Tuesday Reviews

I went to see Suspect Zero last night, henceforth known as "the serial killa wot kills other serial killas" and I can't even write a review because it was so mind-numbingly implausible that a movie called "the naughty leprechauns in magical pink pony land" could not have been any less plausible. A movie called "Prez Bush is a really top-notch president" would have been more believable. The set designer for "the serial killa wot kills other serial killas" fell prey to the "Seven" syndrom of set design. This syndrome calls for the designer to think masses of random clutter=really creepy. By this logic my car is so scary. This serial killa is typical in that he obsessively draws on little scraps of paper, all over his walls, and even does a quite nice wall-sized mural underneath some wallpaper (Q: how does the maverick federal agent figure out it's under there, A: he just knows, cuz his, uh, head hurts and stuff). Just once I'd like to see a serial killer in a movie with a nice, clean home. Because I think in the real world, if the serial killers homes were always crammed to the rafters with random drawings of vaginas and mutilated baby dolls, they'd probably be caught really quickly. The plumber would be all like, "Uh, I think I left something in my van" and next things you know he'd be calling the cops.

So now on to Esquire Grill. I ate there last week. The block that this establishment on has been rendered really sterile and plastic, oops I mean revitalized. I went with my sister, Song. We walked in and were seated by the obligatory skanky underfed hostess with the one-shoulder tank top. The ambiance was so-so, nothing impressive. The lighting was pretty low, there was a large oil painting that looked like it had been done by an eight year old. We were seated and immediately cheesy waiter guy came over to begin his program of harassment. I ordered a glass of Paragary's chardonnay (I was so super happy to find out the Paragary is expanding his empire to include wine) and scanned the menu. I had a really hard time ordering because nothing looked good at all. As I vainly searched among the overpriced items for something I would actually like to put in my mouth, the waiter came by three times to bother us. The first time he asked if I had any questions. I said no, but apparently my eyes must have been saying yes because he came by twice more before I was ready to order. He also tried to do his cheesy flirting thing which as my sister pointed out later, may work for him normally, but it was obviously not working with us, so he needed to drop it. I finally ordered a Dungeness Crab Louie salad. My sister always raves about the mac and cheese so I got a side of that to take to Michael at the Crest. My sister ordered a ginger-honey glazed salmon fillet with mashed potatoes. Whitey (a guy named Whitey, this is not a racial slur) was working in the kitchen so he sent us a complimentary order of corn bread with some kind of flavored butter (I'm guessing chipotle). My salad was, in a word, gross. Now I'm sure this is probably a recreation of an authentic Crab Louie from the fifties, because that goes along with the Esquire Grills whole kind of traditional, meat and potatoes vibe, but there is a reason that some of the food of the fifties has fallen out of style. Some of it is nasty. Like aspic. This salad had a generous portion of crab, but it was covered, no smothered with an overly sweet, thousand island-style dressing. The romaine lettuce appeared to be a bit brown, but that could have been the lighting. The only other ingredients of the salad were avocado, egg, and capers. With a light, lemony dressing this probably would have been great. The corn bread was good, but it was very similar to an appetizer you could get at T.G.I. Fridays. My sisters salmon was your standard salmon and the mashed potatoes were an oozing pool of butter. They were actually yellow and glistening and spreading over the plate they had so much butter in them. The mac and cheese was really good when I sampled it.
Esquire Grill=D
Whitey=A
Later today I hope to post a party review of Lance's party on Saturday night.