Montana Ted’s Wild Awesome Adventure

Comfort food is awesome. Screw fine dining. I hate hoity toity stuff. I could eat burgers for days and days in all shapes and combinations. Ted’s burgers are one of the tastier burgers I’ve stumbled upon in Nashville. I don’t know what it is. Maybe the patty, which could be more tightly packed and held together, but only because there’s so much meat juice flowing that it runs down the side of my arm and I have to suppress urges to lick the grease. George Foreman and his grill can eat it. The grease and juice make the burger tastier. In fact, it wouldn’t be comfort food if it wasn’t unhealthy. Add a slice of cheese, some mushrooms, maybe onions–even a FRIED EGG!–and look what you have: breakfast, lunch, and dinner combined into one sandwich, ideally eaten in one sitting. I didn’t order the “kitchen sink” burger, but I do give the place thumbs up for offering the fried egg topping. The fried egg needs to be accepted and embraced as a burger topping. In fact, I believe the addition of an egg to any item should automatically qualify it as a comfort food. Omelets.  Ramen. Oyakodon. All of the previously mentioned are my comfort foods, and all have eggs. But you know, I understand people have differences of opinion. Comfort foods as a concept is like philosophy: it should be up for interpretation by anybody; there shouldn’t be comfort food tyrants who dictate what is and isn’t a food of significant comfort. Or maybe I’m just thinking too much, and my ill resentment towards my college philosophy class is resurfacing. Whatever. Burgers are great!

This tomato salad wasn’t worth $4. I should’ve bought a bag of prunes instead. Or Metamucil.

I also forgot to mention that the “wild awesome adventure” part is due to the fact that they serve bison meat here–more adventurous than beef, less delicious than veal.

Ted’s Montana Grill

West End

Nashville, TN

The Hipsters: They Scare Me–Local Taco.

Deep down inside, there lies a a very intense fear of hipster. And it just happens that this fear of mine is compounded by a blind rage over and over. I do think, however, that such strong emotions juxtapose often: when I see one from a distance, I’m overcome with fear and loathing; and when I’m surrounded by them, their ever-multiplying numbers taking up my seat at the local independent coffeehouse or restaurant, I fill with disdain. Just why do I harbor such emotions towards this unstoppable and enlarging segment of the youth? And why am I venting here? The first question is easy to answer: their super skinny jeans and extra deep V necks are frightening, just like how some people get the heebie-jeebies when they see pictures of spiders, I feel the same when I see them posted all over the world-wide Internets. I’m sure that there are more logical reasons to be scared, but sometimes the most visceral emotion is the only one that should make sense. As for the second question: because I can, and I’m sure all 2 of my readers (I don’t count myself one of them) would skip my opening rants anyway.

More importantly, I speak of hipsters because they do plague restaurants and coffeehouses; they take up precious customer space (tables and sofas) while spending very little, therefore hurting the establishment and economy. And so that was my train of thought as I walked into Local Taco a couple nights ago. The neighborhood was the perfect breeding ground for hipsters: small brick-laden strip malls populated by independent laundromats, restaurants, pubs, and eco-friendly stores. UGH. I spotted the line in front of Local Taco, winding out the door. The outdoor patio was quickly filling up. And most importantly (as I have learned since kinda joining the working force) pitchers upon pitchers of margaritas were strewn on tables. I glanced over the menu. Fish tacos. Chicken tacos. Fried shrimp tacos. KOREAN BBQ TACOS.

Elvis has left the building. The shark has jumped. This was it. KOGI has officially changed the way hipsters see tacos. I knew I wasn’t going to get a real (dirty and delicious) taco. But I still got the carnitas taco, grabbing on to all that futility would offer. Each taco is $2.50. They come on factory-manufactured, grocery-aisle, unwarmed, stale tortillas. Tip: I’m sure the carnecerias on Charlotte Pike offer bags of tortillas infinitely tastier than these ones. So already, one key component of the taco (the other being the filling) was off. I ordered the whole shabam: carnitas, spicy shrimp, korean bbq, and pork bbq tacos. The pork bbq was basically a bbq pork sandwich with coleslaw in a tortilla instead of a bun. The spicy shrimp was sweet, not spicy. The korean bbq was also sweet, but not so much that desecrated the deliciousness inherent in Korean bbq (translation: it was decent). The carnitas was the white-flight version of pork: no fat, no grease, no flavor. I will be going to Nolensville when I want real tacos. However, if I wanted to sit on a patio and drink beers (not margaritas cuz their margaritas were disgusting and pricey) on a summer evening in a hipster neighborhood (which isn’t entirely bad) I would chill there. And all in all, the crowd wasn’t entirely hipster. The crowd was actually older, as in “I have a real job” older, but still cool. Anyway, I’m craving a taco right now. Filled with buccal muscle. That would be awesome.

Local Taco

Murphy Rd.

Nashville, TN

Post-Boards Pre-Boards Regurgitation

My creative juices are slowly drying up and being replaced by crazy, confabulation, and even possibly neologism. Maybe I should get my thiamine level checked? Or maybe I should stop so damn nerdy and do what I came to do: post pictures. I found a slew of pictures from my gastric adventures around Nashville taken before I started studying for Step 1 and before my camera kicked the bucket. Since it’s been a while, I’ll refrain from detailing how my tastebuds and GI system reacted to each dish. My memory is fuzzy at best by now, even if the food reacted favorably.

Varsity Grille. Patty Melt. Actually, I think it’s called Varsity Grill. The extra “e” kinda makes it sound classy, which sports bars aren’t.

Patterson House. Looking at these drunken pictures makes me realize how old (aka boring and mature?) I’ve gotten in a few short months. Somewhere amongst the pictures you will see sweetbreads, donut holes, and various alcoholic treats. Tangent: I didn’t realize Dark and Stormies were made from dark rum and ginger beer–I already have half of the ingredients in my fridge!

House of Kebab. If someone wants to chauffeur me all the way across town and into the boonies, I’d be willing to eat there again. I think the rose water ice cream is what does it for me.

That’s all for the picture regurge. Now I gotta work on 1) getting a new camera and 2) finding new places to eat. I feel like those are kinda important things for a food blog to have.

Free Lunch – The Grind

No, this lunch isn’t from a place called “The Grind.” The lunch actually has no name. The sandwiches, the pasta salad, and the cookies all came in nondescript packaging, save for maybe a “Yummy” or “Mmmm” sticker on cookie packages. So once again, this blog post may contain zero useful information for  readers.

Surprise, surprise.

I will still post this though, as it marks the end of many good things (but not this blog haha); my relatively carefree life is ending and quickly progressing to real life–the grind, if you will–and my camera is dying/dead, as evidenced by the photo. So here I am again, saying that my blog may go on probably a semi-hiatus because my time may become short and because I HATE food blogs without pictures, and refuse to become what I loathe. That’s not to say that this blog is gonna shut down; I discovered quite a few pictures from way back before my board exams that deserve to see the light of glowing computer screens all over the Internets.

Anyway, let’s talk about the sandwich I had at this free lunch. Vegetarian portobello. Why would I in my right (omnivorous) mind choose a vegetarian sandwich? My friend said it was delicious, and it was warm, and contained melted cheese, which therefore elevated the sandwich to the top of my most wanted list. It was only later that I would discover that by taking one of a limited number of vegetarian sandwiches, I would be taking away lunch (or at least a sandwich) from someone who really needed a meal without meat. I chuckled in my own sadistic mind at the thought. Yes, I’m terrible. I also wished the sandwich had meat. It was definitely good, and the melted cheese added an unhealthy aura to the sandwich, which was definitely appreciated, but it would’ve tasted 158% better with turkey.

I just had an awesomely terrible thought that would appease my taste buds, but would definitely piss off the vegetarians: maybe I should just bring my own turkey next time to add to these delicious vegetarian sandwiches. Yes, yes…that would be tasty. I should go check the calendar for free lunch days now. Until next time!

I Suck At This Foodblogging Deal Now

And not just kinda. It’s been two months of epic fail so far. Granted, I spent the last two months holed up in the same two seats at the library and the student study lounge, long enough to make butt marks if the seats didn’t switch around all the time. You’d think that after two months of eating McDonald’s, Qdoba, Jason’s Deli, Calypso, and hospital food (not necessarily in order of frequency) that I’d unleash the beast and devour anything near delicious during my one week stint in California. And you know what, I did. Except maybe it’s not so worthy of foodblogging because I’ve eaten at all the same places multiple times before, and I ate at the same places multiple times during that one week.

So maybe I’ve become a Boring Bobby, or probably a Monotonous Michael. Neither of the two is my real name, but since my vocabulary is so shallow, I couldn’t possibly come up with something that started with J. Anyway, I’m gonna return to my original rambling from this digression. I actually ate tons of different food. The only time I ever ate the same thing twice was at Santouka (large shio ramen) and In-n-Out (cheeseburgers and more cheezburgers). Everywhere else I frequented–the family restaurant, Imperial Express, and May’s Cafe–I ate different foods everytime, starting with a large plate of noodles meant to serve four from China Bistro. The highlight of the week was actually discovering a noodle dish called Bun Bo Hue (I definitely butchered that, and I apologize for my horrendous foreign language spelling), which is a spicy doppleganger of Taiwanese beef noodle soup, with the addition of fish cakes and rice noodles. It was kick-me-in-the-mouth-spicy, but my parents couldn’t tell because I usually sweat when I’m eating noodles. Even when eating the cold noodles.

Yes, I sweat quite easily. It leads to a lot of embarassing moments. But that’s not for this blog. We don’t drink sweat, unless it’s Gatorade. HA!

Right about now, you may be wondering why I haven’t posted pictures. Well, this brings my to point number 2 of “reasons I suck at foodblogging now”: I brought my camera, yet never bothered to even remove it from its case. I’m probably rusty at the blogging biznass now, but it may also be in reference to reasons specified above (I’ve already eaten and captured food souls in picture form elsewhere on this blog).

Now that my train of consciousness has reached a standstill, and I’m able to reflect on all the semi-fooding I just described, I realize that I have no real objective in this post. Is this me being EMO? LIKE AN EMO FOODBLOGGER?!

Nah.

I’m just really weird, and had to fill space with rambling in lieu of pictures. My apologies for wasting your time. I’ll try to get some (semi-)legitimate writing up here at some point. Hopefully this whole “the third year of medical school will be the most difficult year of your life” deal is not too bad. I should try to bring the camera with me as well.

I’M BACK PEOPLE

I took Step 1 today. I will be returning to the real world (with real food) shortly. HOOORAYYY