Here’s a guest blog from Sonia Gilmore on The Spicy Pickle. Thanks Sonia for your con­tri­bu­tion and I look for­ward to hav­ing you guest write again in the near future.

One work­day after­noon last week, we played five Texas Med­ical Cen­ter co-workers in search of a lun­cheon spot and stum­bled upon the Spicy Pickle restau­rant located at 1333 Old Span­ish Trail, Suite 100-A (cor­ner of Kirby and OST).  Spicy Pickle is a fran­chise of “fast-casual” din­ing restau­rants with plans to develop 7 Hous­ton area loca­tions. Spicy Pickle serves pani­nis, subs, pizzettis, soups, sal­ads and other stan­dard fare accom­pa­nied by the epony­mous spicy pickle.  For those look­ing to save money under their “Pick­le­Nomics” sec­tion of the menu, they offer “Build Your Own” sub or panini, or the “Dou­ble Dilly-O.” We all decided to try this option where for $6.45 + tax, one can choose any two from the fol­low­ing: ½ sand­wich, soup, salad, or chips, plus one gets a 22 oz. foun­tain drink. They do charge $1.00 extra for the for­est and spinach salad (pic­tured here).

Spicy Pickle Mesquite Turkey



I ended up going with the Mesquite Turkey on Honey Wheat Cia­batta bread and Greek salad. The salad con­sisted of romaine let­tuce, red onions, kala­mata olives, green pep­pers, cucum­bers, pep­per­oncini pep­pers and toma­toes served with a gen­er­ous heap­ing of feta cheese and red wine vinai­grette to top it off.  The arti­san bread was crusty and fresh, the kind that one imag­ines is birthed from a stone oven first thing in the morn­ing.  The salad was crisp and had just the right amount of dress­ing although they offered to put it on the side for me. I was pleased with the fla­vor as well as the over­all presentation.

Spicy Pickle claims their food has no MSGs, no preser­v­a­tives, no addi­tives or fillers, and no arti­fi­cial fla­vors. By no small coin­ci­dence, most of my cowork­ers are from the South -  either from Texas or Alabama; the lat­ter of which is known for its home cook­ing.  That notwith­stand­ing, they all enjoyed the unique com­bi­na­tion of ingre­di­ents in many of the dishes. My col­league Kristy who had the Sausal­ito Ban­dido Panini (Sausal­ito turkey, roasted red pep­pers, sun­dried toma­toes, pep­per­jack and chipo­tle may­on­naise)  accom­pa­nied by a small spinach salad said, “The panini was one of the best I’ve ever had — the com­bi­na­tion of fla­vors made this sand­wich any­thing but ordi­nary.”  Another col­league Nancy a.k.a. “The Cake Lady” lauded both the Bastille Panini (Por­to­bello mush­rooms, roasted red pep­pers, smoked moz­zarella, red onions, toma­toes, alfalfa sprouts and sun­dried tomato mayo) and Corn Chow­der soup for their gen­er­ous por­tions, fresh ingre­di­ents, and fla­vor.  Our res­i­dent veg­e­tar­ian, Kissou remarked of the Bastille Panini, “that they weren’t skimpy the veg­gies and they were cooked just right.” When veg­gies are all you eat, this comes as a great value. On a low note, TK said that the first time she took a chance on the Spicy Pickle, she ordered a rose­mary sub, but ended up with a Panini.  This time was her sec­ond visit. She did appre­ci­ate the spici­ness of the pickle though–as did we all.