Clarification

My buddy Spill has added his two cents to the debate over Austin bars and how not-awesome each of his detritus bars are--closely tracking the format that I used.

A couple of things I need to address:

1) The question of 'when does a restaurant become a bar?' For the purposes of this debate, we'll follow the Ernie Banks rule set out by baseball historian and statistician Bill James. If you followed that hyperlink, you'd notice that Ernie Banks, a Hall of Fame Chicago Cub, spent years 22-30 at shortstop and years 30-40 or so at 1B and 3B. He is ranked by Bill James in his millenial tome as the 5th greatest shortstop of all time based on the "where did he bring the most to the table?" principle. That is: Ernie Banks had Hall of Fame credentials at SS, but probably just "good" stats at 1B/3B--AND--everything he brought to the table at 1B/3B should be counted, on a discounted basis, toward his SS ranking.

This is relevant to the discussion of Cain and Abel's which is, of course, a restaraunt in the sense that-yes-you can order food during the daytime and a waitress will come around and take your order. They'll even put some food on your plate and send you one of those foldy bill holders at the end of the meal and expect the standard 20% tip.

But who among us actually considers this place a restaraunt? Who takes a date out for dinner and says "hey-let's grab some fajitas at Cain and Abel's?" No one, right? Almost all the value it brings to the table is as a bar. This isn't true for Kenichi--where they have a pretty cool bar, but 90% of its value comes through its great sashimi and air-polluting hot rock beef. This isn't true for Malaga, where you can grab some great wine, but you're politely encouraged to please-try-some-tapas-off-of-an-awkward food-holding tower-or-we-won't-let-you-sit-in-the-main-area-type deal.

I think you'd have to suspend a lot of your cognitive reasoning to disqualify C&A as a bar just because it has a couple of waitresses and tables.

2) Can't believe I forgot Speakeasy, whose review I'll add as an appendix to the top ten list (it would probably rank #12 or so). Spill is right though; those steps are a killer.

3) I see that Spill is having a suspense-filled day-by-day introduction of his top ten, ala a properly administered game of elimination credit card roulette. I'm not so ambitious. I'll be introducing my top ten in two blocks of five. 10-6 comes some time this week.

Other topics we'll soon be covering: 1. the Carl Ichan/Yahoo situation 2. a book review of Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World 3. a mailbag, where we'll answer reader mail.

I think I've used my annual quota of hyphens here.