Scenes from a farmers market

I am so thrilled that I live a block away from Little Italy's Mercato farmers market! Happening every Saturday at Date and India Streets, Mercato is a HUGE city market with more than 150 booths offering farm fresh produce, flowers, artisan foods and specialty items such as bread crumbs and hummus. This is where you will find me every Saturday morning. I highly recommend checking it out if you want some local, fresh goodness. Come early as it gets busy with people and lots of doggies too!

580 W. Date St.
Every Saturday, 8 am - 2 pm
http://www.littleitalysd.com/mercato/

The Perfect Summer Salad

Loving the burrata salad at Craft & Commerce! Loaded with the delicious mozzarella, strawberries, blackberries, pistachios and heirloom greens, this is a perfect salad to enjoy on a sunny summer day! I like to add garlic friend quinoa to it. Yum, yum!

675 W. Beech St. 

619.269.2202

http://www.craft-commerce.com/ 

4th of July

Happy Independence Day from gorgeous San Diego! I hope everyone has a truly fabulous day!

XOXO - Tiffany

Breakfast with Tiffany... at Snooze

I haven't been back in San Diego long, but I have already discovered my favorite breakfast place... Snooze AM Eatery. This place is absolutely fabulous. Located in Hillcrest, Snooze serves up a wide variety of breakfast and brunch delights, focusing on items crafted from scratch with high quality ingredients. My friend Laura introduced me to Snooze, and now she gives me a hard time for being totally obsessed. I feel it is my duty to try everything on the menu!

The pancakes... are HUGE! You can order one with your meal (sub out your bread!) Feeling super gluttonous? Then order a flight of 3 pancakes.  I would suggest ordering one so you can try other items as well! If you're looking to go the more traditional route, try the blueberry pancake. Pancakes can be made gluten free too!

We ordered the white chocolate chip pancake (special of the day) as a starter for a table of 4. Trust me when I say that one is enough. This is truly decadent and SINFUL! 

Your traditional omelet served with house hash browns (which are amazing!) Choose from any 3 fillings from the menu, to make your perfect omelet! 

If you're feeling extra hungry (which I typically am) go for the Snooze breakfast burrito, stuffed with scrambled eggs, hash browns, black beans, cheddar & jack cheese, topped with salsa and your choice of the green chili or ranchero sauce. My vote is for the green chili. I don't know if I should be bragging about this, but I ate the whole thing. "Baxter, I'm not even mad, I'm impressed!" Ok, it wasn't a whole wheel of cheese, but whatevs. Whoops, that isn't my arm below, but I did eat one, really! 

If you are looking for a fantastic breakfast experience, this is the place to go. Be prepared to wait a LONG time if you are going on the weekend. I even waited for about an hour on a Friday. But trust me, it is totally worth it. You can sip on a fresh mimosa or play some ping pong while you wait. I will be going back to try some more items ASAP!


Snooze AM Eatery 
3940 5th Ave. 
(619) 500-3344
http://www.snoozeeatery.com/ 

Farewell Chicago...

It's been almost a month since I moved back to San Diego and I am finally getting around to posting this. It was with a heavy heart that I moved away from Chicago after 7 wonderful years. Other than leaving my awesome friends, the hardest thing by far is to leave the amazing restaurants in Chicago. San Diego cuisine cannot compare, but I am super excited to dine throughout Southern California and share my culinary adventures with you. New blog name is in the works!
It would not have been a proper farewell without having a traditional Chicago hot dog, so I had to try the best... Hot Doug's! After 7 years, this was the very first time I had a traditional Chicago dog! Hold the ketchup! Yum, it did not disappoint. And it was a treat to have Doug take my order. What a nice guy!
So long Chicago. I can't wait to come back to eat old favorites and test out new hot spots!

Happy Easter!

After 40 days of no chocolate, I finally get to eat my fave, Cadbury mini eggs!

Enjoy this gorgeous Spring day!

xoxo - Tiffany

ALINEA!

This meal cannot be described in one simple and all encompassing word, but if I had to choose one: PHENOMENAL! I am so lucky and feel very honored to have been able to celebrate our anniversary by dining at the best restaurant in the country! Pictures cannot do these dishes justice so I will do my best to explain everything to you! Beyond the amazing food, we just had a damn good time! Four wonderful hours passed, and we left with full bellies, a little tipsy, and huge grins on our faces. Thank you Chef Achatz and Co for an absolutely unforgettable first anniversary! 

We arrived at our table and sitting there was some mysterious red liquid encased in a block of ice. What is this you ask? We shall find out later...

First on the menu: Char roe with carrot, coconut and curry. Perfect little starter. The coconut and curry with the roe was out of this world (and so pretty to look at!)

The ocean arrives at our table! The seaweed display smelled of the salty ocean and with it, came its bounty! An oyster leaf (literally a leaf that tastes like you are eating an oyster), king crab with heart of palm, mussel with saffron and chorizo, and a razor clam with shiso and soy! We transcended to a dining room on the cliffs of the Pacific!

The antenna! Wooly pig with fennel, orange and squid. Look ma, no hands!

Now, I don’t even know how to describe the process here, but a scallop was basically blended and recreated to look just like tofu. A dashi broth was poured on top. Pretty insane!

The ice has melted down a bit and we are given straws to sip on the juice inside: beet, hibiscus and licorice. Personally, I can’t do beets. I’ve tried, and I’ve failed to like them, so this juice was not for me. I stuck to my wine! T seemed to enjoy it though!

Up next, Black Sea Bass served with an olive caponata and fried chickpea chips, inspired by chef’s trip to Sicily. This was by far my favorite dish of the night. Alinea usually does not serve a family style dish, so this is something new, and should stay on the menu. ALWAYS!

What on earth is this? Again, something was placed on our table and we find out what it is later!

The hot potato, cold potato dish was one I was most excited for, and it did not disappoint! You pull the pin out and the hot potato drops in the cold potato soup! We were told to do it fast, so my shot of this is a little shaky!

Mushrooms with juniper, sumac and shallot. T hates mushrooms and even he liked this!

Ok, so the mysterious red stuff hanging on a table was cabbage and we were told to place the venison on it and wrap it like a burrito. Fanciest and tastiest burrito I’ve ever had the pleasure to try!

Black truffle explosion. No description needed. I can now die and go to heaven. Pure bliss.

Fun with utensils! Spoons with lavender, squab, foie gras, rendered duck fat and some other treasures. We were told to eat these in no particular order.

Moving on to desserts... Pear with onion, brie and smoking cinnamon. Having fun with our food!

Ginger antennas! This Ginge enjoyed it!

Winter in New Hampshire… peppermint frost with clear hot chocolate. Such a whimsical presentation!

Now this was a blast! We were brought out balloons and told to suck out the helium! The balloon was apple flavored taffy that you could eat. Taking fun with food to a whole new level!

And finally… dark chocolate with lingonberry, butternut squash and stout. Our server artfully placed the lingon berry and butternut squash on our table and dropped the chocolate ball of goodness for us to enjoy! The elaborate dessert presentation blew me away!

  

By far the most extraordinary culinary experience to date! I’m not sure what could possibly top this! Happy Anniversary T! Love you!

Meet Copper!

T and I brought home this little guy last week and we are totally smitten! Copper is a Yorkie Poo and is the sweetest puppy you ever laid eyes on! Being knee deep in pee pee pads, Copper has been keeping us from dining out, so please forgive my lack of posts! I'm off to Napa at the end of the week to eat and drink a ton of wine with my best friends, so more food posts to follow!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Have a great day everyone! Eat lots of chocolate!


XOXO -

Tiffany

Restaurant Spotlight: Next: Childhood Menu

If you live in Chicago and you have not heard of NEXT by now, you must be living under a rock! Chef Grant Achatz has created a restaurant unlike any other, where the menu changes every few months, focusing on a different time period and/or part of the world, and pre-priced tickets are sold in advance rather than diners calling in to make a reservation. And these tickets are not easy to come by! After stalking Next’s Facebook page incessantly, I was FINALLY able to score day of tickets to the Childhood menu! And what an exciting and playful menu it was! Chef Achatz and Chef de cuisine Dave Beran created a menu based on their 80's childhood in Michigan, where they both grew up. Of course, everyone has had a different childhood, but the 10 course menu was a progression of memory triggers for both T and I! The food was whimsical and delicious and the service was impeccable. It was hands down the most memorable food experience I have had to date! It was so fun to see what was coming next, and to see everyone else’s reactions when their food arrived! If I don’t get the pleasure of enjoying another menu at Next, I will still be a happy girl!

PB & J bite in a box: Love the present given to us. I was like a kid on Christmas morning. What is in here?! We were told to pop the entire tempura fried sphere of goodness in our mouths. If we were to bite into it, the hot “jelly” and peanut butter would probably explode all over our clothes. Instead, it exploded in our mouths in a good way. Ha! Sublime.

Chicken noodle soup: Move over Grandma, this is the best Chicken noodle soup ever! The noodles were actually made from chicken. Chicken! Not noodles. Such a fun play on words. Phenomenal!

Fish & chips: Art on a plate – drawn on stick-figure children fishing for a piece of walleye trapped in a woven potato net over cucumber waves, alongside a deconstructed tartar-sauce beach.Themed girl and boy plates for myself and T. Amazing.

Mac & cheese: The actual noodles were surrounded by a plethora of ingredients, as everyone has their own version of Mac & Cheese as a kid. These fun additions included ham, manchego custard, a "rock" that burst with concentrated hot-dog flavor, and tiny pasta tubes resembling the classic Kraft version. The manchego was my personal favorite.

Autumn in the woods: Presentation wise, this was the most dramatic. An array of smoked veggies, suspended over a torched piece of birch that brings with it the aroma of campfire. My hair smelled like I had been camping out too, but the veggies were scrumptious.

Hamburger: By far my favorite dish of the night. The deconstructed bun was actually a sauce. The meat was to die for. It seriously tasted like I was eating an In-N-Out burger. Want more now! This plate was pure genius!

Lunch box: Just like elementary school! What am I going to get today!? Served in vintage lunchboxes (mine was Pound Puppies,) a variety of fun items were served! The apple brandy fruit leather and the truffled oreo being my two standouts. There was also a sweet note from mom or dad in the box. So fun!

“Foie”sting and donuts: Yes, foie gras frosting was served on electric mixer beaters that you got to lick off, just like when you were a kid! (A very fond memory of mine!). Dipping the cider donuts in the foie was tasty as well. This is something that I will probably never be served again, so I savored it. But, it was super rich so I couldn’t finish it all. By this point in the meal, we were verging on sugar overload, but we kept on going…

Sweet potato pie: No.Room.Left! But I love sweet potatoes! And the addition of the bourbon caramel made it heavenly. Love the campfire presentation!

 Hot cocoa: Officially in a sugar induced coma, thus I forgot to take a picture. A sugar coma, just like when we were kids, right! How fitting.
 
We had so much fun throughout the course of our childhood adventure. It’s hard to describe the nostalgia I felt while pulling my pudding cup and fruit roll-up out of my lunch box. While my mom never gave me black-and-white truffle Oreos, she always packed a napkin and a snack in a plastic baggie! Well done Mr. Achatz! Excited to witness what is in store Next, (El Bulli menu) if I’m so lucky to score those coveted tickets!
 

953 W Fulton Market

http://www.nextrestaurant.com/