“Deadwood”… or “Where Not to Eat While in South Dakota! Part 2″

So other than the crappy places to eat, the first day of our Black Hills weekend-getaway was pretty nice.  Despite the the trailer trash at Tin Lizzie, the yuppies and horrible food at Deadwood Thyme Cafe and Bistro, and the stupid parking fees (seriously, Deadwood, you don’t make enough on the taxes on gaming… you gotta screw people out of money to park?  Deadwood city officials should all be duct-taped down to a booth at Tin Lizzie next to moo moo trailer trash lady while having a New York strip from Deadwood Thyme Cafe & Bistro shoved down their throats), we manage to have a pretty good time in Deadwood… and we didn’t even gamble away our life savings!  Gambled less than 10 bucks in like 5 hours in the casinos 🙂  Yeah, they weren’t tripping over themselves to offer us free drinks or anything, but I did grab a couple of bowls of free dirty rice at Bourbon Street… ’cause the steak at Deadwood Thyme Cafe & Bistro actually may have created a black-hole of hungriness in my stomach.  Bourbon Street even gave the wife and me some beads, like we were in New Orleans or something, and we didn’t even have to flash our hoo hahs… I kept offering, but the waitress told me she’d call security if at any point during our visit my hoo hahs joined the party.  Party pooper 🙁

We awoke on the luxurious bed at our Legends cabin  refreshed and relaxed and ready for a grand day!  We already knew where we are going for lunch, and we were excited.  See, I told you in the previous post that eating at new places is kinda our main reason for taking holiday.  Hahaha… “taking holiday”… all of a sudden I’m Harry Potter, ’cause eating good food is somehow magical for me or something 🙂

Breakfast was provided by the owners of Legends.  We had heart-shaped blueberry muffins and trail mix and orange juice and cereal bars.  All of this was awaiting us on our arrival in a cute little basket on the dining-table-for-two in our kitchenette!  Seriously, I can’t recommend this place enough… very romantic, very charming, and no matter how crappy the food in Deadwood was, our stay at Legends made the entire trip worth while (disclaimer: I am receiving no compensation in any way, shape or form from Legends for my recommendations… however, if the owners of Legends ever stumble across my blog and would like to throw a little sumthin-sumthin my way, I’m a greedy little person and would be more than willing to consider any and all offers 🙂 )

After lounging around the cabin for most of the morning, we embark on the 1/2 hour drive to Rapid City.  We have a day full of activities planned for our Saturday (which means finding a good bookstore or two and losing ourselves in our true passion [besides each other 😉 ]: reading), and we are ready to get going.  When we arrive in Rapid City, we make our first mission finding our lunch destination… Philly Ted’s .

I’m a sucker for Philly-style cheese-steak sandwiches.  I don’t know if this love evolves from my love of sandwiches, steak, Cheez Whiz, or the Philadelphia Phillies; but I know I like a good Philly cheese-steak.  Thing is, I discovered I had never really eaten a good Philly cheese-steak until we actually found Philly Ted’s.

Now finding places when traveling, for the wife and me, usualy doesn’t go well.  I’m really lazy, so I don’t look at directions or maps or anything before setting out to a destination.  The wife is meticulous and knows the address of every place we plan on visiting… but she sucks at directions.  So we are driving into Rapid City on the interstate and I say, “Where is Philly Ted’s?”

The wife spouts off the address, “1415 LaCrosse Street.”

“And how do we get there?” I ask.

“We find LaCrosse Street,” says the wife.  “Then we find 1415.”

“And where is LaCrosse Street?” I ask.

The wife gives me that here-we-go-again-look and says, “You know how I am with directions!  Why are you asking me?”

We exchange a few more sentences, most of which looked like this:

me: “where is the map”

wife: “I didn’t get a map.  why didn’t you get a map?”

me: “do I have to do everything”

wife: “I can’t believe you didn’t plan better”

me: “do I have to do everything”

wife: “just stop and ask for directions”

me: “so you’re saying I’m weak”

wife: “I’m not saying anything, I just think you should stop and ask for directions”

me: “you think I’m an unfit husband”

wife: “just take the next exit, stop at a convenience store, and ask for directions”

me: “you don’t trust me. you wouldn’t want to be lost in a forest with me because you think I couldn’t hack it… you think I’d let us both die!”

wife: “I’m just saying that asking for directions would probably help us find the restaurant, and I’m hungry.”

me: “so you think I’m worthless and you’re wondering why you ever married me… that you’d starve if your safety depended on me… that you can’t count on me when the going gets tough!”

wife: “just take he next exit.”

So, I take the next exit… which happens to actually be LaCrosse Street, and drive south for a couple of blocks… and, what do you know… there’s Philly Ted’s.

“See, we didn’t need to ask for directions,” I say.  The wife just gives me a side-ways glance and rolls her eyes.  She loves me 🙂

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okay… so these two chicks didn’t actually greet us… but we could feel their love…

Inside Philly Ted’s is… uh… well, an order counter; that’s about it.  There are all kinds of really cool signs on the wall, like “If you want a kid’s meal, put on your big-boy pants and go down the street… they have it for you under their heat lamps.”  Hahaha!  No kids meals at Philly Ted’s, but I doubt there are many “kids” who would not love one of these sandwiches.  I ordered the “Viking” (’cause I love the Minnesota Vikings… and they have sandwiches named after every good NFL team), with consisted of cheese-steak and bacon.  The wife had a cheese-steak with mushrooms.

The wait to get the sandwiches wasn’t too long, and we thought we would eat in the “dining area.”  We discovered that the dining area consisted of about three tables resting right beside the kitchen, and it was full. We opted to eat at the outside dining area, which consisted of a couple of plastic tables… and we had to pull our chairs from a stack-o-chairs resting against the building.  Even with the effort required in setting up our own dining-area, Philly Ted’s was an awesome experience!  The sandwiches were kind of like Arby’s Beef & Cheddars… except with real meat and tasty cheese… so they were nothing like Arby’s Beef and Cheddars, but they were very AWESOME!  They had to be close to a foot long and were loaded with thinly sliced steak and Cheez Whiz on a hoagie-style bun.

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I finished mine in a matter of minutes, and the wife couldn’t finish hers.  Needless to say, I had to help the wife out by finishing hers.  What a great place to eat.  Philly Ted’s will definitely be a place we have to stop every time we visit Rapid City 😀

After the feast, we scoured the city for some cool bookstores.  We found a neat little place downtown called Again Books & Bazaar . This was a pretty cool little new/used bookstore and we had a pretty good time here, but I like my used book stores to have a little more selection and to be a little cheaper. There are some pretty cool used book stores in Estes Park, Boulder and Ft. Collins that far surpassed Again Books, but it was worth checking out.

After downtown, we made our way out by the mall and spent most of the remainder of the afternoon at Borders.  Now, Border’s ain’t no Barnes & Noble (’cause it isn’t nearly as big), but it was close.  Isle after isle of book after book containing multitudes of ways to escape reality and lose oneself in an adventure were to be found at Borders.  The chain stores like Borders and Barnes & Noble are a good way to waste a couple of hours on any given afternoon.  The wife and I prefer more intimate, personal bookstores.   The Tattered Cover in Denver is one of our favorite places to “lose” ourselves.  In fact, this past summer we made a special trip to the Tattered Cover, driving four hours with the entire family in tow, just so that I could get the newest book by my favorite author  signed by the man himself.  I am a huge Christopher Moore fan.  The wife had never read any of his work.  I have read almost everything he has written.  I asked the wife to read Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story and You Suck: A Love Story, because they were the prequels to his newest release: Bite Me: A Love Story.  The wife, who is more into the Twilight crap that she is into funny stuff, reluctantly obliged.  She read Christopher Moore, she liked him, and she agreed that a signed copy of Bite Me would be cool… and this is the reason we have been married for over 16-years 🙂  Needless to say, having Christopher Moore write “Rich & Kim… OMFG… CM” inside a first edition copy of Bite Me was one of the coolest experiences of my life… but back to Rapid City…

For supper, the wife and I found ourselves up against a conundrum.  We wanted to have a classy meal with good food, but we didn’t want to bust our budget.  We had asked our Facebook friends for help in choosing a good supper place in Rapid City, but none of the suggestions were working out.  One friend had recommended Alpine Inn in Hill City… but Hill City was too far away to meet our hunger needs.  A second friend had recommended the Fireside Inn, but we couldn’t find a website for it, so we backed out.  We settled for a quaint little place on our drive from Rapid City back to Deadwood called the Pirates Table.  We were not disappointed.

When we first walked in, I was amazed at all of the young hotties dressed as bar wenches and female pirates in tight-fitting pirate gear.  I knew this place wouldn’t disappoint!  We were seated and told that our wait-person would be with us shortly.  I was already drooling 😉

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The wife seemed hesitant as we awaited the arrival of our wait-person. We glanced over the menu and our mouths watered over the vast selection of bovine and aquatic selections that awaited our ordering! The wife decided on the coconut shrimp, and I had arrived at the conclusion that scallops (deep fried, not sautéed) would be my choice. We were both ready to have our appetites tamed when our wait-person arrived…
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“Good evening,” the pirate dude said, “my name is Stephen. Are you ready to order?”

Needless to say, the wind in my sail departed and I truly focused on the food. The wife ordered her shrimp and I ordered my scallops. The hairy guy left and I got kind of pouty.

When the food actually arrived, the fact that our server was a dude crept to the back of my conscientiousness (didn’t disappear, mind you, just crept to the back). The food was AWESOME. The wife claims it was the best coconut shrimp she had ever tasted (and the wife knows shrimp). As for the scallops, they were AWESOME! And they came with a side of FRIES! The night in Rapid City ended with a bang. We drove back to our cabin at Legends and were sated!

The next morning, we packed our getaway stuff and prepared for the trip home. We were going to have one final feasting experience before we headed home.  We had scoped-out an all-you-can-eat brunch buffet in Deadwood while we wandered the casinos a couple of days previous.  “All-you-can-eat” + “brunch” + “casino” seemed like it had to = AMAZING!  Apparently, in Deadwood, they use fuzzy math.

We went to the Silverado, headed to the dining luxury of the basement, and were overcharged for a buffet that looked like a couple of breakfast items had been thrown in with some crap from the evening buffet the previous day.  There were scrambled eggs and dried-out looking meatloaf and link sausage and really tough fried chicken and bacon and a green bean casserole  and really tough biscuits with a really watery gravy.  Stinking Golden Corral would have been better… and would have cost less that $10 per person.  Plus, they had stupid announcements going over the intercom about who had won what and whatnot.  Not a good dining experience… which would have been acceptable if the buffet had been cheaper, or had included drinks, or the waitress hadn’t acted like we were a pain-in-her-ass just for deciding to eat there… or SOMETHING.

We drove home and lamented our miserable brunch experience the entire way.  Overall, the trip was a blast.  The food in Rapid City was wonderful.  If there was one thing to be learned from our weekend away, we learned… STAY AWAY FROM THE FOOD IN DEADWOOD!!!