Lunches...

I haven't posted anything about my lunch experiences yet, and I think it is about time I do.

For the first week and a half, we just ate at the GE cafe, this as it turns out was a very bad move.The predominant food in the cafe was a "freshly" cooked burger, fries and a coke. Not surprisingly, one of my colleagues (who has a set of scales) put on about a kilo in the first week of eating there. Putting that fact together with the food tasting just like a McDonald's burger, we have vowed not to eat on site again.

This has lead us to a search for good food in the vicinity of work. Like my work place in Sydney, there isn't much in the immediate area in the way of food shops so it means a minimum 10min drive. We have headed south, north and even into town to find something worth going back to on a regular basis...

There have been sandwich places where your hands are covered in butter that the bread absorbed from the grill, The drive up window called "Jung's egg roll express" (not quite as bad as first impressions would lead you to think, though we haven't returned yet...), Andy's hamburgers where the challenge to eat a 50 oz (of meat) burger worth $22 in half an hour and it's free (and you get your photo on the wall) appears to as yet have gone unanswered. i.e. there were no photos on the wall... To the Mexican place where English was by far the second language,the food wasn't quite what we interpreted the names to mean and the coke is "Mexican coke" which strangely enough tasted just like American coke except the bottle was a bit fancier... Arthur's burgers is probably the best place yet, it didn't taste like McDonald's and the food actually took some time to come out, which even though the locals get impatient is a very good sign that it is freshly cooked.

Then there was buffalo wild wings, where you have 12 choices of spiciness, from Sweet BBQ to Blazin' I ordered the fifth hottest "Hot BBQ", and thought it was a nice balance between fire in your mouth and still being able to taste the chicken. But we couldn't leave the question unanswered "How hot is Blazin'?" the waitress made a few comments that made us a bit worried what we were about to get ourselves into, but we pressed on. It turns out that the locals are a bit weak, the Blazin' wasn't that hot, definitely not a linear progression from the fifth hottest... and the waitresses were amazed at how easily we ate them and that we didn't run screaming for water afterwards...

and that leaves today's installment "Paul's Place" a small hotdog joint thats been there since the late 1800's. they claim to have sold more than 50 million hotdogs in that time, and the speed with which they serve them makes that altogether possible. They put the big fast food guys to shame. Before we had paid for the order, it was right there on a tray ready to go... the speed may be helped somewhat by the menu choices, you can have 1, 3 or 12 hotdogs, the only other choice you have to make is mustard, onions or Paul's famous relish... I chose 1 hotdog hold the onions... the relish was pretty good, but the hotdog wasn't anything to rave about, although it did beat the one we had in Wrigley field a few years ago. For a couple of the guys from work this was the second visit, and one of the local guys even knew it was the waitresses birthday, but I am not so sure I will be returning...

Unfortunately due to restrictions at work I can't take a camera to lunch, so you will just have to imagine what some of these places look like...


Andrew