My family

Family Stories Vlog

SLAB OF MEAT

27 June 2016

I have a love/hate relationship with The Buckhorn restaurant in Winters, California.

It's probably the best meat and potatoes place in town, but it's a big place, with three different rooms, and each room is decorated with heads of beautiful animals that someone shot for sport.

Look at that moose behind me.  Breaks my heart.

The plan today was to review a matinee in Sacramento and then since we were in the Big City, we would go to a Sacramento restaurant, which we almost never do, to have dinner to celebrate our 51st anniversary.

Only when we got to the theater for the 2 p.m. matinee, we found out it was a one act, hour and a half show and would be out by 3:30.  A little early for dinner even given that neither of us had eaten lunch.

I suggested that we just drive home and go somewhere in Davis for dinner, and suggested an Italian place where I had been for dinner with a friend once, but where Walt had never been.

As we were driving down the freeway listening to Says You on the radio, we passed a billboard for The Buckhorn.  Winters is about 10 miles from Davis.  I suggested that we go there instead.  It was a longer drive (thus we could listen to more of the show) and it felt like more of a special place.

And so we did.  It was only 4:30 when we got to Winters, but it was about 100⁰ when we got out of the car, so we went straight to the air conditioned restaurant, which says it opens for dinner at 5, but it was already pretty full, this being Sunday and all, I guess. 

It was easy to order.  I knew what I was having even before we got to the place.  There aren't many places that we go to anyway where you can get lamb and I was lookin' to gnaw me some lamb bone (trying to forget the contradiction of my hating the game heads on the wall, but looking forward to eating a lamb).

Dinner was fabulous.  It starts with a very generous salad.

along with a basket filled with warm sourdough bread...which really is sour and a generous mound of butter.  I usually fill up on this stuff and then am too full for dinner, but, remembering that, I only finished half of my salad tonight.  When the rack of lamb arrived, I was glad that I had.  It was on a bed of garlic mashed potatoes and had a little bowl of a mint sauce, along with the green beans.

Walt had prime rib, which came with Yorkshire pudding, which was not on the menu and kind of a "surprise."

We skipped dessert because we had ice cream bars at home but the whole dinner was really lovely.

It was very nice to have a day off from my mother, but I have to take her to have her stitches removed tomorrow, so it's back in the saddle again. n