Bones: A Steak and Experience I Will Long Remember

                                             Picture Courtesy of: cynicalcook.com

Although I usually want to reserve this blog for ethnic food choices, I could not pass up the chance to write about my wonderful experience at Bones, one of Atlanta's best steakhouses. Everything about my meal this last Saturday night was unforgettable.

Right when my grandparents and I walked into the restaurant, we told the host that we had a reservation for three under Janet Mintz. Then, the host told us a funny story. He said that someone by the name of Jeff Mintz also had a party of three waiting for a table. Jeff Mintz is my father's name, and we tried to find connections. Although there were no connections assembled between the two, I knew that this meal was going to be something special. And we had not even been seated yet.

After that coincidental ordeal, we were seated downstairs where the noise level was perfect. It wasn't too quiet that we could here a pin drop. But it was not too loud either where one could not here the person sitting right across from them either. It was obvious that Bones wanted this to be a world class experience. After a couple of minutes, the waiter brought out the wine list, but the wines were listed on an iPad. I thought that was so fascinating and indicative of our world today. Bones figured that their customers should not expect anything less.

But what I originally came to Bones for was the food. I ordered myself a flavorful, hot french onion soup as a starter. I usually do not have french onion soup, but great steakhouses often have great french onion soup for some reason. This steakhouse was no exception to that observation. After I finished my soup, I waited for my medium-cooked 12 ounce filet mignon. I was stunned with how tender this filet was. It may have been the most tender steak I have ever tasted, and I have been to many great steakhouses. I capped off my wonderful experience with a delicate-looking pecan pie that was also very good.

Overall, the food would have been enough to make this a great experience, but the coincidental occurrence of meeting another Jeff Mintz signaled great things to come. A Jeff Mintz, whether it is my father or if it just another guy with that name, would definitely recommend Bones to any steak lover in the world.

English Banger Roll Observations

This past Tuesday, January 31, I took a stroll into Emory University's Farmers Market looking for something I had never tried before. The one requirement that I instilled into my head was that the food must be of a foreign origin. What I found for a meager $2.50 was something called the English banger roll, a traditional sausage that was wrapped in a roll.

Picture: Courtesy of 4and20pasty.com

The roll actually looked more like a pastry than something a sausage would be wrapped in. Because of this, maybe surprisingly to some, I was more inclined to eat the roll. You might wonder why I say that. For various reasons, I generally do not eat sausage, bacon, or pork. I just don't like the taste of those types of ground beefs. I figure that I won't be going to the United Kingdom any time in the near future so I might as well give this banger roll a try. Much to my pleasure, I liked the English banger roll wrapped in the pastry roll.  

The funny thing about my experience, though, was that I did not even notice what the meat was until I was about half way done with the sausage. The meat was pretty light in color and I kept trying to cut the roll with a fork. The sausage was fairly easy to cut at first, but then I realized that it was a sausage when I picked up the entire sausage with my fork. Before this point, I thought that the roll was some sort of miscellaneous food item that I could not even describe. It was one of those moments where you figure something out, and all of a sudden everything makes sense. I started laughing at myself because I felt like such a moron.

I never would have thought that trying a food such as the English banger roll would have created a rather amusing incident. However, I enjoyed the taste and experience of the rather traditional English banger roll. These types of funny experiences are what make food such an integral and powerful part of our daily lives. On Tuesday, that roll changed the outlook of my day.