The Subway Breakfast Sandwich.

This morning, I stopped by Subway for their newly offered breakfast sandwich and coffee. I like a couple of their lunch sandwiches, and I like how Subway moves people through the line. Not that one needs to worry about long lines for breakfast because there aren't any, at least not at the Subway I visited. As a matter of fact, the one employee at the store this morning was having her morning smoke at the entrance as I arrived. Not being in a hurry, and out of respect for the simple pleasure of a morning smoke and coffee, I encouraged her to continue and enjoy her break. She respectfully ignored my advice, and came in to take my order.

First the coffee: Seattle's Best. Served from a canister. Hot, fresh, a little weak, but not bad at all. Actually, quite good.

The sandwich: I should say that the cost for a coffee and sandwich is $2.50. That's important because expectations are not high for two bucks. I chose the egg, ham, and cheese on an English muffin. It didn't taste bad, I think I may have even detected a hint of egg taste, but the smell of the sandwich was off-putting. I'm not sure if it is the reaction of the egg to the heating apparatus they use or what, but it did have an unusual non-food odor.

The second problem is the appearance of the egg. The eggs are precooked and scrambled, of course, and one has the choice of yellow or white. I assume the yellow has some yolk in it, and the white, no yolk. But the egg is cooked into a thin, crepe-like shape and has the appearance of that plastic vomit kids use to scare other kids. Sorry, that's just the best way to describe it. I would guess the egg, in volume, is about one-half of a small Waffle House type egg, if you know what I mean.

Is it worth $2.50? Well, not really. But if they could figure out the egg part, the muffin, cheese and ham were pretty tasty. And the coffee is good.

My suggestion: call it a breakfast ham and cheese and lose the egg, or whatever that yellow thing was.

Melis Taqueria

I visited Melis Taqueria the other day. The little taco and sandwich stand on Vickery. I was told they a made good torta.

Now, I'm a big fan of the torta sandwich. Huge. It's Mexico's iteration of the Philly cheese steak, and like the cheese steak in Philadelphia, the torta is made and served from street stands all over Mexico. I spent a few summers in San Luis Potosi, Mexico and had a favorite restaurant named Tortugas that made them to order while you sat at the bar-type counter. For about a dollar (back then about 12 pesos) I was served two small but delicious sandwiches and a Coke.

Apparently, there are two major types of torta sandwiches, those made with a soft, almost sweet-roll, like the ones at Melis, and another, like I ordered in Mexico, which are served on a smaller hard roll. I prefer the latter.

It's not that I didn't like the sandwich. For $5 Melis serves a fair sandwich. My sandwich was a little shy on the meat and avocado, but like I say for $5 it wasn't bad. It was tasty and served hot, but I prefer the harder, smaller roll that has been grill toasted.

Just my opinion, folks -- and I will go back to Melis. 

Melis Taqueria
4304 W Vickery Blvd
Fort Worth, TX 76107

Still Benefiting . . . After All These Years.

Back in the glory days of print and mail advertising, around 1982 or thereabouts, I received a piece of mail selling a small set of nuts and bolts. Included were the requisite assortment of screws, nuts, bolts, washers, lock nuts and some-such, plus a plastic cabinet with drawers. I think it sold for around $15.95. I bought it thinking it might come in handy and save me a few trips to the hardware store.

Whoopee-do, I know, but hang in there while I digress to the even less interesting.

At the time, magnetic data storage on hard drives and "mag" tapes had spawned a new way to reach people at home and work, and a better way to "target" potential buyers. Almost overnight the modern mailing-list industry was born and the "renting" of names and addresses of subscribers, buyers, donors, and owners. I had probably been "targeted" as a new home buyer in my direct mail piece.

To put this in the context of other computer products: the personal computer boom was beginning. The IBM PC had landed on desktops with its floppy drives and green monochrome monitors (man they were ugly). Microsoft was selling MS/DOS 1 (boooring) and still 4 years away from their initial public offering. Apple was producing the Lisa Desktop unit (dud), but the first Mac was two years away, as was the first HP laser printer (the miracle machine). Thirty years now, into the popular electronics boom and "Direct Mail" is no longer the best way to target an audience for most companies, the web is, and web-marketing develops in different ways almost daily.

Back to my non-point. I still have the nuts and bolts set purchased in the mail and have just used about 20 of the washers for a shelf I am building. At the cost of gas today I figured it just saved me another five bucks. But the money saved is not what interests me now. It's that I am still finding use for a pretty lame nuts and bolts kit I bought in the mail almost 30 years ago. That, in a old-guy-dad kind of way, is kind of fun.

Kimbell Art Museum. The Torment of Saint Anthony.

We visited the Kimbell tonight for a member's open house -- as guests, I should say. It was a very enjoyable evening and I got to spend a few minutes enjoying this Michelangelo, acquired by the Kimbell just last year. I am always a little shocked that I can be so close to one of these, and appreciative of life in Fort Worth even more.

Michelangelo Buonarotti

The Torment of Saint Anthony

c. 1487–88. Tempera and oil on panel

18 1/2 x 13 1/4 inches.

Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth