Taco Mayo

In Oklahoma City and the surrounding areas, there seemed to be a chain of Mexican fast food restaurants that were all over the place called Taco Mayo. They were more prevalent than the bigger chains like Taco Bell and Qdoba, so I decided to give them a try one afternoon at a restaurant in Yukon, OK. I ordered a Verde Queso Double Smothered Burrito. It consisted of chicken, cheese, and rice wrapped in a tortilla. The burrito was then covered with a green sauce and more cheese. The cheese covered burrito was served with refried beans, pico de gallo, and sour cream.


As far as Mexican fast food goes, this was definitely a step above Taco Bell. It was a huge amount of food for $5.29, and it all tasted pretty good. I wonder how long before Taco Mayos start showing up in other parts of the country, specifically Florida?

The Grand Food Court at the NCED

The NCED, or the National Center for Employee Development is a hotel in Norman, OK. The hotel is used by Marriott to train their employees, and to ensure that the hotel is always crowded, Marriott made a deal with the Post Office to train the postal workers on the property. A postal worker that I know was going for some training, so I went along for a week long vacation. It cost next to nothing for me to go along, and the minimal price they charged included three buffet meals per day in their restaurant called The Grand Food Court.

Breakfast on my first day consisted of pretty standard breakfast foods. Scrambled eggs, breakfast meats, hash browns, strawberries, and some orange juice. It was way too much food, but that is what happens with breakfast buffets. I took the banana to go as some sustenance for my day of exploring Normon.

I returned for lunch and tried a slice of pizza and a custom made turkey sandwich. The pizza was halfway decent tasting, topped with pepperoni, sausage, green peppers, and black olives. I had no complaints about the sandwich.

Later that night, I returned to the hotel for dinner. Pretty much everything that I tried on this night was horrible. There was fish (flounder if I remember correctly) that was very hard. So much so that I couldn't eat much of the fish. I choose some rice from the buffet and that was a bit crunchy. I also tried some butternut squash, and that too wasn't cooked properly and was really hard. The dinner roll was half decent, but I don't know if that counts. I also tried some freshly made mussels. They were better than the pre-made buffet items, but I still wasn't too impressed with them. The only thing I really had no complaints with was the salad from the salad bar since I picked out everything that went into it.

 

On the second day I was staying at the hotel, I had some fruit salad, scrambled eggs with jalapenos, and a blueberry waffle for breakfast. It was all good.

I didn't get my money's worth on this day since I was on a whirlwind day of seeing the sights in Oklahoma City and skipped lunch here. When I returned for dinner, it seemed the hotel had a barbecue theme. They had quite a bit of meats covered in barbecue sauce, but not much of it interested me. I took some salad, baked beans, corn, and pasta off of the buffet. I also took one of the featured items of the night, their buffalo chili. It was really tasty, but who knows what kind of meat was actually in the chili. Buffalo is an African ox-like animal. Going by the theme of the night, I would assume that they meant the North American Bison. They also could have used normal cow in the chili and nobody would be able to tell the difference...

For dessert, I had a cup filled with pieces of cake, whipped cream, and berries...

In addition to breakfast, lunch, and dinner, the hotel also did late night buffets. I was trying to go to bed pretty early so I could get an early start the next day doing touristy stuff, but on one night I stayed up to check out the buffet, all thanks to a tornado that passed very close to the building and resulted in lots of blaring sirens and everyone sitting in the hotel hallways. The choices were very limited on the late night buffet, but I ended up with a slice of very meaty pizza and a brownie.

The next morning, I ordered an omelet with cheese, onions, green peppers, jalapenos, and black olives. I'm not big on omelets although if you put enough stuff in them they taste okay. I also took a piece of bacon, hash browns, a biscuit and a few of the biggest strawberries I've ever seen. These things were bigger than some apples that I've come across.

After breakfast, I ventured back to Oklahoma City and visited the Art Museum and explored the underground tunnels running under the city, and then made it back to the hotel for lunch. They were serving Cajun themed food and everything was pretty tasty. I tried some Cajun chicken, okra, assorted rices, cheesy potatoes, and an andouille sausage.

For dinner later on that night, I got a sense that there was an Italian theme going on. I had fettuccine Alfredo, fried ravioli (why do they ruin ravioli by deep frying them?), beans, fish stuffed with spinach and cheese, and a salad. I would have to say this was the best tasting dinner of my whole stay.

The next day consisted of my last meals at the hotel. For breakfast, I tried some new stuff such as french toast and corned beef hash. I've heard good things about corned beef hash, but I found that stuff to be disgusting. I imagine that is what dog food tastes like. I made sure to take some more strawberries, but they weren't nearly as large as the previous breakfast.

Because I took a tour of the National Weather Service that took longer than expected, I missed lunch on this day. I got back for dinner pretty close to the cafeteria closing for dinner, so it seemed like everything was sitting out too long. Because of this, I had another freshly made turkey sandwich. I tried a little paella that tasted like it was sitting out too long as well as a slice of really good chocolate cake.

Comfort Suites Breakfast

I ate the included breakfast provided by the Comfort Suites that I stayed at in Marshall, TX. I had scrambled eggs, eggs with some sort of meat, a biscuit, and a waffle. These hotels don't seem to do much fruit in the breakfasts.

Gucci's Pizza in Marshall, TX

After a day of traveling, I ended up in Marshall, TX for the night. The motel clerk recommended Gucci's Restaurant as having the good Italian food, as opposed to the Italian restaurant right across the street. After eating, I really hope Gucci's can't speak for all Italian restaurants in Texas.

The pizza topped with half green peppers and half ground beef with a sesame seed crust was served. I am almost certain that Gucci's used pre-made pizza crusts. The crust was a horrible, dense, foamy bread. I say foamy because if the crust was poked with a fork, the holes would close up and appear that it was never stabbed. Although the crust had seemingly magical powers to heal itself, one thing it couldn't do was connect with cheese. Every bit of cheese, sauce, and topping slid right off the crust. Sometimes this happens if there is too much sauce on a pizza, but there was actually very little sauce on this pie. It's hard to tell exactly how much sauce the pizza started out with though because a lot of it got absorbed into the crust, making it kind of soggy. Perhaps this soggy crust couldn't provide a surface for the cheese to bond itself to.

Whatever caused the flaws with this pizza, I've had better pizzas than this pie from the frozen food section at the Supermarket...

Cajun Cabin in New Orleans

While traveling on a twenty hour road trip from Central Florida to Oklahoma, there was two choices for lunch. Option 1 was to stop at a fast food restaurant and eat the food in the car. Option 2 was to stop in New Orleans and find some authentic Cajun food to get to-go and eat in the car. I obviously decided to go with option 2.

After finding a parking spot in the French Quarter, I made my way to Bourbon Street and went on a very quick (15 minute) tour of the area, and then settled on a restaurant called the Cajun Cabin. They had fake trees in the dining room and alligators on the walls. The back of the restaurant was complete with a faux cabin filled with tables.

I ordered a dish called A Taste of New Orleans. It came with a cup of jambalaya, Red Beans & Rice, and some sort of gumbo. The jambalaya was the prettiest dish with it's bright yellow rice topped with a pepperoncini, but it tasted kind of bland. Regardless, it was still pretty good. I'm not normally a big fan of red beans & rice, but Cajun Cabin's beans were really good. I would say they were some of the best I've eaten. The gumbo was also really good. I'm not exactly sure what was in it, but it was much better than I was expecting.

Free Sonic Root Beer Float

On June 2, from 8:00 pm until midnight, all Sonic Drive-in stores gave out free root beer floats. I don't like root beer very much, but for free, I'd gladly try a float.

I went to the Sonic in Longwood, FL at 9:30pm and there were probably a few hundred people waiting for the free food. The parking was overflowing out into the neighboring bank and Walgreens, so I decided it wasn't worth the wait. About 11:30, I returned to Sonic and most of the crowds had disappeared. I got my float which consisted of soft serve vanilla ice cream and root beer in a styrofoam cup filled 3/4 of the way from the top. It was okay, but I really don't like the aftertaste that root beer leaves.

Unrelated to free root beer, I recently took a trip to Oklahoma and visited the History Center in Oklahoma City. While I was there, I learned some interesting trivia about Sonic. The chain started in Oklahoma and it seems every small town in the state has a Sonic rather than a Mcdonalds or Burger King. One one of their original menus, Sonic once sold a sandwich called The Whopper. It was a fish sandwich rather than a burger, but everyone knows who owns the copyright to that sandwich name now. Sonic official stopped the employees from riding roller skates in the 1990s, but yet the Sonic employees at the Longwood location are always on skates. From what I overheard another museum visitor, roller skates no longer happen in Oklahoma.

Phở 88

I have my favorite restaurants in Orlando's Little Vietnam, but on my last trip to the neighborhood, I decided to try something new. I ate at Phở 88, famous for the graffiti murals on the side of the building. I didn't know this at the time, but phở is actually the name for a type of Vietnamese soup consisting of meat and noodles. Perhaps if I knew this beforehand, I would have made a point to order a soup dish, but now I know for next time.

The meal started out with a Summer Roll appetizer. The two rolls were filled with shrimp, cucumbers, cilantro, and vermicelli noodles. A bowl of peanut sauce accompanied the rolls. These summer rolls were okay, but I've had much better elsewhere. The outside wrappers seemed thicker than what is normally served and they were quite gummy. The fillings could have used more variety as well. There was too much vermicelli and not enough vegetables.


For the main course, I had Grilled Shrimp served over vermicelli. It came with plenty of noodles with the shrimp and assorted vegetables on top. A vinegar based sauce came on the side. It was very tasty, although I remember getting a similar dish at Viet Garden in the past that came with probably double the amount of vegetables. But this wasn't Viet Garden, it was Pho 88 so I have no complaints...

Sweet Tomatoes

Salad bar, Chicken Lemon Orzo soup, and focaccia pizza from Sweet Tomatoes in Altamonte Springs, FL.

Beef O' Brady's Cuban Sandwich

My Cuban Sandwich from Beef O' Brady's in Deltona, Florida wasn't very authentic. Compared to other Cuban sandwiches that I've eaten, this was more along the lines of a ham sandwich with pickles. There was no roast pork here, but that's what you get when Cuban food is ordered at an Irish sports bar. Not that the restaurant was even very Irish. The only food on the menu that seemed remotely Irish was the fish and chips, but there were plenty of American hamburgers. For what it was, the sandwich was decent tasting, but was nothing that will have me rushing back to visit Beef O' Brady's again soon...