Citygirl Bites! Smashburger

HUBS and I have been having what I'm going to call mono flashbacks this week, and Lord knows the last thing you want to do when you're headache-ridden, weak and racked with dizzy spells is...Stand. So, cooking anything major is out for a few days.

I drove us out to Smashburger for lunch today. It just opened a few months ago and still has that new restaurant feeling inside. The first thing we noticed? Their little corner of the strip mall smelled amazing as soon as we opened the car doors. That's always an impressive sign of quality, I must say.



The small (1/4 pound) Spicy Baja Smash with sweet potato smashfries and chili was my choice. It was topped with guacamole (which I passed on to HUBS), lettuce, tomato, onion, jalapenos, pepper jack cheese and spicy chipotle mayo on a chipotle bun. What else can I say about it...Oh, yeah. GOOD! Juicy and spicy without being killer, meaty and crunchy and really just perfect.



The fries were covered with rosemary, olive oil and garlic, which was a nice change from your traditional cinnamon-sugar topped sweet potato fries. There was a lot of nice crispness in that basket, too. Yummy (said with guttural growl).

Their Angus chili was truly some of the best I've had. They laced it with onions, jalapenos and cheddar cheese. It was really meaty, which usually gets on my nerves, but the sauce was so good I just wanted to suck the whole thing down. My only gripe is that I wish they'd chopped the jalapenos so I could have skipped that step while eating.



HUBS enjoyed this production, which is a St. Louis Big Smash with chili cheese fries. His burger was on a nice pretzel bun (good, though it didn't taste as pretzely as some of the other pretzel breads I've had) with grilled onions, sweet peppers and garlic mushrooms, and provel cheese. He, of course, loved it. And, in case you're wondering, the standard fries are great as well.

I can absolutely see us going back; it's about a 20 minute drive away but it's worth it. Yea! New food!

What new food have you enjoyed lately?

Citygirl Bites! Dave & Tony's Premium Burger Joint

I've been so obsessed with pre-vacation planning and post vacation settling in and talking about what we ate in Philly that I completely forgot to let you guys in on Dave & Tony's. HUBS and I went there a couple weeks before we headed out to Pennsylvania.



It's located in a Creve Coeur strip mall store front and had only been open a few days when we went, so it still had that new restaurant aura around it. We got there a few minutes before close, so there was only one other couple there and it was nice and quiet except for the piped-in tunes over the speakers.

What you see above is my Hawaiian Burger with cole slaw. There was a crispy steakburger, ham, grilled pineapple, caramelized onions, BBQ sauce and sharp cheddar on a pretzel bun. As someone who's religiously avoided Auntie Ann's (despite many I can eat that! No, I'll feel too guilty. moments) since 2003, I'm not ashamed to tell you I got this burger mostly for the pretzel bun. It was awesome. Moving on.

And, man. It was good! I ended up taking my ham off, because it felt like overkill, but the combo of salty and sweet is almost always a winner. The cole slaw was nicely creamy and a bit sweet, but I seem to remember that the veggies felt a bit too crunchy. I know, everything's raw in cole slaw. It's supposed to be crunchy. Still...



This is HUBS' Steakhouse Burger and the chili cheese fries we shared. Let me start with those, because, do you see how there's a cup of fries, a cup of cheese and a cup of chili? I'm divided about this. On one hand, the fries stay crisp until you're ready to smother them. On the other hand, you have to assemble your side item. Don't we go to restaurants in order to get away from food assembly?

Well, at any rate the fries were good, the cheese was good and the chili was so thick you could barely scoop it up with a cluster of fries, we needed utensils. I wish there had been more chili and cheese, but I suppose a little forced portion control isn't a bad thing sometimes.

HUBS loved his burger. It was covered in Gorgonzola blue cheese, iceberg lettuce, onion rings, steak butter (which is something like this, I guess) and steak sauce, plus it was on a rye bun.

Now, if none of that sounds good, just take a look at the menu. They've got seven signature burgers, a ton of salads and a gazillion toppings so you can craft your own burger creation.

Final verdict? I'd be willing to go back, especially since HUBS feels the need to eat burgers all the time. The only thing is that they are a couple bucks more expensive than, say, the most expensive McDonald's fare and since the only location is in Creve Coeur, it's a bit out of the way for us. But, as soon as we are more financially stable, we'll be back.

Consumer Warning: Useless Brassieres!

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You know, we really should have known better. And by 'we' I mean me and about half of the women in my immediate family.

Imagine the scene: It was after midnight on a steamy Monday morning it late July. We all knew we should be heading for sleepy time, but decided to take one last click around the TV dial before lights out. What did we find? A segment on HSN promising a four-pack of comfortable yet supportive bras for even the biggest busted of us: the Ahh Bra. Oh, my. We are awake now.

I called my mom. What? Why did I call my mom? Because I wear a 40DD. Do you know how hard it is to find a bra that'll hoist my ladies appropriately and still feel all-day-long comfy? I'll tell you: IT'S IMPOSSIBLE.

I needed to see if she saw it too, or if it was just a late night/early morning mirage; this magical bazoom master. PT saw it, and she was, like me, enthused but leery. After an hour of watching HSN models of varying bustage parading in front of us, we broke down. I went to my laptop and ordered a pack for each of us.

A week later, I had the much-lauded mammary manager in my hot little hands. And you know what? They were extremely comfortable and it was impossible to tell I was wearing a bra without looking down. Also? If you were looking at me, you wouldn't have been able to tell I was wearing a bra either, since my nipples still pointed south as I wore the thing.

I took PT her set to see what she thought, having already decided to return mine. The results were even worse for my poor mom: the bras smashed her boobies into a lumpy uni-boob.

And with that, WE WERE DONE!

So, lesson learned, my people! We listened to all those rabid fans who called in that night and paid no attention to the customer rating on the HSN website, which is only 2.4 stars out of five. Reading the reviews I can see the Ahh Bra is either love it or hate it. And while we didn't hate it we didn't love that shit either. I've already got plenty of bras that feel good but don't hold worth a damn. I don't need to spend 50 bucks on more of those.

Has anyone out there found a good, comfortable bra?