St. John's Bar and Grill - Santa Clara - and Turducken At Home

Phil's birthday weekend passed recently and we had a good time celebrating with friends and family. We went to St. John's Bar and Grill for a Saturday happy hour which featured half off burgers! Yay!All pricing below is based on happy hour pricing. Double the cost for regular price. 

(~$3.90) Mushroom 1/3 lb burger. The burger is a bit plain but with their variety of ketchups to dress it up, it becomes delicious. They offered curry ketchup, chipotle ketchup, regular ketchup, and mustard. 1/3lb is a sizable and filling amount.

(~$3.90) Cajun burger, also 1/3 lb. This thing was fantastic. The cajun seasoning was in the burger so each bite contained a spicy and smoky taste. I couldn't even finish this thing. Every burger came with a bag of chips.

($4.75) Garlic Fries. These fries were just ok. They don't beat the Gordon Biersch stadium fries at the San Jose Giants games, but garlic fries are garlic fries, you can't go wrong. I dipped these in the variety of ketchups mentioned earlier. My favorite was the chipotle ketchup and Phil's was the curry ketchup.I would definitely go back to St. John's. The atmosphere was chill for larger group hangouts and you can't beat these burger prices and options. The ketchups alone are worth a visit.

St. John's on Yelp

On Sunday for a celebration with his family, we finally cooked up the turducken in our freezer. We received this from our brother and sister in law for Christmas and haven't had a chance to cook it. Turkey is supposed to last at least 1 year in the freezer.

A turducken is duck meat stuffed inside chicken which is stuffed inside turkey. Our turducken was deboned and came in cajun seasoning.

The packaging direction said to bake at 325, covered, for 3 hours and 30 mins and then another 30 mins uncovered. I challenge that last 30 minutes cooking uncovered because our bird turned out a bit dry.

Phil really wanted to try these Annie's mac and cheese packages that were on sale. He made white cheddar and aged cheddar. I'm a bigger fan of the white cheddar but the aged cheddar disappeared faster.

Here is a plate of the carved turducken. I believe the duck was chopped up and stuffed inside the chicken. I didn't see whole duck pieces otherwise but these chunks tasted very duck-like. Other than the turkey and chicken being a little dry, it wasn't too bad. The stuffing and duck meat were really good. The gravy that our aunt made from the jus was awesome and very cajun-y.

These are the sides from left to right: aged cheddar mac and cheese, green beans with pesto sauce, roasted organic carrots, garlic mashed potatoes from the box, white cheddar mac and cheese.

It felt like Thanksgiving in May. Happy family days!