travel Archives - Food, Booze, & Baggage

Napa

December 10, 2015 by Mariah 18 Comments

Alternative titles…. “That Time We Drove 9 hours For Dinner”, “Other Things To Do In The Napa Valley Other Than Eat At The French Laundry”, “Last Minute Napa”

This was such a very last minute trip, I didn’t stress too much over getting the most out of Napa. We did not do our regular “how much can we fit in one day” itinerary like we do on many trips. We drove up on Thursday, and drove home on Saturday. Thursday night was our dinner at The French Laundry. We did not have much spare time between arriving and our 9:00 reservation. Friday was really the only day to worry about, and we just decided to see how the day went without too much of a plan.

We stayed our first night in Yountville, so that we could be within walking distance of the primary objective of the whole trip, TFL 🙂 I’m really glad we did, it was a beautiful walk up and back to the restaurant, and the town is very cute. We did have a bit of a issue with lodging. We were going to stay at the Napa Valley Railroad Inn, since it was the cheapest option, however upon checking-in (I mean letting ourselves into our room) we just couldn’t stay there. The room was dirty and gross (hair in the bathroom, holes in the wall, and a wrapper on the floor). The key to our room was hard to work as well and we did not want to come back at midnight to find we could not get in and no one there to help. However, to their credit they did refund our room. With a phone call to the help number we got confirmation they would refund our night and we checked into Villagio Inn & Spa, that is right beside the Railroad Inn. The cost difference was under $100 so it was 110% worth the hassle. I would not have been comfortable in the first hotel. The Villagio room was very clean, huge, but just a little dated looking. Plenty of space to relax in the room, including a little private courtyard (or balcony).

Yountville certainly is a sleepy kind of town, with very little in way of “nightlife” outside of dining. It seemed like most tasting rooms in the area were only open until 5. I think you would be hard pressed to figure out entertainment in the evening hours after dinner. I was glad we had already decided to stay the second night in Napa.

The next morning, we made a stop at our hotel’s buffet brunch, which looked quite nice, though we only sampled a few items as I wanted to go by Bouchon. We walked around Yountville enjoying the Fall colors and of course stopping by Bouchon…While we did sample the Bouchon bakery when we stayed at the Venetian in Vegas, I was not about to pass up a trip to the original. It was tasty and a lovely way to start the morning. It was super relaxing to sit out in the sun eating and feeding the birds pastry crumbs 🙂 Someone might have been scolding me about feeding the birds, and that someone might have knocked the below onto the ground and we got mobbed. That just MIGHT have happened.

After our snacks we walked back down to get pictures of the French Laundry farm. We checked-out of our hotel and headed to downtown Napa.

There we walked a little more around downtown before heading into the Oxbow Public Market.

The Oxbow Market is sort of like an upscale food court idea. Lots to browse, eat, and drink. Our first stop was at Hog Island Oyster Co, where we enjoyed some oysters on the half shell, baked oysters (SO SO GOOD), and a nice dry wine. We then walked around some of the shops, did a liquor tasting, bought some bitters, and settled outside with a cheese platter and wine. We used that time to find a nearby winery and booked a tasting.

We opted for the winery closest to our hotel. No research on the wine, based solely on location. The William Hill Estate Winery was beautiful, and very relaxing. The service was great and not rushed or stuffy. We should have stuck with their white wines, but we did a mix, two reds and one white. The reds were not that good in my opinion, but the white we tried was great. Still totally worth it for the view and experience. Plus as an unexpected bonus our tasting was buy one, get one, since we were staying at the Silverado Resort.

We then checked into our room, had a little nap, and opened a bottle of wine we had bought at the Oxbow Market. The room was small, but very nice and more updated in decor than the Villagio. Later we headed via Lyft to the Cadet Beer & Wine Bar. This place was so neat, and offered a nice selection of wine and beer. Great service here too…but no pictures. It was so dark and they just did not turn out. P and I both got a flight of wine, and I liked all of the wines served for the flight. It was a great stop.

We then headed to our dinner at Torc. This place got great reviews and we were super happy with our choice. All the dishes were well prepared and had great flavor. We had: Deviled Eggs, Foie Gras (Cooked), Risotto, Short Ribs, and Mac & Cheese. My least favorite was the risotto, it tasted great, and was well cooked, but they added cauliflower to it and it made for a super weird texture. I kept thinking I was getting clumps of uncooked rice. That was my only complaint with the meal. I was stuffed by the time our last course came, so much food! Given that I was stuffed, I was ready to be off to bed.

The next morning we went back to downtown Napa to have breakfast at the Napa General Store & Cafe, before heading back home. The breakfast was good, very solid meal, but not overly fancy. It was a good pick for a sit down but casual breakfast.

The Napa area is just beautiful, and I was so happy we got a little taste of Fall colors. I would certainly love to go back…but maybe not drive 🙂 It was a long, boring drive. We were also fairly traumatized by the amount of pollution you drive through in the Central Valley, and realizing most of what we eat is grown in that chemical bath. This was the worst smog I’ve ever seen, so thick and gross looking. This was also the most farms I’ve ever seen too, it was crazy just miles and miles of farm land.

For more to do in the Napa area, make sure to check out Lauren’s (Eat Drink & Be Lauren) posts on their visit!! They did a bit more planning than we did 🙂

Have you ever been to Napa? If so what is a can’t miss stop? Would you drive 9 hours for dinner?

Weekend Jaunt: Los Angeles

September 21, 2015 by Mariah 24 Comments

P and I finally made it on a little weekend trip to Los Angeles (LA) in July. To be honest LA has never been on the top of my travel list. I think I always assumed if I traveled to the West coast I would go to San Francisco, Seattle, or Portland. However with LA only a few hours away, we can’t pass up the opportunity. Since it is a shortish drive we decided to only focus on a few areas/activities this trip and then plan a few other future trips.
As I already revealed, we somewhat planned our trip around trying out Animal. Which was a good experience, so yay!! Of course that was not our only eating stop 🙂

Friday

Our first stop was Ink Sack, which is one of Chef Michael Voltaggio’s spots (Top Chef). Now this is just a tiny little sandwich shop, more take out than dine-in. The thing that really shocked me is their pricing, all their sandwiches are $5 or $6 and they are GOOD. I was not disappointed with this choice. Also they had housemade pork rinds!! I was not disappointed with those either. If you follow me on IG you saw my little quip about it being funny the very first thing I try in LA is a pork rind. I had the cold fried chicken and P had their take on banh mi. Now that we had a little something solid to eat it was onto beer.

First brewery stop was Golden Road. There was no way that we could pass up checking out Golden Road, as part of our first trip to LA. We have loved most of the beers we have tried from them so we made a beeline straight to the source. I have to say, I did not love their pub space. It was too restaurant focused for my taste. They also didn’t have that many beers that were not widely distributed anyway so I was a bit disappointed overall. They certainly have good beers and some neat aspects to their space. I’m glad we got to go.

With the first brewery checked-off, it was time to ditch the car and focus on places that were a bit closer by. We decided to stay in Koreatown at Hotel Normandie. It’s a cute little historical hotel. Would I recommend it? Umm…maybe. It was cute and clean, I actually liked Koreatown. LA is not a walkable city, it’s not one of those places where you can fly in and go all weekend without a car…but I’ll talk more about that later and more on the hotel at the end. Now that we said goodbye to the car, we are off to the Art District.

Here are a few scenes from the Art District…We basically walked around and then had a few drinks and a few bites here and there.

Wurstküche for a couple of beers and a taste of fries. I always have to try out the curry ketchup option, not bad, but not the best I’ve had stateside. Of course they are all compared to the fries we had in Antwerp.

Then a stop at Angel City Brewery, such a cool space!!! I loved the feel of the space and the people were friendly. The beers were only ok, not something I would seek out. I would certainly recommend going though. Though do not drink the water…it was terrible, like really terrible!!

What is a vacation without pie? So we popped on into Pie Hole. Umm…it was ok. Overall I found it too sweet, from drinks to pie, and the crust was not that great either. Cute place though, but I’m sure there is better pie to be had in LA.

We finished our night of course back in our hood, Koreatown. What would be the point of staying in Koreatown and not eating at a Korean place, that is a no brainer. So we yelped our hearts out and narrowed it down to two places and went with the one that had less of a wait, Ham Ji Park BBQ 🙂 It was certainly an experience. The food was great, once we figured out what was going on and the service was attentive. Seriously the hottest bowl of soup I have ever seen! And I didn’t know what any of the little dishes were but it was all good.

Saturday

Breakfast Saturday took us to the Salt’s Cure, which got high reviews. Lucky for us LA is a late rising kind of town so we beat the wait easily. The interior is small and I liked being able to sit at the bar and watch the action. The food was good, but not that creative or rave worthy in my option. Also I’m pretty sure an actor came in and sat on the other side of P, but I could not place him. He was definitely someone.

Then we went to the La Brea Tar Pits, which I have always wanted to see for some reason. I don’t know, it always sound so cool and it were close by, so why not. Well, color me disappointed. It was not exciting at all and there is very little to see. I was not that impressed, and we walked around, but didn’t think it was worth paying to go through the museum part. Oh well.

After that disappointment, we went straight to another tourist trap/disappointment. I figured again, since we were in the general area we would try to see the Hollywood Walk of Fame. HUGE mistake. It was crazy, SO many people, so dirty, so loud, I HATED it. Some woman was screaming and peeing on the middle of the sidewalk, which only prompted me to walk faster to get the hell out of there.

We drove around a bit more and headed over to the Silver Lake area to regroup and see what it was all about. I wished I had brought my tennis shoes and we had tried to do the Hollywood Sign hike or explore the Griffith park, but alas I had not planned on it this trip. In Silver Lake we stopped in and had a little coffee break at Lamill Coffee. After coffee we figured lunch was in order, and we walked up to the Knuckle and Claw, mainly because it was in the area and we could walk there. Meh. It was fine, but not great. I think there are more interesting lunch places to find. To be honest we were just one that side of town, and I didn’t feel like getting back into the car yet. It was nice to have a place to walk to 🙂

We had looked to see what other breweries were close by and knocked another one off the list, Eaglerock Brewery. Beers were ok, and space was not that inviting. I don’t know, just wasn’t feeling it. We decided to head back to the hotel, nap and get ready to go towards the area of town Animal is located.

We had a few pre-dinner drinks at the Melrose Umbrella Company, and it was perfect. Loved the drinks, the space, and the bartenders. Great experience! It put us in the right mood to enjoy our dinner at Animal.

Sunday

Again, wanting to make the most of Koreatown, we stopped by to try out California Donuts before heading to brunch. Yes, I said we stopped for donuts before going to eat somewhere else, totally normal. I wasn’t overly impressed with it, a basic donut…certainly no Nomads 🙂

We drove around a little more and then headed to Faith and Flower. This was one of the best brunches I’ve had in a while and certainly the second best meal of our LA trip. They serve “sharable” dishes, so we started off with the oxtail agnolotti, deviled eggs, and malt waffle. After these dishes we weren’t quite full, so we went crazy and ordered eggs benedict pizza and I’m glad we did. Of course we kind of dug into the pizza before I remembered pictures..oops. The pizza was SO good and the sauce on the pasta was AMAZING, like I wanted to lick the plate. This place was tasty. A nice way to finish off our trip and head back to SD.

We did take a tiny detour, for one more brewery on the way back. Stopping at Noble Brewing in Anaheim, which was not too far off the highway. We have had a lot of Noble beers and knew they were worth the stop. I was happy to see that they had a lot of varieties available you don’t see on the shelf.

Now my review on the Hotel Normandie: My complaint is the noise. We stayed on the 5th floor out of 6, but it was one the alley side of the building which also included an outdoor area for their bar. It was crazy loud until after 3 am, that is a no go for us. They did move us to the 6th floor street side the second night (after complaint), but I would only consider staying here again if I was guaranteed a room on the street side. Honestly, if they invested in better windows the noisy would be less of an issue. Also, if you are there for a weekend, we found street parking fairly easily, so you can save the $20 a night valet fee.

I have to say LA did not win me over. I felt like it was dirty, sprawling and all the rumors about horrible traffic, 100% true. It just did not have the same big city feel I get visiting NYC or Chicago. We will certainly go back to check out the beach area, the Hollywood Sign, and Catalina Islands, but I would not rank LA high on my travel list. I like to walk to experience a city and LA just doesn’t have it. It’s just not my style, though I know some people love it.

Animal in Los Angeles

August 25, 2015 by Mariah 14 Comments

Animal was what P & I based our little weekend jaunt to LA around (more on that next week). Animal shows up on a ton of lists for best of this or that, and well it seemed right up our alley. I’m so happy we got to give it a try. It was so good in fact, that T and I drove up the next week, for a night in LA and dinner at Animal. The food was that good. The menu is mostly meat (hence the name), and made up of mostly small dishes, at fairly reasonable prices. The food was very good, though I give the service and atmosphere a meh. It’s loud, and the waitstaff seems rushed. No cocktails only wines and bottle beer. It doesn’t really have the stay, relax feeling about it at all. The wine menu is all French wine, no California offerings, which is a bit disappointed since they boast sourcing local. Let’s get down to the food shall we…

Tongue Pastrami (ordered both trips). It was a twist on a Ruben with horseradish mousse, sweet pickles, apple butter, and rye croutons. This was both T’s and P’s favorite dish. I enjoyed it for sure, but my favorite was….

Leg of Rabbit with a Lemon Gravy. OMG the gravy was SO SO good, very different than anything I’ve ever had before.

Sautéed Foie Gras with a Biscuit and Gravy. There is nothing about this dish that doesn’t call my name 🙂 Yum!!

Veil Brain!! This was the most unique and out there dish that I tried. Neither T or I had tried brain before. It was actually quite good. I just try not to think about it too much 🙂 It was seasoned well and the texture was not off putting.

Chicken Liver Pate! I loved this dish, it was simple but really really good. The pate was so velvety.

Bone Marrow (ordered both trips). In general if bone marrow is on the menu, I order it. This was one of the best bone marrows I’ve had.

Sweetbreads. I enjoyed this dish, the components all went well together for a cohesive dish. The onion on top was so mild, I had a hard time telling it was onion.

Uni with Fried Cheese and Cucumber. This dish was VILE. I honestly think that the uni had turned, it was not good.

Save room for dessert, both were excellent!

Mango & Passion Fruit Cheesecake. This was amazing, again simple but really well executed.

Bacon Chocolate Bar with Salt & Pepper Ice Cream. Oh so good, I loved the salt and pepper ice cream. It was TASTY and unique.

Sorry about the picture quality but it is VERY dimly lit. The food really impressed us at Animal, P says it’s in his top 5 eating experiences. It was certainly up there, but it lacks a certain feel and atmosphere to crack my top 5, plus the uni dish on the second trip was SO bad. I only made our reservations about a week in advance both times, and didn’t have an issue. You do have to call for reservations, no online option. I’m super glad we got to try it and I got to share the experience with T too. P’s already asking when he gets to go back 🙂

Las Vegas

April 28, 2015 by Mariah 36 Comments

Vegas!! I feel like people are pretty polarized on the town. Many LOVE IT, for others it is usually described as an experience. I think we stand in the latter, it may be that it’s never been super high on my must visit list. It was certainly fun, the people were friendly, and there was plenty to do, but it’s a bit touristy for my taste. I think part of it was the food was just not that spectacular, maybe it just simply missed that authentic quality. I was amazed at the grand scale of everything, each casino was like it’s own little town. I’m glad we got to go, and we get to cross it off our list. How could we not take the opportunity when we could get there for CHEAP (our tickets were around $60 a piece round-trip), plus we got a great deal on the room too!

We stayed at the Venetian, it was really nice. The room was huge and very clean. I’m glad we stayed there, as opposed to Caesar’s Palace which was also on our list as a possible. The Venetian just seemed calmer and the casino floor was definitely less smoky compared to when we walked through Caesar’s Palace. We also liked the feel of the Cosmopolitan when we visited for dinner. This vacation was definitely a little more relaxed than other vacations we have taken, with us not go go the whole time. We gave ourselves a bit more down time than normal. I’m so glad we took the time to head downtown, it was really cool. I liked the feel of downtown more, less busy, than the strip. We took the bus downtown and it was very clean and easy…just make sure to get exact change and you can buy your ticket on the bus. I’ve split our trip into strip (or near strip) and those places more downtown.

THE STRIP

Bouchon

It was so good we ate here twice 🙂 We had planned on the dinner, because, well, it is Keller. We decided on the spur of the moment, to head here for breakfast on our last morning. I’m so glad we did too! While the dinner was good, but I enjoyed the breakfast more. The dishes were more unique. The pate at dinner was my favorite and of course I totally stuffed myself on that and barely had room for the mussels. The deviled eggs were good, but nothing exciting (I really have a problem when it comes to deviled eggs–I can’t resist). I loved my brunch dish of chicken and waffles and P’s croque-madame was exceptional. If I had to pick between breakfast or dinner, I would say go with the breakfast. I also might have had something from the Bouchon Bakery shop everyday we were visiting too…just maybe 🙂

Jaleo

I had high hope for this one and it was good, but I wasn’t totally wowed. Part of it was what we ordered, so maybe it is amazing, but we ordered non amazing things. Let’s do the good first, the gin and tonics were wonderful!! Maybe one of the best I’ve ever had. The space was really cool too! So, my complaint was the one cooked dish we ordered was not that great. It was too oily and too garlicky. We ordered the Jose’s Taco, which is the dish on the lower right, with the gold…so not really a taco, more ham topped with caviar. It was good, but I actually found it not salty enough (I know makes no sense), it was very earthy. Not pictured was a course of cheese. One of my favorite dishes of the night was the olives, the ones on the spoon held liquid inside so they sort of dissolved when you ate them, now those were salty 🙂 An enjoyable experience, but certainly not a rave worthy experience.

Burger & Beer
For a place named burger and beer, both were a bit disappointing. Their beer list was not as extensive as I would hope given the name. The burgers were very good, but the fried pickles were terrible. Way too oily and too much breading. My favorite part of the whole meal was the pickled cauliflower.

Hofbrauhaus

We decided to head out there on our “rainy” day in Vegas. The food was good, but limited beer choice. The service was terrible…and it was not busy at all. We didn’t see our waitress after we placed our order, not even for our check. We might have tried another beer, but didn’t really get the chance to order another one. Not overly impressed with the experience, but the sausage was tasty.

Sin City Brewing
We went to the one in our hotel at the Venetian. It was literally just a bar (stools & counter) tucked into the corner of a hall in the Venetian. The beers were ok, I wish they had a bit larger selection. All the red, hurt my eyes.

O – Cirque du Soleil (Bellagio Hotel)
LOVED this show! I’m so glad that we went, and it was worth the ticket price. It was so fascinating, the stage and the performers were unbelievable. I now understand why people go to the same show more than once, there is so much to see on the stage all happening at once. Just an amazing show!! We went to to the late show too, and I was so captivated I didn’t even think about being tired 🙂

DOWNTOWN

Goodwich/Dino

This was one of our off the beaten path finds, and boy was it good and unique. Goodwich is just a little sandwich stand in the parking lot of Dino’s. You can take your sandwich over to Dino’s and order a beer to go with it. Now Dino’s would certainly fall into the dive bar category, but they were as welcoming as can be. It almost felt like visiting with someone’s bartending grandmother, along with their drunk uncles and the younger son who never left home. It was a hoot!! I highly recommend it. The sandwiches were really good too!! Some firemen lined up behind us so it is certainly a local spot. We caught the bus here, and got back on to continue to downtown.

Banger Brewing

Not a huge fan of this one. The place was nice and bartenders friendly, but the beer was not good. They have some major refining of recipes to work on.

Triple 7
Really, impressed with their beers. Great service here too, they gave us one extra sample so we had a taste of all of their standard beers 🙂 This is more of a brewpub, with heavy emphasis on the pub. They had one of the most diverse and big menu’s I’ve seen in a while, including sushi. We didn’t sample any of the food.

The Container Park

I’m glad we made it down to this area, so cool!! We walked around the shops, bought some chocolates and popped in for a hotdog. What a cool area!! The praying mantis that greets you in the front is HUGE. The hotdog from Cheffini’s was tasty and such a cute space. There were several other restaurants to choose from in the park too. We were not even hungry, but couldn’t pass up the interesting flavors.

Notes

We took Spirit airlines, which was super cheap, but they charge you for every little thing. We avoided individual charges for carry-ons and just packed one checked bag instead. Make sure to get your tickets printed before heading back to the airport, the Venetian offered free boarding pass printing at the concierge desk.
Our visit was during Vega’s off-season which is January/February. We had no problem getting reservations or tickets, but it still was fairly busy in the hotel and casinos. We encountered gray/rainy weather, but our last day there, it had cleared up. Don’t expect pool time during the off-season 🙂
If you are gambling in the Venetian, for a great beer selection go to the Public House. You can take your beer (tell them so they can give you a plastic cup) right back on the floor with you. It’s cheaper and much better than what you can get from the floor bars!

For many, many, more Vegas adventures check out Esther & Jacob’s blog, they lived in Vegas for a whole year!! Also, check out Kristin’s adventures in Vegas on her blog No Reservations.

Have you been to Vegas? What did you think?