Ken Bridge from Pink’s Pizza, Lola, Shepherd Park Draught House, and Witchcraft Tavern talks about those places and the inspiration for the infamous speaker wall at Witchcraft.

Frank had a lot of fun piecing together this segment that rehashes yucca fries vs. regular fries.

Robb Walsh from Houstonia joins us and we discuss it and the book he wrote while recording this segment.

–I really liked Katherine Shilcutt’s “Happy Mother’s Day, From the Cheddar’s Family”. Houston Press is sure going to miss her. Her “They Don’t Have Tacos in the Suck” about a visit from a college friend who joined the Air Force was the best thing I read on Eating Our Words last year. I look forward to more of that for Houstonia.

–Lingers long on Love Street.  She has a house and garden.  I would like to see what happens…

WholeLottaLove from Karbach Brewing Co. on Vimeo.

–Personally I just don’t get the concept of paying a television show like Top Chef money to film in your city. I mean I understand the exposure and all is beneficial, but I would always find a million other things that money could be used for than hosting a reality cooking show. So New Orleans and Louisiana state and local tourism offices ponying up $375,000 for next season’s Top Chef to air there is ridiculous to me. Nevermind the fact that a big chunk of that money is coming from the recovery fund for the BP spill. Eater with a nice round-up of the fun little spat on Twitter between Team Top Chef and Team Treme regarding this.

–Flavorwire.com was kind enough to pull the top 20 most absurd quotes from Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives book.
“Shut the front door, son of Tatum O’Neal, that’s dynamite.”
“I don’t know if it’s fair to call their Russian dressing Russian dressing — it should be called something sexy, like liquid Moscow.”
“[On] the final leg of the Kid Rock culinary cruise, we…” Sorry, had to stop there. Kid Rock culinary cruise. Bawitdaba indeed.

–Really I’m surprised it took Oscar Meyer this long for Bacon Dogs.

–Nice little list from Food & Wine on Houston’s Top 10 Dishes.

–Apparently a Taco Bell out in California is testing out waffle tacos as part of its breakfast menu. Pretty confident they’re already working on Doritos Waffles Locos.

–My middle name is Brennan so I feel I should stake my claim in this New Orleans Brennan’s lawsuit shenanigans.

–A restaurant in Vegas called Firefly had to close down, but it didn’t even have 300 reported cases of salmonella. I guess 200 is a lot too.

–Not that it will translate to wins for the Astros like it recently did for the Padres, but why not grow peppers in the bullpen dirt?

–Want to know more about Ina Garten than you probably should? By all means.

–Jon Favreau write, direct and star. Okay. Robert Downey Jr. Nice. Scarlett Johansson. Now you have my attention. Sofia Vergara. I said you have my attention. Story of chef who gets fired and opens a food truck. Zzzzzzzzz.

Next week Robb Walsh to talk all things Houstonia and Ken Bridge to talk about his newest addition Witchcraft Tavern to the Pink’s, Lola, Shepherd Park Draught House family.  Witchcraft has a great beer selection, solid food, but even if it didn’t it’s worth a visit just to see the wall of speakers.

–Cass from Hawthorn talks a little in this week’s show about his upcoming master sommelier exam. This trailer for the movie Somm looks promising…

–Ec-fn-static that El Gran Malo will be taking over the former Cabo/Pepper Jack’s space downtown. And open for lunch no less. Can’t wait to see what they do with the space.

–Alison Cook on the two other bars that’ll be popping up on Main from Clumsy Butcher aka Anvil. Love the name The Pastry War. Wiki drops The Pastry War knowledge. Knowledge can still be “dropped” right or has that time passed?

–This still hasn’t gotten old..

—-I forget what the M in MTV stands for, but it’s entering the food show game.
@AndrewZimmern – “Will do for culinary arts what Teen Moms did for parenting.”

–Why wouldn’t you want to read an article on the history of baseball stadium nachos?

–I’ve gotten really good at fast-forwarding through Gwyneth Paltrow’s scenes in the Iron Man movies and look forward to seeing how much I can cut down when Iron Man 3 comes out on DVD. The latest Gwyneth being Gwyneth is a reasonably priced $950 shot glass she has for sale on her Goop website. Then there’s this story from NYMag.com of Rebecca Harrington who followed Gwyneth’s diet and advice in her latest book and yeah, face rash ensued.

–Thanks to anyone who follows me on Twitter or listens to the show and casted a vote for A Simple Thread at OKRA last month. A Simple Thread was April’s winner and will get May’s proceeds. You don’t know how much this means to this little organization that is trying to make a difference for the homeless in Houston. Thank you.

–Lived in Texas all of my life and never have had Whataburger’s Spicy Ketchup.  I may as well be a GD Yankee.

–I’m not sure why Carl’s Jr. is test marketing their Pop-Tart ice cream sandwich because it’s not like that combination can be bad.
Team Brown Sugar Cinnamon.

–It’s Passport Brazil at Central Market for the next couple of weeks and Brazil is the focus of the International Festival so this gives me an excuse to tell you that if you have never watched City of God then do so.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.
F’n awesome, right?  I mean it doesn’t have anything to do with food, but there are characters named Carrot and Steak & Fries, so there’s that.

–Food Network and The Cooking Channel announced its slate of new programming.  Can I interest you in Beat Bobby Flay?  I thought that’s what Throwdown was for.  Extreme Tupperware Ladies.  Um.  An Alton Brown led reality show called Cutthroat Kitchen?  Bubba’s Grills Gone Wild.  This is starting to sound like an SNL skit.  Turning to The Cooking Channel which I find myself turning to anytime Chopped isn’t on though I don’t think I’ll be turning for Doughnut Showdown.  At least it’s not another Wars show.  And spoke too soon, Food Court Wars will be on Food Network.  The Travel Channel also listed its new shows and among them is Best Daym Takeout.  Apparently Daymon Patterson is some big, literally big, fast food reviewer on YouTube.  Can’t get away from Nadia G.  She’ll be in something called Bite Me – Austin.  I can’t look at this anymore.  Eater has a full roundup.

–And none of those shows named Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, of the blood of old Valyria.

–I’m a sucker for the Bellagio fountains so the next time I’m in Vegas I’m going to take the Bellagio up on its offer to select the song and push the button to start a show.  I should say the next time I’m in Vegas and I’m up at least $250,000.

–There aren’t many food shows I can’t tolerate for at least one segment.  Nadia G’s Bitchin’ Kitchen is an exception.  Then I saw her on Chopped: All Stars and she was her annoying self and the first eliminated.  I mean even Debi Mazar’s husband beat her.  Anyway, now I feel bad for all my hate because I really misunderstood her.  Alas many of the world’s greatest musicians started out being misunderstood…

–Nothing worse than having a fight right before you sit down to eat. Unless you have Olive Garden menus capable of building a fort because then you’re almost obligated to, right?

–Michael Pollan was on Colbert again and you’ll never guess what they talked about.  Wait, did you guess food?

–The least shocking news ever that Pepper Jack’s downtown has closed its doors.  Place was terrible.  Hopefully a place worthy of that former Cabo space will step in and continue the downtown hotness.

SBF 4-20-13 Segment1 - “Pour yourself a bottle of wine” says it all.

SBF 4-20-13 Segment 2 - Adele Corrigan from 13 Celsius and Denise Erlich from Rathbone Wine Group to talk a little Australia and New Zealand.

SBF 4-20-13 Segment 3 - More from Denise and Women of Wine Charities.  Rocio Gonzalez from Miner Vineyards.

SBF 4-20-13 Segment 4 - We talk Oracle with Rocio and finish with Janiz Frago from Pioneer Wine Co.

–Look Les Alexander, just because you don’t think we can afford the $50,000 initiation fee and $8,000 a year fee doesn’t mean you shouldn’t invite Southbound Food to your wine club Societe du Vin.

–Love me some Downhouse. Love me some Downhouse + Richard Knight from Feast.

–This is how you give notice…

–Because you were just thinking that our country has a real need for a food show on Spike. Covert Kitchens will have Graham Elliott as its host as the show takes an all-encompassing look at a different pop-up each week. Try to contain your excitement.

–Spherified sake drop? Yes.

–Really how have McDonald’s french fry holders not been made standard in American cars yet?

–As if Oxheart wasn’t already difficult enough to get a seat in now there’s this glowing NY Times review of it and Underbelly. Good stuff.

–Ron Swanson eating a banana on Parks & Rec was all kinds of awesome.

–Chopped All-Stars is back and the “All-Stars” in this round were various Food Network personalities like Sandwich King guy, Sunny Anderson, out of the Bitchin’ Kitchen Nadia G., and the dude who is apparently Debi Mazar’s husband. Yeah, can’t say I like watching any of those shows. Thankfully Nadia was first out although she fired a shot across the bow at Debi’s husband who used mango juice by simply pouring it into a shot glass. That dude wanted no part of Nadia. It came down to Sunny and Jeff and Sunny took it home. The rest of the contestants are pretty much made up of Next Food Network Star people, Iron Chefs and Chopped judges.

Indeed.

–Because it’s important? lucrative? to be known as “America’s Only Breastaurant”?

–Eatocracy with a list of Baseball’s Best Bites. Yeah, I’m thinking Atlanta sells the hell out of those H&F Burgers. Seems with as many great places as Citi Field has that it should be open on non-Mets days for people to enjoy their food without having to, you know, watch the Mets. I had no idea the Shake Shack crew opened a taqueria there. In other baseball news an Astro just struck out.  I can’t tell who, but I think we can just assume it was Brett Wallace.

–Warming Glow did what should have been done a long time ago and that’s make some of the chalkboard specials from Bob’s Burgers. Burgers like the “Not If I Can Kelp It Burger” and the “Fig-eta ‘Bout It Burger”. If you’ve never watched Bob’s Burgers you are really, really missing out.

–Grant Achatz on twitter – “Why is food tv in a steady decline when food awareness is on the rise?”
Word.

–If you were looking for a nice lung dish then I suggest watching Hannibal. If not, watch it anyway. It’s pretty promising.  Jose Andres is its food consultant.

–Normally I hate the word “Gate” tagged on to a subject, but “PimentoGate” is awesome. Apparently, The Masters changed up its decades old pimento cheese recipe and ESPN did some snooping around and came up with a pretty interesting story and one that sticks a middle finger at The Masters Man.

–I thought when I saw on Twitter that Ikea recalled thousands of moose lasagnas from their stores that it was a joke. But no Ikea recalled 17,600 such lasagnas because they were contaminated with pork. Um, whoops?

–Friendly reminder to vote A Simple Thread if you’re hitting OKRA in April.

–I don’t want to tell you how to cast your April vote at OKRA, but let me tell you how to cast your April vote at OKRA.  Vote @ASimpleThread.  You can read about what this non-profit organization does here.  But you don’t have time to click so let me tell you that 100% of Simple Thread donations go to the creation of little kits that they pass out to the homeless.  Kits that have things like snacks, clothing, hand sanitizer, toothbrushes, and most importantly in another month – mosquito repellant.  I’ve handed these kits out and I know the difference A Simple Thread makes and the big difference it can continue to make with your vote.
Vote @ASimpleThread.

–Congratulations to Underbelly’s Chris Shepherd for being named one of Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs.  Cool segment from CBS This Morning.

–New Texas Monthly barbecue editor, Daniel Vaughn, did Eatocracy’s 5@5 thing on barbecue myths.  Good stuff.  Probably need to get him on the show to talk about his upcoming book “The Prophets of Smoked Meat: A Journey Through Texas Barbecue.

–I guess the real question is what took Gordon Ramsay this long to get a show on Bravo.

–Interesting read on where beer may go from here.  Native ales: A new state of beer.

–Very cool old interview unearthed by PBS between Howard Smith and Jim Morrison.  Morrison on Why Fat is Beautiful.  Good stuff.

–The Rangers can’t even throw a perfect game against the Astros so I don’t know what makes them think they can pull off a two-foot $26 chili dog.

–Special Edition Easter Southbound Food Show this week with lots of Easter egg dying tips and what to do with all those Cadbury eggs!  Maybe not.  Maybe it’s just the usual crew cracking open some pinot noirs with Lindsay Woodard (listen here) from Retour Wines, catching up with Paul Qui (listen here)and visiting with Judy Camarena (escuchar aqui) from Taqueria Arandas.  Next week we might talk food or we might spend the entire hour recounting the events of this week’s Game of Thrones season three premiere and the  fact it was easier to procure Divine Reserve 13 than procure Ommegang’s Iron Throne Blonde Ale.

–Eating Our Words with a look at 5 special edition Easter candies.  White chocolate carrot cake M&M’s.  Um, no.

–Peep-infused vodka anyone?  Anyone?  Hello?  Is this thing on?

Bonus points for having the Peeps colored as their respective Reservoir Dog character names.

–Head here if you want to get some eating out ideas from the 2013 Best of Las Vegas.  I know there are some places listed that won Reader’s Choice awards that I’d like to visit on my next trip.  Personally I like hitting RM Seafood for, well seafood.  However, this Red Lobster place that won Best Seafood sounds interesting.  Hopefully I’ll have some room leftover for some authentic Italian at the Best Italian winner, Olive Garden.

–Flavor Flav’s Chicken & Ribs.  Reality show.  Sorry, but it’s only at the pilot stage right now, but I’m sure it’ll get picked up soon enough because, well because we’ve already hit the saturation point on celebrity diving shows.

–A Tumblr dedicated to Activities Described by Cook’s Illustrated.  Por ejemplo:
“A tall glass of water, spackled with condensation, is one of life’s plainest and greatest refreshments. But too often a lingering aftertaste and an off ratio of cooling factor to thirst leads to subpar water-drinking experiences. Variable issues of contamination and regional quality aside, we concentrated our efforts on the fields of flavor and temperature.”

–It probably won’t be until sometime in 2015 when I’ll be able to find Esquire Network on my TV (still probably sooner than I’ll have Comcast Sports), but this The Getaway might be a keeper unlike Ilan Hall’s Knife Fight.  Anyway, The Getaway sounds like Anthony Bourdain’s The Layover, but with celebrities.  I’m in for the Joel McHale and Aziz Ansari episodes.  The others, eh.

–I’ve been fortunate enough to have my own or other people’s birthdays to celebrate at The Pass a few times since it opened.  The freakin’ lobster roll and that eggplant carpaccio.  Yes.
The Pass put together a nice little video of the Ham & Eggs course.

HAM + EGGS from Seth Siegel-Gardner on Vimeo.

–Mount Vernon to sell unaged rye whskey using George f’n Washington’s recipe?  Put me down as a yes.  $95 a bottle.  Um, make that a maybe.

In things I meant to post a week ago…

–I just got back from San Francisco, but didn’t run into these Girl Scout Cookie beers that now someone in Houston will be forced to make.  It sounds very Eatsie Boys to me.

–How do you know if your friends are really your friends unless you test them?  Great ad, if you can call it that, for Carlsberg.

–I’m sure somebody is buying these Gwyneth Paltrow cookbooks, but I can’t imagine why.  Although I do like that Eater pulls the best lines.  They pulled some classics out of her My Father’s Daughter including this gem:
“One evening when I had my wood-burning stove going I realized I hadn’t thought of dessert.”  Love that one because honestly that’s happened to all of us at one point or another.
Her new book is (deep breath) It’s All Good: Delicious, Easy Recipes That Will Make You Look Good and Feel Great.
On vegan avocado toast: “…but really it’s the holy trinity of Vegenaise, avocado, and salt that makes this like a favorite pair of jeans.”  Uh-huh.
“This recipe was inspired by a meal I had made by [Bush lead singer] Gavin Rossdale (yes, he looks like that and he can cook).”
She also calls Cameron Diaz “a master popcorn maker.”
I assume whoever had to read the entire cookbook for Eater got the rest of the week off.

–Honestly I’m not sure what took bacon taco shells this long…

Shepard Ross and Jeff Axline from Brooklyn Athletic Club - Listen to this and then go listen to the Divine Fits which was the excellent bumper music Frank picked out.  Divine Fits at SXSW, but not at FPSF

Gang from the Houston Barbecue Festival - HouBBQ.com for all the deets.  People still say deets, right?  No?  Oh.

Brandon Young from Moon Tower Inn - The easily excitable Brandon Young gets everybody all amped up.

–We’ll have the Eatsie Boys back on the show soon so we can finally talk about the release of their long-awaited beers from the awesomely named 8th Wonder Brewery.  Big fan of the Intellectuale.  The last time we had Ryan and Matt on they said they actually had people tell them Dome Foam wasn’t a good idea for a name for a beer.  Those people were obviously dead wrong and this week they tweeted a possible collaboration with Moon Tower on a Dome Foam.  Hell yes.

–Obligatory Johnny Manziel link for Bryan.  SI talking about Johnny and company as they hit spring football.

–Dumbass of the Week comes to us from Lakewood, Colorado.  ‘Twas there that Brianna Priddy was plowing through another waitressing shift at Applebee’s while dealing with the fact she had her wallet stolen and someone was writing bad checks everywhere in her name.  So she probably wasn’t in a great mood when a table of four came in and started ordering, well, whatever people at Applebee’s order.  I guess a margarita was among the items so when Brianna ID’d our dumbass, said dumbass handed Brianna her stolen driver’s license.  I can’t believe this didn’t happen in Florida.  Anyway, Brianna played it cool and walked straight to the phone and called the cops.  Just how much of a dumbass is this woman?  Well she’s 26.  Awesome.

–Still no crown crust pizza from Pizza Hut in the U.S., but if you really hate yourself you can travel up to Canada now for this crap.

–While we’re on the subject of what keeps Americans obese, Denny’s is bringing back its Baconalia menu.  Below would be the Caramel Bacon Stuffed French and I can’t even finish typing the rest.

Make sure you also leave room for their Bacon Pepper Jack Tilapia and BBQ Bacon Mac ‘N’ Cheese Bites.

–Maybe you remember Beverly Kim from two seasons ago on Top Chef.  She’s the one that was the target of the almost cartoonish villain-y Heather.  The Chicago Tribune catches up with her at Kendall College’s School of Culinary Arts where she teaches.  According to her she came out of the show with “post-traumatic stress disorder.”  If anyone would have come out of Top Chef with that it would have been her.

–If somehow you’re not tired of Gordon Ramsay he was interviewed by Men’s Health and apparently said some very Ramsay-ish things.  I don’t know.  I had my fill of him years ago. I will say those old BBC Kitchen Nightmares were gold.

–Buzzfeed with a look in the day in the life of a professional cannabis baker.  It will immediately make you want something a little sweet and a whole lot of cannabis-y…or maybe that’s just me.

–Interesting and unfulfilling twist to the Top Chef finale with a faux Iron Chef between Kristen and Brooke.  I thought the presentation of everything was very clumsy as it related to the viewer.  We just kind of got dropped into the event without much preparation or explanation.  I like the planning with the sous chefs much less the actual selection so to be cheated on all that was weak.  I also didn’t like the fact that I knew the outcome beforehand because there was five minutes left in the show and they had no time for a dessert round so it wasn’t exactly hard to figure out Kristen was going to take it home.  I would’ve included the dessert round and done it up with points to have some suspense, but maybe they thought that would be too Iron Chef-y.  I don’t know.  I do know Kristen and Brooke are both pretty bad ass.  I also know Last Chance Kitchen is still b.s., but Kristen shouldn’t have been eliminated in the first place.   The Daily Show with a lot on something called a sequester, but a little (the 1:30 mark) on Top Chef, Last Chance Kitchen, and the one and only Josie.

–Anthony Bourdain on Archer was as good as you’d expect as a character named “Bastard Chef” to be.
ABBAB: “Always be berating and belittling” – TV chef words to live by
I love how Ron always takes crackers and jellies with him out to restaurants in case the food takes a little while.  Awesome.

–Why wouldn’t you want to read anything about Aubrey Plaza much less her eating habits? From Bon Appetit.

–Finding out Mark Wahlberg and Diddy are coming out with their own water has completely ruined other waters for me.

–Bryan Caswell is in, um, well somewhere where Red Boat fish sauce flows freely and there are many unusual varieties of seafood.  @Wholefish’s timeline has been great.

Now remind me to ask him if the Edward Lee he’s with on this trip is the same Edward Lee I saw on trademark records for “Gangnam Style Hot Wings”

–How did I go this long without seeing this ad?

–If you haven’t been to the rodeo yet and you don’t get nauseous easily then the Chron.com has a look at some of the rodeo foods like deep fried Fruity Pebbles. Houston Press with more rodeo offerings to the gods of deep fried stuffs and bacon, lots of bacon.

–On the show this week we have Shepard Ross and Jeff Axline from Brooklyn Athletic Club, Brandon Young from Moontower and the guys heading up Houston’s BBQ Festival.  You might as well listen because we’ll probably be off the air the next month.

–Terrific read in the Chicago Tribune on Chicago chef Curtis Duffy. Really worth the time.

–I have a rule about eating things with umlauts in their title. The last ingredient in this umlaut delight reinforces that rule.

–Top Chef is down to its final two or three or four candidates. I’m honestly not sure how many people are left for this week’s two-part finale between Last Chance, Save a Chef and whatever else they’re bound to make up. I’m happy Brooke made it to the end because she was easily the class of this season. Sheldon seems like a nice guy, but I can’t see him winning. Then again the fact that Josh’s breakfast and bacon got him to the final three, well…Hopefully the other most impressive chef gets in via Last Chance Kitchen, Kristen. Inexplicably she went home during Restaurant Wars instead of the overmatched every step of the way Josie. This season was fairly forgettable despite trying to liven things up by bringing back CJ, Josie, and Stefan. It also hurt that the most interesting cheftestant, John Tesar, was out relatively quickly. Not only did he obviously have the chops he injected some personality into the show. The best seasons have a handful of chefs that have the look of a winner and repeatedly wow. Not including the All-Stars season I’d say the show has been lacking since Season 6 with the Voltaggios and Kevin Gillespie. Next up will be Season 11.

–If you don’t watch Archer then I’m not sure where you went wrong in life, but you obviously did. The aforementioned former Top Chef finalist Kevin Gillespie voiced a trucker who doubled as the leader of an S&M gang. Good stuff. And then Bourdain found out that there was a show that existed that he hasn’t been on so Bourdain will be on later this year.

–Bob’s Burgers Burgers of the Week:
Don’t You Four Cheddar ‘Bout Me
(comes with four kinds of cheddar)
Only the Provolonely Burger
(comes with provolone)

–I like the One Year In posts Eater Houston does. This time around Hay Merchant gets the treatment. Good stuff with Kevin Floyd on the beer side and Antoine Ware on the food side.  I’m not sure which thing I like more about Hay Merchant. The daily $3 3-6:30 happy hour or the fact the first movie they showed on their movie Sunday was Starship Troopers.

–On the show this week, or whatever week A&M basketball doesn’t kick us off, will be Alex Brennan-Martin to talk about his new pizza partnership he’s bringing from Louisiana, John Tesar to talk about Top Chef, the team from Brooklyn Athletic Club, Brandon Young from Moon Tower and Dominic Laurenzo to talk about his newest El Tiempo on Navigation. Now you might say how can you fit all of that into one hour including Bryan’s obligatory story about how Johnny Football saved a puppy from drowning? To that we say, we dunno.

–Frank is going to offer up some choice wine selections here on a weekly basis. Now if you’ll excuse I need to go ask Frank if he’ll offer up some choice wine selections here on a weekly basis.

Questions, comments or if you’ve seen anything dumber lately than “Big Pizza Sliders“…