Just a quick barbecue-related anecdote from the holidays.
I had the fun of traveling to cover the Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas in Houston and the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio on the last weekend of 2012. I intended to make this a little tour of Texas and enjoy some of the dining features those towns have to offer. Alas, in the process of claiming press credentials, making sure I arrived at press boxes on time and filing stories late at night, I didn't have as much time for restaurant adventures as I thought (unless you count Taco Cabana and room service).
On Thursday afternoon and evening I watched a pair of competitions. One on television, the other live. One a dramatic and ultimately heart-breaking athletic battle on the grandest possible stage for the two competing teams; the other an informal challenge between baristas to see who could draw the pretties pictures in lattes as judged by the gut reactions of three randomly chosen spectators.
Since my two main pursuits are WacoFork and sports, the afternoon and evening made for an interesting dichotomy?
Can I just be frank for a minute here? Today feels like the most pointless day of the entire year to blog about restaurants.
I'm sure everyone had at least one big, indulgent, starch-intensive Thanksgiving Dinner and I'm well aware that at least some of you in WacoFork land had as many as three. Personally, I had one and a couple of rounds of leftovers, which I enjoy as much as the dinner itself. And then I'm also guessing most of you enjoyed a nice restaurant meal on Friday evening after a day of Black Friday shopping or high school football watching.
I took a multi-purpose drive out to Cafe Homestead at lunch today. It's becoming a holiday tradition for me to bring a pie home to my family for Thanksgiving (and probably Christmas too), of course I had lunch and found out the latest on the annual Homestead Fair.
Cafe manager Derek Varejcka said one new feature of the Homestead Fair will be the increased presence of videos and literature that describe and illustrate Homestead living.
I have a huge tip for anyone who's even remotely involved with preparing Thanksgiving Dinner this week. Make a swim through Crav at Gourmet Gallery.
I could leave it at that and let you figure out why I suggested it once you get there, dear reader. But I won't stop there. I'm going to give you reasons on several different levels.
I've noticed recently that Common Grounds, already one of Baylor's most popular hangouts, seems to be gaining popularity as a gathering place. For one thing, I can think of multiple occasions when the backyard was somewhere between delightfully, jovially semi-crowded to absolutely shoulder-to-shoulder packed.
I went to see Mutemath at CG in October, but didn't arrive early enough to have any chance of seeing the stage it was so jammed with concert goers. A similarly large crowd was on hand on a couple of other occasions when I happened by the weekly event, Vertical, when some friends of mine were providing the music. The Sunday after Baylor homecoming, I stopped in to do some reading on a beautiful afternoon and found the backyard full of folks to the extent that I assumed there must be some event happpening. As it turned out, it was just friends winding down the homecoming weekend and I was lucky enough to find some of my own buddies to pass a pleasant hour.
I'm not going to try to influence your decision or attempt to make you see things my way today. Even if I had a definitive answer to the question, I know that you have already made up your mind.
So let's just all follow our consciences.
As I sat in my small airplane seat high above the American Midwest on Monday, all I could think about was the potential of eating a Whataburger for dinner.
So much so that I waived off the cheese pizza offered me by the friendly flight attendant. Not that I hate airplane food. At the very least, the process of carefully eating the packaged meal is something to do on a long international flight like the one that brought me around Hurricane Sandy and safely back to Texas from the UK yesterday.
I'm working on new restaurant news, but for the first time in a while I've hit a bit of a wall when it comes to recon. It happens I suppose.
So in place of restaurant news today, I thought I would take a quick look at this year so far and all the newness that has come our way. And just to make the process a little more fun, I propose that you, WacoFork reader, comment with your top 5 list of new restaurants to hit Waco so far this year.
What's the proper way to celebrate Columbus Day? Is not getting mail or going to the bank enough? Or is there a certain type of food a person should eat?
I considered Italian food and then perhaps Indian food, but ultimately skipped the whole thing and made good on a couple of WacoFork prizes.
