Maggiano's

Look I went to Maggiano’s the first time for Valentine’s day and don’t get me wrong, it was good. For one thing I love the idea of Valentine’s Day, as it is a holiday solely dedicated towards telling your girlfriend how much you like her. Handholding, forehead kissing, check paying... all of the reasons we date boys in the first place, mixed in with a near constant stream of compliments. I love it. Anywhere that I could have gone, I would have loved, but I went to Maggiano’s.

Still, I had no idea how awesome it could be until I went back a second time, for my boyfriend’s birthday, with his entire family. We ordered off of the family menu, and I am about to tell you guys about the greatest deal in the history of restaurants. When you order off the family menu, guys and gals, you pay individually for each family member who joins in, one solid price. For that price you get to pick out a set amount of appetizers, entrees, and desserts, based on how much you are charged. Once make your choices, you can eat until you explode. Until you explode!! They will continue bringing you out platter after platter after platter, until you either tell them to stop or drop dead of cholesterol poisoning in your seat. Not to mention, all you have to say is, yes I’d like another plate, and then not touch it, and then they’ll come by a few minutes later and they’ll wrap it up and you can take it home. +82 You can eat for years off of your leftovers. I’m still full.

At the Maggiano’s in Houston, there are wooden floors around each of the tables as I think is properly hygienic in a restaurant (+3) but all of the walkways have been covered with a thin strip of carpet, so you’re walking on something classy (+8) This really cracks me up because to be honest I’ve never thought to myself, “wow, this restaurant looks really clean and hygienic, but I just wish they’d classed the place up with a bit of carpet. If only that were possible!” Never. I’ve never thought that. But Maggiano’s restaurant did, and that’s why they’re ranked number 1 Italian restaurant that I’ve ever eaten at. And I’ve even eaten at Italian restaurants, in Italy. Let me tell you guys, you don’t get free refills on all your entrees there, that’s for sure.

What I don’t like is that they have valet parking. Look guys I think valet parking is kind of the dumbest thing ever. I hate to come out so strongly against it because one of my roommates is a valet parker, but I hate it. Especially places where there’s a regular parking lot and then you can also give your keys to the guy to park in the regular parking lot. Why would I ever do that? Why wouldn’t I just park my own car? It just seems really silly to me to pay $7 or 8 or 9 to some dude just to save half a minute of walking through the parking lot. -9 There’s a lot of better things I could be doing with that money, like for instance tipping my waiter. Shouldn’t that money be redirected into tipping my waiter? I think everyone at Maggiano’s should have a think about that.

Here’s the other thing I don’t like: the mints they have there. For one thing they sit at the hostess stand so you only see them when you’re seated at your table, not when you leave, so you have to plan ahead if you want one. I hate having to plan ahead, it’s #theworst. -13 Plus, you open up the package and inside it looks like there’s a white wedding mint. I love wedding mints. (Well I used to one time I went to this bar in Houston - F Bar – there’s this really cute bartender there named Antonio who mixes up your cocktails shirtless, I definitely recommend everyone shows up. Anyways there were all these wedding mints and no straight guys so it was pretty obvious what I was going to glom onto, right? So I had Antonio mix me up just one cocktail because I was driving and then I ate approximately 50 of those stupid little mints and it reacted poorly with the Bloody Mary I’d foolishly inserted in my body and I ended up throwing up that night anyway. Just goes to show you should never DD, get some other fool to do that.) Anyways. So it looks like you’re going to get either a good or bad surprise depending on what Catherine you are, pre-F Bar Catherine or post-F Bar Catherine, and then you bite into it in order to create larger surface area reacting with your saliva in order to dissolve it faster, only to discover that in the inside it is not a mint. In the inside it is a disgusting ball of reject chocolate, and your afternoon and your life are both ruined. Thanks a lot, Maggiano’s.

Feast

Like all trendy cool people, I wanted to make sure to get to Feast before they closed for good. My main goal in this was to be able to bring it up in conversations with people who had never been there - "Oh, remember the good old days when Feast was still a restaurant? Man, I had so many shenanigan there that one time I went. Oh, you didn't go? Sucks to be you..." I've been practicing my condescending stare in the mirror all morning instead of doing something productive like working on a career or beating the new Nancy Drew computer game I just installed on my computer.

The best part about Feast is that you need a reservation to get in there. Well I'm not sure if you NEED a reservation. But I got one anyway! This is something I've actually never done before. I recently watched Lena Dunham's hit movie Tiny Furniture and in it she works as a phone girl taking reservations; this made me feel like it was something I could do. If it's Lena Dunham on the other side of the phone, I told myself, answering this phone to give dramatic pause between talking to the handsome chef, then I should be able to handle the social interaction of a several second phone call between myself and a stranger. This assumption is strengthened by the fact that I also am a phone girl at a restaurant and routinely have to have several second phone calls with strangers over fifty times a night. However, at the last minute I choked. For one thing it took me more than one scroll in the internet to find the phone number to Feast, which meant that I had time to be distracted by cute pictures of cats. (Just to let you know I've been distracted in the middle of this post six times already) By the time I found the phone number, I'd already lost confidence. After all, I'd managed to be awake for three hours already without having to talk to a single person. What if that day was the day I broke a world record for longest time spent living in society without talking to a person? It's true that I was planning on going to Feast that night with a date, but Thomas would understand if I didn't talk to him all evening, if it was, you know, for fame and fortune. I'd mention him in my acceptance speech, if I ever spoke again to give one. So I went to Open Table and made the reservation there, and now I'm convinced that Open Table was only invented so that socially handicapped people like me also can eat at nice restaurants +87

Let's talk about brussel sprouts for a second here. Feast has excellent brussel sprouts, I'd like to inform everyone. I'd say third best in Houston after Uchi and then that place in Oak Forest called Plonk! stay tuned for a review next week. Since when were brussel sprouts so trendy! I don't know but they've always been one of my favorite vegetables. I've come a long way since when my mother made brussel sprouts dressed with nothing but lemon juice and butter, I now have several very complicated recipes for brussel sprouts all involving bacon or bacon grease. Anyways remember how people always used to hate brussel sprouts even though they were secretly delicious this whole time? I just want to say that I'm proud of our local area restaurants for bringing this misunderstood vegetable to the table. +13 Though come on brussel sprouts you haven't made it easy for everyone by masquerading as a tiny cabbage which I think we can all agree is the most disgusting vegetable on the planet even my fish won't eat cabbage and they'll eat garbage. (Don't worry I never fed my fish garbage before)

There is one thing I didn't like about Feast. They have those little bowls of salt on the table and you're supposed to use a tiny little spoon to put salt on your food! I think those bowls are so disgusting! Like what if someone went to the bathroom and they didn't wash their hands and then they picked up their water glass and the germs got onto the drink and then they toasted with their water glass directly above the salt bowl and then the condensation from the drink trickled at that exact moment into the tiny little salt bowl? Bam all of a sudden there's germs in your salt! ALSO there's more to my hating here, what's up with that tiny little spoon? There's no way that's as efficient for salt use as a shaker with tiny holes. What if you have Parkinson's disease? All your salt is going to get clumped into very few places and then some of your food is way way way too salty and then the rest of your food isn't salty at all but you don't dare try again because then all your food will be too salty and also it will all be covered in germs. -21 I think it's all part of one of those plans that I hear about where the chef doesn't want you to use salt because they perfectly salted the food already. Look I'll agree the food was perfectly salted, nobody here at Arbitrary Criticism (it's just me guys) is going to argue with you on that. What's more if this is the plan I like it a lot better than just not having salt on the table, now I at least feel like I didn't put salt on because I decided not to, not because I was forbidden to by some guy I never even met before. +3 This is America guys c'mon.