Lucio's

It's a nice restaurant with BYOB.  Good atmosphere, average value, nice service.   It's an excellent date spot.

Striphouse

The Striphouse is a downtown business-oriented restaurant that is completely inappropriate for today's business world.  The walls are draped in pornographic images of the past, probably the 1950s.  Were there breasts in 1950's porn?  Because there are exposed breasts on the walls of this restaurant.  There is an aura aureola. 

[I'm sorry, but let's all stop and take a moment with that last sentence.  How great is it to read this blog?]

So even though it's kinda creepy to go there in mixed company, my co-workers and I ventured over when the newly-opened House of Blues was running a 45 minute wait for lunch.  I would have been happy to wait because it was Friday, but then I would have had to work all weekend.  Oh wait, I worked all weekend anyways.

Wow, this post has  a lot of personal asides.  Probably because reviewing steakhouses is boring.  I guess I just don't like steak.  I like the sides associated with steak though.  For instance, this place has great creamed spinach.  Maybe I will start getting veggie plates at steakhouses, although that's a pretty big professional risk at this point in my career.

DaMarco

DaMarco: the best lunch special in town!

$25 for a three course lunch.  It was fabulous.

Course 1: I had a grilled eggplant salad which was served with warm creamy goat cheese that integrated the salad.  It was the special salad of the day.  Dining companions had a creamy corn soup which was also very good, light.  Another ordered the frisee salad with pears, which was a mound of frisee, so pretty!

Course 2: All but one of us went with the highly recommended parpadelle with rabbit.  It was really good.  I said "what does rabbit taste like?" and everyone predictably said "chicken" but that really wasn't true.  Since I've never had it before, this could be in the preparation, but the rabbit was very moist and tender and it had more flavor than chicken.  It's a flavor I don't feel confident in describing right now (I must admit that although the time stamp says otherwise, this is not live blogging from the restaurant.  Live blogging makes me want to vomit, which wouldn't be good in a restaurant.)

Course 3: The best course, as always.  2 people went with the flourless chocolate cake with coffee ice cream, a safe choice.  I tried it and it was good, the cake wasn't overwhelmingly chocolate, although it would have been too dry without the ice cream.  I had the panna cotta, what a dream.  So light and delicate, and as the waiter served it to me, he poured about half a tablespoon of aged balsamic vinegar on it.  Sounds bad, right?  It's not!  The tartness of the vinegar  cuts the sweetness of the dessert and the sweet cream highlights the sweet flavor of the vinegar (it was very very mild).  

Four stars, what a deal.  Although you might want to dress up a little, we got looks when we all went in there lookin' unemployed, which we all were (all but one of us, but she had already changed into jeans).  I am loving Houston.