Washed Weekly: The Battle at Delaware Springs
I'm a chronic menubator.
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“What’s Will Gonna Order At The Steakhouse on Saturday?”
by Will
There’s a new steakhouse in town and it looks like we’ve got a squad piling into it on Saturday to celebrate four different July birthdays. As a chronic menubator — the practice of looking at restaurant menus prior to a nice reservation — I’ve had a tab open all week with the PDF menu from The Driskill Grill in downtown Austin, Texas. With so much in play and so much money at stake, going in with a plan is almost essential for me here. Proper preparation, poor performance, things of that nature.
Let’s go through this section by section to make sure I’m absolutely dialed going in. Imagine waffling over your decisions in real time at a haunt like this — couldn’t be me.
The Drinks
An A through Z cocktail list? In this economy? After confirming that there’s a cocktail for every single letter, I was left with more questions than answers. Being that my original inclination before seeing the list was to go with “bourbon on the rocks,” here’s what I’m now thinking:
The Frontrunners:
Café Royal Frappé: Call me crazy but this feels like a fun way to kick off the evening without being Espresso Martini Guy.
Driskill Martini: I need to hear what this in-house recipe is before diving in, otherwise I’ll end up defaulting to a Gibson.
Vieux Carre: Can’t knock the classics. Just a matter of whether or not I feel confident that my pronunciation of “Vieux Carre” will roll off the tongue or not.
Yes, I’ll be avoiding wine for the night as it’s been making me feel terrible lately. If I had to order now, we’re hopping straight on the Café Royal Frappé > Bourbon on the Rocks pipeline. Surf’s up.
The Apps
Due to concerns about parasitic diarrhea sweeping the nation, I’ll be foregoing the normal caesar and wedge salad orders in hopes of claiming some dignity when I wake up the next day. That leaves us with shellfish, seafood, towers, and a complete raw menu. Here’s where we stand:
The Frontrunners:
Shrimp Cocktail: This is a conservative play if some of the table feels averse to mashing that Under The Sea Button. I can already tell that if I go solo cocktail, someone will drop a, “Can I grab one of those?” The answer is “yes,” but just know that I kind of resent that you didn’t order your own.
Oysters for the Table: A dozen sea slonks will make the whole squad happy. Knowing the cast of characters I’ll be surrounded by, this feels like a foregone conclusion. Unless…
The Seafood Towers: I’m one “Should we just get a seafood tower?” away from piling on that bandwagon and riding it until we’re out of gas. Seafood Towers can be a tough sell in this economy — but when we’re celebrating numerous birthdays all at once, it just kind of feels like The Move?
Worst case scenario, I’m chomping shrimp solo on my side of the table. Best case scenario, we’ve got a Lincoln Grand Plateau hitting the table and we all leave the steakhouse with our fingers smelling like Dungeness crab.
The Entrees
The biggest decisions of the night and it’s not particularly close. Yes, my eyes popped a little bit when I saw those prices but from the reviews I’ve heard about this joint, no one has left unhappy with anything. While others are surely going to zig themselves into a steak, I’ll be zagging into these options:
The Frontrunners:
Rack of Lamb: I’ve had BIG lamb energy lately (traveling through the Cotswolds will do that to a player). May even ask for an extra mint jelly since you know your boy will be dousing those lamb shanks with it.
Tableside Prime Rib: Red wine jus? Horseradish? Yorkshire pudding? A dude in a white jacket slicing that thang THICK and possibly getting some juices on me? Going to be hard to turn this option down in any scenario, especially when the price is on-par with the rest of the steaks.
Five Spiced Roasted Duck Breast: While this is not on the menu above, it’s something featured on their website. At $48, this is a choice I know I’d end up loving and also leaves some breathing room for a seafood tower.
This is a situation that’s most in-flux. If I’m trying to catch a red meat vibe, we’re obviously pulling trig on that P-Rib. But if I’m in my normal mode, a rack of lamb may be hitting the table at speed.
The Desserts
Imagine skipping dessert at a place like this on a night like this. Could never be me. Besides, I’m sure they’ll send something complimentary to the table for one of the four birthdays going down. Here’s what we know so far:
One of my lutes is an absolute slut for New York Cheesecake. I can almost guarantee we see one of these enter the situation, if not two pieces.
Me? I’ve become an absolute slut for a Baked Alaska. If our waiter does a grand reveal and tells us that it’s tableside, game over for me.
My wife loves Key Lime Pie. While I see this happening in some way, shape, or form, that order will be matched with a slice of that Cheesecake.
While I’m already budgeting out the rest of Q3 around this dinner, man, I’m juiced up. Can’t wait to ask Claude if I have gout come Sunday morning.
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The Battle of Delaware Springs
by Dave
I don’t need to give you the shot-by-shot breakdown of our golf trip last week. Will and I gave you all the intel you needed on Monday’s Circling Back. It was an electric way to finish the trip, but the reality is my team dragged me Weekend At Bernie’s style to even be in the position to have some shots that mattered in the final round. The vast majority of my time on the course was bleak. I mean like shutting down all golf related activities until 2027 bleak. Dark times.
Being on a golf course and not having it is bad. Being on a golf trip and not having it is really bad. Being on a golf trip that features a two-team Ryder Cup style event and not having it is HELL. Have you ever had a conversation with yourself in a municipal course bathroom mirror? I have. I was desperate. I can usually patch something together when I’m having trouble finding the clubface, but I had no answers. If I had to guess, I heard the phrase, “There are no sorrys in this cart” about 12 times. The masculine urge to apologize to your teammate after wasting his tee shot is real. Shoutout to my teammates.
It’s hilarious, really. That final stretch of my final match with Will was the most juice I’ve felt since my kid was born. A bunch of dads in their thirties and forties, half of them 5 High Noons deep, living and dying by every shot. It just means more!
I learned a lot about myself. For example, I’m the same bad player completely sober that I am after a few Mickey Bang Bangs. Disappointing! Like I said, I was trying everything. Wallet in the left pocket. Ball in the right pocket. Nothing at all in either pocket. We were scratching and clawing to hang on. I had this thought going into the trip that limiting myself to post-round drinks would keep me locked in, and maybe that would have been the case if I had a feel that wasn’t “Don’t wipe it” the entire week. But immediate returns are dicey, at best. I ain’t drinking any more, but I ain’t drinking any less!
Oh, and if your speaker runs out of battery halfway through the round, you can actually keep playing. No need to pack it up and head home because you can’t tee off with Bruce Hornsby in the background. Communicating with the person you’re playing with can be both tolerable and rewarding. It’s also more reason to hold it together and save the tears for after the round. You can’t be audibly whimpering, big dog!
For those who missed it, the entire tournament came down to me vs. Will in singles. The last three holes featured the entire group following each shot. Despite the *extreme Zinger voice* pressure, I put enough shots together to eek out half a point and get the thing to a team playoff. Will and I both holed out a couple knee-knockers on 18 to keep the day going. We didn’t embarrass ourselves, and we’re on speaking terms because of it. Did my team lose the playoff? Sure. But that will be but a minor footnote in the history books. People will remember the great battle at Delaware Springs where two men entered the arena, two men left, and one man had too much to eat at the Bluebonnet Cafe and barely made it home in time.
Check Out Brett’s Caffeine Lineup
by Dillon
Brett left town Wednesday for a golf trip in Missouri. Brett’s desk is next to mine so, in his absence, and without him looking over to see what I have going on today, I feel it’s a good time to write about his office caffeine intake.
I hope Brett knows I address these behaviors not to shame him for the sake of content, but because I’m concerned about his health. He did assure us this week that his doctor gave him a clean bill of health recently, which we love to hear, though I do wonder if he’s disclosing the full nature of his diet.
A few months ago, I wrote about Brett’s diet while here in the office. If you missed it, his lunches are 100% supplied by the Washed media “kitchen,” which consists of a refrigerator, a microwave that he’s never used, and a cardboard box that Dave dumps a heap of Costco snacks into every other week.
He’s devolved from a square meal kind of a guy to Dot’s Pretzels and protein bars. It’s actually very common for Brett to eat a plate full of pretzels for lunch. Not as a side. The pretzels were his lunch. He does it a lot. No joke.
On Tuesday morning, his beverage lineup caught the attention of a few in the office. It was, I think it’s fair to say, alarming. Heart palpitation kind of shit.
Bear in mind that a standard eight ounce cup of coffee is about 95 mg of caffeine. I do a couple of those jawns every morning and it jolts me awake, and I’m a seasoned coffee drinker.
I arrived at the office Tuesday at 9:30 in the morning and Brett was halfway through a Tropical Vibe Celsius. This was pretty typical behavior for Brett, as he is a big canned energy drink guy.
Celsius: 200 mg of caffeine
Not even 15 minutes after discarding the empty Celsy, we hear the unmistakable crack of an ice cold fridge cig (Diet Coke for the layperson). Dude’s rocking an empty stomach and hitting his insides with a Celsy-DC one-two punch like it’s nothing.
I took notice. “Damn, a fridge cig already?” I say while keeping focus on my computer screen, in the sort of manner and tone that suggests subtle judgement being lobbed his way. And it was.
Diet Coke: 46 mg of caffeine
Brett made light work of his DC and returned to his desk to bang out some spreadsheets and answer some emails. As the buzz around the office began to subside and the boys carried on with show prep, we couldn’t help but notice Brett sauntering over to the fridge for the third time to see what was what.
Probably just grabbing a mid-morning snack that he brought from home. After all, it’s 10:15am and he hasn’t eaten yet. Probably a bit jittery from being over beveraged and needed a little substance in his tum tum to calm things down.
I’ll be damned if that motherfucker’s hand didn’t emerge from the fridge holding a fucking Crisp Apple flavored Bloom Energy.
Bloom Energy Drink: 180 mg of caffeine
I hadn’t even had my morning Lucy yet and this dude is going triple barrels on the caffeine bevies. His guts just fighting for life in there. What are we doing?
Dude hadn’t had breakfast yet and he’s already 426 mg deep. And although it was separated by a few hours and a pile of Dot’s, he hit us with a second Celsius in the afternoon. Lunatic behavior.
All-pretzel lunches and enough caffeine to kill a child is no way to go about your day, son.
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Can’t believe Will didn’t dive into the side selection. Personally I’m going creamed spinach and mashed potatoes
Dorn, you may be the grammar king, but there's no e in judgment 🫡