David "David" G.'s Profile

The food here is really good. A bit stingy with the tabouleh .. I think I need a T-shirt .. "I just came for the Tablouleh". It is $1 extra to substitute for a salad .. worth it. And their 1/2 chicken is $7 and huge. Hummus is good. Pita is fair. So pretty close on this one. Plus the store is great for olive oil, tahini, zatar, etc. I actually prefer eating in the store to the DiMassi's ONLY because I have control issues over their all-you-can-eat mounds of Tablouleh and fresh pita. At Sarah's the meat and pies are the stars. Nice to have 2 local mediterranean options .. especially after moving away from the best local lebanese one I have ever been to http://www.yelp.com/bi... .. yep in Raleigh, NC .. believe it or not ..

This place is weird. A cross between The Shining and Sizzler. Are we talking about the same Jax?

First of all it is difficult to find. Google mapped it incorrectly on my iPhone and online. People on the phone weren't really sure where it was. If it wasn't a dinner I had to do for a client, I would have bagged it.

We arrived, finally, and had some drinks to soften the blow. Then we opened the menu. $37 for a fillet, no weight listed. Crazy. No spinach, no vegetables of any kind for sides. Except for mushrooms swimming in water .. saw that at our neighbors table. We shared a WTF look.

Salads were right out of a bag. Service pathetic. Two older ladies couldn't figure out which was our server. Then they never ordered our steaks .. so after 40 minutes they let us know that the steaks were prepared "incorrectly". Free drinks and then the puny, insipid steaks arrived. Even the baked potato was rotten .. I'm not kidding. Ever saved a potato too long and you smell that weird watery dirty smell? My potato reeked of it .. like old feet .. diners at the next table even smelled it.

I've been striking out for the last few posts I've made .. but I have HIGH hopes for breakfast tomorrow. Minneapolis let's start over!

This restaurant capped our enchanted visit to Fredericksburg. See my review of The Nest to set the scene. Altdorf is a bar .. er biergarten .. with a kitchen. They have some german food, some tex-mex food, and lots in between. The menu actually open the possibility of an entirely new dish: a nacho-schnitzel! No, not a not-your-schnitzel .. literally nacho fixings .. liquid cheese and all .. piled high on catcher's mitt of fried pork.

The food was atrocious. Served straight from steam table, microwave or fryer. The best thing we had was a beer .. that salvaged the second star for me. The service in this establishment is conducted by a team or sweaty, high strung frat boys .. literally chucking food and beer around like crazy people .. in an empty restaurant.

Avoid? Oh, yes.

Kicked out of the Nest!

I barely feel qualified to write a review here, but I have literally never walked into a restaurant and gotten a colder reception than the one my wife and I received at The Nest. The tiny parking lot next to this rather ordinary house is shared by two donkeys .. a site that my good-natured wife pointed out opened to possibility of a latte made with fresh donkey milk! We had a laugh and walked in .. only to be met at the door by a rather harried hostess. She literally pushed out both of her hands in a stop-stop-STOP gesture. I was wearing a jacket and tie and my wife in a dress, so I don't think it was our appearance. But the harried hostess informed us that they were booked. Now, kind reader, we had not spoken a word up until this point. The restaurant had a big party table set and maybe 2 of 10 table occupied. Next our hostess informed us that the best bet was for us to try Hondo's on main street .. a curious choice given that it is a BBQ place with live music and my wife is a vegetarian.

Suffice it to say that we are not fans of Fredericksburg in general and not fans of the rather prickly Nest in particular.

I first went to Trader Vics when it was located under the Plaza in Manhattan. We were a bunch of high school kids drinking these toxic, delicious drinks. Underage, of course. But I had this memory of Mai Tais and exotic concoctions. Man, to experience it today is a shock to the system.

Most drinks today don't offer the exotic ingredients offered on the bar menu, things like white brandy and creme de menthe .. and for good reason! These drinks taste like an air freshener and scramble your brain faster than a ball-peen hammer to the forehead. We had one drink and moved on to sober up and generally recover.

A nostalgic trip .. literally a Trip .. down polluted memory lane.

It doesn't help that this business was listed with the wrong address. It'.s even cryptic on their business card "Rt. 9 Somers Point". But it is worth finding! This is a real crab shack with fresh clams of several varieties, even giant Quohog chowder clams. Yesterday they were $4 for a dozen giants. $15 for 100 cherrystones. $4 for more mussels than my wife and I could eat. They also have local fish (Kingfish was on sale) and crabs (hard and soft shell). Nothing is prepared, but all is FRESH and that is a find in itself.

The correct address is 1250 Atkinson (New Road) heading toward the bridge on the left. It is tucked into a weird poorly marked parking lot, but this is a LOCAL place. It's super close to Ocean City and within range of AC.

You have got to be (expletive deleted) kidding me.

This has got to be one of the worst hotels I have ever stayed at. Sure, there is cool music, "free wine!" that was announced to us 4 times by personnel as we entered the lobby and that pretentious wanna-be-trendy feel. But the basics simply suck.

We wanted to shack up for a weekend and do the spa thing based on the reviews here. Got to the room and ordered room service for dinner. Disaster. The waiter forgot one of the entrees .. then silverware. Okay he was nervous (I guess?), but how can he leave the kitchen in that state? The then basic hamburger (which cost like $20) was cooked to beyond well done. Almost a cake of bone dry sawdust. And the sauteed spinach was literally inedibly salty. I like salt and this was literally enough to gag me. So we called again .. now we are the room with all the problems after the entree and silverware incident .. and told the kitchen about the food. We were told thank you and that the cook would be informed. That's it?, I asked. Yep, that's it.

Okay, so no dinner but we drained the minibar and had a great night. Next morning, we gamble on breakfast. Same routine. Salmon plate had so much red onion on it it fumigated the room. And they forgot the bagel AND our coffee cups. Unbelievable.  

The hotel was empty on our floor and we heard a tour pass by showing a bridal party around. "We're totally sold out", she said. I almost said (expletive deleted) to her face. The room is barely passable and includes a beige, plastic oval tub that looks like a cross between a wheel-care nursing home wash station and a dirt-smudged porn film set. Get the picture?

There cannot be anyone who has stayed at this hotel with any perspective on what a 5 star hotel is who could give this place a rating above a 1. There are a lot of you here, but this is the fact. Stay at the San Jose in Austin, a W anywhere .. well I could go on but I won't. If I could give this place a 0, I would.

Oh .. and this is to be continued with my rant on the equally poor Exhale and Trader Vics.

A lot of haters on this buffet, but I went with a couple of picky vegetarians from work and they loved it. I'll shovel in pretty much anything as long of there is a lot of it .. in fact, I noticed that I am a pretty liberal star-giver today. A huge self-realization that I am a more easily satisfied hog than I thought. But that is another story.

This buffet features real Tabouleh. What makes it real? About a 10 to 1 ratio of parsley to bulgar wheat. That alone makes it worthwhile to me. Add is some bab and some hummus and that is the meal. Fresh pita and loads of other meats and salads. The meal is a bargain. Ever washed parsley enough to get all the sand out of it? Trust me.

So I am giving this place 4 stars because of my recent star-inflation discovery. But it would be hard to imagine a more 5 star mediterranean in my book.

Man. I wish I had 20 minutes to write about this place. I am not a Chicago Dog or Chicago anything fan. But this dog won me over a head-to-head taste-off with a chili-dog. That's a lot of hyphens and a lot of tasting. And I have to say the Chicago dog won!

Went over to tell the staff and the owner popped his head out and said simply, "I created that dog because I was hungry". Amen.

Not only that, but you can order a beef sandwich, "hot, wet and sweet".  I have no idea what any of that means since I just overheard a phone order .. but need I say more? This place is for people on the run who love to eat quality food in quantity.

A Chicago-style hot dog that beats a chili-dog? Incredible and true.

At the risk of being redundant, I felt that I had to upgrade my previous review from 4 stars to 5. It is arguable that the brisket here is 4 stars, but the beef ribs are pure 5 star. It turns out that IronWorks smokes them for so long that they lose all of the pockets of fat I normally associated with this beef ribs. The ribs are meaty and covered with "brownies". This is a term of art here in TX BBQ that refers to the browned bits that East coast people will recognize as the key ingredient in beef gravy made from roasted pan drippings. But these bits are actually cooked right onto the meat, the singed and delicious residue of  saucing and slow roasting in smoke.

Get the junior plate of beef ribs for $8. You get 2 ribs that are plenty for 2 people, potato salad, beans and bread. Super value, tremendous flavor. Add a root beer from the ice chest, a $1 jumbo pickle and it's a killer lunch.

5 stars .. 'nuf said.