Fancy Pants

For those of you who avidly follow this blog you might realize that I tend to err on the side of cheap.  I am not exactly a regular of fancy restaurants with high class menus, but today we are stepping out of the norm.  This is about a trip to The Bird And The Bear part of the Ouisie's family here in H-town.

To say that the decor in The Bird And The Bear is different, might be an understatement.  Yes, those are chairs hanging from the ceiling and I do not know how to fully accept that but it is fine, the food made up for the oddity.

The meal starts out with a awesome cracker bread, coated in spices and sesame, served up with an olive oil dip filled with herbs and peppers.  I could literally eat this stuff all day and be perfectly happy.

We were in a celebratory meal this day, and so the appetizer of choice was escargot.  I am a big fan of escargot, sure it is snails, but that is aside the fact, this dish was served up in an amazing brandied butter sauce, giving the escargot a much more tangy flavor than the usual butter and garlic sauce I am used to.  The flavor as so much deeper than what I am used to, but that change up made this some of the best escargot I have ever tasted.

Brunch option #1 was The Green Benedict, the idea was brilliant, eggs Benedict with fried green tomatoes and tasso (a Cajun version of ham that is amazing).  Unfortunately, the practice was not as good as the theory, the actual dish is a whole fried green tomato (obviously the fried part did not hold up as well as it should have), and a minimal amount of Hollandaise sauce (Cardinal sin in this guy's Benedict book).  

Once again, good concept mixing in all of these flavors, but I think it would have been better in a more standard Benedict form (sauce, egg, meat, bread) with maybe a slice of fried green tomato, but that is not how this came out, and it was definitely lacking in something.  The home fries and fruit however, were a good side, but it did not make up for the rest of the dish.

The came brunch option #2, for some reason we were stuck on the fried green tomato idea today, and opted for BLTC, a sandwich topped with bacon, fried green tomatoes, and MJ cheese all on some homemade brioche.  Once again, great concept but it was just too much going on for a sandwich, although the house made potato chips helped to lessen to blow.

I cannot recommend The Bird And The Bear for the simple fact that the food was not worth the costs.  The escargot was amazing, but the rest that we ate was mediocre at best and definitely not worth the high end bill that was handed to us at the end of this meal.