This weekend I once again pulled off a new half marathon personal record, it's been a good year for me. This time down in College Station I finally beat an 8 minute/mile pace, but not without some serious suffering along the way. Along with this being the coldest race that I've ever run, 33 degrees with 25 mph winds gusting to 35 mph, I made the mistake of eating at Texas Roadhouse the night before.
Turns out that Texas Roadhouse does not serve pasta. At all. I understand I was at a steakhouse, but how hard is it to throw a dab of spaghetti on the menu. Even I can cook spaghetti. Or maybe a veggie burger. Anything that isn't 90% fat and/or protein would have been acceptable, alas this was not a choice.
I asked the waitress if they could figure something out, she was very quick with a seemingly-prepared, negative response; apparently some runners had already come through that evening with the same questions. They did have some pasta on the children's menu, Mac & Cheese. A little unconventional I think to myself, but at least it has carbs.
I order two sides of this and a Caesar salad, and the arrival of these dishes is about where the wheels came off.
The salad was damn near inedible. Within the sea of Iceberg lettuce there was a tiny bit of Romaine, but that clearly was of the best-consumed-immediately, on-sale-special variety usually shrink-wrapped in a bin near the front of your local Kroger's and ignored by anyone that has ever eaten outside of McDonalds. Of course they made up for it by applying the dressing with a fire hose. How a steak restaurant can survive with poor salad skills is beyond me, but the hour wait to get a seat in the restaurant tells me that they are not having a lot of issues keeping business.
At least I have the Mac & Cheese to fall back on. The only problem was I felt like I was coating my throat in butter as I consumed it.
Me: (uncomfortable look) "This Mac & Cheese sure is...creamy..."
Waitress: (wide-eyed grin) "I know, isn't it great?!"
Me: (speechless, just stares)
In the end I finished nearly half of one of the sides of Mac & Cheese (ignoring the other) and some minority portion of the Caesar. Despite my lack of enthusiasm for either I still felt the butter in my gut all 13.1 miles the next morning.
So, regardless of the effort they expend to create that extraordinarily outlandish redneck environment, Texas Roadhouse is now under an official personal boycott due to the overall lameness of their food. It's rare that I ever boycott a place based on a single meal, but I'm making an exception in this case.
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4 comments:
Dude, I almost puked just from reading your description of that food, let alone actually eating it and then doing something aerobic the following day...
What's the moral here? Eat like shit and do a PB afterwards? :D
Seriously - Congrats on the good run!!!
I'll boycott with you! We went there years ago and got a fried onion thing. (similar to Chili's "Bloomin' onion") The batter on 1/2 of the onion was still in liquid form. Completely uncooked. Disgusting.
OK, perhaps an obvious question, but WHY THE HELL would you go to Texas Roadhouse to carbo-load???
You went to a steak place. They serve steak and other items typically associated with Texas by people in Louisville where the chain's HQ is located. This isn't on Texas Roadhouse, you're the one that screwed up.
It would be no different than me going to Olive Garden and being pissed that I can't get a BBQ Rib dinner. Use your danged head.
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