Red Fish Blue:

The humidity, the humility. I just got home. I am sticky and laughing. I just got back from Red Fish Blue with my dear girlfriend Helen. We made this mistake where we went with twenty-seven dollars. If you’d like to learn about my family, it is fundamental to know that the number twenty-seven is my dad’s life support.

We get there, and I feel like I am on acid watching a movie that is a lot better, but has the same bright-light, dark streetedness of Magnolia and that I am guaranteed protection from all my fears and mistakes for one solid hour.

The lighting is dim and the walls are alive. This very nice guy, with a very professional dialect and demeanor sits us. Helen reads the menu, and instantly asserts, “I am getting dessert.” “That’s going to make me feel ridiculous darling, get something real.” ‘Why?” Helen waits tables, I have waited tables at a few restaurants, and we are both all too familiar with the guy and girl who go on a second date, girl feels uncomfortable to spend guy’s money or eat in front of guy, guy gets uneasy, girl is stern in her simplicity, they are quiet and awkward for a while, the check is the smallest the waiter has ever seen, they spend less time in the restaurant than the waiter has ever seen, but they always miraculously tip well (waiters across the world always think they tipped well by mistake).

So there we are, dating for shy of two years and on that awkward second date. I explain this to Helen. The waiter comes over and asks for our order. We are all having a hard time hearing each other and communicating in general, thanks to this ridiculously loud woman moaning about the traumas of her rich life. This woman was Andrew WK partying all too hard with a megaphone the size of an Oldsmobile.

So we manage to talk over this blister-popping lady. Helen, still stern, got the Root Beer Float. I got the Atlantic Salmon, but I didn’t get any sides, I didn’t get a beer, I didnt get the shrimp boat that I will momentarily captain in the Puerta Azul story, I didn’t get a lot more than I anticipated getting, which is sad and hurtful for me.

The salmon was pan-seared and incredible. It came on a bed of potatoes and was garnished with some olive relish. It was so good, but so small without the sides that you are supposed to get, but I couldn’t because when we did the math we figured that I couldn’t spend more than seventeen bucks. Cheapest fish on the menu: Atlantic Salmon—$16.95.

Helen’s Root Beer Float looked and smelled good, but not nearly as good as Helen. It came and went.

We tipped the guy well. We left. The streets were wet. We got to a crosswalk. It was awkward. I walked around the car that stopped because it started to think it could go again, but before doing that I had said to the car “just go.” Helen thought I was talking to her so she walked in front of the car, which stopped. We got to the other side of the street and flapped our arms around like jellyfish.

The fish and chips are cheap and look great. Go there and get them sometime. As well-presented and good as the food is, Red Fish Blue is too expensive for the very local-hearted.

Rating: 53/100
 

Puerta Azul Restaurante:

Morning hits like a deaf dog’s bark. I clean off the table with all the messy gunk I live with. I then wait and wait and wait to speak to a friend who is moving into the dorms, but get no call, and call him a handful of times and get no reception. I have to leave by 12:40 at the latest, otherwise I wouldn’t be back to my apartment by 2:00, to meet a friend of mine who is coming into town for the day.

So Helen and I go to Restaurante Puerta Azul. It is a Caribbean restaurant and is seemingly undeservedly unknown. We get there and the big room has wooden tables and a good amount of sunlight. I go from being in a bad mood to being in a very shy mood. Our waitress, and the only person I see working in the restaurant, seats us, and gives us bright blue paper menus.

I split the pastelillos with Helen, which are deep-fried pastry shells, I get the spicy beef, Helen gets the vegetable. They taste as perfect as the grace of a mermaid who never flops on dry land. For lunch I got the pollo la parrilla, which is a charbroiled chicken breast marinated in garlic, served with beans and rice. They have three types of beans: house (pinto), black, and vegetarian. My meal was unbelievable, and took me to Costa Rica and for some strange reason Israel at the same time. I was feeling like the most successful shrimp boat captain in the Carolinas. Helen got the tortilla espanola, which is a Spanish egg casserole that comes with a house salad. It didn’t impress the hell out of me, but I can assure you that if you are big on quiche and cilantro it is paradise.

The menu seems difficult to exhaust, and they serve Malta’s, which are the best drink ever-thick, runny sodafied molasses.

Perhaps the biggest appeal of this place is its affordability. Everything on the lunch menu is priced under seven bucks, and that almost assures leftovers. Go there and eat, or be eaten.

Rating: 90/100
 

Louisiana Café:

I went to the Louisiana Café with Karen Saxe in the late spring, but never got a chance to write up the review. I went there last Saturday morning with Hannah and James.

Hannah got the typically humungous breakfast burrito. It had a cornfield-reminiscent plain of hashbrowns jutting through it in all directions. I would like to say there is nothing creative about it. It is the breakfast burrito you’d expect no more no less.

James got the eggs benedict and hashbrowns. Hollandaise sauce holds a special place in my heart. As good as it is there is this unscratchable memory of the 5-gallon jug that was loaded, lined, and congealed with the yellow soot at a restaurant I once worked at. The eggs were poached as expected and the ham was unsurprisingly between thick and thin.

I got the Everything Omelet which came with hashbrowns and toast (sourdough or wheat). What I really wanted was to order all four of the meat sides, but James and Hannah convinced me that it would be really greasy and disgusting. I didn’t want to agree, but I finally did. My omelet was almost awesome. It did manage to have many distinct flavors that did not fuzz into each other. It really had everything in it, which seems to be a rarity these days with the ‘everything’ products.

The hashbrowns were the hit, in everyone’s opinion. I will finish here, because I feel like I managed for the first time ever to only write about the food.

Rating: 68/100
 

Pad Thai Grand Café :

So the trend is getting clear. I tried to go to the very local restaurants to let people know where they can walk/bike and eat and walk/bike back.

I had never been to the Pad Thai Grand Café. The first surprise was that it wasn’t dominated by Macalester students. For some odd reason, I figured that if you put an ethnic restaurant kiddy-corner from the perhaps most ethnic loving school of all times, the students would be holding up the tables and the paintings on the walls. Yet no such sign.

I have been to some excellent Thai restaurants, and some intuitive vibe was telling me that this place would not be good. I figured out that what made me feel this way was last year when I checked out an apartment upstairs and got the feeling that the grease and stink of the kitchen had encroached and was plastered to the bottom foot of all the walls in the apartment.

It was very nice having a meal with Hannah. We manage to both be the type to not let things go or fall, so we talk and gab and talk and talk and think critically and always take that critical artistic step back. So the mood hovered there. We ate outside.

We started with the spring rolls, which claim to be the best in the cities. I won’t attest to that, but I will admit that they are incredible. They have the prefect amount of mint and come with a very real tasting peanut sauce (Hannah’s comment: “And so thin too! Not ketchupy at all!”)

I got the red curry with chicken, potatoes, straw mushrooms, and bamboo shoots. As far as curry goes, I admit I am not well versed, but holy shit was this fantastic. The same way lava looks really good to watch and the way you want to swim in it and pet it, but you know you can’t because it is hot, well this curry is like edible lava in its smooth flow and soft rightness. (Hannah’s comment: “And so thin too! Not ketuchpy at all!”)

Hannah basically got the same dish, but it had fresh tofu and lacked some of the vegetables. Same perfect sauce.

The menu offers tons more. There are a few lunch dishes that are $6.25 that I encourage you all to try at some point.

Rating: 82/100