🚀 go-pugleaf

Random reviews of a couple of restaurants we've been to lately.
Hello, Sharon & Dave!

--paco

Churrascos, Shepherd Square at Westheimer

    Our favorite appetizers, the empanadas maduros -- plantain-flour
    fried pies filled with fresh cheese -- were again heavenly sweet
    and savory, prettily arranged on their mustardy sauce.

    My churrascos -- beef marinated in garlic and parsley, then
    grilled -- were excellent as usual, with yummy grilled veggies
    on the side.  Unfortunately but they no longer offer the churrasco
    shish kebab with extra veggies.  This leaves the churrasco tips as
    the most economical hot beef & veggie plate.

    Her breast of chicken with heart-of-palm sauce also proved tasty,
    but not as yummy as the churrascos.

    The in-laws, looking after their diets, had salads of grilled
    chicken and grilled veggies; these were meals in themselves and a
    pretty good bargain.

Sierra, Montrose at Autrey (just south of 59)

    This place is pretty, with a nouveau Southwestern atmosphere.
    The service was excellent, so I hate to run the place down.  While
    everything was competently prepared with fine ingredients, nothing
    was really tasty enough for me.

    We enjoyed an appetizer of "pan de campo" (basically pizza) with
    barbecued duck.  This was flavorful, and rates up there with Star
    Pizza, although the style is different.

    I had the salmon prepared "campfire style" -- fillets formed into
    an 8-inch disk -- on a jicama-apple-red-pepper salad with
    chilli-vinegar dressing (or something like that).  This is
    supposed to be one of their specialties.  While I enjoyed it, I
    wasn't blown away.  For one thing, it was rather awkward eating
    to have this big chunk of fish sitting on top of all the veggies
    (kind of like "you can't have any vegetables until you eat your
    meat").  But despite the vinegar and the noticeable red pepper
    heat in the dressing, there just wasn't much flavor in the fish.
    Maybe I've burned my taste buds out on hot sauce and garlic.

    She had the grilled veggie platter, which had some high points,
    but was generally unexciting.  The eggplant is smokier in
    Yildizlar's baba ganoush.  The sweet potatos are tastier at
    Ruggles.

    Overall, our $41 (no booze) would have bought us a better meal in
    a similar, but cozier style, at Ruggles Grill (on Westheimer east
    of Montrose).
--
Paul Havlak			Dept. of Computer Science
Graduate Student		Rice University, Houston TX 77251-1892
PFC/ParaScope projects		(713) 527-8101 x2738 	paco@cs.rice.edu