2008

Archive for the year 2008

Monterrey Mexican Grill

Posted on June 29, 2008 by Ching under Food and Drink.

Brian was feeling generous after his magnificent poker win so we decided to take his mom and dad out to dinner and a movie. The movie we had planned on in advance, but they originally had dinner plans with Bill and Lisa. Their plans fell through, so we figured the four of us could have dinner instead.

Since we invited them to dinner, we had them pick the restaurant. They picked Monterrey. We had never been there before so I figured it would be a good time to try it. Never again. We are going to pick the restaurants from now on. =P

We live on the Northeast side of town so we always drive by it, going to and from various places. We’d always wondered what the food was like, but never ventured in. I guess our instincts were correct.

Monterrey has got to be the most insignificant restaurant that has ever opened. Seriously. Notice how there are no pictures of food above. That’s because the food wasn’t picture worthy.

Here’s the quick and dirty. Though they weren’t really busy, the service was slow. The food was so-so. Chips were a 2 on a scale of 1 to 10. Abuelo’s chips tips the scale. They have the best chips in town. Chili’s chips are good, too. Heck, Felipe’s has better chips. Salsa was average. They really needed good salsa to overcome the chips deficiency. So far, not so good.

By the time the server came by to take our drink orders, we were ready to order our meals. I did order a glass of sangria. I have to give it a try from every place that serves it. Blech. Worst sangria ever! What a turn off! My suggestion would be to take it off the menu.

I think Donna ordered a pick two and Dave ordered a pick three, while Brian and I decided to share a pick two between the two of us. He got a bean and cheese burrito while I had a the beef quesadilla. It’s pretty hard to mess up a bean and cheese burrito so I’m thinking Brian was fine with his portion of the meal. I wondered about mine, though. My quesadilla came out looking like a soft taco. When we asked the waiter, he said that is their quesadilla. I kind of expected it to be flatter. Hmmm… Brian and I agreed that our waiter could be (a) lying so that he doens’t have to take the food back to the kitchen and make them redo it, or (b) that’s really how they make their quesadillas, in which case I’m sure we are not the first patrons to scratch our heads.

Donna wasn’t impressed with her meal either. She made a comment that the food was way better the first time they tried the place. She gave it a rating of 2 forks out of 4. I don’t really give ratings, I just give feedback. If I make a repeat visit, then you know you’re doing something right.

As I mentioned earlier the food was pretty average and bland. David almost emptied the salt shaker on his plate. Either his food had no flavor at all, or he is just being himself. He is a bit of a salt addict.

I guess the one nice thing is that the server was conscientious enough to take the sangria off our tab. He could sense that I didn’t like it. I gave it all of three sips. I figured maybe it would get better, but it didn’t. Anyway, I guess he saw that my sangria was still very full at the end of the meal so he didn’t charge us for it.

I wouldn’t say the prices were reasonable because I wouldn’t pay to eat that stuff. If I were to put a price tag on the food, it’d have to be negative. I can say the prices are cheap, though. Well, compared to similar restaurants. Three full entrees and three drinks only cost $30. As they say, you get what you pay for…

I have no idea how they’ll stay in business. I mean, if I want to eat Mexican food I’ll go to Abuelo’s or Felipe’s. You wouldn’t be able to drag me back to this place even if you tried. The food was so insignificant that it made me wish that Red Hot and Blue had never closed. By the end of the meal, I was fully prepared to make a deal with the devil to eat at Red Hot and Blue every week just so they would return and erase this place. I give it about six months to a year.

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Brian Took Home Third and $100 Last Night

Posted on June 28, 2008 by Ching under Poker.

Brian, in an amazing display of poker prowess or just getting really, really lucky, made it to the final table again. He was very, very short-stacked. As in, he only had $40K left compared to all of the big stacks. He managed to survive getting knocked out and actually finished in third place, taking home $100 bucks. Now, we have money to go to the movies tonight. Anyway, I’m glad that Brian did my chips proud.

We got to poker late because DHL was acting crazy and making me freakishly paranoid about my package (contents of said package will be blogged about later). Anyway, we decided to go to poker at the last minute. We made it to poker without being short-chipped but not early enough to not have to sit at the same table. I hate being at the same table as Brian (unless it’s the final table, which we did achieve not too long ago) because inevitably one of us knocks the other out of the poker tournament.

Unfortunately for me last night, I was the victim of the spouse-on-spouse carnage. Brian knocked me out with the first 30 minutes of the tournament. We hadn’t even gone to $200-$400 yet.

So here’s the set up: Brian and I had one player, Kaye, in between us. Kaye was dealer this hand, and I was in the small-blind position. It comes to Brian and he raises to $1600. I should know better than to tangle with my own husband this early in the game, but I looked down at two lovely ladies. I re-raised to $3200, just to see where I stand. He re-raises and goes all in. My BS meter goes off the charts. There is no way he has my hand beat. Needless to say, I called his all in and he revealed pocket aces. Ugh. Bloody hell. He was off to a good start and had won a few hands already so he had my chip stacked covered. That was the end of the tournament for me. I was sidelined before 7:30 PM.

At least Brian was nice enough to loan me his Cowon A3. That thing really comes in handy. I watched Juno, which we’ve had for a while, I just haven’t had the time to watch it. Finished it before break and then I watched Ben Stiller’s The Heartbreak Kid after the break. I finished the second movie and Brian was still in the tourney, amazingly enough.

That’s the story of my poor showing at Friday night poker and Brian’s totally brilliant performance. Then again, he might just gotten really lucky all night.

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Gearing Up for Our Vegas Trip

Posted on June 26, 2008 by Ching under Life, Travel.

Only 23 days until Corey and April’s wedding at Mandalay Bay! Woo hoo! Brian and I are gearing up for our upcoming trip. Though Brian has never been to Las Vegas and this will be his first, I seem to be a lot more excited about the trip than he is… He’s probably all tripped out from having had to go to New Hampshire a couple of times already so far this year. Brian has always been anti-travelling. If we could teleport to Vegas and cut out the part where you have to go to the airport and sit through a boring flight, I’m sure he’d probably be much more excited.

Anyway, one of the most important pieces of advice I read is to bring a couple of pairs of comfortable shoes. So my mission this week was to find my perfect flats.

I had found these Me Too “Neda” Mary Jane flats at Aspen Traders a few weeks ago. They were $77, though, so I couldn’t get myself to buy them. Usually, when I find something at the store I like I’m able to find them online for a third or half the store price. I searched and searched for these shoes and could not find them for less. Everytime I found them on sale, they were only in size 10 or 11 and not available in my size. Regular price online was about $83. With shipping it was going to cost more than just buying them locally.

Finally, Brian and I agreed that I should just go back to Aspen Traders and buy them. We went there at lunch on Tuesday. As luck would have it, they started marking down the shoes that day. My shoes just happened to be on sale! And, guess what. The only size left was mine! And, they were the final pairs they had in black, bronze, and silver. I managed to talk Brian into letting me have both the black and bronze pairs. We agreed that it was a good deal because I ended up getting two shoes for the price of one.

I wore the black pair once this week and the bronze pair, which is pretty versatile actually, twice already. They are so comfortable! No break in needed. I love them! I’m not the only one either. Just check out the reviews on Zappos. I’m so glad I found them. They are nice enough to wear with dresses or shorts. I’ll be living in these shoes during our trip.

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My Cousin Gladys

Posted on June 24, 2008 by Ching under Family, Life.

I received a letter from my cousin Gladys last month. She included some photos. One of her and I taken ten years ago, a recent photo of her, and also a photo of her brother Justin (below).