Wild Goose Chase

It all started around 11:30. I was supposed to be going with the Snowman to meet Falcon at da Wabbit, but the Snowman was nowhere to be found. I asked the Red Nosed Reindeer if she knew where he was. "He's around here somewhere."

But he was nowhere to be found. It's hot out; I figured he melted.

While waiting for a table with Falcon, my phone rang. Turns out the Snowman wasn't a puddle of water after all. "Sorry. Got stuck in a meeting with Burl Ives. Can I still meet you there?"

"Sure," I told him, and informed the restaurant we were three, not two.

Fifteen minutes later, after our waitress had brought our beverages, Falcon said, "Did the Snowman fall into the Harvey Canal?"

As it had been quite a while, I called the Snowman. Turns out, he was with Donner, Dasher and Blitzen at 9 Roses. Snowmen. As reliable as women.

Falcon and I both had the blurry photograph of the Hamburger Steak. Well seasoned and delicious, floating in enough gravy to satiate Santa Claus and Burl Ives.

Cleopatra

So it's been a while since I've posted, but a bout of Achilles Tendonitis has kept my happy ass parked on the East Bank, "working remotely" as they say in office jargon.

Today, I was joined by DEE and Mama's Boy at Cleopatra. Now you may notice my photograph is blurry and not-too-appetizing. I would like to apologize. It's because I was hungry and not particularly interested in composition. Or neatness. Or appetizingness.

This is all because Cleopatra is delicious, delightful and always spot on.

They bake their own bread. Before the meal, they bring out pickled vegetables and olives. My meal, with tip and drink came to $13. That's with the bread, soup, hummus and rice. Not to mention the perfect gyro meat. And that stuff you dip stuff in. No idea what it is. I only know I want to marry it.

Speaking of weddings, DEE announced he planned on proposing to his girlfriend when he takes her to Paris this weekend, so congrats to DEE Z. He showed Mama's Boy and I the rock he's going to give her.

"It's the size of Alaska!" I exclaimed, wondering how quickly I could kill him, steal the ring and get out of the country.

Mama's Boy simply vomited, right there in the middle of the restaurant. Then he looked up at DEE, shook his head and vomited some more.

At which point I looked up for the waiter. "Check please."

Soup is Good Food

Today, took a trip with Mama's Boy and DEE to Pho Tau Bay, a restaurant located in the most run down strip mall in the universe, on the West Bank Expressway between Stumpf and Lafayette.

In most respects, Pho Tau Bay is like many other Vietnamese restaurants, with the different soups, rice or vermicelli dishes and a few Vietnamese po boys. But what really sets PTB apart are its soups, or more specifically, the beef broth.

I find it hard to explain to people, but there's something sublime, complex and, yet, still completely simple about the broth there. Which is exactly the reason it is my favorite--- this simplicity allows you to enjoy pho for what it is without being distracted by other notes.

For comparison's sake, eating the pho at Tan Dinh, while not an unpleasant experience, throws too many flavor bells and whistles at your palate. It loses the basic beefy backbone that Pho Tau Bay delivers and keeps delivering until the bowl is dry.

Today was Mama's Boy's first pho eat (his throat was sore), and he loved it. Earlier, we also had some spring rolls dipped in fish sauce. MB was also a fish sauce virgin, whose cherry burst with the delight of a girl from Westwego on her 11th birthday.

DEE, just back from a trip to Destin, sand in his brain, had one of the vermicelli dishes with the egg rolls. Nearly emptied his plate, which is saying something as DEE usually eats like a rabbit.

So, if you're hungry for soup and it's not a Thursday or a Sunday (they are closed on those days... must be some kind of strange Antarctic Orthodox religious thing), go there. And eat soup.

Mama's Boy Guest Column: Sahara

The bathroom at Sahara has a rather unique mid-wall wallpaper banner that circles the entire restroom:

Don't most of them look a lot like Saddam Hussein?

If you notice as well, there are a few guys that are looking directly at you as if they are saying,"You had better wash your hands after you finish that business. Or we will get Saddam to shoot your ass with a gold plated AK47 that he has hidden under his waiter apron."

Sahara Cafe

First, let's start with the God-awful: Baba Ganoush (pictured below).

Due to the simple fact I was starving, I had to eat some of it, and even though I shared some of it with Mama's Boy, this was all that we could eat, and let me reiterate: we were STARVING. This Baba Ganoush was lumpy, bland and even had a sort of chemical taste to it. Very disappointing. Thankfully, things were going to get better for us at the table, albeit slowly, very slowly.

The Sahara Cafe has two employees, one in the kitchen and one to serve the customers; we customers would quickly number twenty, which meant that the pace of service would be charitably described as glacial. Tectonic is probably more appropriate.

I arrived about five minutes before Mama's Boy, Doppelganger, Falcon and THE MOLE, and was lucky to be the only person at the restaurant. Therefore, I was watered without having to wait the fifteen minutes my lunch companions endured without beverage.

Our lunch conversation wasn't better. Doppelganger was obsessed by an anus, particularly the anus owned by THE MOLE, and what we would rather do, hypothetically, as opposed to tossing THE MOLE's salad. Doppelganger had set the conversational bar rather low. And as children often do, we proceeded to remove the bar altogether. At least there weren't any _actual_ children in the restaurant. The trauma would have resulted in years of therapy.

The food: not bad, really. I had a gyro sandwich (tasty) and a small plate of falafel (tastly, but very salty, and coming from me, that's pretty serious as I'm a saltaholic). Around the table were a variety of sloppily assembled but well proportioned plates of meats with hummus and salad, which were mostly cleaned by the end of the meal. Falcon had some kind of meat pie thing that looked pretty cool.

At the end of the day, however, Sahara suffers from two fatal flaws. 1. The service is too slow. It should not take an hour and a half to eat what is, essentially, fast food. 2. It's biggest problem is that it's only a couple of miles from Cleopatra, which is, hands down, a far superior restaurant serving better food at lower prices.

Two more notes:

THE MOLE is a figment of our imagination. He's far too slovenly and uncool to occur in nature.

Also, following this post, Mama's Boy will again do a guest review, this time of the Sahara Men's Room.

That is all. Please return to your regular programming.

Went to Rotolo's; Don't Make that Mistake too.

Okay, so it wasn't _that_ bad. It wasn't worth the fifteen minute trip to Belle Chasse, either, that's for sure. I was accompanied by Falcon, Doppelganger (who scared the women at the table next to us by reading the menu in a very menacing voice, as if he were the announcer at a monster truck rally), Mama's Boy (no report from the loo), and last, and probably least, Scott Baio who was dressed like Scott Baio.

I ordered an appetizer of breadsticks and a calzone with this unfortunate name: "Sweep the Floors," a moniker so unappetizing, I had no choice. It had to be ordered.

And they came out at the same time, which rendered the breadsticks about as useful as a second appendix.

Doppelganger (who had graduated to a sort of Tourette's-like stream of curse words for the benefit of the six year old at the table behind him. "Mommy, what does 'Felching a chicken's anus mean?'") and Mama's Boy both had Blackened Chicken Alfredo sandwiches, which they both described as boring and bland.

Scott Baio loved his Chicken Caesar sandwich. I got a little creeped out when, in the middle of our meal, he named it Joanie and then had to get up and go to the bathroom for a little "Chachi-time."

Falcon was there the whole time, but somehow was also missing. I think it had a lot to do with the virus I gave his computer also acting on the human body.

Still, all in all, if you want to eat something that's an approximation of good, but only if you have to concentrate really, really hard on convincing yourself it's good, then Rotolo's is right up your alley!

A Message From Mama's Boy

Yesterday, after eating our lunch at Kim Son, Mama's Boy required a trip to the men's room, during which, he felt compelled to photograph and describe the urinals therein. Below is his take. The Mama's Boy Speaketh!

Even though I am a frequent restroom user during lunch hour, never have I seen such ingenuity applied to something that doesn't really need it. I guess this is the pre-precursor to the auto flush? Seems funny that the whole time you are relieving yourself the water will be flowing. I wonder how many people are actually confused when they step up to these or are actually scared by this technology and decide that the stalls are safer. Needless to say, the guy that designed this didn't like touching the flush handles. It actually made me come to the realization that urinal handles prolly got other guys junk juice on'em. Just sayin'.