I started Sunday with brunch at McGuinness, where I had the pleasure of sitting next to Michael Patrick, executive chef at EP Delta Kitchen. He told me about some new things going on at his restaurant. First of all, he told me that crawfish boils on the patio (weather permitting) will return to EP’s this Tuesday, April 8. He also told me about some new menu items:
- Scallops with Chanterelle butter
- Shrimp stuffed with tasso ham, tossed in Louisiana hot sauce with 5 pepper jelly
- Louisiana Sunburst salad, with a cinnamon and tossed vinaigrette, with ingredients including mangoes and cranberries. Mike told me he’s going to put more of a focus on fresh salads, and is now getting fresh vegetables from Tyronza, Arkansas.
- Something called Creole Braciole. Mike described this to me in detail but I couldn’t take good notes on it to save my life. Here’s a link to Wikipedia’s description of Braciole. Mike, if you want to type a sentence or two about this dish and e-mail it to me, I’ll edit this post.
After brunch it was time to head to the Flying Saucer. Sat in the window and played the Window Game for 6 1/2 hours. Here’s a pic of the Window Game scorecard:
The Window Game, for those of you who are new readers, involves keeping count of various categories passing the Saucer window. The nine standard categories are bums, police cars, FUMOT (F’d up modes of transportation), RUP (really ugly people), hooptys, sightings of Downtown homeless person Scratchy, left turns out of the center lane, cars going the wrong way up Second, and buses. As you can see, we add new categories as we go along. The major new category was “security patrol,” the new patrols the CCC hired to clean up the bum situation. And this scorecard proves they are doing a good job. In 6 1/2 hours I only counted 8 bums. Before the patrols, it would’ve been in the 25-30 range for bums.
There was another custom category, tube tops, for which I only counted 3. Come on, Memphis, we need to do better than that!
The faraway winner for the day was the hoopty category – counted 83 of them passing the Saucer window. Here is a fine example of that category:
Also counted two guys with popped collars (shirts with their collars turned up). Bicycle Bobby: “There are only two people who should turn their collar up – Elvis and Dracula. And both of them are dead.”
Beer report:
Previous total: $1,083.00
Beers 182, 183, and 184 by my count (Saucer count still in dispute):
Around the World flight $8.50
British flight $8.50
Spaten Optimator $5.00
Tip: $22.00 x ~30% = $7.00
Total: $29.00
Grand total: $1,112.00
Afterward I went to Calhoun’s to drink PBR and see Best Pool Partner Ever Lauren. Hung out there until about 11, then walked home. Calhoun’s had been doing specials for Cubs games, but Cardinals fans complained (and rightly so), so the bar is now doing $3 24 oz. Busch Light as a special during Cards games.
Tonight: Pint Nite. Also, I heard something about a basketball game on TV.
Restaurants/bars doing something special for tonight’s game, e-mail me and I’ll compile a list and post it at lunchtime or sometime later today.