The Fried Sweats

Jeeves, this one goes out to you, for getting on my case about posting about fried twinkies.

Thursday night was poker night, but this one differed - we all headed out to Brooklyn Heights because Philly graciously offered to host us in his newish home. You may recall that I have mentioned Phil and his lady friend's new home - which has a killer view of the lower Manhattan skyline.

Poker was the usual jovial event - I finished down a couple of bucks on the night, had a couple of great wins, a couple of bad beats, and I'm pretty sure Gordy was the big winner, though Philly did win the tournament. The view from Phil's bay window continues to be killer. And I got the best parking spot in all of BH - right in front of Phil's apartment building. In my life, I will probably never again get such an awesome parking spot anywhere. I did consider leaving my car there for the rest of my life and just walking back to Jersey.

Anyway, when we're at Gordo's we usually order dinner from Two Boots or Wogie's. From Sharif's there's Blondie's. Phil pulled out the menu selection, and we all agreed on The Chip Shop - a British fish & chips restaurant. And as usual, everyone turned into a starving Irish kid and we ordered too much food. Sharif and I both ordered the cheddar cheese and onion croquettes with chips. Jeeves and Mike had the fish and chips, Phil and Gordy both got chicken curry. On top of that, we ordered a chip butty (basically fries on buttered bread), deep fried macaroni and cheese, deep fried Reese's peanut butter cups and deep fried twinkies.

Kids, there is such a thing as too much fried food. I didn't order the fish and chips because I feel I'm ruined for the dish since I went to Ireland. But the cheddar croquettes were not what I expected - they really were just a piece of fried cheddar cheese.... and I did not detect any onions in the mix. As for the deep fried mac and cheese, well, it was a large ball of fried mac and cheese. Not sure how else to describe it. I don't think I would order it again. Rajeev and Mike gave the thumbs up to their fish and chips, though we thought for quite awhile that the restaurant had not given us vinegar or tartar sauce. No tartar sauce for fish and chips? Icky, in my opinion. It turns out the bag with the condiments was left sitting next to the front door. I blame Phil.

Phil and Gordo's chicken curry looked really good and they both enjoyed their meal. But the piece de resistance was the fried dessert. The peanut butter cups were nice, but Sharif and Rajeev made the right choice with the deep fried twinkies. I'm not normally a fan of the twinkie, but when it's deep fried, served with some confectioner's sugar and a strawberry compote? Un. Believable. I'm going to be dreaming about that twinkie till the next time I get to have one.

After the meal, we went back to cards, and our problems began. When I was in law school, the guys used to talk about a phenomenon called "the meat sweats." It occured after a trip to White Castle or a dinner of rodezio at Iberia. Barbeque is also a perveyor of the meat sweats - I've had some serious meat sweats after dinner at Indigo Smoke. Well, I'm here to tell you there is such a thing as the fried sweats. I think we all felt pretty queasy after the meal - duh, I mean the paper the food was wrapped on was soaked through with grease.

I don't care. That twinkie was worth it.