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Where: Nam Vietnamese Cuisine Restaurant, 2727 Fondren, 713-789-6688

What $13 gets you: A delicious, healthy, heartwarming meal – followed by a firm slap in the face

That was my experience, anyway.

I wandered into Nam not knowing what I was getting into. It’s located in a charming little mall just north of Harwin. It was after two and I arrived hungry. I knew right away that I had scored when I saw Press food critic’s Robb Walsh’s review from about three years ago framed and hanging on the wall.

I got the daily special, grilled snapper ($8.95), and since it was before three o’clock it came with choices of egg drop and chicken rice soups, spring or egg rolls and fried rice or vermicelli noodles. I wanted a Vietnamese coffee ($2.50) but decided instead to stick with water and lemon and leave a more generous tip.

Recommended? Yes, I recommend it, even if that does make me unadventurous, mainstream and white bread.

Mother's Day is this Sunday - have you made reservations for Mom?

Cru: A Wine Bar (9595 Six Pines Dr., Suite 650 in The Woodlands) is putting on a three-course brunch, with offerings including brown-butter poached sea scallops, eggs Benedict, pan-seared ahi tuna and roasted duck breast, not to mention more than 300 wines. ($27.95.)

Fleming's Steakhouse and Wine Bar's (2405 West Alabama) three-course brunch offers a choice of filet mignon benedict, crab cake benedict, bone-in ham steak, and roasted turkey crêpes ($10.95.)

Hotel ZaZa's Monarch Restaurant (5701 Main) is offering up an enormous brunch buffet in honor of Mom. ($65.)

And both The Tasting Room Uptown Park (1101-18 Uptown Park) and Max's Wine Dive (4720 Washington) are offering all moms 20 percent off all wine purchases during Sunday brunch, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

I boiled the hamburger in beer in a cast iron skillet on top of the stove, adding five pinches of salt and three squirts of mustard along the way. It was the only “loosemeats sandwich” in the hamburger book and my daughter and I wanted to try something different – different at least for people like us who’ve never been to Marshalltown, Iowa where Taylor’s Maid-Rite makes “a sloppy joe without the slop.”

Actually, put between two pieces of bread with plenty of pickles it was great. Just like a lot of the other slightly more traditional burgers look to be in this ode to that most American of meals.

For two years George Motz drove around the country, eating burgers. (His wife is a vegetarian, he delights in telling us.) He’s written up 100 of his favorites and although recipes are few – Taylor’s being one of the few places not keeping secrets and secret sauces – just reading about these places and the hamburgers they serve makes for true entertainment.

May 1st is Labor Day in Mexico. There was a big parade in downtown Matamoros and a lot of people were out in the streets. After a touring the taco stands of Plaza Allende and taking a lot of pictures, I sat down at a table at my favorite Matamoros restaurant, Los Norteños, which is located between Calle 8 and 9 near the Mercado.

Founded in 1950, Los Norteños looks like it hasn’t changed much since it opened. There’s about a dozen dark wood tables in the downstairs dining room patrolled by four mustachioed waiters in jackets and ties. The manager is a white-haired guy named Ignacio who everybody calls “Nacho.” He stands up front near the door at an old-fashioned wooden cashier stand that looks like a pulpit except for the big glass jars full of candy. There is a separate room that houses the mesquite grill where the cabritos roast, and you can see them from the street.

I ordered the riñonada portion of the cabrito, which included ribs, some tender loin meat and the kidney. First you get a bowl of bean soup and some tortilla chips. Then you get a huge stack of hot tortillas in a wicker basket, and a plate with lettuce, tomato and raw onions. Then there’s a bowl of hellishly hot pico de gallo with big hunks of raw serrano in it and another bowl of a milder cooked salsa. When you finish the soup, they bring your plate of cabrito.

As an undergraduate, I had a very serious love affair with my school’s cafeteria. It was the perfect place to gossip and watch the rotation of meals from breakfast to lunch and from lunch to dinner. Often I would make my way through several full days at Kline Commons, starting with the make-your-own Belgium waffles and troughs of molded eggs, and moving on to the iceberg lettuce salad bar and burgers, finishing with a plate of nachos or re-creating the morning with the ever-popular breakfast for dinner. Since then, I have often dreamed of spending the day at a restaurant in this fashion.

Recently the Internet in my apartment went out, and I felt this was the perfect time to try my experiment. There were two requirements - one, the restaurant had to serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and two, there had to be Internet access available.

The two places around the corner from my house competing as healthy and healthier were the obvious choices. Let me start by saying that I have the same concerns about the word “healthy” in my eating as I do a PG-13 rating in most movies: good, maybe; great, not likely. In order to find out once and for all, I put down my Cheetos and went to work.