I am veg and it can be tricky trying new places. I do some investigating to prepare. I heard good things about a ramen joint, I'm thinking Asian food has to have a veggie option, right? No. They listed vegetable spring rolls as an app (with my luck those have a pork sauce inside), everything else was meat in meat broth. I strike out with a coupla other places and finally find a Moroccan place called "Souk". GREAT!!! I love Middle Eastern food and although Morocco is in North Africa, a lot of the food elements are similar. I offer that as my suggestion and the guys are in. Our friend Jose is going to join us also, fun!
We pick 7:30 then move it back to 8 because John tells us at 2:30 that he is running late. How does someone know at 2:30 that they will be late by 7:30? No one knows. If you think I have some bizarre behaviors, John sometimes helps make me look sane. I think this is why we are such great friends.
Fast forward, Erin and I get to Trinity Groves and it is a madhouse. Absolutely packed. Tons of people, cars and there were a lot of police helping to direct traffic and monitor the crosswalks. Great!! The more people in this area, the better for my home value. I mean uhh, for the city. We drive around, finally find a spot, go up and wait at the place. The setup is very cool, there is a row of small restaurants with massive outdoor (covered) seating that is separated for each place but still together. Sort of like a food court but bougie. Oh and linear, not facing each other.
Please note the 142,000 cars just in this photo. Go across the street and then you see the row of restaurants.
Brad texts that parking is horrible and he finally landed the last available spot. While we are waiting for him to walk up, I notice that there is no one inside and there is a weird group of old people in blazers or ethnically-insensitive robes (Morocco theme dress?). Erin points out that there is a camel. The DJ guy is some crappy trying-to-be-futuristic combo of shiny stickers, lasers and tight black clothes. He has some weird gloves and appears to be plucking the laser beams to make music. WAITTAFUCKINGMINUTE DID YOU SAY "CAMEL"?!!??!!? Yes. A camel. A live two-humped camel. On the patio. And what appears to be a senior citizen belly dancer lady. No offense to the working girls out there but you really should call it quits after a certain age. I get that there probably is no retirement plan for belly dancers but seriously. Brad rolls up, we point out mister camel and we all down to take a look. And by "take a look", I mean "take as many photos of us as near to this camel as we can possibly get." Before we can even get that close, one of the TWO security (off-duty DPD) guys stops Brad with a hand and "It's a private camel, no photos." Hahhahahhahahhaahaahah a private camel??! Now I really have heard it all. We basically laughed at him. He was nice about it. But firm. Ugh. And tells us that it is a private party (there was even some janky sign on a tripod with the rich old guy's name). Back up the top we go. While waiting for John and Jose, I again notice no one is actually inside so I ask a hostess lady if the entire place is private tonight and she says yes. Wait whut. I checked the site about 10 times today, no one thought to put a note online that the entire restaurant was unavailable? I let her know that we specifically came to try Souk, she felt bad and asked us to please come back that this isn't usual. She actually said "Come on back anytime and we will be open!" I laughed and said I would make sure and call before coming back as they wouldn't be tricking me again. So here we go, the 5 of us to try and find something we can eat. Ok something *I* can eat because all those other heifers are omnivores. Kitchen LTO has a veg option (gnocchi) on the menu, place looks expensive so we keep looking. LUCK is pub food, my options there are pretzels and a side salad. No lie. We go all the way back to the end and that place seems to be elevated Mexican food and no veg dish. Behind the row is a seafood place. No. Across the street there is a gourmet hotdog place (fail) and a barbecue joint. Seriously, out of 8 places, only 2 have any sort of vegetarian entree??!! We go back to Kitchen LTO again and the host tells us we have a 2 hour wait to sit outside and a 3 hour wait to sit inside. We laughed at him and walked out. Apparently the ridiculousness of Trinity Groves had us laughing at everyone we encountered.
It was a good lesson to Erin that even for us long-term residents, trying new things doesn't always go as planned. I am not opposed to going back but we will definitely be planning better. I am a little disappointed that in a cluster of restaurants there is no significant veg-friendly presence.
We ended up leaving and heading to this DELICIOUS Thai place called Si Lom. If you haven't been there and you like Thai food, you have to check it out. They don't make my yellow curry spicy enough yet but we are working on it.
If anyone wants to go in with me to rent a private camel, send me a message, we can totally take our camel out in public and not let ANYONE take photos of it.
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