Lunch Date

For this week's column, I reviewed a new restaurant in Baytown.

Oh, and I finally have a myspace. I'm still working on making it pretty, but it's there.

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By Deana Nall
Baytown Sun

Published April 12, 2006

12:31 p.m. That’s the time I usually get the call.

“Hey,” my husband says. “You wanna ...”

“Yes!” I respond. And just like that, I’ve got a lunch date.

I try not to do it every day, but I love going out to lunch. Let’s see — scarfing down a sandwich while dodging airborne Gerber Pasta Pickups from my daughter’s highchair? Or Antonio’s with the handsome, blue-eyed guy that I married? No-brainer.

And as much as people like to run down Baytown’s restaurant offerings, there’s more here than meets the eye.

Take “Mikke’s Old Fashion Burgers,” for instance. That’s where Chad and I met for lunch on Monday.

Well, kind of. Because of Chad’s work schedule, we can’t meet until about 12:45. Sometimes I’m hungry by 11 a.m. That’s what happened on Monday, so I had already eaten by the time I got to Mikke’s. On the days I have lunch with my 7-year-old at her school at 11:40, I can have lunch as many as three times in a two-hour period without anyone knowing.

But enough about my unhealthy and embarrassing personal habits. At Mikke’s, I watched Chad eat his hamburger while 19-month-old Jenna and I shared a chocolate milkshake and an order of Belgian fries. (All the food groups were in there somewhere.)

As a revered member of the press, I got to talk to Michelle “Mikke” Mutton about her new restaurant. Located across from Foozies in the Kroger shopping center, Mikke’s has been open almost two weeks. She explained to me that Belgian fries are fries made from fresh potatoes — never frozen — and that her milkshakes are made from scratch with only fresh ingredients. The hamburgers and hot dogs are made to order and you’ll never find anything sitting under a heat lamp.

“I did my best to make everything first class,” Mikke said.

And Baytown is noticing. Mikke’s four tables stay full during peak hours and she’s about to add more seating outside.

“We thought we’d open up a hamburger place and people might come in from time to time,” she said. “But we get slam-dunked every day. I order double and triple of everything and I still run out of food.”

Mikke’s desserts, including German chocolate cake and brownies — which she insists on making from scratch with real butter and eggs — are usually gone by 2 p.m. She hides cakes in the back to save for the dinner crowd.

And Mikke is no short-order cook. Having lived in Baytown as a child, she eventually ended up at the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu Cooking School in Paris, where Julia Child was her mentor. Her specialty is French and Italian cooking, but she said there is more money in hamburgers and hot dogs.

Besides, she said, “Baytown needed something like this.”

I’ll be back at Mikke’s soon — on a one-lunch day — to try a burger. And some German chocolate cake.

Before anyone gets mad at me, let me say that I still love Someburger, Rooster’s, The Dawg House and Tookie’s in Seabrook. I’m an equal-opportunity hamburger and hot dog consumer.

Mikke’s is located at 4539 Garth Road. The phone number is 281-420-7900.