Friday, December 20, 2013

how tuesday nights should be done.

i’ve been searching forever for blogs that are charlotte specific that review restaurants because man i love some food. honestly i’m not sure why i’m not the size of texas by this point. after awesome successes at places i read up on, i decided i wanted to give cajun queen a shot {and the fact that laurie surprised us with a $40.00 groupon. that totally helped}.
as of earlier this week, i wasn’t that fond of cajun food. i think it was because i just hadn't tried it that much nor knew anything about it. but after eating at cajun queen, i believe i have had a change of heart. i’m not saying i want to straight up move to new orleans or anything, but it was something i’m glad i tried.
first of all, restaurants that are located in a house fascinate me. like do you have this huge underground kitchen where all this is made? it’s just something so different about that experience because it’s much more intimate. you get a comfort feeling of dining your own home because of the cozy decor, but someone else has to deal with the dirty pots and pans.
to start, we got dinner beers. can you even have dinner out without having a dinner beer? nahhhh. bud light for lee, and one of my favorites, bells two hearted ale, for me. have i mentioned before that bells two hearted ale is 7%? people make fun of me all the time for looking into what percentage of alcohol beer/wine is, but the way i see it is, you get more bang for your buck.
i ordered the shrimp and grits! the grits were creamy and the shrimp, blackened. the red sauce was somewhat tomato-y but offset the cream in the grits. there was also a surprise of blackened sausage!
lee ordered the shrimp, chicken, sausage, and crawfish diane.  i’m still not even sure what or why it’s called “diane,” but i did snag a bite and it was scrumptious with a combo of meat and spices spread over a bed of white rice. hindsight, i probably would’ve ordered that instead to get a more cajun like experience.
we dined and had a few more beers for about two hours. halfway through dinner, cajun queen had a live band perform. we sat upstairs and were about 15 feet away from the band. and although i’m a huge live music lover, it was a tad bit loud & we could barely hear each other. thankfully it wasn’t our first date. my suggestion is to dine downstairs because you definitely can still hear the music.
after our bellies were full, we decided to go check out mcadenville’s christmas lights. i’ve been to tanglewood near winston-salem before and loved it. however, mcadenville is called christmastown, usa. i mean, that’s pretty impressive. the traffic was literally backed up for about a mile and this was a random Tuesday so i can’t imagine what it would be like on a weekend night.
the best shot of the traffic i could get was as follows. and even that doesn’t do it justice.
so this town has to go through DAYS of work to put this together. through hearsay, over 600,000 people travel to mcadenville to see these lights every year. see below for what you could be missing out on if you dont go – keeping in mind, although pictures are nice, nothing compares to the real deal.

{welcome to christmastown, usa}
these trees with red, green, and white lights were everywhere in the neighborhood. i'm usually not a fan of colored lights, but these were done right.

this house emphasized "christ" in christmas. i loved that.
across the pond were lit up trees and a fountain that changed from white to red to green!

i literally don't know how they hung these lights. these trees were the biggest christmas trees i've ever seen!
for real this time as i don’t believe i’ll blog again until after next wednesday – so merry christmas!
xo,
-A