Is That A Boat Along The Highway?

If you have ever driven around Houston I am sure that you have seen one of these odd sites around the city.  Yes, that is right, a giant boat just hanging out on the side of the road.

This is Captain Tom's, the boat along I-10 past Fry Road in Katy...  Famous for its oysters and micheladas, but sadly I only wander in here at lunch so I avoid both.  Note this is an extremely difficult feat to perform for someone that loves micheladas as much as I do...

The menu is simple to say the least, basically your options are raw, fried, and a few grilled things here and there.  Then again, we do not come here for the gourmet, we come for the delicious.

Their shrimp and crap gumbo is just that, a spicy bowl that I have been known to smother in hot sauce and suck down in about 2 minutes flat disregarding all health and safety and dealing with the burned tongue and mouth in the afternoon.  The flavors are rich and the soup is good and thick like any gumbo should be.  Note that I am not from Louisiana, nor am I in any way related to the Cajun culture, so I may be completely out of touch with what good gumbo is but for my Texas tongue this does just fine.

As I mentioned, your other option is basically fried foods.  This is the Texas Mini, a dish that family friends directed me two with a couple planks of fried catfish and some fried shrimp with a decent bed of fries.  The batter is a grainy cornmeal, so it is not the best batter I have had and as you can see some days it does not batter well, but the flavor is decent and the fish is pretty dang good.

This is my favorite aspect of Toms, for those of you confused, this is cocktail sauce.  I know you are thinking "Wait, doesn't cocktail sauce come out of a jar?" and you are wrong, oh so wrong.  Here there is a tub of horseradish for you to add into your ketchup to make it as crazy as you would like, and let's just say I like it crazy.

The Flavor of Texas

BBQ is quite possibly one of the greatest foods ever.  I mean there is something magical that happens when you cool a slab of meat low and slow with some smoke thrown in for good measure.

That is what drew me into 7 Rivers located at 1855 Barker Cyprus in Katy.  The name itself screams homage to the great state that I call home, Texas for those of you who forgot, referring to the seven major rivers that call this place home.

I opted for the three meat plate, what better way to truly test out a BBQ joint than to get a plate full of meat?  For my selections I ordered the turkey, hot sausage, and chopped beef.  My personal favorite of the trio was the turkey, a tender flavorful cut of breast with a nice peppery rub that will definitely have me coming back for more.  The other two were not bad, but not nearly as good as the turkey.  The sauce had some good flavor to it, a good level of spiciness to take it up to the next level, but the best aspect of it is that it is warm, nothing like warm BBQ sauce to dip your meat in.

The sides were pretty decent themselves.  Coleslaw is my latest BBQ addiction, somehow I grew up hating this stuff, but in the past year my tastebuds have fallen in love with slaw and I now find myself in a perpetual quest for a good slaw.  This slaw was not the best I have had lately, but it had decent flavor, and I did like the fact that it is chopped up in smaller bits, so all in all it was a good call.

The fries were a favorite of mine, nice and thick, with a good crisp to them.  Plus you get a larger quantity than any one needs with a three meat plate.

In the end, 7 Rivers was a good choice, it is a rather unassuming place since it is located in a strip mall in Katy, but the flavors are good, and supposedly there is some great beer specials here.  Sadly, I have only been here at lunch during work so my indulgences in cheap beer have been lacking.

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.

Heading south of the border... way way way south

So for those of you who do not know, part of my job is dealing with my company’s operations in Argentina and Venezuela.  My increased interaction with these countries has led me to an interest in the cultures of these places, and naturally their cuisine.  It was out of that curiosity that I stumbled upon my next foodventure, Budare, Arepa Express.  Budare is a small café in Katy, located on Grand Parkway just south of I-10 in a rather unassuming strip center.

This place was a complete shot in the dark, I had never heard about an arepa, let alone tasted a lick of Venezuelan food.  To put it in its simplest terms, Budare is an altered Quizno’s with little changed in it, and let’s be honest here I don’t think they need to change a thing.  The simple setting works well for their food and the owners truly care about their food making it all that much better.  The menu is rather lengthy, full of options no matter what your preference in flavor is.

The food here is relatively cheap, the price of an arepa here includes a drink and a bag of chips, yes I know Lays aren’t what you think of when authentic Venezuelan cuisine, but it worked for a lunch.  Being the ignorant creature that I am I had to ask the owners what they would recommend for my first experience with an arepa.  Without hesitation I was told that I would want the number 11, and as I learned at the Korean restaurant, you don’t question people on their recommendations. 

For my sides I chose Lays Classic (can’t really go wrong with the original), and a Texas classic as my beverage, Big Red, nothing like a little red cream soda to round out a meal.

The number 11, or the Pabellón (upon further research the term is for the “quintessential” Venezuelan dish), is arepa bread filled with shredded beef, black beans, cheese, and fried plantains.  The arepa is kind of like a layered meal, first you get the salty cheese, followed by sweet plantains, then the rich black beans, and finally the shredded beef.  They had me at fried plantains honestly; these starchy little pieces of joy are one of my favorite foods in the world.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with them, they are similar to a banana, but are firmer and not quite as sweet, they make appearances in numerous Caribbean and South American cuisines and probably a few others I am yet to stumble across. 

Then came the layer of black beans, sometimes these can be bland filler, but the Budare beans were rich and delicious.

 The beef was tender and full of flavor, shredded into strands of awesome.  Basically, this thing was amazing but I can say it will not be what I order the next time I step foot in that restaurant.

Not because I didn’t enjoy it mind you, but because I saw the light.  After I had ordered I saw the sign that changed my point of view on Venezuelan foods, a sandwich in which bread was replaced by plantains.  Need I say more?

A second tour through Vietnam

I should be a politician with my awesome skills of keeping promises, maybe the mayor of food.  So back in one of my first posts I wrote about the bomb diggity sandwich found at Vietnamese joints, and now I am returning to titillate your senses with my other favorite meal bún.

I tried to make an honest effort of going to a different restaurant than the one that I visited in that previous post, if nothing else to get away from the stellar background music, but it was not in the cards.  I left work and headed north up Fry Road to visit Phở 88 located just north of Morton Road, but evidently they are closed on Mondays so I was dejected and forced to scramble.  Alas, I ended up back at Phở Mai on Westgreen at I-10. 

I did however spice it up this time and roll with a completely new dish that had nothing in common with the sandwich minus a healthy portion of pork.

First, a little background information on bún thịt nướng giò, from hence forth it shall be known as #65 since that is what it is on the menu and I am a lazy writer so deal with it.  The name is basically a description of what is in the dish, bún being the term for the vermicelli rice noodles, thịt referring to the pork, nướng means it comes with fish sauce, and giò means it has an egg roll.  Now that does not include all of the other fresh veggies piled in the bowl but you will just have to wait until later to see those.

As I mentioned before fish sauce is one of the greatest condiments ever invented, this fermented sauce derived from fish kicks everything up a notch or two.  It is basically a salty sauce similar to Worcestershire sauce that isn’t quite so pungent.

The other rock star condiment that I had to use on this dish (as well as most other dishes when it is an option) was the famous Sriracha or as I commonly hear it referred to, “the rooster sauce”.  This chili hot sauce is awesome, and it belongs on most Asian dishes, if not many other cuisines that can use a kick in the pants.

The bowl that shows up is quite frankly gigantic, and as you can see filled to the brim.  The flavor components on the surface are obvious, chopped pork, egg roll, along with piles of green onions, peanuts, carrots, and a sprig of cilantro.  Basically, this bowl is a colorful party begging you to shovel it into your mouth.  The Vietnamese egg roll is a different creature than the Chinese egg rolls that many of you are used to, it has a meat mix with some pork and prawns, along with your usual leafy veggie filling, but the twist in it is mushrooms, giving it a much darker filling than you usually find in other cuisines.  For those of you who hate mushrooms do not wince and vomit on me, it is not an overpowering flavor and just blends nicely with the rest of the mix.

Upon receiving the bowl one of my first tasks is to get my mix on, doing this brings up the veggies hiding on the bottom of the bowl, and mixes the rest in the fish sauce that has settled in on the bottom.  Doing this mix causes the lettuce and sprouts at the bottom to get more evenly spread out throughout the dish.

This dish is a large serving, but you don’t lose a single piece of flavor to size, and at under $7 it is a good price for a full on flavor bên (according to Google translate that means party but I am too lazy to research more beyond that).

Enjoy.

Parlez-vous français?

Just a quick update…

As you can see the demon squirrel has returned and was caught red handed in the act of molesting my poor innocent plants.  If only I still had my BB gun the next blog posting might have been how to make squirrel stew.  None the less I don’t have it anymore so I am going to dangle some delicious French food in front of you tonight.

As I have mentioned other places in this blog, I welcome feedback from all of my readers if you have suggestions or complaints, and I finally received one.  One of my loyal readers complained that I was not eating enough “healthy” food and seemed to be focusing far too much on greasy unhealthy options.  Naturally I argued that it was the point of the blog, hence the term Glutton, but because in the end I am a people pleaser I decided to get something a little less greasy than the usual Glutton for Punishment blog posting.

I wandered into Café Bretagne located on Park Row in Katy, and decided to dive in full force into French cuisine.  The décor was simple to say the least; basically everything seemed to be painted black with the exception of a few red accents and a few model sailboats around the café.  Basically odd décor but I didn’t let that distract me from the simple but delicious menu.

The first arrival at my table was a basket of delicious French bread, a nice tough crust with fluffy white interior that tasted like I could have eaten an entire loaf of it if someone was going to twist my arm. 

After satisfying my immediate hunger with a piece or two of the bread my main course arrived, a delicious salad known as Salade Ouessant.  Little background information on the name, Ouessant is an island in the French region of Brittany, or as they say in French, Bretagne, coincidence?  I think not.  It came at recommendation from the waitress so I figured why not live it up a little since the lunch menu here is so reasonably priced (items start around $3.50 and my lunch being the most expensive item was $8).

The salad was coated in a light layer of dressing that had a rich flavor, with a big pile of smoked salmon in the center, 4 shrimp, tomatoes, onions, corn, and lemon wedges.  The salmon was scrumptious; there are few flavors I enjoy as much as a good smoked salmon. 

The shrimp was overcooked, so it was way too tough and the salad probably would’ve been much better if it did not even make an appearance.  The veggies were all good and flavorful, but the lemons were my favorite twist, the tart sweetness went excellently with the other flavors going on in the salad.

Then trouble showed up, as I prepared to take my check from the waitress she asked the most loaded question ever…  Would you like a crepe?  Now I am not usually a dessert person, but the moment she started to describe the Classic French Crepe to me I melted like the butter and sugar that she described in this crepe.  Just soak up these pictures and take my word that the crepe was amazing…

Such a nice fine layer of sugar on a light airy crepe, divine way to end the meal.

So Café Bretagne is a simple café that does food right from what I can tell in the few dishes I sampled, and I will definitely be back to broaden my experience in the cuisine française.

What friends are for...

So as I mentioned previously in this blog, I love to step outside my comfort zone and try something new.  I did this the other day with my coworker Jenn and a small Filipino restaurant called Pinoy Kusina (Pinoy is a term referring to Filipino people, much like saying Dutch for people from the Netherlands) located on Mason Road in Katy.

We randomly stumbled on this place via the magic that is Google, and Jenn scouted it out one evening with her family using their expertise in Filipino cuisine to make sure that it was up to code and would be worthy of a first time experience for ignorant me.  Her exact words to me that night were “The chicken adobo and pansit were just like home made… Perfect J”.  Of course this meant nothing to me since I had never heard those foods but I took her word for it and the approval of her Filipino husband Jeff.

So one Friday we decided to venture there for lunch, from what I could tell based on the website they offer only a few items each day (I am a firm believer of the do a few things right instead of trying to do it all) and they rotate those items based on the day of the week.  Even better for the guy who was looking to truly get a new experience was the fact that  at lunch they served the food up buffet style so you can try even more foods in one meal instead of just ordering one dish.  This definitely excited the fat kid in me and so how could I possibly say no to this offer?

We pulled up to the small café in a strip center, about as unassuming as you could imagine, it was the kind of place where if you were not looking for it you would most likely pass right on by.  They also have a grocery store on the opposite side of the shopping center that way you brave souls out there could cook with authentic ingredients at home. 

My first sampling from the buffet was a salad, with the main ingredient being mangoes, but there were also onions, tomatoes, and some form of fish.  It was pungent, but the mangoes took the edge off.  I cannot say it was my favorite dish, but it definitely was an exotic flavor to kick the meal off right.

 My first real lesson for the art of eating Filipino food was that rice goes with everything, the proprietor set me straight on this topic as I was eying what to pile on my plate first.  The rice was my favorite style, white steamed rice with a good level of stickiness so it clumped together and easily went along with any dish I paired it up with.  As you can see in the picture I went with three different items, pork adobo, a vegetable stir fry, and chicken in a yellow curry.  All of these dishes had an awesome sauce on them, but by far my favorite was the pork adobo, slow cooked pork that was sliced right through by the fork and had a killer flavor.  The curry was good but the chicken was a little tough for my liking, and the veggies were a great side.

Then came the second trip to the buffet, and of course the adobo had to make a second appearance. I also loaded up a dish that had sausage, chicken, mango, and some veggies but it was by far my least favorite dish of the day so it only got a sampling.  Then came the dish known as Sisig, which I assume was a pork dish in a sour sauce with some peppers in for good spice.

Needless to say I am now officially a fan of Filipino food thanks to my introduction by Jenn and Jeff.  If you happen to find a Filipino restaurant in your neck of the woods don’t be afraid to jump in and try something a little different in your diet.

Always listen to the old Korean lady holding the spatula...

So I will be the first to admit, I had a very diverse upbringing when it comes to different culture’s cuisines.  My dad especially was always encouraging us to try new things, whether it be sushi when I was 9 (and a mean wasabi trick that has been burned into my memory, but don’t worry I got over it and love it all the more today), Thai, Indian, and a score of others.  The logic behind all of this is you need to try something at least once, no matter how different or visually unappealing it may be; in the end you may be pleasantly surprised.

So coming to Houston, it could be said that my tongue was already well traveled, but some days you just have to take it a step further and branch out yet again.  That is how my food quest wound up at Kimchi’s Korean Café located on Barker Cypress just north of I-10.  I had never experienced Korean food before but fortunately I had read an article on Yahoo once about the dish known as bi bim bap, a rice bowl with veggies and meat topped with a fried egg. 

(Unfortunately there is no photo of that since I did that one long before I started this.)

It was delicious, the food comes out in a hot stone bowl that continues to cook the rice and meat as time passes, so by the end you get some nice crispy pieces that are kind of a fun change in texture and flavor.  The dish is also served with a bowl of miso soup (same thing as the Japanese version, basically a nice salty broth) and a small tray of kimchi (fermented cabbage which sounds gross but I was instantly addicted to it) which both complement the hot rice meal great.

I went back to Kimchi’s at a later date, and the cute old ladies who run the joint recognized me right off the bat.  As I debated the menu and decided to go back to the faithful bi bim bap I was quickly corrected by the cook.  “You no get bi bim bap today, you like spicy you get #7.  You like it very much”.   Who am I to argue with the 60+ year old Korean lady cooking my lunch?

That is how I discovered bokum bap (or the English version Kimchi Fried Rice).  It is a delicious stir fry with pork, kimchi, and other veggies all served up in the hot rock bowl and topped off with yet another fried egg, I do like the Korean’s style when it comes to cooking.

So after this little café rocked my taste bud’s world, I have become a regular to that place, and ever since that fateful day I have been following the instructions of that wise old woman, and ordering extra kimchi.  This has become one of those moments in life when you establish a relationship with a random person passing through your life, her father in Korea was ill (he is 92 so they were preparing for the worst) and she was gone for nearly a month and a half, while her children filled the void adequately with banter and good food, it just was not the same, so when I saw her again the last time I visited Kimchi's once again had that warm feeling to it and the world was just a little better place that day.

Where's The Muzak?

Today’s adventure took us to the ancient Southeast Asian land of Vietnam, a place with a rich history and even more delicious food.  My foodventure on the other hand took me all the way to Katy, Texas to Phở Mai on Wintergreen and I-10.  This place is good, but I don’t think they are expecting any awards for service in the near future.  At times they remind me of the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld, you sit down and immediately they ask if you are ready to order and if you are not, so help you God you better be snappy about your decision.

Now for many people the first thought that comes to mind when you start talking Vietnamese food is phở, the piping hot bowl of soup that seems to come in every variety under the sun, and always with a big plate of roughage.  However, in my mind there is a time and place for that 100,000 degree bowl of liquid and it certainly is not July in Houston. 

Nothing like a rotating condiment station to know you are in good hands.

My personal favorite in the Vietnamese noodle house is a scrumptious bowl of heaven known as bún, specifically one that I am not even going to bother trying to write out but it has char grilled pork and an eggroll on vermicelli noodles and veggies.  With of course the Vietnamese staple sauce known as fish sauce, we will not go into details of what it is or how it is made (saw it once on the Travel Channel), no need to cost you your appetite

. 

Alas, today was not the day for that either.  Today my friend was a day for the most glorious sandwich of them all…  A sandwich that makes Subway’s famed $5 foot long look like child’s play.  Yes my friend we are talking about the famed Bánh mì, a fantastic combo of baguette, grilled meat, some variation of veggies, and more cilantro sprigs than you can shake a stick at.  You may ask yourself “Why on earth would there be French baguette running around in the jungles of Vietnam?”, excellent question, for those of you unaware of the history the French once colonized this land and slapped the moniker of French Indochina.  As is often the case when French people show up they leave something behind (usually their guns if in the case of war), and this time it just so happened to include their delicious white bread.

I love this sandwich because of its simplicity, there is no heavy sauce covering up the flavor, just some cucumbers, carrots, nicely flavored grilled pork, and of course a butt load of cilantro which can easily be removed if that isn’t your groove.  The other amazing benefit is that this thing is $3.95, of course the price which leaves room in the budget for another great little item.

Gỏi cuốn, or the summer roll as I have seen it called other places, is always a good side choice.  A nice cool combo of shrimp, pork, and vermicelli all rolled up in some rice paper.  Basically this is an all around cool meal for a nice sweltering day here in Houston. 

Now about that interesting title, normally when I have eaten here in the past I have been serenaded through my noodles or sandwich to the smooth sounds of Kenny G or a nice instrumental version of some Celine Dion song.  It was always comforting to be reminded of being in an elevator, or maybe doctor’s waiting room surrounded by plague victims while I scarf down my meal.  Today Sarah McLachlan was singing to me while I ate, and all I could think of was those SPCA commercials where they show the abused animals.  Kind of a bad feeling when the running joke of Asian food is cat and images of the animal shelter rolling through my mind while I eat some meat, but have no fear, as usual none of it went to waste.