The query is a simple one, and a classic: My mom is coming to town tomorrow and I'm looking for interesting places to take her to eat. Where this gets a little more complicated is the details.
See, Mom has already been the foil for several of my adventures around
town. I took her with me to Luca d'Italia when I was doing a
review of the place and made her eat bunny rabbit and pork face. She's seen me eat my weight in corned beef hash and chicken-fried steak at Rosie's. We've done Steuben's and we've done Cafe Star (back when it still was Cafe Star)
and we've gone to all manner of weird out-of-the-way places that
happened to be wherever we were at the moment that my mother suddenly
grew hungry enough to slow down for a meal. So basically, all of the
traditional family-in-town fall-back locations are out of the running.
Then
there's also the matter of the woman herself. True, she is up for
almost any adventure thrust upon her (and loved, for example, the night we spent at Vietnam House and even a mid-afternoon stop at Pho Fusion),
but what she truly likes is a traditional American restaurant. A
little seafood, maybe surf-and-turf, a couple of glasses of wine or
vodka gimlets, and no fucking around. She would, for example, probably enjoy Venue, but would probably head straight for the car if I tried to take her in for dinner at Root Down.
I posed this question over the weekend to the Cafewestword followers on Twitter (and you are
one of our followers, right?) and got some good suggestions. Bistro
Vendome came up a couple of times, and is always one of my fallback spots. So did the traditional Steuben's and Le
Central, Bang and Lola. Vert Kitchen sounded good, as did the idea of heading out to Fuel Cafe.
But because I am greedy and never satisfied, I am looking for more.
So
let's hear it, folks. Where do you take your parents when they come
into town? What about friends? Loved ones? Barely tolerated
ones? Leave your comments below.
