Fat Tuesday Festivities, Wolfgang Puck Celebrates the Chinese New Year, and a Monster Eating Contest

Flickr user Ctd 2005

Except on Mardi Gras, the jackalope is rarely seen in the wild with its shirt off.

​Some think the best thing about February is Valentine's Day and spending some romantic time with your significant with a box of chocolates and bottle of wine. Not us. We'd rather drink strong cocktails named after a tropical cyclone, eat fried oysters and do anything possible to have the most beads around our neck by the end of the night. The best part of this month is Fat Tuesday and all the craziness surrounding this special day. A few of the Dallas Mardi Gras celebrations going on this Tuesday include crawfish boil, live music, hurricane specials and a clown. Yes, a clown. Here's a taste.

The Hurricane Grill, a New Orleans-style restaurant and bar, will be offering $4 Hurricanes, along with beer and liquor specials, and live music from 10 p.m.-2 a.m. on Fat Tuesday. And the food, well don't even get us started on their Cajun cuisine. Too late. The Hurricane Grill will be serving up everything from fried oysters to chicken and sausage jambalaya with bread pudding for dessert. It's almost like you're in New Orleans, but don't pretend Greenville Avenue is Bourbon Street. We have different laws on open containers and public nudity. Damn it.

Alligator Café will have a kid-friendly celebration with their 4th Annual Fat Tuesday and Crawfish Boil. The party begins at 6:00 p.m. with live music, a crawfish boil, an animal balloon-making clown for the kiddies and Mardi Gras giveaways. Oh, and lots and lots of beads, they say. Remember this is child-friendly, no showing off the other twins for some plastic jewelry.

If you want an unusual Fat Tuesday experience, then check out RA Sushi. We've never heard of a sushi restaurant celebrating the Cajun lifestyle, but there's a first for everything. The Plano hotspot will offer $4 Cajun wings, $6 Creole crawfish and $8 Voodoo sushi roll, with $2 domestic beers and $6 Hur"RA"Cane punch. The party starts at 7 p.m. and will also feature a DJ. Do you think he will be spinning any Zydeco music?

Also going on this week....

Fat Tuesday isn't the only celebration going on in February. This week also marks the Chinese New Year. Sara Johannes, chef of Wolfgang Puck's Five Sixty, will be welcoming the Year of the Tiger by featuring a special menu starting February 15 and running through February 20. The four-course meal will be $95 per person, and includes dishes like salmon sashimi, roasted Peking duck, hot and spicy dumplings and house-made fortune cookies. This New Year sounds delicious.

Freebirds World Burrito is having a Super Monster Burrito Eating Contest this Saturday, February 20, at all three of their locations. Starting at 12:00 p.m. and for a $12 entry fee, burrito-lovers and competitive eaters will be challenged to finish the Super Monster Burrito; the person with the quickest time will be rewarded with a photo on the wall, a Fanatic card with a preloaded free burrito and a Freebirds T-shirt. Hopefully, they will give you some time to collect yourself before taking your photo and not have your "I'm about to blow super monster chunks everywhere" face hanging on their wall.