Panda Express

Oooooooh guys have you ever eaten at Panda Express? It’s so great they have the best orange chicken in the world. Plus did you know they have a location in the Pentagon? Isn’t that really cool? I never really think about the Pentagon, which means that when it does cross my mind I always assume they do top secret cool things and only eat top secret cool things.

Here’s the thing. When I was a little kid, I went with my parents to Washington D.C. for Spring Break. The most notable point of the trip, I think, was that six year old Catherine went to her father and asked if she should pack a jacket, since it was February and we were going to be camping. “Nah,” my father said. “You don’t need one.” It’s not that my father left me cold and shivering for an entire week that stings of betrayal – it was the fact that he packed a coat for himself. His defense is that I should have packed one myself, I was six years old, I had autonomy, but to you I pose the question: was this negligence, or willful endangerment? Only a more thorough investigation of the insurance policy my father had on me at the time will tell for sure. You’re not off the hook either Mom, you could have stepped in and saved all of us. But my point is, obviously the most important thing to do when you go to Washington D.C. is see the panda’s inside the Washington Zoo. When we went, the pandas had just had a pair of panda cubs, long awaited by the political community, I’m sure. I agreed to go on that vacay with my parents, I probably caught pneumonia though it was a long time ago and I don’t really remember, I let them drag me to the White House and the Congress Building and all those lame, historically important, non-fuzzy animal things there are to do in Washington. Finally, on our penultimate day of the trip, they allow me the panda bears, my one demand from this trip that took me away from all of my very important first grade duties and responsibilities. But tragedy had struck! It was raining the day we went, and the pandas had refused to come out into the muckiness, the divas that they are. I didn’t care. It’s not like it was the only thing I had dreamed about since that cute, adorable little panda cub had been born. Since those cute, adorable pandas had been imported as a peace offering from China. Who cares???

But on our last day, as we were driving out of the city, my parents said, sure Catherine, quit your whining, we’ll go back to the zoo. Just for a second. Just to see if those bloody divas managed to get themselves out of bed this morning. At the zoo entrance, my dad casually let slip that we’d been rained out the day before, had missed the only reason we’d made this exhausting, cross country trip. And you know something? The guy at the gate just let us in! He didn’t charge us anything! He said, “Oh, you darling American patriots, I’m sorry that your hopes and dreams were shattered. I won’t ruin your illusions, not with your young child prodigy of an offspring at such  a delicate, impressionable age. I’ll provide you with all the fun and frolic that you could possibly imagine.” And sure enough, there were the pandas, holding hands, allowing pictures of them to be taken in their bathing suits for the cover of People magazine, the first photos of their children being sold for the centerfold article, proceeds donated to WWF. (That’s World Wildlife Foundation, you rubes, not World Wrestling Federation. C’mon guys.) Now, panda bears and I are even more in love than ever before. I hardly ever call them divas when I tell that story now. They even managed to come for my high school graduation, but there weren’t any seats big enough for their massive furry behinds and the principal didn’t understand that despite being called panda “bears” they were actually vegetarian, and they didn’t get to stay for the ceremony. +1768 It was nice of them to come out, just the same.

The only thing is, the charity work closely related to this story Panda Express does is with “communities”, with “underprivileged children”. Are you kidding me? None of those words sound like “panda”! I don’t think they give any money to animals at all! One time I donated at least three dollars to the World Wildlife Fund, and do you know what they gave me in exchange? Coffee mugs with PANDAS on them! Pandas are already the symbol of a charity movement, and it’s one that benefits PANDAS, not intercity children and victims of abusive homes! How dare you invite me into your restaurant under false pretenses, seduce me with your delicious, mouth-watering orange chicken, and then rip away all of my happiness by doing nothing for the species that I love? You better be careful, there are twelve pandas currently living in the United States. All it takes is one call, and a panda will come into your restaurant and then do you know what’s going to happen? It’s going to eats, shoots and leaves! Take that, Panda Express! What has your deceit bought you now? It’s probably too early after the Batman massacre to make a joke about a shooting rampage, so draw your own PC conclusions! -90

Look, Panda Express. We can come to an understanding. All you have to do to buy my support is provide me with a personal, live panda every time I come in to one of your restaurants, for my own personal use for the duration of my meal. All I want is a large, oversized mammal to hug and kiss while I consume my “gourmet Chinese food”, as you so eloquently call it. Before you agree, however, National Geographic does warn that Giant Pandas actually spend a full twelve hours a day eating bamboo, and that’s a lot of fiber, if you know what I mean. I’m not sharing a bathroom with those monsters.

Resie's Chicken and Waffles

Ok so here's the dish on Resie's. There's this app you can get if you're pretentious and have an iPhone or if you're not you can just do it on your computer. Its called Order Ahead and what happens is you put in your credit card once, and then from then on its saved, you can just lose your card for forever. I love stuff like this its why i spend so much money on Amazon as soon as I find something I like, I just order it, no need to crawl across my bed searching for my wallet and then its not there so you have to look under and then its not in your room at all and by the time you find your purse you realize that you don't need a set of shirts which will make you look camouflaged with most urban environments. You live in the suburbs now, and despite your best efforts, you've yet to be drafted by the CIA (wink - that's what a CIA operative would say too, huh?).

Where was I? Oh yeah! So I love this app +7 the only problem is there's like, five restaurants on it so do yourselves a favor, people who own restaurants who read my blog, press this button:

Then I will start ordering food from the comfort of my bedroom and we all know that people who don't think about their purchases before they make them spend more money. It's a sound business investment, guys, just do it.

Here's the dish on Resie's, guys: I love it. Let's talk for a moment about what I actually ordered: the Waffle Cristo. It's a Monte Cristo sandwich (a deep fried ham and cheese sandwich, for you sad folks who have never experienced it's wonder) but in this particular case, instead of being made with bread, it's sandwiched together by waffles. Deep fried waffles encasing cheese and meat.Truly, there is no greater invention since the history of man kind. +12 Oh man but guys can I just give you a little warning, or something? Look we ordered all these sides and things, we were going to really experience Resie's, but by the time we made it to our actual food, there was no way we were every going to be able to snarf it all down. There's two to an order, guys, and they're each the size of a small island. Pro tip, from someone who's still on an all vegetable diet in reaction to this: don't get any appetizers, and don't eat for a week before you order the Waffle Cristo. It's the only way you'll be able to get through all this.

At Resie's, they have onesie bathrooms. Let me just share my life with you up until my trip to the bathroom: so I used to work at this hotel and most of our job was to show up at work every day looking hot. Every. Day. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of natural beauty, but EVERY DAY? Most days I like to roll out of bed, put my hair in a pony tail, throw on some sweats, and hope that nobody looks at me. My legs are what you could call pale (and typically unshaven) so when I'd work at this hotel, after spending six hours fixing my hair and makeup, I'd roll on these black tights to cover up this little discrepancy. The only thing is when I'd gone to Target to buy my tights, I'd accidentally bought something that apparently said "Super control top! Wear these and lose fifteen pounds from your appearance and never breath again!" They go all the way up to my bosom and are topped by this plastic ring that's about half the size I am that digs into your flesh at every moment, reminding you that if you were skinnier (or had just read the label on the tights you were buying, instead of freaking out because you had to be at your shift in five hours and that left very little time for your intensive beauty regimen) you could breath. That's not something I like to think about ever, let alone for an entire shift. I'd have gone back to the store and got new ones, but let's face it, I'm real lazy, or else I would have just gone into Resie's myself, ordered, and waited for it to be ready like a normal person. So on this particular day it was kind of cold outside but I also wanted to wear a dress, so I tried on all of my tights and this particular pair - my only black pair - matched better than the rest so I pulled them on. I hadn't worn them in months. "This isn't too bad," I gasped to myself, my face slowly turning blue as the oxygen left it. "I'm sure they'll only get better as the day goes on."

Spoiler alert: they didn't. All through class all I could focus on was that plastic band cutting into my flesh. Five days later you can still see the mark in my skin. Resie's Chicken and Waffles is halfway to the Woodlands, and I set out around five thirty, when I got out of class, which meant of course that in rush hour traffic it took three hours to drive twenty miles. My bladder, having had the all the pressure of these tights pressing up against it for hours, was about to pop. Not even bothering to say hello to the nice people of Resie's, I exploded from my car, the force of my need propelling me from the parking lot to the bathroom in four easy steps. I barely had time to lock the door. Just like a woman who's kids are trapped in a car, I suddenly had superhuman strength, sliding those damn tights off. I'll spare you the details from here.

After my victory, however, I was faced with the problem of getting my tights back on. This is no easy feat, it takes about thirty minutes to get this torture device up over the hips and up to my neck. I was struggling this when there was a jiggle at the doorknob. I paused, barely up to my knees. There was a jiggle again. "I'm still in here," I whispered to the girl on the other side (a whisper was all I could manage with my depleted oxygen. "I'll be out in a moment." An hour later I stumbled out the door, another girl on the other side. "Sorry," I said to her. "I was struggling to get my tights back on." "Mmhmm girl," she said, nodding in agreement. "I hear that." +32 Resie's gets me they do. -108 to anyone who was thinking throughout this story that I should have just taken the tights off, it would have been better to be cold than dead, I hate you, whoever you are.

I think that's all I have to say. If you have any tips for getting tights on, please feel free to email me at arbitrarycriticism@live.com.

Lupe Tortilla

Lupe Tortilla is so mediocre and average that I almost didn't blog about it. Actually the only reason I am blogging about it is that I've been busy being a young urban socialite, drinking martinis, watching Wreck It Ralph, and washing my hair more than four times a week, so I haven't had enough time to go eat in restaurants. Your choices were to read this review of Lupe Tortilla or a still unwritten review of the food truck Bare Bowls, which I decided not to go with because I hated it and even I can't bear to be that mean about people.

I will give this to Lupe Tortilla: this is the first time I have ever been introduced to a pitcher of margaritas. Have you had one of these? In my mind, pitchers are for two things: draft beer, or Kool-Aid. Margaritas you order individually so you have to face the shame of flagging down the waiter, you finger shyly raised, to beg him to bring you another, you promise someone else is driving. At Lupe Tortilla they don't mess around. They'll give you as many margaritas as you want, at one time. And for the first time in my 21 year old life, I wasn't carded, leading me to believe that I finally, after all these months, look my age. +8

The topic of margaritas leads me to share some information with you about ladies that I just learned through some of the alcohol education classes I'm taking at college (I know, I know, you all wish you'd taken my major, it's something I hear a lot but come on guys we do real work too next week I'm going to have to do the difficult task of touring St. Arnold's brewery it's tough stuff guys tough stuff). The thing is as you know how much alcohol a person can consume before they feel looped depends on things like body weight or how much food you have in your stomach (I always get confused and think this means how many chips and salsa you consume WHILE drinking which turns out is not the case just overkill on my part). Did you know that a woman's alcohol tolerance is also based on her hormones and can vary from one part of the month to the next? I'm not even talking like three weeks she has one kind and then the fourth a different; I mean every single day, a woman has a different set of hormones and every single day they affect her alcohol tolerance differently. This affects my tolerance for a lot of different things too actually, like red lights, pigeons, people burping in my car, etc.

My only point about this whole thing is that it's like a superpower. Not the days, obviously, where you sniff a shot of tequila and you pass out drunk, but the days when you champ through half a pitcher of margaritas and then stand up triumphant, unafraid of tripping over any imaginary objects, perfectly steady in your ability to hug your drinking partner goodbye. We are woman. We are champion!

I really have nothing else to say about Lupe Tortilla except this: have you ever tried to park over there? I remember when all the restaurants off of 59 and Kirby were friends with each other. They hung out on the weekends, they shared customers, they bought each other drinks at bars. Now? They all have signs in their parking lot: this lot is for Taco Cabana/Cafe Japon/Lupe Tortilla/Haven customers only. Twin Peak customers will be towed! Can you believe it? They're all ganging up on the new kid! This happened to me in third grade when I didn't have any friends for four years because I moved to a new school and I was so much hotter than everyone else and they were all jealous about how good the gravy on my chicken fried steak was. -8 Let's just all play nice with each other guys, even if it is stupid that they have valet parking I mean come on who do they think they are.

That's all I got, if anyone has recommendations for a non-mediocre Mexican restaurant feel free to email me at arbitrarycriticism@live.com!

Elevation Burger

My eating at Elevation Burger this Tuesday was mostly in an effort to remain young and fresh. They just opened their first location in Houston a couple weeks ago and all the other internet food blogs (it occurs to me now that "internet food blog" is a bit redundant because blog is short for weblog and therefore automatically resides on the internet, sorry everyone that I have disappointed here today) are already talking about it and I feel like I'm behind the jump! I'm 21 years old! I should BE the jump! It's just disgusting and disappointing to me and I'm sorry.

Here's the first thing you need to know about Elevation Burger. The guy who was taking my order took his job way too seriously. I don't know if you guys have ever been a part of a restaurant opening, but I started working at Pink's Pizza on Bissonnet within like three days of it opening. It's real easy to take your job seriously within the first three days that it opens. Nobody's ever heard of you before, but instead of you being the weird-still-in-her-awkward-years girl on her first day at Catholic school, you're the super-hot-doesn't-even-know-how-to-spell-pimple girl on her first day at an inner-city public school where they never saw a natural blonde before. Everyone wants your food, everyone wants to be nice to you, whatever you give to anybody is the greatest thing in the world. They haven't gotten used to you yet. They aren't taking you for granted. Then slowly everyone gets used to your usual level of service, they start looking for the corners to cut, they want discounts on things, they start being rude, and you realize that this isn't the greatest company in the world to work for, it's just a company, and no matter how much you like working there and how much you like your coworkers, you're going to quit in a year and a half anyway. This guy hadn't been beaten down yet. People were still being nice to him. He might have been the manager, pre having to fire his favorite worker, of course. Anyway, not only did he answer all of our questions, he told us which questions to ask, and then when we were ordering, he tried to upsell us twice! Are you kidding me? When's the last time anybody who didn't work in a movie theater tried to upsell anything? (Actually once at Starbuck's somebody told me I could get like twenty ounces of coffee more for only a quarter or something and I went with it. The thing is I'm very susceptible to upselling because I rarely know what I want, and if someone tells me I'd rather have a coke than a cup of water, as long as they provide one or more reasons I'm going to believe him. That's why that guy was so effective.) Anyways what's my point? My point is that I liked it. He's a nice guy. +13

Here's the other thing. You know what's wrong with Elevation Burger? All they're ever doing is caring about the environment! They've got this grass-fed beef stuff going around, which I think is just mean in the first place because I would always ALWAYS always rather eat corn than grass. Have you ever eaten grass? I have I have an older brother so I ate my fair share of grass as a child. It's nasty. Sometimes there are bugs in it. I've never seen any bugs on the corn I've eaten, you can take that to the bank. Then they're all, "hey, if you guys have Celiac's disease, or whatever, or are like on some kind of weird diet, all of our buns are gluten free." They make all of their buns out of potatoes. All of them! What if I wanted to take a hamburger and eat it in front of some chump who can't eat gluten? You can't do it with an Elevation burger, that's for sure! They have a vegan burger on their menu! Are you kidding me? Vegans don't get to eat burgers. It's just not a thing. You give that up when you decide you would rather be sanctimonious than happy. -81 This is awful. This is too many choices. This is for too many people. Obviously this country did not elect Mitt Romney.

I think you should all go eat at Elevation Burger, just beware that the parking lot favors small, fuel efficient cars, and if you try parking there in your father's Four Runner and then the parking lot fills up with either people who want to eat halal meat or people who are nervous that they're unhip because it's been at least a full week and they still haven't eaten at Elevation Burger, you're going to need to do at least a 6 point turn to get out of your parking spot. (-2 sometimes people who drive Hummers are still good people guys come on)

Brick House

Breastaurant. Defined by Urban Dictionary as:

"A male-oriented restaurant where the servers' bodacious, natural cleavage is never on the menu--but always in voluminous supply. Daisy Dukes in various forms... function to round out the servers' assets.

Breastaurants are in a class by themselves. They are certainly above the mainstream in terms of atmosphere, but will never be considered fine dining by pretentious elitists who value "ambiance" (pronounced OM-bee-ahnse) over ample portions of, well... everything.

Breastaurant atmosphere is both fun and titillating. It gives new meaning to the phrase: "Let's head to the mountains!" Likewise, the food is a carnivore's delight."

I'll admit to you that I don't know what is better: that they used "titillating" in that final paragraph, or the actual act of pronouncing the word "breastaurant." +19 In either case, it's the joy I find in saying those 3 syllables (and the desire to type it) that lead me to the Brick House last Thursday night.

I'd like to start out by saying that if you, like me, are only familiar with breastaurants from classics such as Hooters and Twin Peaks, prepare to find yourself a little disappointed when you walk through the front door of  Brick House. Obviously there are deep vs in the shirts of all the waitresses (I think in this case it's acceptable to skip the politically correct term "servers"), but ladies and gents, the sad truth is that they were all wearing pants. That's right. I guess it's not called a buttaurant, that's true, but if I'm going to ogle I want to ogle. Plus let's face it, we've got boob guys and we've got butt guys. If you just appeal to the boob guys, you're cutting out at least half your potential audience. And what about leg guys? I'm just saying, this is a bad business decision. -12

The salt and pepper shakers on the tables of Brick House are way huge. They have, like, 300% the amount of salt and pepper that a normal salt and pepper shaker have. I'll admit to you now, I'm only mentioning this as a set up for this boob related joke: More than a handful's wasted. +231

But enough talk about boobies. I think I love Brick House. For one thing, they are fully committed to their gimmick. If there is anything I believe in, it is fully committing to my gimmicks. Brick House is a Man Restaurant. They have hot little girls for men to look at. They have big screen TVs for men to watch. They have dozens of beers for men to drink. And here’s my favorite part. They have couches that you can sit on and drink on and watch TV on! You can just sit on a couch, in a restaurant, and do all the things that you would do at home except OTHER PEOPLE are doing all the hard work! +29 As you know if I were in charge of the world I’d just hang out on my bed all the time and have other people do all the hard work. That’s what I want the next restaurant concept to be. They’ll just have these huge beds and topless guys will come round and bring you milk and cookies and they’ll have big screen TVs that you can watch Clueless and Saved all night long. And let me tell you those boys aren’t going to be going halfway, they’re going to be wearing shorts, you can bet on that. I’m going to call it PMS – Perfectly Marvelous Stuff.

OK well that’s everything you have to know about Brick House. Except the last thing is that on their drink menu, they don’t have a Bloody Mary, they have this disgusting sounding thing that is a Bloody Mary mixed with a beer. A beer. In a Bloody Mary. I think there are some serious questions that need to be raised about this and you can bet your rear end that we won’t be serving those at PMS – interested investors can contact me at arbitrarycriticism@live.com.

Coco's Crepes

This is actually my fourth or fifth time going to Coco's Crepes because I really like it, guys. There's something about hanging out in that part of Gray Street, with all the apartments on top of restaurants and yuppies walking their dogs that makes me feel really competent and useful. I've been pretty stressed out about graduating in a semester and a half and not knowing what to do with myself and having to work in a restaurant for the rest of my life while I "find myself" and then having to move to Portland and always talking about how above the corporate life I am. I've watched three episodes of Portlandia, guys. I don't want that to happen to me. So, I went to Coco's Crepes to sit outside and look at all the people who have real jobs and deadlines and dogs who are relying on their support for survival and it really calmed me. One day I too will wear a pantsuit with matching heels. One day I too will have a desk.

There is one thing about Coco's that I don't appreciate, and I'm sure you guys who have been there can guess what it is. That's right. Their font. The thing is, crepes are serious business (except for this pun Melissa told me: Haunted French pastries give me the crepes. Heh heh heh +12 to Melissa). Their font is not serious! Their font does not capture the urban-ness, the ocean in the middle of the corporate grind! The font they use might as well be out in the suburbs, like in Sugarland or something, and then instead of selling serious, professional crepes, they'd serve muffins or something equally laughable. Losers eat muffins. (I just remembered that I ate a muffin for a midday snack today so I'm going to retroactively take that comment back.) Either way, muffins are not serious business at all and I wish they wouldn't project that image. -12

Here's the other bad thing, now that I think about it. I went to Coco's Crepes to act like I had meaningful, important things to do with my life. That's why people hang out in that part of town. To pretend like they matter. Or, you know, to actually matter. But either way, I wanted to work on my homework and eat crepes and wear heels. But without the heel part, actually, I just bought some shoes that look like moccasins but are actually slippers, they're all I've been wearing for weeks the slipper fur on the inside is all trampled down from continuous use. I don't care though, my feet feel great. Anyway, so I'd brought my computer so I could work on my serious, important person homework and my serious, important person writing projects. Like all serious, important people, I hadn't planned on coming to Coco's Crepes, I'd just impulsively decided that that was where I'd be the most productive. I don't know if that's how serious important people actually do things tbh. That stands for To Be Honest, just to let you serious, important people know. I didn't charge my computer! I assumed a place where serious important people hung out would have the tools to do their serious important work! But Coco's doesn't. I mean inside the restaurant they do, actually. You can plug you computer up for weeks inside. But I mean I didn't want to sit inside, I wanted to sit outside, so after I ate my crepe I just went home and did the work I was doing there anyway. -9 Less productively than I would have, I'm sure. I'm sure.

Look but have you guys had an Italian ice before? They have those things at Coco's Crepes. They are so good! It's like drinking a milk shakes, but they have all the flavors in the flavor universe. Watermelon? When's the last time you ever had a watermelon milk shake? Never, that's when! Unless you went to Jack-in-the-box they might have them there. Either way they're awesome, but they have half the milk products that a regular milk shake would have, which is really good because halfway through I always get real thirsty for water and then later I just think I'm a little lactose intolerant if you know what I mean. Plus it's carbonated! I'm just saying it's all the good things of a milk shake: tasty flavors, whipped cream on top, and none of the negatives: having to drink dairy products, not being to have watermelon flavors. +18323

That's everything I have to say about Coco's Crepes. If you want to offer me a job where I can wear pantsuits and own a dog when I graduate, email me at arbitrarycriticism@live.com. Otherwise, stay tuned for next week, because I just discovered the term "breastaurant" and am eager to use it in as many sentences as possible.