2012-366 Day 199 – Road Trip Food I

If there’s one thing we do well when travelling, it’s eat. Jess and I generally use a combination of Yelp and Food Network when determining where to eat, and it’s served us pretty well the last couple of days on the road. Being on the road, however, meals don’t necessarily match up to a defined breakfast, lunch, and dinner schedule, so I’ll just give you the approximate time of day.

Sunday Morning – McDonalds: Well, you know, we hadn’t really gotten started yet, so I guess this doesn’t count?

Sunday Afternoon – Linn’s: An institution in Cambria, Linn’s is famous for growing a special type of berry that I’m not going to try to spell in this blog (ollala . . . olollie . . . nope, not going to do it). They also have a restaurant that serves American comfort food and desserts. I got the Hearst burger which had local beef, gouda, and roasted garlic aioli on a artisan roll. The roll was probably the best burger bun I’ve had in my life, a type of ciabatta that wasn’t too thick and not too airy. The whole package was quite delicious.

While I am not generally a dessert person, I did sample the Black Magic Cake on the platter that was ordered. I was the first one in on it and almost had my head knocked off by the dark chocolate ganache in it. It was quite good as well, but I’ll let one of the dessert people handle the specifics of it.

Sunday Night – Cannery Row Brewing Company: A late night arrival at the hotel and a quick scouting of the area landed us in one of the places that was still open at that time on a Sunday night. We were handed a late night menu and preceded to take full advantage of it, ordering Guinness battered mini corn dogs, applewood bacon cheddar fries, and a crunch cake. The corn dogs were very good, with just a hint of Guinness flavor (too much would have turned me off) and excellent batter. The applewood bacon fries were excellent, with slab cut bacon chopped up and very good fries, it was perfect late night fare. The crunch cake was disappointing as a cake, but the crunchy parts interspersed made up for it (butter scotch chips, peanuts, oreo pieces, chocolate chips, and a couple other things I don’t remember). The frosting wasn’t great either, but we had more than enough good stuff to go around.

Monday Morning – Crepes: A little crepe place between our hotel and the Monterey Bay Aquarium turned out to be quite the find. I got a good old-fashioned breakfast crepe which happened to be the house special, smoked turkey slices, two eggs, and extra cheese wrapped in a crepe. Everyone else got a good variety of sweet and savory, and they were pretty big, so we were happy with our breakfast choice.

Monday Afternoon – Tollhouse Cookies: In leaving the Aquarium and heading back to retrieve our car to head out for the next stop, we didn’t really budget time in for lunch and wound up just getting some cookies from the Tollhouse shop. This wound up being a mistake, as we would not stop for food again until much later. We learned a lesson as a car this day. The peanut butter cookies were definitely good though.

Monday Night – Boulevard Cafe: This wound up being our only “it is here, so we are eating here” location, and we got pretty lucky with it. I’m not even sure what city we were in, but it’s somewhere near San Francisco. The restaurant serves upscale comfort food, and three out of the four of us ordered a variation of mac and cheese. I had the Italian mac and cheese, which featured mozzarella, italian sausage, and a cream cheese sauce. It was excellent, although I would have liked a little more sausage (I wasn’t particularly shorted, I just really like italian sausage).

Tuesday Morning – Dynamo Donuts: Our first “quirky” spot, there was a bit of an adventure as the first address we were given by a food app was just plain wrong and led us to a different doughnut shop in a, how shall we say, unsavory neighborhood (do not use the address given by tvfoodmaps.com). After rectifying our mistake and covering a large part of the southern peninsula, we made our way to the shop. They make all sorts of unique donuts, including a maple bacon apple doughnut that they are famous for (or is that macon baple doughnut? I’ve heard it both ways ;). We got several donuts and some coffee (I heard reports that the coffee here and at the crepe place the day before was very good as well, I got hot chocolate here), I got a blueberry corn muffin that made a great breakfast. The maple bacon apple was very tasty and had a nice balance of salty to sweet. There was a spiced chocolate which we likened to a chocolate churro with a bit of spice at the end, and a hazelnut chocolate doughnut that was solid.

Tuesday Afternoon – Boudin: The San Francisco classic, Brian and I both had beef chili in a bread bowl. It was good. Can we tell that I’m not going to be a food critic when I grow up?

Tuesday Night – Johnny Garlic’s: Guy Fieri’s (a Food Network personality) original restaurant in Santa Rosa, this place was offbeat and crazy good. Everyone got something they really like, I got a bison and italian sausage (see, I told you) meatloaf sandwich with swiss (actually, gouda or provolone would have made the sandwich even better) and onion straws on a ciabatta bun. Bison is a much lighter meat than I was expecting, and it really allowed the italian sausage to shine through while providing a bit more of a meatiness to the patty (okay, maybe I could work at it a little bit and be a decent critic). I was unimpressed with the garlic fries, but eating the entire sandwich after the bread bowl earlier more than filled me up.

And it is now almost Wednesday morning, so it is time to sign off.

Weight: 229 Loss: 11 lbs – Running Yearly Mileage: 207.1 miles
Volleyball Match Record: 4-1 (9-6 Game Record)
Fitocracy Level: 23 ID: disciplev1