Poverexic in NYC

New boss M took me out to a “welcome lunch” today to Steak Frites, which was incred.  I’d always wanted to go there for lunch, but it’s too expensive for me.  The only other time I’d ever been there before was for a Mad Men party a few months back where they had $10 huge really strong Mad Men drinks and a ton of free appetizers.

I was super excited about Steak Frites free lunch, but one of the downsides of “business lunches” – similar to dates – is that you’re obligated to do a lot of talking and hence can’t do a lot of eating.  This is why I just like getting Tasty King with the roommates because we can all just concentrate on our food and sit in silence front of the TV and eat.  I hate having to talk while I’m eating because I’m clearly not interested in having a conversation.

So I got the best burger in the world with roquefort and caramelized onions and huge strips of bacon with a side of frites, and I was hoping M would do most of the talking so I could dig right in.  Unfortunately she was really interested in my background and how my first few weeks on the job were going and how my teams were and how my clients were and how my workload was and how this compared to my old job and DAHHHHHHHHH HAMBURGERRRRRRRRR plzzzzz sirrrrrrrrrr.

For every bite of delicious burger, I had to do another 10 minutes of talking.  Before I knew it, an hour had flown by and M had to rush back to the office to make a 1pm meeting.  BUT… BUT… BUTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT I had barely finished my burger and I hadn’t even gotten through half my fries and practically all my bacon strips had fallen out of my burger and so there was just a pile of thick bacon strips on my plate yelling “DON’T LEAVE USSSSSSSSS DON’T LEAVE USSSSSSSSS” WAAAAAHHHHHH.

When M asked for the bill I tried to shove as much of what was left on my plate into my mouth as possible, but of course the questions kept coming and I had to keep finishing chewing to speak.  My stomach was happily full, but I just couldn’t help having this incredibly uncomfortable feeling in my stomach for having left all those bacon strips and frites.  I thought about them all day and couldn’t get that image out of my head.

My new job already sent me on a business trip my first week on the job… back to the homestate, Tejas.  I was excited at the thought of 5 straight days of expensed meals and a nice hotel room all to myself, but, let’s just say, boy am I glad to be back in NYC.  This was undoubtedly the worst work trip I had ever been on, and I didn’t even get any good food out of it, so ZERO points for poverexia.

Part of it was work’s fault because I was so fucking busy the entire time, I only got to go out to eat twice anyway and the rest of the time I just had to order room service or get food from the hotel bar.  The Marriott Riverwalk room service was terrible — I couldn’t even eat the chips and salsa because the salsa was way too hot (I sent it back), and the tortilla soup had a glop of guacamole in it — WHO PUTS GUACAMOLE IN TORTILLA SOUP!??!? YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO PUT FRESHLY CUT AVOCADO SLICES!!!!!!!!!!!! ughhhhhhh

One of the nights I ordered steak tacos from the hotel bar and a prickly pear margarita, and this is what I get:

Marriott Riverwalk bar food

a) Those aren’t TACOS, they are like… NACHOS.  b) That margarita came in the biggest water-glass-size glass I’d ever seen a margarita come in, and I was like whoaaaa everything in Texas IS bigger, but then I downed the entire thing and did not feel the slightest buzz.  I was like WTF so I ordered myself another, downed that too, and still felt nothing.  I was like THIS IS CRAP!!!!!  THIS IS CRAP!!!!!!!!!  Seriously Texans don’t know how to make a good drink because they just put a shitload of sugar in their drinks and think it’s a great drink.  The all-you-can-eat tacos plus margaritas at VAMOS across from my NYC apartment has Tex Mex that’s 2389478927389472323 times better than anything I had in San Antonio.

And the 2 nights that I went out to eat I was still in desperate search for Tex Mex and asked the Pat O’Brien’s hostess if there were any good Tex Mex restaurants she could recommend in the area, and she goes “Tex Mex?  What’s that??”  UGHHHHHHHH I had to get back to NYC ASAP.  I didn’t know what was wrong with this state.  There was no such thing as public transportation, we had to rent a car to get places, I did not see a single convenience store in all of downtown San Antonio, and most importantly, why weren’t there any Chinese delivery boys on bikes riding around the city?!??!??!??!  I was so relieved to get back to NYC and order Tasty King.

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