Polyester girl (Dallas)

'Sup y'all?

A nod to Regugitator (1994).  Why you ask?  Well, we didn't really plan where we would eat, anymore than we would at home.  So, tonight in Dallas was supposed to be the big night out and that was meant to be at the French Room, until DRESS REGULATIONS.  I'm sure you know we walked a lot of Dallas yesterday, so dinner was meant to be nice and cruisy.  It wasn't and I refuse to buy a cheap pair of polyester trousers (get the link to the title?), Lowes style, to comply.  I will not be a polyetser man and fall into line.

OK, I had changed clothes before my rejection.  Shorts and runners were not appropriate for the French Room.  After a little while clearing email I unboxed my new shoes, donned a shirt and jeans. Good jeans.  The style and cut of jean that has seen the inside of many highly rated Sydney restaurants - but not Dallas.  "I'm sorry sir.  We have dress regulations.  Do you have a coat? And we don't allow denim jeans."  I'm OK with dress regulations, really I am, I don't want to go to a top restaurant and see people wearing high-vis jackets and work boots or thongs and shorts or even T-shirts.  But, relatively new jeans, a collared, long-sleeved shirt and brand new $229 shoes?  Seriously. "We'll see you next time sir."

One of the foyers at the Adolphus

Actually, no you won't.  There is not that much to see in Dallas aside from the JFK scene and we nailed that, so if we do come back here it will be in transit to other parts of the States. Like Elvis (one of the hotel staff has an elvis hair cut), we left the building and walked a round the block to find a restaurant that didn't have 26 TV screens adorning the walls.  No luck, so we chose Campisi's Italian Restaurant.

I've always considered Italian the international cuisine; I still do, but there are certainly some local variations and Texas has a few.  The garlic bread was interesting.  It was toasted and soft, without butter and came with a 'red sauce' that we would have called Napoletana.  It needed the sauce.  Finally we decided to create our own pizza: pepperoni, Canadian bacon (ehhh?), onion, mushrooms, black olives, artichoke heart and roma tomatoes.  Cheese was standard.  The sauce? Marinara?  Like, what?  Then we had it explained to us, marinara in Texas does not involve seafood as it does in Australia, it is the red, tomato based sauce, or Napoletana.  And a nice bottle of Italian red.

One of town attractions - an original log cabin.

The young waitress was named Kennedy.  They all feel the need to tell you their name.  Jayne wanted to ask if she was named in honour of JFK but I wouldn't let her.  She liked Jayne and told her she looked pretty in her LBD and jacket.  Clearly Kennedy didn't like my jeans either.  People - they are Levi 501s. What is not to like????

Less is always more on a pizza and we discussed the number of toppings we had selected.  I figured they would reduce the quantity to balance the number of ingredients.  Wrong.  This is Texas and our pizza was bigger than ... and very tasty, although in hindsight I would have opted for extra cheese. Luckily we were less than one block from home.

It was at Campisi's we learned about the Texas Fair - a giant Easter Show/Ag Show style of event that lasts for a month and it commences with a parade through downtown Dallas tomorrow.  Excitement plus! How will I ever sleep?  But sleep I did, after a big meal and 15kms underfoot; sleep was easy.

The winning jams and preserves

The day dawned as the others, late (what's with sunrise after 7am?), clear skies, it's going to be another hot day in the late thirties for you celsius people, or 93 if you are a Farenheit fan. But the first order of the day is breakfast.  Well, a breakfast that doesn't involve anything deep fried, powdered or overtly sugary.  It will be a challenge.

We found the Corner Bakery Cafe.  Not well named.  It didn't sell bread and it was a fast-food breakfast place.  It was awesome - if you liked eggs.  Every dish on the menu, except the pancakes and the pastries, came with scrambled egg.  They did smoothies, frappes and also sold juice, water and coffee. Tempted though I was to try the coffee, I just had the OJ and Jayne had a muffin.  I love how by putting some miniscule amount of bran into a chocolate cake we can re-name and it becomes a breakfast food.

Then to work out the vaguaries of the light rail.  We needed help and went to tourist information, learned what we needed to know and headed back to the rail line, purchased tickets and waited all of 2 minutes for the train to take us to the Texas State Fair.  Yeeehaw!  There was, of course, a queue to buy tickets, several queues in fact. We joined one that moved slower than rust in a dry climate and when we finally made the counter we understood why.  The lady in the booth had trouble counting to $36 despite the fact that she was handed the correct money - a $20 note, 2 x $5 notes and 6 x $1 coins.  High level maths. "Oh, I like that you've given me the right money!"  We were also grateful since we could still have been there, had she been required to work out the change from a $50!!

How to describe the fair?  Repetitive.  There were duplicate stalls everywhere and I'm not just talking food.  It's like the Sydney Easter show, the Home Show, the Car Show, the markets and every country show all rolled into one.  And it has a mascot, Big Tex.  Original. And, yeah, he's um, big.

Big Tex being big.

Surprising is another word. There was the ubiquitos side show alley with its food stalls.  Kennedy the server from last night said "you all will see a whole of mess of fried food." She was spot on.   There were corn dogs - think pluto pups with inbuilt pockets of melted cheese topped with corn relish (I think).  There were tacos, buritos, nachos, fries, pizza, turkey legs, cheeseburgers, original hamburgers to name but a few of the mouth watering items available.  However, my top two personal all-time favourites were the Krispy Kreme Donut burger and chicken-fried bacon (you know, battered bacon deep fried).  It was heart attack central just waiting to pounce.  Needless to say we saw a lot of personal tranportation vehicles - I've never seen so many - and to go with that people with walking sticks and obese people, seriously, morbidly obese people.  And it was hot and not all of them were on scooters and carts.  At times it was difficult not to judge.  Big Tex was not only the only big thing at the Fair.  To paraphrase Scarlet O'Hara, "I will never feel fat again."

Part of the butter sculpture

Continuing along the surprising line was the butter sculpture. Yep. You read that correctly.  A pity it was behind glass because it made photography challenging, but you'll get the picture (such a comedian).  3,000 pounds of butter went into the sculpture, that is just a lick over 1,360kgs.  You could cover  lot toast with that.  Or make food for the homeless people.

We haven't heard many Australian accents since we've been away, but there was a guy from the Cenral Coast at the Fair selling Akubra hats.  Interesting.

There is a surprisingly rich tradition within the music industry here.  I'm not just talking country music, in fact I'm not talking about that at all.  The talent that has grown here is quite eclectic and covers all genres from Buddy Holy at the birth of rock'n'roll through Janis Joplin to the Mike Nesmith from the Monkees to some serious guitar heroes like Stevie Ray Vaughn.  An unkind person might think that music was an escape from the fried food and the heat.

Some musical Texans

Then there were the fashions. Jayne wouldn't allow me to take any sneaky photos.  But, oh my, the 50 something guy in the spiderman sleeveless shirt, red basketball shorts, red, white and blue stripped socks and sneakers in the same colours was impressive not just because of his clothes.  He was also massive. There was a guy whose T-shirt read "I am the North Texas foodbank" and I thought, "yes you are big fella" until I realsied he was a volunteer working with them.

The key to the above photo

Pricing over here is such a long way from the Australian price gouging we are used to.  There was discount entry for those who chose to bring particular food items to donate - they go into a food bank to feed the homeless people.  The food was all quite cheap as well, except for the water, potato chips were cheaper than bottled water.  Strange.  The Fair runs for a month and a season pass was only $39. Although why you would want to go more than once has me puzzled.

Tomorrow is a transit day.  We leave here at 8am bound for the airport and a flight to New York and a change of time zones, so it is unlikely there will be a blog post from me.  So, for now, it's off in search of some real Texan food, like a bison burger.  And yes, I AM wearing my blue Levi 501s.