Lunch Theme Weeks....With Reviews!

So yeah, the lunchbunch have become bored with lunch and now we're doing thematic weeks.

Last week was pizza week. We hit Red Elephant, Decent Pizza, Mellow Mushroom and finally Barnaby's (no lunch on Monday). I'd rate them thusly:

1) Decent
2) Mellow
3) Elephant
4) Dog shit
5) Barnaby's

Decent Pizza is like Momo's...gigantic slices for cheap. They also have Bradley's sausage as an available topping, which wins. The crust is thin, with the outer edge being thick and doughy. I left the outer crust.

Mellow Mushroom is a bit more traditional, thicker crust. I think it is a whole wheat crust. Very tasty. A bit more expensive than Decent.

Red Elephant was like Barnaby's minus all the skeeze. Same crust (beer batter) and cut style. Tasted a little better to me, but I am not a huge fan of Barnaby's. The atmosphere was world's better than Barnaby's....meaning it has been cleaned in the last 20 years. It is a wait-staff place like Mellow Shroom, which means you have to tip, and the prices were pretty high for what ya got.

Barnaby's is stuck in the 70's, which is incidentally the last time the place was cleaned. Efficiency is definitely not something they specialize in there. You are supposed to pick a table first...each of which have a barely discernible, grimy number plate and if you are lucky, a paper menu and small pencil. You're supposed to bubble in on the paper menu what you want, then take it to the cashier to pay (and hope that somebody doesn't take your table in the mean time).

So, you get up to the counter and pay for your food and they ask for your name. Now, first of all, you can't get your drink at this counter or pay for it. Second, they asked your name and don't give a damn about the number of the table you chose...so why did you bother putting that on the menu to begin with? OK, so you're gonna be thirsty of course, so you have to head to the bar area and order your drink - and pay for it - separately from your food. Fine. Great. God help you if you wanted to pay with plastic.

So you get back to your dirty table, assuming it hasn't been pilfered, and you wait. They will eventually call your name over a loudspeaker stolen directly from Charlie Brown. If you can manage to understand what they say on that damn thing, get your ears checked. But wait...there's more insanity. If you ordered a pizza, you have to pick it up at yet another counter (we're up to three now). If you ordered anything else....yup, you guessed it...you go to a fourth counter.

Holy balls that place sucks.




This week is BBQ week.

On Monday we tried out Wilson's. It is a small mom & pop BBQ place that is a bit hard to get to because of a one-way street. The food is comparable to Sonny's in taste. Portions and price were OK, but nothing to get excited about. The best part of the meal was the corn on the cob. They must boil it in a garlic infused liquid and then sprinkle it with cajun seasoning. It is awesome.

Tuesday we drove way out to Tiny's. This place is all backwoods BBQ all the way. And it is awesome. The portions were hefty and the price very reasonable. You even get a complimentary dose of BBQ smoke perfume to take back with you to work. Highly recommend.

Today we hit Jim & Milt's. I got a combo platter with sliced pork and some ribs. I figured it would just have smaller portions of each, but the plate was loaded. It came with beans and a fried corn on the cob. Folks, I'll be dead by 40...if that. But I will have eaten well, and thus lived well. Everything was very good.

So far I have Jim & Milt's just slightly ahead of Tiny's. Tomorrow we're hitting a chain place; Famous Dave's. We'll see how that goes.