Cozymel's

Cozymel's is a chain of Mexican restaurants in DFW (we went to the Grapevine location). We went for one simple reason. It was Kinsey's birthday and she wanted to try the margarita sampler!

Happy Birthday Kinsey!

Since it was her birthday MoFF, Kinsey got to make the choice on the restaurant. Her margarita sampler was the highlight. As you can see, it was five varieties of margaritas served on a block made to look like a ancient ruin. Fancy right? I had the skinny margarita myself, and it was pretty tasty. I can't say that about the rest of the meal.

I knew Cozymel's was going to be a different experience from our usual Friday night spots when the waiter asked how many kids menus we needed. I guess that dinner in the suburbs for you! We started out with chips and queso. I am not a good cook, but I have to say, my homemade queso was better then Cozymel's. I ordered the grilled portobello mushroom fajitas as it's still lent (only a couple more weeks!) They were not good. The mushrooms had a really odd flavor, and I was not into it. I stuck with my rice, guacamole, sour cream and cheese.

Luckily, they were generous with the rice!

The food was not great. The service was terrible. Our waitress was clearly having a bad day or hated her job or something. We pretty much had to beg for chip and water refills and she looked at me like I was crazy when I asked for rice instead of beans with my fajitas. She was generally unpleasant throughout the meal.

I would not go back here. There are too many good Mexican restaurants around to waste time at a bad one! But as always, we made the best of things and had fun!

Sisu Uptown

This is the pool area. Apparently you can reserve the cabanas, which is cool but a bit strange for a non-hotel. (photo credit: blogs.dallasobserver.com)

This week kicked of the month of MoFF birthdays! We have three March birthday people, so the vote is suspended for a few weeks, as the birthday person gets to choose the restaurant. So this week, we celebrated Jon's birthday at Sisu Uptown, a restaurant with a pool. You read that right, they have a pool. It reminded me of a place that you would find in Miami -  very trendy.

I decided to be fancy since we were eating at a fancy place. I tried the Prickly Pear Margarita, which was as tasty as it was pretty. It was a good way to start the meal.

Not good for the blood sugar, but you have to splurge every once in a while, right?

Since it's still lent, I went with another vegetarian dinner of tomato soup and macaroni and cheese. Both were excellent - the soup came with a cup of cheese, basil and croutons. The waiter poured my soup over the crouton bowl, so I have to give points for presentation.

Seriously, so good!

I enjoyed my dinner - the food and drinks were really good and the service was fast and attentive. But I have a few bones to pick with Sisu. For one, this type of restaurant isn't really my scene. It's the kind of place that gives Dallas a reputation for pretension. That doesn't make a bad place by any means, it's just not somewhere that I would want to go very often. The real turnoff happened when the bill came. I knew the dishes were a little pricy, so I was prepared for that. The issue was that the server added a 20% gratuity to our bill and it wasn't labeled on the receipt. Now, I don't take issue with restaurants adding gratuity to large parties (especially when they add 15-18%), and I think you should tip your server 20%. That is my typical practice. In this case we only had six people and the restaurant wasn't busy. It wasn't like we were taking space away from other customers. The real kicker was that the tip wasn't labeled on the ticket. It felt like they were trying to trick us into tipping more, which just didn't sit well with me.

If you're looking for a trendy restaurant, this place would be worth a visit - just pay attention to your ticket at the end of your meal!

Momo Italian Kitchen

I'm a little behind on my blog post this week - what can I say, it's the week before spring break and I had midterms in my grad school classes!

Anyway, last week, Meal of Food Friday took us to Momo Italian Kitchen, a hidden away Italian bistro in North Dallas. The restaurant seemed a bit out of place in the shopping center. It's located next to a very suspicious looking massage place and doesn't look like much from the outside, but inside, it was very nice - white table cloths, view of the kitchen,  and a nice waiting area (where we hung out for about an hour). Despite the long wait, we had a great dinner! I don't mind a wait as long as there is an out of the way place to sit. It's BYOB (with a small "corking fee"), and the host was nice enough to put our drinks in the fridge for us while we waited.

Photo credit: http://momoitaliankitchen.com/menu/

This was a good choice for a Lent Friday. There were several meatless options, so I had variety to choose from. We started out with the complimentary bread with pesto and the mini pizzas - I claimed the mushroom pizza because it was meat free and I LOVE mushrooms.

Pic credit goes to the momo's website (along with all the other pic credits for today) as I was too excited to eat my dinner to remember to take pictures.

The appetizer worked out well as I couldn't decide between pizza and pasta for my entree. I went with the Maccheroni alla Vesuviana, which is basically pasta with tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella. It was all really good! Everything was fresh, hot and tasty.

No lie, I ate all of it.

I would go here again in a heartbeat. The only bad thing that I have to report is the long wait. That being said, they have a huge patio area that almost doubles the size of the restaurant. On a nice evening, it would a great place to sit outside and enjoy some good food!