Continually trying to knock out the all important "list", my wife and I took a pleasant drive up I-10 to the Leon Springs exit and dropped into the Longhorn Cafe and Grille for a quick snack.
I must preface this by letting you know that we were extremely hungry by the time we left our house looking for vittles and when we arrived, we took no effort to comb the menu for just the right items to purchase. In fact, before our order came out, I was already kicking myself for not ordering a passel of appetizers like the Jalapeno Poppers or fried mushrooms. Another time I suppose.
The place looks like any number of other burger or BBQ places we have been. In fact, my wife was reminded of Babe's Old Fashioned Hamburgers though I don't recall there being any mounted deer wearing hats at Babe's.
I like the fact that they offered both the picnic table option or for folks like us, the booth. They also had some young lady going around making little balloon animals for the kids and that seemed to be a big hit with the grandchildren crowd although my wife did correct me when I pointed out one grandchild with his grandparents that no, those were his parents. I guess they started in their mid-50's. Nothing wrong with that at all.
Anyway, onto the food. We both ordered from the special menu where you get a sandwich, a side of either fries, tots or rings and a drink for a single price, and only maybe a buck or two more than a meal at McDonald's.
My wife had a hankering for a fish sandwich since we had to drive by the Bass Pro Shop on the way to Leon Springs, and she suddenly was craving the fish at Islamorada. The first thing you will notice is the onion rings. They are huge, the kind that sort of crumble all over the place and in serious need of salt. If you like the onion rings at Clear Springs, you'll appreciate these, just be sure to salt them, add some tarter sauce or ketchup or something. Aside from the lack of flavor, they were very good.
The fish itself looks like two planks directly from Fred's Fish Fry. Local San Antonio readers will understand. I have no issues with square fish like you find at Mickey D's, especially when it is presented on a perfectly grilled bun and topped with lettuce, tomato and some tarter. But overall, my wife just wasn't impressed and it made for a long drive back right by the Bass Pro Shop at The Rim.
I ordered the Cheeseburger combo, also with the rings. Ordinarily, we would have mixed it up with one of us getting rings and the other trying the fries, but I looked over at someone else's order coming up and decided I wasn't intrigued by the thin fries I saw.
I have nothing bad to say about the burger. The highlight for me is the bun and the fact that they are willing to slather on about a half cup of mayonnaise. Any place that will serve it up to the point that the mayo is dripping onto my beard fully understands how to make a burger in my book. For the price, it was filling, it was juicy, and it was consumed in about three minutes. The patty did not look to be fresh but rather from a frozen state - I could be wrong, but again, simply no complaint at all, I would certainly enjoy another one.
I am told that some of the other Longhorn Cafe locations are actually better in quality. The place was not overly packed but we still waited close to 20 minutes from the time we ordered to the time we got the food. That isn't bad considering they make your order from scratch I guess.
Can't make it to the What-a-Burger near your house? Don't hesitate to give Longhorn Cafe & Grille a shot.
I have waited to report on this incident for at least a month now, wanting any remaining evidence to have been long ago sent off to the local landfill, destroyed via the normal digestive process, or at minimum, until the statute of limitations expire.
You see, we are up for trying new things, especially when it comes to cooking. You'd never know it to look me in the gut, but (or butt), I really do want to try to eat somewhat right, and my wife tries to help in that department. So, people always say you should try to increase your consumption of fish and, I know this probably defeats much of the point, my wife prefers fried fish. For some time, we have been thinking of getting one of those spiffy frying machines that reduces the oil splatter and makes for a cleaner fish frying operation.
As it turns out, my wife saw this little video feed from AOL showing some famous cooking guy, Tyler Lawrence who has an easy recipe for Fish and Chips. Again, you won't need to remind me that this isn't the healthiest route to adding fish to your diet, but I'm a huge fan of Baby Steps, especially if it tastes good.
So, I got home from work and my wife had gone out to one of the usual home stores specializing in Linens and Things. I'd prefer not to say the name of the company for fear of a potential law suit, but they seem to have a lot of Linens and Things in the store. Oh, and they always send us these coupons for 20 % off the purchase price of stuff.
It turns out that not only did she purchase a new special deep frying system (have you noticed how everything is a system these days - a wash cloth is now part of a face cleaning system), she had several pounds of fresh fish. I mean, if we are going to eat fish, dammit, we are going to eat a lot of it!
I may have mentioned before that my first job was at McDonald's. I know the business end of a deep frying vat - the seriously solid basket suitable for holding five pounds of Idaho Burbank Russets or a box of about twenty square filet's o' fish, and this sir, was no solid "system".
The idea was functional. Basically, for safety reasons, the basket would lower down into the vat, the top covered and sealed everything to avoid spills and fires, but the fry basket itself seemed really flimsy and cheap. Oh, and the fryer itself was made of plastic. But, we would not be deterred in eating healthy, and I was hungry.
It just so happens that I had purchased this spiffy Tupperware type box during the grand opening of the Bass Pro Shop over at The Rim, that lets you shake your fish in all the bread crumbs. It really is an awesome system, so I was eager to use it for the first time. In cahoots with this Tyler Lawrence guy, my new fry system and a Tupperware box, how could we go wrong?
So, I open up the box to the fish fryer, and the first thing I notice is that the box seems to have been opened before. I don't mind getting the floor model on something, but let's not try to fool me into thinking that I'm getting a brand spanking new product. So I inspected it and it was clean and everything seemed to be there. No problem.
We got out all the ingredients and the recipe called for the use of a beer. The only thing we had at the time was one a Michelob Ultra Light. I'm not sure that was what they had in mind, but what the heck. So, we mix up the little batter mix, we put the needed flour in the Tupperware Box thing, and we load up the fryer system with some good quality canola oil or something supposedly healthy.
Dredge, Batter, in the fry basket - we were off to the races and I was so excited about having some home fried fish, that I had to actually take pictures. 
Then again, I take pictures of everything, so perhaps it wasn't all that special. Either way, we followed the recipe exactly and we just knew this fish was going to be a tasty treat as soon as it emerged from the awesome, safe and clean fish frying system.
Okay, here's the deal. This fish frying system sucked. Within a minute or so, instead of the fish getting golden brown and floating to the top, it all molded itself together and welded itself to the fry basket. 
Though the fish itself was not fully cooked, the batter had created such a gooey mess of Super Glue, that the only way to get the fish unstuck was to pull it away from the golden delicious crispy crunchy fried batter. A total waste of almost a quarter pound of fish.
Luckily, we still had the rest of the fish and we still had the rest of Tyler Lawrence's special recipe, so we did what we probably should have done in the first place, we busted out a deep fry wok and went to town with it.
I am happy to report that the fish fried up perfectly, there were no resulting house fires to worry about and no harm came to anyone other than the fish.
After dinner, we scrubbed the living crap out of that fryer and I went over the fry basket thread by thread to remove any sign or hint of Tyler Lawrence or his batter. We repackaged everything in the exact packing specifications as we received it and the following day, my wife took the item, fully sealed back to the store it was purchased from.
Upon inspection, the lady was satisfied that everything was there but she said, it almost had a smell of fish to it. My wife said, "Yea, that's why I'm returning it. My husband gets really freaked about using stuff that was previously opened by someone else."
The lady smiled and said, "Yea, it happens a lot more than you know."
I must preface this by letting you know that we were extremely hungry by the time we left our house looking for vittles and when we arrived, we took no effort to comb the menu for just the right items to purchase. In fact, before our order came out, I was already kicking myself for not ordering a passel of appetizers like the Jalapeno Poppers or fried mushrooms. Another time I suppose.
The place looks like any number of other burger or BBQ places we have been. In fact, my wife was reminded of Babe's Old Fashioned Hamburgers though I don't recall there being any mounted deer wearing hats at Babe's.
I like the fact that they offered both the picnic table option or for folks like us, the booth. They also had some young lady going around making little balloon animals for the kids and that seemed to be a big hit with the grandchildren crowd although my wife did correct me when I pointed out one grandchild with his grandparents that no, those were his parents. I guess they started in their mid-50's. Nothing wrong with that at all.
My wife had a hankering for a fish sandwich since we had to drive by the Bass Pro Shop on the way to Leon Springs, and she suddenly was craving the fish at Islamorada. The first thing you will notice is the onion rings. They are huge, the kind that sort of crumble all over the place and in serious need of salt. If you like the onion rings at Clear Springs, you'll appreciate these, just be sure to salt them, add some tarter sauce or ketchup or something. Aside from the lack of flavor, they were very good.
The fish itself looks like two planks directly from Fred's Fish Fry. Local San Antonio readers will understand. I have no issues with square fish like you find at Mickey D's, especially when it is presented on a perfectly grilled bun and topped with lettuce, tomato and some tarter. But overall, my wife just wasn't impressed and it made for a long drive back right by the Bass Pro Shop at The Rim.
I have nothing bad to say about the burger. The highlight for me is the bun and the fact that they are willing to slather on about a half cup of mayonnaise. Any place that will serve it up to the point that the mayo is dripping onto my beard fully understands how to make a burger in my book. For the price, it was filling, it was juicy, and it was consumed in about three minutes. The patty did not look to be fresh but rather from a frozen state - I could be wrong, but again, simply no complaint at all, I would certainly enjoy another one.
