This week, the Cheap Bastard eats at the Purple Onion, 1838 Irving Blvd., 214-747-0101. The place has a picture of a Viking on the wall, yet she neglects to make any Spam-Spam-Spam jokes. That's it, then. Alice is out of the audio-video club.
Number of pictures on the wall of guys in Viking helmets count: 1 Times I heard someone say "Honey": 23
The Purple Onion's menu says they serve "open face sandwiches," but I asked for a Robert Downey Junior face sandwich and they told me no. What the hell?! Of all the faces in all the world that you could offer as sandwiches, you didn't think you definitely needed to get the RDJ face? It's a no-brainer: the dude is Iron Man Holmes. C'mon, everyone wants to eat that face. (loud, Dallas sigh) "I guess I'll have The Santiago scrambler."
The scrambler comes with what Purple Onion calls "a side of biscuits and gravy," which, in normal people speak apparently translates to "two giant fucking biscuits seriously if you eat both of these biscuits you've just ingested three thousand million calories and two heart attacks, oh and here's an actual bowl of cream gravy with a soup spoon in it, you shouldn't eat the spoon but shit, you shouldn't be eating these two biscuits and you ordered them so fuck it all, right?"
The biscuits were good. But mostly, they were giant.
Then, the scrambler arrived. Scrambled eggs, onions, green peppers, hash browns, ground beef and approximately eighteen cups of cheddar cheese lovingly sprinkled on top -- all on a plate. Not on a skillet. Hold the scrambler phone.
And this is the moment that I realize that my favorite part of eating a scrambler is that I get to eat it out of a cast iron skillet. Shit.
Scrambler spoiler alert: Without the skillet, a scrambler is just a shoddily put-together omelette. It's boring, no-chorizo-or-jalapenos-or-side-of-tortillas-having migas. It's Public Enemy without Flava Flav. It's reality TV without any idiot rich people. It's a world without bacon, people. This is serious. Ohmygod I think skillets might be the biggest reason I order fajitas. In fact, I'm definitely sure the only reason I order the skillet queso at Chili's is because it has the word "skillet" in the name. Put "skillet" in the name of any food item on your menu and I bet it makes it sell harder. Skillet Cobb salad. Skillet chocolate ice cream. Skillet mostly-cantaloupe-and-honeydew fruit cup. Skillet broccoli cheese soup. Yep.
Of course I realize that this is my fucking weird Needy Skillet Lady problem and not Purple Onion's problem -- (needy skillet lady voice) but I will say that I personally think their scrambler could improve with the addition of a little skillet-to-table action. The Santiago scrambler was pretty good, but it could have been skillet-good.
