Phoenicia Deli – Highest Recommendation

Posted on July 5th, 2003 in Houston,Restaurant Reviews by The Donkeys

Phoenicia Deli
12116 Westheimer Rd
Houston, TX
(281) 558-0416

The Phoenicia Deli, located out on the west side on Westheimer between Kirkwood and Dairy Ashford, has

some of the best food we have ever eaten. I’m specifically talking about the

Chicken Shawarma. For the uninitiated, a Chicken Shawarma starts out with many chicken breasts, rubbed in various heavenly spices, then piled up and slow roasted on a turning spit. The outer crispy parts of the chicken breasts are then shaved off, so every bite of chicken is crispy and wonderful. These bits of chicken-y goodness are then wrapped in a large homemade flatbread with this AMAZING garlic sauce. The sauce (we originally mis-indentified it as mayonnaise, and that’s the texture that it has) is actually (based on some research) some sort of heavenly marriage of garlic and olive oil. It is POTENT and oh-so-good.

The deli serves the chicken shawarma with tomatoes and potatoes (the potatoes are kept under the spit of chicken, absorbing all the wonderful juices), but we ALWAYS order it “sauce only” — (no tomatoes or potatoes). It is simply heaven on earth, I can’t even get across how wonderful this food is!!
Phoenicia’s prices are reasonable (about $20 for a lunch for two), they also offer hard-to-find middle eastern and armenian food items in their deli section toward the back of the shop, and the newly-redecorated decor is quite inviting. The staff is pretty friendly (we see the same folks there most of the time we go).

The hours are a bit limiting; they close at 7 on Saturdays, I believe, and they’re closed on Sundays. But it’s worth it — we’ll plan entire weekends around being able to get to Phoenicia on a Saturday for Shawormas. Give them a try!!

Loch Ness Monster Found?

Posted on July 2nd, 2003 in Engineerboy by EngineerBoy

Yesterday there were various news reports about a 40 foot long gelatinous sea creature that washed ashore in Chile. The story can be found many places, including CNN (which has a picture):

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/americas/07/02/chile.science.reut/index.html

Reading this story got me thinking, because it’s not every day that 40 foot long creatures washes ashore that nobody can identify. And then I thought about another unidentified water creature, the Loch Ness monster. The legend of Nessie has persisted for a long time, but nobody has been able to find her. Sophisticated motion detectors, sonar, radar, etc have been used to try to spot Nessie, to no avail.

However, what if Nessie was a giant jellyfish of the same type that washed ashore in Chile? Jellyfish have a density that is very close to that of water, and don’t have any hard parts, like bones or shells. That means that it would be very difficult to use sonar/radar to distinguish her from normal fluctuations of water temperature, density, and pressure. A giant jellyfish might be quite stealthy in the deep, cold waters of Loch Ness.

I’m not a “true believer” in Nessie, and am not looking to justify my beliefs. However, I did find that this creature in Chile offered a plausible explanation for the phenomenon of the Loch Ness monster. Time will tell if it’s an accurate explanation or not.