Text 5567, 64 rader
Skriven 2008-04-17 16:54:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: steaks 160
==================
Oscar's, Rogers, AR

My friend Ella Lou and her brother Uncle Steve picked me
up at the airport, and we headed to Oscar's, a place that
I actually like quite a bit.

As my flight had come in on time, it was just about 5:30
when we showed at the restaurant, and, surprisingly, we
weren't the only people dining. We were hoping for early
bird specials (we'd had them before), but the specials
inserted into the menu looked rather expensive and unspecial.

Our waiter was a genial James Beardish sort of fellow,
who smoothly upsold us into buying two appetizers: sauteed
mushrooms and Cajun-style bbq shrimp. The former were
regular button mushrooms, stewed in butter until quite black
and gooshy - quite ugly but quite flavorful. The shrimp were
eight nice big Gulf ones cooked in butter with some garlic
and a hefty hit of Cajun seasoning. The bread is nice, and
one can get extra (and extra butter - Steve and Ella go
through butter very rapidly). Salad comes - a sizable pile
of shredded greens with excellent grape tomatoes, cucumber
slices, and huge clots of shredded cheese (which I gave
away as best I could). Ella had some creamy Caesar dressing,
which looked gross, and Steve asked for double dressing,
Caesar and ranch, which looked grosser. My salad was dry.
For some reason, the courses were telescoped, so the starters
came first, then five minutes later the salads, then five
minutes later the main courses, so our table got mighty full
mighty quick - this was the only complaint I have about the
meal, which was otherwise of pretty high quality, both the
food and the service, though one easily gets tired of flirty
guys who look like James Beard.

Both Ella and Steve had the 10-oz prime rib, hers medium-rare
on the rare side, his medium-rare on the medium side; both
came exactly as ordered except maybe 1/4 to 1/3 bigger than
advertised. Veggies and tater come with. I had a bite: quite
good, very tender (I thought maybe chemically tenderized,
but there was no telltale weird taste or almost liquidy
texture). My 20-oz sirloin extra rare came extra rare and was
quite a nice piece of meat, only the fat was as uncooked as
the meat, and I had to leave it behind (to compensate, I had
a chomp of Steve's prime rib fat and gristle).

A mass-market, rather sweet and untypical Argentine Malbec
actually did well by the mushrooms and okay by the meat.

I think we didn't have dessert (and I in fact took half my
steak home with some of the mushrooms), but I can't be quite
certain, as my notes went the way of all electrons yesterday,
along with most of my blue wave directory, some of my comms
directory, and lots of my Windows settings.

Quite a good meal, better than the Outback for approximately
Outback prices.

Turns out, when we were talking to some locals, that there
are in fact early bird specials, only you have to ask for
them. We would have saved 5- each on the roast beef plates.

___ Blue Wave/386 v2.30
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
 * Origin: Doc's Place BBS Fido Since 1991 docsplace.tzo.com (1:123/140)