Otherwise Unavailable, Part 2

Touching down later Sunday for my first-ever Houston visit (somewhat unbelievable as I’ve experienced Dallas, El Paso, College Station, Austin & San Antonio), I drove a solid 45 minutes at 80 mph from the north-side airport to a southwest suburb. Why? Because everything is FAR AWAY in Texas because it’s all BIG and because everyone else drove 95mph in blatantly oversized vehicles to stimulate the local Big Oil economy (oh, and because that’s where the office and hotel were). Have you noticed the complete absence of city streets in Texas? That’s right, because everything is actually highway. Exit the 80 mph expressway only to drive 60 mph on an access road to screech into the hotel parking lot. Bigger, farther, faster, better. Houston is a generally OK town, though, a big improvement over that enormous blotch Dallas-Fort Worth.

I feasted on an IHOP good ol’ American club sandwich that evening with fantastically delicious unsweetened iced tea; I drank a gallon of refills. Club sandwiches in Europe range from fairly good to kinda weird, but they never use the right deli-sliced ham or turkey, the toast isn’t quite correct and they include a fried egg (no complaints) and use some pink salad dressing sauce instead of regular mayo. Perkins or Denny’s couldn’t have done it any better, this one was sublime. Ooh, and with onion rings too. Fries are generally excellent in Europe but no onion rings, so I scarfed those suckers.

Monday with work colleagues again was forgettable, lousy Jack-In-The-Box lunch (huh?) and OK steak tenderloin for dinner, with a baked sweet potato the size of Mars and more dry iced tea. The bleu cheese drenched wedge salad was a winner though. Tuesday on the road featured McDonald’s lunch (huh?) and a solid Mexican-ish dinner with fish tacos, spicy black beans and surprisingly the best guacamole this side of Frontera Grill. Wednesday: dinner of so-so fried soft-shelled crab but another nice wedge salad.

Thursday made the entire trip worthwhile. Temporarily freed from colleagues, I walked a short distance from the hotel for lunch at the classic American Mexican-run Mexican restaurant, Las Haciendas. See picture above…tacos baby, feed me then shoot me, enough said. Then with time ticking away, I grew conservative and started repeating myself. Thursday dinner featured another IHOP club sandwich/onion rings/iced tea extravaganza, and then a final fantastic farewell lunch on Friday at Las Haciendas, exact same order, same quest-clinching experience. Friday afternoon I loaded my salsa-breath self onto the plane home, but not before pausing during the 45-minute drive for an unsweetened iced tea for the road.