Live Oak Grill in Sugar Land, TX

Some good home cooking from a laid back joint is just what you need sometimes.  Nothing fancy.  No white table clothes.  No pretentious foodies barking about cooking sous vide or using molecular gastronomy (though I am a fan of those things).  Nah.  More like come on in darlin',  sit in a booth, and eat some Texas-sized deliciousness out of a deep fryer!  

My buddy Chad and I recently ate at the Live Oak Grill in Sugar Land, TX.  A lot of Sugar Land is overrun with massive suburbanization and the streets are lined with retail dining chains.  I remember growing up there and thinking that a lunch at TGIFridays was a good meal.  Oops.  Fortunately if you know where to look, even the cookie-cutter Houston suburbs have some good finds.  Live Oak Grill looks like it is in a house with a huge Texas flag painted on the roof.  Okay, maybe that's not so cool.  I mean, is that really necessary?  Well, maybe.  There's something interesting about Texas.  No matter what, they make no mistake about boasting that they are, indeed, Texan.  I feel a similar pride in Louisiana, but we haven't learned how to express it like they do in Texas.  The lone star that is hangs from walls and car mirrors is special.  It makes me vomit in my mouth sometimes, but it is special. 

Live Oak Grill in Sugar Land, TX

Chad's wife Ashley works at Live Oak Grill.  That's really why we were there.  Well, that and because they wanted me to eat there.  Naturally, since there was food involved, I obliged. I'm always willing take suggestions and dine at places that are new to me.

While the beer selection didn't lean towards too much craft stuff, they did have some good regional and local brews out of Texas like Shiner and Saint Arnold.  Can't argue with that.  I started my meal with some huge, delicious onion rings.  The massive Vidalias were cut thick, breaded, and fried... just like any good onion ring should be.  And they were indeed very tasty.  Soft, flavorful onion inside a crispy fried coating... yes!

Then came the main course: a gigantic chicken fried steak absolutely smothered in white gravy with a side of macaroni and cheese.  The steak came out with a crunchy exterior and full of flavor on the inside.  It had been pounded out and properly tenderized, that's for sure.  The gravy was a bit excessive, but also contained enough pepper to make it a delicious accompaniment to the juicy fried steak.  The mac and cheese lacked a little inspiration, but the basic noodles and cheese sauce still hit the spot.

For dessert, Ashley brought out a couple brownies with scoops of Blue Bell's homemade vanilla ice cream.  I love a good chocolate-vanilla, hot-cold combination!  Delicious!

All in all, Live Oak Grill is definitely the kind of place I enjoy dining at when I travel.  It is authentic, local down home cooking.  It is the kind of place with character and a soul.  I like that.  And I like a good chicken fried steak every now and then too!

The Buffet of Buffets: Las Vegas, Nevada

The Buffet of Buffets

Not too long ago a crew of mine from my younger days descended upon Las Vegas, Nevada for a reunion weekend of shenanigans and tomfoolery.  While most of the acts that occurred in Vegas will "stay in Vegas," I couldn't resist returning home to write about one of the most incredible offers known to man: The Buffet of Buffets!

Thanks to Cheetz for the Limo!

In order from left to right, Chetan, John, Tyler, myself, and Chad, met at the airport where a limo picked us up and brought us to the Plaza Hotel and Casino.  I really enjoyed staying off of The Strip as downtown is such a more relaxed and old-school Vegas atmosphere.  Still, a couple nights later we made our way to Las Vegas Boulevard to experience a culinary conquest like no others.  The Buffet of Buffets is offered by seven Harrah's owned properties.  For one very reasonable price ($39.99 for rewards card holders, $44.99 without the card), diners get 24 hours of access to all seven buffets.  Conceivably it is possible to do all seven.  Perhaps one day I'll try that.  But since we had other things to occupy our time in between buffets, we did manage to hit three of their most famous destinations of glutony.

Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas

Our first stop brought the clan to lunch at the Lago Buffet in Caesar's Palace.  No, Caesar didn't actually live there.  But, the casino/resort is a spectacular place with statues, vaulted archways, and decor that really brings you back to the days of old... minus the constant ringing of slot machines that echo the majestic halls.

Chefs at the Lago Buffet

Lago Buffet had a line accumulated outside its entrance at 1 PM.  Despite the wait time, we knew our dining experience would be worth it.  The Buffet of Buffets kicks off when you arrive at any of the seven buffets on the Harrah's list.  Upon purchasing the buffet, your rewards card is activated that allows their computer system to know exactly when its 24 hour window has expired.  With a time stamp of around 2 PM, we knew how long we had to make our rounds the following day.

The Lago Buffet stuck to their specialties.  The menu featured some Italian and Asian cuisines as well as some excellent herb-roasted meats, a divine dish of braised beef, and some of the best biscotti I've ever tasted.  All in all the buffet offered legitimate quality, wide enough selection, and a commitment to keeping up the standards of the cuisine they produced.  While the Lago Buffet did not offer food from all four corners of the map, they made up for it with doing what they do really well.

Prime rib (left) and bacon-wrapped pork (right)

Plate #2 at Lago Buffet.. the mac & cheese and green beans held their own

Dessert plate at Lago Buffet: the biscotti (far left) stole the show

No caption needed

By the time that evening rolled around we had somehow rolled our way over to the Rio.  We killed a couple hours gambling and allowing our stomachs to settle before meandering over to the world famous Carnival World Buffet.  This behemoth of an eatery seems easily as large as a football field.  It is a hike to get from one end to the other.  Carnival World's gimmick is to offer such a wide variety of international and American cuisines that it would be impossible to not find something to satisfy your taste buds.  The buffet stretched from country to country, continent to continent to come pretty darn close to capturing global cuisine all in one spot.  On my first plate I hit up the meats that were right in the center of the World.  Fresh glazed ham, tender and rare prime rib, and surprisingly delicious sausage were sliced on site and plated to order.  The clear winner, among everything that the Carnival World Buffet had to offer, was the prime rib.  That night, I'd venture to say they had the best prime rib in Vegas.  It was cooked rare, expertly seasoned, and as juicy as a fresh peach.  I got both the end and a center cut off the slab of beef and went to town.  The flavor popped in my mouth and for a brief moment, while I was sitting there amongst a sea of indulgence, I didn't care about anything in the world other than getting that next fork of cow into my mouth.

Ham, prime rib, and sausage awaiting their digestion

Immaculate.  Glorious.  Beef.

Unfortunately, while the prime rib highlighted the trip to Carnival World, the rest of the fare didn't stack up.  It seemed to me that they tried to do too much and focused way more on quantity than the quality of all the little niche cuisine offerings.  The Mexican section didn't even look edible, the sushi was a poor attempt at sub-par rolls, the pizza was alright, but not stellar for the kind of oven they had there, and the American section was downright disappointing.  Still, I'd go back from the prime rib.  I hope it wasn't a fluke.

Carnival World plate #1: check out that prime rib!

You think they go through some crab legs?

Carnival World plate #2... you can actually see the plate in this picture!  And yes, that is a corn dog.  No, it wasn't good.

Desserts at Carnival World... the cookies and cream gelato rocked.

After another night at the blackjack tables at the Plaza with our new friends Janice, Toi, and Kimmy (oops, maybe that was supposed to stay in Vegas... nah, it's on Facebook, so it's official), we were set to leave Vegas.  However, none of us flew out until around 6 PM the next day so we naturally had time to hit up one more buffet in order to make the Buffet of Buffets worth it.  We had stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, so needless to say we skipped breakfast and decided to head back to The Strip where we would hit up lunch at Planet Hollywood's Spice Market Buffet.  While our bellies and digestive tracts were still a little out of sorts from the two buffets the previous day, I was really looking forward to the Spice Market Buffet.  Unfortunately, it fell flat on its face.  We made it through the line just in time to be within our 24 hour window, and from a distance the food looked great.  Like the setup at Carnival World, the Spice Market had a carving station in the middle and was flanked on each side by as series of international cuisine stations.

Plate #1 at the Spice Market Buffet in the Planet Hollywood Casino

After loading up a plate with a selection of prime rib, some Asian fare, a small taste of Mexico and France, and a few morsels of dried out chicken that represented the Middle East, I met my buddies at the table and began to chow down.  Unfortunately, I was hard pressed to find something on my plate that I wanted to take more than one bite of.  The prime rib was the biggest disappointment by far.  One look at that picture and you can tell how well done and over-cooked it was.  It looked to me like they left last night's beef in the oven for too long.  After eating the beautiful rare prime rib the night before, I pushed this rubbish off to the side and refused to take a second bite.  I went back to the prime rib station at Carnival World twice more before leaving, and every chuck of bovine glory that they sliced was well done.  What a shame.  As for the rest of the food, the best item may have been the spicy boneless chicken wings.  Yeah, exactly.  If that's the best thing, I could have just gone to get chicken wings at Hooters (or anywhere else for that matter).  Oh well.  I guess "lunch" on a Monday at Planet Hollywood really just means "Sunday dinner's leftovers."

All in all I was still blown away by the value of the Buffet of Buffets.  For $40 I got three full, gigantic meals at three totally different buffets inside of three of Vegas's most famous resorts... and there were still another four that I never got to try!  The Lago Buffet at Caesar's Palace wins my award for best all-around buffet of the three.  The selection wasn't as great, but what they lacked in quantity to the other two buffets was easily made up for in quality.  My other award for best single food item goes to the prime rib at Carnival World at the Rio.  I could have eaten nothing but that for three days and been satisfied.  The biscotti at Lago would come in second.  In closing, God Bless America, and thanks to Harrah's for allowing us to wallow around Vegas in such glutinous glory!

Jay's Bay X: Winter Games for New Year's 2010 with a Fish Fry and Gumbo!

Jay's Bay X: Winter Games turned out to be a roaring success despite the absence of our dear friend Chetan, who happened to be frolicking around on the other side of the globe instead of living it up at Jay's Bay with his boys.  We dearly missed Chetan, but his spirit stayed with us as his picture from our high school days joined us everywhere we went.

John, Tyler, and the Spirit of the Sweet Indian Prince

Most of what happens at Jay's Bay stays at, well, Jay's Bay.  However, this being a food and drink blog, I thought it would only be right to feature some of the wonderful food that got cooked up over the New Year's weekend.  Thursday evening brought New Year's Eve and, along with it, an amazing fish fry.

Hushpuppies in the Oil and Slap Ya Mama Battered Catfish Filets

For any of you who have never had Slap Ya Mama fish fry I suggest you try it, and soon. They make an amazing blend of corn meal and spices that adds just the right amount of flavor to season the fish without overpowering it. Tyler and Lauren helped me cut the fresh catfish filets into strips. We then dipped them in whisked eggs and milk, followed by giving them a coating them in Slap Ya Mama fish fry, before dipping them into the hot oil. The fish turned out crispy, moist, and delicious. To add to the fish we also fried up a couple batches of hushpuppies. The guys from Texas brought some jalapeño hushpuppies and I found a bag of homemade corn balls at Southside Produce back in Baton Rouge so we did a little taste test. I liked the jalapeño spice from the Texas puppies but the Louisiana spheres had more overall flavor and pizzazz. They definitely won the show so I'm glad that I found them at the local produce stand.

Jay Doing the Frying, Showing off the Feast, and some Remains of the Finished Products

New Year's Day brought on my efforts to try to watch football... and gumbo!  I brought everything that I needed from the bayou to the bay so that I could make a duck, chicken, and sausage gumbo for the gang.  The ducks were killed during our duck and goose hunt near Jennings, La.  You can click here to see the blog post and video from the hunt. 

Step one for the gumbo was to roast to the chicken and ducks for a few hours to get them cooked to the point that I could pull the meat off the bones. The night before I cooked the gumbo, Tyler helped me liberally season the birds inside and out with fresh sea salt, cracked black pepper, cayenne, onion powder, garlic powder, and thyme. We let them sit in the fridge overnight and then in the morning I covered them in foil on a roasting pan and put them in a 350 degree oven for an hour and a half to two hours. I let them cool for a while after pulling them out of the oven until the temperature lowered enough to get my hands dirty. I pulled off all the meat from the birds and placed the shredded chunks of goodness into an appropriately sized mixing bowl. All of the skin, fat, and bones from the poultry were placed into my large stock pot to be rendered down even more for the stock. I also poured a little bit of the liquefied duck and chicken grease into a sauté pan for later.

Two Ducks and a Chicken after Roasting, Stock Simmering in the Pot

While I messed with the avian proteins, Tyler graciously cut up my vegetables.  He diced two medium yellow onions, two green bell peppers, and 4 stalks of celery (known as the Holy Trinity of Cajun cuisine).  I also had him press six or seven cloves of garlic to mix in with everything.  All the vegetables and garlic were blended together in another large mixing bowl.  I took several handfuls of the vegetable medley and added them to all of the chicken and duck leftovers in my stock pot.  I then added about 3 quarts of water (that's a guess) and let the stock simmer for another couple of hours while I watched football on TV.  It was New Year's Day, after all, and the Tigers were playing.  That's all I'll say about that!

When the football game ended I returned to my wild game in the kitchen to get the full gumbo in the pot.  I turned the burner off on the stock and removed the lid to let it cool.  I then heated the sauté pan that I put a little extra duck and chicken fat in and added the remaining onion, bell pepper, celery, and garlic to start cooking it down.  The veggies were stirred while the stock cooled until the onions started to turn clear.  Fortunately there was no shortage of large bowls and pots at Jay's Bay.  I poured the stock through a strainer into another pot.  The strainer collected all of the bones and skin segments for me.  However, it also had all of the cooked down vegetables that I placed in with the stock, and I didn't want to waste that flavor.  After shaking out all of the liquid, I placed the strainer over the trash can and started picking through the solid remains.  The bones and skin that I found were moved to the trash can while the rest of the tender meat that fell off the bones, as well as the soft and translucent Trinity morsels, made their way back the pot. 

Back at my now empty, original stock pot, the time had come to add all of the ingredients together.  I started with the freshly cooked down vegetables and garlic, then added all of the de-boned meat that I had placed in the fridge.  Oh, and don't forget the two pounds of Manda Cajun sausage the John sliced up for me.  All of that was covered with the stock that I had previously strained into the other pot.  I added more garlic powder, onion powder, salt, black pepper, and cayenne, threw in a couple bay leaves, a few shakes of gumbo file, and several heaping tablespoons of previously made roux, stirred the pot real good, and let everything simmer for a few more hours while we sat by the fire that Chad and Ashley made outside and told stories.  When the time was right the gumbo got served over some fresh Louisiana rice that I also picked up at Southside Produce (where all of my vegetables came from) and some potato salad on the side. 

The finished product tasted amazing:

Jay's Bay Video: Duck, Chicken, and Sausage Gumbo and Fireworks!

Now I'd like to share a brief booze story.  There was plenty of booze flowing throughout the weekend including several types of bourbon and whiskey, unique flavored vodkas, and an assortment of St. Arnold's beer out of Houston.  However, for NYE, Katie and company brought a couple bottles of sparkling wine to celebrate the occasion.  Having seen several celebrities open Champagne and sparkling wines with a knife or sword on TV, I thought that this would be a perfect time for me to give it a try.  It took an old heavy knife out of the kitchen drawer and went out to the back porch with my buddies.  Taking the back end of the blade, I struck the bottle just under the rim.  Success!  The cork, along with a portion of the glass from the neck of the bottle, shot off into the yard like a baseball shoots off of Albert Pujol's bat.  Liquidy delight bubbled out of the opening that I created, and we were ready to toast 2010!

Jay with the Cut-Off Sparkling Wine Bottle, Bottle and Toasting Glasses Ready for Midnight

I love Jay's Bay.  There aren't many annual or semi-annual trips that I look more forward to.  Getting together will all my old high school buddies has never let me down, although I do wish Chetan could have been there.  I'd like to give a special thank you to Chad, Ashley, John, Lauren, Tyler, and Katie for the great weekend at Jay's Bay and all your help and friendship along the way.  And Johnny, if you are reading this, I'd love for you to come next summer as well!  Until then, have a great 2010, and I'm sure there will be plenty more Jay's Bay trips in the future!