Today's photo of the Amelia's/Sironia chicken salad sandwich and spinach salad comes from local photographer/WacoFork friend Katie Burch.
During the course of creating this WacoFork thing, we've been thrilled by the way people want to participate with us. Burch and I, who see each other at the coffee shop and the pub pretty often, spoke about food pictures. I encouraged her to snap photos and send them to me and I would use them in blogs.
And that's how I ended up lunching at Amelia's/Sironia for the first time today.
Whether Burch knew it or not, her photo choice pushed me into a new realm of Waco restaurants. While I try to keep up an image as a sophisticated and open-minded restaurant blogger, the truth is that I'm more of a Mexican food and barbecue junkie. If a restaurant is located in a place where mostly ladies shop, chances are pretty good I haven't eaten there, or at least I don't eat there too often.
I'm not bragging about this. It's just the way it is.
Anyway, I sat down for lunch at Amelia's/Sironia for the first time with another photographer/friend, Carole Kiphen. Full disclosure, I enticed Kiphen to have lunch with me by texting "I need to eat lunch at Amelia's. Will you go with me so I don't feel so out of place? I'll buy." It worked.
Not only did she join me, she did me a solid by ordering the chicken salad sandwich, spinach salad and cream of asparagus soup combination, thus freeing me up to eat a bacon cheeseburger.
That leads me to the most pleasant surprise. The Amelia's/Sironia bacon cheeseburger hit the target. I'm struggling to write about it without using emphatic swear words in order to communicate how good it was. I'm telling you, gentlemen, recommend to your wife or girlfriend going to Amelia's/Sironia for lunch. She'll think you are deferring to her desires, so you'll earn valuable credibility. And then you can chomp down on a tasty burger. Double win.
Before choosing the bacon cheeseburger, I considered a sandwich-and-soup combination. I hesitated as the day's soup was cream of asparagus. In fact, I admitted to our server, Anna Beth, that cream of asparagus didn't light up my imagination. She said it was actually quite good and offered to bring us tasters, which we accepted, of course.
It was better than anything with the word asparagus in the title should be. Still, I passed, but Kiphen's lunch included a cup of soup and I stole a few spoonfuls.
So thanks to Burch and Kiphen for helping me expand my restaurant horizons. And thanks to Amelia's/Sironia for serving me a manly lunch.
