TheSnackHound

I was musing the other day on how casually large and imposing tikis are used in the hotel and restaurant business.  Didn’t they learn their lesson from the Brady Bunch about messing with them?  Actually, sometimes, a business moves in and “inherits” a large and impossing tiki element to their building as left over from an establishment built somewhere between after WWII and the mid 60s with a polynesian theme that was so wildly popular.  They are forced to tie it in and make sense of it in some way. Maybe they put a tiki bar in the back even though its a Mexican place now.

This was particularly intersting to me. Here is the Best Western Aku Tiki in Daytona Beach. At right is what they show on the Best Western site. Looks like they are trying to minimize something rather than to play up its kitschy, nostalgicness?

If you have ever driven on Route One, you will not be able to miss the giant Tiki looming over the parking lot of Kowloon’s. The building itself is an area landmark and very common feature of driving directions. “If you pass the building with the giant tiki, you have gone way too far.  What is inside, you are greated by autographed photos of every wrestler Killer Kowalski seemed to have trained plus other celebrities who have come to Kowloon over the years. Plus a brain explodingly large menu.

Your brain will be in a whirl over the extensive menu featuring chinese (various regions), thai, polynesian, and Japanese cuisine.  You can indulge in sushi while your friends go for Pad Thai or a Pu Pu platter.   At any other restaurant, the variety would seem like a huge mishmash.  Kind of like “Pizza and Mexican.”  Because their menus of each ethniity are so large and complete, it is like several restaurants in one.  The rooms are slightly themed differently and there is also a comedy club on the premises.While some culinary experts may say the choices at Kowloon’s are way too high in number, patrons clearly don’t mind and it is part of the attraction. In fact they do have a Thai themed room, etc.  Try the famous Scorpion Bowl for two as long as you aren’t the driver. If you go, bring a LOT of cash. There are many economical choices on the menu to be had, but you will want to try everything.  I recommend that those in your party order different items so everyone can share or sample them all in order to try the most dishes.

This restaurant is definitely proud of their tiki.  You won’t see them trying to hide it in brochures like the best western.

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3.5

There are so many restaurants that are just so-so.  The food wasn’t offensive in any way.   No one in my party got sick or anything like that.  It was just not memorable whatsoever.  When you go to a restaurant and can’t remember what you even orders a few days or a few weeks later, it a sign that either you go there everyday and one day flows into the next, or it was just like any other place.

What if you are looking for more than “just adequate.”  Let’s say that you are going out for a special occasion versus being just desperate to find anyplace at all because your blood sugar is low.  When I am in a new town visiting, say near Philadelphia, I may not be able to depend on opening up the phone book and going to whatever Philadelphia restaurants my finger landed on that weekend.   Otherwise I may end up being shuffled into a place where tourists are “supposed to go to.” They may convince me I am supposed to eat under the Liberty Bell and not get arrested. Tourist hazing.

Instead of that, Restaurantica features over 400,000 restaurants in North America.  I was surprised to see even the little donut shop on the corner listed.  It has amassed this list of names, addresses, and phone numbers in its only five years of existence.  You have an opportunity to post your restaurant reviews to give other visitors a better indication of where to go in town. There is a number rating system for quality that appears to be weighted by number of reviewers and the rating they give. In otherwords, it is very balanced. That one cranky neighbor that is never pleased with anything and just likes to complain can’t tank a restaurant with their single vote, nor can the only guy in town to like a restaurant put it at the top of the list because he is the only one reviewing it.

Check it out, weigh in, and have fun searching. You may even find a place around the corner that you never tried before.

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3.5

My dad and a friend of his always used to joke that they were going to retire and open up a Dairy Queen.  They thought it was the best business because you would be open just after Easter to before Halloween and you would have the other months off to kick back.   I don’t think it was really about business model, but more so that they both really liked ice cream.  My father is not a heavy nor particularly indulgent man, but an outing usually doesn’t end without an ice cream.   I was always Miss Boring Vanilla until I later discovered Peppermint Stick and Cookies N Cream.   Until then, I was a Vanilla girl probably for fifteen years running.

When I was in grade school, Charlie’s Shake Shop in Mukwonago, Wisconsin, was pretty legendary.   Charlie was actually named for a Charlene.  They had booths as well as the expected little tables and “ice cream shoppe chairs.”  They served every flavor of ice cream someone in second grade could have ever dreamed up, scratch n sniff stickers, and candy sticks.  In the back hall, there were a few arcade games.  I remember Pac man and Joust, and a pin ball machine.  I remember the jukebox, and the times we used to try to trick our siblings into smelling the old shoe or skunk scratch n sniff stickers.

Every year, the student who won the Listening Competition got to go their with the music teacher, where they were treated to the ultimate situation.  What was the Listening Competition?   We prepared for it all year.   We were heavily versed in music appreciation from the standard classical pieces, show tunes, to orchestra pops.   We were played a very short, short snippet of the record and had to identify it the quickest.  But the needle could go anywhere in the record.  Kind of like “Name that Tune” without Kathie Lee.  In otherwords, if you are the type of person to only remember snippets of bad 70s ballads because you have seen too many Time Life music commercials, we had the classical version in our heads.

There was a dish that was seldom ordered, but was heavily entrenched in the Clarendon Avenue Elementary School lore.  It was literally a bucket that contained a scoop of every single flavor Charlie’s Shake Shop served (and it could be plain or have any toppings you wanted).    The winner would get to go to Charlie’s and actually order anything they wanted on the menu, but that is what traditionally was ordered just because you could. No one ever finished it, unless they were lying.   You see, the selection put Baskin Robbins to shame.  If you were thinking about just 31 flavors, that would be the appetizer.  You were just starting to warm up at that point. They happily wrapped it up “to go” if you could make it back to your freezer in time.   In a small town, nobody lived to far, so one could actually make it.

Today, no one would dare serve something like that.  It would just be a major health issue waiting to happen, but you sure wouldn’t die of a calcium deficiency!    It could make any person lactose intolerant for life in twenty minutes.

A few years later, we moved away, and Charlie’s closed and became a bike shop.  Or did it used to be a bike shop before Charlie’s?  I can’t remember.   But the fact remains, is that Charlie’s became history, for a reason we don’t know as it always seemed busy.     Back then, which was not that long ago (the 80s), it was the only ice cream place at the time in town in a “one grocery store/one restaurant/one pharmacy” town.    Today, there are over 25 restaurants there.  I guess we would have been considered like “pioneers” compared to what it is today, except we wore jelly shoes and carried trapper keepers instead of carrying muskets.

Now, I am sure I will hear from someone else who remembers Charlie’s, as I found zero reference to it on the internet.  Well, now something about it is on the internet.

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3.5

Yesterday, my husband and I were kidnapped and taken to a Sunday Brunch at the Hilton.  I am unable to disclose which Hilton property in the United States we were taken to, in order to protect the identities of those innocent bystanders who work there.  In a future post, I promise to thoroughly review the actual hotel restaurant, which deserves to be seperated from the event as much as possible.

If you can guess which particular location it was, then wow me and I might just give you a special gold star of that you can brag about on your report card.   Maybe you will shock me so much, that I will give you other special prizes.  Who knows. Since this is a kidnapping story, detectives, private investigators and crime psychics are not excluded from participation.

Just as we were about to walk out the door, where our friends were waiting in the driveway to pick us up for church, Aunt-in-Law called, asking us about Sunday Brunch.    Even though technically the brunch could occur at a moment that was after the service was finished, Aunt-in-Law has no concept of Space and Time.    If church usually got out about 11:30, 11:45, and we weren’t going to rush out the door (we would inevitable stay and chitchat with different people and wouldn’t dream of rushing the friends that drove us), a time machine would have still been needed to make a noon brunch.    It took fifteen minutes to get home from church, plus it was another 45 minutes from home to the brunch location.

I almost left out the fact that at 9:30, Aunt-in-Law had not made any motions to walk out the door or probably still had rollers in her hair.  She was also more than 100 miles away from us.

Instead of saying “NO,” my husband said:

“We are going to church. Sorry, we aren’t going to be out until at least 11:30.  You can call us later if you want, but we won’t be able to make something that if it is at twelve.”

Most common sensical people would have taken that as us giving our regrets, but just being polite as heck about a scheduling conflict that we much rather attend.

No, no dear readers, Aunt-in-Law interprets such things as a glimmer of hope.  She is a “figure of speech fundamentalist.”  ”Call me later” does not mean: “You are welcome to phone us later and tell us how it went.”  Rather, it is an appointment or an insistence to be called later.  The secondary meaning is:  Call when you are on your way to pick us up because we technically would be finished with what we are doing by then.

My husband did not think anything of it, and we made our way home from church at our very leisure.  We stopped one place and our friends dropped us off.

We got in the door of the house, and I no sooner took one of my shoes off and was about to kick off the other when the phone rang.  I could sense the disturbance in the force, so I went to where my husband was on the phone.

It was Sister-in-Law screaming:”They are at the corner and will be there any minute so go outside now and you better be ready and we’re driving ahead of them so we can get a table and they won’t wait for you because we are on a time schedule and if we don’t make it there by one o’clock they will give our table away and brunch is only until two and we’re all going.”

“Who is ‘all of us’,” my husband innocently asked.  (I would have said, “Who are THEY?”)

“You, me, mummy, Aunt-in-Law….WHO DO YOU THINK?” SIL barked off the laundry list.  She never thinks the request for a body count indicates that my husband is calculating how many/which vehicles need procurment, but rather takes it as a sign that he doesn’t want to go if someone specific is going.  There would be six of us in all.

“Okay, okay, stop yelling at me!”

I will confess that I was tempted to bail and let my husband go by himself, but since he was still recovering form being in the hospital I didn’t want him to be vulnerable.  Nice that Sister-in-Law wasn’t even involved in the “plans” at first.  They added her on, and, as usual “took over.”

So two seconds later, a horn honks and the OTHER Sister-in-Law is there, and I barely have time to even go to the bathroom, and certainly had no time to change.  The dogs are all discombobulated that we acted like we were “home” and then walked right back out.    By this time it was 12:52 and they had changed their reservations to 1:00 P.M.   We knew by the time we got there the last of the cream cheese would’ve been scraped off the cut glass serving plate and it would’ve been called a day.

Aunt-in-Law decided that it would be “fun” to at least “go and see the restaurant” even if we were there and only had five minutes to eat.   We could just “look” and go somewhere else if they wouldn’t let us eat.   She said this as if we had been invited to see the President’s Private Residence, or were allowed to look through any scrolls never seen by the public that was saved from the library of Alexandria before the Romans and others destroyed it before the Dark Ages.   One would still have gone and seen one of those even if one only had 5-15 minutes.   In fact, you would have something to talk about for the rest of your life.

We had a pleasant enough ride.   Part of it, of course, was an argument about the stupidity of driving 45 minutes to go to something we wouldn’t be able to make, nor did we have to, and then the rest of the conversation was quite pleasant.

My husband had an ephiphany:

“Why don’t we eat somewhere else?”

Yeah!  Let’s do that.  Even Cracker Barrel with the high ceiling that magnifies the voices of screaming children, and the prospect of good desserts but “eh” food sounds like a utopia by this time.

Aunt-in-Law quickly vetoed that, “Sister-In-Law and Mummy will be waiting for us.”

(By the way, she really referred to Sister-In-Law by her given name, but she referred to her sister as “Mummy,” much like my Grandfather would call  my Gramdmother “Grandma,” in front of me and my cousins when many of us were in the 2-5 year old range.    Aunt-in-Law’s two nieces and one nephew in their mid 40s or early 50s - plus me, her niece-in-law in her early 30s were all definitely past the 1-3 year old identity issue age where they don’t understand mom has a first name).

No sooner was it mentioned that we should just go to Olive Garden, no matter if there was little on the menu someone with salt restrictions could have, the phone rang.   Of course it was Sister-in-Law who always seems to know when someone is trying to thwart her.   Sister-in-Law #2 handed Aunt-in-Law the phone seeing who it was because she didn’t want to talk to her.

“We’re IN.  We’re SITTING DOWN.  WHERE ARE YOU?”

“We’re Five minutes away.”

We were more like ten I thought, but I didn’t say anything.

In the meantime, my husband’s customer called and invited us all to a pool party, and because he is not a rude man, invited all who we were with to come too.  Under my breath I said to my husband,”We’ll see,” because I could just imagine what would unfold and wanted to assess whether everyone could handle that (if he could handle them and vice versa). Aunt-in-Law sounded delighted.

We made our way into the restaurant, and the hostess told us that we only had twenty minutes.

If this was Panera, or another similar place, I would have said that twenty minutes was plenty of time to get our food and eat.   Not at a leisurely Sunday brunch.

Since we didn’t see Aunt-in-Law very often, my husband replied, “We can do a lot of damage in twenty minutes, that’s fine,” to avoid any arguments.

So, down we sat.   I got my salad, a plate of entrees and sides, dessert, and another plate.  We looked like gluttons because we tried to get everything we thought we would eat and just pick it up all at once.

Among the dishes I sampled:

Pasta with Clams.   Penne with a creamy clam sauce.  The bits of clam were not just all cartilage!
Chocolate Cake (of course)
Cream Cheese and Lox on Rye (I was thrilled - you just can’t find that around here.). Capers were sprinkled across the Lox. I skipped them.  I just decided I hated capers.
Steamed Veggies - Summer Squash and Green Beans.  Summer squash is a very underrated vegetable.

Mimosa was included, but I was surprised I wasn’t carded.   Oh well, end of an era.  Unless they just were sick of is. Normally, I pass on alcohol, but I like mimosas, the champagne ratio is low and with the present company, I sure needed it.

I was pretty quiet during the meal, especially since we were sort of on a mission to eat enough before they put the food away.   Meanwhile, Mother-in-Law (for more lowdown on her, here’s another article,) who is an insulin dependent diabetic and shouldn’t be drinking excess amounts of orange juice and liquor got skunk drink.  There is not a lot of alcohol in a mimosa, but too many is too many.   The immediate, unpleasant side effect was that she blurted out at the waiter, “Come here and clean the table now!”  My husband did an almost Tex Avery double take.

“It’s okay, nobody heard me.” she said.  When you are drunk, you have no concept of sound amplification.

Later, she started talking a bit incoherently in the lobby.   My husband facetiously said to her, “Drink more!”   Despite the health concerns, it was an improvement, because normally she dished out the guilt trips and the crocodille tears at the drop of a hat.

I excused myself to go the bathroom, and when I returned, half the table was standing up and in a defensive position.  The moment I had left, all heck broke loose.  Sister-in-Law was yelling at my husband about me and how I talked or didn’t talk enough during the meal and what was my problem.  Like I wasn’t methodically eating like everyone else was.  Should I talk with my mouth full now? She also brought up that two weeks ago my husband didn’t answer the phone when she called.   Everyone in the restaurant probably would have said that he had good reason to not want to.

Abuse? Salt Bloat? My husband would have take salty Olive Garden food anyday.

When the invite to the pool party was mentioned, Sister-in-Law barked at my Mother-in-Law that nobody was allowed to go there, as she had to go to Lowes and everyone had to help her or tell her what she should do when she bought a shower curtain.  Maybe its just me, but I thought she had much bigger problems, as she decided to tear apart and renovate both bathrooms at once.   Maybe that is why she was such a tool today.  She had nowhere to “go.”   So i guess she decided that we shouldn’t have anywhere to go either.

So, Sister-in-Law carted Mother-in-Law out and my husband and I had a wonderful hour or two, totally abandoned at the hotel with nowhere to go.

Oh,  I forgot to tell you that I can’t drive.   Also, my husband can’t drive for another 5 months to medical reasons.  That would have been a crucial element earlier on in the story, to create more of an element of tension.

We took a walk to a nearby horse farm and fed the horses apples and oat biscuits.   The only other things we had on us was a church bulletin, eyeshadow, a Halloween pen with an eyeball that moved around on it, gum and $21.72.     MacGyver would have had us flown to Hawaii and back on that bounty of supplies.   But MacGyver was off that day.

That’s the story that we will embellish over the years about how we had been kidnapped and were held at the Hilton.  Not at any sort of gunpoint, but there had definitely been a standoff.

(for more stories of the characters herein if you are a total glutton for punishment:)
Mother-In-Law:
Burnt Offerings
Eww.  Who Drinks Pepper Water?

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3.5