Destination Dining: Savor at Klyde Warren Park

We celebrated a birthday last night with dinner at the snazzy new restaurant Savor in Klyde Warren Park--you know, the reclaimed air space perched on a slab over the sunken Woodall Rogers Freeway that's been planted with grass and flowers and food trucks and bocce balls.  I think it was brilliant to connect uptown and downtown by bridging the carbon monoxide canyon below and creating an inviting play space for downtown denizens forty feet in the air.  During the sweltering, super hot months in North Texas (basically February through November) kids splash and laugh in the sprayground and sweaty attorneys from Jones Day munch on Easy Sliders in suits and ties while wild-eyed, craft-crazed women from Lakewood adorn all the trees with yarn bombs. KWP is a place for all people and attracts a wide variety of visitors, from misty morning tai chi classmates to retired policemen looking for an afternoon pickup game of checkers.  The park's programming is designed to appeal to a little something in everyone, resulting in a monster mash-up of activities and a crazy kaleidoscope of non-related special events. (BTW the outdoor park is also non-smoking and offers valet parking for $15.  Now that's Dallas in a nutshell.)

Waiting for Mr. Big

The restaurant is following the park's lead, resulting in a pleasant destination for dinner despite the fact that it has a multiple personality disorder so severe they should have named it Sybil instead of Savor. First of all, it calls itself a Gastropub, which makes one imagine a rustic tavern or a hipster dive with hand-crafted, high quality food.  Folks, this place is all Dallas dazzle and flattering lighting and sumptuous furnishings.  It is so freaking gorgeous it burns your retinas, like Sofia Vergara in a smoking hot red dress. A more appropriate handle might be Gastropalace but I don't think that's in the foodie lexicon.  All the exterior walls are glass so when seated in the dining room surrounded by the lighted trees in the park you feel like you're on location for the next Sex and the City movie shoot. There is a very sophisticated, Manhattan vibe to the place that makes you want to wear a Tom Ford tuxedo and swizzle champagne until the wee hours of the morning, trading bon mots with your friends while impressing diners at nearby tables with your unstoppable, chic urbanity.

The chef is reportedly a veteran of Ritz Carlton Hotels, and the food really is quite tasty.  But here's the heart of the personality disorder I mentioned before:  A city park with a glamorous restaurant and a talented chef who serves delicious food that is as homely as the loneliest wallflower at a singles dance.  The ingredients are just sort of thrown on the plate and shoved around with no regard to color or contrast. In a city as preoccupied with appearances as Dallas, this is unexpected, to say the least.

This is a flatiron steak with creamed spinach fritters, wild mushrooms and pearl onion.  That's exactly how it came out of the kitchen. Four shades of brown off center on an oblique, white plate.  The fritters were hot and messy, the steak very flavorful if a little chewy, which is to be expected with a flatiron, not my favorite cut of meat.  But oh, it looked so sad and self-conscious in that beautiful room filled with beautiful people, as if it were wearing a home-made sackcloth dress on prom night.

The Wedge Salad sounded unusual because it came with bacon and fried pickled onions instead of the expected diced tomato.  As you can see, this did not produce an inspired presentation either.  A baby iceberg lettuce head was chopped in half, thrown on a plate and then doused with pickled onions and blue cheese.  It would have looked fine in a roadside diner but in this sparkling space it was as drab as Miss Jane Hathaway at a funeral.

The four of us really enjoyed our meal. I had a short rib that was so tender it fell off the bone when I merely glanced at it.  Another plate was barbecued shrimp and grits, and the orderer of that dish is now a certified member of the clean plate club. We all shared some shrimp and calamari that were crispy with a slightly sweet chili glaze as well as some luscious lobster puffs with remoulade. I had a mild amount of sticker shock when the bill came because the menu is artfully constructed to appear moderately priced but it really is not.  I think people who can design that good of a pricing fake-out are geniuses.

Maybe the chef should ask whoever did that to help with the design of the plates...

The #1 Restaurant in Dallas?

A week or so ago, our dear friend J's brother B was in town.  We'd heard about each other for years but never met due to time and travel constraints.  On a recent cross country road trip he stayed with his elder sister in her exquisitely appointed, suburban manse and requested a night out with us. Not sure why, perhaps he'd heard we were charming and witty or possessed  unusual lingual skills like ventriloquism or the ability to talk like a pirate in fluent French. I don't really know but when we are summoned to dinner by Lady J, we do as we are told.

It was a Monday night, so our Go To option for out-of-towner, first time dinner meet-ups, DISH, was a non-starter since they are closed on Mondays. I'd remembered reading, somewhat surprised, that D Magazine had rated NHS Bar & Grill (aka Neighborhood Services) #1 out 100 restaurants in Dallas. Really?  Better than FT-33?  Better than Lucia?  Or even though it's not my personal favorite, the ultra-glam Fearing's?

We'd been to its short-lived sibling, Neighborhood Services Tavern on Henderson during the few months it was open and thought it was okay but we never went back so I guess we kind of voted with our feet. We'd not been to NHS and guessed it must be 1000% better to have ranked so highly in our city's most successful lifestyle magazine, if success is measured by the volume of ads for plastic surgeons, designer footwear and suited-up realtors standing in front of tract mansions.  I congratulated myself on thinking this the perfect opportunity to show brother B a good time at the best place in town.

Most of the food critics in town have this thing for the owner and chef of NHS, Nick Badovinus.  No clue why except that he looks like a blond rock star, has a funny sense of humor, opens wildly successful restaurants and his teeth sparkle like he's starring in a Dentyne commercial. I've never met Chef Nick but I'd like to because I think I'd like him based on articles and interviews I've read. Therefore, I hope he doesn't read this because I am about to go all Emperor's New Clothes on him. NHS is certainly not the #1 restaurant in Dallas.  It's not even #10.  If I had to hazard a guess I'd put it somewhere in the mid-30's with a slightly receding hairline and the beginnings of a paunch.

Don't get me wrong, it is not bad.  Service is brisk and efficient, not overly warm, but pleasant enough. The interior is small and cozy. The menu is written in a humorous, self-mocking way that I really liked. The food was good, although I had to go to the website and pull up the menu to try to remember what we ate and I still can't.  Sorry, Charlie, but I can still remember every layered flavor of the garlicky hummus and house-made ricotta at Cafe 43 several months ago, and the exquisite juniper roasted lamb loin I had at the French Room in 2006 but I can't even  recall what I ordered at NHS one week later.

Every critic, reviewer, blogger and self-described foodie is entitled to their opinion, and on a rainy Monday night, NHS was jam-packed.  It looked like a super busy Saturday night in most Dallas restaurants. So maybe the four of us were entirely clued-out, but we just didn't get how this little workaday, neighborhood friendly, pretty good restaurant could outrank all the other hot spots in town.  It doesn't push the culinary envelope like the food forward revolution going down in the Design District nor is it all dolled up in marble and crystal and other shiny objects we attractive urban swells of Dallas appreciate so much.  It's in a strip mall in an upscale neighborhood.  It's not super expensive.  And it's owned by a charismatic chef who apparently knows how to shop for new clothes befitting an emperor.

Clogged Arteries

Howdy Folks.  Er, Good-bye Folks.

Everyone knows that Texans brag a lot.  Those who don't live in Texas find it truly annoying. Those who live here understand why we do so, and quite smugly, I might add. Everything really is bigger and better here, except for a certain junior senator who shall remain nameless because he is the worst kind of self-promoting, ridiculously conservative tea party marionette unworthy of being identified in this blog, or any other respectable media outlet for that matter.

Our State Fair is a Great State Fair--naturally the biggest and grandest in the land.  Our fair lasts for nearly a month, and is celebrated in the largest collection of vintage Art Deco buildings in America.  They were built for the 1936 Texas Centennial and boast stylish murals and sumptuous sculptures ensconced in a pretty, beautifully landscaped parkland with fountains and flowers and flourishes unseen anywhere else in the world.

Happy Happy Corny Dog

In the last decade or so, the State Fair of Texas has evolved into the world's largest venue for impossibly crazy fried food inventions. Always known for Fletcher's Corny Dogs and Tornado Taters, the Fair has amped up its publicity for all new deep fried food alternatives.  Past winners include Deep Fried Grilled Cheese Sandwiches (served with a little ramekin of Tomato Soup for dipping) and a Battered and Deep Fried Snickers Bar, and they have stood the test of time and are now staples of provisions one can look forward to consuming each year.  Previous headliners that never returned due to unpopular demand include Deep Fried Butter and Deep Fried Beer.  (Were they even trying or was it all about a gimmick for shameless media ink?)  I kinda thought the trend might have run its course when the emblematic Big Tex was himself deep fried and self-immolated. But the new and improved Big Tex returned this year along with several new deep fried innovations. We tried them all last Sunday and ever since I've been hooked up to an IV in the emergency room with a 10% chance of survival.

Deep (Fried) in the Heart of Texas

Best of the bunch was the Deep Fried King Ranch Casserole, sort of a Tex-Mex lasagna with chicken and tortillas instead of ground beef and pasta.  It came with tortilla chips, salsified sour cream and a tiny Texas flag on a toothpick.  Totally Texas Tasty!

Thankfully, I Did Not Finish It

Fried Thanksgiving Dinner was not a favorite.  I tend to eat one food at a time during our national feasting day, so having turkey, stuffing, and creamed corn rolled up in a ball of seasoned corn meal, then deep fried and served with brown gravy and cranberry sauce was rather daunting.  I know the pigeons really enjoyed the chunks I accidentally threw on the ground.

The Deep Fried Cuban Roll had me doing spot-on Ricky Ricardo impressions until several unnecessarily PC passersby asked me to stop.  Maybe they would have been more impressed if I had some of those poofy sleeves and a set of imported bongos.  Slow-cooked pork shoulder, chopped ham, Swiss cheese, pickles and some kind of spicy spread was rolled into pastry dough and deep fried, then doused with mojo sauce. Ay-yi-yi-yi!

I think what finally did me in was the Texas Fried Fireball. Pimento cheese, pickles, cayenne pepper and bacon dipped in buttermilk and rolled in jalapeno batter, then deep fried and served with chipotle ranch dressing is not a recipe for gastric wellness. It wasn't long after that little experiment that I was seen trotting out to my car, Emergency Room bound, where I lay to this day. I am hoping they get my cholesterol down under 1,000 before the fair is over. I'm fixated on trying the Southern Style Chicken Fried Meatloaf. I mean how bad for you could that really be?

Destination Dining: Farm Stand

I was in Los Angeles this week on business and had the happy chance to reunite with some former colleagues from a couple of lifetimes ago.  You know those kinds of friendships, where even though you haven't seen or talked to each other in 14 years, you pick up in the middle of the sentence you last left off with like there was no time lapse in between.  We caught up, we reminisced, we laughed until tears came to our eyes, and we marveled at the passage of time and how little it had affected our outward appearances.  (You can probably guess that last part was after we had donned some wine goggles.)

After first gathering at my hotel we ventured over to a restaurant in El Segundo. El Segundo is a little

It Doesn't Smell That Bad

prosaic community just south of LAX which, though right on the water, is still affordable due to its airport sound pollution and ever present aromas from the water treatment plant and factories that the city's founding fathers had brilliantly built smack dab in the middle of the beach.  It is fondly referred to as Smell Segundo, and if you do venture to the beach it is advisable to wear close-toed shoes and a hazmat suit. But other than that it is lovely. There is a Back to the Future 1950's Main Street complete with barber poles, a Fix It Plus and a Repair Square strip mall, and several yarn shops.  It also has a few quaint little eateries, diners, and donut palaces along with a handful of really great restaurants.  One of these is the Farm Stand and that is where we went.

Farm Stand is like so totally LA.  Start with your basic Farm to Table concept, add vegan, organic, local, seasonal, non GMO ingredients, toss in a reduced carbon footprint, then stir.  Sprinkle with salty ocean air, spritz with a little smog and serve.  Our server looked just like American Idol runner up David Archuleta wearing white disc earrings the size of Kennedy half dollars.  His name was Edgar and he was good at pretending not to be annoyed every time he approached our table to take our order and we had still not looked at the menu due to everyone talking all at once punctuated with shrill laughter.  Several hours elapsed until we finally ordered a bunch of plates to share, and I must say his enthusiasm to be still serving us seemed genuine.  No doubt he is actually an actor. All waiters in LA are, you know.  Big secret revealed!

Farm Stand's menu is dotted with handy symbols so you can tell at a glance if the dish is consistent with your Southern California sophisticated palate and dietary needs.  A green V means it is vegetarian, while NO means non-dairy.  A black squiggle denotes vegan optional and a wheat stalk crossed out diagonally in red means gluten free.  A star indicates that Sandra Bullock ate it one time and ##@$! means a drunken Mel Gibson went into an anti-Semitic rage and yelled obscenities at passersby while eating it. So handy!  The restaurant is very committed to reducing its carbon footprint so its bussers and dishwashers double down as migrant workers. You can see them through the windows to the outside, their backs laden down under heaps of fresh produce harvested from nearby gardens in California's virtually endless summer sunshine.  Awesomeness.

Being the urban sophisticates we are, we ordered seven or eights plates to share and I grandly instructed Edgar to just sequence them as he saw fit.  He interpreted this to mean that he would wait until everything was ready, and brought every dish to the table all at once.  What with water and wine and plates and cutlery already in place, he had to use the adjacent table to put some of the food on.  The two diners seated there seemed a bit startled but not the least bit disturbed by it. SoCals are so chill.

The coarse hummus with pita was garlicky and delicious, as was the diced cucumber, minted yogurt dip topped with walnuts.  Pumpkin ravioli with basil cream was a standout, as were the all natural meatballs in ancho chili cream sauce.  (I wondered what an unnatural meatball would taste like but my inner moderator thankfully squashed it before it spilled out of my mouth, which anyway was full of Superfood Soup--a healthy yet slightly underwhelming concoction of herbs, barley, organic chick peas, organic lentils, organic pintos, caramelized onions, garlic, turmeric, yogurt, and sauteed mint.) After a couple of spoonfuls I was so jacked up on vitamins and greenery I did a little Muscle Beach flexing, showing off my taut, well defined and undefiled body until Edgar's boss came over and kindly asked me to stop it.  I meekly obliged, but not before twerking just a little bit because I am such a fan of Miley.  (He lies!)  At least I didn't set myself on fire, Jimmy Kimmel prank video style.

The meal was really delicious, but not so more than the company.  My old friends are definitely non GMO, totally organic, and their carbon footprints smell like chocolate.  Smiles!

O Canada

We just got back from a week in Montreal, a city unlike any other in North America in that everyone speaks French and a lot of men wear mismatched plaid shirts and shorts, usually with socks and sandals. The women are beautiful and chic but smoke several packs of cigarettes a day, resulting in throaty, really sexy speaking voices.  Of course you could say "I am looking for a houseplant" in French and it would sound lustily seductive.  I was hopeful that the haut cuisine of La Belle France would translate across the Atlantic, but sadly, it does not, except for a preponderance of baguettes and orange marmalade.

To be fair, we didn't take any fancy clothes so our options were limited to sidewalk bistros and casual pubs.  It doesn't matter whether the food is Canadian or Afghan or Japanese, the menus all share one food item peculiar to Quebec (but quickly snaking its way west through the other provinces.) This item is called Poutines, and where it is listed prominently on virtually every menu in town, it is usually followed by two or three exclamation points, as if to say "you've been searching the world over for something fresh and exciting and now you have found the most incredible delicacy, enjoy"!!!

Mmmmm, Cheese Curds

Poutines are disgusting.  They are overdone French Fries topped with oozing cheese curds and slopped with thick brown gravy. Denizens of Montreal are inexplicably mad for them; they are sort of the Sprinkles Cupcakes of Canada. They eat them all day long.  They eat them at breakfast with cafe au lait, at lunch with a spork and a beer, and at dinner with exquisite sterling silver cutlery.  When I ordered my first (and only) poutines and the waiter set the plate in front of me, I trotted out my best high school French and said Excusez-moi, serveur, mais vous avez placé juste à tort le petit-déjeuner du chien en face de moi.  He was astonished that I had compared this mess to the dog's breakfast and insisted that I try it.  I made a big show a taking a huge bite, which seemed to satisfy him, so as he turned his back I delicately removed it from my mouth by hacking it onto the sidewalk.  I poured the rest of it in in a potted fern next to me, which promptly died.

In Old Town Montreal, with its ancient buildings, sorbet shoppes and a Cirque du Soleil tent, we had a wonderful Croques Monsieur (ham and cheese sandwich) with about twenty-five pounds of French Fries.  I made hexing signs at our waiter when he approached me with a bowl of glistening curds and a ceramic boatful of gravy, and he skittered away nervously.  The India Pale Ale I drank with it was delicious and cold.

We went to a place called Dunn's Famous (I was like famous what since it seemed like a dangling

Dunn's Famous....what?

modifier but I was shushed.)  It turns out they are famous for their smoked meat sandwiches.  I asked if smoked meat was like pastrami or brisket or corn beef or something and the waitress just tossed her curls at me and said I'd have to see for myself.  (She said it in French, so she might have actually said something entirely different regarding my diminished mental abilities, not sure.) I ordered the Smoked Meat Reuben and it was exactly like pastrami/brisket/corned beef.  I think Dunn's is famous just for being famous like that dreadful reality show family where everyone's name begins with a K.  You know who I mean.  Don't make me say it.

Piazzetta on Rue Ste Catherine

Piazzetta looked interesting, with its bright red sidewalk cafe and attractive servers.  They had some weird toppings on the menu I'd never seen in a pizza place before, like beef tongue and chicken feet and of course freaking cheese curds, but I went sort of All Italian American and ordered the single serving pepperoni, "fully dressed." (I guess modesty prevails in Montreal to some degree since naked pizza is frowned upon.)  It was a rectangle of crispy flatbread with a modicum of mozzarella, some tasty sliced tomatoes and 12 discs of bland, slightly pink meat that reminded me of Canadian bacon but with less spicy heat.

Honestly, the best meals were the daily breakfast at our guesthouse, called La Conciergerie.  Every morning we welcomed a generous repast of yogurts, fresh fruit, cereal, juices, and muffins, all ratcheted

Ooh la la, Le Petit Dejeuner Etait Magnifique

up by accompanying rarities never found in your more mundane "breakfast included" places. Two days we had boiled, spotted quail eggs, and another time yellow plums from Southern Ontario.  The owner dispatched a lackey every morning to the local patisserie, so we could also indulge in fresh, aromatic croissants, little breakfast tarts and brioche with butter and homemade jam.  I sort of never wanted to leave but I feared another pants fastener debacle and the owner was too nice a guy to be blinded by brass projectile jeans buttons.

All in all, it was a great trip if not exactly a gastronomically adventurous one.  I am glad to be back in Dallas and just starting to think about which inventive, chef-driven kitchen we might be gracing with our presence tonight.  I heard there's a new French place in the Park Cities that we might try.  If they feature poutines on the menu I'll probably make a scene.

Shrill, Party of 12

So, we thought we were going to stay in last night because this is Restaurant Week in Dallas.  You know, sort of the New Year's Eve Amateur Night of Dining that lasts forever in the doldrums of Summer when Olive Garden aficionados decide to trade up for 35 bucks and bring their bratty children to upscale restaurants so they can run wild while they nurse fruity sweet vodka cocktails.  Wow that sounded kinda haughty. Okay I own it, I'm that guy.

More out of habit than interest, I nevertheless speedfinger walked through Open Table and realized RW doesn't start until Monday night so I snagged an 8:15 reservation for two at Sissy's Southern Kitchen.  (I really hate that name.  Saying "meet me at Sissy's at 8:15" is a sure fire way to lose all street cred in the world in which I dwell.  Even thinking it to yourself is somehow diminishing.  I tried referring to it as SSK but D was like "huh?" so I had to say it out loud and I could see all respect for me beginning to dim in his eyes so I started acting all macho and karate chopped a phone book in half and we were good again.)

We arrived at the spectacularly busy front door (neighboring Hibiscus was Deadsville, btw) and told one of the three perky door women that we had a reservation.  She dimpled and asked us to "walk this way."  (I muttered "if I could walk that way I wouldn't need the talcum powder" under my breath but this elicited no laughs as I have used that line approximately 4,013 times.)  She then proceeded to seat us at a lovely table for two in the secondary dining room beside a party of 24.  Seriously?  They were on their third or twelfth round of drinks and the cacophony of great friends celebrating something really important was beyond deafening.  We lasted about 16 seconds and I went back to the hostess stand and asked why we were being punished.  She looked at me quizzically and I patiently explained that being seated adjacent to a private party wasn't very fun for those not invited to it.  She was nice about it and apologized and then led us to a secluded table between the back door and the bathroom.  Thank you.

Our server was sort of checked out, like she was thinking about a term paper that was due on Monday except this is Summer and she was older than most college students so I'm not sure.  Don't get me wrong, she was okay, just absolutely disinterested in the moment, or us, or both.  We ordered beverages because it seemed appropriate and we didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings.  I had a beet salad with pecans and goat cheese, which was good, and D dawdled with the Sloppy Slaw, which was a ramekin of blue cheese dressing with three leaves of torn cabbage swimming inside it.  Odd. Maybe it's a Southern thing.  Or a Sissy thing.  Snort.

Then an entire hour elapsed.  It wasn't unpleasant, given the choice view of pairs of girls repairing to the ladies room to plump up their hair and pull down their tight miniskirts and jocular shirt guys high fiving their way into the one-seater with frilly doilies and cans of air freshener festooning it.  I wanted to snatch a fried green tomato from the table next to me but the woman seated there had ESP or something and kept guarding it with her jungle red manicured talons and glaring at me beneath her finely arched brows.  Her date was kind of menacing and I came THIS CLOSE to explaining to him that I just wanted to taste a little of her tomato until I realized that might result in my being on the business end of his meaty, violence-prone fist.  The entire restaurant was full of large boisterous parties, all intent on breaking the sound barrier with shrill laughter and booming, hearty guffaws.  I longed for comparatively quieter atmosphere of the American Airlines Center when the Dallas Mavericks annihilated the Miami Heat in the 2011 NBA Finals, Game 6.

At last our food arrived.  I had their famous fried chicken, which was garbed in a thick brown burqa of unseasoned coating and pressure-cooked to within an inch of its life. I peeled off the crunchy, greasy outer layers and managed to eke out a few forkfuls of nicely seasoned poultry. The chicken came with 2 gallons of mashed potatoes and one of those stainless steel gravy boats like you see at Denny's.  I had a little and asked for the rest to be Fedexed to the starving children in Africa.  Our server noted the request with no outward sign or acknowledgement of my flat out hilarious repartee.  D had the chicken-fried flat iron steak, which for some reason he thought was chicken but I corrected him twice and he was annoyed but I ended up being right, as usual.  He ate half of it and had the rest wrapped up for our pups' lunch.  Too bad it is still in his trunk and it is 11:45 the next day and 114 degrees in the shade.

The place was absolutely jammed and got even more so as I payed our just north of $60 tab, which is very low on the Dallas continuum of restaurant going.  Perhaps there is a correlation between cheap prices and bustling crowds, I don't know.  But as I left the restaurant and awaited the valet parker, I wondered to myself in a wry, Carrie Bradshaw voice, if Sissy's Southern Kitchen wouldn't be more appropriately named Jim Bob's Grub.

No LA in NOLA

One Can Never Be Too Loose on Bourbon Street

I just returned to Dallas from a four day conference in New Orleans.  I personally love The Crescent City, the City That Care Forgot, for its Spanish/French/Whatev architecture,  upside down cemeteries, the Mighty Mississippi and its churning Delta Queens, the charming people with "dese and dose" accents and megawatt smiles, the smell of Bourbon Street on a hot July night, redolent of high-spirited frat boys who've knocked back a few two many hurricanes at Pat O'Brien's...well maybe that last one, not so much.  Ahh, but the world class Creole cuisine really makes my bons temps roulez.

The conference was for an association of venue managers and was positively jam-packed with intense educational classes, helpful workshops, inspiring keynote speeches, crazy trade show antics and extravagant theme parties (use your wry, ironic inside voice when reading that sentence.) Sadly, there was not a lot of free time in the agenda to explore all the new little chef-driven kitchens and hole-in-the-wall dives that make New Orleans so romantically gut-busting. Finally, on Sunday night, I discovered an evening free and quickly
speedfingerwalked through Open Table, only to find to my immense dismay that none of the places I was anxious to try--Root, August, or Maurepas Food, were available.  Heck, I couldn't even get into Stella, which I'd been to before.  My feet were killing me from walking about 400 miles that day so I lazily just went next door to where I was staying at the Hilton Riverside to a convenient little sanitized enclave of bistros and cafes and ended up dining at Ruth's Chris Steak House.

Red-faced, I feel shame for exposing myself like that in a food blog, and fear I might be shunned by the foodie universe in coming weeks.  (Of course there is nothing wrong with Ruth's Chris except the odd possessive in its name.  Many people mispronounce it and call it Ruth Chris's, but it's actually, puzzlingly Ruth's Chris.  I mean, what the heck is a Chris steak? Is there a breed of cattle called Chris?  Did perhaps a woman named Ruth buy a Steak House named Chris and didn't have the money to change the sign out front so just spray painted "Ruth's" across the top? These questions blur my mind but thankfully don't blunt my appetite. But I digress.) 

Perhaps He Fears Toe-Main Poisoning

The restaurant was jammed with fat white people who had apparently traveled to the Big Easy in July for the sheer pleasure of wearing high-waisted shorts and socks with sandals in the hot stickiness of high Summer. There was also a preponderance of canes; canes are not an unusual sight in the French Quarter, although they are usually sported jauntily by fancy dressed men in pimp hats and spats. These canes looked more like supplemental weight supports, like a third leg but denuded of socks and sandals. Even some of the children had them.

My server was precious. Actually, her name was Precious, or at least that's what her name tag said, and it was entirely appropriate. She talked me into a drink against my will, forcing me to add "easily influenced" to my resume just below "chain restaurant-goer." She told me she had just put a "loaf" in the oven for me and was going to fetch some whipped butter. I looked the other way as I spread it on a slice of crusty, fragrant bread not once, but twice. (I would have felt worse about it if the couple at the table next to me hadn't eaten two entire loaves each. The woman finished up the last one by dunking the end of it in her butter dish like a cop with a donut in a coffee shop.)

The fresh tomato and red onion salad with balsamic vinaigrette was quite the perfect excuse for eating my weight in blue cheese crumbles.  It was followed by a huge slab of prime New York Strip cooked perfectly medium.  It was on a sizzling hot plate spewing off sparks of smoking butter that made an artistic stain on my white shirt reminiscent of Van Gogh's work during his 1888 sojourn to Arles.  I had eaten about half of it when the snap at the waistband of my pants went berserk and flew right into Precious's eye, blinding her for life. She cursed loudly in some swampland patois and I was afraid she was going to summon a spell from Marie Leveaux or else open up a can of Cajun whupass on me.

It was definitely time to go.  I gathered my sagging pants in my left hand and tried to hide the impressionistic butter painting on my shirt with my right as I hastily scrawled my signature on the credit card slip.  I lost my balance on the way out and struck my head on a lamp post.  As I staggered away I could feel disapproving, squinty eyes on the back of my head from all the tourists still inside.

"Some people just don't know any better," they were thinking as they finished up their chocolate bread pudding with bourbon pecan sauce topped with non-dairy whipped cream.