DFW Epicurean Delights
Stuck with an hour to kill in Dallas, which is our absolute minimum layover since approximately 87% of all visits to Dallas International Airport and Bar have resulted in delays on arrivals, on departures, and during exceptionally busy times, for urinals. So we aim at trying to program in excess of one and a half hours between flights even though ultimately this is as ineffective as slathering on a couple of gallons of insect repellent during a late summer crawfish boil in Louisiana. In those dark hours before dawn on the central Texan plains we sometimes wonder if American Airlines has some sort of deal with the city of Dallas to do all it can to drive up hotel occupancy rates. I can safely say that Dallas is the city I've spent the most number of nights in that I've never actually visited.In any case with an early morning flight in and time to kill along with a bit of gnawing hunger, we attempted yet again to find something marginally edible outside of Terminal D. We failed.
McDonald's? Please. I've chewed on wet cardboard with more taste and marginally better nutritional values.
Manchu Wok sounds interesting until you arrive in front of it and realize that every single entrée type item seems to be battered, deep fried, and coated liberally in gloppy sauces in various shades of orange. Artistically daring but of questionable culinary providence.
There is a KFC Express which shares a counter with a Pizza Hut Express! I wonder if it would be easier or at least more informative to rename it as a KFCPHXpress? In any case pizza and fried chicken - does KFC actually offer anything that might be construed as coming from a chicken, even a cage raised, genetically modified monstrosity that will someday break free and wreak havoc on humanity for crimes against nature and good breeding practices? Or are all the brown, crusty, shapeless chicken fingers, nuggets, tenders, and/or strips the result of an industrial process housed in an abandoned bauxite mine in deepest, darkest Idaho? From KFC's commercials I think it wouldn't be hard to assume that chicken pieces like breasts and legs are old school and one shouldn't eat anything that can be construed as identifiably from animals.
It might have been there before but this trip was the first time I've ever noticed a Dunkin Donuts in DFW. They apparently serve breakfast sandwiches of particularly unappetizing appearance, even as depicted on the menu board. I was too timid to ask to see what a real life sandwich looked like. Since the Dunkin Donuts is a stand without anything more advanced than a coffee maker and a microwave, it's all too horrifyingly clear that the sandwiches are shipped from some vast factory complex, prepackaged for convenience and warmed though the miracle of short waved electromagnetic radiation for the customers' delectation. Sounds yummy!
And apparently, not wanting to feel left out in doing their part to add to Americans vastly shortened cholesterol and saturated fat damned lifestyle, Auntie Annie's Pretzel and Death Emporium is now offering a, wait for it, Pepperoni Pretzel with quasi-tomato dipping sauce. And who says American's aren't on the forefront of innovation anymore. Screw missions to Mars! We can make Pepperoni Pretzels, dawg!
So with all these offerings available, I think it obvious why we tried Au Bon Pain again, primarily because it makes a slight and probably mostly farcical effort to offer at least the concept, if not the reality, of a healthy alternative. My Pesto Chicken sandwich was exemplary in its inoffensiveness. Of course this meant that it didn't actually include flavor as that might offend the average American palate but still if you stripped off the bread, the pallid tomatoes, and limp lettuce, and just ate the chicken it wasn't too bad.
Mary wasn't quite as fortunate. She ordered the Thai Chicken Wrap which for reasons known only to the ancient secret societies like the Illuminati, because it's beyond the ken of Twenty First century man, contained crunchy wonton noodles. As far as I am aware, and this is based on personal experience with an actual visit to the fabled Orient and even more specifically Bangkok, Thai food is tasty, spicy and redolent of exotic herbs and vegetables, but does not, as far as I know contain even the smallest amount of wonton noodles. Needless to say the wrap pretty much went downhill from there ending in a syrupy sludgy mess that purported to be a Thai peanut sauce which tasted more like brown sugar with a touch of , hmm, wall paper paste, perhaps? A delicate and subtle flavor to be sure. Mary gave it the old college try and she should know how to do that since she spent, by conservative estimate, something like 30 years in institutions of lower and higher learning, but she was unable to choke down more than a quarter of the wrap. The rest will undoubtedly set undisturbed in a Texan landfill till excavated still intact, a couple of millennia hence by the descendants of mutated chickens.
Manchu Wok sounds interesting until you arrive in front of it and realize that every single entrée type item seems to be battered, deep fried, and coated liberally in gloppy sauces in various shades of orange. Artistically daring but of questionable culinary providence.
There is a KFC Express which shares a counter with a Pizza Hut Express! I wonder if it would be easier or at least more informative to rename it as a KFCPHXpress? In any case pizza and fried chicken - does KFC actually offer anything that might be construed as coming from a chicken, even a cage raised, genetically modified monstrosity that will someday break free and wreak havoc on humanity for crimes against nature and good breeding practices? Or are all the brown, crusty, shapeless chicken fingers, nuggets, tenders, and/or strips the result of an industrial process housed in an abandoned bauxite mine in deepest, darkest Idaho? From KFC's commercials I think it wouldn't be hard to assume that chicken pieces like breasts and legs are old school and one shouldn't eat anything that can be construed as identifiably from animals.
It might have been there before but this trip was the first time I've ever noticed a Dunkin Donuts in DFW. They apparently serve breakfast sandwiches of particularly unappetizing appearance, even as depicted on the menu board. I was too timid to ask to see what a real life sandwich looked like. Since the Dunkin Donuts is a stand without anything more advanced than a coffee maker and a microwave, it's all too horrifyingly clear that the sandwiches are shipped from some vast factory complex, prepackaged for convenience and warmed though the miracle of short waved electromagnetic radiation for the customers' delectation. Sounds yummy!
And apparently, not wanting to feel left out in doing their part to add to Americans vastly shortened cholesterol and saturated fat damned lifestyle, Auntie Annie's Pretzel and Death Emporium is now offering a, wait for it, Pepperoni Pretzel with quasi-tomato dipping sauce. And who says American's aren't on the forefront of innovation anymore. Screw missions to Mars! We can make Pepperoni Pretzels, dawg!
So with all these offerings available, I think it obvious why we tried Au Bon Pain again, primarily because it makes a slight and probably mostly farcical effort to offer at least the concept, if not the reality, of a healthy alternative. My Pesto Chicken sandwich was exemplary in its inoffensiveness. Of course this meant that it didn't actually include flavor as that might offend the average American palate but still if you stripped off the bread, the pallid tomatoes, and limp lettuce, and just ate the chicken it wasn't too bad.
Mary wasn't quite as fortunate. She ordered the Thai Chicken Wrap which for reasons known only to the ancient secret societies like the Illuminati, because it's beyond the ken of Twenty First century man, contained crunchy wonton noodles. As far as I am aware, and this is based on personal experience with an actual visit to the fabled Orient and even more specifically Bangkok, Thai food is tasty, spicy and redolent of exotic herbs and vegetables, but does not, as far as I know contain even the smallest amount of wonton noodles. Needless to say the wrap pretty much went downhill from there ending in a syrupy sludgy mess that purported to be a Thai peanut sauce which tasted more like brown sugar with a touch of , hmm, wall paper paste, perhaps? A delicate and subtle flavor to be sure. Mary gave it the old college try and she should know how to do that since she spent, by conservative estimate, something like 30 years in institutions of lower and higher learning, but she was unable to choke down more than a quarter of the wrap. The rest will undoubtedly set undisturbed in a Texan landfill till excavated still intact, a couple of millennia hence by the descendants of mutated chickens.
