Prince Al’s Diner
Holy shit. An update. First in a long time. My apologies for that. Our last tour with August Burns Red was so plagued with problems that it kind of demotivated me from posting. Or doing anything really. But now we’re in the UK and we had a great week in Europe so I’m back in top form. So let’s get down to it.
We played London, Ontario on the ABR run and before the show our good buddy Pat (check out his sweet photos and zine at http://patmoore.ca and http://geminimag.wordpress.com) took us to a pretty cool diner called Prince Al’s. I got into some healthy grub, as usual.
That’s the raspberry and chocolate shake I had. Raspberry is the king of berries, and it’s always a winning combo with chocolate.
Speaking of winning combos, that’s the peanut butter and bacon burger, or appropriately named Elvis burger I had. Naturally it was delicious. Elvis burgers seem to be popping up in diners here and there and I’m totally ok with that. Peanut butter makes everything better. The fries were just as good as they look.
I’m sure this meal took a few minutes off my life. Thank you Prince Al’s.
Asia de Cuba
So I’ll start this post off by saying Asia de Cuba is probably the fanciest spot I’ve ever blogged about. It’s an Asian fusion restaurant in the Mondrian Hotel next to the House of Blues on Sunset. We got taken to dinner here by Kelly Paiste, the head of Paiste Cymbals, the brand Mikey uses, and joining us was her friend, John. We ate some food I’ll remember for some time.
(This place is a 4 star restaurant, so I didn’t have my camera out all over the table taking pictures of the many dishes we ate. I would’ve felt like a tool doing that. So instead I stole pictures off the internet of a few of the dishes we ate.)
One of the dishes we started with was this duck confit. It was served along side cucumbers, calabaza and cabbage and had a nice port hoisin sauce to drench it in. Delicious.
The pan-seared jumbo scallops were also great.
The Thai beef salad was great as well. Steak and salad mixed together can be disastrous, but Asia de Cuba doesn’t fuck around.
We also had some pesto grilled shrimp, rock shrimp mu shu (the little Chinese-style burritos you put together yourself) and I think some spare ribs? Even though these were just starters they were already flying all over the table and I was ravenous with my desire to consume everything in front of me. It was all fantastic.
For the main courses we had even more deliciousness.
We had a bit of Shanghai noodles,
lobster mashed potatoes (so good!),
grilled strip steak,
and this honey-rhum glazed pork roast. This dish was a killer. Everything about it was delicious. The skin on the top of the pork was just slightly crispy, but the meat itself was so tender and flavorful.
We also got down with some more duck, grilled ahi tuna, Alaskan butterfish and I think some more spare ribs? By this time I was two Mojitos deep (their’s rule by the way!) and so completely overwhelmed with the sheer amount of food that was in front of me. I was basically just piling whatever I could on to my plate and just devouring it, with little regard for distinguishing betweens meats or trying to keep sauces from soaking into other sauces. It was like I was in some weird dream where I had to finish all this wonderful food before someone took it away from me and I’d never have a chance to try it again.
Once we were all done with the main courses we were pretty much stuffed to the brim, so we went easy on dessert and got these Mexican donuts. They’re basically donut holes coaked in sugar and cinnamon but they were some of the best I’ve ever had. Fluffy and warm on the inside, and with a caramel sauce to dip them in that was terrific.
Kelly even got us to meet the chef, which I thought was really special because I’ve never done that before! He was really cool; he had no reservations about chatting it up with us about what he loves to do, which is make great food and stuff the rest of us with it.
By the end of the night we were all done. I probably muttered a few random things here or there about how great the food all was, but I was in a full-on stupor. All this food just kicked my ass. But that’s ok because I let it. I’m more than happy to let food this great take control and have its way with me. Anytime, Asia de Cuba.
U.S. Egg
On the day of our Mesa, AZ show we checked out this really good breakfast spot in Tempe called U.S. Egg. Junior had been telling me about this place for some time now and thankfully it didn’t disappoint at all.
I had the “Half and Half”, which is a small stack of their famous (and for good reason) “Protein Pancakes” and a half order of one of their Idaho Hot Skillets. This skillet was topped with an egg, bacon, avocado and tomatoes and was great. The bacon was cooked to a good crispness (soggy bacon can take a hike) but what I really liked about it was that the avocadoes weren’t just a few sliced pieces. Rather it was a huge amount of avocado spread across the entire skillet. Tasty.
Those pancakes were exceptional though. Upon first bite I was hooked. They’re called “Protein Pancakes” because they’re full of more ‘substantial-ness’ than just pancake batter; they mix in granola, berries, slivered almonds and a lot of cinnamon. Every bite was better than the last. By the time the butter and maple syrup had blended in with the rest of the flavors it was pure heaven. These are honestly some of the best pancakes I’ve ever had. Next time I’m at U.S. Egg I’m getting a full stack of just those.
Stubb’s
Before our show at Emo’s, Mikey and I checked out a fairly well-known Austin barbecue place called Stubb’s. Not only does Stubb’s dish out some good tasting grub but they also have two stages and put on a lot of live music, especially during SXSW. We were about 2 weeks early for that though, so on this day it was all about food for us.
I had the brisket plate, with a side of mac and cheese and fried okra. The mac n cheese was tasty and the fried okra was good also. If you’re from California like me, or maybe the east coast, you probably aren’t going to see fried okra too often. It’s a total Southern side. But I like it every now and then. It’s kind of like eating peppers that aren’t spicy at all. The beef was perfect. Tender and juicy, and it had the pink smoke ring, the true sign of well-smoked and barbecued meat. I doused it in their housemade sauce and that just made it even better.
Another good Austin barbecue to scratch off the list. I will try them all.
