We frequently join our friends Gary, JoAnn, Laura Belle, and Don for dinner Friday evenings. What with our various vacation and travel schedules over the past few weeks, tonight was the first night in several weeks that we could do our traditional Friday thing.
We generally stick close to home for our Friday evening outings, preferring to range farther afield on Saturday nights. Only problem with this is, East Cobb - our part of the Atlanta metroplex - is not exactly awash with restaurants. Most likely this is because of a long-ago decision by the Learned Elders of Cobb County, in which the county refused to be a part of the nascent Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority. As a result, restaurants in Cobb County would need to rely on the local supply of janitors, busboys, and waiters, the pool of low-cost labor available inside the Perimeter being inaccessible.
This means that some of the local eateries tend to be crowded on weekend evenings.
OK, I can deal with that. But tonight, a night marked by intermittent bursts of heavy rain, it seemed as though every frickin’ Tom, Dick, and Harry in East Cobb decided to eat out.
Most places around here will not take reservations (why should they bother?), so you end up dealing with the infamous Waiting List. Laura Belle made a few phone calls. Longhorn had a 90 minute wait (!). There are very few restaurants at which I am willing to wait an hour and a half for a table; Longhorn is not one of them.
We ended up at Houlihan’s, where the wait was estimated at 45 minutes. We figured that by the time we went anywhere else (where we also would have to wait), we would have killed at least that much time...so we stayed and schmoozed. Within 30 minutes, we had our table.
Houlihan’s has a menu that appears to have been written by a 27-year-old with a semi-snarky sense of humor. It’s mildly amusing. I’m happy to put up with it because the food is generally pretty good. I had the Mercury-Encrusted Salmon, and it was so good, I glowed in the dark. SWMBO ordered the Polish Onion Soup (it has a head of cabbage in it instead of a cheese-encrusted crouton), which also was a big hit.
Once upon a time, Houlihan’s had a menu item that beggared description. Really. It was a BLT made with an entire pound of bacon, served on two slices of bread that were sliced lengthwise from an entire Pullman loaf. I am not making this up.
I ordered it once. Once. Ate half of it, then took the other half home until it grew green hair in the back of the fridge. Why they took that gi-normous fuckin’ sammitch off the menu, I have no idea. Heart-healthy, my ass.
We generally stick close to home for our Friday evening outings, preferring to range farther afield on Saturday nights. Only problem with this is, East Cobb - our part of the Atlanta metroplex - is not exactly awash with restaurants. Most likely this is because of a long-ago decision by the Learned Elders of Cobb County, in which the county refused to be a part of the nascent Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority. As a result, restaurants in Cobb County would need to rely on the local supply of janitors, busboys, and waiters, the pool of low-cost labor available inside the Perimeter being inaccessible.
This means that some of the local eateries tend to be crowded on weekend evenings.
OK, I can deal with that. But tonight, a night marked by intermittent bursts of heavy rain, it seemed as though every frickin’ Tom, Dick, and Harry in East Cobb decided to eat out.
Most places around here will not take reservations (why should they bother?), so you end up dealing with the infamous Waiting List. Laura Belle made a few phone calls. Longhorn had a 90 minute wait (!). There are very few restaurants at which I am willing to wait an hour and a half for a table; Longhorn is not one of them.
We ended up at Houlihan’s, where the wait was estimated at 45 minutes. We figured that by the time we went anywhere else (where we also would have to wait), we would have killed at least that much time...so we stayed and schmoozed. Within 30 minutes, we had our table.
Houlihan’s has a menu that appears to have been written by a 27-year-old with a semi-snarky sense of humor. It’s mildly amusing. I’m happy to put up with it because the food is generally pretty good. I had the Mercury-Encrusted Salmon, and it was so good, I glowed in the dark. SWMBO ordered the Polish Onion Soup (it has a head of cabbage in it instead of a cheese-encrusted crouton), which also was a big hit.
Once upon a time, Houlihan’s had a menu item that beggared description. Really. It was a BLT made with an entire pound of bacon, served on two slices of bread that were sliced lengthwise from an entire Pullman loaf. I am not making this up.
I ordered it once. Once. Ate half of it, then took the other half home until it grew green hair in the back of the fridge. Why they took that gi-normous fuckin’ sammitch off the menu, I have no idea. Heart-healthy, my ass.
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