Traveling Treats

"blooming" tea

I've been lucky in the past few months to be able to travel outside of the lovely little {BIG} state of Texas and try some amazing food. I started my journey in the great state of Colorado. I was here for a long weekend and went to some pretty great places. If you have never been to Boulder, Colorado specifically - put it on your list. It may be a small college town, but it has got a lot of character. It's a town very similar to Austin, Texas but stuck between a lot of beautiful mountains. Apparently, Boulder is THE town to visit/live if you are a foodie. This was a shock to me, I had been to Boulder before but never got the chance to experience the true Boulder food scene. Unique, stylish and delicious can only begin to describe it.

Here we go:

Here is a brief summary of what we got into one morning... Pancake flights, an entire plate of hashbrown goodness, yes an entire plate. Hasbrowns, cheese and two toppings of your choice. Bloody Mary's, Brewmosas (belgium trippel beer and orange juice) and a specialty egg benedicts every month at a place that solely serves brunch (Snooze, an A.M. Eatery). Needless to say - we didn't eat till quite later that night.

Imagine this, sweet corn - on a PIZZA! so delicious. Pizza Locale was a quaint pizza shop where pizzas are made in an in-house brick oven. As an appetizer we had fried saffron risotto balls....probably could have just had about 10 of those and would have been completely satisfied.

An adorable french inspired creperie serving sweet and savory crepes along with a delicious americano, thus starting my terrible, terrible americano addiction.

We ended our trip at a place called Oak at Fourteenth. Here we royally indulged ourselves. We basically had the entire menu; potato gnocchi, burrata cheese with olive & kumquat tapenade, the best kale salad I have ever had with  apple, candied pecans and an amazing fresh lemony dressing, a calamari salad with grapefruit and toasted pistachios, pork belly and tomato braised meatballs (the last two I didn't have - well maybe a bite... woops). All of these dishes were shared/small plates so the four of us just shared bits and pieces of everything. Dare I say it... the best meal I have ever had?
I was also able to travel to California where I had an amazing seared tuna and a scallop and shrimp pasta topped with julienned squash and zucchini. Although I'm not elaborating on the meals, they were stellar, especially paired with a glass (or two) of wine.