Houston's - Snowy Sunday Lunch

On Sunday a group of us ventured out in to the snowy streets to catch a 10 am showing of The Last Station. Now before I go into the meal that followed I must tell you The Last Station was the best movie I have seen all year! I love Helen Mirren;  Christopher Plummer who had his best moments ever on film; and I won't forget to mention the always overlooked and undervalued Mr. McAvoy.  Don’t stop, don’t pass go, and by all means please don’t go see Avatar and tell me it was the best movie you have ever seen… go to The Last Station.

After the movie, we were looking for a place to have lunch. I hadn’t done any pre-movie restaurant scouting, because I got the theater wrong and thought it was going to be showing in a different area of town.

We all decided to try out Houston’s which has recently come to Denver. Now I am not a fan of “trying out the new chain restaurant in town”. But since we are all huge fans of the Cherry Creek Grill; since CCG is part of the same company; and since it was snowy and cold - we thought we would overlook its chain status.

We started out with the spinach dip and were sadly disappointed. It is served in a large ramekin flanked by two smaller ramekins with sour cream and salsa. I found the accompaniments odd and the spinach dip boring.

Each of us had a different meal. Mac the French dip; Swooze the chicken tenders; Walsh had the chicken sandwich; and I had the inside out spicy tuna roll salad. Oddly, I didn’t try anyone else’s dish (weird I know). But everyone enjoyed their meal… the chicken nuggets were dipped in a tempura batter which I thought was weird, but just a preference.  My salad was heightened by their offering of Ponzu sauce (instead of soy) to dip my sushi in. I wanted to drink the Ponzu and am now obsessed with acquiring their recipe.

Overall Houston’s was good, but from now on I will stick to the Cherry Creek Grill.