Tesar's

Listening to the Southbound Food radio show a couple months ago I won a $200 credit at Tesar's, a new-ish restaurant in the Woodlands. After a few tries, we got together enough people to go and made the trek up there to try it. The credit was supposed to be for a "Burgers and Beers" party, but after we ate and drank, we found out that the drinks couldn't be comped (at least not without the owner there, which is who I had communicated with), so we struggled to make it to the full $200 value, but we definitely had our fill and enjoyed it for the most part.

The Drinks:
They had a small, but nice, beer selection, and Dan, Erik, and I tried some familiar favorites and some new brews, but the drink that really caught me was their jalapeno margarita. I'm really enjoying drinks with a little spice for some reason now, and this one was no exception.

The Burgers:
The Burgers at Tesar's are what has gotten them some recognition in the Chronicle and Houston Press. We thought they were pretty good, but not worth the price or the trip to the Woodlands. We tried "The Magic" burger, which is a bacon & cheddar burger served on an English muffin, and the "Tail End" which has braised pork mixed in with the grass-fed beef, and is topped with green tomato chutney and braised collard greens. The tail end was my favorite of the two. It was really moist, and collard greens make everything better. Eric also ordered some peach-glazed foie gras sliders, which were good, but one or two bites was about all that anyone could handle. Very rich.

The other stuff:
Onion rings were ok, fries came with 3 different seasonings, I liked the chili powder one the best. Kimmy tried the lobster roll, which we expected to have nice pieces of lobster, but instead was more like a lobster salad, not bad though. I also tried an oyster po-boy, because it's hard to pass up fried oysters on a menu, but it was hard to enjoy with everything else we had to eat. Erik seemed to enjoy his Kobe hot dog. But really, I think the best thing we ordered (other than the jalapeno margarita) was the lobster flatbread. I can't remember all the details of it, but it was basically a thin, crispy crusted lobster pizza with tomatoes and herbs.

The desserts:
The waitress told us we still had a ways to go to reach our $200 credit, so even though we were stuffed we got a piece of chocolate torte (not bad - nice contrasting textures, creamy mousse and a flaky crust - Kimmy took a couple more to go), and a few of their ice cream tasting plates - 9 small scoops of different ice creams and sorbets. We figured all of them out but one (or did we eventually decide it was butterscotch?). Jonathan would have said most of them just tasted like vanilla.

Overall, it was a fun lunch, thankfully I'm one of apparently about 10 people who listen to the radio show and was able to win it.

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