Bowie Restaurant Project: (91) Wesley's Southern Cuisine

For an explanation of the Bowie Restaurant Project, look here.



For a list of all the Bowie Restaurant Project reviews, look here.

Wesley's Southern Cuisine,
15606 Emerald Way,
Most Recent Foursquare Check-in: 12/15/2015
Total Foursquare Check-ins: 2
Pre-Foursquare Visits: No
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

They have the best barbecue I've had in this area. Let me say that up front. Based on the BBQ, I'd give it 4.5 stars. When I went back for my second visit, I worried that a review based on ordering BBQ every time wouldn't be informative. Then they told me they only have BBQ on the weekends. So I ordered the fish with mac & cheese and mashed potatoes. Then they told me they only have mashed potatoes in the evening. Wait, what?

My pique at their unadvertised menu limitations may be the only thing keeping them from hitting 4 stars. The fish was pretty good, but not fantastic, and the sides were very good both times. The food court is looking up again between this and Yamon!

Bowie Restaurant News

Well, it finally happened. A restaurant opened and closed before I got around to reviewing it. Simply Southern Grille is no more. They opened around February and closed recently. That's actually plenty of time for a review, but we visited in May and were not eager to return. The food was OK, but the service was really, really slow. The only time the waitress moved quickly was when my wife got up to go having left a lottery ticket on the table. She tried to scoop it up, but I was too quick. So I meant to get back there, but never did.

I have realized a couple of other places I need to visit, though. Auntie Anne's pretzels has been the highlight of the food court during some dark times, but I never considered it a restaurant...until I realized they sell pretzel dogs. So that deserves a visit.

When we were at Wesley's, Christina got a smoothie from Tamo Smoothies. She said they sold sandwiches. So that deserves a visit, too.

That leaves me with those two, Sakura and Jerry's Seafood.

World Heritage Update: Brussels

I was in Brussels last week, where I visited my 61st World Heritage Site, La Grande-Place. Brussels has two more sites, but my trip was short, and I was very sick, so I only visited the one. 61 out of 1031 is 5.92%, a new high percentage! (Sometimes the percentage goes down due to new sites being inscribed.)



To make sure that it really was a new high, I wrote a spreadsheet tracking number of sites visited as of a given year. (For simplicity's sake, I only considered year-end totals.) I had to track both the year I visited and the year the site was inscribed, so visits to sites that were later inscribed only show up after the inscription. Then I compare it against the number of total sites inscribed to see my percentage. Here's a graph (I smoothed it to make it look nicer):

So, yes, 5.92% is a new high for me, beating 2012's previous record of 5.82%. Unless they add more than 35 (which they haven't done since 2000), I won't need more than 3 new ones to break 6% for the first time. It looks like the Frank Lloyd Wright buildings will be inscribed, so that's one. I have no idea which ones the other two might be, but I will try to make it happen.

Nebula Update: Tehanu

Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book was an amazing meditation on age, gender and power. It was also kind of boring. The themes were fascinating, but even more than the first three Earthsea books, nothing much happened (until the very end).

I was disappointed, because I think Le Guin is one of the best science fiction authors ever, but I kept waiting for some wizarding to happen.

I now have seven Best Novel Nebula winners left to read. Since I last checked, The Falling Woman became available for Kindle. In fact, it was on sale for $1.99 a few weeks ago, so that will probably be the next one I read. It's getting to be a feeling of obligation to finish the last few, though, which is why it's taking so long to get around to them.