Howdy gang! I hope you've all had a wonderful weekend. Mine was fairly sedate, although I got a lot done. I stayed home on Friday night and took a truckload of junk that I decided I didn't need anymore to the dumpster--there's a strip mall within spitting distance of the house, so I waited until after dark and availed myself to their dumpsters, getting rid of some stuff I've been carrying around for far too long. That was about the highlight of my evening, because I had to work on Saturday.
Luckily it wasn't the early shift, but it was still kind of a grind. I went in at 11:00, and spent the day doing two downs and one up, making good, but not great, money. When a couple of 5:00 pm dealers came in, I got cut loose, but I didn't mind. I felt pretty tired and just wanted a shower and a beer.
However, I got two compliments on my nails while I was at work--I'm tellin' ya, women notice that stuff--so as I was leaving, I sent Beth a text message telling her that I was drummin' up business for her with my purty fangers. She answered me right back, so I called her. We had a nice chat on my drive home, but she was getting ready to go out to dinner with her brother and his wife, so no, my evening was spent at home alone. I did all kinds of fun stuff like laundry and cleaning the bathroom, although I sifted through the listing of local poker tournaments for about a half-hour before giving up.
I made the mistake of sleeping with my bedroom door open, and around 6:00 am I was awakened by two oversized golden retrievers jumping up on my bed with stuffed animals in their mouths, begging me to play with them. I gave them far less attention than they wanted, and shooed them away after just a minute or two. I slept for another two hours before reaching over and turning on the coffeemaker.
Since it was my day off and I had absolutely no commitments, I lounged around in bed reading and drinking coffee for several hours. It was almost a perfect Sunday morning. I finally got up and showered, then got dressed and was suddenly stumped for something to do. Again, I was wanting to go play poker, but I was also kind of hungry, having not eaten anything since leaving work the previous afternoon. The only thing I had in the kitchen was English muffins, yogurt, and orange juice, and that didn't really turn my crank in the middle of the afternoon, so I tried thinking of a good local restaurant where I could have lunch.
I considered Settebello, as it's just down the street, but I just wasn't in the mood for pizza. Then I thought about what's good over at Green Valley Ranch or at The District. I remembered that Lucille's BBQ has been on the to-do list for some time, and as soon as I thought of it, BBQ sounded like a damn fine idea. So I headed off towards The District.
It was about 3:30 in the afternoon when I got there, and when I walked in, I could see that the restaurant was only about half-full. I told the chick at the hostess stand that I'd just need a table for one, and she handed me a pager and said that it would be a few minutes.
I was kind of taken aback, because there were clearly plenty of tables available, and about a dozen servers milling about doing not much.
Really? I need a pager for a single top? Are you guys short-staffed today?
She hemmed and hawed for a moment, unable to admit that she'd just given me the pager out of habit, and finally said Well, there's immediate seating in the bar.
That was fine with me, so I grabbed a corner table and opened the menu that was already there waiting for me. I knew I didn't want any appetizers, because I figured that if it was any kind of respectable 'cue joint, the main course would be more than enough food.
After spending quite a bit of time perusing the appetizer and drink menu, along with the regular menu, I decided that I'd have the two-meat combo, so I went with the baby-back ribs and brisket, and for sides I chose the honey-roasted peanut slaw and BBQ beans. And it came with biscuits that were served with some sort of honey/cinnamon butter. I was impressed early on when I found out that not only was Lucille's a 'Coke' place, but they also served it in Mason Jars, just like grandpa's lemonade.
I sat there nibbling on my biscuits and sipping my Coke, reading my magazine and waiting for the food to show up.
It didn't take long, and I was quite impressed. I got a half-slab of ribs, a large hunk-o-brisket, my two sides, and a wedge of seedless watermelon. They had three different bottles of BBQ sauce on the table, and I think I found the perfect combination by mixing their classic mop sauce with the hot-n-spicy offering.
The beans were very good--swimming in a sweet and smoky sauce, cooked just one minute past al-dente. And the sauce had some sort of piggy goodness floating around in it. I don't know if it was bacon, fatback, hamhocks, or what, but whatever it was, it sure was good and it didn't taste like it was good for you. The cole slaw was interesting--it was a vinegar based dressing, with shredded cabbage, both green and red, plus carrots, and big chunks of sweet peppers. And the whole dish was covered with finely chopped honey-roasted peanuts. It was pretty good--nothing like I expected, and my only gripe was that the cole slaw was more room temperature than cool. Maybe I'm an oddball, but I prefer that stuff to be colder.
The brisket was fork tender--seriously--no knife needed! It had just enough smokiness to it to give it some good flavor, and I was happy to try all the different varieties of sauce with it. But the highlight of the plate was the baby-back ribs. They were really tasty. After one bite I was kicking myself for getting the combo plate. Not that the brisket wasn't good, but the ribs were just so much better. Truly, god had smiled upon that pig, for it brought much happiness. Anthony Bourdain is right when he speaks about the pig being a superior animal to the cow. Not that I don't love me some tasty beef, but damn, a pig, slow smoked over hickory wood and dipped in a sweet sauce, well, that's just a bit of heaven on a plate as far as I'm concerned.
I nibbled and sucked every last bit of meat off of those bones, happily making a mess of my face and hands. The rest of the meal was pretty damn good, but those ribs stood head and shoulders above everything else.
I would go so far as to say it was the best BBQ I've had in Vegas. Granted, I'm not drawing on lots of experience, as my visits to both Salt Lick and Memphis Championship were downright awful, and the BBQ at Ellis Island was the best I'd had since I left Nashville. But Lucille's, well, they're doing it right. Not bad for a smokehouse based in Orange County instead of Kansas City or Possum Holler, Tennessee.
As my meal was winding down, my waitress brought me a plate with a rolled up hot-and-wet towel to clean myself up with. Coupled with the free refills and CNN on the TV, I almost felt like I was flying first-class. And yeah, Lucille's, compared to many of the roadside stands I've visited in the south, is a first class operation. No picnic tables, no flies, no paper plates. And no Wonder Bread with my meat, either. I enjoyed the air conditioning and the blues music being piped in overhead, and if they could just figure out a way to combine a little honeysuckle smell in with the wood smoke, maybe throw in a few lightning bugs around dusk, well, then I'd forget that the authentic BBQ I was grubbin' on was being served in Henderson Nevada.
I couldn't enjoy such a fine southern meal like that without trying dessert. Oh, they had stuff like chocolate cake and Snickers pie on the menu, but if you're gonna go full-on southern style, there are only two desserts to choose from--cobbler or banana pudding. And when my waitress told me that the seasonal fruit was peaches, well, that sealed the deal.
I ordered mine with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, just as god intended. It came out piping hot, full of about three whole peaches worth of fruity goodness inside, garnished with whipped cream and a mint sprig, the ice cream slowly melting into a pool across the sugary crust, seeping down into the fruit below.
It was a fine epilogue to a very fine meal, and as much as I wanted to eat it all, I just couldn't finish the job. I was stuffed.
My meal came to about $38 before tip--not cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but they gotta pay for that air conditioning and indoor plumbing, unlike most of the joints I've seen in my travels. I toked it up to $45 and waddled out of there, pleasantly surprised that I can find great BBQ in my neighborhood, even if I have to pay a premium for it.
I will certainly be going back!
My plan after dinner was to fill up my gas tank and then head down to Planet Hollywood and play in one of their evening tournaments. But just as I was pulling into the gas station, I realized that it was Sunday night--time for another T2V tourney at PokerStars.
I called Dougie to see if it was still on--there had been talk of a cancellation due to most of the buffoons being involved in their fantasy football draft which overlapped the poker tournament. He said it was still on, but likely to be sparsely attended.
So after I filled my tank, I headed home instead of to the Strip, logged on, and saw that I was the third player registered, with 20 minutes to go before the cards were in the digital air. So I sent a mass text-message to all my favorite donkeys that said MULTI-TASK, BITCHES!, hoping to drum up some more players.
Unfortunately, that didn't work--most of them have a hard enough time playing cards, much less trying to avoid drafting players who are out for the season, so our tournament kicked off with a whopping six players at the table. And adding insult to injury, they'd set the table up so that everyone was on my left. What the...?
As you can imagine, it went fairly quickly until we got down to heads-up play. Yep, I was one of the final two, but Little Drew had me covered about 6-1 in chips. But I worked my way back to even, although it seemed like that bastard had two pair every time I had an Ace, pissing me off time after time.
I finally got him though, when he had the bad sense to go all in on a flush draw when I had two pair. He never got that fourth spade, and well, they ended up playing the Mikey National Anthem there on the podium at the conclusion. So now I'm the first multiple-winner of the T2V Sunday Tournament, and I get to talk shiat for a week, even though I only had to beat five people to get there. I'll take it, though.
Anyhow, that's the weekend. I've got to work first thing in the morning, and even though I have no scheduled days off until next Monday, and Beth works every night, I'm gonna call her tomorrow and hopefully we can work out a time to go out for lunch or find some sort of Vegas-style buffoonery to do together this week.
And just because I'm an immature dork with too much time on my hands, I set her ringtone on my phone to She's A Lady, by Tom Jones, while I changed Kimmy's to The Thrill Is Gone by BB King. Of course, I'll never hear that one. Kimmy stopped calling me two months ago.
Mikey
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