11/03/2022 The Fish House, Pensacola FL

 

The Fish House is as one would imagine, a seafood dominant restaurant. Carol and I were at Pensacola to do the impossible, so we decided to spend some per diem. Turns out we didnt spend a whole lot at all! I should have made Carol buy my dinner because of ALL the work she makes me do for her, but I was nice and bought my own. We had a lot of things, such as Gulf shrimp, redfish, and roasted brussels sprouts with bacon. Every thing was pretty good and I would definitely come back here again. 

During dinner, we got a surprise live performance from a local singer, and even our server joined in the singing. Apparently they do that on the regular, and it wasnt bad at all. Pictured is Carol, brussels sprouts and the gulf shrimp. I only had to take 637 pics of Carol before she approved one for publication! Shes funny that way. I only had to take ONE pic of the food, and there were no complaints!

10/29/2022 Cubi Bar Cafe, Pensacola FL

Going to Pensacola is always fun, considering that this is where it all started at Naval Aircrewman Candidate School, where I got to swim, PT and PT and swim every day. Every. Day. And the really funny thing about that is that I STILL wasn't in the bast shape of my life coming out. No, that time was when I was rowing in high school with the guy to the right! We went to HS together, joined the Navy (almost) together, and then didn't see each other for almost 20 years. So it was awesome when I called and told him I was coming to Pensacola and he just happened to be in Mobile! 

So we went back to both of our first real hobby, and that would be aircraft. Between the two of us, we know everything. Yes, we know more than you. Deal with it. The Cubi Bar cafe is modeled after a club in Cubi Point, Philippines that catered mostly to aviators and aircrewmen It was an Officers Club, however the cool officers would bring the entire aircrew as guests. If you were a boat sailor, you didn't go there unless you were invited and escorted. The decor is a lot of the naval aviation memorabilia that was in the actual Cubi Bar from 

But, lets face it, one does not go to the National Naval Aviation Museum for the food. To be perfectly honest, the food at the original was a lot better and featured local fare. You go here to grab a snack or a light lunch while you are at the museum. The attraction is the memorabilia and you can easily walk around looking at all of it for a lot longer than you spent eating there. That being said, the staff is extremely friendly and the service is quick. The food is average but the surroundings are like no other place you will ever be.

 

09/28/2022, The Grill Out Back of the Homewood Suites on Hotel Circle , San Diego, CA

Sometimes, you don't need a restaurant and you just go spend your per diem on steaks and fish and sausages and veggies and feed three people plus the front desk. Danny(not pictured for whatever reason), Felipe and I went and bought a pile of stuff for the hotel grill and got to work. There were, as you can see, steaks, fish, veggies, stuffed mushrooms and Italian sausage. 

This made Felipe very happy. This is his happy face to the right there...

We also made the front desk pretty happy when we showed up with not only clean grill tools, but food! Jenny and Brandon (at least I think thats who it was) gladly had some home(wood) cooked dinner that night!

The steaks were ribeye and the fish was a yellowfin tuna steak. The grills at the Homewood on Hotel Circle are always in good shape so after a bit of "sterilization", we had no issues. Of course since I cooked, its a automatic 5 stars out of 5, especially since the tina steaks came out nearly perfect. Too bad Carol missed it all.

Yes, I need a haircut...

 

07/26/2022, Volcano Sushi, Del City, OK

Today I'm not sure why Dave didn't join us. Dave probably didn't want sushi. Carol and I did, however so we went to Volcano in Del City. This is another one of those places that we went back to because it was good. I mean, you're already taking a big risk going for sushi this far away from the coasts, so you have to stick with what you know. I managed to get a shot of Carol this time, and we can clearly see that she's using a FORK in a sushi place. Seriously. 

That's fine tho, at lease she didn't make me buy her dinner. She was getting her own per diem this time! 

Not pictured is the roll they made for me with no rice. Well....it there in the foreground of the pic of Carol but they were pretty good about allowing me to eat sushi and not a bunch of carbs. I gotta watch out for that. Also if you speak Chinese or Japanese (where is Alex when we needed him???) you will be much better off. It took a while to communicate the "no rice" request.

All in all its a 4 stars out of 5 and that is why we came back to this place.

 

07/25/2022, Van's Pig Stand, Moore, OK

 

Sooooo BBQ. Sometimes you go to a place that you hope to get back to, and Vans Pig Stand in Moore is one of those places. So David, Carol, and I went to get a pile of BBQ that was so good and so photogenic that we forgot to take pics of ourselves. Dont worry, you arent missing much. 

There was pulled pork, sausage, ribs and pretty much anything you can imagine for a southern Oklahoma style BBQ. I got lucky and picked up a small pile of brisket burnt ends, which are probably terrible for you, but whatever. 

Did I mention it was hot? I mean really hot. See the pic, it was 112 degrees F in the parking lot of the building we were working at on Tinker AFB. Thankfully, every place we went was very well air conditioned and not at all hot and sticky. The answer to the question "Would you like to be seated outside?" was a resounding NO. Hell no. We want to be inside, preferably right next to where the cold air vent is.

This is a cafeteria style ordering place, however the people behind the register and the people who bring your delicious BBQ out to you were as friendly as can be. This is the place for good BBQ and friendly people working here. Which tells us that its well managed, because we all know that crappy managers make for poor attitudes among employees. 

4 stars out of 5 for both food and people. Maybe a half star extra for good AC.

11/30/2021, Uncle D's BBQ, Patuxent River, MD

 BBQ. When you think of BBQ, you think of St Louis, Memphis, Kansas City or even Texas. But Patuxent River, Maryland? Probably not. However, this place is about to change the way you think for several reasons, not the least of which is the smoked fried chicken. That's right. Smoked. Fried. Chicken. I said what I said. We went here about 10 times, too. Everyone went: Andre, Candace, Josh, David and even my friend Al.

To the left there is Myself (left), then Uncle D, Andre and Candace and this is only one of the times we went. We pretty much tried everything on the menu and didn't find anything we didn't like. This place is now easily in my Top 3 BBQ joints of all time. It has to be because Uncle D doesn't do anything the easy way. He starts early, smokes everything just right and then does other things that make it even better. Like the smoked fried chicken.

Andre thought this was the best chicken ever. Which we all agreed with. Speaking of chicken, they were mostly wings but on occasion, there would be thighs. This wasn't on the normal menu, but if they were short on wings they would replace with thighs. The thighs were somehow even better than the wings. Kind of. But if you had the thighs and wings together they were also equal somehow. This is chicken that you can eat way too much of and not even feel guilty about the 6000 calories later because its that good. I haven't even started talking about all the other things. Which most of are in the top pic. If you cant decide, the 301 Combo is for you. Get the extra sausage, you can thank me later.

Some reasons to go to Uncle D's:

1. The chicken. If you go in there for no other reason, this is the thing you need to absolutely get.

2. The ribs. You can have em wet or dry but either way they are awesome. They are tender without being mush and they stick to the bone a bit but not enough to where you gotta gnaw on it. Also, they don't know how to count. In a good way. Sometimes you order 6 bones and get 9. No idea why but I never got LESS than what I ordered, but about half the time i got MORE. 

3. Sides. None are bad, and there's pieces of rib in the green beans. For real.

4. Old school Motown music. While you stuff yourself, you listen to the classics from the heyday of Motown. Uncle D is from Chicago, but Motown affected everyone.

Complete 5 out of 5 and he's only been open 6 months.

11/29/21, Asahi Japanese Gril, Patuxent River, MD

 A standard venture to get Japanese food, grilled in front of us. Its your typical Benihana style place that's not called Benihana, ya dig? In any case it was Myself, Candace, Andre and Dave, and most of the pics that were taken are of the "artsy" type because everyone thinks they are Ansel fkn Adams, amiright? To be fair, we were supposed to go get BBQ this night (more on that later) but it was closed. So we had to pick another place and this one was already on the list to try. There was A LOT of food, which all consisted of some form or combination of steak, shrimp and chicken with fried rice and veggies. Personally, I skipped the rice. 

Besides, there was plenty of rice with the sushi, which was ordered in large amounts. And Asahi Super Dry in 22 ounce bottles! Just like I remember from Japan and it was ice cold, which is really the only way to drink Japanese beer. This video of Candace "oooohing and ahhhhing" over the huge fire pretty much tells it all. If I do, I will add it. Speaking of Candace, she managed to make friends with a local family about 4 seconds after walking in, so we sat with them at their grill table. I'm not sure exactly how that went down but there we were with a family of three telling stories.

The food was good, the fire was better, and we left full and with leftovers. Tomorrow we should be doing BBQ like we were supposed to do tonight. Hopefully the wait is worth it