Night of Nine Roses and Naughty Knight: brought to you by the letter N

On July 20 the Gastronauts ventured over the GNO CCC for an evening of food for the third time. Our destination - Hoa Hong 9 AKA Nine Roses, a Vietnamese restaurant near Stumpf and the Westbank Expressway. Nine Roses is a great place to go with a large group of people - big round tables with big lazy susans. This most recent time there were five of us, but I have been with a group as large as 12 or so (I don't remember exactly how many since it was almost ten years ago).

We started with a couple of orders of spring rolls - one with tofu and one with shrimp and pork. They have some other wonderful appetizers that we did not get - jellyfish salad and seafood salad are perfect for a hot summer day.



With the lazy susan, a large group can order family style. We had several sharable entrees - lemon grass tofu (which is not technically on the menu - just ask for it), green beans, Buddha delight mixed vegetable, and coconut curry with shrimp.



With a good size group, you can get out of there for under $20 (sans alcohol) and have a taste of several different things and have a full belly. Each of the five of us pulled out a credit card to pay for our tab. After the waitress took our five cards to the counter, the hostess looked over at our table at started to laugh. At least she didn't scowl at us and shake her fist.

Once again the evening was not over until we hit a Westbank dive bar. Just a couple of blocks away on the Westbank Expressway feeder road next to the Cigarette Connection sits the Naughty Knight Lounge. Stepping into an unfamiliar bar is always exciting and this time was no exception. The bar had several regulars celebrating someone's birthday - there was a cake and food on one of the two pool tables. The bartendress and several other ladies looked pretty tough, they even had to escort out a very drunken patron. We stayed for one Budweiser and one game of pool and then called it a night.

Who is ready for a Westbank bar hopping night?!!! So many more to explore. Oh yeah, I guess we can hit a Westbank restaurant before the hopping begins.

back to the bestbank

The Gastronauts made our way across the river once again, this time to go to the recently reopened Pupuseria Divino Corazon. Originally the plan was to eat some pupusas and then hit the Hong Kong Market for some asian food grocery shopping. However, the market closes at 9 and we were not heading across the river until about 8. So the trip to market was put on the backburner. Plus we barely made it in time to the restaraunt, which we found out closes at 8. Actually, they had already locked the front doors and we snuck in through the side door.



The restaurant had not been licensed for liquor yet, so the cerveza, sangria, and margaritas on the menu were off limits. For a beverage, I decided to choose from the bebidas latinas. Unfortunately, they were out of horchata. I picked the pina (pineapple) drink .



For the food choices, I went a la carte - shrimp ceviche, sweet corn tamale, and one pupusa. I was a bit disappointed with ceviche. The shrimp wasn't fresh, seemed to be pre-packaged frozen small shrimp. The pupusa was a different story - a tasty treat of corn masa filled with beans and cheese. A pupusa originated in El Salvador and is sorta like if a pita were made of corn flour. It was served with curtido, a coleslaw of vinegared cabbage, onions, and carrots. Mmmmm...tasty. The sweet corn tamale was to be my dessert, or at least a starter dessert. We wanted to try the nino envuelto - what could a wrapped child be?!!! We were not to try a nino envuelto that evening, but were persuaded to get not just one but two pieces or tres leches cake. One would have been plenty for us, two put us over the edge. Nonetheless it was a sweet treat.



One of my favorite things about the Westbank is finding adventure filled bars like the Knaughty Knight near Nine Roses. One such discovery was Floozies next door to Divino Corazon. How could we not go to a place called Floozies?! But first we wanted to make a pit stop at the fireworks stand in the parking lot of the restaurant. We walked around to the front of the trailer to see that they were closed. Oh well. On to Floozies.



From the outside, Floozies seemed a little sketchy - no windows at all. With some trepidation we tried to peer into the bar through the mail slot on the door. We decided to take the plunge and head in. Oh man, what did we walk into? A good ole boy haven. The place was pretty crowded as it seemed to be pool tournament night.



The House of Flooze had it going on, dude. They had shirts for sale - regular t-shirts, girly shirts, wife beaters. A lovely framed painting of a nude woman reclining on a sofa. A cardboard John Wayne. A cross-stitched Floozies sign. A jukebox full of country. Lots of NASCAR signage. A US Marines poster.

UPDATED ENTRY (with photos borrowed from Meg R on Facebook):



After returning from the Westbank, we headed to Kun Flama on Magazine Street to catch a set by Ratzinger. It was the closing party for an art show and there was free Killian's Red, Moet, and Hennesey.

During the final song of the evening we were saved by Cardinal Evan. Make the sign of the cross.