Blogger 365 Day 188 - The reviews are in

     I made mention of my Sunday yesterday, where I went to lunch and followed that up with a movie.  I guess I could go into detail about those events this evening, what was good and bad about both.

     I think the first thing I can mention that was good about both was that they were free.  I used a gift card I go for Christmas for my lunch at Longhorn Steak House and a free movie pass that I got online for my birthday for the movie, so in that regard it was very good.  The only things I paid for were my tip for lunch, a subsequent mocha frap from Starbucks after the movie and a trip to Bottom Dollar, where I bought some ingredients to make spinach dip.  So I guess you could say I got away cheap.

     Breaking it down into its parts though, the day wasn't perfect by any measure.  There weren't many movies playing that I really was wanting to see, certainly nothing I would have called a must see for me, so picking "Edge of Tomorrow" wasn't so much the fact that I was dying to see it as it was that of the movies playing on Sunday that looked like the best choice.  Given the number of days I usually have off, I could have passed entirely but there is no saying when I would be getting another chance to catch a movie, so the Sunday offerings it was.

     With a show time of 2:55, to me that meant if I got there early enough, I could grab lunch first and then go to the movie and with a $25 gift card in my possession it seemed like a good time to revisit Longhorn Steak House.  I have been there on two previous occasions, once with family when I had a half rack of ribs that was very good, and once with Sammy where I had a filet that was absolutely delicious, so my hopes for lunch were pretty high when I got there.

     I got to Longhorn around 1:30pm, which I figure is plenty of time to eat and walk across the parking lot to catch the movie.  I went in and was seated in a smaller booth, but I am flying solo, I didn't need a big booth.  One thing I have noticed though is often times when I go to places like this, being by myself often means the amount of attention that I get from the server is less than that of the two and four tops they are more focused on.  I get it, they think there will be more money on those tables than from me by myself, and who knows, maybe they are correct, but I almost always tip well, if my service is substandard I will still tip, I will just never come back.

     The first issue I had, and maybe this is my own fault for showing up on a Sunday afternoon, was that there wasn't a lunch, or even brunch, menu.  I know lots of people go out for Sunday dinner after church and what not, but at 1:30 in the afternoon I am not looking to eat a large steak, or even a giant meal.  Most days I don't even eat lunch, but when I am out for lunch I would like it to be lunch.  But as I am seated and handed a menu it is the dinner menu.  In case you were wondering, yes Longhorn does have a lunch menu, they just apparently don't offer it on Sunday afternoons. 

     I poked through the menu, trying to find something lunch appropriate and settled on the pretzel stick appetizer and a burger and fries.  The pretzel stick app came out first, as I requested and as the waitress set the plate down at my table she told me to be very careful, the plate was extremely hot.  Okay, duly noted.  The plate had for longish soft pretzel rods as two sides, a side of beer batter cheese sauce and a side of honey mustard.  I broke the first rod and dipped it in the beer batter sauce, the sauce was pretty good, the pretzel not so much.  It wasn't a bad tasting pretzel but there were cold spots in it, as if the tossed the pretzel rods in the microwave and just tried heating them up.  I then touched the "be careful, this is extremely hot" plate and it was anything but.  It wasn't stone cold mind you, but I could have easily paraded around the dining room with my plate and had no fear of burning myself.   I then tried the honey mustard sauce, which was just common,. there was nothing about it that would suggest it was a signature sauce from Longhorn Steakhouse, it tasted like any generic honey mustard sauce you could pick up in the grocery store.  Next up was the burger and fries, the fries were hot enough, but had that texture of being under the heat lamp since before I arrived.  The burger was just bland, no real seasoning to the meat (which is very bad for a steakhouse not to season beef), nor were there any condiments either on the table or offered with the burger that might have add flavor to it.  Even the Swiss cheese on the burger was barely melted, I could have just pulled the slice off of the burger and eaten it separately if I so wanted.   Al in all it was a $10 burger that was barely better than a Big Mac, and with less seasoning.  This is exactly the type of experience that will make me think twice about going back, over priced food that at best can be described as pedestrian and after having two previously good experiences there, a tad bit shocking as well.

     The movie, well if you weren't a Tom Cruise fan going into the movie, chances are this will do nothing to change your mind about him and his acting.  I have always found him to be a decent actor, maybe even a tad under appreciated for his thespian skills, so in the large body of work that will come to be the Tom Cruise catalog, this movie will probably sit somewhere in the middle, not particularly bad but nothing amazing either.  It is basically a sci-fi version of "Ground Hog Day".  Okay, maybe not as bad as "Ground Hog Day".  It is standard Tom Cruise action adventure fare and little more.  Then ending seemed to be a bit of a cop out, but I don't require happy endings to all of my movies, only my massages.

     Anyway, that was my Sunday in a nutshell and hey, no Leonard Nimoy.