Wednesday update

The Redbirds are back in town today, playing Round Rock at 6:35. This is a huge homestand and I will have more to say about individual promotions as the days go on, but here are a few of the highlights:

  • Two All-You-Can-Eat Thursdays where a specialty ticket includes a buffet 6-8 PM. Mac & cheese bar April 26, and a soft taco bar May 3.
  • Silky O’ Sullivan’s Irish Heritage Night Friday, April 27
  • Patrick Wisdom Home Run Statue giveaway and post-game fireworks Saturday, April 28
  • Bark in the Park for Sunday, April 29 day game where you can bring your dog. The specialty ticket includes a rope frisbee.
  • All-Inclusive Night Tuesday, May 2. All club level, dugout, and field box seats are $20 that night and include free hot dogs, hamburgers and fries, chips and cheese, popcorn, and small fountain sodas.

The Brass Door has a new website with an interactive event calendar. Note that weeks on the calendar are Monday-Sunday rather than the more widely seen (in the U.S.) Sunday-Saturday.

Max’s Sports Bar has announced that Crawfish Saturday will be back this Saturday, April 28. $9 for 1 pound or $12 for 2 pounds of crawfish,. The crawfish comes with sides of corn, taters, sausage and mushrooms. The bar opens at 11, with the first crawfish coming off a little after noon. I have had these and they are far better than what is served at most of the crawfish festivals around town.

Felicia Suzanne Restaurant will be closed Friday dinner for a public event. They will, however, be open for their 25 cent Friday martini lunch.

Pro wrestling fans: You can dress like the Nature Boy. There’s now a Ric Flair signature suit collection.

Beale Street Wine Race is this Sunday. Teams from local bars and restaurants will compete in an opening parade, a beauty pageant called Queen of the Vine, a grape stomp, and a relay carrying trays of wine bottles. This is a day of debauchery and a lot of fun to watch. The first event, the parade, starts at 1 PM. Needless to say, I will be there. It will be a bit weird though because none of my favorite hangouts are competing this year. Who am I going to root for? One thing’s for sure – I am staying away from the Call-a-Cabs at Wet Willie’s.

I’ll pre-game for Wine Race at Blind Bear. Taking a week off from B-RAD’s bar at Pontotoc after Terrible Tony refused to maintain even a minimum level of decent human behavior last Sunday.

As for Saturday, that will be an unusual day for me as well. The Moody Ques are competing at Southaven Springfest, and while I don’t have to be there, I kind of want to. So I’m going to drive on a Saturday! I’ll probably hit the Memphis Farmers Market for the first time this year, then head down to Southaven before noon when they start charging to get in the festival. I will stay out of our booth until 2:30 though, because our cooks have turn-in and hopefully MBN Finals and I don’t want to get in their way. I’ll check out the carnival during that time. After 2:30 I’ll grab some BBQ in our booth (hope there’s some more of that white Alabama BBQ sauce) and stick around for the awards ceremony at 5:15 in case I need to take photos of our cooks on stage receiving trophies.

Breakfast for lunch!

Yesterday, I walked across Kirby Parkway to give City East Bagel and Grille a try. They serve breakfast and lunch from 7 AM to 2 PM, and I decided to have one of their breakfast skillets. I got the Farmer’s Skillet – Sausage, potatoes, mushrooms, onions, and green peppers topped with two eggs prepared your way and cheese. It comes with a choice of bagel or toast on the side.

I got my eggs scrambled and ordered a bagel. I assumed it would be a plain bagel, but they had over a dozen different varieties – Banana Nut – Blueberry – Chocolate Swirl – Cinnamon Raisin – Cinnamon Sugar – Cranberry – Everything – Garlic – Jalapeno Cheddar – Onion – Plain – Poppy – Salt – Sesame – Sun Dried Tomato – Top Seeded – Wheat – and told me I could choose whichever one I wanted. I got an Everything bagel. It came with butter and cream cheese, and there was strawberry and grape jelly on every table as well.

All in all, a good, filling meal when I’m in the mood for breakfast at lunch. They have other meat scrambles as well, including corned beef, ham, New York pastrami, Santa Fe diced chicken, and bacon. I will be trying some of those for sure in the future.

However, I failed to read the menu all the way through, and therefore did not notice they have daily lunch specials. A man at a table near me got a chicken pot pie, and if I had known that was a special, I might have got that instead of my Farmer’s Scramble. Neat thing about the lunch specials and also the veggie plates: They come with the Dessert of the Day.

Service was friendly and good and I liked the upscale diner vibe. I will return to City East sometime soon.

On the way back I passed First Tennessee, and stopped at their drive-up ATM even though I was on foot. Is that weird? I probably wouldn’t have waited in line if there were one or more cars waiting to use the ATM. They’d probably assume I was waiting to rob them! Nobody walks in Germantown.

That’ll do it for now. Back tomorrow.