Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Greenz Restaurant

For those of you who don't know my beautiful and wonderful wife yet, let me introduce you to a fun and interesting fact.  Lauren loves deals......loves them! And she is an excellent deal hunter.  She's always finding great ways to eat wonderful food while saving money (see lobster post).  And this my friends is how we found ourselves at Greenz Restaurant.  
You may be wondering why the first picture in this post is one of a wine bottle.  I mean isn't this post supposed to be about a restaurant?   Well, it's kind of about both.  You see, Lauren found a gift certificate online for Greenz Restaurant.  The terms of the deal were as follows: 
      1.  Pay $2 and get a $25 gift certificate. 
      2.  Your total bill must be at least $35 to use the gift certificate. 
      3.  No alcohol (officially speaking) or other discounts.  

Essentially we needed to spend $12 to get $35 worth of food. Sounds good right? .....it gets better......Lauren had us go for happy hour. I don't remember exactly what these deals were, but the appetizers, desserts, and the alcohol we weren't supposed to get was cheaper.   
We soon realized that we'd be getting a ton of food, and since we were meeting up with friends after dinner and had no way to bring leftovers home, I lamented out loud that it was too bad we couldn't use it for alcohol since we couldn't possibly eat all of the food.  The cashier heard me and immediately said that he'd let us do it.  This opened up a world of possibilities.  Doing the mental math I realized that to make up the difference I could either get 2 bottles of beer at $3 a piece, or one bottle of wine for $7 (an amazing restaurant price!).  Lauren volunteered to drive, and I settled on the wine.  After all it was the better value, and this is one area where I've been trained well by my wonderful wife. 

My initial intention was to drink part of the bottle, and take the rest home.  However, things didn't really turn out that way.  After all, it is illegal to drive with an open bottle of alcohol (even if it is in your trunk).  Before I knew it I drank the whole thing!  For a guy who doesn't drink a lot, this is a big feat.  What can I say......it was a fun evening. 

We ended up ordering 2 appetizers, 2 entrees, 1 dessert, and a bottle of wine for only $12!  Amazing!  Our first appetizer was goat cheese purses with a strawberry sauce.  They were basically goat cheese wrapped in phyllo dough and deep fried.  What's not to like?  They were delicious! 
Our second appetizer was panko-fried shrimp.  They were the most disappointing part of the meal.  I was really excited the shrimp, but they were horribly overcooked.  Tough and stringy shrimp was all that waited beneath the crispy crust.  And they would have been so good....... :(   In the chef's defense, we walked in just before closing (as they were cleaning up) and ordered a ton of food.  They must have had to take a lot of things back out and really scramble to cook all of the food at once, so I can understand why some of the fried items were overdone.  I still enjoyed myself.....and I would have enjoyed myself with or without the wine. 
Lauren ordered a warm pear salad with goat cheese and a cup of tortilla soup.  Both were excellent.  The soup was warm, cheesy, and spicy.  I enjoyed most of it since Lauren isn't a big fan of tortilla soup in general.  The pear salad was light and fresh.  The"pears" weren't warm, but they had a very unique flavor.  They tasted strangely like strawberries, which I thought was actually better than pears would have been.  The toasted pecans on top made the salad perfect, and it was Lauren's favorite dish.  Lauren made similar salads for dinner many times that month, and while I'm not a big "salad for dinner" guy, I didn't mind at all. 
My favorite part of the meal was a pulled pork sandwich.  Even Lauren liked it! There was a lot of meat inside, and it was tender and tasty.  The warm toasted ciabatta bun was great too!  The only down side was the sweet potato chips that it came with.  No, it's not poor lighting.....they really were that dark.  I like chips crunchy, but those chips were burnt. 

We got a caramel fruit cup for dessert. I thought it was a good way to end the meal. You can see it in the picture below.  There was a close-up picture of it, but I accidentally deleted it, so you'll just have to use your imagination.

SE Corner of Beltline and Montfort (New Location)
5290 Beltline Rd. Suite 103A
Addison, TX 75254
972-385-7721

4 comments:

Cooking with tien said...

I knew there was a reason that I liked Lauren so much. By the way, I like you too Mike. It's all about the hunt for a great deal. -Tien :)

tranytran said...

we love greenz and restaurant.com coupons!

Anonymous said...

You're great bargin hunters! We need to develop our skills in this area. Are you giving pointers?

Just got back from Boston. Had to try the lobster rolls after seeing Mike's big one. We had one while in Plymouth. It was "ono" and such a cute LITTLE thing for $9.00.

Mike's Pastry was busy. The canoli (sp?) was delicious, but a bit rich for us. The Napoleons were better. :)

genkitummy said...

Tien-you're so funny! Yeah, i love the rush of getting a good deal.

Tran-hey, we should double date sometime. Mike and I bought some other restaurant.com coupons.

Mom and Dad-Hi! I'm glad that you both enjoyed Boston! Darn, we should have tried the napoleans instead of the canolis. :(