I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I love food and I have a super crazy sweet tooth. The past 2 weeks have been a whirlwind as far as food goes with trips out of town for both personal & work events and I’ve been eating not so cleanly. I don’t have any more planned trips until the end of July so I will be trying to get back on board with my normal clean eating diet starting this week.
This is going to be a super heavy photo post and everything was sooo good.
Starting with my work trip to Atlanta, we stayed at the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead and they had some amazing food, even in banquets.
Lunch in The Cafe. Cafe Turkey Club on multigrain bread with a roasted garlic aioli, Soy Cappucino & Tahitian Vanilla Crème Brulee (my favorite) with a lemon macaroon & fresh berries. Great way to start out the event!
Tuesday night dinner, my boss & I have a tradition of going for a steak dinner the night before the event. It’s our way of regrouping and starting the event off right. This time around, we went across the street to Lenox Square and hit up Prime. The food was amazing! Although the timing of the service was a bit off. We attempted to start with what were absolutely AMAZING oysters but the seafood person was a bit behind so they actually came right after the first course and just before the entrees which was a bit odd, but ok. I also had my favorite, spinach salad, love, love, love spinach, and a New York Strip steak before a great apple pie dessert, with a tiny bit of vanilla ice cream (which we shared).
I didn’t have time to take a lot of photos of the amazing banquet food that we had the opportunity to eat at the Ritz Carlton, but these are a few from our dinner function. I like to try a little of everything, just so I can comment when the guests talk about something. Started off with an excellent plated salad, with goat cheese stuffed with something, maybe pears. Then we had a buffet dinner, which included 3 meats, the salmon was excellent! and a bunch of different carbs, risotto & mashed potatoes, lots of veggies including purple carrots, cauliflower & green beans. Then to top it off, some gran marnier creme brulee & a fruit tarte.
So after getting home from Atlanta, I headed out to San Diego for the Rock n Roll Marathon weekend with my friend/running buddy, Pete. We travel to races a few times a year and always eat like kings, he loves food as much as me :).
We started out our food/running weekend at the Ocean Room, which was kind of a nondescript, somewhat empty place when we arrived. But the food was really good. We started out with a Kamikaze Roll, which was made with panko oyster, avo, gobo, cilantro, cucumber, tuna & tonkatsu sauce – YUMMY!! After which I had the seafood stew, which I would highly recommend.
We decided against dessert at the restaurant and instead found a cute little gelato place called Chocolat Cremerie. I only like fruit flavored gelato so I got a mix of strawberry, lemon which are my staples, but I mixed it up and added in some peach too. It was pretty good.
Breakfast on Saturday was pretty normal, eggs and toast, I didn’t want to eat too much before our shake-out run with Meb. No photos since it’s so boring :).
Now lunch on the other hand was absolutely amazing!! We went up to La Jolla on checked out this restaurant called Whiskandladle. They have a sister restaurant called Prep Kitchen, which we plan to check out next time we go. It reminded me a lot of the Fox Restaurant Concepts that we have a lot of here in Phoenix. We had the best server, I forget her name, darn it, but she was super cute (tiny) with short dark hair. She was one of the best servers we’ve had!
So I started off with a cucumber & honey mimosa, which was a nice change from the normal orange juice. Nice & light. I chose the fish tacos for my entree, although I was super tempted by the special which was a pork carnitas, but I can get pork anytime and the tacos were made with yellow tail! and came with yummy house made chips. I very rarely eat chips, but I love house made chips, these were really good, but a bit salty, although I think that was a good thing with the race the next day. To finish off the meal, we had fresh strawberry shortcake with homemade whipped cream, fennel & I think kumquat. Amazing!! I’m practically drooling just thinking about this meal.
We finished off Saturday, where I was finally able to meet the amazing & super speedy Rhea, one of my instagram friends, I love how social media brings people together, and her friends, Vanessa & Sean, who are equally speedy and amazing at dinner. We went to a place called Buon Appetito, which was in the Little Italy part of San Diego. I thought it was ok, but not great. I normally eat pizza the night before a race but they didn’t have any so I went with my second choice, lasagna. It was prepared differently than I’ve had it so I’m thinking that the owners were from a different part of Italy than I’m familiar with. I’m a lasagna connoisseur and this was not my favorite, however I ran really well the next day so I’m not knocking it :). I think the best part of the meal was meeting Rhea and talking with her and her friends. I love hanging out with other runners – it’s so inspiring to hear why everyone started running and what they have achieved.
After the race, we went to a really cool, eclectic place, called Eclipse Chocolate, which I’ll have a separate review coming up on.
And so as you can see, I’ve eaten a lot of really yummy food in the last 2 weeks, but it’s been pretty heavy on the dessert course so I’ll be concentrating on eliminating sugar from my diet for the foreseeable future, just to get back on track for a little bit.
Do you get off track, diet-wise, when you travel? I try but I just love food and when I’m not in my normal routine, I don’t always eat as well as I should.
