Dining, Reviews

AYCE Korean BBQ Faceoff

This has taken awhile to germinate, but I think it’s about time I weighed in on the two Korean BBQ places I’ve visited in the first half of 2010.

Omi Korean Grill and Bar

2625 Old Denton Dr
Carrollton, TX 75011

Omi has a few things going for it. It’s perfectly located in a busy Asian strip mall. It’s also relatively new, meaning spacious, pretty and clean. My dining partner and I checked out their AYCE barbecue buffet, and we were mostly satisfied by their selection, though their options leaned toward more pork than beef or chicken. The panchan was a mixed bag, mostly forgettable. Service and pacing was typical for this kind of dining, meaning inattentive and inconsistent. Despite the giant vent hood over the table, I still walked out of the restaurant smelling of smoke, but I was pleased Omi had the grill built into the table, unlike some other places. Will I be back? Probably…they had an extensive menu of options that I’m willing to explore. And Omi provides a good setting for celebrations, entertaining friends and out-of-town guests.

My rating: 3.5 stars
***1/2

Blue House

2540 Old Denton Rd Ste #300
Carrollton, TX 75006

Blue House is in an older building and setting across from the busy Korea-town strip mall from Omi. As part of our dining adventure, we sampled the AYCE bbq buffet. While the tables here were designed with built-in grills, it seems that the portable table-top burners were the grills of choice here. The fiance and I were pleased with the mostly beef offerings, and the banchan tended to be more memorable than previous places (including the large salad plate). Service here was just as comparable as other Asian establishments, meaning the staff was as accommodating as most places (though we were lucky to be visiting when we were one of two parties in the entire restaurant). Blue House had a nice sized Korean and Japanese menu, and I was almost persuaded to order off it, had I not the mission of checking their buffet. Worth another visit? Most likely! But I would be less likely to share this place with others; Blue House is more of a guilty pleasure than a must-go destination.

My rating: 3.5 stars
***1/2

Ye Olde Garden

Texas summer months not for planting

6/7/2010 First Crape Myrtle in Bloom at Work

Lessons learned about Texas gardening: don’t plant in June (through September) unless you want your new plants to fry. It’s generally good advice to refrain from summer plantings because the new plants rarely have had enough time to establish root systems to weather the scorching heat. It’s also not a good time to experiment unless one has disposable cash flow for it. So I’m skeptical that the impatiens we put out in the part shade front garden will survive the heat.

It is however a good time to get mulching. Any ground left bare should get a liberal cover of mulch to protect them from losing too much moisture this summer.

Meanwhile, it’s time to think about those fall plants by perusing the catalogs. The honey wants a new crape myrtle, and it appears that Petit Jean Foothills Nursery has a nice visual rundown of the most common cultivars available in the trade. There is of course crapemyrtles.com (supposedly the most popular site for such things) but the poorly-designed site gravitates toward selling dwarfs and provides little info on other cultivars. Another site provides a download of some of the newest cultivars out in the market. Of course, the most comprehensive site would be an agricultural database such as the Texas A&M archives or University of Arkansas Agricultural Division.

A resource for Texas-tested and approved plants is PlantsforTexas.com. Their plant list contains some very hardy plants that can weather the harsh climate. Most of these plants are recognizable and frequently used in Texas landscapes, so it’s a great site for shopping for future specimens.

For seasonal annual color, the A&M list found at this location provides some good recommendations for the Texas garden.

Ye Olde Garden

Rise of the summer-heat lovers

The spring show is wrapping up…the last Navona lily wears its white crown in a garden bed that is gathering itself for 100+ degree weather. We had made the mistake of laying out some pots of new impatiens that we purchased at Strong’s Nursery on Saturday only to discover that the sizzling heat had baked the flowers off by Sunday.

The plants that we had positioned in the newly prepped herb garden also suffered from the heat. I fear that the pineapple mint suffered the worst, perhaps irrecoverable. The rest perked back up, especially the ornamental peppers, after liberal watering. We also added a few more plants to the herb garden: 2 Thai basils, one Sweet Basil, another Lime Basil, three types of peppers (Fresno Chili, Bonnie Bell, and one whose name I forget at the moment). I also took two of the lemon thyme cuttings and transplanted it into the bed.

I also planted a recently acquired Mint Julep Calla lily under the shade of the burgeoning Hot Lips salvia sitting in the courtyard flower bed. What was once barely a foot high is now a rounded 3-foot specimen of green. It is currently in between flower displays, but I hope it will perk back up soon.

Lastly I planted the Imperial Dark Blue Plumbago by the fence, sharing the bed with the struggling Nepeta and the newly-budding yarrows. Time will tell if the plumbago can stand the partial shade conditions.

Speaking of shade, the crape myrtles providing most of the cover to our corner flower beds have started blooming. In the front yard is a light pink specimen. The myrtle in the courtyard, nearest the fence door, is a “lavender” or purple variety. The other myrtle hasn’t staged a reveal yet, but I’m betting it is purple as well. This revelation was a lot more pleasant than expected–I was dreading that the myrtles would be of the Pepto-Bismol pink shade. Lucky us!

Technical

Connecting to console

Connecting to console using Remote Desktop via XP changed with the application of SP3. Either type in mstsc /admin or edit the RDP file to include the line “administrative session:i:1”. Generally, this applies to Windows OSes moving forward (Vista, Windows 7 and server flavors) and is most evident in server environments. For example, connecting to Windows 2K3 server will yield several open sessions unless an RDP session specifies the console session.

Also one can disallow Administrator logoff in a remote session via gpedit.msc in 2K3. Open the Group Policy snap-in, navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Terminal Services. There are several options under the Standard tab that one can modify to enable or disable user behavior during remote sessions.

Lastly, it’s important to note that under default RDP settings, users should be encouraged to “logoff” RDP sessions. Simply disconnecting sessions leaves applications open and risks data loss should another user remote in.