I had a pretty enjoyable Wednesday, even though I was dog-tired most of the day. I've mentioned before that it's hard for me to sleep 'regular' hours any more, and sometimes it affects me on my days off. I was up all night on Tuesday, unable to sleep, so around 3 am I decided to watch a movie on cable, The Great Raid, which kept me fairly entertained. By the time it ended, however, the sun was starting to come up, so I decided to just get up and get started on my day.
I got a lot of stuff done before Scott and AliceLee showed up around 11:30, pulling up in my driveway behind the wheel of an ultra-cool Chrysler 300 Limited rental car.
We hung out here at the estate for a little while catching up on the latest before deciding that we were hungry enough to head down to lunch at Commander's Palace. No reservations we needed and we were seated immediately.
The lunch menu, although very limited, isn't the main reason for lunch at Commander's. It's the 25-cent martinis that are the big draw. Honestly, besides the Po' Boy sandwiches or the 1880 3-course lunch, there are only five other choices for entrees. And having eaten there before, I knew that a couple of them really didn't interest me. Cheap booze, however, has a universal appeal.
The choices for the 1880 lunch looked interesting this time around so I went that route. My appetizer was a potato-andouille sausage cake, which was pretty good. I followed that up with some excellent grilled mahi-mahi covered with pineapple-habanero salsa set atop a serving of cheesy grits. Dessert was a non-descript chocolate bread pudding.
Scottie also went the 1880 route, choosing the turtle soup for an appetizer, but Alice Lee went with the 1-1-1 soup sampler. Besides the snapping-turtle soup, there was a smoked pork offering, and some sort of seafood vichyssoise. For entrees, Scott had some sort of hearty soup and rice combo, but Alice Lee just ordered a $20 crabcake which had to be the mother of all ripoffs. Not that it tasted bad, it was actually pretty good, but twenty bones for a slab of compressed lump crab meat smaller than a hockey puck seemed to be a bit much. She also had a small creme brulee for dessert, which she said was also pretty tasty, if not a generous portion.
As far as the martinis go, I got the daily limit of four of them, the best one this time around probably being the apple martini. We all had chocolate martinis with dessert, but overall, I was extremely dissapointed with the drinks during this visit--the martinis were never cold. Good martinis should always be chilled almost to the point of a slight skim of ice across the surface. Not this time. Every time we got a new drink, it was like the bartender just gave the cocktail a cursory shake in the ice before pouring it. Room temperature martinis pretty much suck. I even asked the waiter, upon ordering my second round, to make sure they were chilled this time around. But there was no such improvement.
I know that my gal Krista, at the Peppermill, even puts the martini glasses in ice while she's mixing to give the drink an extra chill. But the bartender at Commander's seemed especially disinterested in his craft that day.
Overall, the food was pretty good, the service was excellent, but even with the 25-cent martini deal, there isn't much value in eating lunch there. If it weren't for the 1880 3-course special, an a la carte lunch bill would come close to about $80 a person, instead we managed to get out of there for about $80 before tip.
After lunch, we staggered next door to the cigar shop there in the Desert Passage shops. Being in such an upscale neighborhood, their prices reflected it. Although they had a great selection, we were turned off by the gouging. Granted, I'm happy to pay a premium for a good cigar, but after smoking top-shelf brands for the past ten years, I know what cigars should cost. A 300% markup over retail is a bit much. Luckily we had plenty of cigars on us already, so we just dropped a few bucks in the cashier gal's tip jar and availed ourselves to the comfy leather chairs in their lounge and smoked our own.
I don't know what happened to me, but the combo of drinks, food, and lack of sleep conspired against me and I was starting to get droopy and actually dozed off a few times in my chair. So after an hour or so we decided to hit the road. I needed a nap, and Scott wanted to go to Caesars and give them a little play to finish off his quest to get a pile of gift certificates from Harrahs.
So we headed out of the Aladdin, they dropped me off back here at the house, and they went back to the strip to do some gambling. We said our goodbyes, making tentative plans to get together again around Christmas or so. It's always great to see them, so besides the good food and cigars, the company made it a pretty good day all around.
After a much-needed three-hour nap, I got up and microwaved a Hebrew National and twisted open a Michelob Light for dinner. Not quite as good as the lunch I had, but the price was right.
Mikey
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