Text 22851, 71 rader
Skriven 2015-01-12 08:22:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: ost 63
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Ranch House Grille is famous for its country-fried steak
and for its chile verde, both agreeable to me, but I didn't
particularly want the eggs, hash browns, and toast that
come with; so I got a side of CFS and a side of chile verde,
paying about the same as a small full breakfast but getting
a bit more meat and avoiding the tasteless stuff. The meat
was not as good, I thought, as Yvonne's, but still quite
respectable. The chile verde, pretty bland, also thin and
wet, also very green tasting, as though the green chiles
had been substituted for with nopalitos. Eh.

Swisher had never been to Talking Stick at Salt River, the
newest (now second newest) ballpark on the circuit. It's
soaring and modern and quite the sight for old folks such as
we. We had a good long time to admire it as we tottered from
the remote parking lot, being too cheap to buy into the VIP
one. If Swisher had suppressed his vanity and gotten a placard,
we could have parked in a handicapped zone, but no. Anyhow,
there are electric carts to take the lame and halt between
the lot and the stadium. They stopped for pretty much every
pretty girl in the neighborhood but not for us, despite Swisher
being in some obvious discomfort as he walked. I suppose we
could have hailed one of them, but we both have our vanity.

Inside, catering is mediocre, though there are some "native"
specialties available, such as (not so good) fry bread. We
watched a similar mediocre game between the Mariners and the
Rockies, in which the Mariners prevailed 5-2, though truth
be told, I found a stand where a cute young shill sold me a
big tumbler of cheap but strangely alcoholic sangria for not
too much money and another stand where another cute young
shill sold me a generous tumbler of Gentleman Jack for less
than that sangria and the same as a hard lemonade. The heck
with baseball, just get a little lit and watch the world go
by, yeah!

Eventually, time to go get some food to soak up the booze.
This time we found the Roaring Fork, though we did overshoot
it once and had to go behind the place (it's in the ground
floor of an office building and is less than prominent, to
give us credit) and approach it from the side.

It was happy hour, so we had the various things on special
offer. So that's how I got to taste a huckleberry margarita.
If you like sweet girly drinks, this is fine, but it doesn't
really taste like either huckleberries or a margarita. Just
sayin'. I switched to the Earthbound Merlot, an off brand
that is actually kind of earthy, but more importantly cheap.
Swisher, unable to get Milwaukee's Best in such a distinguished
establishment, stuck with Coors Light.

There are free snacks at the bar, mostly cheap-ass cheese
that manages to have no aroma whatever (probably mercifully
so), and chips.

We got a pot of the famous chile verde, which was obviously
made in advance for the occasion and not nearly so good as
when you order it for real in the restaurant, and an order
of "pig wings," the small part of the pork shank in barbecue
sauce; I think these come in a huge frozen pack and are the
same anywhere you go - I used to get them at happy hour at
Big Fish with Carol a decade ago, and they were pretty much
identical.

I'd perhaps rather have had real food, but, what the hey,
spring training tickets have gotten expensive, and one must
economize somewhere.

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