Funky Desi Indian Restaurant and Lounge – Moline, IL

D.Rough were in Illinois visiting my family for Thanksgiving and thought we’d try out a new Indian restaurant in downtown Moline. I remember this place being some sort of dance club or banquet hall back in the day, so I was curious what it would look like inside. Plus the name includes “Restaurant and Lounge”, so my curiosity was piqued.

The inside is a weird cross between a nice Indian-decorated restaurant, a neon-lit dance club, and a sports bar (sooo many TVs above the bar). I’m not sure what the designer was going for here, but they’ve covered many bases here – I’m not sure that’s a good thing. But this also allows for plenty of seating – booths along the walls, tables in the dance floor area, and a nice private large dinner table for large groups in the front. It isn’t gaudy, it’s just confusing inside.

We went and checked the buffet out and it looked really good, so we both went with that plan. There were plenty of things up there, as well. Too many to name, and I’d butcher the names of the things if I tried. Veggie pakora, butter chicken, tandoori chicken, matter paneer, and a bunch of other things. I loaded up my first plate and when we got back to the table, the server lady had brought a nice basket of naan bread.

The food was above average, compared to many Indian buffets I’ve eaten at. The paneer was quite good and there was also a noodle dish that I didn’t catch the name of (I’ve never seen noodles at an Indian place, so this one stuck in my head), but it was very delicious. It wasn’t very spicy, but had good flavor. I wish the vegetable pakora hadnt’ been in a covered chafing dish, since that makes it soggy (not that it stopped me from eating about ten of them). The butter chicken was also above average. Overall, a pretty good showing from this restaurant.

I even had to go back up for a second round…. No one is surprised by this, I’m sure.

I generally try not to call people out on customer service unless it’s bad, but there was a younger server there with plugs in his ears (behind the bar a lot, so he may have been a bartender) who crossed a lot of lines with customers. I know HE felt he was being sociable and fun, but he did a few questionable things, including asking two Indian gentlemen why they weren’t drinking after he had tried to push some cocktails on them at lunch. “Is it for religious reasons?” – he ACTUALLY asked these guys this and then wouldn’t let it go. These guys were not regulars or anything, there was no camaraderie here, just invasiveness. Then, he badmouthed our server to the table behind them, saying she didn’t know how to do things and that was why she was screwing up. It was all a bit more than he should have been saying. It wasn’t funny, it was inappropriate and made people feel uncomfortable. Maybe we should have said something at the time. I wasn’t in the mood to be confrontational. If the food wasn’t so good, I may have, just to vent, but I was enjoying my lunch.

Aside from the too-many-televisions-showing-sports and “that” guy, the food was decent and fresh and plentiful. And from the looks of the DJ equipment, speakers, and spinning neon light-y things, I’m guessing it turns into an equally weird dance club at around 8 or 9, when the cocktail happy hours start.

Top 5 things about Funky Desi
1. Butter chicken

2. Matter paneer

3. Our server girl was extremely nice and very competent should not have been bad-mouthed
4. The buffet area was really classy and clean
5. The unnamed noodle dish

Bottom 5 things
1. Invasive and inappropriate server/bartender
2. Odd combinations of environments
3. Too many televisions for a non-sports-bar
4. Covered chafing dishes make battered food soggy
5. Some of the booths were taken up with DJ equipment, which we thought was odd…

www.funkydesi.com

Eggies – Minneapolis, MN

My friends M. and Trash Giant like to experiment with different culinary oddities. Sometimes it is candy. Sometimes it is crock pots. Sometimes it is a freakshow device someone gets as a gift for Christmas. M.Giant got a box of Eggies this year and after trying one himself, Trash decided I needed to experience the mysterical and wonderbang joy of Eggies.

The box exclaims “NEVER PEEL a Hard-Boiled Egg Again!” Focus on the “never peel” part for a moment. Yes, I DO find it difficult to get all of the shell of a hard-boiled egg from time to time. IS it enough to anger me to the point I’ll invent a device that actually adds steps to circumvent the dastardly shell that I so loathe? Probably not. But apparently, someone was enraged enough by this blood-pressure-spiking phenomenon to do just that.

So, we’re going to look at the normal process for boiling an egg and eating it first.
Step 1 – boil some water
Step 2 – drop in an egg (still in the shell) and wait a couple of minutes
Step 3 – remove egg from water and let cool
Step 4 – crack and peel the egg (THIS is the apparent bane of someone’s existence)
Step 5 – eat the egg

Hello, 2012. Nice to meet you. Who’s your new friend? Oh, hello Eggie! I can’t wait for you to save me the trouble of peeling a hard-boiled egg before I eat it. Show me how!

Step 1 – start a pan of water boiling
Step 2 – disassemble the four pieces of the Eggie plastic egg-shaped device
Step 3 – spray pieces with Pam or some other stickiness fighter
Step 4 – reassemble the Eggie, minus the top lid portion
Step 5 – crack a raw egg and use laser-precision to get most of the raw egg into the small hole in the top of the Eggie device while keeping the yolk intact
Step 6 – sprinkle in whatever flavorings you’d like to add to your hard-boiled egg into the small hole in the top of the Eggie. We used Cajun seasoning in our trial.
Step 7 - Tighten both the top screw-down enclosure AND the collar around the fat portion of the Eggie – this stops it from exploding all over your kitchen due to pressure build up
Step 8 – Swirl the ingredients you added to the Eggie to distribute the seasoning evenly. Do not shake
Step 9 – Drop the Eggie gently into the now boiling water with the loop pointing up and wait a couple of minutes
Step 10 – remove Eggie from water and let cool
Step 11 – loosen the collar of the Eggie and unscrew the pieces of the Eggie
Step 12 – turn the Eggie upside down and hope it slides out onto your plate. In our case, we had to coax it with a spoon
Step 13 – eat what appears to be a half of a hard-boiled egg with the mange (Trash’s term, not mine)
Step 14 – wash and store Eggie containers for when you re-gift them to some other sucker








Weird, since the big selling point on the Eggies box is it is a three step process – Crack, Boil, Twist! When do they do all these other things?

First things first: The egg, despite its appearance of having gone from an egg shape to a dome shape with a flat bottom and covered with disease, is delicious. Honestly, the damn things are fantastic. Probably helped by the Cajun seasoning we put in to help it. Seriously. It was a delicious hardboiled egg. Well-played, Eggie.


The egg is dome-shaped because the raw egg doesn’t completely fill the Eggie. The top portion is flat so when you flip it over, it looks like you’ve lost the top half of your egg. I assure you, it is still in there. It was, in fact, hermetically sealed in the Eggie container with the collar put on. I’m still not sure why it looks diseased though. Must be some sort of bubble issue or reaction to the seasoning, but it definitely does not have an appealing exterior. Just ignore those things and eat it.

Secondly, you’ve gone from a five-step process to a fourteen-step process. That’s a 180% increase in the amount of work you have to do to eat this. I’m no mathmatologist, but I THINK this is the fatal flaw in the Eggie’s intended purpose. Does it avoid the hassle of peeling the egg after it is cooked? Yes. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. However, there’s all this other stuff that you have to do that completely negates the aforementioned mission. [Editor’s note: Having just been to China, this may be the best invention for this country, since they love to add steps to processes to keep people employed – this could be a godsend (if they believed in God)]

Finally, this device exponentially increases the amount of time you’ll spend making hard-boiled eggs. Why, you ask? Because there are six Eggies in a box. Once your kids find out how miserable you are making leprosy-covered egg-domes every morning, they’re all going to ask for 2 or 3 each. You’re going to have to get up a 3am to make people eggs each morning. I’m sorry. Were you sleeping? I wanted a couple of Eggies, Mom. Thanks! See you in a few hours!

Thanks for allowing me to experience the Eggie, M. and Trash Giant. If I see them in some sort of re-gifted act of kindness for me, you will pay. You WILL pay…

www.geteggiestv.com

The Great Rib Fiasco of 2009…Continued

It is official, the BBQ gods hate me. If you haven’t read the original “Fiasco” post, you should do that first. For those who have, you’ll know we ALWAYS have issues trying to get BBQ ribs. Nothing runs smoothly. Ever.

We tried to go to Rooster’s BBQ Deli last night. Low-Vee, HotGirlsBrother, and I planned it for a week. We even invited TheDoctor, who layed out a dismal blanket of terrible puns and jokes the whole ride to St. Paul. He’s lucky he’s tall and has street cred, or we totally would be forced to stop hanging out with him. This is why we all hate our friendship with TheDoctor. (Totally kidding. We hang with him because he makes us look good.)

We rolled up to Rooster’s after HotGirlsBrother GPS the most direct (and seemingly convoluted) route from Minneapolis. Oddly, there were no cars anywhere in sight. So I pulled my truck up onto the sidewalk to check the hours. Sure enough, Rooster’s is closed on Mondays. Did we think to check that? No, of course not. Yes, it’s our fault TECHNICALLY, but come on. Really? Monday?

(Insert spinning camera angle from above as we all yell “NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!............”)

We ended up going to Lee & Dee’s Bar-B-Que Express instead. Thankfully, we had a good meal there and watched some episodes of Deal or No Deal on the tele. That smoothed out most of our anger.

You’ll get a review of Rooster’s at some point. When I’m less bitter. And we won’t be going there on a Monday, clearly.

Corpsekitten's Xmas card

So I got what basically amounts to an Arctic mob threat in the mail.
Supposedly, the hand-crafted card lost some glue adhesion in trasit, but I think we all know what it means.

Thanks for the warning, Corpsekitten...

Brookview Golf Course – Golden Valley, MN

As stated in a prior post, my nephew came up for a visit and brought his golf clubs to force me to play golf. We decided at 3:30pm on Sunday afternoon, that we should play another round. Hmmm. Where to go. Again, we picked at random and came up with Brookview. Looks like a lot of water and some mature trees. Let’s do it.

We raced to get there and there were very few people out, so we got right on the course. We were flying. Finished 9 holes in less than an hour and a half. This course was on par (pun intended) with most public courses I’ve played, though it was quite a bit harder. There is water in play on 16 of 18 holes. (For those that don’t know – that’s a LOT). The course had some great elevation and used the water very well. Some tricky holes. The course showed some wear, but was still in pretty good shape. Not run down at all.

The staff was pretty standoff-ish and a little rude, but I’ve seen worse. Those people made the day less enjoyable, but we still had a good time.

Since were racing through the course, we went in and extended our play to the back nine in hopes of finishing all 18 before it got dark. We were stuck behind a slow group so we skipped the hole they were on and went past them to the next one. Apparently, this was a no-no an we got the course marshall all up in our face (along with some crotchety old guy that told us if we were in his way, he didn’t have a problem hitting us. Nice, old man. I hope he didn’t have a problem with me hitting his ball back to him if he came close to us either. Whatever. We returned to our rightful place behind our original slow group and just kept right on their tail. We ended up finishing all 18 holes in close to 3 hours and before it got completely dark.

I ended up winning this round by like 5 strokes due to my nephew loosing like 12 balls in the water. Again, we laughed waaaaay too much but still had a great time. I’d golf here again, but not before I’d golf at Edinburgh.

Top 5 things about Brookview
1. Great use of water hazards, sand, and hills
2. I hit the majority of my shots in the fairway – which never happens
3. Finished in 3 hours – that’s FAST
4. Course was in pretty good shape
5. Pretty affordable

Bottom 5 things
1. Rude staff
2. Lots of leaves (I know it’s fall, but it got annoying after a while)
3. No beer cart
4. A lot of parallel fairways, which my nephew took full advantage of
5. Group in front taking multiple shots when they KNEW we were behind them

http://www.brookviewgolf.com/