Road Tips

The Big Steer - Altoona, IA

Back in Central Iowa again for a weekend earlier this summer, it was getting late in the day and we decided to go get something to eat.  I decided to go to a place that my wife and I had both been to before - but not together.  I took off toward Altoona and The Big Steer steakhouse.

I can't tell you when the Big Steer first opened - I seem to remember first seeing the place back in the 80's on trips to Des Moines.  It had been over 12 years since I had last been in the place and Cindy and her kids had gone there during a trip to Adventureland earlier than that.  Randy and Sherry Fix are the owners of the Big Steer and have been for years.   

The Big Steer is located on Adventureland Drive in Altoona just down the road from both Adventureland and Prairie Meadows Racetrack and Casino.  (see map)  The restaurant is easy to see thanks to - of course - the big steer statue out in front of the place.  

They're open until 9:30 at the Big Steer and we walked in at 9:28.  I asked the hostess if it was too late to get in for dinner.  She went back into the kitchen to check with the cooks.  I took a look in the bar area - the place where I ate the first time I came in years ago - and it was empty.  She came back out, grabbed a couple menus and said, "We can get you in."  We promised her that we'd order fast and eat fast.  

She guided us to a booth in the dining room.  The dining room was still about a quarter full and we were soon greeted by our server for the evening, Ted.  We promised him that we'd be quick so he could get out of the restaurant sooner than later.  I ordered up a Boulevard Double Wide IPA and Cindy got a glass of malbec wine. 

Steaks are the main dish at the Big Steer, although I did look closely at the prime rib they had that evening.  Pork chops, chicken entrees and seafood including lobster tails, shrimp and salmon filets are also available at The Big Steer.  

I prodded Cindy to make up her mind quickly so that by the time Ted came back with our drinks we both would be ready to order.  When he dropped off the beer and wine, he wanted to know if we needed some more time to look over the menu.  He was sort of surprised when we told him we were ready to order.  

Cindy got a Caesar salad to start off the meal while I got a house salad with parmesan dressing.  The salad plates were filled with cool and crisp lettuce greens.  The parmesan dressing was light and not overpowering.  The salads came with some warm homemade bread.

Since most of the other diners had their meals, it didn't take long to get our meals.  In fact, Cindy still was eating her Caesar salad when her dinner was brought out.  She ended up getting the Steak de Burgo with a side of grilled asparagus.  The steak was a 6 ounce filet - medium - that was topped with a butter/garlic/white wine de Burgo sauce.  Steak de Burgo is sort of a staple at Des Moines area steak houses, first introduced to the area in the late 40's at the classy Johnny and Kay's restaurant near the Des Moines International Airport.  (Johnny and Kay's closed in the early 70's.)  Now you can find Steak de Burgo - in many variations - at many Des Moines area restaurants.

(Here's the recipe of how to make Steak de Burgo, courtesy of the Des Moines Area Community College culinary education department via the Iowa Beef Industry Council - For each beef tenderloin steak: sauté beef tenderloin steak to medium-rare in 3 tablespoons of butter in heavy skillet. Remove steak from pan. Add 2 teaspoons chopped garlic and sauté. Add 2 teaspoons fresh or dried basil and deglaze pan with 2 to 3 tablespoons white wine. Pour sauce over steak to serve.)

I went with the 9 ounce USDA Choice filet - rare.  I got a side of fresh hash browns mixed with fried onions and topped with cheese to go along with it.  I figured I'd have a couple three bites of the hash browns because I was going to concentrate on the steak.

I was joking that the steak was still "mooing" when it was served, it was so rare.  It had a cool deep red center and was tender and juicy - just the way I like it.  It was a fabulous steak.  It was late, I was hungry and I made short work of the 9 ounce filet.  

Earlier when we had sat down, we noticed some people at a table near us eating creme brûlée.  I'm a sucker for good creme brûlée.  After we'd finished and Ted came to ask us if we wanted any dessert, it was after 10 p.m., we were the last people in the place and they were already starting to clean the dining room.  I said, "You know, if it were around 7:30 we would get some of the creme brûlée.  But we know you want to get out of here, so we're going to pass."  

Ted produced our bill, placed it on the table and sincerely said, "Thank you for your consideration."  It looked like he'd had a long night.  

Even though we hurried ourselves through dinner, we didn't feel hurried or got any part of an attitude from the staff at The Big Steer because of our late arrival.  Ted's service was professional, the food was very good, and we enjoyed the time we spent there - although it was less than 40 minutes from the time we entered the place until the time we left.  The Big Steer is one of those steakhouses that shows how good Iowa beef can really be without being really fancy.  It's worth a stop if you're traveling along I-80 and you're looking for a good steak dinner.  

Old Town Mexican Cafe vs. Cafe Coyote Taco Shootout - San Diego, CA

During our trip to San Diego earlier this year, my wife wanted to visit the Old Town State Park, the first European settlement in the area dating back to 1769.  Many of the buildings in the park are replicas of buildings from dating back anywhere from the 1820's to 1870's.  Many of the buildings are of traditional Mexican architecture, but there are also a number of buildings that feature historical Western U.S. styles of designs. It turns out that Old Town is the most visited state park in California, but the area is also somewhat of a tourist trap.  There's a number of shops and restaurants in Old Town, some of the shops were the type where we walked in and immediately wanted to get out of the place.  

It was in the afternoon when we were there and we wanted to get something to eat for lunch.  We decided on Mexican food, but there were two restaurants that were close to one another and we couldn't really make up our minds which one to go to.  The first one - Cafe Coyote - had a lady out in front making fresh tortillas.  The second one - Old Town Mexican Cafe - had a sign that said they were the original handmade tortilla restaurant in Old Town.  We thought, "Hey, let's do our own little taste test and get street tacos at both places!"   

We decided to give Old Town Mexican Cafe the first try.  (see map)  Bob Estrada, Herb Lizalde, and J.D. Dahlin are the longtime owners of the Old Town Mexican Cafe which opened over 33 years ago.  Old Town Mexican Cafe is somewhat famous in the area for their tequila dinners once every two or three months that showcases different tequilas pared with foods.  

Entering Old Town Mexican Cafe, we found a large bar area with a dining room just over a half wall.  It was around 2 p.m. when we walked in and the place was pretty full.  

To the right of the hostess stand was a lady making tortillas on a flat grill.  We first had our handmade tortillas in California years ago and we're big believers in the taste of a good fresh corn tortilla.  

We were seated in the colorful patio dining room off to the side of the main dining/bar area.  This area also had a bar and a number of tables and booths.  We were given menus and we both ordered a margarita to get things going.  

The food on the menu at Old Town Mexican Cafe is your typical fare - of course there are tacos, but they have enchiladas, burritos, chimichangas and a whole slew of appetizers including a chorizo queso, a spicy shrimp appetizer and a braised beef rib appetizer.  

But we were there for the tacos.  We decided to order a couple carne asada street-style tacos - Mexican-style with chopped fresh cilantro and onions.  They came with a chile verde salsa and, somewhat to our surprise, a side of refried beans.  

The other tacos we got were a pork carnitas and a shredded beef taco where the tortilla shells were deep fried tortillas, thicker and not as pliable as the other tacos.  They were much larger than the carne asada tacos and I knew that our street taco shoot-out would be finished before we got to Cafe Coyote if we ate all we had on the plates.  

The carne asada tacos were very good.  The meat was tender and had a little crust on the outside of the steak.  The tortillas had that wonderful freshly made taste quality.  

I'm not certain that I liked the thicker tacos as much as the fresh grilled tortillas.  The shredded beef was sort of bland, but tender.  The carnitas were also good, but not the kind of taste sensation I was looking for.  We were careful to sample all the tacos without overeating.  We killed off the carne asada tacos as the fresh grilled tortilla shells were just outstanding.  

We walked around for about an hour looking at things in Old Town San Diego before we headed over to Cafe Coyote.  (see map)  Out in front of the place was a lady making tortilla shells along the sidewalk.  The smell of the cooking tortilla shells was heavenly.  

The people behind Cafe Coyote are Lehn Goetz and her husband, Richard.  Richard Goetz grew up in New York City and ended up in San Diego as a Vietnam vet and a Naval Officer.  After working for five years in an investment firm, Goetz started his own firm and one of his first investments was purchasing the building that now houses Cafe Coyote.  The building was part of the struggling south end of Old Town and had been going through a two-year foreclosure.  Goetz purchased the property in the fall of 1988.  Less than year later, Goetz and his soon-to-be wife Lehn opened Cafe Coyote in a small space in the building that seated just 70 people. 

Lehn Goetz recognized the potential of the south end of Old Town San Diego and in addition to running the restaurant she spearheaded marketing efforts for bringing more people to their business and other businesses in the immediate area.  She was one of the founding members of the Business Improvement District for the south end of Old Town.  

Richard Goetz no longer is involved with the day-to-day business at Cafe Coyote, but Lehn Goetz continues to run the restaurant which has grown ten-fold in the restaurant. There are two floors of the restaurant including an outdoor patio area in between two of the buildings.  

We were seated in the cantina area of the restaurant and was greeted by our server Ramon.  They had an impressive selection of tequila at Cafe Coyote featuring over 100 different types on hand.  Cafe Coyote claims that more tequila is sold in the Old Town area of San Diego than any other place in the world.  On Thursday evenings, Cafe Coyote also has tequila ambassadors that answer questions and make suggestions of what tequilas to try.  Cindy ordered a gold margarita and I went with a Dos Equis Ambar as we looked through the menu.  

Ramon came back with the drinks and he said, "You know, happy hour starts in about 10 minutes.  I'll start it early for you folks."  That was nice of him!

Part of the happy hour specials were an assortment of tacos - carne asada, shredded beef, carnitas, al pastor, shrimp, fish and even potato tacos.  And that was perfect with us.  Most of the tacos were priced at $4.50 each if you bought them ala carte ($4.95 for the carne asada and shrimp tacos), but they were two bucks each (three bucks for the shrimp and fish tacos) during happy hour.  

We ended up getting a carne asada taco along with a shredded beef and a carnitas taco.  The carne asada didn't have the crunchy outer edge at Cafe Coyote compared to what we experienced at Old Town Mexican Cafe. However, the carnitas had a wonderful taste - moist, tender and flavorful, they were fabulous.  And the spices that they cooked the shredded beef in were more pronounced and flavorful than what we had at Old Town Mexican Cafe.  The shredded beef was also moist and tender and really stood out on the taste buds.  

However, we thought the fresh tortillas at Old Town Mexican Cafe had an edge in taste and texture above the ones we had at Cafe Coyote.  The tortillas at Cafe Coyote cracked and fell apart while we were tasting them.  They seemed a little more dry and over-cooked compared to the ones at the Old Town Mexican Cafe.

OK - so in the great Old Town San Diego street taco shoot-out of 2015, my wife liked the carne asada at Old Town Mexican Cafe better than the one we had at Cafe Coyote.  But we both thought the shredded beef and the carnitas tacos were better than the ones we had earlier at Old Town Mexican Cafe.  However, we thought the fresh made tortillas were better at Old Town Mexican Cafe than the ones we had at Cafe Coyote.  We agreed that if they could get the tortillas from Old Town Mexican Cafe to go along with the carnitas and shredded beef from Cafe Coyote, and then get the carne asada tacos from Old Town Mexican Cafe, it would have been a perfect street taco outing.  Quite honestly, I'm not certain that you could go wrong with either place.  They were serviceable Mexican restaurants - not the best we've experienced, but worth the stop if you're in Old Town San Diego.

Chester's Hamburger Co. - San Antonio

Down in San Antonio for a dealer show earlier this summer, we had finished up with what we had to do around noon on that Friday.  My colleague John needed to go find some CD's for a demonstration he was going to do in Virginia the following week and we took off trying to find CD stores on the north side of San Antonio, which turned out to be a somewhat difficult proposition.  At a used CD shop that we found, I casually asked one of the guys where a good burger joint with cold beer would be - a place the locals go to.  He immediately said, "Oh, that would be Chester's."  As in Chester's Hamburger Company.  He directed us to one down the Interstate 10 freeway just north of Wurzbach Road.  (see map)  

Chester's Hamburger Company has been around since 1984, but other than finding out that Dale Mabry was the owner/president of the company for a number of years there was no other information that I could find on-line.  I'm not even certain how many Chester's there are in San Antonio - there may be three locations or as many as five.  In an age of social media and easy ways to get your name out to the public, Chester's Hamburger Co. has no web site, no Facebook page, no Twitter account - nothing that does anything to promote their place in the community.  And they may not need it - they're continually voted as having the best burgers in the San Antonio area.  

Even the building near the University of Texas/San Antonio Health Science Center that houses the Chester's is very nondescript.  They have a tall sign out front that is visible from the freeway, but that was it.  The parking lot sloped enough that you would feel a lot better about putting on the parking brake to make sure your car didn't slip out of gear and roll away.  

Inside Chester's Hamburger Company, the main dining room had a low slung checker board ceiling.  It had kind of a delightful dive feeling to the place.  License plates and beers signs covered the walls while antique stained glass window panes were hung in the restaurant's windows.  There was a sort of an air-conditioned patio room on the front of the building that looked like it had windows that opened on cooler days.  As in cooler than the 93 degrees it just happened to be that particular day.  

The procedure at Chester's is to order at the counter and get a number for your order and place it on a table for them to bring it out to you.  Everything is made to order.  In addition to burgers - which included a chili cheeseburger, bacon cheeseburger and green chile cheeseburger - you can also get a BLT, a grilled chicken sandwich, a grilled cheese sandwich, hot dogs, chili dogs, and even salads with grilled chicken, and even a bacon salad.  I'd never seen a bacon salad before on a menu anywhere.

The other thing that they had at Chester's was an impressive beer selection.  And they had Shiner Premium beer.  Hey, when you're in Texas!  I had to have one.  My colleague John didn't want to slum with me and got a Duvel to go along with his burger.  But they easily had close to 75 different beers in bottles in the cooler behind the counter.

John and I got the same thing - the green chile cheeseburger, hold the mayo.  And we both got fries (although I thought about getting their onion rings).  They were the great greasy fries that are crispy on the outside, but still somewhat pliable when you pick them up.  The burger was served with a poppy seed bun.  

There wasn't a lot of the green chile salsa on the burger, but it had a bit of a peppery bite to the taste.  The burger also came with fresh lettuce, pickles, a tomato slice and fresh raw onion rings.  From the first bite I knew this was a very good burger, but I couldn't help but think how much it tasted like another San Antonio institution - Whataburger.  (There's a Whataburger right near the airport in San Antonio and I had to stop and get a burger right after I landed in town earlier in the week.)  Both Chester's and Whataburger make their burgers to order, the only difference I could see was that Chester's sold beer and Whataburger doesn't, and Chester's uses a poppy seed bun, while Whataburger's is plain.  Still, I'm such a big fan of the Whataburger (click here to read about a previous visit to Whataburger), the Chester's burger was probably a small step up in terms of the bun and possibly the veggies that they put on the burgers.  Chester's had a very good and very tasty burger.  

The guy at the used CD shop didn't steer us wrong.  The burger at Chester's was juicy and full of flavor, the green chile gave it a bit of a bite in the taste, the veggies they put on the burger were fresh and crisp, and the poppy seed bun held together very well with the juicy burger patty.  Along with a great selection of cold bottled beer, I was thoroughly happy with the burger at Chester's Hamburger Company.  It's a step up - albeit a small one - from the very good burgers at Whataburger.  Plus they have beer!

Le Local - Montreal

Earlier this year, we had a dealer event in Montreal where we unveiled some new speakers from Focal.  The group that I was with involved about 25 people and my colleague Todd was in charge of coming up with dinner options for the group for the two evenings we'd be dining with our dealers.  He came up with a popular bistro in Montreal's Old Port area - Le Local.  

Louis-François Marcotte was a local chef who helped produce cooking shows in Montreal including the popular BBQ Cooking with Louis.  His production partner, Richard Dorval, was also involved with restaurants in the Montreal area.  Marcotte and Dorval were involved in a couple of restaurants before opening Le Local in 2008.  A year later, Marcotte and Dorval split with Dorval keeping the restaurant and installing Olivier Belzile as the chef of the restaurant.  In 2012, Dorval was joined by his daughter, Marie-Lou, as a co-owner of Le Local.  

Le Local is located on Rue William, just up from the Cité du Havre neighborhood where many of the old St. Lawrence piers were located.  (see map)  It was about a 10 minute car ride for us from the hotel to the restaurant and we were seated right at 7 p.m. at a long table in the bar area of the restaurant.  

The main dining area could be classified as urban contemporary with a large accent on wood paneling and sleek lighting.  The lighting was muted but sufficient enough to see around the place.  There was an outdoor patio for dining, but a storm had come through earlier in the evening and with it some cooler weather so they had it closed down for the evening.

Since we were in a large group, we had a prix fixe menu rather than getting to order off the regular menu.  The choices were a braised beef dish served on a bed of rice and squash puree, a New Brunswick salmon served with grilled broccoli fleurettes in a cauliflower cream puree, and a cheese ravioli dish that was served with duck confit.  

I got the braised beef entree.  It was a chunk of beef, slowly cooked and covered in a wine sauce.  It was - in a word - delicious.  The beef was tender and full of flavor.  I'm normally not big on squash, but the puree went very well with the beef.  This was a great dinner.  

The New Brunswick salmon (above right) featured a large chunk of salmon that had a deep fried salmon chip garnished on top.  The broccoli surround the salmon resting on the cauliflower cream puree.  A small bit of a tapenade made from roasted garlic, black olives and anchovies was off to the side.  The two dealers near me who got the salmon said it, too, was very good.  

One of the guys across the table from me got the cheese ravioli with the duck confit (pictured right).  Slices of parmesan cheese covered the confit that was mixed in with some arugula with the cheese ravioli resting in a brown gravy.  It actually looked a lot better than it was described on the menu, but I was pretty happy with my braised beef dish. 

And we drank a lot of wine - a LOT of wine - at Le Local.  Their wine list was extensive and pretty impressive.  Most of the wines listed were of French or Italian origin.  I wish I would have taken a picture of the label of the red we had.  It was full bodied and very good.  

There were some other things on the Le Local menu that I would have liked to have tried - the grilled AAA-rated (next to the very top rating for Canadian beef) flank steak with a spicy barbecue butter sauce and the salmon tartar in a lime truffle oil are two that popped out at me when I was reading the menu after dinner.  But what I had with the braised beef was fine enough for me that evening.  The food was eclectic and interesting.  The service was impeccable.  There were little to no hiccups in taking care of 25 diners all at once.  Le Local would be a place that could offer a nice romantic dinner as well as handling a large party.  (Photo courtesy EatWell Montreal.)

Stone Brewing World Bistro and Gardens - Escondido, CA

A shout out today to my neighbor Greg who upon hearing that my wife and I were going to be spending time in the San Diego area for our 20th wedding anniversary earlier this year told me that, in no uncertain terms, we had to go to the Stone Brewing World Bistro and Gardens in Escondido.  We were spending our last night in Carlsbad, about a 20 minute drive from Escondido, so we went over to the Stone Brewing World Bistro for dinner.  

There are a large number of great micro/craft breweries in the San Diego area.  Ballast Point is one of my favorites, Karl Strauss is a legacy brewing company, and AleSmith was one that I was turned on to during our visit to the area.  However, Stone Brewing may be the most well known of any of the San Diego breweries.  In the early 1990's, Greg Koch and Steve Wagner began to fool around making beer in Koch's condo in Solano Beach, CA, just north of San Diego.  The two had casually known each other before they met up again at a one day beer making class at the University of California-Davis.  Wagner went off to work at the Pyramid Brewery in Washington state, but kept in touch with Koch.

The two decided to start their own brewery and it was Wagner who had the recipe for their first beer.  But they needed seed money and they found an investor who was willing to put up money toward a brewing facility in San Marcos, CA, a small city next to Escondido.  The investor - Koch's dad - gave the pair $500,000 to buy a 30 barrel brewing system and they made their first beer - a pale ale - in 1996.  

Wagner was the brewer, Koch was the salesman.  He took off with jugs of the original Stone Pale Ale to give out free samples at bars around the San Diego county area.  However, the hoppy and bitter taste of their pale ale was ahead of its time causing many people to reject the taste of their beer.  

Pictured right - Greg Koch and Steve Wagner

Initially, Koch and Wagner were losing as much as $30,000 a month - they were making more beer than they were selling.  A cash infusion from Koch's dad kept them going for awhile longer until the summer of 1998 when they finally turned a profit.  Stone Brewing never looked back.  

Today, Stone Brewing is the largest craft brewery in the San Diego area, and the 9th largest in the United States (as of 2014).  It brews eight year-round beers and a nearly equal number of special releases during the calendar year.   

In 2005, Stone Brewing opened their new brewing facility in Escondido, a 55,000 square foot facility with two 200 barrel capacity brewing systems.  Nearly a year later, Stone Brewing opened the World Bistro and Gardens next door to their brewing facility.     The restaurant part was 8500 square feet with a seating capacity of 425 persons.  The restaurant was one of the first sustainable restaurants in Southern California featuring a number of "farm-to-fork" foods long before it was fashionable to have that type of dining.

And unlike other breweries that sold only their brewed beers, Stone Brewing World Bistro features three dozen specialty beers on tap and over 100 varieties of bottled beers to choose from.  They also have an extensive wine list at the World Bistro with a number of bottles of white and red wines from California vintners.  

(In 2013, Stone Brewing opened a second World Bistro location in the Point Loma area of San Diego.  The Stone Brewing World Bistro Liberty Station features similar "farm-to-fork" and eclectic beer offerings as the Escondido location.)

We had made reservations for 7:30 on a Saturday evening, which was good until we realized that it was going to be a spectacular sunset and we wanted to enjoy it one last time while we were in Southern California.  I made a call back to Stone Brewing World Bistro late in the afternoon to see if we could push it back to 8:00 p.m.  I left a message and they called back shortly to tell me it was no problem.  Even though it had turned somewhat cloudy about a half hour before sunset, the scenery was still worth the wait.   

It was about a 25 minute drive from where we were watching the sunset along a beach in Encinitas to the Stone Brewing facility.  (see map)  Actually, we drove past the entrance and had to do a U-turn down the street to make it back to the parking lot.  As we entered the parking lot, well, there were a LOT of cars.  I mean, there had to easily be well over 200 cars in the parking lot.  I sort of wondered what we got ourselves into.

We found a pathway that was covered with vines that took us to the entry way and the host stand for the World Bistro.  There was a small wait before I gave the young man our name.  I figured that we'd have to wait for a while, but he grabbed a couple menus right away and said, "You can follow me, folks."  

We wound our way through the main dining area, past a large stone wall that had the etched Stone brewing logo in it, past large windows that looked into the brewing facility, past a large rectangular stone-topped bar and up some steps to an upstairs dining area that overlooked the main dining floor.  We were seated at a table and it wasn't long before our server for the evening, Braden, came over to greet us.  

Personable, outgoing and sure of himself, Braden was a great help in navigating both the food and beer menus that evening.  Cindy had ordered up the Stone Pale Ale.  Braden said, "Hey, we still have the original Pale Ale, but we've got a new Pale Ale - the Stone Pale Ale 2.0.  It's smoother, yet more flavorful - I think - than the original."  He did such a good job selling it that not only did Cindy change her beer order, I got one, as well.  

The food offerings at the World Bistro were, well, interesting.  With most of the food geared toward the "farm-to-fork" concept, I found items such as rigatoni with kale and locally made Portuguese sausage.  Duck confit tacos with a green papaya-jicama slaw sounded interesting enough, as did the Peruvian-spiced chicken.  For appetizers, they featured hemp seed pretzels, fried olives with roasted almonds, fried quail legs in a Sriracha sauce, and fried Brussels sprouts in a sweet and sour sauce.  For a guy from the Midwest, it was very Californian to me.  

Cindy started off with a bowl of the cheddar/garlic/Stone Ruination soup.  It was an unusually strong smelling - and in a good way - cheddar cheese soup with a good amount of garlic mixed in with a portion of the Stone Ruination Double India Pale Ale giving the soup a sort of hoppy and bitter taste.  She shared some with me after taking a few bites and declaring it to be delicious.  It was very good, but also very rich.  One person could have had the soup as a main course.  

For our main entrees - which came out very quickly after we had ordered (Cindy still had about half her soup in the bowl) - I ended up getting the Arrogant Brisket.  It was slices of brisket braised in Stone Brewing's famous Arrogant Bastard Ale and served on a bed of mashed sweet potatoes.  Only I don't think they were sweet potatoes as much as they were mashed garlic potatoes, which was fine with me.  The beef was tender and the beer-braising brought out a lot of interesting flavors to the meat.  Crispy onion straws and blanched kale came with the brisket.  It was a good hearty meal.

Cindy got the chicken schnitzel that consisted of two flattened chicken breasts breaded and fried, then served with a medley of grill veggies such as broccoli and cauliflower.  The chicken schnitzel was sitting on a bed of garlic mashed potatoes.  Cindy immediately said that it was too much food, but did a good job in getting one of the chicken schnitzels down along with a number of the grilled vegetables.  She declared her dinner as very good, but there was too much of it.  Braden asked her if she wanted to box up the rest and she explained to him that we were traveling and it would just go to waste if she were to take it.

As most servers are wont to do, Braden tempted us with a series of desserts.  I was full from my very good brisket and Cindy was just about stuffed from the soup, chicken schnitzel and grilled veggies.  But she had him run through the list.  I stopped him when he said he had a blue cheese/jalapeño/blueberry cheesecake.  He enthusiastically said, "Oh, yeah!  It's great.  You get all the tastes - sweet, tart, bitter and spicy.  I like to eat it with some leavened bread and Sriracha sauce."  

And that's how he presented it to us.  The combinations in the cheesecake were interesting.  Yes, you did get a bit of a spicy taste from the jalapenos, there was a noticeable blue cheese taste and the fresh blueberries helped hold everything together.  I didn't quite get the leavened bread and Sriracha connection with everything, but I gave it a try.  The intense taste of the Sriracha was a little too overpowering with the rest of the dessert.  But, then again, I have a colleague who puts Sriracha on everything.  And I mean everything - he carries his own bottle with him wherever he goes.  

After dinner, we walked out into the garden area that featured a bar area, meandering stone walk ways that were engulfed in vegetation and illuminated with hanging lights that led to alcoves - some with fire pits - where people could sit and enjoy a beer over conversation.  Babbling brooks crossed under and beside the walk ways.  I would have liked to have seen the garden in the daylight, but at night it seemed sort of cozy and comfortable.  We walked around the garden for a good 20 minutes just looking at the stone formations that was the architectural base for the garden.    

Our visit to the Stone Brewing World Bistro and Gardens was a memorable experience - not only for the interesting and good food that we had, but for the architecture and lay-out of the garden area.  Braden's service was forward and efficient, and the overall vibe to the World Bistro was laid back, yet professional.  This was a great place - and a great meal - for our last night on our Southern California vacation.  

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

My wife and I recently took a trip to Eastern Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  We had considered taking a trip to Minnesota and hanging at a cabin resort that the sister of a friend of mine owns, but my wife vetoed that idea because we were going to go in September.  And she wanted to go somewhere warm, remembering that it didn't get past 70 at any time during our visit to San Diego earlier this year. She'd always wanted to go to the Great Smoky Mountains and after doing some research into the trip, we decided to make the trek just after Labor Day.  

My wife was especially intrigued with staying in Gatlinburg, TN - the gateway town to the Great Smoky Mountains.  We sort of knew what to expect with Pigeon Forge, the nearby town that is the home to Dollywood part-owned by country music superstar Dolly Parton who grew up in nearby Sevierville.  Driving through Pigeon Forge on our way to Gatlinburg, we thanked our lucky stars that we didn't book a room there.  It was the epitome of a tourist trap.  Little did we know that Gatlinburg was just a smaller version of Pigeon Forge.  

We figured that Gatlinburg would be similar to Estes Park, CO which is the gateway to the Rocky Mountain National Park that we visited a couple years ago.  (Click here to read about that trip.)  We thought there would be some unique shops along the main drag (known as Parkway Road) and it would be muted compared to Pigeon Forge.  After getting gigged $10 bucks for public parking off of Parkway Road in downtown Gatlinburg, we started to walk along the street.  After walking about 100 feet, I turned to my wife and said, "Uh, this is not for us..."  

There were shops with people standing out front huckstering to get tourists to come in. There was a cheesy shooting gallery.  A Guinness World Records shop employee beckoned people to come in.  We walked by a gospel magic shop where the teachings of Jesus were explained through illusions.  (I'm not making this up!)  Old time portrait studios where people dress up in 19th century garb and get their pictures taken in black and white were a big hit along Parkway Drive.  Funnel cake places, Baskin Robbins, and fudge shops were also along Parkway.  There were t-shirt shops and a museum that appeared to house replicas of famous cars from television and film.  Cindy had tears in her eyes when she realized that she had made a bad decision about wanting to stay in Gatlinburg for four nights.  

The only - well, I shouldn't say the only, but it's close - saving grace to us staying in Gatlinburg was our hotel, the Doubletree Park Vista.  It was built on a flat top above Gatlinburg and offered tremendous views of both the Great Smoky Mountains and of the town of Gatlinburg, itself.  The staff at the Park Vista was overly friendly and accommodating.  Upon arrival, the desk clerk warned us that we needed to remove all food from our vehicle because the black bears in the area were in the midst of foraging for food to shore up for the upcoming winter hibernation.  

(Just to show you how destructive bears can be, check out this video of a family's SUV that was trashed by a mama bear over the Labor Day holiday as they were on vacation near Gatlinburg.)

This is the panoramic view out of our 15th floor room at the Doubletree Park Vista.  (As always, you can click on the picture to get a somewhat larger view.)  The Park Vista was built in 1970 and became a Hilton property about five years ago.  They've spent a lot of money getting the place spruced up and about the only quibble I had with the place was that the beds were too soft and somewhat lumpy.  We had originally booked the room for four nights, but over dinner on our first night in Gatlinburg, we made alternate plans to get out of there sooner than later.  Nothing against the Park Vista - we just didn't like Gatlinburg.  

The people, however, were very friendly.  And many had that delightful heavy southern dialect that would take a one syllable word and turn it into two syllables.  Such as, "Be careful out THA-YER.  Thays BAY-YERS in the HE-ILLS."  And sometimes they'd take a two syllable word and make it one, as in, "That feller there looks like he needs some BOLD (boiled) peanuts!"  It's an infectious accent and one that I found myself replying to the people in the same inflection, mainly so they could understand me as they weren't used to hearing a plain Midwestern accent.   

When we were in the Rocky Mountains a couple years ago, we found a couple places in Estes Park that would make sandwiches that we could take up to the park and have while we saw the sights.  The first day into the park, we stopped at a place called the Chalet Village Market on the mountainside of Gatlinburg.  A very nice lady made up a couple hoagie style sandwiches for us and we had them at a picnic area in the park later on that day.  Along with a couple bottles of water and a bag of chips, I think the total bill came to just under $17 bucks (which I thought was a great deal.)  

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited national park in the United States - and by a long shot.  In 2014, over 10 million people visited the Great Smoky Mountains.  The next most visited park - the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona - had 4.7 million visitors.  One of the reasons may be that there is no admission fee, but another could be that nearly 60% of the nation's population is within a 12 hour - and less - drive to the park.   We knew that traffic could get sort of bad, but it was also after Labor Day so we knew it wouldn't be as bad.  

We had a couple of goals for the first day in the park.  One of the great things about the drive up the mountain are the number of turnouts that offered some stunning views of the mountains and valleys.  This was taken from a turn out on the Newfound Gap Road about halfway up the mountain.  

This is the view from the parking lot at the Newfound Gap where Tennessee and North Carolina meet.  This is looking east into North Carolina.  At a few yards over 5000 feet, this is the lowest drivable pass in the Great Smoky Mountains.  This spot is about a 16 mile drive from Gatlinburg - or about 30 to 40 minutes with regular traffic.  It was a little cool up there - in the low 60's.  But it was comfortable enough where I didn't need a jacket.  Cindy was a little cool, however.  

Also at Newfound Gap, the Appalachian Trail crosses the parking lot.  The trail begins on the southern end at Springer Mountain in northern Georgia and spans the length of the Appalachian Mountains up to the northern terminus at Mount Katahdin in Maine - 2168 miles in total.  We could not be at the trail without walking on a portion of it.  There were actually a number of people taking a hike on the trail at the Newfound Gap.

A few miles away from the Newfound Gap is Clingmans Dome, the highest peak in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  It is also the highest point along the Appalachian Trail that roughly follows the North Carolina/Tennessee border through the park.  It's about a 15 minute drive along a mountain road to get to the parking lot for Clingmans Dome.

The views from Clingmans Dome - the third highest point east of the Mississippi River - were equally stunning.  The low clouds with the sun filtering through onto the green mountain side below was a pretty impressive sight.  

There's an observation tower at the top of Clingman's Dome that's up a pretty steep, yet paved, walkway.  Now, I was warned about this walk up to the observation tower - about 1/2 mile total - and with the light air at over 6000 feet, the walk was - and using the local vernacular - a BEE-ITCH!  Thankfully, they had benches every few yards and I had to sit a couple three times to catch my breath on the way to the top.  But after I got used to the light atmosphere after a bit, I was able to make it up the final 200 yards without being winded.  

At the top of the steep trail is the observation deck.  It's basically a round slab on top of a pedestal and to get to it you have to traverse a long meandering walkway that takes you to the top.  This is where my wife paused as she looked up at the walkway and said, "I don't know if I can do this."  She's afraid of heights - walking on bridges especially freaks her out - and she wasn't too whippy about completing the final leg of the journey going up on a narrow bridge to the top.  But she realized that I busted my out-of-shape ass up the long walkway to get to this point and she wasn't about to wimp out on me getting to the top.

Keeping her head down and holding on to the side, I helped her get to the top and the pay-off was worth it.   You had a 360 degree view of both the Tennessee and North Carolina sides of the mountains, including a faraway view down to the north and west toward Gatlinburg and further away, Pigeon Forge.  Much of Fontana Lake - a large reservoir over 17 miles long and a mile below Clingmans Dome - was easily visible from the observation tower to the southwest.  

After a brief walk on the spur that leads to the Appalachian Trail, we went back down the hill.  The walk on the steep path was much easier going down, but it played hell on my knees and ankles.  It was good to get back to the car and, later, back to the hotel to rest up.

The next day, we decided to take the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail that started not far from our hotel.   The Roaring Fork creek gets its name from the sound it makes after a good rain in the mountains.  But given that they were in the midst of a drought in the area, the creek was not much more than a trickle of water with a patch of water pools here and there.  

The trail is about 4 miles long if you take the loop back to the starting point, but there's a 5.5 mile one-way stretch that takes you along Roaring Fork creek and back into Gatlinburg on the northeast side of town.  When we came to the start of the one-way stretch we trudged on.  And we're glad we did.

As I was coming over a little rise in the road, lumbering out of the forest and across the road was a black bear.  We immediately stopped the car, grabbed the camera and started to shoot pictures.  The bear was wearing a tracking collar and sort of walked slowly across the road before disappearing into the brush on the side.

It turned out the bear fell off a ledge on the side of the road.  Dazed a bit, it came back up to the side of the road.  I had the car stopped in the middle of the road at this point and was able to squeeze off a few shots of the bear through the car window.  It didn't appear to faze him in the least that there was a car with park tourists less than 10 feet away from him.   We thought that if there was one bear there had to be more.  And it turned out that there was another bear - or bears - on the right side of the road behind us.  People in a car behind us were taking pictures of something on their right.  We couldn't see anything, so we headed on down the road.

The one-way road through the Roaring Fork area took us through tunnels of trees that were growing right along the roadway.  It was cloudy and sort of spitting rain that morning so it was dark and somewhat foreboding, not knowing exactly what was up around the bend.  We were on the lookout for more bears, but I also had to keep an eye on the trees close to the road and the drop-offs that would come up when the creek would come back aside the roadway.  

We crossed Roaring Fork creek a handful of times.  Some of the falls were mere trickles and we wondered how neat this place would be with the snow run-off in early May after the road would open for the season.  (The road closes on November 30 each fall.)

The 8 mile trip around the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail took a little over an hour given the slow pace and the stops that we made.  We got into Gatlinburg a little after 10 a.m. and decided to go to a place that we had found the day before - Old Dad's General Store - to get a couple sandwiches to take up into the park with us.  We saw a liquor store next door to Old Dad's the day before and we stopped in to see what they had for beer and wine.  In Tennessee - for now - wine is only available in liquor stores while beer is only available in grocery or convenience stores.  (The law was changed earlier this year and will go into effect next year to allow both liquor stores and grocery stores to sell both beer and wine.)  We found that Old Dad's General Store had a grill and a deli for sandwiches to go.  We grabbed a couple sandwiches and a couple bottles of water and took off back into the park for another journey.

Our next trek in the park took us on a 24 mile (one way) trip to Cades Cove, which is an 11 mile one-way loop around a valley surrounded by mountains in the Great Smokies.  This area is probably the most popular spot in the park as it not only has a number of meadows, but it also is the home to a lot of wildlife including deer, turkeys and black bears.  

Because of the large amounts of traffic along the one-way loop, there's a lot of stop and go driving, especially thanks to inconsiderate people who don't use the turn-outs to allow cars behind them to pass.  We followed a red pick-up truck from South Carolina with two ladies in it for about two miles who stopped along the route about every 100 yards to lean out of the windows to take pictures.  The final straw was when they stopped for nearly five minutes to take pictures of turkeys in the meadows.  There were - at least - three dozen cars parked behind them, many at the end wondering what the hell was going on up ahead.  My wife and I could only imagine how bad the Caves Cove loop would be if it were in the midst of the summer visiting season or even during the recent Labor Day weekend.  

We got finally got around the truck from South Carolina (I think they got the message from the driver directly behind them and they finally pulled over to let traffic pass) and we continued on our way around the loop.  Old homesteads that dated back to the 1800's that had been restored dotted the clearings in the forest around the loop.  

Cindy had had enough of the stop and go driving for awhile and wanted to get out of the car to stretch her legs.  We came upon a clearing in a meadow with a solitary stand of trees in the middle.  It appeared there was a fence around the trees and she saw a lady standing down by the fence.  She said, "Let's stop here and walk down to those trees."

Cindy saw that there was mowed path down to the trees and we walked toward the trees.  We wondered if it was an old cemetery or if the fencing was there to keep deer away from the trees.  

As we got closer, the lady who had been standing along the fence had made her way back toward us.  As she got closer she said, "Uh, I don't know if I'd go down there if I were you.  There's a bear down there."  She said that she was looking at the old gravestones - it turned out that it was a cemetery - and happened to look up in one of the trees to see a bear looking back at her.  

The lady was telling us that she visited the cemetery many times over the years, eventually doing a genealogical study of the people who were buried in the cemetery.  She said that there were 21 people buried in the plot under the trees, all from the same family.  (I believe she said it was the McGuire family who lived in the area back in the 19th century.)  As we were talking, we noticed some movement in the tree on the north side of the plot and suddenly a small black bear lowered itself down the trunk and sort of warily looked around.  

The bear took off across the meadow toward a grove of trees that lined the meadow.  We had forgot our good camera for the trip and I had just gotten a new Samsung Galaxy S6 phone that we used exclusively for the trip.  The pictures of the bear was taken with the 8X zoom and they actually turned out pretty well.  I turned around to see a line of cars stopped along the road with people standing outside - many with much better cameras than even the one we left at home - taking long range pictures of the young bear galloping to get to the line of trees.  

We made it to the trees to see the homemade headstones sticking out of the ground.  The lady accompanied us to the gravesite and continued to talk to us.  She was nice, but she obviously wanted to talk to people.  She lived in Florida, but coming to the Great Smoky Mountains was her passion in life.  She loved to walk in the woods and she told us that she either sang or talked to herself so she wouldn't startle the bears that may be lurking in the trees.  I surmised that she probably talked to herself even when she wasn't hiking in the Great Smokies.  

The lady eventually wandered back toward the parking area, but not before she warned us to look out for the "rattlers" (rattlesnakes) lurking in the weeds near the mowed out walkway.  When we got back to the parking area, she was engaged in conversation with another tourist who looked like he would rather be anywhere else than there at that time.  

After leaving Cades Cove, we found a creekside picnic area to get our lunch.  It had begun to rain a bit (it rained much harder in the mountains later in the day - a much needed good rain) and we found refuge under a shelter to finish up our lunch.  The foggy mist in the mountains - the "smoke" that gave the mountains their name - was beginning to rise from the trees thanks to the dampness on the ground.  It was pretty and eerie at the same time.  

While we're not sure that we saw everything that the Great Smoky Mountains National Park had to offer, we're certain we saw a lot of it.  There's not as many roadways in the park as you would find in Rocky Mountain National Park, but the vista turn-outs in the Great Smokies gave us some pretty sensational views of the landscape.  The weather wasn't the best, but that didn't deter from our visit in one bit.  If you get the chance to go to the Great Smoky Mountains, do it.  

Voodoo Taco - Omaha

One of my favorite places to go beer hunting when I'm in Omaha is Spirit World.  It was located on Pacific Street next to one of my dealers for years before moving over to the Aksarben Village shopping and entertainment area in Central Omaha earlier this year.  I had just come from calling on my dealer who told me where they had moved to.  As I pulled up to the new Spirit World location, I saw a restaurant that sort of intrigued me - Voodoo Taco.  (see map)  It was around 1:30 p.m., I was hungry and I had some time to go get a couple tacos from Voodoo Taco.  

Owner/founder/managing partner Eric Newton opened the original Voodoo Taco location in Northwest Omaha in the summer of 2013.  He soon opened a second location in the Nebraska Crossing outlet mall in Gretna southwest of Omaha in early 2014 and opened the Aksarben Village location in October of 2014.  Voodoo Taco also has a food truck that roams the streets of Omaha and they've also garnered national attention for their "taco cannon" that will shoot foil wrapped tacos at University of Nebraska-Omaha sporting events starting this fall.  (Click here to see a report on the taco cannon from Voodoo Taco.)   

The Aksarben Village (by the way - if you don't know this, and many people outside of Nebraska usually don't - Aksarben is Nebraska spelled backwards) location for Voodoo Taco is not that large, but it has a trippy contemporary look.  It's a cross between nuevo-industrial, art deco/South Beach, and modern wood paneling.  Common tables were in the middle and along the windowed west wall, one of which is open wide on nice days.  Like the day I was there. 

The order counter is upfront and the menu is located on the wall behind the counter.  It's tacos, tacos, and more tacos at Voodoo Taco, but they also feature salads, bowls and nachos if you don't want to get just tacos.  They feature over a dozen different types of tacos featuring beef, pork, and chicken primarily.  There's also an alligator taco, a fried avocado taco, and fried fish or shrimp tacos.  Beer is available, but I had a big meeting later on where I wanted to be sharper than normal.  So I ended up getting a glass of water out of the fountain machine.   

I ended up getting a pork carnitas taco and a grilled mahi mahi taco.  (I almost went with the green ghost chile pulled pork taco where the pork is braised with ghost chile peppers, but thought that might be a bit spicy especially with a meeting coming up later in the afternoon.)  The pork carnitas came with asadero cheese, cabbage, chopped fresh onions and cilantro on corn tortillas.  A lime wedge came with that taco.  The pork was tender and had good flavor.  It was a fine taco.

The grilled mahi mahi taco also came with cabbage and cilantro, but came with Cotija cheese.  A lime wedge also came with the taco.  It, too, was a fine taco, nothing earth-shaking, but not bad at all.

Actually, the one thing that got my attention was the sauce that came with the tacos.  They have 7 different sauces to choose from at Voodoo Taco - everything from a peppery tomato sauce (which I had), to a tomatillo sauce I wished I'd gotten with garlic and ancho chile peppers (once again, I had a meeting coming up and didn't want to be full of garlic), to something they called Habanero Lightning that featured habaneros, ghost chile peppers, and Trinidad Scorpion peppers.  I like spicy, but not that spicy.  The peppery tomato salsa featured fire roasted tomatoes and peppers and it was very good.  

Voodoo Taco was, well, it was fine.  It wasn't eye-popping, there wasn't anything that really jumped out at me in regards to interesting tacos, and the two tacos I had were good - above average good.  The atmosphere was nice and funky, the service (they bring your food out to your table after you order at the counter) was acceptable, and it was a fine experience overall.  If you're just in the mood for some tacos where you can have a number of choices, Voodoo Taco should be able to fit the bill.  

Burger Bar Crescent - Montreal

Earlier this year, I had to be up at our home office outside of Montreal for a dealer presentation.  I was staying in downtown Montreal at the Novotel Montreal Centre hotel and I got on line looking for a place to get lunch while I was waiting for dealers to show up to the hotel.  I found a burger joint that sounded interesting that was only a couple blocks away - Burger Bar Crescent.  It was a nice warm day in Montreal, so I took a five minute walk to get a burger at Burger Bar Crescent.  

Morrie Baker is the original franchise holder for Ben and Jerry's ice cream shops around Montreal.  He has had a number of them in the area and one of them is on Boulevard de Maisonneuve in downtown Montreal.   Just around the corner from the Ben and Jerry's location is the busy Crescent Street, a hip and cosmopolitan area of restaurants and entertainment venues.   Walking along Crescent Street one day about five years ago, Morrie Baker noticed a space that formerly housed a Mexican restaurant was vacant.  And he quickly came up with a plan for that space.

Ari Baker had been in the food service business for a number of years and he was looking to do something else after closing his coffee distribution business.  His brother Morrie came up with a concept for a high-end gourmet burger place in the Crescent Street location.  The brothers opened Burger Bar Crescent in May 2011 with the concept of using only fresh - never frozen - ingredients along with a number of eclectic burgers that changed over a period of time.  It was a huge gamble in a city where there's some world class restaurants, but from the start business boomed.  In fact, their business doubled over projections they'd put down on paper.  

I got into Burger Bar Crescent just before the noon hour rush.  (see map)  They have a small patio in front of the place and even though it was a very nice day, I opted to sit at the bar.  

The restaurant is not very big with a handful of tables backed up to banquette seating along the wall.  I'm guessing that it can get pretty packed at times.  

I was greeted by one of the servers, Stephania, who was also helping out behind the bar.  She gave me a menu and I ordered up a Blonde de Chambly from Montreal's Unibroue brewery as I looked to see what I wanted to get.  

There are 13 grades of beef quality as designated by the Canada Beef organization.  AAA beef is the next to the top designation - only behind Canada Prime - and that's what Burger Bar Crescent uses for their 6 ounce burger patties.  In addition to their AAA beef burgers, they also feature bison burgers, chicken sandwiches, a pulled pork sandwich, an ahi tuna sandwich and a braised beef sandwich.  Burger Bar Crescent also a number of appetizers including chicken wings, nacho plates, and fried calamari, a handful of mac and cheese dishes, and - of course, since we're in Quebec - poutine dishes that ranged from just good ol' regular poutine with cheese curds and beef gravy over hand-cut French fries, to a poutine that featured Montreal smoked meat and Jarlsberg cheese, to the Decadent Poutine which featured foie gras and duck confit.  

The burger selection was pretty interesting.  Their signature burger is their award winning Hangover burger topped with American cheese, classic poutine, a fried egg, smoked bacon, caramelized onions and truffle oil.  The Firestorm consists of a burger topped with jalapeño Havarti cheese, something called 911 sauce, banana peppers, a jalapeño relish, spicy mayo and a slice of tomato.  They also had a burger that was topped with Montreal smoked meat and Jarlsberg cheese, and there was one that was called The Dude that was a blend of beef, pork and veal, topped with Monterrey jack cheese, mozzarella cheese, a spicy ketchup and crispy fried onions.  

I ended up going with the Quebecois burger - it was a 6 ounce burger patty topped with chopped sautéed wild mushrooms, bacon strips, caramelized onions and Swiss cheese.  I had a choice of fresh cut fries, cole slaw or a side salad to go with the burger.  Then I saw that for a $3.95 (CA) upcharge I could get a side of classic poutine.  When I ordered that from Stephania, she said, "Great choice!"  

The burger was, in a word, fabulous.  All the burgers are cooked to medium at Burger Bar Crescent and the patty had a slight pink middle.  It was big, juicy and tasty.  The mushrooms had a good earthy taste that added to the already great taste of the burger patty, the bacon had a good smoked flavor that enhanced the overall taste of the burger, and the Swiss cheese was slathered over the burger patty.  All of those taste sensations almost drowned out the taste of the sweet caramelized onions.  The bun was light and spongy, and it held together very well with everything that was going on with the burger.  

The poutine was also excellent.  There's nothing better than good, artery-hardening agents such as cheese curds and beef gravy over the top of fresh cut fries.  It had been a long time since I'd last had poutine, and that's probably a good thing.  Poutine is another one of those great tasting dishes that is in no way good for you.   

After I finished what I could of the big burger and the poutine, Stephania tried to coerce me into some of their desserts which included, at no surprise, Ben and Jerry's ice cream.  I had to decline.

Burger Bar Crescent was an excellent find.  The burger was excellent, the poutine was excellent, the service was very good.  It was a great place to have a very good gourmet burger, one that I'll remember for a long time.  

Stacks Pancake House - Dana Point, CA

During our trip to Southern California earlier this year, we stayed in the beautiful port community of Dana Point.  I've often said that if I could live anywhere in the continental United States, it would be in Dana Point.  Along the main drag of the Pacific Coast Highway in Dana Point, we saw a place that we wanted to try for breakfast.  On our last morning in Dana Point, we stopped into Stacks Pancake House.  

Nixon Tanuwidjaja grew up in Indonesia and worked in restaurants to help put himself through college.  He ended up in Los Angeles running the operations of four Japanese restaurants.  It was while he was in L.A. that he met his soon-to-be wife, Ovita - also from Indonesia - and the two embarked upon a quest to learn more about the subtleties of Asian cuisine.

The two moved to Hawaii and found out that the meshing of Asian and Hawaiian cuisines made for some interesting combinations.  It was also in Hawaii that they found  - as my wife and I discovered on our trip to Hawaii five years ago - that breakfast is the favorite meal of the day to most residents of the islands.  They worked on a concept to incorporate Asian cuisine with traditional Hawaiian breakfast dishes.  Once they felt they had something to work with, Nixon and Ovita moved back to Southern California opening Stacks Pancake House in 2010.  They opened a second location in Mission Viejo in early 2013 because of the number of customers that were driving down to Dana Point from the Irvine area.  

We found parking just down the street from Stacks Pancake House and walked up the street to the restaurant.  (see map)  The restaurant features both indoor and outdoor dining options.  Patrons place their orders at a counter and are given a number to place on their table for the servers to bring their food to them.  It was a nice morning and we decided to dine outside on one of the heavy metal mesh tables under an umbrella. 

The menu at Stacks Pancake House is a mix of traditional Hawaiian breakfasts (loco moco, Spam-infused dishes) to traditional American breakfasts (waffles, pancakes, omelets) to the exquisite (eggs Benedict and crepes).  They also serve lunch at Stacks and feature Asian influenced foods such as Korean barbecued short ribs, chicken teriyaki, and chicken katsu that is a Panko breaded chicken breast served with a tonkatsu sauce that is similar to a Worcestershire sauce, only thicker.  

While we were in Dana Point, Cindy kept eyeing a roadside stand that sold strawberries.  The only problem is that they only sold them by the pint and she didn't think she could eat a whole pint.  I told her, "Hey!  We're on vacation.  Let's stop and get some strawberries and you can toss what you don't eat."  Well, she's picky about how she prepares her strawberries and she kept saying that she didn't want to stop.  And we never did.  So when I saw that they had strawberry crepes at Stacks, I just figured that she'd get them.  

She didn't.  She got what I had - the blueberry crepes.  (Actually, I almost got the French toast which they make with sweet King's Hawaiian bread.  To this day, I don't know why I didn't get the French toast with blueberries on top of it.)  The crepes were filled with a rich compote with large blueberries mixed in.  The crepes were, in my estimation, excellent.  Cindy seemed to like them, too, but was kicking herself later on in the meal by saying that she should have gotten the strawberry crepes.  "These are good," she said.  "But what was I thinking?  I'm sure they would be using fresh California strawberries in their crepes."  She was mildly peeved at herself for her decision not to go with the strawberry crepes.

When we got to Stacks and found that it had a large Hawaiian influence on the breakfast menu, I initially thought for a moment about getting a loco moco.  (They also had a kalua pork omelet that caught my attention.  I love good kalua pork.)  For the uninitiated, a loco moco consists of a choice of a hamburger patty (or two), Portuguese sausage, or fried Spam that is placed on a bed of steamed rice and topped with two eggs and a gravy.  (Click here to read about the loco moco I got during our trip to Hawaii.)  It's a lot of food and probably better tasting when you're massively hungover.  

But I had to get something that had a Hawaiian bent to the breakfast, so I got a side of Spam.  It was four slices of Spam fried and served straight up.  I can't tell you the last time I had it.  Well, yes I can - it was in Hawaii.  Cindy wanted a bite and she almost recoiled in horror - not because it tasted bad, but because it was so salty.  And that's why I don't eat Spam once in every, oh, I guess five years.  I hardly salt anything and Spam is fairly heavy in salt content.  The funny thing though, Cindy kept reaching over and cutting off a corner of a slice of Spam.  

Dana Point is one of my all-time favorite destinations and with the diverse and extensive menu at Stacks Pancake House I'm sure I could have breakfast every day there for a week and not have anything remotely close to the same thing on each visit.  For a Hawaiian-style breakfast place, they do a very good job and it was a great value for what we got.  I was happy with my blueberry crepes and even though my wife would have liked to have gotten the strawberry crepes instead, I believe she liked her blueberry crepes, as well. Stacks Pancake House was a great find for breakfast in Dana Point.  

Bavarian Lodge - Lisle, IL

I was in the western suburbs of Chicago on a recent trip there and decided that I needed something along the lines of comfort food for dinner one evening.  Having Indian food - my usual go-to comfort food - the night before, I decided to find a German restaurant.  A quick look on my GPS told me of a German restaurant in the suburb of Lisle, not far from where I was.  It wasn't long before I pulled into the Bavarian Lodge along Ogden Ave. (see map)

Since the restaurant opened in 1986, it was known as Chef Paul's Bavarian Lodge.  Owner/chef Paul Taylor ran the business for nearly 25 years before his son Alan took over the place and changed the name to simply the Bavarian Lodge.  Alan Taylor put more of an emphasis on craft beers to go along with their German foods.  Their beer selection features over three dozen beers on tap and nearly 150 bottled beers, many of which are European imports and American craft beers.   

It was after 8 p.m. on a weekday night (the Bavarian Lodge is closed on Monday and Tuesday) when I got into the restaurant.  They feature a large dining area, but I opted to sit in the bar area after I asked the hostess if I could eat at the bar.  The dimly lit bar area looked more like an old German beer hall whereas the dining area sort of looked like a more formal sit-down restaurant.  

On the wall behind me was the ever-changing list of beers they had on tap at the Bavarian Lodge.  It was a great beer selection, I'd have to say.  One of my favorite American craft beers - the Ballast Point Sculpin IPA - had just been added to the tap list according to the bartender.  I couldn't pass up a pint of that.  

The menu at the Bavarian Lodge is an extensive mix of authentic German fare featuring a large number of appetizers such as a wurst platter, German potato pancakes, Hungarian goulash soup, breaded white cheddar cheese curds, and Amish duck wings.  Dinner entrees include sausage plates, about a dozen different pork schnitzel platters, European specialties such as beef stroganoff and stuffed cabbage rolls, and traditional German foods such as roasted duck, Kassler rippchen, and jager huhnerschnitzel which are chicken breasts in a white wine mushroom cream sauce.  

I started off with a cup of the liver dumpling soup that was served with a somewhat hard pumpernickel roll.  The beef liver dumpling was void of that liver-type taste and was very good.  The broth was slightly salty, but it was a great dipping agent for the pumpernickel roll.  

 
My main entree that evening was the sauerbraten - marinated beef slices topped with a somewhat citrus tasting sauce that I found very pleasing.  The sauce also had a sneaky peppery taste on the taste buds.  I got a side of spatzle and red cabbage to go along with the sauerbraten.  

I will say that the sauerbraten with the gravy sauce was very good.  Tender, easy to cut, flavorful on its own, the sauerbraten's overall taste was amplified by the tart sauce.  The spatzle had a nice consistency and wasn't overcooked.  And the red cabbage had a great sweet and sour taste quality.  There was nothing that I could complain about with this meal.

As I was having dinner at the bar, a gentleman around the corner of the bar where I was seated was having a conversation with the bartender.  He had a heavy German accent and it turned out that he was, indeed, from Germany.  It appeared that this gentleman was a regular customer at the Bavarian Lodge, saying that it was the only place he'd come across in his frequent travels to Chicago that had what he felt was authentic German food.  

With that type of a ringing endorsement from a native of Germany, I can't deny that the food I had at the Bavarian Lodge was some of the better German food that I've had.  The sauerbraten was exquisite, the spatzle and red cabbage were equally wonderful, the liver dumpling soup was some of the best I've ever had, and the selection of beers both on tap and in bottles was very impressive.  There's not a lot of German restaurants in the Midwest any longer, for whatever reason.  But I'd put the Bavarian Lodge up against some of the better ones I've encountered in my travels. 

The Peppertree at the Depot Crossing - Grinnell, IA

Back earlier this summer to see friends and family in Central Iowa, we had a night to ourselves where we decided to head over to Grinnell to a steakhouse that I'd heard about, but had never been to - The Peppertree at The Depot Crossing.  It was a nice Saturday night so we made the drive over to Grinnell for dinner.  

For a number of years, I'd been hearing about a restaurant called The Depot that was housed in an old train station next to where the Iowa Interstate (formerly the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific railroad, or more commonly known as the Rock Island Line.) and Union Pacific railways cross each other just southeast of Grinnell's downtown area.  I was told that the Depot closed about four years ago and I was sort of upset that I never took the time to stop in.

Later in 2011, Steve Tibbitts who is the owner of The Peppertree and Pepper's Bar and Grill in Oskaloosa, IA, bought the Grinnell property and kept a lot of the old train station fixtures and decorations in the dining area.  He opened The Peppertree at the Depot Crossing in July of that year.  

The Peppertree at the Depot Crossing is located at the corner of 3rd Ave. and Park St. in Grinnell.  (see map)  The building looks almost generic and is very non-descript from the front when you pull into the parking lot.  The real star of the place before you even step inside is the old train depot itself.  From the parking lot you can't see the ornate round corner that faces the crossing of the two tracks.  You actually have to go out onto the tracks and navigate around the building to see it.  Or there's a parking lot just south of the tracks where you can park and take a look at the building's southeast corner.  

The main dining room is a combination of brick walls and wooden ceilings with wooden beam supports.  Large windows let in natural light during the day.  A number of booths and tables were interspersed throughout the spacious and comfortable dining area.  

The bar area was obviously an add-on to the depot and features a moderate sized bar, wooden floors and large windows.  The bar area offers more casual dining and has a patio seating area.  For a nice Saturday night we were sort of amazed that there was no one on the patio, even having a drink and enjoying the evening.  

In the basement where the restrooms are located is a room that is used for receptions, meetings or parties.  Soft canned lighting with brick walls were the highlight of this room that had more of a feel of an old time Elks Club.

We were directed by a hostess to a large booth in the middle of the main dining room and given menus.  The main focus at The Peppertree at the Depot Crossing is steaks, seafood, Iowa pork chops, ribs, pasta dishes, chicken entrees, soups and salads.  They also have an extensive list of sandwiches and burgers on the menu, as well.  

Since it was Saturday night, The Peppertree at the Depot Crossing was featuring prime rib, just as they do on Friday night.  I don't get prime rib very often, but it sort of sounded good that evening.  They have 3 different sizes of prime rib - an 8 ounce petite cut, the Peppertree-cut which is 12 ounces, and a 17 ounce thick-cut slab of prime rib.  I ordered a Peppertree-cut from our young waitress Lexi, who was sort of tentative and unsure of herself as she initially waited on us.  She asked how I liked it cooked and I asked her for the rarest piece the chef can cut off the prime rib.  And it was a deep pink tint when she brought it to the table.  Plus it was a little larger than I expected.  If this was the 12 ounce cut, I wouldn't have been able to even come close to finishing the bigger cut.  

Cindy went with the petite filet with the deburgo sauce on top.  The creamy and buttery deburgo sauce had chunks of mushrooms mixed in with garlic and a red wine reduction. I was sort of surprised that Cindy opted for the sauce on her steak as it contained mushrooms and she's had a problem with mushrooms since she was a little girl.  (Something about meals 3 times a week made with cream of mushroom soup as a base.)  But in recent months, I've noticed that she will sneak a couple bites of sautéed mushrooms when I order them at a steakhouse.  She got a glass of a house merlot to go with her meal.  I got a glass of the house shiraz after I had finished with a bottle of Sierra Nevada pale ale before the food made it to our table.  

The prime rib was very good - very tender and easy to cut with a rich beef flavor to each bite.  The only quibble I had was that it needed more au jus sauce (which I didn't ask for).  The prime rib was served on a deep plate in its own natural juices, but they could have put more on the plate with the cut of beef.  

My wife was happy with the petite filet topped with the deburgo sauce.  The steak was tender and the sauce brought out more of the richness of the taste of the beef.  She said there was not a thing wrong with the steak she had.  

However, our only major problem with the meal came with the side we both ordered - the cheesy hash browns.  I was going to get rice with my prime rib, but Cindy ordered the cheesy hash browns and that got me to change my mind.  I wish it hadn't.  The cheesy hash browns were just plain bad.  They had mixed the cheese in with the hash browns and it had sort of coagulated and they were sticky and didn't have a very good flavor.  Almost simultaneously when we took our first bite, we both said, "Ugh!"  That was the only bite we took of the cheesy hash browns that evening.

But even with that, the meal we had at The Peppertree at the Depot Crossing was a thumbs up from both of us.  The prime rib was very good, my wife was more than happy with her petite filet, Lexi became a little more assured of herself as the meal went along, and the atmosphere of eating in an old restored train depot was exquisite.  It was an overall experience that surpassed our expectations and The Peppertree at the Depot Crossing is a place that people in and around Grinnell are lucky to have in their community.   

2015 Iowa State Fair

My wife and I decided to take in the 2015 Iowa State Fair that was recently held in Des Moines from August 13 thru the 23rd.  It had been awhile since we had both been to the State Fair and being that it's one of the true staples of Midwestern Americana I thought we'd share some of the pictures and experiences of that particular day. 

First of all, the State Fair experienced an all-time record number of attendees this year.  Unofficially, 1,117,398 people went through the gates of the State Fair including a record five-day stretch of at least 100,000 people.  (There had never been a stretch of more than two days where the Iowa State Fair drew at least 100,000 attendees.)  Even with one day where Des Moines received nearly 2.5 inches of rain, total attendance beat the previous record set in 2008 by 8,248 people.  The day we were there - the second Saturday - a line of rain came through in the evening keeping the overall day's attendance down.  Still, they had nearly 112,000 people on the grounds that day.  Only one day - the Tuesday when it rained heavily - saw attendance down from the previous year.  Overall, the 2015 State Fair drew over 102,000 more people than the 2104 State Fair.  

Speculation as to why the State Fair drew record crowds centered on a new state law that was signed earlier this year by Iowa Governor Terry Branstad that decreed schools across Iowa could not start any sooner than August 23.  Many school districts cried foul at the new law saying that they'd be forced to have classes into June, while the governor said that early school start dates hurt tourism and attendance at the Iowa State Fair.  (Over the past few years, some schools in Iowa started during the second week of August.)  

Another reason for higher attendance could have been the weather which was cooler than in some previous years.  But one of the main reasons why so many people came out to the Iowa State Fair had to do with the number of Presidential candidates that came to the fair this year.  With Iowa's "first in the nation" status with the Iowa Caucuses next February, nearly every Presidential candidate from both major parties attended the Iowa State Fair this year.  On August 15, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders were at the fair helping attendance soar to over 115,000 that day.  Jeb Bush was at the fair the day before that and the day we were there New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal were stumping on the grounds.  Here's a picture Cindy took of Chris Christie walking around with Governor Terry Branstad after I said, "Oh, hey!  That's Chris Christie!"  

After finding a great off-site parking spot near one of the main gates, we walked onto the grounds around 10:45 on that Saturday morning.  My sister goes to the Iowa State Fair nearly every day and we met up with her to start off with the Agriculture Building.  Outside the Ag building is a flower garden that is made by local landscapers for the fair. 

My sister is a retired horticulturist for the City of Des Moines and my wife has quite the green thumb, herself.  They were sort of immersed in the flower beds and rose bushes pointing things out and getting ideas for our backyard.  

Also outside the Ag building is the largest pumpkin at the fair.  This one was grown by a guy in Southern Iowa and came in at 1235 lbs.  This pumpkin was about 90 pounds short of hitting the all-time record big-assed pumpkin of 1323 pounds.  

The Agriculture Building is one of the more popular places at the fair with exhibits of plants, flowers and produce along with little shops along the upper tier of the building.  It was especially packed on this busy day because of the pilgrimage all Iowans have to make when the come to the state fair - to see the Butter Cow.  

Since 1911, the Butter Cow has drawn the attention of fair-goers who stop by the refrigerated room to look at, well, it's basically a wood and metal mesh frame shaped like a cow and then sculptor Sarah Pratt takes about 600 pounds of butter and puts it over the frame to eventually turn it into a cow made out of butter.  I don't know a better way to explain it.  Pratt is the fifth butter sculptor to work with the Butter Cow.  She worked with long-time sculptor Norma "Duffy" Lyon for 15 years before taking over in 2006.  

Each year, they pay homage to something or someone by making a butter statue in that person's - or thing's - honor.  This year, Pratt paid tribute to the long popular board game Monopoly which is celebrating its 80th year.  The Monopoly Man was depicted in one scene leaning on a pile of money, while another window had the board game in butter.  In the past, Lyon and Pratt also made butter figures of John Wayne, Olympic gold medalist Shawn Johnson, Elvis Presley and tributes to Dr. Seuss, as well as the first manned landing on the moon.  

The dahlia competition was going on at the Ag building.  Cindy loves dahlias and she was getting ideas from the different colors that were on display. 

And where else can you find a competition to name over 30 different varieties of weeds found in the state of Iowa?  They had an amateur and professional competition to name the different types of weeds on display.  Actually, we did learn the names of some of the weeds we've pulled out of our garden in the past.  

On the other end of the main floor of the Ag building is what I like to see - the prize winning garden produce grown by backyard farmers from across the state.  

These heads of cabbage were HUGE!  I've never grown cabbage and I don't know if they're actually supposed to be this big - at least I've never seen cabbage this big in a store.  But these were the size of basketballs.  

The tomatoes are always a favorite to compare to the ones we grow.  We tried a new technique in growing tomatoes this year and we had ripe cherry tomatoes in six weeks and ripe Better Boy tomatoes by the 4th of July (we planted the bushes in mid-May).  Our tomatoes were great this year, but these looked pretty darned good, too.  

Onions, beets, sweet and hot peppers, garlic, zucchini, squash and melons were all on display.  I wouldn't know the first thing about what makes a specific vegetable a prize winner at the State Fair, but there are definitely people who take it seriously.  

The hot peppers they had on display are always interesting to me.  I've grown hot peppers over the years - more for fun than anything - and they can be a little troublesome to grow in Iowa.  Most of the really hot peppers - habaneros, Scotch bonnets, ghost peppers, Charleston Hots, Trinidad Scorpions - generally have to be started inside and then transferred to an outdoor garden when the weather gets nice.  But jalapeños and chili peppers can be easily grown in Iowa gardens.  

These ears of corn always amaze me.  I see ears of corn, but there's different varieties and hybrids of corn that are grown across the state of Iowa.  And somehow they get judged to be the best in the state.  Once again, I wouldn't have the faintest idea as to what makes an ear of corn better than another one.  

From the Agriculture Building, we went up a ways to the Cultural Center for what is always a highlight of our visit to the State Fair - the salon photography exhibits.  Cindy has seriously thought about entering some of her photographs in the past, but some of the images proved that the photographers have some pretty expensive equipment to take the pictures and some pretty expensive programs to touch up the photos.  

Adults and youngsters have separate categories in which they're judged.  This year's theme was "Silhouettes" and over 3000 photographs were judged.  There's also categories for Iowa Places and Landscapes, People, US Places and Landscapes, Plants, Flowers and Trees, and a handful of other categories that are judged.  It's easy to lose an hour of time in the Cultural Building.

We went over to the Pigeon, Poultry and Rabbit building to see what was happening over there.  My sister had a pet rabbit years ago - Fletcher - and I had a pet rabbit - Bunny (how's that for a unique name?) - that I had to give away before I went away to school at the University of Iowa.  The kid I gave my rabbit to raised rabbits for competitions.  When I gave him my pet rabbit he was floored.   "This would have won at the County Fair and I could have showed this at the State Fair," he told me.  Unfortunately, the rabbit died before he could show it the next year.  

Because of the outbreak of the avian flu in Iowa earlier this year, there were no chickens on display at the State Fair.  However, we did see that someone had a good sense of humor by putting ceramic chickens in cages.  

One of the more popular food places at the Iowa State Fair continues to be the Iowa Pork Producers tent.  (Once again, it's actually a fixed building and not a tent.)  There were long lines for the famous "Pork Chop on a Stick" at the stand next to the Pork Producers tent again this year.  

When he wasn't hanging out with Chris Christie, Governor Branstad and Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds were hanging out at the Pork Producers tent greeting people as they went in.  Lt. Governor Reynolds is known as Governor Branstad's "shadow" as it seems that they're always seen in public together.  I've never known a Lt. Governor - anywhere - that has had more camera time with a sitting Governor.  

Actually, we walked past the Pork Producers tent to get to one of my favorite places - the Bud Tent!  The Bud Tent has been around since 1947 and is a favorite gathering place for fair-goers.  In fact, we met up with a good friend while we were at the Bud Tent.  

The Bud Tent really isn't a tent but a permanent structure that has more of a barn feel to the place.  The local band Fat Tuesday and the Greasefire Horns were playing in the Bud Tent that particular day.  Beer ain't cheap at the Bud Tent.  It's $7 bucks for a 16 ounce cup of draft beer.  I got 5 tickets for $30 bucks and bought another one for $7.  $37 bucks doesn't last long at the Bud Tent.

Drinking a couple beers made me hungry and I had to go to what I call the Holy Grail of State Fair food - Carl's Gizmo.  The gizmo is - well, click here to see what a gizmo is all about.  It's basically a sandwich on a hoagie bun with ground beef and Italian sausage cooked together, topped with a seasoned marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese.  They are to die for.  

I garnished my gizmo with banana peppers and sat down to enjoy the wonderful sandwich.  Some people like the all-Italian sausage Jennie Grinders that are sold right across the way from Carl's.  My blogging buddy - The Slakingfool - has told me that he's sort of partial to Aunt Mary's Great Grinder which has a small booth down by the giant slide at the fairgrounds.  But for my money, I haven't found anything at the State Fair that is as good as a gizmo from Carl's.  

My sister was on the hunt for something that she had read about - chicken fried bacon.  This tasty sounding treat emanated from a fair in Texas and a couple of the stands were selling it last year.  We went around to a couple of the stands but found out that they didn't have the deep fried bacon this year.  Probably for the best, health-wise.  

Cindy was looking to get a steak sandwich and we ended up at my favorite drinking establishment at The State Fair - the Stockman's Inn.  Stockman's always seems to have cheaper - and colder - beer than other places around the State Fair.  We ran into a buddy and his wife while we were at the Stockman's Inn.  

The steak sandwich at the Stockman's Inn was a big piece of meat for a steak sandwich.  Generally, a steak sandwich is thin cut of ribeye.  The one at Stockman's was a half-pound thick cut of sirloin strip steak and served on a hoagie bun.  She ordered it medium, but it came out more medium rare.  But that was fine with her.  She gave me a bite and I have to say it was pretty delicious.  Not as good as a gizmo, but very good. And a great deal at only $9.50.  

Of course, next door to the Stockman's Inn is the cattle barn.  It's always one of the big stops during the State Fair.  Raising cattle to show at fairs is serious business for many farm families across Iowa.  

Above - This is Samson, the biggest bull - or "Super Bull" - at this years fair.  Coming in just a shade under 2900 lbs., this red angus was raised by the Zellmer family of Atlantic, IA.  Samson definitely had some size to him, but he's still over 500 pounds lighter than the all-time record Super Bull shown at the 2009 Iowa State Fair that weighed in just over 3400 lbs.!  

Pictured left are two Scottish Highland cows penned up in the cattle barn.  There are 20 different categories of judging for the cattle competitions at the State Fair.  In fact, the cattle competitions have gotten so big that they've outgrown the cattle barn and have to stick cattle in other buildings nearby.   

Over at the horse barn, it was Clydesdale and Percheron day.  The Clydesdales and Percherons were on hand to be part of one of the biggest nights at the fair - the draft horse competition.  Friends of ours that we ran into at the Stockman's Inn said that the annual competition held over at the Richard Jacobson Exhibition Building is generally sold out.

We snuck in and took a look at some of the draft horses and wagons getting ready to parade out for the competition.  My buddy was right - there didn't appear to be a seat in the newish Jacobson Exhibition Building.  The amount of money these competitors put into their horses and wagons was pretty impressive.

From the horse barn, we had to go take a look at the Big Boar winner at the swine barn.  This guy - Big Mac - weighed in at 1166 pounds beating the next largest pig by 57 pounds.  Big Mac is a Blue Roan - which is a cross between a Hampshire and a York - and was raised by Tom and Nancy McDonald from Ryan, IA.  (I had to look up on a map to see where Ryan was.  It's about 35 miles north and east of Cedar Rapids.)  In fact, Big Mac took second place last year for the Big Boar title at the State Fair and he packed on a few pounds in the off season by eating Twinkies and drinking Old Milwaukee to get to his fighting weight.  

The Avenue of Breeds in the swine barn is always a popular place to take a look at nearly every type of animal on display at the Iowa State Fair.  This is the place that if you don't want to trudge through every barn at the fair, you can pretty much see what you want to see at the Avenue of Breeds.  

They had goats, sheep, cattle, horses - even an elk - on display on the Avenue of Breeds.  It's the place where city people who don't like the smell of money to go and get the "looking at cows and stuff" out of the way.  (When I was a little kid, I turned up my nose at a farm we were passing because of the smell.  My dad told me that smell was "money".)   

These long-haired goats were interesting.  I don't remember the breed, but they were pretty cool to see.  

Before she left for the day, my sister bought Cindy and I two tickets to Ye Old Mill, basically the Tunnel of Love at the Iowa State Fair.  This ride is the oldest permanent ride at the fair dating back to the early 20th century.  Now here's a shocker - I've never gone thru Ye Old Mill.  Ever.  Not that I'm the non-romantic type, it's just never been high on my "to-do" list when I go to the Iowa State Fair.  Well, this time we went.  While my wife thought it was romantic, I thought it was sort of schlocky.  

From Ye Olde Mill we made our way back up the hill to the new MidAmerican Energy stage to say "hi" to our friends Bob Dorr and the Blue Band before they started their first set.  I've known Bob, guitarist Jeff Peterson and drummer Steve Hayes for years, as well as their equipment guy/stage manager/road manager Dennis MacRunnel and part-time organist Sam Salomone from working summer events for the City of Davenport.  Dennis and Steve gave us a tour of the backstage area of the new stage and it was pretty impressive.  By the time they started their set, the rain that had held off for most of the day had started up.  True troupers, The Blue Band not only played the first set, but got in a second set at 9:00 p.m. to the delight of rain-soaked fans.  The new stage kept them dry.  

Before we left the State Fair that evening we stopped off at the Iowa Craft Beer Tent.  The tent features 48 beers on tap from a variety of microbrews around the state of Iowa.  It is generally populated with insufferable urban-hipsters, pretentious 20-somethings, and pompous self-professed intellectuals bloviating on the aggressive cloying and the refined robust nature of a specific beer.  Oh!  And there's also a number of regular guys like me who like a good beer at the State Fair.  I got a Peace Tree Brewing Co. Soundcheck Session India Pale Ale while I was there.  Peace Tree is located in Knoxville, IA and they do have some pretty good beers.  

The rain was really starting to come down and it was time to get out to our car which was parked about a ten minute walk from the Iowa Craft Beer Tent.  We got a little wet and decided to head downtown to get some sushi from the wonderful akebono.  (Click here to see the entry on akebono.)  The Iowa State Fair is always fun to go to, even if it brings back the memories of my youth that the end of the fair generally meant that school was just around the corner.  Even today, to me the Iowa State Fair means that summer is almost over - and I love summer in Iowa.  But that's the only negative thing I can think of when it comes to the fair.  If you want to find out about anything and everything that Iowa has to offer, you can pretty much see it all at the Iowa State Fair. 

Labriola Bakery Cafe - Oak Brook, IL

I have a dealer in the Oak Brook area in the western suburbs of Chicago and after I finished with our meeting and got ready to head back home to the Quad Cities, I decided to stop for lunch.  Not far from my dealer is a place that I've wanted to try for awhile - the Labriola Bakery Cafe.  I'd read that this place had a pretty good burger and I thought I'd give it a try.  

Rich Labriola grew up in south suburban Blue Island, the son of owners of a south side pizza joint.  He was exposed to artisan breads at a young age and he was immediately hooked.  French breads, Italian breads, even German breads - Rich didn't know how to bake, but he wanted to learn how to make those artisanal breads he was so fond of.

He studied under experts of the art of baking European-style breads, all the time learning things along the way to put his own signature on his breads.  Rich learned that adding an extra step or an extra minute to the baking process set his breads apart from other artisan breads.  

Labriola ended up opening his own bakery - Labriola Baking Company - in 1993.  He brought in specially designed Italian ovens, aged his own flour, and used only the finest and freshest ingredients in the baking process.  His first customer was the Chicago location of Spago, the upscale Italian restaurant owned by Wolfgang Puck.  Business grew precipitously for Labriola and he was soon supplying his breads to over 700 restaurants in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin.  

Pictured right - Rich Labriola (Photo courtesy Crain's Chicago Business)

Labriola sold his namesake bakery in 2013 four years after he launched his first restaurant in Oak Brook.  He opened his second restaurant - a larger one along N. Michigan Ave. in downtown Chicago - in January of this year.  Labriola is slated to open a pizza-centric concept restaurant - Pizza Bar - in Oak Brook sometime this month with the help of Chris Macchia, the chef and former owner of Coco Pazzo and The Florentine restaurants.  The two are also looking at opening a downtown Chicago Pizza Bar location sometime in 2016.  

The Labriola Cafe location in Oak Brook sits in the Oak Brook Promenade along Butterfield Road, just north of I-88/East-West Tollway.  (see map)  The shopping/restaurant complex is very popular and parking can be a bit of a hassle at times.  But I was able to find a spot not far from the Labriola Bakery Cafe when I got there around 1:30 that particular day.  

As you come into Labriola Bakery Cafe, you'll find a large case with fresh baked breads, desserts and pastries.  It was hard not to linger around the case seeing what they had to offer.

On the other side of the area after you enter is the main cafe part of the place.  The menus are located on flat screen televisions above and behind the counter.  You place your order at the counter, they give you a number on a table top stand and you go find a seat in the dining area.

There's more than just burgers at the Labriola Bakery Cafe.  They're known for their Neapolitan pizzas, as well as sandwiches - hot and cold, pasta dishes and rotisserie chicken. Entrees include a skirt steak dish, chicken parmesan and a pan-seared salmon filet served topped with bruschetta and served on a bed of sautéed spinach.  

I'm somewhat of a fan of Kevin Pang, a food, entertainment and pop-culture writer for the Chicago Tribune.  He used to host a video blog - The Cheeseburger Show - for a few years where he gave great recommendations for burgers in and around the Chicago area.  He once wrote that the Richie Burger at Labriola Bakery Cafe was one of the best in Chicagoland.  And that's what I ordered along with a bottle of Warsteiner beer.  

The Richie Burger consists of an 8 ounce ground Black Angus beef patty topped with white cheddar cheese, lettuce and tomato.  Applewood smoked bacon was an option and I got that, as well.  The burger is served on a large pretzel bun.  They also have another signature burger at Labriola Bakery Cafe - the Maytag Blue Cheese burger that has, of course, Maytag Blue Cheese, smoked bacon and caramelized onions.  Kevin Pang likes that one, as well.  

Some pretzel buns can be sort of hard and somewhat dry.  That was not the case with this pretzel bun on the Richie Burger.  The crown had a nice crusty crunch on the outside of the bun, but was light, airy and spongy on the inside.  I'm still a big believer that a great bun makes a great burger.  But the the beef patty smothered in the white cheddar cheese was also a delicious component to the Richie Burger.  Cooked to a perfect medium with a hint of pink in the middle, the burger was juicy and very flavorful, especially with the white cheddar cheese.  The smoked bacon was a nice complement, the lettuce was fresh and crisp - not limp at all, and the tomato slice was very red and very fresh.  Much more fresh than what I would have expected for a tomato that early in the season.

I've gotten a lot of great ideas for burger places to try in the Chicago area from Kevin Pang over the years and he didn't steer me wrong on the burger at the Labriola Bakery Cafe.  It was a little expensive - nearing $14 with the bacon - but the taste and quality of the bun and beef shined above all else.  Labriola Bakery Cafe is a comfortable place for a nice lunch when you're in the Oak Brook area for shopping.  Simply put, the Richie Burger was outstanding.  

The Fisherman's Restaurant and Bar - San Clemente, CA

During our stay in Dana Point, CA, we were looking for a place where we could have dinner right on the water.  Some place that offered great views of the Pacific Ocean and a place that preferably had seafood.  We asked someone at our hotel where a place like that may be that was a close drive away.  That person told us about The Fisherman's Restaurant and Bar on the pier in San Clemente, just south of Dana Point.  

The Fisherman's Restaurant and Bar is one of two locations the restaurant actually has - the other one is up in Seattle.  Owner Hal Griffith grew up with his family having clambakes and fish fry parties on the beaches of his native Northwest U.S.  Griffith was originally a damaged cargo salvager in the Seattle area and eventually opened a small shop on Seattle's Pier 57 to sell the salvaged goods that he bought.  He eventually began to develop other businesses on Pier 57 including restaurants eventually buying the pier from the City of Seattle.  In 2012, along with his sons, Griffith opened the Seattle Great Wheel, a Ferris wheel that was constructed at the end of Pier 57.  

Nearly 30 years ago, San Clemente, CA was looking for someone to lease a small snack stand space at the entry of that city's long and historic pier.  Griffith came in and made an offer to lease the stand and he opened The Fisherman's in 1987.  Three years later, Griffith proposed expanding the space into two different spots - one a more formal sit down restaurant and on the other side there would be more of an oyster bar/lounge.  Griffith's proposal was met with a lot of derision from the locals, but in the end the city council approved his plans and that's how The Fisherman's Restaurant and Bar came to be 25 years ago.  

The San Clemente Pier is located along a stretch of Aveinda Victoria that winds down through downtown San Clemente.  (see map)  There's some public parking just up the hill from The Fisherman's that we took advantage of and went down to the pier.  Crossing over the Amtrak tracks to get to there, we decided to take a walk out to the end of the pier to take in the ocean and coastal scenery.  

The pier is nearly a quarter mile long - at 1296 feet it is the 15th longest pier along the California coast.  It offered stunning views of the coast and the ocean, and was a popular place with walkers, fishermen and sight-seers.  

The Fisherman's two places - the regular restaurant and the oyster bar - are at the start of the pier.  We decided to see if we could eat on the deck of the oyster bar as the sun was getting ready to set.  The hostess took us to a table on the deck that overlooked the coast line up to Dana Point and past with the sun slowly sinking into the Pacific Ocean.  The breeze coming off the ocean was cool - it was cool the whole time we were in Southern California - so propane heating lamps were burning to keep the outside patrons warm.  

Looking for a complete seafood overload, we looked through the menu to start picking stuff out to try.  Our server for the evening, Caitlyn, came over to greet us and take our drink order.  Cindy ordered up a mai tai and I ordered a beer.  And right away, we ordered up a couple of oyster shooters and a dozen oysters on the half-shell.  

The oyster shooters were swimming in a mixture of a bloody mary mix, horseradish, Tabasco, cocktail sauce and black pepper in a martini glass.  The oysters were plump and weren't gritty.  The mixture masked the fishy taste that we found the oysters on the half-shell had.  It was a fun and unique way to start the meal.  

We got an order of a dozen oysters on the half-shell after that.  Like the shooters, the oysters on the half-shell at The Fisherman's were big and meaty.  However, like other places we had oysters during our trip to Southern California, we found these to be somewhat fishy in smell and taste and somewhat gritty.  But the one thing that made these great was the Atomic Horseradish that came with the oysters.  A dollop of the overwhelming Atomic Horseradish mixed in with a meaty oyster and the fishy taste all but went away.  Atomic Horseradish is great.  (Click here to read about Atomic Horseradish.)  

Cindy decided that she needed some clam chowder to warm her up.  The lamp heaters were doing a good job of keeping me warm - I joked that the lamp was causing me to turn medium-rare on one side - but Cindy thought she needed something a little warm to help her out.  The clam chowder came in a deep bowl and was a traditional New England-style chowder.  Cindy said it was very good, but very rich.  She couldn't finish the whole bowl because she wanted something for her main course and didn't want to spoil that.  

I wanted some shrimp.  They didn't have any peel-and-eat shrimp on the menu, but they did have a prawns cocktail.  And for good measure, I also ordered up a dungeness crab cocktail they had on the menu that evening.  The prawns were big, fresh and tasty, but the dungeness crab cocktail was heavenly.  Chunks of crab meat sat on top of a cocktail sauce.  As good as the prawns were, the dungeness crab cocktail was even more fabulous.  

Still not satisfied that I'd had enough seafood, we signed up for bucket of the clams.  They were steamed in their own natural juices, along with fresh garlic, chopped celery and onions.  These clams were simply outstanding.  Big and meaty, the clams were easy to chew - not the rubbery consistency that you get with over-cooked clams.  It was served with fresh sourdough bread and dipping the bread into the clam broth was an extra treat to go along with the clams. 

Actually, I had looked at a number of things on the menu before I ordered the bucket of clams.  They had a seared ahi tuna as well as Hawaiian-style ahi tuna poke on the menu.  They also had Cajun-style ahi tuna tacos.  I almost went with that before deciding on the clams.  Cindy had her eyes on the crab cakes and she that's what she ordered.  Fresh dungeness and snow crab meat were mixed together, lightly breaded, then pan-fried in olive oil.  Technically an appetizer, the crab cakes were good sized and more than enough for what Cindy was looking for.  She was very happy that she got them.  

I think it's safe to say that we fully achieved seafood overload during our visit to The Fisherman's Restaurant and Bar in San Clemente.  From the great views, to the relaxed atmosphere, to the good service, and the broad selection of very good seafood The Fisherman's was exactly what we were looking for that particular evening.  This was  fun for us to just order a bunch of things and we enjoyed them all very much.