Foiereo and a Cosmo Sidecar

Sidecar SLO

There comes a time in every woman’s life when she just needs to take the plunge, and by plunge I mean seeing something on a menu that absolutely terrifies you by the description and creates such hesitation that you literally need to be pushed into ordering it by supportive or absolutely out of their minds, friends. This happened to me the other night at Sidecar in SLO. A new hip restaurant and speakeasy style bar that recently opened in town. Michael Reyes is the Executive Chef and has added quite the unique and fantastical spin to the menu. It’s ever changing, farm to table cuisine in what he describes as a “Rustic French Italian” cooking style.

Yakitori – Buy American, Eat Japanese.

Japanese food. So overproduced in America. I was talking to a gentleman from Britain the other day who reminded me that when you go to England and don’t really know where to go or what to order, it’s like visiting the Central Coast from oversees and going to Applebees for dinner, expecting to get the local flavor. Japanese food is one of those cuisines where you really have to shock your system and go to Japantown in San Jose to understand that we don’t really get the authentic stuff, and don’t really know what we’re missing. Well, the Yakitori cooked up by AJ over at Raku in San Luis Obispo is a glimpse into what we’ve been missing.

It’s a Pass-tee not paste-y! :)

There is this little spot on Chorro St. in San Luis Obispo that brings a wee bit o’ the Emerald Isle and England to the Central Coast. Slo Pasty Co. serves up little meat pies of goodness. Pasties are a pastry filled with meats and vegetables (almost like a stew with less liquid) that became popular in the 1700s and again with the tin Miners of the 19th century, because they were nutritious, portable and most importantly- filling. Nowadays,

Pedro Loves Laetitia

Saturday night I had the pure unadulterated pleasure of pairing one of my favorite sherry’s, Pedro Ximenez with Laetitia’s brut Cuvee as an aperitif at Lido. It was a match made in heaven.

Dazed and Confused: Basquing on the Beach

I feel I must start this post with my philosophy for writing these reviews for you. I’m not a chef, and therefore have no right to criticize. I prefer to inspire you by telling you what I enjoy no matter where we go. I don’t want to be a “restaurant critic” because everyone has bad nights, servers in bad moods, stand-in cooks. I simply want to inspire you to try everything and make up your own mind, but also have been told I know good food, which is why I started posting to begin with. So please accept this post in that spirit as you read. Now, on to the day AFTER 4/20, which may explain why I entitled this post “Dazed and Confused.”

Great friends Mel and Bob (from our evening at Marisol) invited us to join them at a new restaurant that opened in place of Old Vienna, the only German food we’ve found in the county. I was terribly excited to hear it was Basque food,

Once upon a midnight dreary, I showed up at Cuvee and became less weary….

I love Cuvee, it’s one of the coolest places I know. It reminds me of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “the Raven” crossed with a champagne and sparkling wine bar. Instead of pondering over quaint and curious volumes, I ponder over glorious bottles of bubbly. Cuvee is located in gorgeous Avila Beach, is owned by a wonderful woman named Starr Hall, and is run by her adorable daughter Savannah and her boyfriend Justin. It’s beautifully appointed in a rich Victorian design with velvet, and dark wood. The tables are dotted with ebony Raven’s feathers in little vases perched on old worn books. The bar is made of the riddling racks

Lido? Lovely on a Tuesday night!

One of the most amazing things about living in a vacation destination in California, is all the beautiful restaurants and resorts located on the coast over looking the ocean, beach, or cliffs above the Pacific. It never gets boring to turn to Doug at the spur of the moment and say “Which one of the incredibly beautiful places would you like to go for dinner?”

The Best Appetizer Ever?

I have to admit – I live here by the sea and have a riduculously difficult time finding good seafood. I’ve recently become enamored with oysters, and our local oysters are some of the best I’ve tried, but I’ll talk about them another time. Today, I want to talk about a dish I’ve had twice now – the first time by accident, and the second time intentionally – and both times I was absolutely stunned at how such a seemingly odd combination of flavors and textures could come together to create possibly the best appetizer I’ve ever had.

Glass is in session

One of the most well known wine glass makers in the world is Riedel glass out of Austria. According to acclaimed wine critic Robert Parker “The finest glasses for both technical and hedonistic purposes are those made by Riedel.”

According to Maximillian Riedel’s Facebook page it was in the 1950s, that Riedel Crystal of America, “introduced the concept of varietal specific wine glasses”. What most people don’t realize is that now a days, wine glasses are as diverse as the bottles of wine themselves. You have red wine glasses, white wine glasses, flutes and aperitif glasses. But how do you decide which one to use with which wine? Is there a general all around glass that I can use for both? How can you tell which is for red and which is for white?  And why does it make a difference anyway, a glass is a glass right? Wrong.

Ah Luis, Luis…You gotta GO!!!

I know, we’ve blogged about Luis before, but get used to hearing about it because we are LOVING this place! Vanessa is terrific and really knows her stuff, not to mention I have been craving Maegan Loring’s chicken and duck fat pate since I wrote about it in my Going down in Gluttonous Glory blog. Today we went to Luis and decided to try the flights, I got the red GSM (Grenache/Syrah (Shiraz)/Mourvedre) blend and