Pasta e fagioli — amazing! Linguine with shaved truffles — exquisite! Service — impeccable!
My wife had the veal liver. I don’t even like liver but I tried it and loved it! They can make you like things you don’t even like.
It’s not inexpensive — that needs to be mentioned — but if you feel like helping to spend the country out of this recession we’re having, I think you’ll really enjoy it.
We had Mother’s Day brunch at Todai Japanese buffet in Orange.
Unfortunately, directly in my line of sight at another table was a 500-pound bald Asian guy — a beast of a man — stuffing huge handfuls of food into his gaping maw.
And when I say “huge handfuls of food,” I mean he seemed to have a python-like ability to unhinge his jaws to accomodate the volume of food he was cramming in there.
Buffet managers must die a little inside when a guy like that shows up.
Everyone’s got armbands and 3-D glasses . . .
Irvine schools are on spring break this week. I took a day off for father-son activities with my boy, age 15.
As we were driving back from lunch at Wingstop, I said, “You want to see Monsters vs. Aliens in 3-D IMAX?”
“Not particularly,” he said.
I’d already decided that I did want to see it so I got off at the Irvine Spectrum exit.
“I guess this means we’re going to see it,” he said.
“You know what they say: Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time, but regret for the things we didn’t do is inconsolable.”
“Oh shut up, Sophocles. It’s a movie for two-year-olds.”
“No it isn’t. There’s a giant girl in it. It looks cool.”
“I’ll be the combined age of everyone else in the theater.”
We got there a little early so we bought the movie tickets and walked around the Spectrum for a while. I bought a Tommy Bahama shirt and the boy got some red sneakers at Vans.
I have to admit that the movie didn’t really live up to my expectations, but the 3-D IMAX was good and I liked this line from BOB, the monster with no brain, when the battle against the aliens looks hopeless:
“Gentlemen, I may not have a brain — but I have an idea!”
In the evening, the boy had a high school roller hockey game and his mom and I watched him. It was a good day . . .
I know my son had a history test today, and that history is a make-or-break class for him. I want to ask him about the test but we’re having a delicious family meal at Olive Garden and I don’t want to break up the festive mood in the event the news turns out to be bad.
I decide to ease into it with some small talk . . .
“So, how was recess today?”
o_O (BLANK STARE)
I continue, “I know you had a history test today but rather than get right into that, I thought we could start with some small talk about recess.”
He says, “I haven’t had recess since 6th grade.”
“Oh. In that case, how was the history test?”
Hangintherejack.com has coupons for two free tacos, valid ONLY today — Tuesday, February 24, 2009 — from 12:00 a.m. to 11:59 p.m.
I know this because my son printed out a sheaf of them last night and asked me to take him to Jack in the Box at midnight for a bedtime taco snack.
When that idea sputtered, he laid out his plan for today as follows:
And I know a father who had a son
He longed to tell him all the reasons for the things he’d done
This story needs a quick setup . . .
My son’s two-year-old birthday party was a festive event. The whole neighborhood was there!
We had a bounce house, a clown . . . the only thing that marred the day slightly was that as everyone sang “Happy Birthday,” his mom lifted him up so he could see the cake, and he stuck his finger out and touched a lit candle.
It wasn’t a bad burn but he did cry for a while.
We have a video of this. That’s why he remembers it.
So — we’re having a late lunch today at Souplantation. A kid who looks about four years old runs down the aisle, turns the corner and runs back up the next aisle over.
I ask, “Why is it a good idea as a parent to let your kid run through restaurants?”
My son, totally off topic, says, “Why is it a good idea to let your kid stick his finger in a candle?”
I say, “I don’t know. You didn’t do it again though, did you?”
His mom says, “Maybe you shouldn’t have a birthday party at all if you want to complain about it.”
“A two-year-old shouldn’t have a birthday party?!” he asks in disbelief.
I say, “Mom makes a good point, if you’re just going to stick your finger in a candle and ruin it for everybody.”
After we struck out at Black Angus, we wound up at Lucille’s Smokehouse Bar-B-Que on my son’s recommendation.
Not only does it turn out to be better than Black Angus, they’ve got — mint juleps!
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have an alcoholic beverage at a family lunch, but I love mint juleps and it’s rare to find a place that advertises their ability to make one.
“What kind would you like?” the waiter asks.
“There are kinds of mint juleps?” I ask.
“We have seven different brands of bourbon.”
“Oh. Let’s go with the Wild Turkey.”
Ahhh, I’m in heaven . . .
We’re on our way to Black Angus for a family lunch.
My wife is driving . . . she pulls a huge stack of coupons out of the glove compartment and hands them to our son in the back seat.
“Find the Black Angus coupon in there,” she says.
After a while, he says, “Why do we have ten 20% off coupons for Bed, Bath and Beyond?”
“Your job is to find the Black Angus coupon,” she says, “not to criticize people.”
I say, “If you combine all those coupons, they actually wind up paying you to take the merchandise out of the store.”
A while later, he says, “I can’t find a Black Angus coupon.”
I say, “Let me take a look.”
He hands me the coupon stack, which I look through and find it.
“Pwned,” I say. “Why couldn’t you find it?”
“It looks just like the Bed, Bath and Beyond coupons.”
“Do the Bed, Bath and Beyond coupons have a big picture of a steak on them?”
“It’s exactly the same size and the same cardboard and it was mixed in together with them.”
About this time, we pull into the empty parking lot in front of Black Angus to find out that they’re not open for lunch . . .
I took my boy to Souplantation for dinner after his hockey game. An Indian kid in the line across from us was wearing a t-shirt with a gorilla on it.
“That Indian guy has a cool shirt,” my son said. “I’d rock that.”
“I’d sport that,” he said.
“I’d don that,” he said.
“I’d . . .”
“I get it. Now shut up so I can focus on my salad.”
I saw one of these upside-down bottles at Black Angus the other night . . .
The frustrated diner battling a ketchup bottle is part of our cultural vocabulary, and the solution turns out to be as simple as turning the problem upside down!?
I couldn’t decide if this was a stroke of brilliance or whether we’re all fools for not thinking of it decades ago . . .
A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.
BIG DEAL! I said the same thing last week!
Who needs Warren Buffett when you have a good dog?
Talking about Warren Buffett is making me hungry because his name looks like “buffet.” I wish someone would open an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant for dogs.
I would invest in that . . .
— Lightning 
We went to Souplantation for dinner tonight. I was really hungry but when we got there, there was already a line of people at the salad bar.
I hate when that happens.
Let me tell you what I did: I grabbed a tray and came in swinging, cracked a few people in the cranium, then finished them off with a serrated-edge knife from the silverware station.
It’s a crude plan, but let me tell you why it works: the element of surprise. No one goes to Souplantation expecting to be knocked over the head and stabbed . . .
I hadn’t been to a Norm’s restaurant in years. There isn’t one in my neighborhood. We discovered this one because it’s close to the new place where my son’s taking percussion lessons.
Not only was the boy able to get two eggs, two sausages, two pieces of bacon, half a dinner plate full of hash browns, and two gigantic slabs of French toast with butter and syrup for only $5.99, he managed to polish off the whole thing before I even finished my salad.
Excellent value!
Rating: Five stars.
Souplantation is our favorite family restaurant, but it really does give me the creeps watching fat people at all-you-can-eat buffets.
Tonight there’s a fat guy plodding through the bakery section, loading up on pizza, muffins, etc. He takes one of everything, except the things he takes two of. An obese woman decides that the bowls provided at the dessert bar aren’t big enough, so she brings over a soup tureen and loads it up with frozen yogurt, before slathering on the chocolate chips, peanuts and syrup.
Have you ever wondered why fat people are fat? Neither have I. But for everyone who’s ever said, “I don’t know why I can’t lose weight,” it’s because you’re eating everything that’s not nailed down.
