Pico's

Uggh I am such a pig when it comes to Mexican restaurants I think I should change the name of my blog from Arbitrary Criticism to "Catherine Martin stuffs her face with chips and salsa across Houston." I'm a pig and I don't care. Pico's (5941 Bellaire) has been on my to-do list ever since my friend Melissa (not my roommate guys believe it or not I have more than one friend) recommended their margaritas to me, and last night I decided to finally check it out.

The thing is guys, I had a really bad time there. Here's the thing: as a college student, the two words that are the most important to me are "Happy Hour." Shortly followed by anything that even sounds like it will have tequila in it. +14 for tequila. So I read on their website that they have happy hour from three to six on weekdays, and to me, happy hour means half priced drinks. I have no idea what happy hour means in real life, this is just my understanding based on the happy hour menus I read on the internet and the Sex in the City movie, which I watched with my mom. I only turned 21 a couple months ago and to be honest I haven't yet settled in to "drinking in public," so this was going to be one of my first experiences. I sit down with Melissa (this time my roommate Melissa, c'mon guys keep up) and Scott, and immediately order a margarita.

Then I inspect the menu. For one thing guys, Pico's seems really expensive to me! Look for the most part Mexican food is Mexican food, let's face it, while there is obviously a difference in taste from Taco Bell to Escalante's, the best Mexican food in the world, for the most part when you go to one Tex Mex place over another it's based on atmosphere. Doesn't it follow that they should all be priced the same then?? I'm just saying, I'm not going to go to one place and pay fifteen dollars for something that I can pay nine dollars for somewhere else! -71 I was going to this place in the first place for the happy hour. This means I'm a cheap bastard! That's what that means! I'm not going to mince words with you! I'm sorry I used that kind of language! And you know what the worst part is? I'm on scholarships! I'm not even a starving college student! I'm just this cheap out of principle!

And then! You know something?? We had the worst waiter in the entire universe! He came by, took our drink order, came back, deposited mine and Melissa's margaritas, didn't even bring Scott's Sprite, and then disappeared without even taking our order! It's possible that we waved him away at this point, I don't remember. All I know is, he didn't return for at least ten minutes, without Scott's Sprite. At this point we were still arguing about how expensive this restaurant was, and the fact that nowhere on the menu did it actually mention what kind of happy hour specials they had, and the fact that we were probably going to end up paying nine dollars for a drink, so we definitely waved him away this time. Nine dollars for a drink? You can get a handle of McCormick's for that much money at the liquor store, guys. Just letting you know what kind of deals there are. He went back for Scott's Sprite, and didn't return for another ten minutes. -81 Do I look like I'm made out of time here guys? Do I? Because I'm not. I'm made out of flesh and blood and a lot more sodium than I think is strictly good for me. As far as time goes, I haven't plucked my eyebrows in a month because it's impossible to multitask while doing this. Things are getting out of control on my forehead! I'm starting to look like Frida Kahlo! (Heh heh heh take that Frida) I certainly don't want to wait twenty minutes for somebody in a dining room with only three other seated tables and two other waiters! C'mon guys. C'mon! So in revenge we didn't order any food at all. Take that, Pico's! I just sat at your table and ate three baskets of chips and got drunk!

But guys here's the thing about their margaritas. I mean I don't remember what exactly it was that Melissa told me so many months ago about this place that lead me to write their name in my planner, but they gave me 27 oz of margarita for only eight dollars and a quarter. At the time I thought it was outrageous, but by the time I reached the bottom of my glass, whew was it worth it. The waiter was still awful and the food was still overpriced, but at the end of that drink... the music was so much better, the decor so much homier, and the bus boy, who kept bringing us more chips and more of their salsa (which, by the end of our stay, was the best salsa I'd ever tasted), was the most handsome, gentlest, most wonderful man in the entire world. I'd started out the evening complaining to Melissa and Scott about all my responsibilities and stresses, but by the time I left... honestly guys I can't remember what sorts of responsibilities I have at this point, I think maybe I go to college and I seem to remember some kind of detail about a job but I'm not sure... and instead of starting on my homework or reading a book or anything like that, when I returned to my apartment last night I took a bubble bath and watched two hours of Batman: the Animated Series on my laptop. +142 Stress? What is that? I'm not sure.

So if you're having one of those days, I'd recommend actually researching when their happy hour is and checking Pico's out. Just remember, if you have to wake up early the next day, to drink lots of water before going to sleep and maybe setting an extra alarm, just in case.

Sunrise Taquito

Look I'm going to try and give a fair and balanced review here, but I'm not going to act like I didn't think - like I'm sure we all did - that taquitos are little fried tubes of meat paste. My only exposure to taquitos to this point has been in the freezer section of H-E-B and made by Del Monte. Apparently, that's just a white people thing. Apparently, taquito is just Spanish for tiny taco. Apparently any taco can also be a taquito. As usual I've done no actual research and am just assuming you shmucks will believe whatever I tell you, but either way there was nothing fried about the taquittos at Sunrise Taquito and to my avid disapproval the meat inside these delicacies appeared to be from an actual animal and not from a meat paste machine. I know. -10

Here's the best part of Sunrise Taquito - its built attached to a gas station! While this does make it hard to see when coming down the street from certain angles, it makes everything inside it so delicious. Seriously guys, when have you ever had anything bad from a gas station? And I'm not talking just about good stuff like those huge cans of Arizona green tea for just 99 cents or Snicker's bars. Or those mint chocolate M&Ms, which you can basically only get at gas stations and also CVS pharmacy which is the only reason I go to CVS pharmacy, other than their extremely steep discounts on after Easter candy. I'm talking about ICEEs, guys. Did you know that all summer long at Valero, you can get any size ICEE for only a dollar? Any size! Just a dollar! And you know those hot dogs that you can get at gas stations? They aren't disgusting, guys! Not by a long shot! This one gas station in my neighborhood sells nachos. Nachos! What you do is, you take a bag of chips, you open it up and pour it into the paper tray they provide, and then you use the nacho cheese they provide for the hot dogs and you can use the hot dog jalapenos and onions and things too. I'm not just making this up like it's some kind of ghetto college student thing I do to get food for free. This is a real thing they do, and I love it. I love it! But this Shell station, they've taken it a step further! They're serving real taquitos, and there wasn't a microwave in sight! +92 (I'd prefer if nobody mentioned the move of Subway into gas stations, I'm far less amused by this sort of antic.)

Here's the other thing. So there were all these pictures of people posted on one side of their cash register. Ignoring for a moment for the fact that some of those dudes were super hot, I wonder - who were those people? Obviously a couple thoughts come to mind, employees, favorite guests, blah blah blah, that's all super boring. I'm hoping that these people are people who've completed the "Sunrise Taquito Challenge." Look like most Americans, I started watching Man Vs. Food during exam week last semester and instantly fell in love. It combined my two favorite things: eating a lot of food, and having people congratulate you for meaningless accomplishments. (Did I tell you guys I won thirty dollars in Las Vegas? I did?) I mean guys I was obsessed with that show for a hot minute, let me tell you. I liked the episodes where he ate really spicy things, obviously- after one such episode, I sat down to train for the Buffalo Wild Wings Blazing Challenge, a competition I'm still preparing for- but what instantly turned me on were the ones where he ate huge quantities of food at once. I feel like this is the sort of competition I've been training for my whole life. And I'm not talking about those hot dog eating contest where people dip their buns in water, that stuffs gross, I'm looking for endurance rather than speed. Adam Richman eats a lot of food, but it's good food, and he's appreciating it the whole time. That's what I like to see. If there was a competition to see who could eat the most popcorn without stopping, I'm in. I can shovel handful after handful of popcorn into my mouth, all day long, especially if it's covered in fake butter, especially if it has garlic salt on it. A competition to see who can eat the most bowls of macaroni cheese? I'm in. I'll eat macaroni and cheese for weeks, I don't care. You get what I'm saying here? Once I ate an entire watermelon in one day. I was pretty bloated afterwards, but I did it. I did it out of love and respect for the watermelon. So I think that those people on the wall love Sunrise Taquito so much that they completed the Sunrise Taquito Challenge - two hundred taquitos, one day. You have to pay for your own taquitos, but you get your picture on the wall. I think it's worth it. +32

That's all I've got about Sunrise Taquito. I know I've been kind of flaky about updating my blog these past couple weeks, and so if you feel like you need some more Catherine Martin love before our regularly scheduled blog post this Thursday, please, feel free to read this article that I wrote for a reputable website that's not even written by a college student in her free time. And then email me about how much you love it at arbitrarycriticism@live.com!

Spanish Flower

So recently I've been introduced to the seedy world of health inspections, and how embarrassing it is to have your restaurant shut down and then appear later in the week on Channel 2. Here's the thing, guys: in my experience, most restaurant kitchens are way safer and way cleaner than for example my apartment kitchen. Just the fact that these restaurants are run for profit means that they must be kept cleaner, not just from a health inspection standpoint but I would argue even from an efficiency standpoint. You can make more food in a clean kitchen than a dirty kitchen, and way faster, and while I don't have any kind of facts to back that up I do want to ask everyone to take health inspection scare stories with a grain of salt. Especially anything to do with bugs - in my internet research since my exposure to this, I've noticed lots of exposure to restaurants where bugs have been found. Seriously guys? Let he who has never found a roach in their house cost the first stone! It doesn't mean you're dirty, it just means you have a plumbing system! That being said, dialogue on this issue brought my boyfriend and I to the Spanish Flower, in the Heights area. One of his cousins used to be a health inspector, and he was telling me that one of the reasons she quit her job was that restaurant managers kept banning her from their restaurants, and she was scared of running out of places to go eat! Which is obviously the best reason to quit a job seriously guys I'd get plastic surgery or something so I could keep coming and I'd give them a fake name. But Spanish Flower is one of the restaurants which banned her (probably over something silly like mislabelled buckets I swear these guys get so particular) and I wanted to celebrate my ability to eat wherever I want, regardless of the things I'm going to say about them later on the internet. +4 for freedom guys +4 for freedom. 

 Here's the thing Spanish Flower is 24 hour Mexican food, my favorite kind of restaurant, and even better than that if you ask you waitress she'll breath the most beautiful phrase in the English language: breakfast is served all day. +71 Still it was a pretty reasonable time when the two of us got there, fresh off of our back-to-school shopping, our bags filled with folders emblazoned with kittens and pencil boxes we didn't really need. The restaurant wasn't even full, but they put us in the crappiest table imaginable, right next to the door, where everyone leaving or coming could trip over our chairs or, even worse, watch me drop salsa on my shirt in an unfortunate attempt to be a lady. -23 I just don't understand why we, of all people, had to sit at this table! Was it because they knew who Thomas's cousin is? Was it because I'm so hot, they wanted to punish me by making me eat in a poorly situated table and prove 30 Rock wrong, that sexy people do not live in a bubble? Was it because Thomas, unbeknownst to me, had dated the hostess and in a fit of jealousy she lead us to that table? Is my karma finally catching up to me from that time I hit a bird with my car driving home from Christmas break? The world may never know, but just in case next time I go to Spanish Flower I'll try not to look so attractive. Here's what else you should know about Spanish Flower. In their entry way, they have a print of a Frida Kahlo painting. Maybe its a real Frida Kahlo, I'm not sure, I'll be honest they all kind of look the same to me. Look guys I don't want to be mean, but seriously, don't you think she is the worst painter ever? Look look look I studied art history I get that its sad, that she was confined to her bed, that she didn't have any friends and could only paint herself. I don't want to be mean, but seriously, if you could paint yourself however you wanted to, don't you think you would have focused a little less on the monkey sitting on your shoulder and a little more on clearing up your unibrow?? Ughhh I'm just saying -45

The thing is the food here is actually really good. Maybe their tangle with the health inspector was over unsafe levels of MSG or something cuz it was seriously good. Its their salsa that really blew me away; don't get me wrong it wasn't my dads salsa and it wasn't Escalante's salsa, but still it was just the perfect thickness. I hate watery salsa; I like to dip my tortilla in there and really make a difference, you know? At Spanish Flower, you always make a difference! +62 

Anyways guys have a great day and remember, just because somebody has a health code violation doesn't mean you're better than them!

Benjy's

Look guys I don't want you guys to think I intentionally wanted to go to a place where they use such disgusting words as "grass fed" and "sustainable" and "brunch". I wanted to go to Mission Burrito, but I was overruled, and you can't hold it against me, OK? OK.

Look here's the thing about Benjy's: they have a brunch menu. I'm not sure what exactly it is about brunch that I find so irritating; ostensibly, I should love brunch. It has everything I love about eating: runny eggs, things you can dip runny eggs into, bacon, the appeal of it being after one o'clock in the morning. I guess it's just the word brunch that I have such a problem with, and it's only because I'm just not being generous, if we're honest with each other. I don't like brunch because it's a cute, silly, clever combination of the words lunch and breakfast and if the decision had been left up to me, I'd have come up with lunfast. I don't have the ability to make clever portmanteau that everyone in the universe can come up with, and it really hurts my feelings. -10 I wish I could come out really strong against their brunch menu for that reason, but guuuuuys, the have chocolate bacon waffles on their menu. Waffles with bacon baked into them, covered in whipped cream and strawberries and chocolate chips! Excuse me, but +14! Come on guys! Waffles covered in chocolate, filled with bacon! It's a bacon filling! Can you believe that? Screw cream filling, am I right? My point is this particular dish was created with me, Catherine Martin in mind, with particular emphasis put on my monthly hormonal cycle. I'm just very conflicted with this particular brunch menu, very conflicted; if only they'd put a fried egg on top of the waffle, I would have no question left in my mind.

Ugh but do you know what was happening when I entered Benjy's? There was a freaking baby shower hanging out in their party space, all of their pregnant ladies and baby shower gifts wafting in front of our very eyes. -8 guys! I can't believe it! For one thing, those pregnant ladies should be in their homes eating pickles, not putting their future children at risk gallivanting around town! But I think that particular sin pales in comparison to those piles of gifts sitting by the entrance of their restaurant. Excuse me? Did these guys not go to preschool? Did they NOT learn that if you're going to bring a present for one guest at Benjy's, they have to bring a present for all of us? I certainly didn't walk away from that restaurant with a new stroller and some pacifiers! I just had a sugar rush! Honestly I wasn't even offended about not getting a crappy present like that, I'm not a pregnant lady, I'm only 21, once I was trying to change my cousin and he rolled off of the changing table and had a bruise on his head. Obviously I'm not fit to be a mother. But those presents were so beautifully wrapped! There was so much tissue paper in those bags! Uggh it was all I could do not to vault over the party room partition and rip the tissue paper out of the bags and throw them over my head in fistfuls like a spoiled child in a cartoon! All I wanted to do was rip the paper off of those boxes! I mean seriously guys, I only wanted to unwrap those presents, I didn't want to keep them! Besides, their pregnant fingers probably shouldn't be exerting themselves in that sort of way, I mean come on guys, they need to save their energy for the life that's growing inside them! But they didn't even ask.

And then there were these ceramic owls, just chilling on top of the window where their food comes out. Just sitting up there, looking at me. -13 Why on earth would you put owls inside a restaurant? Do you know what owls eat? Mice, and voles! For them to be present in a restaurant means that their are enough mice and voles there to feed all of them! Do you even know what a vole is? I'm just asking because I don't, but it sounds really gross! Here's a list of things that start with a v: vipers, velociraptors, and vampire bats. Does any of that sound like something you want running around your food preparation areas? NOPE! Obviously voles are even worse than all of those, and they are just letting them hang out there with nothing but ceramic owls to stop them! I hate it!

But let's end on a good note, shall we? Guess what Benjy's has bowls of at their hostess stand? Those really great soft mints! You know, the red and white striped ones that taste like peppermint but when you put them in your mouth and suck on them instead of being like those crappy Starlight mints and just slowly melting away and being way too pepperminty, the soft mints are mostly sugary and they don't melt so much as they crumble in your mouth? Uggh I love those! Sometimes during exam week and I need constant supplies of sugar in order to keep the sugar crash at bay and also in order to stay up, I'll buy one of those huge buckets of them and eat the whole bucket in a week. OK usually it's more like three days, nobody tell my dentist please. But if you go to Benjy's, you don't actually have to buy a whole bucket, you can just have your friends make a commotion so that the hostess has to look the other way and then you can put your hand in there and take a whole handful and by the time the hostess looks back, you've taken the whole bowl and your purse is full of soft mints and you've disappeared. +91

That's all I got, but if anybody is throwing a baby shower this week and needs someone to unwrap all the presents and pull out all of the stuffing from bags, email me at arbitrarycriticism@live.com I'm prepared to rearrange my whole schedule for you.

Thien An Sandwiches

I know, I know, I know. Since when have I ever been culturally sensitive? Since when have I branched out and tried things that I can't pronounced? Since when have I embraced ethnic food that isn't Mexican? It's been my secret shame for three years: I love pho, guys. I love it. I'd even go so far as to say that it's even better than chicken noodle soup when you're having a bad day, and that's why I sought out Thien An a couple weeks ago.

Here's what I think is really helpful about the place. As everybody knows, the only restaurants in downtown Houston are of the Vietnamese variety (or Jason's Deli). That means occasionally, white people have to eat ethnic food, regardless of how well we can pronounce foreign words. As well, despite the number of bowls of pho I've eaten in my life (hint: more than two) I really never have any idea what's going on when I look at a menu. "I want the one with meat in it," I usually offer up blankly. At Thien An they helpfully alleviate some of this pressure by providing pictures of all the meats you can choose to have in your pho, alongside their names in both Vietnamese and English. +10! Brisket, flank meat, and meatballs are all easily defined in pictures, making things clear for me in a way that normal words usually takes care of for regular people. I have this shirt that I bought on Busted Tees that's a picture of a unicorn and all of the cuts of meat have been divided and labelled across the figure; I think this is funny because it's a unicorn and the shirt's yellow and everyone knows unicorns are allergic to the color yellow, but regular people might find it entertaining because these are actual cuts of meat assigned to an allegedly mythical creature. I don't know about this sort of thing. Despite getting my education at the second finest restaurant management school in the country, I have no idea how to butcher any sort of animal and am completely lost at telling someone the difference between white meat and dark meat. So I'm really glad when I open up Thien An's menu and all I have to do is point at something that looks like something I liked in the past. It simplifies the experience for me and I think it helps to disguise my overwhelming ignorance in the face of the real world.

Here's what I don't get about Asian restaurants. I mean real Asian restaurants, that actual Asians eat at, instead of Panda Express, and Asian restaurant only Hispanics eat at. None of the sauces on the table are labelled! You're just supposed to know, I suppose, that the brown sauce is oyster sauce (I made that up, I don't know if that's true or not) and the orange one is God knows what. The only sauce anybody ever labels is the sriracha, which I think is awful! -7! I already know what sriracha looks like, thanks, mostly, to one night when I tried out an Asian inspired Bloody Mary recipe I made up myself, substituting sriracha for Tabasco sauce and soy sauce for Worcestershire. It was delicious, thank you for asking, until I allowed myself to be roped into a drinking game and ended up chugging a pint of it. It was several weeks before I allowed myself to look at tomato juice again, and I will NEVER forget what sriracha looks like. I could pick it out of a lineup with my eyes closed. Sriracha's name has been permanently etched into my heart, and not in the good way. So if we're going to be keeping things in the original bottle, please, let's not make that a priority, let's focus on these other oddities that Western raised Catherine has never mistakenly mixed with alcohol.

Let's talk about sriracha for a little bit longer. Have you heard this thing where people call it rooster sauce? I'm conflicted about how I feel about this. Right, people call it rooster sauce because there is an actual representation of a rooster on the bottle; why is this? I have no idea what these words on the bottle mean, I took Spanish in high school and have stuck with it into college. And then I'm still not sure... obviously I'll always find people calling things that aren't animals by the names of animals really charming and sweet, that's just who I am. But I think I've already mentioned to you that I'll never again consider sriracha charming and sweet. Sure, we've gotten back onto the footing where I can occasionally eat bits of it on my food; it's particularly delicious, for the record, on pizza. But no longer can I think of sriracha in the slightly condescending way that allows you to think of something as "cute". We don't have that relationship anymore. Now, sriracha and I are grudging peers. We're military generals from opposing countries, usually at war with each other, in a truce exclusively to fight against a common foe. We only unwillingly admit the strengths of the other. Maybe sriracha is a guy and there's some unresolved sexual conflict in this anthromorphography, I'm not sure, I just know that our relationship is complicated and I don't want to set anything off foot by calling sriracha cute ever again. So I think I've come to my conclusion: I don't like when people call sriracha rooster sauce. It hearkens back to days that I'm not comfortable remembering, when the two of us were much more carefree. -14

Back to Thien An. So I took my pho home with me, which is something that I love to do because I think the idea of soup to go is really funny and also I like eating in my bed in my pajamas because I'm in college and it's every college student's dream to never get out of bed. Every night before I go to bed I have to sweep out the crumbs, it's actually pretty gross I'll admit, but on the bright side I change my sheets more than anybody I know. Take pride in that, Mom. So I was sitting around all innocent, waiting for my soup to be ready, and I couldn't help but look in the cooler sitting next to me. Look maybe I'll eat pho in a restaurant who's name I can't pronounce, but I'm not so modern and hip that I know what Asian things are. So there was this jug in the fridge, and I swear guys, it looked like it was full of green milk. What is that? And then above it were these trays that looked like they held jelly seaweed salad. I recognize seaweed salad, I like the taste of it, and I really like the texture of it because it feels like you can just slide it down your gullet without chewing it. I like the texture of anything in which the first three words in my mind include the word gullet. It's my favorite eating word. Gullet. It just seems provocative in a way that I like. This jelly seaweed salad, though. You'd have to chew that. Gullet wasn't in the first fifty words that I thought while looking at it, and I think even a casual observer of Catherine Martin's life would be able to imagine at least a couple of those. It's not that I'm not willing to try new things, guys. It's just that I find myself a fish out of water in situations like this and I occasionally panic. I did not drink the green milk, and I think we only have myself to blame for this. The -14 goes to me, not Thien An.

If anybody has any sort of answer to the questions I've posed here, feel free to email me at arbitrarycriticism@live.com. Otherwise, enjoy your eating guys, please be more adventurous than myself.

Lambo

Look guys I don't have to tell you that Chinese buffets are the most contradictory things in the world. I mean it's an all you can eat buffet. You stuff yourself completely full, like, to the bursting, and then thirty minutes after you leave, you're hungry again! Why don't people just stay an extra thirty minutes and then stuff themselves again? I don't like it -9 I never think properly at the time to most efficiently use my 12.99.

Still as far as Chinese buffets go Lambo's (6158 Westheimer Road, don't get excited hipsters, it's on the outside the loop part of Westheimer yuck) pretty good, I'll give them that. The thing that I like the most about them is that they have a whole buffet of Asian soups. Right normally at these shindigs they have some hot and sour soup or whatever that drivel is, and then egg drop soup which is my favorite! And those are your two soup choices! Which aren't bad don't get me wrong I love egg drop soup, I thought that was all I needed in my life. But Lambo, they have like five or six different soup choices! You can get some miso soup there, when has that ever happened? I love miso soup! I never had it until I went to this place called Zushi Sushi in Dallas and there was this unbelievable waiter named Raphael who worked there and whenever he'd hand you your coke or whatever you'd say thanks and he'd say "my pleasure" but he'd say "play-shar" instead of pleasure and I'm still so attracted to him, please nobody tell Thomas. Anyways my point is miso soup is really tasty and I've never seen it in a buffet, they also had this Thai soup, Thai soup doesn't sound Chinese to me! That's so multicultural +13 gotta give them props for that, but let's face it everyone's just real glad to have options when it comes to eating hot wet foods in the middle of a hot wet Houston summer.

Here's the other thing, guys! EVERY CHINESE BUFFET IS THE SAME, I say now that I've just differentiated this Chinese buffet from every other Chinese buffet. OTHER THAN THE SOUPS, all the food is the same! You got your orange chicken, your General Tso's chicken, your chicken nuggets for the white people kids who go to this sort of thing with their parents. You got your egg rolls sitting across the buffet from the spring rolls. You got your rice, fried, steamed, or brown. And you got your buttered green beans. I'm not sure if that's a positive or a negative, either! I love when everything is the same! That makes decisions so easy! Right? You already know what you're going to eat when you put in your drink order and stand up to walk to the buffet. Buuut... guys, don't TELL anyone, but sometimes I like trying new things. I know. I know. Nobody would ever expect that, but that's ACTUALLY the reason I started this blog! I'm just saying, I'm a little torn here between these two compulsions of mine. Luckily this is America, and we can make decisions as to where to eat on a daily basis and nobody is going to force us to eat crappy Chinese food if we don't want to. +4, America. +4.

What I do have a problem with is places that serve sushi and have live fish inside them. Seriously guys? What am I supposed to think? I mean I'm going crazy right now, Melvin's been flushed away to the hospital all summer long since I've been out of town so much, I really miss the guy, you know? And here they are, aBUSing these fish by forcing them to live in such close quarters to their fallen comrades! Their fallen comrades! I work in a sushi restaurant right now, I'm pretty sure I have an understanding of what tuna, salmon, and crab look like, but goldfish? I'm not so sure. I can't easily spot that in a roll, right? I just don't know! -24 We were sitting pretty close to the aquarium at Lambo's and I never saw anybody come and pull out a fish to fill their diminishing stock, but maybe they'd just planned in advance, you know? I just don't know.

BRC

Look guys I've been wanting to eat at BRC since I first drove by it, because as we all know BRC stands for Big Red Cock, and they have a giant red rooster in their parking lot, and what sound do roosters make? What sound, guys? That's right! Roosters say "Brrrc! Brrrc! Brrrc!" It's the cleverest naming strategy I've ever seen! I mean guys it's genius! +165

Obviously I was going to like BRC no matter what based off of that, I mean they could have been disgusting and I still would have wanted to go back. But as you all know I just returned from Canada and I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with the Canadian oddity of poutine, but it's French fries, covered in gravy, mixed with cheese curds. I mean it sounds nasty but I'll always give someone a chance and I gave poutine a chance and I'm glad I did, it's delicious. Just so you know that's brown gravy not white gravy, I know, I know, but it's still one of the best things in the world and guess what they serve at BRC! POUTINE, with DUCK! They've taken one of the best things in the world, and then covered it in a bird which guarantees they can charge at least twice what they normally would! I mean this is good marketing guys, not to mention it was delicious! +13 As delicious as the poutine was however I am under oath to mention something horrible that happened at dinner, however: we'd all been plugging away at this poutine, but you know how group dinners go, nobody wants to seem like the piggy one and down the whole plate of appetizer, and everyone's taking delicate bites to try not to seem too desperate and hungry, and when you get down to the last four or so bites, the really good ones, the ones that are completely drenched in brown gravy, and then there's the gravy on the bottom that you can run your fork through on the way from the plate to your mouth, you have to sit and wait a minute to pretend like you're going to let someone else eat them first. I know, I know, it's hard, but it's etiquette, you know? It's etiquette. So all of us are sitting there, staring at the plate, wondering who's going to break first so we can all dive in there and stab each other over the deliciousness, when who should walk by but the waiter and take those last delicious bites, without first asking if we were done. The best part of the appetizer, wasted by the wait staff! I'd never been more heartbroken in my life! -8 Normally I'd be outraged and throw a couple chairs around, grow to twice my size and have my skin change into green, but as you know the name of the restaurant is BRC so I sat through it and only cried into my napkin a little bit.

Seriously though guys have you been into this restaurant before? It is so trendy. You can tell it's trendy by how little effort they've apparently put into making it trendy. Instead of regular napkins for you to wipe your poutine-y fingers on (don't lie, it's just a fun word), they have heavy duty kitchen towels. They're the same towels we used at my first job in Waco, Texas, to clean the kitchen at the end of the night. The same ones! They're giving us kitchen towels and we love it because it's new and novel! +2! I don't know about you but I'd love anything BRC gave me! More than that, they have these framed images on their walls and the first part is a picture and then underneath it is a word, or vice versa. But like it's the word bar, but then underneath it instead of being a picture of a bar, like you were expecting, there's a picture of a fly. So you're supposed to interpret that as "Barfly." Get it? It's not your normal restaurant artwork, guys, it's snooty and highbrow! You have to actually think about it! +89 Oh gosh it's ingenious I've never exercised so many mental muscles in my entire life, you know??

Oh man and you know what's really great? Their bathroom. The thing is you guys, you first walk in to their bathroom area and there's the girls bathroom door and the boys bathroom door and two other doors which I didn't go into because I assumed at the time that they were unisex bathroom doors but now I'm scared are doors to wealth and riches, available only to whoever is brave enough to enter in to what they thing is a unisex bathroom, and along the other wall was a long trough like sink. Boy was I not looking forward to that! I'm sure you all are aware that I'm a world traveler, and this is something that I've seen a lot of in Europe. Being forced to wash your hands in public. I mean what is that, they're afraid we don't wash our hands in real life, and they think that if they make us accountable to everyone using the bathroom at that time, we'll be more willing to? I don't think so guys, I wash my hands every time I use the bathroom, no matter WHO'S watching, so you're not going to trip me up. And since when were we falling over our heels to emulate Europe in the first place? They have a unified monetary system! We laugh in their faces! So I was a little teed off and then I walked into the actual bathroom, and guys, you have to know, everything is completely alright. I'll spoil the surprise and tell you not to worry, there is an individual sink in the bathroom, so you don't have to make any of your sins known to the other bathroom users. Wash or don't wash your hands at your own prerogative, I won't tell. And the best part? On all four walls there is a thin strip of mirrors running along all sides and it is so cool! Right you know how when you have a mirror in front of you and a mirror in back of you you can look into them and see infinity of yourself and in my case it's beautiful and wonderful! Well here there are FOUR mirrors on ALL sides so you can see infinity of yourself from every angle! Let me tell you, leaving that bathroom was the hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life, and it couldn't have happened without the thought of duck poutine waiting for me! +93

That's about everything. If you have any alternative recipes for poutine, please, feel free to email me at arbitrarycriticism@live.com!