Hub of Deliciousness

For those of you who don't know, Houston has some lovely weather, high humidity and a mild winter night means a nice pea soup fog will be drifting in most evenings, but it also means a decent time to sit outside and not sweat for once.

This was definitely the case one hazy night when we wandered up to Hubcap Grill on 19th Street in the Heights.  The Heights location is home to a great beer yard, perfect for lounging outside and sipping a few cold ones in between downing an amazing burger and fries.

Hubcap had me at hello the moment I saw their beer selection, that choice alone took about 5 times as long as deciding which of their amazing burgers to order.

My theme of the night for beers was to relive my days in Utah, enjoying a Squatters Hop Rising, a 9% double IPA full of bitterness and flavor.

I followed that up with a Wasatch Polygamy Porter, a rich dark ale from the same company, with a great motto of "Why have just one?" nothing like a little Utah humor on a beer label with the flavor to back it up.  As ironic as it may be to some, Utah has a great micro brewing culture that is pumping out some of my favorite beers that I like to indulge in anytime I visit my dad in Salt Lake.

Now on to the burger, I decided to go kinky with this one and selected the Cheeto-Burger, a patty topped with Cheetos and cheese sauce.  The flavors were crazy and the texture blew my mind, but the meat quality and the bun that seems to be made from a pillow makes me think that any combo picked from this broad menu is sure to please the taste buds.

Now do not come here looking for a veggie burger or a whole wheat bun, you come here looking for flavor and a kick ass product that does not end at the burgers.

Their fries are hand cut and ridiculous, and come in an untold number of varieties no matter what your taste may be.  We opted for the Stinky Fries, an aptly named dish of spuds topped off with malt vinegar and garlic.  The bitterness of the vinegar and the pungent garlic are great flavors on these thick cut fries, that seemed to match perfectly to my beer and burger.

Basically this place is perfect for burger lovers and beer lovers alike, and if you are like me and love both it might be just what you imagine heaven to be.

Keeping Austin Weird

Austin is a weird place, I do not really think there is any denying it.  There are few places in the world where you see old men wandering the streets in a bikini or such a wide variety of tattoos and piercings on just about every inch of skin imaginable.  Nonetheless, Austin does create some of the finest live music, beers, and food around so I will let them stay for the time being.

We stopped in at Casino El Camino one night, a place visited by none other than Diners, Drive Ins and Dives highlighting their unique menu and kinky decor.

Of course when in the Hill Country you have to drink the local water, so I was quenching my thirst that evening with one of my favorites, Fireman's 4 by Real Ale Brewing out of Blanco, Texas.  Fireman's is a crisp blonde ale that seems to go great with just about any food and even better on a hot Texas day.

We came here for the food though and the massive burger patties were calling out name from the moment we walked through the door.  The one weird aspect of Casino is the fact that all of the food orders are done at a tiny back kitchen window and you have to listen closely for your name to be called after a long wait.  Trust me it is worth every minute of waiting.

One of the burgers we went with was the Buffalo Burger, a massive patty topped with bleu cheese and buffalo sauce.  Full of all sorts of flavor from the spicy wing sauce to the creamy richness of the bleu cheese, but the real winner here was the patty, full of amazing beef flavor you just do not find patties like this too often.

Burger #2 was the Pitts Burger, piled high with sauteed mushrooms and onions, A-1 sauce, and provolone cheese.  Yet another masterpiece, and the toppings do a great job of accenting the meat rather than covering it up and hiding it.

Note:  I have been back here since this visit (sorry did not take any pics) but I got the Amarillo Burger, a burger piled up with roasted serrano peppers, pepper jack cheese, and a cilantro mayo.  This burger kicked my butt, serrano peppers are about 3-4 times hotter than a jalapeno, and no amount of beer could help me recover from the tears and inability to breathe, but it was still a damn good burger.

The greatness did not stop at the burgers though, we ordered up some of the Verde Chili Fries, their kick butt fries smothered in queso and a garlicky tomatillo salsa.  Basically these are some of the greatest fries I have had in my life because the toppings alone, plus it keeps you safe from any vampires you might bump into on 6th Street, and I am sure that they are there.

Dozynki or How I Learned To Love The Polish

Festivals in my mind are a great way not only to experience the different cultures but also to get a wide sampling of food from said culture.  In that spirit, I attended the Polish Harvest Festival (Dozynki) and had a great time taking in the dancing and food, along with a beer or two.  The festival is held annually at Our Lady of Czestochowa on Blalock north of I-10 in Houston.

We were greeted by some welcoming people made from hay bales, although the ground was muddy and the weather was not exactly pleasant the festival atmosphere was still very present. 

The beer of choice for the day was Pilsner Urquell, it was cool and crisp, and perfect on a warm muggy day, if only they served it in glasses that were not designed for an 8 year old.

I certainly felt out of place in my shorts and a shirt, but it was very cool to see all of the various Polish dress and the dancing that was put on by the children.  I personally would like to have a dance off between the Polish kids and the Greek Festival kids, people with power let's see what we can do to make this happen soon.

Now on to the food, which is of course why I came here in the first place.  My love for perogies made this festival an instant attraction to me, and these certainly did not disappoint.

I went with the sampler plate to get the best variety I could, it contained bigos, Polish sausage, three types of perogies, and a cabbage roll.  Bigo, is also known as hunter stew, it is the brown pile on the plate, and contains cabbage and a variety of meats that provide unique textures and flavors with each bites.  The cabbage roll was rather bland compared to the other dishes, and the meat seemed under cooked at first look, but the sauce was rich and overall was good for a cabbage roll. The real stars of the dish were the perogies, one was meat, one was potatoes and cheese, and another was sauerkraut, all of them delicious.

All in all the Polish Harvest Festival was a blast, it was great trying some new foods that I otherwise would have never had the opportunity to try on my own.  Definitely reminded me that I need to make another trip to Polonia and get a big plate of perogies the next time I find myself near Blalock.

Judging A Book By Its Title

On a recent business trip down to Corpus Christi I left my meal choice up to a coworker that was much more familiar with the local fair, and that was definitely the choice to make.  We made our way down to The Executive Surf Club near the bay, upon hearing the name all I could think of was people dressed up in stuffy suits and over priced food, but this place was far from that.

As you can see, this place lacked anyone is stuffy attire and even included a gigantic fishing lure as a decoration.  The laid back dive bar would have fit perfectly on a beach somewhere rather than downtown Corpus which has no sand anywhere near it but hey beggars can’t be choosers.

For my choice in libations I decided to kick back with a XX Amber, and it arrived in a cold bottle that helped ease back a long day of driving and work. 

For food I decided to rock some seafood, I mean when you are within a stone’s throw of the Gulf it just seems right, and in this place I decided to trust the experts and get one of the house specials.  For that I settled on their version of fish and chips, panko breaded filets that were full of flavor and crunchification that was like a party in my mouth.  The real rock star of the dish was the tartar sauce, it was not your standard tartar sauce mind you, but a Creole tartar sauce that added a twist to the usual mayo and relish dip.

The twist in the meal was the side of battered fried, fries dipped in a batter and then fried up giving it an extra dose of healthiness.  I actually was not a big fan of them, the concept was interesting, but they just didn’t have enough flavor to make them anything special.  Good thing the fish was so awesome I was able to ignore the short comings of the fries.

In Its Prime

So today I am serving up a primo burger to you, and you will eat it, and you will like it.  Unless you don't like the stuff on it or burgers in general so I guess you will not necessarily eat it or like it.

Beck's Prime is a local burger chain that knows how to serve up quality burgers and french fries.  My foodventure this go around took me to the "special" Beck's known as the Sportatorium located in Memorial City Mall at Gessner and I-10W.  A wall of televisions, a projector or two, and a decent selection of beers on taps all adds up to a good environment to scarf on a burger that makes you almost forget you are sitting in a busy mall full of screaming brats and annoying teens.

Seriously the best part of the beer here is that the pint glasses create one of my favorite sights in the world, beerbergs.  For those of you unaware of this phenomenon, it is the situation in which your glass is so cold your beer freezes up into an iceberg floating in a sea of deliciousness.

The Sportatorium offers a good selection of burgers, and I opted for the concoction known as Bill's Burger.  A 1/2 pound patty of certified Angus chuck, sauteed onions, cheddar, bacon, jalapenos, prime sauce (a sauce similar to Thousand Island known as secret sauce in some other circles), and some miscellaneous burger veggies.   Basically this was a 4th of July fireworks show crammed in between two soft and tasty buns that just kept exploding time and time again with each bite.  I was a fan, but the meal did not end there my friends, no not by a long shot.

These delicious hand cut fries were quite possibly the star of the meal, crispy and full of flavor it was almost a crime to dip them in ketchup, but alas I am weak.

Until next time my hungry little friends.

Getting My Craft On

Ok so I know once again I have been slacking off lately, but today  I am taking a step back from food yet again so show off my recent project.  As you well know I love beer, specifically craft beer. In my drinking I often find myself staring at the labels admiring the various forms of artwork that finds its way onto a bottle.

So I got the idea one day to take labels and form them into a collage on a small old table that I had to give it a different look.  The original concept was to use labels that I drank, removing them from the label and then gluing them onto the surface of the table.

Unfortunately, that idea was a total failure.  Most labels would tear when I tried to remove them, I had the most success when running them through the dishwasher but that left the labels faded and wrinkled when I dried them out.

That was when a new idea struck me, write the brewery and get them to send me labels that had not been glued and were still in mint condition.  Sure enough, the labels started flowing in and that meant that I finally had to get my craft on with these craft beer labels.

Please disregard the goat dog in the background, Cabron was another boredom project but didn't turn out nearly as amazing as the beer label table.

Overall I would say my craftiness was a success this time in creating something that will have to be thrown out by my future wife.  I'll keep you posted the next time I get bored and come up with a crazy idea.

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.

Pulling Pork

Some days I think I am a mad scientist when it comes to food.  My mom had purchased some pork steaks; a childhood memory of Jill’s involves the grilling of these slabs of pork butt.  These are okay, but they are usually tough and gristly when you grill them up.  So we decided to call an audible on this recipe and change up the meal.

For those of you unfamiliar with pork butt, it is not from the ass of the pig, it is actually the shoulder at the front of the oinker, sometimes also known as Boston Butt, most commonly seen in that delectable dish known as pulled pork.  That is exactly what we decided to change our meal to, usually butt comes in gigantic portions (it is a cheap cut of meat so quantity is king), and unfortunately for a few people that is overkill so the logic the steak cuts would create a smaller serving.

The key to good pulled pork, as with all barbecue, is low and slow, low temperature cooking over a much longer period of time (talking hours not minutes).  For those of you who like to interchange the phrases, grilling is high heat over a short period of time; consider it the next time you fire up the grill.

We used the Crockpot for this, letting the meat sit in a broth of beer, vinegar, ketchup, and a mixture of spices.  I am a firm believer in beer being an excellent cooking agent anytime you have the meat soaking in something or even when using a drip pan. 

As you can see after a few hours you have some tender succulent pork ready for pulling.

My personal favorite sign is when the blade bone slides right out without any effort.

My preferred method of pulling is using two forks to sort of scrape the meat so that it comes part in strands.  The one benefit in the steaks is that the meat is in shorter pieces instead of being 3 or 4 inch long pieces.

Now it comes time for the construction of the proper pulled pork sandwich.  Having not spent an abundance of time in the southeastern United States (epicenter of the bbq pork world) I have not had a whole lot of experience in this first hand, but fortunately I am a loyal adherent to Man Vs Food and Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.  Ergo, I have learned that the proper way to create a pulled pork sandwich is to top it off with a heaping helping of coleslaw.  I was too lazy to make my own coleslaw, so I picked up a container at Hickory Hollow on Heights here in Houston and it was perfect.

All in all I would say this was a successful cooking experiment, and even made some awesome leftovers for the next few days.  So yes if a Texan can accept a pulled pork and coleslaw sandwich, then perhaps there is hope for world peace.  Do not worry beef, I still love you more.

The rooster made me do it...

This adventure led me to a BRC Gastropub here in Houston located on Shepherd Drive.  A gastropub is a restaurant that serves higher end beer and food and BRC definitely lives up to that definition.  You may be asking what exactly BRC means take a look at their giant statue outside of the restaurant and soak it up.

Now that we have got that out of our system I will issue a disclaimer that I did not exactly go full force into the menu here, just a light sampling of the beer and an appetizer, but after getting my toes wet here it is just a matter of time before I am back to dive in.  Check out the menu for yourself and it is not too hard to see why I will be back.

For the beer tonight I drank up one of my all time favorite beers, Moose Drool. This rich beer is brewed by Big Sky Brewery out of Missoula, Montana.   It is full of flavor, a malty beer, loaded with chocolate and caramel giving it a smooth drink that goes down way too easily at times.

My second beer of the night was another sampling from No Label in Katy, Texas.  This time it was El Hefe Hefeweizen, a sweet beer perfect for the warm summer nights here in Houston.  While I am not a big fan of hefeweizen myself, this one was good and easy to drink.  No Label has quickly become one of my favorite breweries that I keep an eye out for whenever I am at a bar with a wide selection of taps to choose from.

Then came the appetizer, with a wide list to choose from we tossed it back and forth for some time before the waitress informed us of one of the house specials, mac and cheese.   You will find this item under the sides portion of the menu, but as you can see there is no description of the flavor. This is because they rotate it day to day, featuring a new flavor on different days of the week.  This night’s special was buffalo chicken and bleu cheese, a combo too good to say no to.  The chicken was their “Dixie fried chicken” and it was quite frankly amazing and the bleu cheese was perfectly balanced, not too over powering, but all in all a delicious dish.

Basically, it is only a matter of time before I return here for dinner (Monday nights are $7 burger and fry nights) or brunch (their chicken fried steak sounds killer) so stay tuned for a future write up.

If it looks like a taco, and smells like a fish...

I am sure that I have said this before, but one of my favorite things about living in Texas is the abundance of Mexican food.  There is just something magical about chips and salsa and the wide variety of dishes that there are to choose from.

That being said, one of the best aspects of Mexican food is of course the cerveza.  Mexican beer may not be the best quality, but that is why we have limes, and boy do they go down easily.  In my blog post about brunch I gave you a hint about one of my favorite drinks, the Michelada.  This delicious beer drink is mixed up with tomato juice, Worcestershire, hot sauce, and spices…  Basically a bloody mary mixed up with beer, lime, and a salted rim.  This beautiful concoction works for every meal of the day from early in the morning to late at night, you can find one these in my hand if I wander into a Mexican joint or am sitting on a beach in Cozumel.

For dinner one night I wandered down to the local Taqueria Arandas, one of many of a chain that is found throughout Houston, Dallas, and a few places in between.  These restaurants are open early and close late, a good option for a cheap breakfast or a hearty dinner.

Like many other places around the Houston area, Taqueria Arandas rocks the double salsa, a robust red and smoother green.  Now in the past I have found these salsas to be irresistible (ok so maybe I have a slight salsa addiction issue) but this night they were a little out of control.  Don’t get me wrong this is a good sign, when a restaurant makes their salsa from scratch you tend to have a few variables once in a while so I would rather suffer a little (and have to drink more beer) in order to get some good fresh salsa.

Now traditionally my dinner at this place has been the Arandas Special (theory:  if a place is willing to stick their name on it they better do it right), a plate full of fajita meat, veggies including tomatoes, avocadoes, beans, and a pleasant surprise side of cactus. That’s right folks those prickly little plants you find in the desert make a tasty side dish, nopal as it is referred to in Spanish is a dish similar in texture and flavor to a green bean with a slight twist.

That was my plan as I walked into the restaurant, but that was stopped cold in its tracks by a sign hanging on the door for a new special reading, Chipotle Fish Tacos.  I LOVE FISH TACOS! They are quite possibly one of the greatest dishes ever invented, chunks of flaky fish grilled up with flavor filled up into a corn tortilla, topped with some garnishment, and a side of limes.

Chipotle is one of my favorite seasonings in food these days, a chipotle is a smoked jalapeno that goes from a ripe red (yes jalapenos are red when ripened not green) to a nice brown dried pepper full of all sorts of flavor.  It covered up whatever low quality fish may have been used in these tacos (let’s be honest we don’t want quality fish going in cheap street style tacos), and went perfectly with the onions and cilantro that were packed in these tortillas.  Squeeze a little lime on them and you can do no wrong.

Fish tacos and beer, as our friends to the south say “muy bueno”.  Oh yes, and to complete the opening phrase, first I must admit that I did not come up with this on my own but instead stole it from Fuzzy's Taco Shop in Dallas, so in conclusion:

... it's got to be a tasty dish.

Manhappiness Pt 2

So you might have thought I was joking when I said that we went to So Long Saloon twice while in Manhattan...

Then you my friend would be mistaken.

Now since I already ranted and raved about just how good this place is I will take it easy tonight and just let you admire some more pics with brief descriptions.

The favorite beer of the night was none other than the Manhattan local Tallgrass, nothing like a little local ale to start a meal off right.

Then of course we have the familiar friend show up at the table...

 

With some salty buddies...

And just like that...

So long... so sad

But wait, from the kitchen comes a new friend, one to help fill the void left by our creamy raspberry beantastic friend.

The Bleu Cheese Burger, a pile of awesome loaded with delicious beef, ooey gooey flavorful bleu cheese, and some bacon tossed in there for good measure.  And yet again, you cant ignore the side kick.

Basically I love this place, and you should too.