FOODIES

The day after cousin Tracy and Jeff’s wedding shower, we all met up at Lonesome Spur for breakfast. Cousin Tracy’s friend Lynn joined us also.

For those of you who don’t know, Lonesome Spur is located in the town of Justin, the boot capital of Texas. It’s the home of — yep, you got it — Justin boots. The discount warehouse was right next the restaurant. We actually saw it on the drive up and I got very excited. That is, until I found out that they’re closed on Sundays. Such is my luck. Ugh.

I guess we’ll just have to make another trip back.

The food at Lonesome Spur actually wasn’t bad and the menu prices were quite reasonable. I wouldn’t mind eating there again.

Brian had the Justin scramble, which is the exact same thing he gets at every breakfast joint or diner that we go to whether or not it is on the menu.

Donna had an omelet.

David had chicken fried steak, which doesn’t really look as impressive as other chicken fried steaks that I’ve seen or eaten.

It looks like cousin Tracy had a bigger chicken fried steak. Hmmm?

I ordered the cowboy omelet minus the veggies. The only thing I had them leave were the tomatoes. So basically it just had ham, sausage, bacon and tomato. LOL.

I really liked the extra crispy hashbrowns. That was a good call by cousin Tracy.

Here’s our group at breakfast. I can’t wait to go back. Not so much to eat, but I want to go boot shopping. I heard you can get some really good deals from the Justin discount warehouse.

Fuse was the other place that we tried at Gaylord Opryland. Their roasted red pepper hummus is delicious.

Carmen had the Fuse burger.

I had the Asian sesame chicken wings. OMG. They were so yummy!

We definitely made the right decision in eating there instead of waiting to eat at the airport. LOL.

Carmen and I were starving by the time we arrived at our hotel at 2:30 pm Tuesday afternoon. We dropped our bags off in our rooms and immediately went searching for food. We didn’t have to go very far. We got to Cascades American Cafe about ten to fifteen minutes before they closed their lunch service.

I originally wanted to get the grilled brioche Monte Cristo sandwich, but that’s what Carmen decided to get. Therefore, I had to pick something else for the sake of getting unique food pictures. I mean, it’s really boring to take pictures of the same thing. I ended up getting the Naan flatbread sandwich, which was very good. I don’t regret getting it at all.

It’s rotisserie chicken salad in a grilled Indian flatbread. Really good!

Had dinner at Free State Brewing Company on Mass Street in Lawrence last night. Here are some obligatory food photos…

The appetizers (hummus, artichoke dip, chips and queso) were all very good.

The food was just okay, though. I had the chicken pesto pasta dish. It was just okay. I think I might have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t gotten so full on the appetizers. Then again, I’m not a big fan of linguini. I prefer skinny pastas.

I would definitely return to Free State for drinks and appetizers, though. Yum!

Alright. Alright. Get your minds out of the gutter. We went to Texas de Brazil over the weekend. We being Cousin Tracy, Jeff, Brian and me.

The restaurant has a massive salad bar that offers a lot more than just salad. You have to be very careful because you can easily get full on the salad bar items and then not have any room for the steak and other meats.

Besides salad, they have their signature lobster bisque soup (which was delicious), all sorts of breads and cheeses, some sushi, smoked salmon, smoked prosciutto, grilled provolone, cooked shrimp, Greek olives… I can’t even name them all because there were like 50 different items in the salad buffet. Maybe more than 50. It was wild. I should have taken pictures of it, but didn’t want to draw too much attention. It was a bit of a fancy place after all.

Here’s Brian enjoying some smoke prosciutto.

I was very happy to find that they had rice because, as you all know, I like to eat rice with all of my meals. The Brazilian black beans dish was yummy. It had great flavor and went really well with my white rice.

Jeff, aka “Mustache Man” (that’s what Vicky’s daughter Faith kept calling him), waiting for some meat.

Here come the meat…

The infamous Brazilian sausage…

It was very good. As was everything else that I tried.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the restaurant (we don’t have one here in Wichita, but they are all over Texas), it’s a Brazilian steakhouse where the meat-men (I guess they’re supposed to be gauchos) come to your table with these big hunks of meat on a stick and they just slice you off a piece of your choosing. You have these little round cards that are green on one side and red on the other. If you want the meat-men to come, you just put it on the green side. If you want some privacy or want to be left alone, you just turn it on the red side and then they don’t bother you. I think the closest thing we have to Texas de Brazil is Fogo de Chao, which is at least three hours away. I really wish we had a place like this in Wichita, because it’s actually kind of fun. Makes for an interactive dining experience.

They were making fun of me because I kept my little disc on green even though I didn’t want any more food. I just wanted the meat-men to keep coming so I could take photos. Since I couldn’t eat everything, I wanted to make sure I at least got a photo. I think I got a photo of every single meat they offered except for the ribs. I didn’t get a photo of it and thought that someone would come back by with some ribs, but no one ever did.

I could have easily eaten everything in sight, but I behaved myself. If I did, I would have surely passed out and Brian would not have been a happy camper. Specially since he needed my help to navigate out of downtown Fort Worth. LOL.

Anyway, Texas de Brazil is something else and definitely worth checking out. My advice, take it easy on the salad bar and save room for all the savory meats. There was offered various cuts of beef, pork, chicken, lamb, bacon wrapped meats, breaded meats, sausage, ribs… It’s pretty insane. Definitely come hungry!