Not quite as good as the Märzen but good none the less.

Kevin got a Bud Light for his next beer so instead of a photo of beer I am going to recycle a photo of pouting Kevin…  Man up.

Now we weren’t just there to quench our thirst, fortunately Sunday’s at Gordon Biersch is an all day happy hour so we got some scrumptious appetizers.

Our first choice was Southwest Egg Rolls. I was expecting something along the lines of what you get at Chili’s but these were much better.  They were much softer and had a ton more flavor, you could actually detect the different ingredients rather than having one flavor throughout the dish.  The real star of the plate though was the jalapeno ranch, how can you go wrong with that?

Option two was some sweet chile shrimp, little fried shrimp with a sweet chile dipping sauce.  Not as good as the egg rolls, but good none the less.

Breakfast of Champions

In case you guys have not caught on yet I love breakfast.  People say it is the most important meal of the day, I prefer to think of it as the most delicious meal of the day.

I am also a coffee junkie, if left to my own means I have been known to drink an entire pot of coffee all alone, yes I am a mess when it comes to coffee.  Specifically, I want it to be bold, a kick in the teeth, uninhibited by cream or sugar.

With those two loves of my life, a perfect storm is created at one of my favorite breakfast joints in Dallas, Café Brazil.  There are multiple locations throughout the Metroplex, but on this trip Kevin and I went to the location in University Park near the SMU campus. 

Now I will be honest, I do have a history at these restaurants including one alleged event of proposing to a waitress for a glass of water after a long day of a Rangers game and a night in Deep Ellum.  On this trip however, we were of clear minds just looking for a grub breakfast.

As you can see, Café Brazil is a Mecca for coffee lovers with absurd selection and a bottomless cup that is great/horrible for people like me.

Their food is amazing as well, I mean let’s be honest, and I would not lead to a place for its coffee alone.

We will start out with Kevin’s delicious but un-foodventurous meal.  He went with your basic pancake breakfast with the standard fixings.

When this was the only plate that arrived at first Kevin was truly heartbroken.  Poor little Kevin (ps- in the jumbo version of that photo the gray hairs are way too visible).

Once the fluffy pancakes showed up all was right with the world.

Then came my glorious meal choice.  Historically, I have been a fan of the El Gordo Crepe (which translates to the fat guy basically) that is loaded with chorizo, cheddar, onions, jalapenos, tomatoes, bacon, all smothered in a spicy cream sauce.  Basically it is a healthy batch of heaven just waiting to clog your arteries.  Just for you folks though I decided to step outside my normal order and tried the Breakfast Relleno Crepes, filled with eggs, roasted poblano pepper, chorizo, cheddar, and once again that wicked cream sauce. 

This crepe was delicious, the chorizo is amazing, and the peppers give it a mild twist, but that side of cheesy hash browns was a dish that I could eat all day in a giant bucket.  Their other potato side, the rosemary potatoes are equally as good, but on this day the cheesy hash browns were calling my name.

After going to Café Brazil for years with my dad when he was in Dallas, and the time I have been there since he has left I am yet to be disappointed by a breakfast at this place.  Now they just need to open a location in Houston so I don’t have to drive 4 hours for a fix.