BURKARD'S BLOG

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28 SEP 03: "PLACE" SETTINGS

One nice thing about living in the Historic District is being able to walk to nice restaurants for dinner. Friday night, I walked to the new Houlihan's Old Place on Broadway -- only to find a stray dog walking parallel to me for about two blocks. Was this dog looking for dinner, too? And might it be me?

The dog gave up the slow-speed chase at Eighth and Broadway, and I proceeded to dinner at Ninth Street. A sign outside Houlihan's Old Place said "Proper ID Required" -- yet the greeters laughed for some reason when I showed them my driver's license at the door.

My server for the evening at Houlihan's was Melody, who's been quite a traveler. She graduated from Knox College in Illinois, served in Americorps, and not long ago finished a one-year stint in Kenya. See what all that education and public service gets you? A waitress position in a hotel restaurant....

The thing that struck me the most about Melody was her telling another customer she grew up in Kansas. It turns out she's from Wellington -- a half-hour drive south of Wichita, and a town which gained a reputation when I was in college for having good-looking young women. I even wrote a high school student I saw in their daily newspaper. Yes, even then I was that desperate for romance.

(Names of these attractive women are available on request - if you're even more desperate than me, since I've given up on them.)

Several odd things struck me about Houlihan's Old Place. Take the giant-sized posters on the walls - old advertisements in French and Italian. This European Union stuff is getting out of control....

Then there's the Houlihan's menu - where Irish items are a bit hard to find. The main alcoholic beverage of the house is Absolut. As far as I know, its Ireland background is an "Absolut Zero."

The most Irish thing I noticed on the menu at Houlihan's Old Place was the "Red Bliss mashed potatoes." Only later in the weekend did I realize why Houlihan's has no restaurants in Alabama. For Crimson Tide fans, there hasn't much red bliss lately -- such as losing to Arkansas.

The nicest touch I noticed at Houlihan's was a menu where you could have smaller portions. I settled for a single chicken br**st (not spelled out so no readers are offended) instead of a double. To borrow a line from the late Groucho Marx, "When you've seen two, you've seen them all."

The dessert menu also was filled with "mini" items, perfect for a nearly-full waistline-watching guy like me. The "chocolate cappucino cake" had vanilla ice cream on top, and cappucino icing on a cake slightly bigger than a cupcake. I was offered coffee with this - but doesn't the cappucino fill that need already?

Continuing a rather bad habit at restaurants these days, several televisions were on above the main dining room. I was situated in a booth where a Mets-Marlins baseball game distracted me all evening. For one thing, why are the ESPN commercials captioned while the game is not?

(If I had sat the other direction, it would have been CNN and Fox News - but at least that would have been Irish, with "The O'Reilly Factor" on.)

With a generous tip, I had a nice dinner for less than $20. And as I pointed out to Melody, I had NO "to-go" box to take home - or if that dog showed up again, halfway home.

COMING THIS WEEK: A NASCAR driver, a wheelchair, and one angry mom.... as well as a quickie tour of Highway 520....

BLOGGER'S NOTE: Daily blogging may diminish in the next few weeks, as we prepare for a fall vacation....