NYC 10 Years Later- Day 6

Thurs. Sept. 15, 2022 East Hampton to NYC

I was rudely awoken before 8am by the jackass wielding a jackhammer. I tried to sleep some more but only made it half an hour. I went downstairs for breakfast. Really, I just needed coffee. Brent stayed for a bit then ordered an Uber to take him to the private airport because that was the only place to rent a car. I stayed behind and read my book on the covered patio, eating pastries. At 9:07am I got a text from Brent: the car rental place doesn’t open until 10am, Google was wrong. Eh, more reading for me. Also, I was kind of stuck because Brent had taken the room key.

We drove to Sag Harbour, parked at the marina and had a look around. We went through the quaint downtown, but it was packed. There was a giant yacht at the marina and Brent googled the name. Turns out it’s some millionaire guy’s yacht and it costs $2 million a year to maintain. It was enormous. 

We had lunch at the Candy Kitchen in Bridgehampton. It was an old school diner and I could picture it being super busy during peak summer season. Brent had an egg cream, it was listed in his “1001 Foods” book. I had a sip. Blech. Who ever thought of mixing seltzer water and ice cream?? Why?? Brent had a turkey club, which is just another WHY recipe. Why the extra slice of bread?? So unnecessary. I opted for the classics: a lime rickey (which is actually cherry soda) and a cheeseburger. I couldn’t not get a slice of pie, and they had their own in-house made ice cream so of course I got it a la mode: a slice of strawberry-rhubarb pie with a scoop of maple walnut. It actually paired quite nicely. Even if I was a little cheesed, the crust was more of a shortbread! I was hoping for flaky and buttery. Ah well, it was still delicious. 

We drove to Montauk Point, the tip of Long Island. It seems to be an anniversary tradition to go to ocean-side vistas? This was the second year in a row. It was more than I had expected. I thought there’d be at most a picnic bench and a far-off light house. Instead, we got to visit the historic lighthouse! At the giftshop there was a sign saying that washrooms were for customers only, good luck enforcing that rule. It was not set up like that, we could easily go around. It wasn’t even past the ticket booth which was in the opposite direction. We did end up paying admission. We had to climb a narrow skinny staircase to the top. The base of the lighthouse was a museum about the construction. We had pretty views, including a close view of the lighthouse light bulb. Down below you could see the brackish water where fresh met salty.  Off in the distance was Rhode Island. The gift shop was not good, no coffee and no magnets. 

On the way up I had seen a roadside restaurant called The Clam Bar. This was my best chance for Manhattan clam chowder, I had yet to see it on a menu anywhere. What a damn confused soup it is. Is it tomato? Fish? If I add vodka, is it a Bloody Mary? It is surely not a chowder. It was not filling enough and just not that good. I would rather have bouillabaisse or tomato soup or regular clam chowder. Not this monstrosity. Pick a lane! It also makes for a terrible car snack. Miraculously, I neither burnt myself nor did I spill any. We returned our car at the private airport. While we waited for our Uber, Brent grabbed a free can of Coca Cola from the complimentary fridge. I passed on the coffee, no idea how long it sat out on the patio in the carafe for. Watching a helicopter land was so confusing, I always imagined them just dropping down, not gliding in. 

In the car, the driver asked us how our flight was. It was awkward. We were on our way from a private airport to a train station? And I smelled like onions (lunch) and tomatoes (snack). It was rather odd. We bought our tickets at the station and then walked to Starbucks. I was in desperate need of caffeine. I got there just ahead of the rush and still it took a while. Not sure why, all they had to do was mix the concentrate with water and shake it. I figured a grande mango dragonfruit refresher would be enough to keep me awake. It was not. While we waited for the train, Brent walked to the nearby liquor store and got some beers. They didn’t have any ciders, but I would be able to find them in the city later on. He made it back with 3 minutes to spare before the train arrived. I tried to read on the train but I kept falling asleep. Eventually I finished The Cartographers but I was too tired to go back to the other book. When we got off the train at Jamaica station there was a train across the platform going to Penn Station. We ran for it. It had been a day of perfect timing.

At Penn Station we had a toilet break. The train over from East Hamptons didn’t have a bathroom in our car, it was in the next one over and confusing to get to. We walked south to Scarr’s Pizza for a modern take on the “classic” and “authentic” New York slice. On the way we passed by the edge of Chinatown. The first liquor & wine store we stopped at had limited selection, mostly of Cutwater cocktails I’d already had. Surely there’d be more. Two more stores and all they had were multipacks. By the fourth one, Brent pointed out that if I got a multipack, I could just give the rest to Cait & John. I completely forgot about that. The fourth store was in a university/student-heavy neighbourhood and finally I was in luck. We walked by so many gallery openings, apparently, we were in a hip artsy area now. 

There was a line at Scarr’s but it moved quickly. Our only option was cheese slices. But when I asked, he said he had some “grandma” slices in the oven and ready soon. These were more deep-dish style and had pepperoni. I was fine waiting a few minutes, we devoured our cheese slices while we waited. The cheese slices were better than the “grandma” slice. They were both good, but not as good as Joe’s on Bleeker. The “grandma” slice had a tomato sauce that had a lot of nice herbs in it, but we wanted that classic NY slice.

We were pretty far south. You could tell we were in an older and once poorer neighbourhood (think: tenements) because the streets were much narrower. I recognized the name Orchard St, was it where The Tenement Museum was? Yes, and we walked by it on our way back. We didn’t realize how far south we had gone, until we ended up at an intersection where 1rst and 1rst should be. At first, we weren’t sure if this was the spot. I noticed a restaurant called One By One and I pointed it out, we must be close! And then we saw the intersection: 1rst and 1rst! The nexus of the universe! Seinfeld! We both excitedly started taking pictures of it and a guy asked us what were so excited for. For once, we were the oddballs.

At the liquor store I had grabbed three cans, two small ones. The first one was a lemon cranberry cosmopolitan: the perfect walking drink, the can was red and small. I ducked into a CVS and got marshmallow-flavoured Halloween mini Kit-Kats, a Milky Way and extreme Sour Patch Kids. My second walking drink was also a small red can, a cranberry and gin cocktail. A business-looking man in a suit walked past us, and he was just farting so hard. So many farts. We walked by a dog that seemed to be all on his own and as I started looking for the owner I saw the guy just standing there, and I swear he looked like TJ Thyne from Bones. 

We were staying at The Lombardy hotel. It was odd, the whole bathroom was mirrored. I did not need this in my life. No one needs to see themselves sitting on the toilet. My pen finally ran out, thankfully this hotel kept them right by the bedside. The Cazadores spicy margarita was the perfect drink to the end the night while watching Jeopardy! I hadn’t gotten any Cutwater cocktails because I figured I could get them at the baseball game the next night. 23,000 steps.

 

Quebec Get Away- Day 2

Day 2: Mon. July 12, 2021- Montreal, QC:

There was no in-room coffee available, just the coffee maker sans-supplies. We stopped at a small I, Chez Jose, because on the sign outside it said they had iced coffee (the only proper nourishment during a heat wave). 

Our first stop of the day was Schwartz’s Deli for a smoked meat sandwich. Apparently, we were too early, the guy told us to come back in an hour at 10am. Up next on our Montreal (food) tour was Hof Keltsen, a Jewish bakery that was listed in the 1001 Foods book for challah, chicken livers and bialys. They only had challah available. It was so damn good and made for the perfect walking breakfast. Ta Pies, an Australian bakery from the 1001 Foods book, was closed for renovations for another week. St. Viateur Bagel (THE original Montreal bagel place) was surprisingly not that busy. As I waited in line, I watched the staff making bagels and paying close attention to their technique. It was awesome to watch as they cut from a giant blob of dough, expertly rolled it into a rope and then sealed the ends. I had tried this before and it was so hard to do, and these guys were doing it effortlessly. In addition to the cinnamon raisin, blueberry, everything, and sesame bagel I also got a bottle of everything-but-the-bagel seasoning (a perfect souvenir). We tried to go to the other Montreal bagel place, Fairmount Bagel but they were also closed for roof repairs. On the street outside there was a giant flatbed truck and all it had on it was a dog eating a bone. That sort of made up for the disappointment. We happened to walk by Beautys, which was also in the 1001 Foods book but when we went inside the guy told us that they wouldn’t have cheese blintzes available until next week. A lot of just-barely-missed-it food moments so far.

Walking through the park we saw that the public bathrooms were open (since COVID times it’s been tricky). We walked through the McGill University campus. There were lots of beautiful old buildings and we could kind of see Mont Royal in the background. We walked along Rue St. Catharine, aka the shopping district. (I had no luck at Aldo or Aritzia and there was a line to get into Victoria’s Secret). There was so much construction going on, I could imagine it was a much nicer place before it was all torn up. We stopped at the Place Eaton mall for a bathroom break. It was my first time back inside a mall since pre-pandemic times. It was a bit odd and it felt weird. On the way to the bathrooms we happened to pass by another Aldo and Aritzia! Again, no luck. I stopped at Indigo to grab some notebooks, my travel book sparked a new project idea to get all my recipes in order. While we were at it, we got new Joycons at Best Buy, one of them was on its last legs and that was no good, especially for something that we played so often when we travelled. 

On the way back we walked through the nice park grounds of the contemporary art museum. Back at Schwartz’s Deli there was no line and it wasn’t too busy (even though it was lunch time). We got one sandwich to go. I had seen pictures of the behemoth online, I knew I would only be having a bite or two. The sandwich was pretty good but it was also really heavy. I opted for more bagels instead. So far we had walked 13.21km. And we still had the whole afternoon!

The McKeown original cider was delicious and cooling me down. It had been a carb-heavy day so far. I was so tired and my legs were hurting. We rested for a bit in the cool AC and rehydrated. We looked up Mont Royal and debated if it was worth heading out to see (climb). The consensus was yes.

It was a much slower walk in the afternoon. It was hotter out and my legs were dead. The stairs we had to climb to the top made me seriously question our plans. Why??? Why stairs??? At this point I was going at a snail’s pace. The view from the top was worth it though. We could see all of downtown Montreal. I had locked eyes on an ice cream vendor as soon as we got to the lookout. I wanted to take photos first because balancing an ice cream cone and my camera did not sound fun, I would go there on my way back. Bad plan. He was all sold out by then. We walked to Lac Castor, on the way we saw a groundhog squeeze under a fence. We had a pretty view of the lake from a hilltop. The stairs back down were not as bad, even if I was missing an ice cream cone. 

We stopped at a depanneur that advertised having craft beer. They had a nice selection of ciders but I only grabbed a Lacroix (no relation to the soda water) pineapple cider. We dropped our bag at the hotel and headed back out to the SAQ (official liquor store) down the street. The selection was tiny and awful. But they had what I came for: cheap vodka for my homemade liqueurs. It was cheaper than I could get back home. My final stop for this leg of the tour was my beloved LUSH, which I had also not visited since pre-pandemic times. It felt so good to be back. I got a solid body butter and a honey body wash and a sample of lime body lotion. Total KM: 21.95.

I showered off the layers of sunscreen and sweat that coated my body, nothing beats a LUSH shower. Once I got to lounging on the bed, it took a lot to get me to move. We watched Tim Robinsons’s episode of The Characters, solely for the Lady Luck sketch because we were going to the casino tomorrow and we needed motivation. We watched an episode of Jeopardy! and then it was time for dinner. We ordered poutine for pickup from La Banquise. Again, it was not busy at all. We ordered one regular poutine and one with pepperonis, bacon and onions. They were cut real thick and more like hotdogs than pepperonis. It was a bit odd. I stopped in at another depanneur, I was still dehydrated, and got an iced tea as well as some more ciders (Lacroix watermelon mint and McKeown berry). The poutine was good but the bottom fries were soggy. The Lacroix pineapple was exactly what you would expect. 

We watched Superstore and Master of None. The new season of Master of None was just awful. Yet we stuck with it for a while. Eventually we went back to Superstore. I munched some more bagels, leaving the blueberry one for breakfast. We watched clips of I Think You Should Leave but that wasn’t enough to keep me awake. I was ready for bed before 11pm.

 

July, Oh My!- Some Semblance of Normalcy?

LarbShack– I saw a photo on the BlogTO Instagram of a popular new pop-up, made more popular by a visit from a politician. I’d never even heard of larb but of course Brent knew exactly what it was. We had a small debate over dinner whether the green leaves were cabbage or just really tough, thick lettuce given to us to make wraps. I swear it was lettuce! I grew up eating cabbage rolls, I know what cabbage looks like and feels like. The mild dish was not mild at all, it had these little hot red peppers and oh man was it spicy. But not as spicy as the spicy dish. Overall, it was alright, worth a try especially given it’s a pop-up and won’t be around forever.

Aunty Lucy’s Burgers– another pop-up! This one instead offered In N Out style basic burgers. I was all for it, having seen the delicious-looking pictures all over Instagram and BlogTO. Their original location was out of our delivery range, but when there was a dispute with the landlord and they had to find a new home, they popped-up closer to us! I really liked the burger, but not as much as the one from Rasa. That is still the best burger of the year (for now). The fries were really good too.

Colibri– Toronto Life Top 100. We are making our way down the list, and it is sad to see how many places have closed. Colibri was not one of them. Our original dinner plans were not available, so Brent had to wing it and order without me. He winged it well, ordering chips & guac along with 5 tacos: shrimp, beef, fish, pork, chicken. That is also my order of preference. The shrimp was actually really good. The others not so much. The beef was too salty but still it won second. The fish was alright. The pork was too fatty and the chicken too bland and it just drowned in the taco and I tasted no chicken. The chips & guac were alright, but way too many chips for the amount of guac provided.

**going back to work kind of put a dent in both fooding and my kitchen adventures

 

June Eatin’

Rasa Bar: Toronto Life top 100 of 2019; the online reviews said that the beef cheek burger and the quinoa salad were really good. I’m always hesitant about delivery burgers and fries. But oh man was I wrong. This was one of the best burgers I’ve ever had. It was so meaty and juicy and it had the perfect soft bun. The fries were seasoned like curly fries. It is rare to encounter a fry that needs no dipping. The salad was surprisingly good for a salad. The grapes, while odd looking and threatening me with being a tomato, were a good addition (despite the risk). We also split a garlic shrimp app, it was good but this has been a great year for shrimp dishes and the competition was stiff.

Maker Pizza: I had seen a photo of an amazing-looking sandwich on Instagram, turns out it was from Maker Pizza and wouldn’t you know it, I was craving pizza (I blame it on Animal Crossing and all the anchovies). We ordered a small pepperoni pizza and a sandwich. Oh sweetmotherofgod, that sandwich. Sesame sub bread. Tons of meat. Good cheese. An easy-to-remove tomato. And some peppers and lettuce compactly smooshed underneath. It was one of the best sandwiches I have ever had. And it left me thinking about it. I could see myself almost regularly ordering it. I do have to get it at least one more time, and warm it up in my panini press to melt the cheese.

Mid-way check-in: So far June was looking good food-wise, ordering anyways. I gave up on my sourdough starter when the light bulb in the oven died (it is impossible to replace). I finally cracked open the giant bag of flour to make some less-than-great peanut butter brownies (they were truly awful and I am surprised that ATK misled me so badly). I guess I was still riding the joyous high off of successfully making danishes from scratch (thanks NY Times!). How could ATK be so wrong about peanut butter brownies when they were so right about oatmeal muffins (the best ever, it has changed my opinion of home-baked muffins). I ordered 5lbs of rhubarb and now I found a farm that delivers to Toronto for free, hello giant flat-pack of strawberries. Hello jam.

La Palma: blogTO voted best lasagna; This was a difficult meal to rank. The lasagna was in fact, some of the best I have ever had, yay for that. But the chicken liver mousse was awful. It was sweet. Even after I sprinkled some salt on top it was still not saved. The piri piri chicken was similarly awful. There was just something so off about the flavour profile, like it had a giant hole in it and something was missing, and there were other flavours there that just did not belong. Some bites, the skin was charred and tasted burnt. They should stick to making lasagna and not futz about with other dishes. Even the bread that came with the chicken liver mousse was meh.

Banjara: 1001 Foods book, biryani; we’d been to Banjara in the past, and we debated including it in our yearly restaurant rankings (which we’d only started doing last year) and in the end decided to include it, we were trying new foods. We got a half order of tandoori chicken and an order of chicken biryani. Oh man was it a lot of food, it was enough for two dinners and we had half leftover. The tandoori chicken was really good as was the biryani. The naan, on it’s own was kind of sad. It desperately called out for sauce to be dipped in but there was none in sight. I used it instead to scoop up the (very) generous portion of rice that came with the tandoori chicken.

June ended with me going back to work >.>

 

A Whole Month Has Passed?!

Somsun Superstar: voted best new cheap eats 2019. Bosnian sandwiches. I had no idea this was a thing. Now I know. The bread was delicious, but that’s about all I can say. I was decidedly not a fan of the meat. In both the classic which had very little toppings, and Brent’s sandwich- it was a tiny bit better but still not enough.

Labora: Toronto Life Top 100 restaurants. So much food! So much more than we had expected! The paella was great and we only ate half. Can’t go wrong with shishito peppers but I still maintain that my sesame-soy ones are better. Steak sandwich was the clear winner though. The sweet potato bites were awful and pushed to the side. Too crispy and kind of tasteless?

Le Petit Dejeuner: voted best waffles. I was skeptical for many reasons. Waffles from a non-waffle-specialty place? No crazy options to pick from? Combined with it being delivery, I had my sights set on the challah toast croque monsieur and the waffles were just an afterthought. I was wrong to doubt. The waffles were perfect, so buttermilk-y and they didn’t even need anything more than maple syrup. But that croque monsieur, *drools*, it stole the show. It also set the day up weird because we ate so early.

Union: Toronto Life Top 100 restaurants. The polenta was not what I expected. Not even close. I was expecting something with the consistency of mashed potatoes, with tomatoes on the side. This was a spongey brick. And with so much food, it got pushed to the side. Duck fat toast was amazing. The ribs were sticky and delicious and just fell off the bone. Brent preferred the burger, I preferred the ribs so it was an easy swap after we each stole bites. The mashed potatoes (that we didn’t order?) were not good, too lumpy. And besides, we had a giant pile of fries to tackle. Fries do not hold up well cold. That had become our new criteria when we got too much food: triage it by preference and how well it holds up cold.

Friday Roots: I must have seen this one on Instagram or a Toronto Life article or who knows. My notes only say: fried chicken. I was intrigued by the sweet potatoes with marshmallows. I was picturing whipped potatoes with a sweet marshmallow crust. Not potatoes soaked in molasses with overcooked marshmallows sprinkled over sweet potato chunks. Pass. As usual, I was not a fan of the  burger. Burgers are a hard thing to pull off. The fried chicken was good, nice and meaty. But some bites were so, so, SO greasy. The biscuit was a bit soft and doughy for my non-biscuit-liking (I’m just not a fan in general).

Sushi Masaki Saito: this one had been on my list for a long time, Michelin-starred chef known for aged sushi. Yes please! Except, it was $500/plate. Maybe no. That is until I saw an Instagram post that due to the pandemic they were switching to delivery. They had a chef’s special, a selection of 8-10 mini-dishes for a measly $200. Yes please! Day saved! It took me over 10 minutes just to get through. Then the earliest I could order for was the following week. That is ok, at least I was in. Our dinner arrived in a cute little bamboo box lined with banana leaves. One look inside and I knew we were in for a treat. The mackerel was actually good!! Who knew that was possible?! The octopus was amazing. I liked chomping on the ginger. Everything was really good….but still not as good as some of the other places we’ve been to, even this year alone.

Rol San: voted best late-night Chinese food. Turns out my memory is terrible. We had eaten here before and we were not impressed. Nothing, not even when I bit into the fried octopus, no trigger due to my again not being impressed. It was chewy. I did like the nutty flavour. But fried food shouldn’t be so chewy. The congee was just awful. I mean we had to try it, it was from the 1001 Foods book. But now that I know, I am ok forever. Shellfish (in this case it was oysters) in black bean sauce were delicious. I particularly liked ripping them out of their shells. It was oddly satisfying. The hot & sour soup (also from the book)- not good. It was weirdly sweet, but like sweet-sweet not the kind of sweet that goes with savoury. The Singapore noodles were good. I really just kept going back for those and alternating the oysters and the orange chicken (that was actually more of a ginger chicken really).

Finishing off April: sourdough discard pizza from scratch?

 

Fooding From Home!- Amuse Bouche Edition: March Digest

March is more a mini-digest (haha!) as this all set off on *spooky!* Friday the 13th

Day 4 (Mar. 17): I refused to wear green. The 1000 Foods Book is playing a bigger role in our fooding now, as I am in need of some kitchen-time (I actually love baking and cooking and without work I have less excuses for whipping something up). Random number led us to Italian sandwiches with sauerkraut and crumbly pork sausages. And then we ate those for dinner for like the next three days. Not a good start to a prolonged period of social-isolation, I had to stop eating sauerkraut.

Day 8 (Mar. 21): Descendants Detroit Style Pizza. Goddamn they make a good pizza pie! This is what pizza should be, this is what I had been wanting out of a deep-dish pizza (sorry Chicago, YOU SUCK!). I have never had a more harmonious slice of pizza, everything on it paired so well. Who knew a dollop of basil (and other herb?) butter could work so well! *applause* I am tempted to say this is the best pizza in the city, it definitely beat out Maker Pizza my previous #1. But then again that’s not a bad thing, to have a rotation of really good pizzas available to me based on what I am in the mood for. I love this.

 

Hungry Insomniac: Falafel and Shawarma

As it turns out Chamsine opened a new location, conveniently (or is it?) at Queen & Sherbourne.  Not a happy corner, I swear there were blood drops all over the sidewalk at the corner across the way and I stepped in it. As we had walked down we debated what our backup plans would be if this place failed us again.

Lucky for us, they set up shop where there used to be an old Irish pub and were open. We ordered a falafel, shawarma and kebab wrap. All three with the works and I just picked out the tomatoes, it was easier that way. At first I was bummed they didn’t have fries. Until I was halfway through my second half of a wrap, and I realized it would have been way too much food. It was already too much. Unfortunately I had gone in the wrong order. I started with the kebab, it was alright. The falafel was much better. But then the shawarma, oh man! I really wish I had gone in the reverse order. Twice I wiped my face and said I was done and twice I went back for more bites of shawarma.

 

Steaking It To The Eats

I was curious to see what the new iteration of Momofuku, Kojin would have in store for us. It was no longer a price fixe menu, instead it was more of a steakhouse. I had a vague notion of it being a steakhouse but I moreso remembered it just focusing on Ontario meats. Good thing we ordered the steak because when Brent went back and checked his notes he saw that it was indeed known as a steakhouse.

To start we ordered the corn flatbread because the server said they were known for it and served it in all the Momofuku restaurants. She didn’t really need to sell it on me, as I was already convinced: spiced honey sounded so good. Brent also ordered the fire-smoked beet salad because it had savoy cabbage in it, one of the 1001 foods. I picked out a few pieces of cabbage, it was alright. But he mostly on his own with this one. Beets taste like dirt to me.

For our mains Brent had the butcher’s steak because we were told that all the other steak options were meant for sharing and were large. Curiously it was the only one without a size listed and the steak Brent got was tiny by steakhouse standards. It does explain the low price tag though. I had the pork chop except the only accouterments were onions. I mean yes they added a nice flavour but I didn’t want to eat them. The pork chop itself was weird. Some bites were good. Some were super fatty and chewy. Some were tasteless. Overall it was a tough piece of meat and even the steak proved easier to cut.

For dessert we split an order of the peanut butter cake because it was served with hokey-poke ice cream (vanilla ice cream with bits of something similar to sponge toffee). It was just vanilla ice cream with barely a discernible hokey-poke. The cake itself was still warm, a nice touch but kind of mild on the flavour. I liked the mildness of the peanut butter but it needed something else still to go with it. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t something I would crave.

At least the cocktails were good, further cementing my growing love affair with yuzu.

 

Aloette is French for Disappointing*

*I am well aware I gave away the ending.

I went into our odd-hour lunch (3pm is neither lunch nor dinner) at Aloette with medium-low expectations based on our experience at Alobar. If only I knew how wrong I was. I am actually a little bit impressed with just how below-expectation Aloette was! Seriously! Across the board everything was subpar. The cocktails barely saved it. The bread was alright.

To start we had the hamachi sashimi. We were presented with a bowl and a spoon. Just one, so we could serve ourselves. It was a confused dish. The fish, the avocado and what was supposed to be salsa verde (but was really just flavourless green goop) did not go together at all. The fish was underneath it all but had taken in none of the flavour. The avocado, though warm and salted, seemed like it was tossed in just because, more of an after-thought.

The potato gnocchi looked good but all I could taste was Parmesan cheese. With a cheese that expensive and that rich in flavour, a little goes a long way. Even the pieces with little cheese had soaked it up from their mates. Brent said the bacon, which I avoided as if I needed any more umami flavour, was chewy. The fried chicken looked and sounded promising. Yuzu and honey! Except the lettuce was served on the side: were we supposed to make a salad of it? Wrap the chicken in it? I ate just the chicken. Which was not that good. I doused it in hot sauce and that helped a little. The best (though so few) bites were the ones with the yuzu-honey combination! Why was it just a little tiny sprinkling?! Why didn’t it get the Parmesan treatment?! Pile it on!

Brent ordered the octopus, maybe that would save our lunch. The octopus at Alobar had been good. Nope. It was bland and tasteless. It was on a par with the romanesco in the dish (read: broccoli!). At least I can cross that one off the 1000 foods list?

The award for most lackluster, most disappointing meal goes to…. Aloette! I don’t even feel the need to wait until the end of the year.

 

FloriDejaVu: Day 4

Sat. Nov. 9, 2019:
Key West to Miami, Florida:

I woke up at 8am because I couldn’t sleep any more. By some miracle I was not hungover and had slept quite well for the most part. At the hotel breakfast they had two carafes of coffee, one full sized one and one smaller one. Except neither was marked as decaf. This was a game of Russian roulette I was not willing to play. I filled up my cup halfway from each. Except then there was no milk! They had mini boxes of cereal but no milk! At least there was creamer in the hotel room. It was raining, checkout wasn’t until 11am and our lunch restaurant didn’t open until 10am. We settled in to watch TV, Planet Earth marathon alternating with Friends, and wait out the rain.

The key lime pie was good but nowhere near as good as Kermit’s (first place) or Joe’s Stone Crab (second place). The crumb had gotten soggy in the fridge overnight and it was a bit salty but they did get bonus points for serving it with a lime slice on top. It was a nice touch. I ate the last ⅕ of the sandwich from yesterday, it had totally held up and maybe was even a smidge better (or i was just hungrier this time around?).

We checked out and had one last Key West walk ahead of us. First to the car, which was parked a few blocks away. When we left for snorkeling, we lost our prime parking spot right out front. We passed some high school girls doing a car wash at the gas station on the corner. We passed by again via a different corner after we dropped our stuff in the car and headed out to Duval St. for one last walk. I joked about if I walked in would they give me a shower. At least the rain had stopped and it was much cooler now.

Duval St. is drastically different on a Saturday than on a weekday. Everyone is out and about drinking. There were some people who were impressively hammered for eleven in the morning. One lady sitting on a bar patio shouted at Brent, “go Blue Jays!” (She was there an hour later on our walk back). I joked that we had one last chance at Margaritaville. It was during this conversation that I learned it had nothing to do directly with Key West or Jimmy Buffet, that it was just capitalizing on a song lyric from the two. It was more Hard Rock Cafe or Bubba Gump, rather than the Sloppy Joe’s I thought it was. Having just now learned that Key West was nicknamed margaritaville I decided that on the walk back we would stop in at Fat Tuesday for one last walking margarita. Also, I had not gone to Fat Tuesday while we were in New Orleans so it only made sense.

We had lunch at the Conch Shack, another place from Brent’s 1001 Foods book. They were known for their conch fritters but they had a platter of conch: fritters, ceviche and cracked. Arguably that made the most sense to order. Brent also ordered a cheeseburger, given the last one had been terrible and, in my mind, did not count. Now this, this was a cheeseburger! So flavourful and greasy and basic and oh-so-perfect. I also really like the cracked conch, which was just flattened, salted breaded and fried pieces of fish. But the true winner was the conch fritters, possibly one of my all-time favourite seafood dishes in general. As we ate, we heard faint peeping, there was a momma chicken and her six little chicks nearby and they soon got wise to the fact that we were messy eaters, dropping crumbs all over the floor. We were worried about stepping on them when we finished. Some people walked by and saw them and started taking photos, promptly scaring them off.

We stopped in at Sloppy Joe’s for a bathroom break. The place was packed with tourists. Fat Tuesday was just a wall of slushie machines. I went with the smallest of the four sizes. The signs all said that the strawberry margarita was the fan favourite, so obviously I had to get that one. Even still, the smallest size was quite hefty, 12oz maybe? It was good and refreshing except I kept getting rib freeze. As soon as it settled though, I went right back in. We stopped at Kwest to get another pack of the almost-completely-peanut-butter Reese’s cups. They were so good, even better when they were frozen. I also got a Mexican Sprite, we had a long drive ahead of us with few stops. We walked back along Olivia St. for one last look in the cemetery for the cat I had named Floyd, Flossy for short. Alas, she was gone. We walked by the car wash girls again for the third time. As we waited for the light to change Brent spotted a Polish grocery store across the street. I was compelled to go look. There was no bakery, I had really been hoping for some fresh road snacks. They did have singles of beer, which was unfortunate as we had enough drinks. I wish I had known about it sooner. They had a black currant radler! They didn’t even have the basic sól ziołowa! I did get a good laugh at the wing spice that roughly translated to “wild, south, untamed” style.

The Mexican Sprite was so much better than regular Sprite, so smooth and tasty. I was headed from margaritaville to sleepyville, I couldn’t stay awake. I put in a request for a Dunkin’ Donuts stop and nodded off. Unfortunately, the two Dunkin’s we passed were both on the opposite side and hard to get to. I tried to eat a Reese cup but it was so incredibly melty that it was a bad idea. I stuck the top of the wrapper into the vent in order to cool it via a/c. We had been so close to making it the whole trip with only filling up the car before returning it. Alas, as we were almost out of the Keys the low-gas indicator light came on. We would have to fill up the car twice. It wasn’t meant to be. At the gas station I got green apple Fanta and a bag of chili lime (purple bag) Doritos. They had Ben & Jerry’s ice cream sandwiches but we were on our way to lunch! I made a note of it for the next time we are in the States.

As we pulled into the Popeye’s parking lot, I saw that they had a chicken sandwich poster in the window. And it did NOT have a sold out sign over top. Things were looking good! We ordered one spicy and one regular. Except than Brent’s credit card wasn’t working and I was down to my last $5USD. We had come so far!! We couldn’t’ fail now!! Thankfully my credit card worked, else we would have had to settle for just one. The drive-thru had gotten so busy that we couldn’t pull out of the parking lot until one car let us pass through. The sandwiches were in little foil bags to keep the heat- except within a few minutes we were chowing down on the regular one. By the time we got to Trader Joe’s 20-minutes later we were finishing off the spicy sandwich. It was very good, I loved the soft buttery bun and the fried chicken was so good. I still could have used more pickles or lettuce or mayonnaise. I lean a little more towards it than Chick-Fil-A because i am a sucker for that crispy skin. The apple Fanta was really hitting the spot.

Trader Joe’s was confusing. There was a line to get into the parking lot and a guy in a vest directing traffic. Brent pulled into the parking lot of the Burger King across the street while I ran in. I grabbed as many jars of Everything But the Bagel spice as I could safely carry. It was actually half of the stock left. The guy looked at my five jars and looked at me curiously. I said we didn’t have it in Canada. He understood, he knew they were $10CAD each on Amazon. In total I paid $11 USD for all five of my jars. I immediately regretted not running back and grabbing the rest that were left on the shelf. But then I thought of Brent sitting in the parking lot and I rushed out. I had already taken longer than I’d wanted because the cashier was so chatty. He ended up shaking hands and exchanging names with the guy in front of me in line.

We topped off the gas tank in the car and I ran inside to grab an iced coffee for the next morning (something i had forgotten to do at the first gas station). I also found a Hershey’s strawberry and waffle chocolate bar and summer splash Starbursts. We were staying at a hotel in the airport which would save us some time the next morning and make the early wakeup a little less brutal. Our room did not have a mini fridge but it did have an ice bucket. We arrived in the room right at the start of halftime in the football game, perfect time for Brent to go get ice while I started on packing. I filled the sink and arranged our drinks while Brent went to get a second bucket of ice. I added the Reese’s cups in there as well. Packing was like a game of Tetris, I really had to cram everything in. The All Day watermelon wine spritzer was surprisingly good, given it was a wine from the band of the same name. It felt a little like a prank but it got the job done. The rose one was better though. I had a funny photo of both of them sitting in the sink on ice. I played a little Mario Odyssey while Brent watched football. We finally cracked into the tostones, they were not good. Far and away the worst we’ve ever had. Thankfully we had the backup Doritos which tasted faintly like Froot Loops thanks to the overpowering lime. The frozen Reese’s cup was so good. I kind of regretted not just grabbing the whole box.

When we checked in we saw that there was an airport Margartaville, I joked that we had one last shot. Now that we were out of hotel drinks, it seemed kismet. I was finally going to Margaritaville! It reminded me of Jack Astors. Our table was a surfboard. I had considered getting the original margarita but then Brent said he was also getting a margarita, so he got that one while I got one with fresh raspberries. Good thing, given the original was way stronger and it would not have ended well. I’d already had two cans of wine. They were not spritzers, it was just straight up wine. Eventually i realized the strength of my margarita had been masked by the raspberry puree. We split an order of the chicken quesadilla, it was alright. The real winner was the chips and guac on the side.

Back in the room I was trying to write in my notebook but I was fighting a bad case of the mega-hiccups. The shower was one of those high-pressure ones, not great on my sunburnt back. I flipped between Love It Or List It and a Thanksgiving cooking show.