Boxing Donkey, Birth of NakedBob

Boxing Donkey
300 Lincoln Street
Roseville, CA 95678
(916) 797-3665

NakedBob was in fine form for his birthday! Boxing Donkey is always a lot of fun with good Guinness and yummy food. Their happy hour goes until 8 pm and includes everything from Irish egg rolls to small portions of fish and chips and shepherd's pie, so that is mostly what people ordered. We seem to come here about twice a year...read the other posts for details.

We had some extra sometimes drunks join us which is always nice to sort of mix things up. Momma J (the mommy of TheJenny), even made the birthday boy some of the richest cupcakes we have ever encountered. Most of us couldn't even finish them. I hear there was evaporated milk and cream cheese in them...for the love of god, she was trying to kill us!

Samurai Sushi, Birth of Caddie & Nairb

Samurai Sushi

12251 Folsom Boulevard

Rancho Cordova, CA 95742-6305

(916) 353-1112

It's Earth Day! We are mostly a group of people with a green streak, but wow did we suck at it this year! We met up at Samurai Sushi to eat some of the worst fish off the Seafood Watch card, and the birthday girl Caddie, drove her '67 Cadillac all the way from Walnut Creek and back. Oh well, we'll make it up another week.

The other birthday person was our favorite Nairby! Sushi was his choice. Now Samurai Sushi may not be the best in the area, but they are affordable, dependable and nice. It's not going to blow your socks off, but it's tasty and they actually make their spicy rolls spicy - you have to respect that. If you don't know where this place is, it's the building off of Hazel that looks like an old Denny's or Eppie's that's been covered in neon lights. Yeah, that's the one!

We haven't been here since way back in November 2008! We ate fish, we drank booze, we exchanged cards and gave gifts. A good Thursday.

Journal Tidbits:

"A lot of Mexico is outdoors." - RobotGoBen to Nairb
"A creepy old man in the hand is worth two in the bush." - Sluggy
"I had to do a lot of Sharpie to get Nairb over Jesus. Jesus didn't go down without a fight." - Scribby
"Happy B-day Curlyn...Nairb can suck it." - Shooter's tweet from NYC

Tapa the World, Birth of Jarla

Tapa the World

2115 J Street

Sacramento, CA 95816-4738

(916) 442-4353

Oh Jarla, you were born in a rickety barn and we love you! She had a need for copious amounts of sangria and small plates of delicious food. Hello Tapas! Haven't been here since August 2008. Jarla had a fabulous parade of reused birthday cards. It's really hard to tell who they are from anymore with all the sharpie cross outs. And a bevy of gift cards. Shopping for Jarla!

A very fun cousin of The Jenny stopped by and kept the conversation interesting. We hope she happens to be working in Sacramento again soon! Her best phrase, "I'll try anything...oh wait! Let me rephrase that!".

We always get seated by the kitchen since it's the only place in the joint that can seat 12, but it's not a bad thing! Some folks had tapas, some had meals, all were good. The burger was surprisingly tasty and the cheese of the day was a basic manchego and for $6, not really worth it. Sauteed mushrooms are bathed in a butter/crack mixture that is just yummy.

Overall a lovely evening of quotable comments and satisfied tummies.

Um, yeah. We saw this that night... Awe. Some. For the record those are paper posters plastered on a minivan. Seriously.

Nairb's Home Invasion

Undisclosed Rancho Cordova Location

We are continuing our monthly home invasions. This month, Nairb is the lucky drunk that gets to host us. He was quite hospitable with comments like, "whatever," "I won't have time to make anything," "I don't care."... you get the idea. But we didn't and just came over anyway. We were taking bets on whether or not he would actually be at home when we showed.

So it was a bring your own booze & food night which always mean there are about a dozen drunks at the In-n-Out Burger drive thru. I don't know why it's so tasty, but it is. And we had your standards, gin & tonic, beer, rum & coke, vodka tonic and what ever else we could dig out of the fridge.

We had some special guests. The Doctors came all the way out from Elk Grove with the kidlets and stayed a while. After that we settled in for some live action Tick - which is a must see!

Best moment of the night? Shooter presenting another little blue slip of paper that said "Inspected by: Thursday Drunks 1/22/04". We hid a couple hundred of these in his apartment as part of his initiation many moons ago. A few homes and many years later, he sometimes finds another gem. This one was in his checkbook. I get the feeling he writes lots of checks.

The Counter Burger

The Counter - at the Fountains
1005 Galleria Boulevard

Roseville, CA 95678

(916) 773-2333

We traveled out to the fancy new "lifestyle" shopping center in Roseville called the Fountains to try out the Counter, a build-your-own-burger joint. When I've walked by before, the smell was heavenly. We had a full house (sans Nairby who was "working") and special guests - kidofadrunk, and two friends that joined us at Magpie last December.

The check box menu is pretty fun, you just have to go through and pick everything you want. Type of meat, toppings, sauces, cheese, type of bun. Sounds easy until you encounter the huge amount of choices! And once you get to the plethora of sauces, you kind of have to go back and reassess your choices. Plus, NO ERASERS!

After much laboring over our options we finally ordered. The bad thing is that the fries and appetizers are on a different sheet so many of us didn't get anything other than the burger. The fries are huge, so sharing is a great option. They have sweet potato fries, onion strings and shoestring fries. All good.

Have to give them credit for bringing out the kid food first - nice touch so the wee ones don't get grumpy. And they brought NakedBob's at the same time too. Draw your own conclusion.

Beer menu is short but sufficient. Wine menu is short and kind of pricey but the quality was good.

So let's get to the burgers. Everyone seemed to enjoy the food, some more than others because they designed a combo that really hit the spot for them. At $8 for just the burger it seems to be a little expensive, but if you share fries with a few friends and add that on, it's not that much more. The sauces are all house made and damn good. They also come on the side which it nice. Basically if you can come up with a good combo for you, you'll like it here. If you have no imagination, they also have some preselected burgers that you can just order.

Would I go here before such places as Fuddruckers or Burger and Brews? Maybe not, but if I'm craving a burger and I'm in Roseville, this would be the place I stop.

-- Post From My iPhone