Celebrating

Turtle Soup, anyone?

On Saturday night, Mick and I went out to celebrate my success in the Oklahoma Writer’s Federation annual writing contest. If you’re interested you can read about it at http://www.grandlakeink.blogspot.com/

Much to our dismay, we found that our favorite restaurant had changed hands and is now a sports bar and grill. It was a really good place, too, but probably a bit too off the beaten track, hence their demise. Tables were far enough apart that you didn’t have to sit on your neighbor’s knee. Their food was superb, and they had a good wine list. They also had a lovely patio area overlooking a pond with a fountain, where you could watch the fish and turtles swimming about. Oh hum.

Instead we went to our second choice, The Roadhouse, on Monkey Island, (there are no monkeys, and it’s not an island, go figure). Now don’t be mislead by the name, the place is not full of cowpokes, in fact, there’s not even a whiff of fried chicken on the menu, and very other car on the parking lot was a Mercedes, so our little Saturn was in good company. Why is it that when people have pots of money they prefer to donate it to the German economy rather than prop up their own?

Anyway, this place is always jumping on a Saturday night, and we had committed the ultimate sin of not making a reservation, consequently they fobbed us off with a table in the bar. We ought to have left, but we were hungry.

Now, I have no complaints about the food or the service, both of which were excellent, but the table was extremely cramped, and the bar very noisy. But what really pissed me off is there were several empty tables, and they remained that way until we had finished eating. Now I appreciate that if people have made a reservation, they don’t want to be kept waiting, but we could have eaten and left before they even turned up. Or, we would have happily taken our coffee out on the patio, if they had showed up early.

I know I shouldn’t bitch, it’s our own fault for not making a reservation, but we hadn’t intended to go there in the first place. Anyway, I’ll let that be a lesson to me, and not go there again unless I’ve booked a table.

So what did we have? For starters we shared:

Escargots, dripping in garlic butter, with warm rolls for dunking.
Deep-fried breaded calamari, with a black bean dipping sauce.

This was followed by a salad, with hot honey mustard dressing.

Then I had, chicken and artichokes in a creamy mushroom sauce.
Mick had the rack of lamb, as lamb is as rare as hens teeth in Oklahoma.

We both had the Monte Carlo potatoes, which I’m guessing are baked potatoes chopped into bite size pieces, and then roasted with a honey glaze and some herbs, they were delish, and they came with steamed veg.

Needless to say, we neither of us had room for pudding/dessert, but then we’re not big sweet eaters.

Sorry about the layout, but blogger is having paragraph problems again.