Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Dinner at Central Market on Lower Greenville

The wife and I have decided on a weekly date night for us to get away for an hour or so, by ourselves, while the kids are at home. We've only done it a few times now but it's been pretty enjoyable just to get out for a bit, especially for the wife.

So, tonight I decided that we'd try Central Market. I'm not a fan of Central Market. In fact, I think they are overpriced for their groceries and although their "fixed" food looks good and tasty (and so far has been), I think it's slightly overpriced as well. I'm not a "fancy food" expert so I could be way off but I just don't like to pay too much for "basic food."

Anyway, we live and learn on what is good, tasty and worth the money and that which is not. The wife went with her standard visit to the salad bar where as I wanted to venture out a little bit. I ordered 1/2 lb of the shrimp salad and 1/2 lb of grilled flank steak with honey garlic. Her salad was rated at $7.49/lb and each of my items were priced at $17.99/lb. The price of mine is why I went with a 1/2 lb because there was no way I was paying $35 just for my shit. Total bill cost with tax was $24.31.

The shrimp salad was passable, very passable. The salad consisted basically of shrimp, diced celery and some dressing. That's it. The counter attendant did give me a decent amount of shrimp but I think for $8.64 I could have just bought a shrimp ring at Kroger for $9.99 and it is currently a BOGO. So, I'd get 60-80 decently priced and tasting shrimp for roughly $11. The celery was like needless filler.

The grilled flank steak with honey garlic was pretty tasty. It wasn't oo, ah awesome. It wasn't fork-cutting tender. It was however well grilled and marinated nicely. I could see a pound for $9 worth it but $17.99? That's just ridiculous.

On the way out, we picked up some dinner for the kids. We saw the "dinner for two" meals in a bag. They had a meatloaf dinner that had a good-sized portion of meatloaf, two rolls, a side of garlic mashed potatoes (probably like a 1/2 lb) and a side of amandine green beans for $13.99 plus tax. Once we got home, we opened the dinner-for-two bag and found that it contained way more food than we got with the individual orders combined! We got jacked. If we'd known any better, we would have gotten 1 or 2 dinners. I think we could have easily split one dinner between the four of us with the amount of food that was included.

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