Restaurants – Page 18 – Fervent Foodie

10-Mile-Saturday

July 18, 2010 5 Comments

Saturday morning I woke up around 7am to get my run in. It was already 80+ degrees and 85%+ humidity. Perfect running weather, right? Even though the air was so thick feeling, I was excited to get out and explore some of Charleston on my run. I’m still on week #5 of the interval training, which means I’m doing 3 intervals of 3 minutes walking and 7 minutes running.

Here’s the route I ran:

My time per mile was a lot slower than my Charlotte run earlier in the week — but I’ll crack that up to the crazy humidity!

We were planning to have a late breakfast, and were in search of bottomless mimosas, so we headed to Toast.

Bottomless mimosas:

I took this picture several times, and somehow a bulging bicep kept appearing in the background… 😉

We split the Deluxe French Toast stuffed with apples and apple syrup:

And the all garden omelet (which I added sausage, zucchini, and pepper jack cheese to):

Both of these were delicious, and the mimosa made for a very relaxing brunch 🙂

(Unintentional foreshadowing: we are headed to the Folly Beach Pier today!)

After brunch, we set out to walk along the river banks. We walked, and walked, and wallllkkkeeeedddd…..

On our way back towards the studio, we stopped at the Buccaneer restaurant for some margaritas and snacks. The Buccaneer has a ton of authentic pirate artifacts, which was pretty neat.

I ordered the crab cake:

This was pretty good, but I don’t think my belly is sold on crab meat yet. I could only eat half of this (may have been do to the exhaustion from walking though).

Here’s the route we walked during our Saturday afternoon excursions:

That’s over 7 miles. Add that to the 3 miles for my AM interval training, and you’ve got yourself a 10-Mile-Saturday!

After a much needed 2-hour nap and showers, we headed to California Dreaming for some waterfront dining.

View from our table:

First up was the bottle of wine:

We split the chicken quesadilla appetizer:

SOOO frickin good.

For dinner, we split the blackened chicken pasta:

Pasta four nights in a row? Check. 😀

And then we split the hot brownie with ice cream for dessert:

Of course we were extremely happy with this meal:

We decided to go green on the way home, and called up a Green Taxi:

Jarrod was pretty pumped about this:

Today is our last day in Charleston! We plan to get in a little beach time then head to King street for some grub 🙂

Restaurants, Travel

Friday B,L,D in Charleston

July 17, 2010 7 Comments

For breakfast Friday we decided to head to Hominy Grill, which is a nice short walk from the studio we are renting.

We sat outside on a nice little covered patio that had several mounted fans to cool us down:

We decided to order two dishes to split, and ended up with the sausage omelet with home fries and toast:

And the buttermilk pancakes:

Both of these were DELICIOUS. We also brought some of the housemade banana bread and ginger pumpkin bread home with us:

Box of joy:

We both enjoyed both of these breads, though I preferred the pumpkin and Jarrod preferred the banana.. so that worked out quite well 🙂

After breakfast, we headed to Folly Beach for a little sun, and the sand, and drinks in our hands napping on the beach:

All the sun and salt water made us crazy hungry, so we stopped at the Triangle Char bar for lunch:

For an appetizer, we ordered the cheesy sausage Tailgate Dip. Cheesy Heaven:

I ordered the Turkey Burger, which was called the “I’m on a diet but still want a burger, burger”

I ended up only eating half of the burger, because we had such a big breakfast and all the cheesy dip. The avocado spread is what really made the burger tasty.

Jarrod got the spicy chicken tacos, which he REALLY liked:

After our late lunch, we headed back to the studio for some napping/showering then headed on our merry way to dinner. We decided to go to Sermet’s Corner on King Street. The restaurant had great ambiance, and kind of funky decor:

For the appetizer, we ordered the Baked Artichoke Torta:

Looks beautiful, tasted like butt. Haha.. unfortunately the menu didn’t mention that the torta was FILLED with black olives. Jarrod dislikes black olives. I, on the other hand, DESPISE black olives. I feel like they taint everything they touch… there’s just no eating around them because once they are in a dish the whole dish is RUINED (in my opinion anyway 😉 )

Lucky for us, the main course was AMAZING. We ordered the chicken sautéed with chorizo sausage, roasted red peppers, and sweat peas, in a red wine thyme gorgonzola reduction over penne pasta:

A-may-zing. For the record, that is pasta for night #3 in a row.. Hahaha 😀

On the way home, we decided to take one of the bike taxis back to the studio. Here’s a pic of me trying to discretely take a pick of the driver’s t-shirt without the driver noticing… Too bad he noticed, so I felt bad and didn’t try to take another clearer pic.. hahahah

For my raincheck b-day cake, we stopped at Cupcake and I got a Chocolate Tuxedo Cupcake:

This was so decadent…the icing was so thick and creamy it literally took several attempts to swallow… I saved half for later today 🙂

Today we’re heading to the harbor to do some actual sighteeing and some (more) eating 😉

Restaurants, Travel

Italian take #2

July 16, 2010 8 Comments

Yesterday afternoon, we arrived in Charleston. In an effort to save $$$, I booked us a studio apartment rather than staying in a hotel in the historic district. This saved us about $400, but we are about 1-2 miles out from most of the restaurants and sightseeing we want to do. I think the savings offsets the distance, plus with all the eating we’re doing the more walking the better!

We have a full kitchen, washer dryer, and nice dining area too:

While Jarrod was in Belgium he said all he wanted was some decent Italian food, and there was none to be found near his worksite. So, I grudgingly complied with his request to get Italian for the second night in a row…. 😉 Just kidding–Italian is my fav too!

After some googling, we decided to go to Bocci’s in Historic Charleston because their menu had a lot of different dishes we had never tried.

Typically, when I go to the store to buy wine I end up with Cabernet about 90% of the time. So in an effort to keep trying new things we went with Bocci’s special wine of the night:

This wine was FANTASTIC! I’m so glad the waitress recommended it. It was full bodied and had a great spice to it.

For the appetizer, we really REALLY wanted to order the bruschetta…. But we decided to push ourselves outside our tomato-basil-cheesy-bread-goodness comfort zone and instead ordered the Arancini. The arancini is an arborio rice ball made with sausage, parmesan, ricotta and roasted red peppers, fried to golden brown and served with marinara sauce:

And it was absolutely delicious!

The ambiance of the restaurant was fantastic. It was low lit, and had a series of small rooms with sporadic tables of all shapes and sizes. It reminded me of restaurants I visited in Europe back in college, especially with the huge doors that opened up to the outdoors.

For our main entre, we went with the Chicken Conchiglia: Large pasta shells stuffed with chicken, three cheese mix, and herbs, topped with tomato basil sauce and baked:

These were so tasty — and super filling! We ended up brining 3 of the 5 shells home with us. I think we might make them into sandwiches later today 😀

Charleston has so much character (and so much humidity 😉 ).

Since I’ve been gone, two of my friends from home have decided to try out overnight oats (and send me pictures)! I think they miss me 🙂

Tim tried oats + almond milk + cinnamon + brown sugar + banana + peanut butter:

In his words they were: “mmmm OMG perfect!”

Jessie decided to try oats + almond milk + peanut butter + cinnamon + brown sugar + strawberries + blueberries:

In her words: “OMGGGGG. These rocks my socksssss”

😀 So if you haven’t tried them based on my raving, now you have two additional ravers to back up my love for overnight oats! I think that’s the first thing I’m going to eat when I get home!

Restaurants, Travel

Last night I ate like a queen

July 15, 2010 6 Comments

For dinner last night, Jarrod and I headed to Coco Osteria. We found this restaurant last time we were in Charlotte and loved it not only for the food but also the location and lovely outside patio right in the heart of uptown Charlotte.

First thing first, we ordered a bottle of wine:

Though we love wine, Jarrod and I are not wine experts. We usually order wine based on which name sounds the most appealing. This wine was fantastic!

We ordered some bruschetta to split:

I think bruschetta is our #1 favorite pick for appetizers. We get it pretty much everywhere we go, and it is ALWAYS amazing. I love balsamic.. and tomatoes… and basil… and bread… 😀

We also had some of the house beans and bread, which was so simple and so tasty:

When we go out to eat, Jarrod and I often split an appetizer and dinner. That way we get to try lots of things without overeating (at least not TOO much). We split the bucatini with grilled chicken for our main entre. This consisted of hollow spaghetti, caramelized onions, smoked pancetta, tomato sauce & shaved pecorino cheese plus the grilled chicken we requested:

A fabulous first night of food on vacation!

Interval Training: Day #1, Week #5

This morning, I woke up around 6:30am to get my run in for the day before the streets of Charlotte got too busy. I am now at 3 intervals of 3 minutes walking and 7 minutes running. I was a little nervous about the jump in running time from 5 minutes to 7, but I think being in a different city really energized me. I had to do most of my running on the sidewalk, which made me worry about my knee. So I tried to “think light” as I was running and put as little impact as possible on my legs.

I really didn’t have a route in mind, I just kind of set out and turned whenever I came across a red light:

There are so many beautiful buildings in Charlotte, and also very many beautiful restaurants I’d like to try 😉

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