Biker Jim’s Gourmet Dogs

April 15, 2014 Comments Off read Attractions, Colorado, Masticating With Mellzah, Mountain, Travel, USA, West

If you tell me a restaurant has a variety of exotic meat, I’ll make it a priority to eat there, and my visit to Denver was no exception, as I planned a meal at Biker Jim’s Gourmet Dogs.

Biker Jim’s started as a street cart and eventually expanded into a restaurant, and frankly (ahem), I can see why. They’ve got a number of exotic meat sausages on the menu as well as a standard beef dog, and I think the only miss is the duck cilantro if only because I wouldn’t cry if all cilantro was eradicated from the face of the Earth. Die, devil weed! But I will never say no to a fried pickle, so they have that going for them as well.

I decided on a reindeer sausage topped with “the conspiracy”: stilton bleu cheese, bacon red onion marmalade, lemon aioli, and french fried onions. Yes, I flew to Denver to get something shipped from Alaska. Shut up. Jason decided on the Jack-a-lope topped with cream cheese squeezed out from a caulking gun and coca-cola soaked caramelized onions. I took bites of both and they were excellent. The Jack-a-lope was sweet and spicy while being comforting and familiar. The reindeer had a more adventurous flavor profile with the slight gaminess of the sausage, the richness of the stilton bleu being cut by the slight tart of the lemon aioli, with the crunch of the onions adding an excellent texture and the sweetness of the marmalade lingering on the palate. If I didn’t have to save room for another exotic meat adventure later, I would have liked to have tried more. Should I find myself in the Denver area again, I’d definitely go back.

Don’t pay outrageous grocery store prices for something the farmer probably spit in!

February 10, 2014 2 Comments read Attractions, Florida, Masticating With Mellzah, South, Travel, USA

On our way back from Weeki Wachee, we saw a billboard on the highway advertising “The Showcase of Citrus”, which boasted a monster truck off-road eco tour and safari and a world-famous orange slushy. We clearly had to go; there was simply no choice in the matter. The signs tell us what to do and we do it. We ended up arriving at The Showcase of Citrus not terribly long before they closed, and as such, there was no monster truck eco tour in our future, but we were able to take a look around and see what else there was to see.

Is this something that they really need to warn people about? If you live in an area where alligators are flipping everywhere, where approximately a third of all tourist dollars go toward alligator-related amusements, do people actually forget that there are alligators out in the water? Because I grew up across the street from a manmade lake where the most dangerous thing inside was a chance of pinkeye and only the bravest of kids would put a toe in there, is what I’m saying. Once, Tommy Host swam out to the island in the middle and got diarrhea for a week, and I don’t think I ever saw anyone swim in the lake again. And all of THAT is not alligator level danger. Who forgets alligator danger?

We had no intention of missing out on a world famous orange juice slushy, and frankly, I had no intention to share, so we bought two. I don’t want to call the Showcase of Citrus people liars, but the orange juice slushy is nothing that I’d call home about. Or remember that I still had in the process of consuming it. It was really nothing you couldn’t replicate with a bottle of OJ in the freezer, if it’s something that you felt like you needed to try. If you really want to replicate the flavor, do it with a slightly sour bottle of OJ. I wonder if they have a contract with Dole?

“If you could describe this experience in one sentence, what would it be?” “I can do it in a word: Harrowing.”

January 31, 2012 Comments Off read Everything is Terrible, Masticating With Mellzah, Pacific, Travel, USA, Washington, West

On Friday, we went to Wing Dome (which used to be a clever play on words on Seattle’s King Dome, but now that it’s gone and so are the Sonics, it’s more like a subtle way to confuse tourists and recent transplants) to celebrate Chris’ birthday. I ate my very first chicken wing, and as with most things that come with dipping sauces, I rather enjoyed it. Chris, who decided to embark on the 7 Wing Challenge, enjoyed his somewhat less. The 7 Wing Challenge is as such: eat seven of their chicken wings smothered in seven alarm sauce in under seven minutes without using any napkins or drinking any beverage. If you win, you get the wings themselves for free, a t-shirt, and your picture on the wall of fame. If you lose, you have to pay for the wings…but not as much as you’d pay the next morning if you ate all seven. The only thing allowed on the plate at the end of seven minutes are clean bones. Our waiter helpfully added that one of the challenge-takers likened the flavor of the sauce to the devil’s dick. But Chris had just tried the five alarm sauce, and he wasn’t concerned.

He started out strong, but in the end, couldn’t make it past three wings. I don’t blame him–I tried a dot of the sauce on my pinky finger and my mouth exploded in flames while my face went numb. And not only is the sauce hot, there’s an ungodly amount of it ladled over the wings, which seems unfair. If you were to order any of their other wings, there would be only enough sauce on them to coat the surface–this was a chili bowl full of sauce dumped on top. A ten-gallon hat full of sauce.

This was an after picture. An AFTER–there’s so much sauce, you can’t even see that anything has been eaten or disturbed. Bad form, Wing Dome. Bad form.