Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Booze, Clues, and Food

Could the eighth time be the charm? Agave Tequila House y Cantina is the eighth restaurant in as many years to open, or reinvent itself, at 1745 N. Vermont Avenue that I can think of. In the heart of Los Feliz, the restaurant/bar's locale should be ideal, yet I swear it’s cursed....

Honestly I might’ve been hesitant to check this place out, but was drawn here by Booze Clues, a monthly trivia night I’ve been competing in since its debut a couple of years ago. The pub quiz has had multiple homes, and Agave is the latest. Considering that its stock of more than 200 tequilas is the selling point of the place, I would’ve liked to try a tequila flight. But since I didn’t want to divide my attention between tequila tastings and trivia questions, I decided to save it for another evening. Instead, Mr. Comma and I both had the house margarita ($6), which was drinkable enough if nothing to gush about.



From the food menu (clockwise from top left), the chicken wings with chipotle barbecue sauce ($9) sounded great, tasted okay; couldn’t really detect the chipotle. Jalapenos rellenos ($5) were spicy and flavorful. They weren’t battered and fried like typical chiles rellenos, but it worked as bar food. These two appetizers were actually filling enough to satisfy both Nathan and me as far as our hunger went, so that was a pretty good deal. Other members of our trivia team ordered the Mexican flatbread, essentially nachos in pizza form, and beef skewers with rice and beans. I think they ran between $9 and $11.

Our team tied for 3rd place this month. Our pattern is usually this: a middling showing at halftime (the first two rounds are current events/general knowledge and a changing “specialty” round), followed by a pretty strong surge in the visual and audio rounds, our strengths. In fact, a few quizzes back, my founding teammate Jen (who blogs at Epicurean Quest) and I were thrilled to find a visual round composed of celebrity chefs. Most of them were easy, but even we got stuck on a couple. Would you have beaten us?


Name that celebrity chef (click to enlarge)

4 comments:

Octopus Grigori said...

Interesting. Our short-lived Booze Clues team -- Hot for Teacher -- had precisely the opposite pattern: we would clean up on current events and general knowledge, and then get blown out of the water on the music section.

Perhaps we should discuss a merger of the two teams at some point.

hane said...

whatever it takes to squash those damn free radicals!!

SinoSoul said...

time for a new post, me thinks.

hane said...

sinosoul, you are absolutely right. thanks for the nudge.