Lunch Report: Willie’s Grill and Icehouse on 281…

Saturday was a day to run multiple errands that led us from one side of town to the other in sort of a round about fashion. Way past lunch time, we found ourselves picking up some supplies at Family Leisure over on San Pedro. We seem to have become regulars there what with the heavy use our Jacuzzi gets. Anywho, whilst there, we asked our regular sales guy, Brad for a lunch recommendation in the area and he asked if we had tried Willie’s just up the road on 281. We hadn’t, so off we went.
Willie’s is part of a chain found all over the Houston area and three locations here in San Antonio. We had driven by the Shavano Park location several times opting for other eateries in the area and I suppose we missed the one in Leon Springs last time we were out looking for houses in The Dominion. (That’s a joke.)
The first thing you notice is that Willie’s has lots of outdoor dining on a huge deck as well as the indoor garage-like seating area. During our visit, there were lots of families with their little soccer-kids enjoying a nice lunch after a morning of sports action.
Inside, there is plenty for the adults to enjoy including several troughs of ice cold beverages. You won’t go away thirsty, my friends. I wouldn’t consider this a big destination for spending hours watching sports, but their were plenty of TV screens everywhere in case you needed to keep an eye on the Red River Rivalry (since when is it not the Red River Shootout, by the way?)
We walked in and at the first counter, a nice lady took our order, handed us a ticket and sent us on our way. Naturally, I started looking for a place where I could pay for the vittles, but instead was told to go find a place to sit. From there, a waitress came out, took our ticket and went to enter our order into the system. The fact that she had to come back twice to clarify that first, my wife wanted cheese on her cheese burger, and second that I wanted cheese on my cheese burger seemed a little inefficient to me. We had to giggle at that one. We surmised that when the place is really busy, it helps control the flow into the seating area by stalling people at the first counter. Who knows? Bottom line – when you go and try Willie’s, don’t be alarmed when you order twice.

Before I tell you what we ordered, you should know that this place has a wide selection and options for every taste. I didn’t get a picture of it, but when you first walk in, there is one of those butcher cases with fish and shrimp and other meats laid out for your viewing pleasure. We saw several folks ordering some sort of shrimp cocktail action with these huge bowls of salsa and diced avocado that looked really good. They also offer loads of starters that could make a fat guy like me stay for an extended period of time just sampling everything. In fact, they have a Sampler for $20 that includes as you would imagine, samples of everything. If you and a group of friends are really hungry, they offer the Ultimate Platter for $40 that is a sampler of entree items – catfish, shrimp, steak fingers, chicken, onion rings – the works. Can you tell I’d like to go back and gain a few pounds?

So, in spite of the wide selection, we opted to try the burgers. They do offer wheat buns, but were out during our visit.
My wife ordered the Chili burger (with cheese) which is a 1/2 pound burger with your standard fixin’s and a side of chili so you can add as much or little as you desire. The burgers all come standard with fries. She loved it. It was such a gooey mess that once she picked up half of it, she was not able to put it down for fear of the whole thing falling apart. That might sound bad to some folks, but it makes for good eats.
Obviously, some lady on her first date with a new guy might not feel as comfortable with the messy hands, but my wife can take it. I will tell you that I did not like the chili at all. I don;t know if it was some sort of doctored up canned version or what, but it just seemed like someone dropped in an extra cup of chili-powder. It wasn’t that it was too hot/spicy, it was just too much chili powder, in the same way someone might put too much salt or too much cumin on a dish. But she liked it so there ya go.
Just as a side note: Eva ordered up a Pink Lady which is a strawberry milkshake in honor of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Willie’s sends them a dollar for each one you order.
I went with the Icehouse Burger which is a 1/2 pounder with your choice of cheese, all the normal stuff plus bacon and mushrooms. Yum. Instead of the fries, I upgraded to the onion rings for a buck. By the way, we did notice some people order a “small” onion ring as an appetizer, and it was a plateful. The bun was slightly grilled, a must of course, and the burger was cooked medium – a rarity these days. The onion rings are hand breaded with a light dusting making them seem like they are probably more healthy for you. At least that is what I told myself as I shoveled one right after another down my gullet between mouthwatering bites of bacon, mushroom, cheddar cheese and burger. I don’t think it was just that we were really hungry; we were both quite pleased with the quality, quantity and taste of the burgers.
Look, this isn’t some hole in the wall that you find by accident and hope that it never gets really famous; it is of course a chain. But from what we could see on our first visit, Willie’s offered a wide selection of food, friendly service in an inviting atmosphere. Having established that they can make a fine burger, we are ready to return for some of the other options – like catfish. If the hand breaded cat and the fried pickles are anything like the burgers and onion rings, we’ll be in for another Tasty Treat.

Have you been to Willie’s other locations? Your comments are always welcome, you know.

Rumors of my Demise…

…well, you know the drill – widely misreported and such. I’ve just been busy for the past few weeks and haven’t had a chance to sit down and type out a few lines or post a picture or two. I’m making a concerted effort to offer a quick update without having to stop mid-stream to witness an accident, deliver a baby or re-wire my house, or any other time consuming event. So here we go…
Do people still play the Lottery in Texas? Apparently disabled people do. Strange.

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Have you ever eaten at Henry’s Puffy Tacos? In San Antonio, most people have probably never tasted a really good puffy taco from Henry’s but they know exactly who the Puffy Taco is. At the San Antonio Missions baseball games, they take a break at some point and have a little kid chase the puffy taco around the bases. If all works out well, the little kid is able to tackle the taco just feet away from home plate and the kid wins a prize of some sort. Seriously, aside from the dizzy bats, HTPT is the highlight for me. Oh, and $1 beer.
Anyway, we stopped into the Henry’s on Bandera at Wurzbach which is in the location of the old Clear Springs Catfish place (and I think before that, maybe it was the Black Eyed Pea – I can’t recall), so we could get a Mexican Plate.
No time for a full report here, but that was the best puffy taco I’ve had in a while. And the enchiladas were yummy too. Is it the best Mexican Plate in San Antonio? Nah.

Oh, there was one minor incident that made us giggle. We ordered and within a few minutes, some guy comes out to bring us our plates of food. As we were admiring the bounty, the server deposits a third plate of food on our table and we sort of figure out that it isn’t amazingly fast service but instead, the wrong table. You should have seen us doing one of those Las Vegas style black jack dealer hand moves where you demonstrate for the cameras that you haven’t stolen any chips. We established that we hadn’t touched the food and the server promptly picked up the plates and moved them one table over to the hungry diners next to us. Not sure why the hungry lady gave us a dirty look – it wasn’t like it was our mistake or we had licked the avocado.

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Did I mention that I saw a lady get hit by a car? I know, not a very appetizing topic. Not to worry, it wasn’t all that bad, though I’m sure she might not agree.

The gist of it is that I stopped into the Exxon on West Avenue and I-10 to pick-up a refreshing beverage in the near 100 degree heat. As I was walking back to my truck, I saw the lady leaving her car at the gas pump walking toward the store. I opened the truck door and heard a screech and sure enough when I jolted myself around, I saw a stopped car and the same lady on the ground, high heels tossed several feet from her body. Of course I ran over immediately to assess the situation and to see that she wasn’t dead or anything.

Now before you ask, no, I did not take any pictures (though I was prepared – naturally), but if you need your fix I have some pictures of a burnt down house that might help.

Anyway, the driver of the car was just as apologetic as could be. He turned around to say something to his kid in the backseat of the car and simply did not see the lady. Since he was turning into the gas pump next to the lady pedestrian, I estimate his speed at about 1/2 a mile an hour. Nonetheless, a Chrysler 300 at 1/2 a mile an hour probably doesn’t feel that great.

I asked the lady if she was alright and she said she was, asked her if I could call an ambulance and she said no, and asked her if I could help her get up. Yea, she was sort of sitting there with her dress hiked up around her waist. Sorry perverts; again no pictures (though again, I was quite prepared). At any rate – the long and the short of it was, I called the SAPD and let them know a lady had been hit, I offered to stay with the participants of the little incident but after about ten minutes of waiting, they were okay with me leaving. I really felt bad for the driver. The guy was just beside himself with guilt and was clearly more upset than the lady was. Of course, I suspect he may have been thinking long term about the impending call from Wayne Wright or one of the usual lawyers who advertise during Springer.

UPDATE: I kid you not, I received an e-mail from the office of Wayne Wright, LLC today requesting a statement for their client – the lady who was hit. How did I not see that coming?

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Did I mention that we tried out the new Longhorn Steakhouse that just opened up on 1604 at Culebra in Alamo Ranch?
This is a picture of my wife waiting for our food. But of course, they had only been open a few days, so really, no cause for alarm.
Forget everything else, just order that $9.00 shrimp appetizer and maybe a salad. That is all you need.

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One of the things we are doing in preparation for a new remodel is figuring out what our kitchen should look like. So we went over to Lowe’s in Alamo Ranch to grab a few catalogs on cabinets and appliances and ended up making a minor purchase.
Look up the word “Impulse Shopper” and you will see our wedding picture in the dictionary. Not to suggest we got married on an impulse 25 or so years ago. But I do have to admit, these babies are gonna look sweet in the new kitchen. The oven has two compartments, and it is as though the upper level was made specially to bake Papa Murphy’s pizza. Just awesome!
I’m especially fond of this dishwasher. It has the hidden control panel on the top, and by all accounts, it cleans the dishes much better than just letting our dog lick them after dinner.

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I’m going to try to wrap this up as I listen to the thunder and lightening start to kick in. No, I’m not as worried about frying the computer as I am facing the fact that we cannot hit the hot tub tonight. Lighting and hot tubs do not mix.

But, and I promise this was not an impulse buy, we did get a newer, bigger jacuzzi delivered this weekend. Long story short, we sold our brand new (month old) hot tub to the neighbors and we ordered up a bigger one. This is not meant to be a reflection on just how enormously fat I am, but the recognition that our kids come home and we’d like to get in it without all being squeezed in cheek to cheek. Yikes!
But, this new one is huge! The old tub (“old” is such a harsh term for a tub that is less than two months old) measures about 4 1/2 feet X 5 1/2 feet. The new one is 8′ X 8′! And that was never more clear when they showed up to roll it through our gate into the back yard.
When you go into Family Leisure (Watson’s) over on San Pedro, the place is pretty big so you don’t get the exact feel for how much of your deck the tub will take up. It was a bit overwhelming to say the least. The delivery guys were just awesome and didn’t even flinch when they saw the trees they had to negotiate to get the tub into the yard.
Of course, I couldn’t wait to test it out and had to pose like a little kid as the water filled. And of course, we put the canopy with full mosquito netting over the top for use.

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And there you have it, a week or two worth of information that you just couldn’t live without. To all the blogs that I follow – I promise to get back and leave comments and such – just been busy.

And to one of my favorites, BuzzardBilly who ended her blog this week, like everyone else who read you regularly, I’ll miss your updates. I promise to pursue my inner Freddy Mercury!

Friday Night Update: Birds, Fish, Peaches, Tubs…

And when I say “tubs”, I’m not necessarily pointing out my huge belly, but I can understand if you took it that way.

I know, it feels like I have not provided any information in at least a week. You may be thinking that now that we have the little jacuzzi action going, we can’t be bothered with anything else. Oh sure, the timing – what with the end of the season for most of the TV shows we watch, there doesn’t seem to be anything pressing keeping us from taking a dip to relax the muscles before bed. I highly recommend it – if the hot tub is working.

For those of you not paying attention, we purchased a spa/jacuzzi/hot tub whatever – over the Memorial Day weekend. Well, the following Saturday, we went back to – Watson’s Family Leisure over on San Pedro to attend “Spa School“. They offer this seminar to pool owners (Pool School) and spa owners as a free service to help you better understand how all the chemicals work. Even if you bought your spa or pool somewhere else, they are happy to have you join the class and believe me, it was well worth it. I seriously was lost and Brandon, our instructor cleared a lot of things up.

Oh, if you get queasy really easily, you may want to skip this picture.
Too late, I guess. Sorry. Anyway, this poor bird for some reason flew into the truck parked next to me. I honestly thought it was a prop at first – you know how you see guys hang big brass sacks from the trailer hitch of their trucks. But upon closer inspection, it was a real bird. Makes good eatin’ in lean times.

So back to the hot tub. We had this routine down of going out at about 9PM each night, sitting in the tub for half an hour and then coming inside, getting ready for bed and seriously sleeping much better. Hell, a doctor should have written me a prescription for this years ago and perhaps I wouldn’t have such crappy sleeping habits.

So there was a huge rain storm sometime during the week and the next thing you know, the tub has gone all haywire on us. Of course, we did all the standard troubleshooting – you know, like reading the manual and such – and I even got on the Google and found a web page to ask questions to. (Still no answer on that one, though I may go back and answer it myself). I disconnected the power and restarted it multiple times, but the thing was just going crazy.

I called Family Leisure just before their closing time and talked to a few folks there, but their spa technician was out and they took my info. The next morning, I went out and just cut the power from the breaker figuring there was no sense in blowing the spa up, and I went to work. (Is this too much information? I haven’t even gotten to the fish story yet.)

I get ahold of Austin, the Spa Tech, and he takes all the information and advises me to cut the power for at least 24 hours, pointing out that there is some memory in the system that should clear after 24 hours. I was startled at first because when he mentioned the spa having memory, I started feeling a little nervous about a minor situation with one of the jets. Oh, I’m just kidding Mr. Naughty-Thoughts…

Anyway, long story short, we waited 24 hours, cranked on the power and we are as good as gold. Everything reset as expected and I’m happy to report that we just got out of the tub not long ago.

I got an interesting e-mail the other night from a reader and person involved with the Mr. Cod company. The gist of the e-mail was that he had read about our rough experience with the Mr. Cod on Grissom and Timber Path and was hoping we might come back for another try. He very graciously offered a free meal but of course, I declined the freebie. But I did say we would be happy to visit again, and we did just that, this evening.
We always seem to find excitement. When we walked in, there were no customers at all. The place was empty with the exception of a single cook and the lady at the counter. We placed our order and then began to look for a place to sit. I’m guessing in an effort to save money, the air conditioner was set to a brisk 85 or 90 degrees, because I began to sweat. This is no joke; I walked from table to table, booth to booth until we found the coolest place to sit in the restaurant then took a seat.

As we were waiting, an older gentleman and his son walked in. If you follow on Facebook, you already know what happened next. I was in the middle of uploading a picture of my Mr. Cod receipt to FB when my wife yells at me to go help the man. I was oblivious to the fact (and this is why people should not text and drive) that the older guy was having a medical situation. I ran over to see if they needed help, but my wife immediately jumped into action, directing the lady behind the counter to call 9-1-1 NOW! The younger man got his father seated and Eva began to ask him how he was etc. The lady on the phone suddenly had an issue with speaking English and promptly handed off the phone to my wife. It wasn’t that the dispatchers don’t speak both Spanish and English, but you have got to pick one language and stick with it as you try to describe the situation in an emergency.
Bottom line: The man was okay and everyone lived happily ever after. The paramedics arrived and commented about the extreme heat, just as the A/C kicked in and my platter of fish arrived. Deciding not to haul the guy away in the ambulance, they ordered dinner. That’s one way to generate business. (I kid, of course).
So, my wife ordered up the fish sandwich. We had good luck with this on our last visit and once again, she was very pleased with the the taste and the way it is served. The fries were fine and plenty. We realized that we could have easily ordered the fish sandwich with fries and a single plank of fish for me and been full.
I saw that they offer catfish now and so I had a fish platter that came with a piece of catfish and 3 fried shrimp. They have figured out the cooking time for the shrimp. These were meaty and not under or overcooked. I was not expecting the catfish to be fried in the same batter as the normal fish they offer. I guess I didn’t know what to expect, but it was just fine. I did enjoy it and have no complaints at all in the quality, or the presentation.
They have napkin dispensers now!
We did order some pies (I had lemon and it was just as good as the one next door at What-a-Burger) and I’m not sure if the meals came with drinks or not. The ticket came out to over $18.00 and for what seems like a fast food atmosphere, that still seems a tad bit steep to me. But I won’t quibble over a few dollars as long as the food is good.

I am told that they have a new Mr. Cod over on DeZavala, and I’m sure we will give it a spin, if only to follow-up on all this. If other readers have tried them out recently, (It has been over a year since the Mr. Cod on Grissom opened), I’d love to read your comments.
I think we planted our peach tree about two years ago. Seriously, how awesome is this? I just wish the skin wasn’t so fury. I prefer the ones in a can with light syrup.

And there you have it. I’ve been informed that I’m slackin’ on the bloggin’; hope to write more sooner rather than later, but it isn’t looking good for this weekend. Lots to do!