Palazzo Trattoria

Palazzo Trattoria, or Tratt's for those in the know (just kidding I made that up) is located at 2300 Westheimer. I went there the Saturday before last to attend the monthly meeting of the Mystery Writer's Association of the Southwest, which I bring up, once again, to prove how cultured I am. I'm sure that you will all be able to read my mystery novels sometime in the near future, after I have finished thinking them up.

I think that Tratt's is an excellent location for a group of mystery writers for a number of reasons, starting with the artwork on the walls. I'm not sure who exactly they commissioned to paint them, because for any other group of people they're kind of gross looking. It looks like someone painted tile floors onto a canvas, and then lobbed a water balloon filled with blood at them. Did you guys ever watch the Dilbert show when it was on? There was one episode where there's a blood drive and nobody shows up but Dilbert, and they guilt him into giving, like, ten gallons of blood, or something, I saw this a long time ago, and then the people in charge of the blood drive took it up to the roof of the building and lobbed it at the pointy haired boss. It was pretty funny, that was a pretty funny show in general, I wish they hadn't cancelled it my life would have been different with the Dilbert show in it. Anyway so I think that's how they created these paintings. It's pretty disgusting if you're a civilian, but if you're me, a member of the Mystery Writer's Association of the Southwest, it's more than that - it's a visual example to us of what it would look like if someone was murdered on what looks like every possible floor tiling available at your local Home Depot. It's a wonderful tool. +19

As well, the bathrooms are a wonderful place for a murder mystery to take place. In the ladies room, the doors had a sort of opaque glass paneling in them, so nobody could look in on you while you're taking care of business (picking the lock on your handcuffs with a bobby pin; this is a murder mystery, remember? You don't have time to tinkle, the clock's ticking and if you don't find the murderer soon they'll put you away for something you didn't do) but you can keep on eye on the shadows and see if anyone has entered the bathroom. Here's how that would work: you're X, the plucky heroine, and you've escaped from the back seat of the officer's car as he detours to Palazzo Trattoria on the way to the MWASW meeting in order to give a lecture on his daily life. You have a sneaking suspicion that while the officer is "a good guy", he's been suckered in by "the bad guy" and will do anything he can to destroy you. You don't want him to get in trouble with his superiors - he keeps a picture of his dead wife on his dashboard to remind him what crime can do to this world - but you need a little bit of time to track down the real killer of the museum curator and find the millions of dollars worth of paintings before it's too late. You sneak into the bathroom and are picking the lock when the officer realizes you're gone. He knew he should have dropped you off at jail before he gave his lecture, but the MWASW was his late wife's favorite organization, and he likes to do everything he can for them, in her memory. The whole organization fans out, searching for you, and you leave the door to the stall cracked, so that it looks like it's empty. The door to the bathroom opens, and you stop breathing. You can see the dark shape of a person on the other side, and you can hear the heavy footfalls of the officer, can hear the worry in his heartbeat, not more than inches and a thin, opaque sheet of glass away from your own. He doesn't see you, however, the lighting and the glass protecting you, and after a long, breathless moment he leaves. You crawl through a ceiling tile and escape. Thanks to Palazzo Trattoria (+32), you manage to find the true killer, who happened to be implicated in the killing of the cop's wife, as well. You find the paintings, you clear your name, and you and the officer, who's emotional baggage has been lifted through your efforts, fall in love and get married.

The other benefit of Palazzo Trattoria's is that, due to the influx of intelligent, crime savvy individuals who meet there once a month, you're less likely to get mugged there than any other Italian restaurant in the city as crime is scared of what could happen to them. +8

Alamo Drafthouse

So two Monday's ago I went to the grand opening of the Alamo Drafthouse in Vintage Park. I'm offering this restaurant review to you less as information and more as proof that I'm an intelligent, well cultured young woman who attends such things as Grand Openings, and rubs elbows with such famous celebrities as one Jason Schwartzman.

My brother attended college in Austin, at the prestigious University of Texas campus. (I'm only saying nice things about him because I feel sorry for him for having to live in such a liberal, drug fueled culture without the benefit of a city as large and diverse as Houston. Let's all pity him together, guys.) Anyways when I was young and restless and in high school I'd go visit him, and he told me about this place called the Alamo Drafthouse where you could eat food while watching your movie, and a friend of a friend saw Quentin Tarantino do cocaine off of one of the tables. I didn't even know what Quentin Tarantino looked like, and at the time I was living in Waco and was therefore blown (no pun intended) away by the big city antics of Austin. (It's OK to laugh guys, I've grown much since moving to Houston and now laugh in the face of Austin-ites.) Anyways so I went to visit him once and he offered to take me to the Alamo Drafthouse, after much hype, only to discover that all of the showings for that evening had been sold out. On another trip we went again, only to discover that it was closed for renovations. When it reopened, I went for a third attempt, only to find that it had been struck by lightening and was closed for the day. That's correct, guys: Austin does not, in fact, have an actual Alamo Drafthouse, but only a shell of a building that they have erected to impress out of town guests and provide some sense of comfort to the poor hippies who toil in this desolate city. We Houston-ites are so, so fortunate to not have to display such trickery, and have, in fact, several real live Alamo Drafthouses in our city. +82

Here's what was really cool about the grand opening: Jason Schwartzman came to talk about himself, and then afterwards they showed the movie Rushmore. If you guys haven't seen this movie you really should, if only because then the next time you're driving past St. John's and Lamar on Westheimer you can look at them and say, hey, look at that, those places are in a movie! This is pretty exciting as I am very seduced by the limelight, hence the fact that I have this wildly popular blog about my own personal arbitrary criticisms. +13 Plus as you probably know not very many movies have been filmed in Houston and it fills me with a great sense of city pride to see us on the silver screen. Because of this desire I'm writing a television series called Pizza Hit, about a girl who works in a pizza restaurant, which you should know is in no way based on my own extensive experience in the pizza industry because I'm way too cool for anything as mundane as that, heh heh heh. Anyways it was really cool to see this famous person so close to me, society columns should know that he arrived with a backpack and I will report that he was, in fact, double strapping. Take that, my father - famous people double strap their backpacks.

In other news about the grand opening, after spending the entire day in my cost controls class with little chance for lunch, by the time my boyfriend arrived at Alamo Drafthouse, I at least was quite famished. Seduced by anything with the words "fried pickle" in the item name, I recklessly ordered appetizers and entrees and chocolate shakes, and after this food frenzy like most college students I began to fear the total on the bill that was slowly winging it's way to my seat. But guess what, guys! They were having this thing called "training days" and because their employees were all new, everybody's food was 50% off, regardless of whether or not something got screwed up! A whole 50% off! +1890 There's nothing I love more than unexpected discounts. Especially one as large as that! My only regret is that I did not order more food!!!

Anyways check out whichever Alamo Drafthouse is closest to your home and then be filled with Houston style pride, even if you don't live in Houston, even if you accidentally got lost and live in Austin, because we're a great city and everybody loves us.

Cedar Creek Cafe

Here's a fun fact guys! This is my 100th blog post! If we were in kindergarten we'd celebrate this by throwing a 100 themed party, but instead I think I'm going to join a gym. +12 (That wasn't an arbitrary approval number guys, that was the number of pounds I've gained since starting this blog.)  (Just so you know I came up with this particular joke after my third blog post and have been waiting all this time to use it, so you better freaking laugh.)

I'll just go right out and say it: I think Cedar Creek is a little bit tacky. It's possible that the only reason I think this is because my friend Scott, who some of you may remember from several of my 99 other blog posts, loves it so much. As you may remember I've had a rather begrudging relationship with him and his restaurant choices; it's not that I think he's a redneck it's just that he's from Bastrop and said about Cedar Creek, quote, "It probably has the best atmosphere of any restaurant in Houston. Probably in all of Texas." -32 It's not that I think it has a bad atmosphere, it's just I don't think that atmosphere is created by putting beer signs on the wall. I get that Scott feels this way, he has pasted an enormous cardboard cutout of a beer bottle in the dining nook of our shared apartment. I don't enjoy sitting at picnic tables because no matter how the surface actually is, I always perceive them as being wet and sticky. I think that restaurants should have proper lighting on the inside. If there isn't proper wattage above my food, I assume that it's somehow doctored, like with poison, or hidden green beans.

That's the only bad thing I'm going to say about Cedar Creek. There's a large shipping crate in their outdoor seating area; I could come up with no other reason for it to be there than to serve as a hiding space for the bodies of bloggers who give negative reviews. Let's proceed to the rest of this review, a glowing endorsement:

Here's what's good atmosphere at Cedar Creek: on the ice machine, there is a picture of Ice Cube. On the tea dispenser? A photo of Ice T! This is very funny and witty, though I'll be honest, I'm only familiar with Ice T from his work in Law & Order SVU. +21 I don't want you to think I normally watch Law & Order, it's definitely my least favorite crime drama on air. Buuuut, there are only so many episodes of CSI and Castle, and my obvious favorite crime drama, Major Crimes, the Closer spin-off which has managed to achieve what we all thought was impossible - being as good as the Closer- is currently in between seasons. Sometimes I have to compromise my beliefs and watch crappy crime dramas. Personally, I think the best part of the show is Detective Stabler, who I happen to have a bit of a crush on, please don't tell my boyfriend.

Here's what else I like about Cedar Creek: there's an actual creek running alongside, and living inside said creek, there are little minnows!!! Little bitty minnows! +47 So I just bought this huge aquarium for my bedroom, it's 29 gallons, I haven't checked my lease to see if this is allowed so maybe you shouldn't talk to my landlord, either. Anyway so I went to Petco and I bought some fish, I have two angelfish, named Hamilton and Franklin, and a guaramo, named Christina, and two sharks, Sally and Patrick. Sally's really mean and she's starting to get super fat; she and Patrick are the highlight of my tank. At least they were. I mean what's cooler than having sharks that live in your bedroom? The only thing is Sally started to look kind of sickly so I looked her breed up on the Internet to see what I could do to help her out. Big mistake guys, I should have just let her starve to death without an adequate supply of leafy green vegetables, because guess what I learned! Red-tailed sharks are actually part of the carp family, and are also called "Redtail Sharkminnows." Minnows? You've got to be kidding me!! My sharks that I so lovingly plucked from their Petco aquariums, fed shredded cabbage, and bought catfish pellets for? They're nothing more than the minnows that live in the creek by Cedar Creek!

Obviously after I discovered this I sunk into a deep depression. I didn't get out of bed for hours, I just laid there sluggishly, my eyes glued to the tank, my vision blurred by tears. There was no more point to my life. All I'd wanted was to one day become a Bond villain, to be able to hang a British MI6 by his toes above my darlings, Sally and Patrick, only to have him escape at the last moment and save the world. How can I do that with a pair of carps?

In the end, it was their very weakness that made me love them more. Maybe they will never terrorize a major world power,  but that just means they need me, to feed them and protect them. They rely on me to love them and stare at them through the glass of their tank. How could I deny them of this, my mother's love?

It really turned my attitude around. I love my fish, and I love Cedar Creek, because they have little bitty Sallys and Patricks of their own. Thanks Cedar Creek, and please don't put me in your bad blogger shipping crate. :)

Uchi

So I went to Uchi last Wednesday night. It was a bit of a culture shock for me, guys; look I normally go to places where nobody will look me askance if I'm wearing sweatpants as even wearing regular blue jeans sometimes is too dressy for me. I'm what some people could refer to as "fashionally lazy". For the record nobody has ever referred to me as that as I just invented the term. Anywho so I was wearing a dress and it was really bizarre to be hanging out with real adults who go to real restaurants and talk about important topics (I'm not quite sure what these are yet.) It was pretty surreal for me because I've been slaving away at the lower rungs of the restaurant ladder here in Houston for three years now, and walking through Uchi I recognized a good many people as patrons of restaurants I'd worked at. That's pretty weird, guys, to see people on a peer to peer basis that normally you are, in a way, working for. +12 for equality, I suppose.

The only problem is of course that I always struggle to comport myself as an adult. I mean I have everything in my favor, guys: my mother is an etiquette teacher; I wear glasses, which automatically makes me excel in social situations; being 22 years old, I am actually an adult. Eating dinner with a group of my friends normally would exempt me from the world around me - they, being on the same level as me, would never judge me - but Uchi sets out little tasks for you to accomplish in order to eat your meal.

Task 1: when you sit down, the waiter comes and brings you a warm towel. This has only happened to me once, when Canada Air bumped myself and my traveling companions onto a later flight and as an apology upgraded us to First Class. I didn't know what to do with the towel then and I certainly didn't Google it later, assuming I'd never again fly First Class. I had no idea what to do with the towel. For the benefit of you, my viewing public, I went ahead and bit the bullet and asked the waiter - as I suppose I should have inferred, it's simply for cleaning off your hands. I mean come on guys, I should have figured that out, obviously they weren't expecting us to give ourselves sponge baths at the dinner table.

Task 2: If you just order water at this restaurant, which I always do, obviously, as a health conscious young lady (hahahahaha yeah right +2 for myself), they bring you out the tiniest cup imaginable and then a jar of water for which to serve yourself for the duration of your meal. I think this cup is normally for serving Sake in, obviously as Sake is the third grossest beverage in the world (after Guinness and Tab soda) it's important to limit the serving size. This means that either you have to remain dehydrated for the duration of your meal or you have to be constantly reaching into common areas, grasping the community jar, and refilling your own glass between sips. I'm not the most steady individual guys there's a lot of chance there for a person to spill a quart of water all over everyone's sushi, watch out for this risk when you eat here.

Task 3: Look guys here's the other thing, I've never really quite mastered sharing plates with people. I think this is a cultural thing, I really do, and my family is just not the kind that shares food at restaurants. I mean like a bite, I get, but when I order something it's because I've run a cost benefit analysis on everything on the menu, taking into account 1. how much I've enjoyed this or similar things in the past 2. would I prefer to eat this over everything else on the menu 3. does the price compare to how much I'd wanted to spend this evening 4. is there enough of a novelty to this food that I couldn't easily create this in my own kitchen (number 4 obviously counts the least because, as a lazy person, I'm pretty unlikely to recreate anything that can't easily be made by opening a can). There's a lot that goes into what I order at a restaurant and to be expected to immediately turn around and share it with everyone... while it's something I can handle, it's just not a social task I'm often expected to accomplish and I just want you guys to know, Uchi expects you to accomplish it.

I hope these instructions are helpful to any other fake adults out there who are thinking about going to Uchi and need some tips; especially with Valentine's Day coming up this Thursday. I hope you ladies take this as an instruction manual to keep your guys on lock and thinking that we are much more poised and graceful than them, it's a struggle that we all have to keep up with for the good of the gender.

D'Amico's

This past week was pretty good for me. Just a recap on my life, I'm a college student and I live with two roommates, and I spent most of my time hanging out in my underwear in my apartment complaining about what I'm going to do when I graduate in three or so months. It's a pretty hard life but I don't want you to think there aren't any bright spots, and this week there were actually two: my parents and Scott's parents both came into town. Maybe you guys don't know but when you're a college student the only thing better than your own parents coming into town is the parents of someone whom you are very close to; either way you're going to get a free, hot meal at a restaurant you normally wouldn't go to, but when your friends' parents come in, you don't even have the added stress of making sure the apartment's clean. My own parents I took to the newly redesigned Hooter's on Kirby, but Scott's parents took us to D'Amico's, a nice little Italian restaurant in West U.

Here's my main criticism guys. So there are these shelves lined up at the entrance of the restaurant, lined with some of the ingredients they use in their recipes. It's kind of cute and homey and rustic, and then you look closer and there is a can of pizza sauce. These jokers are using canned pizza sauce??? Are you kidding me?? Look I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on crappy pizza chains, but I'm willing to bet that even Pizza Hut doesn't use pizza sauce out of a can. And if they do, it's at least a proprietary brand, rather than something that looks like it can be grabbed at the grocery store when you're in a hurry and can't be bothered to spend five minutes making your own! That's how long it takes to make pizza sauce, guys. Ten minutes. Look I know I have a bit more experience than the rest of you guys in working in pizza restaurants, but I'm willing to bet that there is not a single one of you out there who couldn't make something better. -14 And then to advertise it! To everyone! To just leave that can out there for everyone to see! I was ashamed to be in the same restaurant as my fake parents, someone like me taking them somewhere like that.

But it's not all bad guys come on, just don't order the pizza. Here's what I like: when Scott ordered a Sprite, they brought him a cup of ice and a can of soda. I don't know, it's kind of silly I guess not to offer free refills on soda in this day and age, especially since it's usually so much more cost effective to have soda syrup rather than soda cans, but I think it's kind of sweet. I think I like it in a can better just because whenever someone refills my glass I feel obligated to drink it, but whenever I drink too much soda, I get a headache. This way nobody can refill your Sprite when you're in the bathroom. +23 The only thing I'm worried about is what if they're tagging into the socialist mindset in NYC where they are putting limits on how much soda you can drink! What if this is some kind of regulation! I hate being regulated and even more than that I hate being regulated without my knowledge. When I was in high school I didn't even know that we had blockers on the computers for a long time because I was just hanging out, being a good kid, getting shit done, taking names, etc. Then one day I thought I'd play some tetris and turns out everything you want to do as a kid is banned, and I didn't even know for years, and I now I have to live with the pain of knowing that there were boundaries to test and I left them untested. I mean how do you think that makes me feel about myself! I had to burn my rebel flag and now when I grow up all I can aspire to be is an accountant, and not even the dirty, swindling kind. -8 to me.

There was another thing I liked. To differentiate between the boys and the girls washrooms they had portraits on the doors, a man on the men's door, the Mona Lisa on the women's door. I think it's silly because according to some art historians, the Mona Lisa is a portrait of Leonardo di Vinci AS A WOMAN. It's a picture of a man disguised as a woman on the stall of the girls room! So to me it sounds like there are two men's rooms at D'Amico's, or maybe you can use it if you're transgendered, but for a girl like me? There's nothing. You have to pee in the streets like an animal. +10 Take that women, that'll teach you to seek equal rights. Just to let all the ladies out there know, though, the bathrooms are onesies so as long as you can sneak in there without anybody seeing you you're home free to pee in privacy if you want to be a dirty liar about it (which I did, because I test boundaries, like a boss.)

If you're the parent of a close friend of mine, please feel free to email me at arbitrarycriticism@live.com and I'll put you on the schedule for taking me out for a hot meal.