Oishii

And the greater Houston sushi tour continues ...

Two Saturdays ago, the husband and I stopped into Oishii for one of their (very inexpensive) lunch specials, 9 pieces of sashimi for $8.95. Seriously. Nine pieces, for under $9.

Remarkable.

The sashimi is exactly what you would expect for $9: basic selections of tuna and whitefish chosen by the chef, not every piece is perfectly cut, and some pieces are better than others. Nothing was terrible, and a few of these little bites were actually very tasty. It was all served by friendly and efficient staff in a clean, well-decorated space.

I've always said that there are some things that you shouldn't buy on sale: condoms, LASIK and sushi. I take that back (at least for the sushi). You should probably still pay full price for the other two.

Special Out of Town Edition: In N Out Burger (Dallas)

Those are good burgers, dude.

The Tasting Room

Ah, wine bars. At some point my husband and I must have grown up, because we stopped doing this and started doing this instead. Cool with me, as long as we end up at a friendly and accommodating wine bar. Unfortunately, we didn't find The Tasting Room to be exactly what we were looking for.

It all starts and ends with the service. We were seated in the back of the bar, near the private wine storage lockers. Not exactly an ideal spot, as the waiters had to ask us to move every time a patron requested a bottle from their locker. When our (first) waiter approached, he immediately asked "How long have you been here?", which leads me to believe that sometimes customers seated in this area get ignored or forgotten. We did.

At some point our waiter left and we got another one. Not that anyone introduced him to us. He just showed up and started taking our orders. Eventually he disappeared too, and we had to flag down a busboy to get our check. During the brief period that we had a waiter, he wasn't a good one. He kept removing the wine list from our table, which makes no sense if he wanted us to continue to order. At one point he forgot to bring one of our friends his drink. When we asked for it, he snapped "I thought you said no!! Alright alright!"

Bizarre.

One good thing did come out of this strange situation: the very sweet manager saw us being forced to move for the umpteenth time, and provided us with a complimentary glass of wine and a nice cheese platter.



This tiny act of charity is the only reason why we would return to Tasting Room. After that kind of service, you really need a shot.

RDG + Bar Annie

We went to RDG+Bar Annie with a large group of my coworkers. One of them recently started a new job, and this place was his choice. I have to say, it wasn't a bad one. RDG is great for celebrations, with its luxe interior and very large drinks menu. But, as should be obvious from the website, it's a nice place. It lends itself to a quiet, adult type of celebration only -- something we understood, but some other patrons did not (more on that later).

We started with the Bar Annie nachos with red chile beef. These nachos looked a lot prettier than your standard bar fare, but they still offered all the meaty satisfaction of regular nachos. They were fun to eat and there were plenty for everyone at the table to enjoy. Recommended.

For dinner, I had the chef's special snapper. This was also a very pretty and satisfying dish. The fish was perfectly cooked and arrived with very good mashed potatoes and green beans. No complaints here.



Service was standout. Our waiter was polite, friendly and extremely professional. He had lots of helpful suggestions and obviously knew his menu well. Check-plus-smiley-face for that.

So with good food, nice decor and impeccable service, you might wonder why I'm not more excited about RDG+Bar Annie. The truth is, it's not really the restaurant's fault. It's that the people at the table next to us were EXTREMELY intoxicated. I'm talking loud speeches, ladies-falling-out-of-their-shirts, men-yelling-curse-words intoxicated ... and they arrived that way. The problem was, no one at the restaurant seemed to want to do anything about that, and there's where they lost me.

RDG+Bar Annie is decorated and staffed like a fine dining restaurant. Their prices certainly are on-par with other fine dining restaurants. So, I think, patrons have the right to expect a fine dining atmosphere. A fine dining atmosphere usually doesn't include loud drunk people making announcements to the entire dining room. If RDG wants to be a "fun" bar and allow people to act like that, that's fine, but they should market themselves that way (and drop the prices considerably). If they want to be "The Best Steakhouse in Houston" then this kind of behavior should not be tolerated.

Convivio

Last year around this time I blogged about Table Seven. It's gone now. I'm not surprised; the food just wasn't fabulous. While I hate to see a local restaurant go under, I'm glad that we got the chance to experience its replacement, Convivio.

Tapas is one of our favorite concepts, and the menu at Convivio did not disappoint. We ended up trying quite a few of these little dishes: braised oxtail montatido (which was served on bread); prime sirloin with beer sauce (also a montadito, served on bread); chorizo croquettes (pictured above); foie gras (pictured below); and the meatballs. To wash all that down we had a bottle of Spanish red wine, chosen off the enormous wine list which is cleverly presented pasted to an empty bottle.

Both the food and drink menu are so large that there really is something for everyone. Because we sampled so many dishes, I'll break it down as quickly and succinctly as I can:

Braised oxtail: a little stringy but very flavorful. The portion was much larger than expected; what arrived was more akin to an open-faced sandwich than a canape.

Prime Sirloin: by far the best dish of the night. Sweet and savory, nice sized portion, very tender meat.

Croquette: nothing to write home about. Not enough chorizo flavor, oddly sweet filling, and I couldn't really tell what went into the dipping sauce, but I didn't love it. Skip.

Foie: not the best foie we have ever had (that was August), but still tasty. Probably because foie is ALWAYS tasty. Worth a shot, if you know and like foie and want an inexpensive fix.

Meatballs: our waiter recommend them. Good standard fare. Tasty sauce and arrived very quickly. I could see this being popular with a large variety of people.

Our server was sweet, competent, and happy to offer suggestions (particularly in choosing the wine). Unlike its predecessor, Convivio had a healthy crowd, and I have a good feeling that it's going to make it.

Skyline Deli

The Skyline Deli is located in the bottom of my building, but I have avoided eating there, as I heard a nasty rumor that the manager refused to let an employee take food home at the end of the night, but forced her to watch the manager throw it out instead. That kind of waste and spitefulness was enough to make me lose my appetite. However, I forgot my lunch on Tuesday, and I was desperate. It was Skyline or the Burger King across the street, and I went to Skyline for convenience. Poor choice.

The workers at Skyline can best be described as surly. They wanted nothing to do with me; I had to ask for my diet coke three times, and was never once met with a smile or a thank-you. Oh well. Maybe being forced to throw out leftovers does that to people.

However, after sampling the food, I'm not sure why anyone would want to take it home. I got two pieces of chicken, mashed potatoes and white gravy. The potatoes and gravy were fine, which is good, since they were all I ended up eating. The chicken was so greasy it was practically inedible. Add to that the fact that I asked for -- and paid extra for -- white meat and ended up with a thigh and a leg (NOT white meat) and I was not a happy camper.

I didn't take a picture, but trust me, the internet's not missing out on much.

There are a lot of things about my job that I don't understand. I don't understand why people leave the disposable toilet seat covers on the seat after they use them. I don't understand why the difference between "reply" and "reply all" is so confusing to some people. But more than anything, I don't understand how ANYONE manages to choke down a lunch from Skyline Deli every day -- but some people do.

If you're ever on Bissonnet and you're hungry, go to Burger King. Or there's some gum stuck to the ground in our parking lot. Seriously, you're better off -- and you won't have to pay extra for any particular color of gum.