Mother's Day Brunch

Mother's Day. A day when you celebrate and appreciate your mother and everything she's ever done for you. (Side note: You should be appreciative of your mother every day). Since Mother's Day is such a Hallmark Holiday nowadays I did a little research (aka Googled Mother's Day Origin and done) about the origin of Mother's Day.

1. "The modern American holiday of Mother's Day was first celebrated in 1908, when Anna Jarvis held a memorial for her mother in Grafton, West Virginia. Her campaign to make "Mother's Day" a recognized holiday in the United States began in 1905, the year her beloved mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, died."

Boom. Origin story. Riveting. 

So every year my family decides to do what everyone else in the world is doing and take my mother to brunch. And every year it falls on me to find a place and make a reservation and it's hell. Why is it hell?

1. Literally almost everyone else is doing the same thing on that same day, It's not a unique game plan. It's pretty much standard. Mother's Day falls on a Sunday and clearly all mother's love champagne. It's pretty basic. Mother's Day is literally the most basic bitch of the Hallmark Holidays followed closely by Valentine's Day

2. Since almost everyone is going to do brunch most places hike the prices up to serve you a special "Mother's Day Brunch" that you clearly wouldn't be getting if you came any other Sunday.

Wow. I sound bitter about this. Really it's just a pain in the ass to search and call and search and call. So I decided that since this year I don't have to do that since my mother will be out of town I will do some basic research for you. 

1. Dallas Arboretum 

If you're thinking about going to the Dallas Arboretum for Mother's Day Brunch and you have yet to purchase your ticket... don't bother they are sold out. I thought about not posting about this location but changed my mind because Mother's Day is every year and it's good to know places in advance. It's pricey though, you're looking at $68/person.

2. Nasher Sculpture Center

How cool would it be to have a Wolfgang Puck brunch surrounded by art and sculptures at The Nasher Sculpture Center!?! They are having two seatings for brunch, 10 AM and 1 PM. 1 PM is still available so I suggest you run over there and snag what's left of the seats. I understand that's a little late for a brunch but if I were reserving the seats I would be grabbing the 10 AM and calling it breakfast, That's how we do in my family. This brunch is going to run you close to $60/person for nonmembers. If you are a member it's only $50/person. A big enough difference to pay for your parking. 

3. Cru Wine Bar

This is the place I took my mother last year and it was amazing. You have a three course menu you choose from, plus $9 carafes of mimosa. Another great thing about Cru is there are three locations around Dallas. Dallas- West Village, Plano- Shops at Legacy, Allen- Watters Creek. Conveniently, at the Allen location, they also have the Allen Arts Fest the same weekend. So after you're done eating you can stroll around and look at the different vendors and listen to live music. 

Mi Familia, minus my dad who is taking the picture.

Additional side bar. I love Cru Wine Bar. 

1.  I love wine. 
2. Their food is amazing (but small portions so don't really plan on splitting anything unless you want to buy 5 plates of food.)
3. They have flights. Which means you can order any of a variety of flights, obvs that I get the champagne flight, and they serve you three different types of whatever you ordered, usually ascending in quality and price. 

Both mine. Hello champagne flight. Believe me I was flying.

The staff is super friendly too. I got a top-off or two of the real champagne from Champagne, France, and I was super excited because I had never had real authentic champagne before. In-so-doing I embarrassed my friend Caitlin that was with me, but hey, it also got her a top-off of her red wine. That was her life that evening, she didn't understand what was going on but hey, this girl knows that the worst anyone is ever going to say to you is no, so always ask. 

What is my life right now? Me + champagne + statue = this moment

That went into a mini-review of Cru. But seriously, check that bitch out, totes worth it.

Since I said I was going to do a mini research for Mother's Day I've also included two articles of some Mother's Day Brunch Spots:

ABOUT 

They mention Bread Winners. I do love Bread Winners brunch. They have four locations but they get packed, hard and fast so make a reservation. Also, it's pricey so don't be surprised when you get the bill. Those mimosas will add up quick. But the food is amazing and kinda worth the cost. Bread Winners is siblings with Henry's Majestic and they too have a brunch. But to my understanding it's just a typical brunch services for both places. And can I just give a shout out to whomever runs their social, they are always responding to my tweets. 

CULTURE MAP 

Do not take your mother to El Fenix for Mother's Day Brunch. Sorry but I just can't stand behind that one. You can step up your game for one day. 

If all else fails, make brunch for your mother. She will love it more than any place you could take her. I did that one year. I made my muffins ( recipe found in my post about sweatpant brunch), eggs and mimosas. We ate in our backyard, no need to rush anywhere or worry about anything. It's a great and cheap alternative which makes you look more thoughtful.

Hopefully, this makes your life a little easier. Remember, Mother's Day is when everyone and literally their mom is out for brunch so make reservations as soon as possible. Really you should have one by now, but if you are here it's probably because you don't. Tell your mother how much you love her and appreciate everything she's ever done for you because without her you wouldn't be here.

I am Sherlocked at the Perot Museum Social Science Night.

Every couple of months the Perot Museum has an evening called Social Science. It's a night where they stay open late for an adult only themed party. Last night Megan and I attended "Mysterious"; it lined up with the International Exhibit of Sherlock Holmes.

When I say themed party I don't mean the toga party you attended in college or that awkward 1920s themed bachelorette party you had to go to. When I say themed here I mean the events that are going on along the four floors of the museum all relate to the general theme of the evening. Some examples of the events are:

• The Forensic Challenge: When is a Crime Scene Not a Crime Scene?
• Forensic Botany
• A film on "How Sherlock Holmes Changed the World"
• DNA Extractions
• Fingerprint Analysis
• Composite Sketch Challenge
• Murder Mystery: Who Killed Ben Lion?

Of those events we did the following:

We went to The Forensic Challenge talk. It was about 30 minutes long, and funny story I'm almost positive the forensic anthropologist that assisted him on the case was my anthropology teacher in college.The is the only thing I will frown upon, they needed to warn you in some way that you were going to see actual explicit pictures of actual dead bodies. I saw about three bodies too many.

I did a fingerprint analysis on myself and learned that my thumb does not fit any of the 9 typical patterns of fingerprints. Even the guy running the booth was baffled by my thumb. But my other fingers matched a right loop pattern. 

The composite sketch challenge would not work for us but it seemed cool. They show you an image of a person for 7 seconds and then you are supposed to recreate what you saw. 

The Murder Mystery was all throughout the museum. We didn't actually do it, but it had potential to be really interesting. You were supposed to wander the museum looking for clues and evidence (stations set up for you to look at hair samples) and talk to suspects. We never saw any suspects. We found the booths for evidence but never any suspects. But again, we didn't actually partake in that events. 

The biggest disappointment though was the International Exhibit of Sherlock Holmes wasn't included in the price of your event ticket. I don't remember seeing that written anywhere when you purchase your tickets, but I do remember there was no option to buy an exhibit ticket when you were checking out online. We were not happy about that. It was almost the entire reason we were there. I had to talk Megan into buying a ticket by telling her it was essentially the cost of a drink. The exhibit itself looked cool BUT it was way too crowded and there was no clear set up as to what you were supposed to do. It's a murder mystery in itself, where you go to stations and look at evidence and solve the crime. After room one I was over the murder mystery and just wandered about the exhibit looking at stuff and things. It looked cool. It all looked cool. If less people were in there I would have tried to put effort into the crime game but it is what it is. 

            

While all of this is going on though you can wander the entire museum and look at all the permanent exhibits sans crying, screaming, running children and with booze.

Here's me trying to outrun a T-Rex. Jurassic Park could be real. I need to train.

Speaking of booze, they had specialty cocktails for this event, Spyglass Sour (Tuaca Lemon Drop Martini) and the Curious Southern Comfort Caramel (Southern Comfort Caramel and Sprite). 

Tasty drinky drinks

In addition to the actual cocktails they had a station with frozen cocktails. Booze infused ice cream is the best. 

These tiny samples were not enough. More was needed.

They did claim to have turned their cafe into a "Gastropub". I use quotes because it depends on your definition of gastropub. It was more than they had British-themed food options that they took forever to put on the line. We went an hour into the event to get food because everyone and their mom was eating first thing. We both wanted the fish and chips but there weren't any ready. We were behind one couple waiting for food, after about 15 minutes there was a crowd of closer to 12 waiting for food to be put up. They were making it fresh, but they were making them one at a time. Were my fish and chops and strawberry rhubarb tart (more like all strawberry no rhubarb tart) and champagne worth the $17 dollars and 20 minute wait? No. Just no. It was fine. It was food. But the cost was high for what I received. I recommend you eat before you go to one one these events.

But besides the food, and the slight disorganization of the event it was totally worth it. We ended up staying an hour and a half longer than I guessed we would. Downside, it was pouring rain and it ruined my chance to play leap frog like the adult I am.

All in all here is what I think of The Perot Museums' Social Science Adult Program:

1. Eat before you go. 

2. Go in with a semi-game plan. It can be overwhelming with the crowd and the events. Also, it will take longer to get to places than you would think. We missed some events just because time got away from us.

3. If you want to do whatever additional traveling exhibit is there know you are going to need to buy a ticket once you get there.

4. Totes go to one though! I already bought my tickets for the next one on June 19th titled Naturally. 

The Drunken Rabbit- Rather Sober- Easter Egg Hunt Brunch of Misery and Defeat.

I don't intend to write every week unless I do something that is really interesting and time sensitive. This event ended up being both time sensitive (Easter related) and an interesting story. Read "interesting" not "awesome". I fully believe this will be the worst brunch review I will ever write and I just started this en devour.

Earlier this week I found this "Drunk Rabbit Easter Egg Hunt Brunch" on Instagram. It was positioned as a local event at The Cellar out in Irving/Las Colinas where they offered brunch and an adult-only Easter egg hunt following. Drinks were $2 mimosa and $4 Bloody Marys and the event itself cost $20, reservations required. I did some additional research about this particular event and found it incredibly difficult to find. The Cellar website had no posts about it. They had no tweets about it on their Twitter. I eventually found a Facebook event that had no interaction on it. They clearly didn't want people to know about it. (I should have seen this as a sign.)

Delicious warm mimosa

My friend Jamie and I reserved tickets and ventured out there all excited about our cheap mimosas and Easter egg hunt. Why wouldn't we be. All of that sounds awesome! Upon arrival we walked into The Cellar to nothing. We followed some other girls downstairs (to the cellar... clever) and we see a couple rows of tables set up with a small amount of people and a tiny buffet. No one is there to tell you what to do. Do we seat ourselves? Are the tables set up by reservation? I have my ticket, is anyone going to take it, or scan it, or just casually glance at my phone screen with false interest to make sure that I followed the rules? We find the only table left open, it was all the way in the back corner, in the dark, under a fan, and had no chairs. Thankfully the girls that came in just before us didn't need all their chairs so we grabbed them for ourselves. Again, we are left with a feeling of complete confusion. Do we wait for the waitress? Do we just get up and eat? Eventually someone told us that the waitresses (sorry, waitress, there was only one) is only there to give drinks, food and non-alcoholic beverages are at the buffet. Oh and the buffet wasn't fully ready with all the hot food but if we wanted to eat we could.

We ended up getting biscuits, sans gravy since that wasn't ready yet, sausage, potatoes, pancakes, deviled eggs, some grapes (which were still in giant bushels on the serving platter, no one bothered to separate them a little), donut holes or cake pops, neither of us were really sure, and some mini muffins. Let's go through these items one by one:

1. Biscuits: Clearly Grand biscuits that were either made the night before or a little over done. The outside was very dry but the inside were decent. Gravy or butter would have gone a long way.
2. Sausage: This was decent. We each only had one.
3. Potatoes: Literally the best thing on the buffet. 
4. Pancakes: Seemed like they were cooked the night before.
5. Deviled Eggs: So I don't eat deviled eggs, it's something about the whipped center so I tried one and wasn't sure if it tasted right or not. Since I couldn't tell I assumed they weren't supposed to taste the way they did. Jamie loves deviled eggs and told me they were not supposed to taste the way they did. Neither of us finished our singular deviled egg.
6. Grapes: Unless you served me rotten fruit it would be real difficult to screw this one up.
7. Donut Holes/Cake Pops: Sugar-coated sugar overdosing on sugar. I think I got a cavity just looking at them. Pretty sure they were purchased from Kroger the day before from the bakery clearance rack.
8. Mini Muffins: Again, store bought muffins. The blueberry were good, the bran were dry,

Our table lacked ketchup, so I stole some from another table. We shared our hot sauce with this couple seated near us. Our salt would not come out of the shaker and we realized that the reason was because it was solid. We opened up the shaker and broke up the salt ourselves.

As we ate our food we started to comment on how horribly unorganized this event was. We watched as the staff (of 3) set up tables and chairs as the event went on. If you have to reserve a ticket why wouldn't you already have an idea of how many tables and chairs you need, and then over compensate? It wasn't even that crowed, maybe 50 people were there. 

This was everyone. 

Where we were sitting it was incredibly dark, which might have been a blessing since then we didn't have to see the food. Jamie went back for a second round of potatoes and also brought some concoction of food back with her. We weren't sure what it was. Jamie told me "I brought this because it has peas and meat in it. I figured we could try this together. I think it's some kind of hamburger helper." After staring at it for a moment trying to figure out what it was we both tried it. It was not good. We both basically forced ourselves to swallow it, then we washed that down with some nice warm mimosa. Yes, warm mimosa. Not warm because it was sitting there, but came to us warm. What we found out was that we ate "Breakfast Shepard's Pie". We took a camera flashlight to the plate and found potatoes (which tasted like potato chips), peas, onions, meat, cheese (?) and hopefully gravy. 

I'm sorry for that picture, but I actually ate it. So #sorrynotsorry

After "brunch", if that's what you call it, it was time for the Really Kinda Sober Rabbit Easter Egg Hunt. This lasted about a whole minute before all the eggs were taken. Depending on how close you were to the door when they announced the time to go directly affected how well you did. I got 3 eggs, Jamie got 7. The first guy that bolted out of the door had a basket full of eggs and another girl had zero. Most of the prizes were candy, some were coupons for drinks or appetizers, big eggs had little alcohol bottles. There were also some "grand prizes" but neither of us won those so not sure what they were. We left this cluster of a brunch immediately after that. 

Over-flowing with goodies

This was a series of unfortunate events. The Cellar acted like they were caught off-guard by a brunch that they planned. Everything was a scramble and nothing went according to plan it seemed. They tried but they let the idea of this event overwhelm them so it didn't reach the potential it had. It was a real disappointment to see something fail so miserably.