188 Houston
From
MICHAEL LOO@1:123/140 to
ALL on Wednesday, April 03, 2019 05:39:04
I tend to book breakfast-included rates when not traveling
alone, and then, feeling the frugality urge, take advantage
of the offering, and so have willy-nilly become expert at
these. Here, the food was surprisingly good. Breakfast
potatoes were cooked to mush but deliciously seasoned with
red and green peppers, onions, and jalapenos. Possibly soy
sauce as well. Chive scrambled eggs were rich and tender,
and the attendant admitted that she had overdone it on the
butter when making them. I tried them on the strength of
the buttery smell in the breakfast room, and then I went
back for seconds. The usual sausage pucks, spongy to soak
up the abundant grease, not too salty this time, my kind of
food. Good orange juice, better than the usual Minute Maid.
Borden Dutch chocolate milk, which actually tasted like
chocolate and milk.
We had late checkout and plenty of time to plan our play
before Carlos came with his taxi to pick us up. We'd made
the appointment for 2, but he showed up at 1:30, so we
hurriedly packed up and were down at 1:40 for him to take
us to The Sam Houston, Curio Collection, one of those
supposedly historic hotels renovated in a supposedly
historically informed way. Well, okay, maybe.
Chad the front desk guy gave us a corner room overlooking
the courthouse and some coupons, which he claimed were good
for two people and which we tucked away for later. Spoiler:
they weren't.
Moonshiner's has a good rep for happy hour, and it's barely
two blocks off. It's another hipster place using a good ol'
Su'n schtick and falsely assumed to distill its own white
lightning.
We got there midafternoon and found a fair number of young
affluent-looking folks, the guys mostly sucking down brews
and their gals sipping frou-frou cocktails, such as the
happy hour special, peach shine tea, which I chose for its
good price to performance ratio - it was that Georgia Moon
peach schnapps that I've had elsewhere mixed with secret
ingredients, iced tea, and lemon and mint. Not perhaps my
first choice tipple, but $5 can't be argued with; it was
actually decent, given the 70+F sunshine. Lilli had Elsa
Bianchi Malbec, sweet in aroma but not in taste, with
mostly red fruit and berry flavors nd a little leathery
or cured meat funk. Pretty decent. For snackitties I got
fried green tomatoes, which were too thickly cut so not
quite cooked through but pleasantly marinated in vinegar
hot sauce and then cornmeal-crusted and fried pretty
nicely, though given the thickness a double frying would
have been better. We shared a plate of brisket sliders,
which were quite good, the meat smoky enough though not
fatty enough, not oversauced, with frou-frou toppings of
scallion and red cabbage. For my second round I switched to
a Texas fallback of 512 pecan porter, while Lilli stuck with
a good thing. And then there was maybe a round more, and it
was welcome that the hotel was only a few hundred feet away.
After a quick recovery, we went downstairs to Pearl, where
none of the food appealed, so a house margarita and a glass
of Woodbridge Pinot filled the bill. We relented at some
point and got a comparison order of brisket sliders, which
were nowhere as good as up the street, tough and oversauced.
For the second round here I switched to a Negra and Lilli
stuck as usual to her red wine.
By the way, the free drink coupon that the desk clerk
promised was good for two was in fact good for only one.
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