a night at the shack

Went to the thursday night thing at Sub Shack last night. I was a little apprehensive pulling up at 700 because there wasn't really anyone there yet and you could see into the kitchen and I didn't see any food and I was fucking starving. Pretty soon after we seated ourselves the owner (Gary?) came up and introduced himself and told us the deal. They set out a buncha food (they have a different theme every week, this week was Mexican) around 730 or so. It's ten bucks a plate if you want to eat and it's all you can eat. You can buy any of the wines by the glass or get three tastes for five bucks or two dollars a tastes. And believe me, these are generous pours. I was a bit tipsy on the five dollar taste and some at the table (I won't name names) were drunk. They have tons of wine, mostly California wine, especially El Dorado country, and some Australian and Chilean wine. Gary is a real wine enthusiast and it's great fun to talk to him about wine because he's really excited about it. I wanted to start off with a grenache so he poured us one from the Sierra Vista vineyard in El Dorado. It was a really pretty ruby color and it tasted quite good. Michele is on her way to Sac and probably not checking the blog so she can't help me out here by telling me more about grenache. Gary started enthusing about a blend that this vineyard has, so our second taste was the Fleur de Montagne from them. It's a blend of Syrah, Grenache, Mourvedre and Cinsault. It was delicious. The food was finally served when I was about to faint from hunger and had already deleriously told Paul that only God can judge me because I thought he was judging me about something. He seemed confused. The food was pretty good and there was a ton of it but I wasn't in the mood for Mexican that night so I wasn't bowled over. There were beans, rice, guac, pico de gallo, chicken mole, chalupas, fresh chips and chipotle sour cream. Some of it was overly salted. Anna said that if she were to go back she might call ahead to see what they were making, and I agreed, but I definitely want to go back for the wine. OK, so for our last taste I wanted a zinfandel, and he poured us two. I wish I could remember the second one, because it was the bomb, but I can't so I'm going to have to ask him next time I go in. He said it's his favorite. It was an El Dorado one. He also was raving about Lava Cap wines, which made me want to try them because I see them everywhere but they're kinda expensive. We were there until 900 and the crowd got increasingly raucous and fun. The place was toasty warm and smelled great because he had a fire going in the stove. A fun night. If you like wine you check it out.

The T street light show is crazy this year. The court around like 52nd st (?) not exactly sure but you'll know it when you see it, is bigger than ever. There is a house this year that has choreographed a light show to music. It was playing Good Vibrations when we pulled up. There was also a drunken christmas carol bongo jam going on at one house.