I spent a fun Christmas Eve with wonderful friends yesterday. A little before 6 my friends Jessica, Josh, Jennifer, Katie Mac and I made the trek over to Texas de Brazil for Christmas Eve dinner.
TdB is not only known for its meats, but is also known for having the best salad bar in town. Here’s a look at my plate:
Okay… I’m going to stop right here for a minute. I feel that it is important to give one’s self a performance evaluation from time to time, to assess strengths and weaknesses. That is the path to continued improvement. Let’s have a look at the strengths and weaknesses from my trip to the salad bar.
STRENGTH: You’ll notice that I didn’t bring any actual salad back from my trip to the salad bar. Salad takes up valuable space on a plate that could be reserved for other items. I was a good steward of my plate’s real estate by passing the salad.
STRENGTH: Although I didn’t get salad, I did load up on one of the items that was supposed to be a topping for the salad: bacon. Look at all that delicious bacon on my plate. Well done, me.
STRENGTH: I got a cup of lobster bisque. My rule is “dip everything in lobster bisque.” Bacon, steak, cheese, you name it.
STRENGTH: Cheese. Those two mozzarella balls and that slice of provolone were welcome additions to my plate.
WEAKNESS: I wasted space on my plate on items that could have made room for more bacon. If I wanted a California roll I should have gone to South Main Sushi. And those haricots verts (green beans), while tasty indeed, are not as tasty as bacon. I’ll give the pepperoncini pepper a pass because I like spicy food and my troll likes foods that are the same color as her hair. But really, this plate should have been about 50% covered in bacon.
WEAKNESS: I only got one bowl of lobster bisque. I should have got two and maybe even three. I’ll say it once again – when you’re in an all-you-can-eat dining setting you can’t be concerned with what other people think of you. We had a table for 8 but a couple of people weren’t feeling well so we only had 5. I would have had plenty of room to spread out.
I was going to give myself a B- for my salad bar effort, but what the heck, it is Christmas, I’ll curve it up to a B. This was not a bad plate at all. However, if I am to one day become the LeBron James of the Texas de Brazil salad bar, I have got to work relentlessly on correcting those weaknesses.
Before we move on, while we’re on the subject of performance evaluations, here’s a guide on how to give your cats their annual performance review.
Once you’re done with your salad bar plate, you get a fresh plate for meat, and a button, green on one side, red on the other.
Gauchos (servers) come around and offer you cuts of various meats. A green button tells them, “Yes, I want meat.” A red button tells them, “No thanks, I’m good for now.”
I didn’t get photos of all of my meats – a plate full of medium-rare cuts can be kind of gross to look at – but here’s one I took.
Pictured here are a sausage, a filet, and a bacon-wrapped jalapeno pepper. Jessica told us the jalapenos are the must-get item carried around by the gauchos, and I can’t disagree. I also had a bacon-wrapped filet, garlic sirloin, the house cut Picanha, and a lamb chop. I got full before the flank steak came around, but I’ll share a tip a friend gave me yesterday: Ask for a side of goat cheese from the kitchen to eat with your flank steak. The two flavors are said to be amazing together.
Garlic mashed potatoes are served to every table as a side. There are sides of fried bananas too.
Christmas Eve dinner at Texas de Brazil comes with complimentary dessert, and after we finished our meat our server brought the tray around. My troll and I decided we wanted the Bananas Foster cake.
A good dinner and good friends is a Christmas Eve well spent. I enjoyed the company.
On to the news…
Yesterday during the day, I decided to observe Christmas Eve as Jesus would if he were still on Earth today. In other words, I went to a bar for some day drinking.
So about 10:45 I was sitting at Bardog, a PBR parked in front of me, when my phone rang. “Who calls anyone any more?” I thought. We live in the age of text messages, Facebook Messenger, and Snapchat. Nevertheless, I answered.
“Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul!” said two very excited male voices talking over each other. After a couple of seconds I recognized the voices as my friends Rahul and Tony.
“Slow down, guys, I can’t hear what you’re saying when both of you talk at once. One of you talk. What’s going on?” I replied.
“We need your help! Christmas comes on the 30th this year,” said one of them.
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “Christmas always falls on the 25th of December.”
“For us, Christmas comes on the 30th,” said Rahul and Tony. “Go look on Facebook.”
I pulled up my Facebook app and found that Rizzo’s had just added a new event on Sunday, December 30 at 8 PM: Drag & Dinner. Goldie D and Friends will put on a show while you enjoy a plate of deliciousness from Chef Michael Patrick. Goldie & friends performed last December at Rizzo’s and it was said to be quite the show. Cost is $30 and you must call 901-304-6985.
“Paul, you’re friends with the chef there, right?” said Rahul and Tony anxiously. “Do you think you can get us front row seats?”
“Yeah I’ll get right on that,” I told them, and hung up.
Here are Downtown bar opening times today that I’m aware of.
- Max’s Sports Bar: “normal hours” which would be 4 PM but I hear they might open a bit earlier than that
- Bardog Tavern: 5 PM
- Local: 5 PM
- Flying Saucer: 5 PM
- Blind Bear: 6 PM
- Dirty Crow Inn: 6 PM
- Silly Goose: 7 PM
- Closed today: Brass Door, The Vault, Green Beetle, Huey’s
Glad to hear that arrests have been made following multiple thefts in Harbor Town.
Things you can’t unsee:
Too flattering? pic.twitter.com/1qxj6o6IB5
— Claude Taylor (@TrueFactsStated) December 24, 2018
Surfing Twitter last night, I saw a post about doggos. Finally it all made sense to me: Puppies grow up to be dogs. Puppers grow up to be doggos.
Merry Christmas to all my readers. Back tomorrow with more news.