Mattazuma's Revenge

What's almost dieing worth?

It turns out that almost dieing (or at least looking bad for a minute) is worth a mixed berry buckle at Shaw's Crab House in Chicago.

I decided that we were going to go out for dinner last Friday and we picked Shaw's because we could get a table at 7:30.  On some level it's not a good sign when an established restaurant has openings for Friday at 7:30 on Wednesday, but that's a different post.

I decided to get some oysters, Shaw's has great oysters & I haven't eaten them in a while.  So with the oysters you get three sauces, a horseradish seafood sauce, Tabasco and a Champagne & vinegar sauce that I was told was "French". 

The champagne sauce was more of a slushy that a sauce.  I put some of it on a Long Island oyster and decided to slurp it down.  Big mistake.  When I dumped it into my mouth I inhaled some of the very vinegary sauce into my lungs.  It was probably the worst feeling I've ever had.  It was kind of like choking and a burning feeling all at the same.  I did swallow the oyster but I felt like I was half choking due to the vinegar that went down the wrong way.  It took a few minutes to feel even kind-of ok.  The waitress was very concerned for a minute.  Jonnell contemplated the Heimlich.  A guy (a doctor I guess) came by five minutes later and said he was about to jump in with the Heimlich
.

I did eat the rest of the oysters (with a fork), and the Champagne sauce was very good, I recommend it if you go and get oysters.  My lobster was also excellent.  We had a Rombauer Chardonnay that was a little sweet for me, but was also very good.

When I had a hard time choosing between Key Lime Pie (a personal favorite) and the Mixed Berry Buckle the waitress was nice enough to bring both.  In case you were wondering, the buckle is a ramekin filled with a berry mixture, including Marion berries (insert joke here), with a coffee cake-like batter on top which is baked.  The batter appears to buckle, thus the name.

I don't think all the vinegar was out of me until sometime Saturday afternoon.

William Shatner's here to save the day!

You know, when I want to get a sci-fi DVD and am not sure which one to buy, I always think "What would Shatner buy?"

Now we can get a Shatner-approved DVD every month, from the William Shatner DVD Club!

100 Patty Burger at In-n-Out

This is amazing, 8 guys ordered an 100 patty cheeseburger at In-n-Out in Las Vegas.  And they ate the whole thing!

Here's the link.

In case you were wondering, In-n-Out is the best fast food out there.  I wish there was one in Chicago.

So we want a new fridge

We are trying to figure out which refrigerator to buy.  I'm playing around with a site called Backpack during the fridge buying process.

Go check out my refrigerator page:  It's Here

If you have any suggestions please leave comments.  I really like this LG model.

Illinois Booze distributors are at it again in Springfield

Illinois booze distributors are trying to keep people from buying wine directly from wineries.  They are using the standard "stopping underage sales" excuse for their law.  This is, of course, a bunch of crap.  They just want their 50% markup on the wine they distribute.  These laws absolutely kill small wineries that the distributors will not stock.

This is not about Illinois wineries.  This is about stopping people from getting expensive (and high distributor margin) wine shipped to them from California.  Why else would there be a 2 case limit per winery per year?  That is also why there is an in-person initial sale requirement.

So please call your senator down in Springfield and try to get this stopped.  Since they have probably paid Blago off, he'll probably sign it if it gets to his desk.

Sun-Times story

Hat Tip: Volokh

The Strokes - 3 Paragraph Concert Review

We got to see the Strokes tonight as part of their mini promotional tour for their new album, First Impressions of Earth, which came out today. They played the Park West which holds only around 1500 people.  A friend of mine is on The Strokes mailing list and got the scoop on the special fans-only presale.  It was the best deal on a concert I've seen in a while, only $14 a ticket.

They played around five songs off the new album, they were pretty good but I haven't heard them enough yet.  They also played pretty much all of their earlier hits.  They seemed more confident playing the earlier stuff.  The show was 1:15 total, which wasn't bad considering how little we paid to be there.

If you can get tickets to see one of their other US shows, go for it.  It was a lot of fun to see a "big" group in such a small place.  I have attached a very short movie of the people in front of us bouncing up and down.  The music was way too loud for the microphone on my phone.

Download Video_010306_002.3gp