Friday, November 19, 2004

New restaurant reviews

I just realized on my way into work that Prez. Bush will be in office until I'm in my mid-30's. Lame.

So, I ate at Icon last night. It looks kinda cool inside. It's giant. I don't know how many it can seat in its labyrinth of rooms, but I'd say it was about at one-fifth capacity on a thursday night at 8:00. I don't want to say this place is doomed, but our busboy was wearing a black cape and carrying a scythe. Anyway, we were seated by a young woman in a Ramones T-shirt whose breasts were entirely covered, much to my surprise. The other day when I stopped by just to take a quick look at the menu the two hostesses were showing more breast than a bucket of KFC. Today they both looked much less naked. We scanned the menu. To me, there were not many appealing items. Anna thought it was a good menu. I was not ravenously hungry, so I ordered the grilled ahi salad. It was nine bucks, so I expected it to be a dinner-sized rather than side-type salad. Grace got the blue crab sandwich, Anna ordered the pulled-pork sandwich. Our food took quite awhile, which I was happy about because we were talking the whole time. We didn't get drinks, but the wine list had quite a few wines by the glass, and you can even order glasses of Moet for, I think, 9 bucks. That's cool. My ahi salad was pretty tasty. The ahi was crusted with so many black peppercorns that it was really spicy and they were kind of hurting my teeth, I think they could stand to grind it a little finer. The dressing on the salad tasted good, but the greens were the standard supermarket mesclun (with lots of cilantro), about three slices of yellow pepper, and nothing else. The ahi could have used a little sauce, I wished that I had some wasabi around. Although good, the salad was boring and I was still hungry afterward. Grace and Anna's sandwiches both came with fries and a little bit of cucumber salad, similar to the kind that you get at Japanese restaurants. Grace's sandwich was open faced, which made it awkward to eat. Anna's sandwich was kind of a sloppy mess that she had to eat with a knife and fork. Grace's crab was really fishy (that sounds dirty). She contrasted it to a ginger crab she had recently at New Station and it suffered in comparison. She didn't like her fries and neither did I. They were really dark looking as if the oil was dirty and they were pretty soggy. She didn't finish her crab sandwich and as soon as her hunger faded from eating some of it she declared it "gross". Anna said that her pork sandwich was overly sweet. I tried it and the sauce made it taste exactly like a sloppy joe to me. Not really something I'd order at a restaurant. We all agreed that we would not order our dishes again, but that the space was pleasant and that we'd give it another try sometime. I'll let you know if I eat there again. It's possible there's a few delicious things on the menu and maybe we just ordered wrong, I don't know.

I ate at the Crepeville this weekend and I liked it. I didn't like my crepe, but I don't really like breakfast crepes so I shouldn't have ordered it. The potatoes were really good, though, and they give you the option of a bagel or toast if you get eggs. David Paul's Greek scramble was way better than my crepe. The coffee was not great but not bad. I'm really happy that there's another breakfast option in Sac now.

I found the craziest article on mad cow that I hope to write about sometime next week, so if you have a weak stomach, be warned.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey becky,
is this the website you were talking about?
http://www.organicconsumers.org/madcow.htm

Here is a crazy article from earlier this year:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/madcow/skarbek32804.cfm

Anna

beckler said...

yeah, that's the one. it seems legit.