Welcome to "Eating With Duy"

As a first post, I thought it would be fitting to give a sort of introduction to what this blog will be about, just so you know what you might be getting yourself into. This is a restaurant critique blog, written by yours truly, Daniel. Along with me is my friend and roommate, Duy, who has an education background in the culinary arts.

(Duy is on the right, I'm on the left. Ignore the middle)

As a Creative Writing major, I've always heard that it would be beneficial to start up a blog; however, the only problem with that is I never knew what on earth I could write about. I'd tried starting up blogs before but they always failed because I either got bored or my content was, frankly, boring. It always felt like a hassle to keep up a weekly stream of writing and it would eventually get to the point where I would start to ramble because I had no idea what to write about.

So I'm surprised at myself, actually, that I'm starting up this blog with so much determination and excitement. But here I am.

Duy (pronounced "Zoo-E", by the way) and I have been good friends for a little over a year now. We go to the same church, same school, live in the same house, play the same video games, we get along. During this past year of getting to know Duy better I've learned that he is a very talented chef, and when I say talented I mean the food he cooks is out of this world. I've been eating like a king while I've been his roommate.

It's his dream to eventually own his own restaurant and I have no doubt that one day that dream will be a reality. And because that's his dream, he has a lot of knowledge on how a restaurant is supposed to work, the standards it should uphold, how the food should be prepared, etc. So when we went to a small restaurant in the middle of Lufkin that supposedly sold Pho (a vietnamese soup) we went to it with minds and palates ready to cast judgment. 

I say "we" but really he was the one ready to be a full-on critic. I just wanted to see if their pho was better than the one sold by an even smaller restaurant in Nacogdoches. I won't go too into the details of our experience eating there, because it was a bad one, and resulted in Duy calling a health inspector afterwards, but I mention it because it was in this dimly-lit restaurant with mismatched chairs that the idea of this blog forced its way into my mind. 

Duy loves to eat and knows his stuff when it comes to food. I know how to write and love to eat. It was the perfect combination! Restaurants are plentiful wherever you go and there's always an experience when you go somewhere new to eat. 

There would be an endless supply of content! I thought.

So I pitched the idea to Duy and we've now formed a team to visit as many restaurants as we can all over our area of East Texas and other towns, cities, and states we may travel to in the future. There might be other things I write about on here--important life events for either one of us, for example--but the main feature will always be critiques of the restaurants we visit and eat at.

We'd appreciate your support as we go down this wonderful journey that's bound to be full of delicious and maybe some not-so-delicious-we-better-call-somebody-about-this-place experiences.

Spread the word!