A lot of things have been described as “better than sex.” Mascara, for one. The food at local dessert restaurant Better Than Sex, for another. But how does one prove such a claim? For a representative sample, intrepid AMP staffers Sasha and Ellie sought out fine dining among the finer things in life — ass and titties.
Buck’s Cabaret — Stripped Back Classics
We open on a stage surrounded by pink and yellow lights. The speakers blare something not-quite-emotionally-available-enough to be considered R&B, and with a muted ‘49ers game on in the background, a woman slinks about the platform, sometimes crawling, sometimes dancing, and yes, sometimes twerking against a pole.
Huh? What’s going on? Sorry, did you think we were going to compare the food at a gimmick dessert restaurant to the thrill of having sex? Hot, sweaty, rapturous fornication? That seems a little unfair, don’t you think? I mean, how would you even measure that? What’d even be the point? No, we decided to see if sex can beat Better Than Sex at its own game: as a dining experience. This is a review about the food at a strip club. Cool? Cool.
Our first consideration on making the decision that yeah, we were absolutely going to go to a strip club for the food, was safety. As two feminine-presenting people, strip clubs don’t tend to see a lot of us, we imagined, and having someone who looked and acted like he belonged there would be helpful. Unfortunately, we are both obnoxiously, unmistakably queer, and therefore came up short on any men over 21 we knew who weren’t too dorky or gay to look anything but out of place. Boo and also hiss. The solution? Crossdressing. With about 19 years of experience pretending to be a dude under her belt, Sasha should have been a natural. Tragically for us, no amount of cough-inducing joint hits or casual reminders to stop crossing your legs, goddamnit seemed to bring her anywhere more masc than ‘vaguely 1940s-inspired butch lesbian’. The best we could come up with was vaguely androgynous. Whatever. We had a mission, and we were determined to see it through.
We arrived at XTC Dallas, aka Dallas Showclub, aka the bright purple building with hideous lavender detailing, at 7:40 p.m. — 40 minutes after the listed opening time. We didn’t expect it to be popping, and frankly we weren’t too interested in being there while it was popping. What we did not expect, however, was to be greeted by an impassioned, or perhaps indignant, woman and her boytoy as we walked up to the entrance.
“Oh, were you guys gonna go in there? Good luck, because there’s nobody fucking here!” she exclaimed. Despite her irritation, one couldn’t help but get the impression that she was a woman who lived for the opportunity to be righteously angry, and the desolate strip club had delivered. She looked to the guy she came with. “This is what we get for being adventurous… Fuck it. Let’s just go to Spearmint Rhino. Like usual.” She sighed, then turned back to us. “You guys wanna come with? Hell, do you wanna drive us there?” We declined. The back of my car is a perpetual wreck, and the woman and her silent male companion hardly seemed like the right company for a pair of judgemental assholes on a mission to judge and be assholes. Into the strip club we went.
There was, in fact, someone in there. Exactly two someones, both larger men who worked at the bar. One of them noticed us at the entrance (where I had been staring at the ceiling, which displayed a fresco of “The Creation of Adam” with Adam swapped for a well-endowed woman) and encouraged us to come in, telling us we were the first to arrive that night, and “the girls” would be there around 8:00. We were in no way, shape, or form asked for ID, despite the fact that showing up to a strip club at 7:40 was the most underage thing we could have done.
The strip club looked roughly the way one might expect it to — a raised platform with a pole on it, surrounded by dozens of small tables with four chairs each (though from how densely packed they were, it was obvious that there being multiple chairs to a table was more of a formality than an expectation). The booths were cavernous, easily seating 10 or more each. It was clear that clientele usually came in packs or entirely alone. Being the first people to show up to the strip club is a difficult experience to describe. To start, we did not belong there in the first place, which was made more apparent by the fact that there was no one else there to look at. Were the gentleman employees looking at us? Maybe, but not like we were anything out of the ordinary. The instinct to run and hide remained nonetheless, like a prey animal which finds itself completely exposed. After a bit of hemming and hawing, we decided to just try and get what we came here for. We approached the man hovering vaguely around the bar and asked if we could order food. The answer was no; the cook was still on his way, almost an hour after opening. Sasha and I looked at each other and walked out. We knew where we were going next.
The Spearmint Rhino was located in a much worse area. Now firmly in Harry Hines, Dallas’ red light district, the streets made me fear for the safety of my tires, and the atmosphere made me fear for the safety of my continued existence. The club itself, however, approached something that could almost be mistaken for class. The exterior was cream, with well-maintained ornamental shrubbery and warm lighting. The foyer was entirely dark wood, and as we went in, we held the door open for a middle-aged woman carrying a host of birthday balloons which, upon interrogation, were for her. All good signs. Unfortunately, while making pleasant small talk with the woman checking IDs (because they did that there) we learned that their kitchen was closed for the night. No explanation given, so feel free to make one up for yourselves, Comets. My guess is that the cook’s mistress went into labor. Whatever. Fuck. We found ourselves in the same place we began — hungry and with our strip club cherries quite unpopped.
We found a third strip club on Google Maps — Buck’s Cabaret. The website said they’d been open since 11:00 a.m. and listed a few dinner specials, so odds were good they’d be open and able to feed us. We arrived at a building and parking lot that could have been mistaken for a windowless Hilton Inn or other low/mid-budget hotel. But. As we walked up to the featureless front door, a man stepped out. He wore black slacks, a black button-up, a gold vest with butter-yellow paisley detailing, and a giant white faux-fur coat. He saw us arriving, looked us in the eyes and said:
“Pimpin’ is hard, y’know?”
I thought we were being pranked. I thought we had stumbled into a South Park bit. At any moment, Seth Rogen or Seth McFarlane or a different Seth enjoyed predominantly by iFunny users were going to jump out at us and make us sign talent release forms.
Somehow this was not a bit, and the self-proclaimed pimp welcomed us into the club, where we paid $10 each for the privilege of entering the fine establishment. The interior was moderately busy, with the bars to either side of us crowded with people and everywhere else sparsely populated. We stood there like idiots until a woman in a tank top with “NICE RACK” in big letters came up and asked if we would like a table. We nodded dumbly and were led out onto the main floor.
The waters we requested came bottled, and I suspect at significant upcharge (roughly $8 each, based on our bill). The menu was, in the fashion of kitschy Insta-bait bars and millennial burger joints, on a QR code. Whether it presents a safety concern to the dancers to give clients an easy excuse to have their cameras out is another question, to be answered in an overly long, weirdly Zionist “New York Times” thinkpiece. It was also, in a word, basic. One page total, with the most standard assortment of American food available for bulk order on the Sysco website. Sasha ordered the buffalo wings, I ordered the rodeo burger, and we decided to split mozzarella sticks.
While we waited, we availed ourselves of the incredible people-watching. Of the people sat around the main stage, we were the only ones who didn’t come in alone. Everyone else was a middle-aged man flying completely solo. Periodically, the braver ones would approach a dancer onstage with a thin stack of ones and shyly present them to her, haphazardly tucking them in the waistband of whatever lingerie the woman was wearing as she shook her ass in his face. Some of the men would instead limply toss the bills to either side of the women, and so each time this happened the dancer would awkwardly shuffle the small pile of fallen bills off to the side before continuing her act.
Truth be told, most of the strippers we saw were boring. They’d arrive onstage, pull their titties out the same way a plumber on his fifth call of the day pulls out his wrench, and mostly just shake their ass against the pole. Now, I like women as much as the next strip club attendee. I am capable of having the intended emotional and physical reaction to watching a beautiful woman shake ass. However, because I view women as people, what I couldn’t handle was the eye contact. I know that these women do this all the time. I know that this is normal to them. Yet when they were on that stage, doing their thang, we would meet eyes and I just couldn’t find that hot. I didn’t feel like the stripper liked me, I felt like I didn’t like myself for looking at the stripper. Maybe that’s the Protestant in me talking, but it wasn’t my bag.
Our server brought us our mozzarella sticks and a card with her name (Brittani, which would be the free space on a strip club bingo card). These were the highlight of Buck’s cuisine. They were perfectly cooked, with a cheese pull long enough to make a more satisfying mouthful than some of my dates. Possessed of just the barest whisper of grease and coated in shredded parmesan cheese, they made an exceptional first impression. They made a strong second impression when despite the dim lighting, we realized they had been plated on a bed of lettuce. As in Caesar salad mix chopped lettuce. Weird, but not weird enough to turn us off.
What also didn’t turn us off was the performance we watched while putting those large sticks into our holes. As I said, most of the strippers were boring. But most, by definition, is not all. Her name is lost to the sands of time, but a woman with the shiniest black thigh-high boots I have ever seen in my life ended all conversation in the room when she got on stage and started climbing up the pole. And climbing, and climbing. She got to the top of the pole, 20 feet easily, in heels while looking sexy. She flipped upside down, holding on with just her thighs, and began a slow descent down the pole. Her routine was otherwise standard, but it didn’t matter. This was what we had truly hoped to see, and we had seen it. Our entrees came, but in a sense our appetites were far less wanting than when we arrived.
Instead of my promised rodeo burger, I had received a standard dry burger, with lettuce, tomato, and a side of ranch that I poured on generously. It was offensively routine. The bun was stiff, its flavor unremarkable. The lettuce was crisp but oddly warm, the tomato was not juicy so much as vaguely damp. The ranch was the saving grace. I am notoriously picky about ranch, dumping it over everything at Chili’s but turning my nose up at Hidden Valley and its ilk. Most ranch is too creamy, and the things people eat ranch with are not things I want to add such a dairy-heavy condiment to. But this ranch was spectacular, well-spiced to add tang without reminding me of half-churned dairy. It made the burger palatable, and inspired me to keep eating the french fries much longer than my appetite bade me to do so. The fries themselves were also enjoyable in the most average of ways. “B” tier, rather than “C.” They were well-peppered, and the sort of fry with just a hint of crunch on the exterior of each.
It was then, as I was picking at the remains of my food, that we received a visitor. A man knelt down beside me at our table. The man. Pimp Guy.
“Y’all enjoying yourselves?” He was muffled under the sound of the music, something highly syncopated with a Christina Aguilera feature. “Which of these ladies is your favorite so far?”
“The woman who climbed up the pole, that was — that was really impressive,” I not-quite shouted back. Most of the women blended together, but I would have bet anything that was the answer of everyone in the room at that point.
“Oh yeah, I love the pole tricks. They don’t do those often here, but they did them a lot at this club in Pittsburgh I worked in.” Panic. I am panicking right now, just a little bit. I’m usually solid, socially. If you put me in a room with a couple other people, odds are I’ll make a connection or two within a few minutes. However, I have no idea how to talk to a pimp. At this moment, I am rolodexing through all the directions this could go. What does a pimp want to talk about? What does he think I’m like? What can I do or say to affect that impression? These waters are uncharted, and I am very lost and so very far from home.
“Oh, I have family there!”
Reader, I made small talk about Pittsburgh with him for about three minutes.
I don’t know what he was looking for when he walked over to us, but I got the impression that he hadn’t found it. He told us he was walking around if we had any questions, offered us a hand to shake, and asked us our names. Our fake names took a second too long to seem natural for either of us, but he didn’t comment, and introduced himself as Skylar (which should also be on a strip club bingo card). His false identity came to him much more easily than ours did. It struck me then that we had gone through a social ritual, the asking of names, designed to learn something about each other while learning nothing. Everybody lied. Nobody got anything out of that. Everyone came to this building seeking to be wanted in some way, then acted as someone so different to who they were outside of it that the person others saw and desired wasn’t them at all.
Also the bill was $52. That didn’t help my impression of the place either.
Food: 6/10
Vibe: 3/10
Price: $15-$20
Better Than Sex — Decadence Gets Dicked Down
As mentioned earlier, by comparing Better Than Sex to Buck’s Cabaret, we’re meeting the restaurant at its level — as a dining experience as opposed to a carnal experience. Let’s try things a little differently: rather than looking at sex as food, let’s look at food as sex. This is each of the desserts and drinks we tried at Better Than Sex: A Dessert Restaurant as sex.
Lucky Shot: Light and airy, the Lucky Shot comes with instructions from your server about how to down it. Combining sexual, word-based pleasure with an easy-breezy attitude, the Lucky Shot is, rather obviously, JOI, or jerk-off instructions! The light, nutty flavors correlate easily to trying to get that nut off, particularly at your partner’s discretion.
Honey Bunny: Despite technically being a virgin sparkling white wine, the Honey Bunny carried the air of something a bit more experienced. The lavender honey flirts with you, light, sweet, with a hint of bitterness, careful not to let an overeager heart run wild. It knows exactly what you want and leads you by the hand, and it- I mean- it’s a MILF. It’s a MILF. Which, like, y’know… hell yeah.
Minty Moaner: This creamy mint sipper comes with a dark chocolate rim that sticks, giving you a perfect combination in every pull. This rich combo of light and dark makes the Minty Moaner a perfect pick for blindfolds. Like a blindfold, the Minty Moaner will also make all your other senses feel alive — mostly due to its hefty ABV. That sucker is strong.
Missionary Crisp: A cross between a cobbler and a crumble, the Missionary Crisp is a delightful mash of smoky caramel, tangy-sweet apples with the fine crunch of skin, cinnamony smooth graham crumbles and delicate vanilla ice cream. It’s like a piece of apple pie 10 minutes after the a la is moded, when the ice cream melts into the filling and turns into something new altogether, but without any of the sog gained or losing the oven-fresh warmth. As a fine dance between warmth and cool, between fiery smoke and chilled lightness, the Missionary Crisp is waxplay. The gentle burn of a melted lotion candle on your back, salved by a partner’s cool hand and heated words, is a delicacy much like this orchard-hailing confection.
Berry Bondage: Despite the name, I didn’t feel particularly tied down with this white chocolate and raspberry crêpe… rather, it lulled me into its bright, dulcet flavors, the whipped cream presenting a disarming levity as it sunk me deeper into the dish’s sticky, saucy folds. Nothing stopped me from putting down the fork… but I didn’t want to put it down, regardless. Hypnosis is the way this dessert plays: an evening where everything in your mind fades except smooth, sensual pleasure.
Fever: It promises a good time, but it borders on braggadocious — the allure of thick, creamy action with chocolate cake AND chocolate pudding seems a little too good to be true, and the phallic arrangement of vanilla ice cream balls with an extra bar of chocolate is a little audacious, especially since it falls shorter than expected. It certainly still delivers on showing you a fun night, but the mixed (mouth)feelings beneath the surface make for an experience that’s inconsistent and even a little awkward. Fever is a first date turned one-night-stand, the kind of hookup that you can confidently say you enjoyed… but you were hoping for more.
Food: 9/10
Vibe: camp/10
Price: $20-$30
