Dinner: Tina and I went to meet Kent and Larisa (and others) at Pao's Mandarin House (2300 Lohmans Spur, Lakeway, TX‎ - (512) 263-8869‎) for Chinese New Year Dinner. Unfortunately, I got the dates wrong (it was supposed to be dinner on Saturday and not Sunday), so we waited for thirty minutes before deciding that they weren't going to show up. (Later in the evening when I reread the email thread, I realized we were the ones that never showed up to dinner - the previous night - how embarrassing!) We started with a few appetizers:

Braised Pig Elbows, $6.25. We expected a slightly different dish, but it was pretty good.

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What I Ate: February 14, 2010 (Chinese New Year Dinner at Pao's Mandarin House, Which Wich)

Dinner: We drove down to San Antonio for Chinese New Year's Dinner at Braden and Kelly's house. For dinner, they cooked several Chinese dishes and provided a few restaurant prepared dishes. It was a great dinner with old friends and a couple of new friends. Here are some of the dishes:

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What I Ate: February 13, 2010 (Chinese New Year's Dinner)

Dinner: For a pre-Valentine's Day dinner, I made a reservation for dinner at Zoot (11715 Bee Caves Road, Bee Cave, TX‎ - (512) 477-6535‎). The last time we were at Zoot, we had an excellent dinner, but that was back in April 2009 (about a month after they opened in their new location in Bee Cave).

We arrived a tad early and waited at the bar for our table. While at the bar, we ordered the Sweet potato / parsnip soup with apple, golden raisins and tarragon. Although it wasn't much to look at (most soups aren't), it was delicious. The soup was slightly sweet and slightly savory at the same time and was very well-balanced (a phrase that pretty much describes most of the food we had tonight). It was a great way to start our evening at Zoot and a quick reminder of how flavorful our first meal was.

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What I Ate: February 12, 2010 (Zoot)

Lunch: I microwaved the burger patty and toasted the buns of my Bacon Cheeseburger from Outback Steakhouse. After reassembly, the burger was pretty decent, but a little too sesame flavored (because the sesame seeds were well toasted). The burger was not dry (but also not moist).

Dinner: Tina and I ate at BJ's Brewhouse where I ordered their Brewhouse Blonde Fish 'n Chips (Fillets of Pacific cod dipped in our special light batter made with Brewhouse Blonde beer, then deep fried to a golden brown. Served with wedge cut seasoned fries, tartar sauce, and malt vinegar). Both the fish and the chips were overly greasy (we suspect the fries were double fried - once earlier and once just before service). The first piece of fish was okay, but the other two were a tad soggy.

I've found that the search on this blog works fairly well, but when I'm looking for a particular restaurant or dish that I ate (to remind myself of a previous experience or see what it looked like), the search doesn't work too well. Searching for a restaurant name often pulls up other blog entries where I may have mentioned or compared against that restaurant, making it more difficult to find what I'm looking for.

So, I wrote a tool to help - it's a search tool that was specifically designed to dig through What I Ate and provide links to to the meal as well as photos of each dish. Just go to the What I Ate Search type in the restaurant name or name of the dish and click on "Search". If there are ten or fewer results, all the photos will be pulled up automatically (otherwise, just click on the "Show Photos" link).

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What I Ate - Search Tool

Lunch: Tina made ramen using the noodles from a Nong Shim Ramyun packet and the pork soup she made.

Dinner: I served the braised beef shanks that I made last night with a spicy wine sauce.

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What I Ate: February 10, 2010

Lunch: Tina and I shared the left over mushroom pizza from Cafe Bistro.

Dinner: I braised beef shanks, but they weren't cooked enough by dinner time. I did eat the marrow out of the bones and made a sauce out of some of the braising liquid with wine and spices.

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What I Ate: February 9, 2010

Dinner: On the way back from buying wire shelves from Lowe's in Schertz (a town just north of San Antonio - the last remaining Lowe's in our area with pantry shelves in stock), we stopped at Outback Steakhouse in San Marcos twenty minutes before closing. We started with Kookaburra Wings Chicken wings tossed in a savory blend of secret spices and paired with our cool creamy Blue Cheese dressing and celery. We ordered "mild" since we hadn't had these before. Next time we'll go up to "medium" heat since these weren't spicy at all. As for the "secret spices", we tasted mainly ground cumin. I did enjoy these wings quite a bit and not a single one was dry, tough, or stringy. Way, way better than the KFC Fiery grilled wings from yesterday.

Next, we tried the Bloomin' Onion A true Outback original. Our special onion is hand-carved by a dedicated bloomologist, cooked until golden and ready to dip into our spicy signature bloom sauce. We had never had their Bloomin' Onion before (I've only been to Outback Steakhouse three times in my life including this visit), and, I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised. I thought the onions would be sitting in grease (with all that surface area, I just expected it to be overly greasy), but it wasn't. In fact, I thought it was better than most onion rings since there really wasn't all that much breading on the onions - just enough to add some flavor and crunch, but not enough to detract from the main ingredient - the onion. Surprisingly good. One Bloomin' Onion is too much for two people (unless you're not eating anything else).

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What I Ate: February 8, 2010 (Outback Steakhouse)

Lunch: I had a craving for wings and what better day to dine on some fried chicken wings. I drove to the nearest KFC (6818 West Gate Boulevard, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 707-8494‎) and ordered some - only to find out they no longer have hot wings. The only wings my KFC sold were the Fiery Grilled Wings. I was pretty discouraged since they stopped selling my favorite KFC menu item, but went ahead and ordered ten with an individual sized cole slaw (which seems smaller in the new packaging) and large mashed potatoes and gravy (which I didn't eat at lunch).

Dinner: Tina made a kale, potato, and sausage soup out of a pork bone broth (that was cooked for four hours the previous night). We ate the delicious soup with some toasted bread.

For dinner, Tina and I headed over to Tarka Indian Kitchen (5207 Brodie Lane, Sunset Valley, TX‎ - (512) 892-2008‎) which was recommended to me by one of my neighbors (who is Indian). Turns out to be not a good recommendation. We ordered several items to try at the counter after which I realized that the place was the Indian equivalent of Yan Can - sauces are prepared before hand and proteins are mixed in with the sauces (which is the opposite of how many Indian dishes (like the vindaloo we ordered) are prepared with long slow cooked methods that meld the flavors of the protein with the spices and sauce).

We started with Vegetarian Samosas which were not bad. The flavor and texture was fine, but I felt there was some spice or taste that was missing (but I'm not well-versed enough in Indian cooking techniques to identify what was missing). This was the only dish that I would be willing to order and eat again that we had.

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What I Ate: February 6, 2010 (Tarka Indian Kitchen)