What I Ate: June 19, 2009 (Buffalo Wings and Rings)

Dinner: We were in the south part of Austin, so we went to Buffalo Wings and Rings (9600 S I H 35 # D300, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 291-9464‎). They make 12 different sauces on three different "wings" - boneless, tenders, and traditional. Naturally, I ordered regular Buffalo wings (on the bones - so real wings). I also ordered another set of wings of a different flavor and a side salad. Tina ordered a Gyro pita and added $2 to make it a platter (which comes with cole slaw and a side (which we chose Potato Wedges). Note the menu below: "Gyros & Pitas - Old Chicago style Gyros, served with Saratoga Chips." Tina was looking forward to the chips as well as the potato wedges ("Make it a Platter! Add Slaw and your choice of side to any gyro, pita, sandwich, wrap or burger for only $2.00"). This is important, I'll come back to it.

But first, I'm going to complain about the wait. We entered the restaurant at 8:46pm. We waited about ten minutes before a waitress came by to take our order after we had been seated. The kitchen staff looked like they were taking there time - no urgency to any of the food preparation - people wandering around in there with seemingly nothing to do. At 9:23 (25 minutes after ordering it) my salad ($3.99) came out. The buttermilk dressing was overwhelmingly smelly (of buttermilk) - you know the smell, it's the smell of the restaurant size canister of bottled buttermilk ranch that you get from the restaurant supply store.

Tina's gyro pita ($7.99) came out at 9:28pm - thirty minutes after we placed the order - and the gyro slices were cold. Colder than room temperature cold (but not refrigerator temperature). We were so hungry by this point that Tina refused to send it back - her desire to nourish her body out weighing my need to send bad food back. Then we noticed that next to the tiny cup of cole slaw and the pile of potato wedges was not a single Saratoga Chip. Did they forget the chips? We asked about the chips and we were told that when you upgrade to the platter, you lose the chips. Please refer back to your menu - where does it say we lose the chips? Had we known that we wouldn't have spent the extra $2. The only benefit for our $2 upgrade was that we got the potato wedges which were the best part of the meal.

My Buffalo Wings ($8.49 for 10 wings) came out looking pretty promising. Unfortunately, they had been cooked to death - dry and tough. The sauce was no good - it tasted like Louisiana Hot Sauce but nothing else - where was the butter flavor?

The wings came with a small container of ranch dressing (I asked for both bleu cheese and ranch dressing seeing that since I ordered multiple orders of wings that shouldn't be a problem. It wasn't, but when I ran out of bleu cheese dressing and had to ask for more, I was charged and additional 50 cents.) and some 1.5 inch long strips of celery (that had evidently been cut into thin strips first so maybe I got a total of 3 inches of a normal celery stick). Nice.

My other bowl of wings - five garlic parmesan wings ($4.99 for 5 wings) were fairly flavorful but also dry as hell.

Here's the half cup of bleu cheese dressing. They're kind of stingy here. Why even bother giving me the celery sticks? They obviously don't want me to eat them.

I'm done ranting. Now onto lunch.

Lunch: Tina made some Chinese food for lunch. She stewed half a cut up chicken in soy sauce and spices (lu ji), sauteed some radish greens, and made a salad of cucumber, radish, mung bean sheets, garlic, and cilantro in a dressing of vinegar and sesame oil.