eG Foodblog: bmdaniel (2011) - Going off the diet in Dallas and Chicag

[toolprincess]

Please post your photos. Who doesn't want to see photos of sausages and hot dogs?

thanks for an excellent blog! I fear my food adventures will pale in comparison.

[bmdaniel]

Made it to Franks and Dawgs for lunch in Lincoln Park. We went to Hot Dougs on our last trip and thought it was pretty solid. We were expecting F&D to be a bit second class in comparison. We were very pleasantly surprised - I thought Franks and Dawgs was excellent and significantly better than Hot Dougs. Highly recommend.

There were 6 of us, and we split a lot of stuff. I'll split into two posts - I'll do the non-dog stuff first and then finish on a high note

Triple truffle fries - suprisingly good

Cheese fries - about what you'd expect

Beans - very surprisingly good - delicious blend of different beans done in a dry, semi-mashed style

Brussel sprout salad - okay, but we make a better version at home

Fried green tomatoes - very nice, we did two orders

Truffle mac and cheese - pretty ordinary

Cole slaw- fine, had raisins.

[bmdaniel]

Okay, sides were fine but on to the main event - very few misses in the hot dogs. They also use a toasted lobster roll bun, which I think is a significant win over Hot Doug's more standard hot dog buns.

Bayou Dog - Andouille, Fried Shrimp, Remoulade - this was excellent

Chicagoest - this was their take on a chicago dog - one of the best (Nicole's favorite)

Chinese Duck - Duck sausage, pickled lotus root, (sorryy can't remember what else - can't get the menu to load)!

Ham Hock - This is another one I can't remember all the ingredients - ham hock sausage, balsamic saba.... just okay

Kids meal - even basic hot dog was very good

Kimchi Dog - pretty solid

Mystery corndogs - each of these was a different sausage - well done

Rueben Dog with thousand island dressing and sauerkraut - multiple people's favorite (went back for a second of these)

New Orleans - andouille and fried shrimp with a more ketchupy sauce - not as good as the Bayou but not bad either

Truffle dog (with truffle mac and cheese) - like the mac and cheese itself, just oaky

Dessert dog - french toast bun, chocolate sauce, and various fruit and toppings - surprisingly good.

Like I said, overall this was really great and I'd highly recommend

[bmdaniel]

Okay, really home stretch now - last meal was at smak tak, a polish restaurant by the airport. My wife is half polish and had requested a polish meal. After doing some research, Smak Tak sounded like a winner, and we weren't dissapointed. Delicious (if extremely filling) polish food.

The room - polish hunting lodge style

Nicole had a polish apple-gooseberry juice

Two soups - mushroom and borscht with small mushroom dumplings - both delicious

As starters we had two plates of pierogies and potato pancakes. The pierogies were half savory (cheese, potato, sauerkraut, meat) and half sweet (sweet cheese, cherry, plum, blueberry). All of this was delicious (and we ate way too much)

We didn't really need entrees at this point but they were ordered -

Stuffed cabbage - excellent

Ground veal cutlet - least favorite of the three, but still tasty

Bigos (Hunter Stew) - Nicole's mom prepares this at the holidays - I though this was an excellent (if a bit different) version

Alright - that's it for the food in the foodblog. Need to run to catch the plane - I'll try to sum up a bit tomorrow before this closes.

[Pierogi]

As a fellow Polska, isn't "Delicious (if extremely filling)" the very definition of Polish food??

Those pierogies look SWOON-worthy. They really look nice and light (ok, if you can ever use "light" to describe Polish food) and almost homemade. Certainly closer to mine than any type of "commercial" product I've seen anywhere. And the potato pancakes with applesauce would make Gramma proud, as would the golabkis. Although I serve mine with egg noodles, not potatoes. Better to sop up the buttery, sour creamy, tomatoey sauce, ya know.

Not to mention the calories and cholesterol..... But there are those long, hard Polish winters to consider....

Nice trip to Chi-town. It's where I was born, and though I don't get back often (and *certainly* don't miss the weather), there's still a part of me that yearns for it.

[bmdaniel]

I just wanted to finish up by thanking everyone who followed the blog this week. I have a newfound appreciation for how much work goes into these - definitely ready to be done taking pictures of everything that goes in my mouth!

It's been a lot of fun and I hope interesting. It was definitely a great food week (even with the Schwa and Lucia hiccups). Hopefully not too much damage done to the diet (the good news is after all that food the prospect of scaling back is pretty attractive).

Headed back to Houston today (hopefully I have better travel luck than last week), but I will keep an eye on the thread in case anyone has any last questions/comments before the blog closes up this morning.

Thanks again to everyone!

Ben and Nicole

[SaltySnack]

I really, really enjoyed this blog. It definitely introduced me to some places in Dallas I've never been before. Next time I'm there, I will definitely have to check them out. Thanks so much for sharing your week with us.

[Pam R]

Ben, thanks so much for sharing your week with us. The food looked so good and it was fun to be in two places with you! Hope you had a good trip home. Thanks