Text 847, 127 rader
Skriven 2006-04-28 10:50:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: the land of chains 583
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In the land of chains.

After Ella Lou picked me up at the airport, it transpired
that she had not eaten that day, and my airplane salmon
salad had long since gone away. She'd always wanted to take
me to Abuelo's, and as we were driving right past it, it
seemed to make sense. It's a big cubic place, somehow
familiar-looking. Like Timpano with a touch of Copeland's
and the Outback thrown in, and some fake Diego Rivera murals
(it calls itself a "Mexican food embassy"). Turns out it is
a chain, although respectable enough.

A smiling waitress who looked as though she enjoyed both
working and eating there.

The usual chips and salsa were the usual; a side of
guacamole was distressingly portion-controlled (two small
sherbet scoops) but tasted all right, fairly chunky, made
fresh within the last couple days (just that tiny bit of
frizzante quality that you get with slightly old guac).

Many enchiladas -

ground beef with chili con carne was completely standard,
but the chili was boring;

shredded beef with red chile was also standard, with a
decent New Mexico-style sauce;

chicken with salsa ranchera was tasteless white meat with
a fairly spunky chunky tomato and pepper sauce;

and avocado with salsa crema was surprising, the components
going together nicely.

Rice was the usual pseudo-Spanish stuff; beans were
excessively peppered with black pepper, and I liked them
very much.

Beer runs $5 a pint.

=

Grub's is a bar right next to the Walton Arts Center, so
very convenient for the musicians. It's not a chain, thus
is an anomaly in this report. Its famous half-pound burgers
are a good buy at $5.25 ($6 with stuff on top) and pretty
tasty, although I suspect a lightish amount of some cereal
filler. The second time we went I opted for the chicken
fried steak for a couple bucks more - oddly, Ella's onion
rings and then her burger came out, with no sign of my meal.
The waitress trotted out and asked if I wanted gravy. Yes.
On your steak? Yes. On your mashed potatoes? Yes. Turns out
they had to make a fresh batch of gravy (I could taste the
scorch from the burned previous batch, which hadn't been
sufficiently washed out of the saucepan); this tasted
partway between cream gravy and red-eye, but at least it
was from scratch, with real milk and real flour; the mashed
were out of a mix, but spunked up with garlic powder. The
meat was not all that big, maybe 6 oz, with a lot of breading
that was nice and crisp on one side and soggy and underdone
on the bottom (obviously someone was tending to the gravy
disaster instead of paying attention to the frying). Next
time, it'll be a burger for me again. Oddity: 16 oz Guinness
and 12 oz Dos Equis cost the same, $2.75. 12 oz of Budweiser
is a buck.

=

The Dixie Cafe is another of these big square mall buildings
and clearly a chain. No alcohol, either. Nonetheless, the
food was the equal of the southern mom'n'pops I've eaten at.

Fried pork chops were pretty good, and red beans and rice
on the side just needed a couple of shakes of Louisiana brand
vinegar peppers to be perfect. I also had a decent side of
okra. Ella and her daughter's father-in-law Kenneth both had
chicken and dumplings, a nice bland meal, the dumplings being
the flat noodley kind rather than the fluffy drop ones I favor.

Looked up the place on the web: turns out there are 18 outlets,
16 of them in Arkansas and 2 in Tennessee.

=

Belle Arti is the fancy restaurant in downtown Rogers (there are
several out by the freeway - Copeland's, the Outback, and Oscar's
Prime Rib), which is otherwise your typical sleepy old southern
town. It's an offshoot of a well known place in Hot Springs, and
I don't know why the owner chose to expand here. Anyhow, it is
the most pretentious place in town, with the suavest help.
It does have lunch specials, so Ella Lou decided to treat her
daughter, son-in-law, and me. There were 4 specials on the
blackboard in the front window. The shrimp and artichokes over
fettuccine sounded the best, the others being things along the
lines of ziti with meatballs, so the three of them all got this,
which was decent, although the artichokes were from frozen and
the wine sauce was slightly undercooked. Ella got only 2 shrimp;
Barry got 5; Kristen got 8! The waitress came by as the natural
redistribution was taking place - said, oh, we'll get you some
more shrimp; Kristen said, no need, I had more than I could eat.
Nonetheless, halfway through the meal, another batch of 5 shrimp
came out on a little plate, so I got a couple shrimp to try.
I bucked the trend and got a spinach salad (your standard, but
quite fresh, and with an orange vinaigrette instead of the
sweet-sour dressing that is customary) followed by spaghetti in
tomato sauce with Italian sausage (decent sauce, al dente pasta,
a huge quantity of spamlike sausage rounds) and a glass of okay
Chianti (Kristen joined me with some Chardonnay).

We ended up with more than enough food, but Ella wanted to try
the special raspberry dessert, which essentially turned out to be
frozen raspberries mixed with toasted almond slivers and topped
with a big blob of whipped cream and a cherry - infant food.

When the bill came, it was higher than anticipated. The dessert
was $6, a bit much but more or less expected. The pasta special,
though, rang up at $14 each. Kristen said she thought that the
specials were $6.95, but the dish that came out really was a
bit generous for that price. We took a look at the board on the
way out: the other specials were listed, with $6.95 by each; the
pasta with shrimp, on the bottom of the board, was listed with
no price. Ah, well, live and learn.

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