Dining in Dallas.com

Inner Struggle Of The Gallus Domesticus

Tags: cartoon, funny

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Best Magic Ever!

I wish I could do this. Imagine the possibilities! =)

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Banana Leaf

The other day I went out to eat with a co-worker at Banana Leaf near Preston and Campbell. For those of you who’ve never been or heard of Banana Leaf, it’s a Malaysian Restaurant with hints of Thai added to their menu. Overall, it was a pretty good experience - the service was quick and courteous, the food tasted great, and the dessert was just…amazing. One thing that caught my attention, though, was their fond of mango. Every course had options with mango..Spicy Mango Salmon, Mango Chicken, Mango Slices with Sticky rice, they even served Mango Iced Tea, which incidentally, was very refreshing!

But onto my other half of the experience. So doing what I normally do when I order from a menu, I requested my dish to be prepared spicier than normal - only this time I specifically told the waitress to make it as spicy as they can possibly do (even if it meant jeopardizing the edibility of that dish). So initially I was a bit apprehensive as I waited for my dish to come out. Never before have I requested a restaurant to go all out on me, especially from a Malay/Thai place. So finally after what seemed like years, the food came out and from a distance I saw my dish colored coated with red. At first the smell was a bit pungent and threw me back a little bit but let’s just say after the first bite, my taste buds had not been satisfied of its unworthy challenger. That’s not to say, the dish wasn’t spicy at all - in fact, for the common man, it would’ve been pretty overbearing. But as for me, my quest in finding something that’s actually TOO spicy for me unfortunately continues.

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Hottest Hot Sauces Known To Man

There’s a certain person I know who has always boasted that no food or sauce is too spicy for him. Well, I wonder if he’s checked out this list of the hottest hot sauces known to man.

Before I read this page, I never knew that there was actually a unit of measure for hotness – the Scoville unit. Your typical jalapeno pepper is rated at between 2,500 – 8,000 Scoville units. The top two hot sauces listed on the page are rated at 16,000,000 (yes, that’s six zeroes) Scoville units. Would that melt your tongue off?

Apparently, the top few that are listed are not really meant to be consumed ($250 is a pretty hefty price tag, so they’re more of a collector’s item; plus I suppose you might die if you actually tried to eat it). But just scroll down a bit to say, #20, and you’ll see that you can still buy a bottle of “Magma” hot sauce, rated at a mild 1,000,000 Scoville units, for about $12.

I’m tempted to buy a bottle just to see what it’s like… and maybe offer some for my boastful friend to try.

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$100 Burger

There’s a fine dining place in Florida that has a $100 hamburger in their menu. Apparently there was a demand for burgers at this fine dining establishment and the chef didn’t hold anything back. The restaurant is called Old Homestead Steak House.. actually it’s a very exclusive venue located inside the Boca Raton Resort and Club where membership costs $40,000 and an additional annual fee of $3,600.

What caught my attention when I read this story was obviously the price. As I investigated further, I realized why it cost so much. The meat itself is made up of beef from 3 continents.. American prime beef, Japanese Kobe and Argentine cattle. Most Americans who know their steak can understand why prime beef would be pricy. Japanese Kobe beef is expensive not simply because it’s beef from overseas, but it’s a very pampered beef so to speak. I remember visiting Japan about 4 years ago and our tour guide mentioned something about Kobe beef. She said that they make Kobe beef with specially prepared cows. These cows were given special treatment. One of the things she mentioned was that the cow handlers would massage the cows on a daily basis. In doing so, it makes the meat tastier? I don’t know. Makes me wonder.. if I’m a wild animal.. I’d be really wary if I start getting preferential treatment over others of my kind.

In any event, I wonder if this will be a big thing here in Dallas. Maybe we already have a restaurant like this that serves ridiculously high class hamburgers. As Texans, I’d expect we’d embrace it wholeheartedly with steak knife in hand and belts unbuckled.

Tags: burger

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Jello Conquered!

I was wandering down an aisle at the grocery store a couple of weeks ago and saw some instant jello packs displayed. I have never made jello my entire life, and at the spur of the moment I grabbed a box and thought, “how hard can this be?” Following the instructions word by word, I mixed 1 serving into 1 1/2 cups of boiling water, stirred until the powder was dissolved, then added 1 1/2 cups of room temperature water and put the whole thing in the fridge to set for 4 hours. Well, it didn’t really set in 4 hours, so I let it set overnight. Needless to say, my first attempt at making jello ended up as a slightly thick version of colored water.

A couple of days ago I wandered down the same aisle, and I passed the same jello display and felt as if they were mocking me for being such a rookie at my first attempt. So with a fierce determination, I yanked another box off the shelf, threw it in my cart, and headed home to give it another shot. This time I thought, “screw the instructions” and boiled 1 1/2 cups of boiling water per serving, then put the mixture in the fridge to set. What did I get this time around?

Success!

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Golden Corral

I overheard a coworker a few days ago asking if anyone knew of an inexpensive all-you-can-eat steak restaurant. The first two all-you-can-eat steak restaurants that popped in my head were Fogo de Chao and Texas de Brazil, but they didn’t exactly meet his inexpensive criteria. Well, today we went to eat at Golden Corral at the southeast corner of Campbell and Plano and guess what they had? All you can eat steak! Granted, the steaks they had were not high quality because they were seasoned quite heavily, but it tasted pretty good. Just don’t go for anything cooked more than medium or else you’d be chewing your jaws sore. It’s only available on Saturdays though, and the price is $8.99 per person. But if you’re a steak eater, it’s quite a deal!

Golden Corral
1440 East Campbell Road
Richardson, TX 75081
(972) 437-2470

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