Vic’s Touchdown Cafe Near RaceTrack, LA
We’re headed home again, but the day has dawned shrouded in a thick Halloween-y fog drifting up off the bayous and covering the low lying roads. We get on a fast road, and decide to have breakfast, hoping the fog will break.
We exit almost as soon as we got on the road, headed South on a road heading toward the Gulf, looking for something that is not fast food. And there it is, on the left, we just passed it, so we circle back for breakfast at Vic’s, Breakfast Lunch Dinner.
As it turns out, I believe the real name is Vic’s Touchdown Cafe. The interior is full of sports trophies, banners, team memorabilia, and stuffed deer heads. There are other customers, eating breakfast, chatting with a man whom I believe is probably Vic. We ordered breakfast off the plastic menu table mats, and settled back to listen and learn.
People in Louisiana are hospitable, and kind. They asked us questions, shared some local lore and when I asked Vic if he had any milk, he opened a little bottle of milk just for me and put it on the table so I could have milk in my coffee. I was impressed, but I get the impression he thought it was just good manners. My kind of place.
I didn’t take photos of the food; it might have spoiled the mood. It was traditional breakfast; eggs, bacon, biscuit and AdventureMan had hash browns. It was all good, even the coffee, and even better because it was not fast good. This was a great stop.
By the time we had finished, the fog had lifted and we had clear sailing all the way back to Pensacola 🙂
From Lake Charles to Houma, Louisiana And Bon Creole
Another wonderful day to travel Southern Louisiana and the lowlands. We stop at one of our favorite places, Saint Martin’s Lake.
Near the factory burning cane, I see an old abandoned house. There are a lot of old abandoned houses on the backroads of Louisiana; rich pickings for series like HBO’s True Detectives.
The air was so clear you could see every atom of smoke as this factory burned off chaff grinding cane into cane sugar syrup:
Just in time for lunch, we hit New Iberia, where my friend Dave Robicheaux hangs out. Last time we were here, we went to a wonderful Place, Bon Creole, but we remembered it was hard to find. Even with my smart phone, we drive right past it, and have to go around the block and look again. This is not a place that makes itself KNOWN; you have to know where it is, and you have to really want to find it, LOL!
The interior is a hunter’s dream.
At the table near us, a group of local women are sitting and one is holding court, saying “You never know about so-and-so; she is so SECRETIVE!” and I am thinking that she would call me secretive, too, that I would be very careful about telling anything about myself that she could be spreading to all her friends – and everyone else in the Bon Creole who cared to listen.
Thank God, our food is ready, and I start with my gumbo, thick with shimp. Oops, I forgot, the gumbo comes with potato salad.
And more grilled shrimp – this time on my green salad. So many shrimp I couldn’t eat them all!
Poor AdventureMan! “Why didn’t I just order a 6″ Overstuffed Oyster Po’Boy???” These oysters were the old fashioned kind, fresh, dipped in corn meal and deep fried, just the way he likes them, but no, no, he couldn’t eat them all. I had one, and there were still many left, so many fabulous oysters!
As we were leaving, we stopped two residents who were leaving and asked them if we could get to Highway 90 by continuing down the road we were on, and they offered to let us follow them to Franklin. Franklin is like 25 miles down the road, imagine. They were willing to be so gracious to perfect strangers. We gratefully declined, and used their instructions and our smart phone to get us over to 90, en route to Morgan City and Houma.
“Pesto; The Quiche of the ’80’s”
It’s still hot, hitting the nineties, but something is changing. You can see it in the angle of the sunlight, especially at sun rise and sun set, the directions have changed, the angles have changed, and the colors are richer.
Time to harvest the basil. This is not my garden, nor my basket, nor my garden, but the resemblance is uncanny, and this is a great photo for illustrative purposes.
We grow a lot of basil, pots and pots of basil. After early church, I hit the pots with my garden shears. I trim off all the little flowers on top (I’ve been doing this all summer, but I never seem to keep on top of it) and then I trim back the branches, laden with basil. I have an entire basket full of Genovese, which, after picking off the leaves, washing them and spinning them dry, come to 12 cups of basil.
Doesn’t everything go better with a little pesto? I love to smear a little on my BLT’s, I love to pop a spoonful into a soup, and oh my holy tomato, basil pesto on pasta, to die for. Â I know what I want to do, but I want to be sure I get proportions right, so I go to The Silver Palate Cookbook, it came out years and years ago and has a lot of basic but really really good recipes. So, how old is this cookbook? When I was looking at the Pesto page, there was a box that said “Pesto – the quiche of the ’80’s” or something like that which implied pesto was the newest, most wonderful thing – in the ’80’s.
“????” I thought.
Isn’t pesto one of those classics? Maybe it’s because we frequented Italian restaurants when I was going to high school in Germany, but I remember pesto. It’s not like quiche (which, by the way, is my grandson’s favorite thing), it’s no passing trend, pesto is classico!
I made all the  batches with garlic, lots of garlic, about triple what the recipe calls for, and I roasted it before I tossed it in. One batch I made with almonds, one batch with sunflower seeds and the last batch with my all time favorite, walnuts. I labeled little snack bags, put globs of pesto in them, sealed them up, put them all in one big gallon sized plastic bag and sealed that up and put the whole lot in the freezer, to pull on on those days when I need a pop of flavor and a taste of the long hot summer.
Here is my variation on the Silver Palate recipe:
Basil Genovese Pesto
4 cups basil, packed, washed, dried in salad spinner (or whatever) still fresh and green
8 – 12 cloves garlic, peeled, roasted
2/3 cup really good olive oil
some salt and some pepper. The best thing is coarsely ground salt and coarsely ground pepper that you’ve ground yourself.
about 1/2 cup nuts. Pine nuts are classic, as are walnuts, but pesto is one of those dishes with a lot of variation based on what God’s great earth hath provided. I don’t even measure the nuts, just eyeball it. I used walnuts, almonds, and sunflower seeds in separate batches.
In a nice large food processor, put in nuts, garlic, salt, pepper, oil and then pack in 4 cups of basil. Process until you have a gritty ball. You won’t be able to see any leaves, but you will be able to see specks of white. Spoon into freezer containers in usable amounts and freeze.
Golden Palace: Packed When Tudo’s Closes
We were on the way to get my foot x-rayed and AdventureMan had promised me lunch at one of my favorite places in Pensacola, Tudo’s. When we arrived, the parking lot was empty – that’s not a good sign. There was a notice on the door that the restaurant was closed for ‘new equipments,’ and would open again soon.
We’ve seen Golden Palace (I love that on their website they have steam wafting up from the Pho), two doors north of Tudo’s several times, but you know, you feel sort of disloyal to your favorite restaurant when you try another of the same genre, but especially if they are so closely located. But now we could give it a try, guilt-free.
The place was packed. There was a line. We chatted with the woman in front of us who said she had also intended to eat at Tudo’s – I am guessing most of the clientele were people who would otherwise be eating at Tudo’s. Lucky day for Gholden Palace 🙂
We started with soup, and the soup was tasty, rich in flavor, delicious:
I tried the shrimp with lemongrass, and it was very nice, very generous with the shrimp, I couldn’t eat it all:
AdventureMan had the salad rolls, full of BBQ pork, also very tasty:
Golden Palace is worth a visit. Tudo’s really has the Vietnamese-favorite-in-Pensacola medal all sewn up, but Golden Palace has its own merits. I was particularly impressed at the grace and efficiency with which they managed to serve a great many customers and keep them happy.
The Macaroni Grill in Pensacola, FL
For the most part, AdventureMan and I stay away from national chains. One time in the last couple of years we tried Olive Garden, and, like many of the chains, they had gone to using “pre-formed” meats – how do you think they got all those dishes to look so uniform?
But Macaroni Grill is – or was, it’s all unclear now – a part of the Outback Chain, and Outback will always have a place in my heart because of their open-handed support when I worked for an educational foundation, raising money for scholarships. They were a joy to work with, and so generous to our scholarship recipients.
So we decided to give the Macaroni Grill a try. Here is what the entry at the Cordova Mall looks like.
I had the Caesar Salad, which was very good, fresh, great dressing:
I also had the Chicken Marsala, which had three chicken cutlets, real chicken, not pre-formed, not identical, with angel hair pasta. The Marsala sauce had barely a hint of Marsala, but it was pretty good. I’d prefer a little more Marsala taste. It was plentiful, and I had enough left over for dinner, too.
AdventureMan had the lasagna, which he said was really good! His portion was so huge, he also had enough for dinner and I don’t think he was able to finish it, there was so much.
Service was prompt and efficient. We asked the server if all the food was prepared here, or prepared elsewhere and sent semi-prepared, and she said, with great pride, that all the food was prepared daily, on-site. You could see into the open kitchen, and chefs and assistants were back there busily preparing meals – all a good sign.
We probably won’t go back, just because there are two or three other Italian places in town we like better, but it is a perfectly decent restaurant with above average food, very clean, good service and convenient if you are at the Cordova Mall.
The Tin Cow on Palafox in Pensacola
It’s not a bad place. The service is fabulous. The restaurant is often packed, and has something for everyone.
I have one complaint. I don’t often eat hamburger, so I saved my July hamburger to eat at Tin Cow, which I had heard totally majored in hamburgers.
Here is the interior on a busy Saturday – and. thanks to the renaissance of downtown Pensacola, it looks like every Saturday is a busy Saturday, and that is a good thing. We got there early, within half an hour every table was taken and people were lined up outside to get in. Here is what it looks like inside, before every table is taken:
They have a great menu for children, children are welcome and well taken care of. Another positive for the restaurant – we saw people of all generations and genders there, all having a great time, all enjoying the Tin Cow experience.
They have a huge menu. There is a have-it-exactly-your-way menu, where you pick every little thing, and then there are about thirty hamburger theme choices, and for the vegetarians or non-beef eaters, there are alternatives. Truly, there is something for everyone. It can be almost overwhelming, but truly, you should be able to find something to order.
Here is AdventureMan’s hamburger and fries. The fries were good.
I had a hamburger and salad. The salad was really good, notably good because it was just a little side salad but really good.
Everything was good – except for our hamburgers. As we ate, we looked at each other in dismay. The burgers weren’t even grilled, they were maybe fried, and had no taste other than the condiments. I was especially dismayed; what? I had wasted all my beef calories and cholesterol on a mediocre hamburger?
It must be us. We love the burger at Apple Annies, at the Seville Quarter, and at Red Robin. We think Sonny’s has a pretty good burger. But the Tin Cow is supposed to specialize in burgers, and this one was one big disappointment. I hate to even write this review, because to us, everything else was so good, especially the service. But . . .
“Perfect!” The Bridge Restaurant in Anchorage
Language changes, and usage changes, and one of the differences I heard on this trip was an increasing use of the word “Perfect!”
We had eaten at Mooses Tooth (see below) and we wanted to change up the pace for our last night in Anchorage, finishing with really really good seafood in Anchorage. We decided on The Bridge, and we decided to make reservations.
“I’d like a reservation for two at seven o-clock” I said and the lady taking the reservation said “Perfect!”
She asked our name and I told her and she said “Perfect!”
Our name is perfect? That we gave her our name is perfect? That she wrote it down perfectly?
I told her we would see her at seven and she said . . . well, you can guess what she said:
“PERFECT!”
It took us a missed exit and some driving around to actually find The Bridge, and oh, what fun. It is in the downtown most part of downtown Anchorage, on the banks of the river, spanning the river.
There are a lot of parking lots with limited parking, limited to like two hours because they have so many people wanting to fish in this river. At seven at night, this river was PACKED. The river was packed with people, fishing! They had gorgeous weather, and the fish were biting.
This is the kitchen at The Bridge:
And this is a view of a part of the interior. There are a variety of seating areas; this area was for those who had reservations. There was seating on a patio, but this is a very brightly lit place on a hot, sunshiney day, and I am glad to be inside, out of the hot sun, hot sun at seven at night – it’s the equinox.
We loved this restaurant, and while we had many wonderful experiences on this trip, this would be one of my first choices going back. It’s a little off the beaten trail, (although we saw two tables of eight reserved for Orvis fisherpeople) and the people who worked there seemed to really love working there. At least half of the people were from Anchorage.
We ordered the Smoked Salmon Pate, not realizing we would also get more pate with our bread. The Bridge is like that; it gives you more than you expect. Sorry for the high contrast photos; there is a lot of bright sun I am working with here.
AdventureMan also ordered crab legs, not realizing they came on the appetizer buffet you get with the full meal, which we ordered. We ordered too much food for our last night in Anchorage, when it didn’t make sense to take food back with us.
The Bridge has a fabulous appetizer buffet.
For his main course, AdventureMan had the grilled halibut, which he says was the best on his entire trip:
And I could not resist ordering The Bridge’s Alaska Cioppino – I am a sucker for Cioppino, and this was exquisite.
They also had rhubarb crisp as a dessert, but I could not even think about eating another bite. Next time I hit The Bridge, I will start with the Rhubarb Crisp 🙂
The Bridge is only open for the summer season. It is a total WOW.
It was (you guessed it!) “PERFECT!”
The Little Mermaid; One of the Best Restaurants in Homer
The last time we were in Homer, we tried to get into The Mermaid, which was near the Driftwood Inn, but it was full, and worse – fully reserved. We had not made reservations. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake this year, but as they do, things had changed, The Mermaid was under new management and the people who had created it’s huge success were at another restaurant, The Little Mermaid. So we made a reservation at The Little Mermaid and hoped for the best.
Oh my.
It is about as opposite to Captain Patties as can be. While both emphasize great fresh seafood, The Little Mermaid is more experimental.
We were really glad we had made reservations. There is a bar, very small, and then there are like four booths and maybe three more bar stools at a counter in the room to the right.
This is the exterior:
This is the blackboard, posted to the left as you enter, actually in the bar area which overlooks the harbor:
And this is a view into the kitchen:
A view of the interior where the booths are:
Our appetizer, Halibut Balls with Teriyaki Sauce. This was absolutely delicious, and I have never seen halibut presented this way before:
Now the sad part. When our meals came, I forgot to take any more photos. AdventureMan had Kodiak Scallops, which were very simple and absolutely delicious. I had a Brazilian Stone Bowl, a big (stone) bowl of Alaskan seafood in a coconut milk liquid, boiling hot and it stayed hot; it was novel and unforgettable and delicious. As we were waiting for our meals, the waitress came and asked me if we could wait just a couple minutes more; they had a fresh batch of mussels in and would like to throw a few into my dish, would I mind waiting?
We had seen the man walk from the harbor into the restaurant, carrying a big bag of freshly caught mussels. Of course I would wait!
For me, this was one of our best meals of the trip, and if you go to Homer, be sure to make a reservation at The Little Mermaid, out on Homer Spit. This is also where the locals go; it is a very popular place, deservedly.
An Ice Cream Break and Totem Cones in Juneau
“Are you from the Philippines?” AdventureMan asked the man behind the counter as he dished me up a cone of Huckleberry (Blueberry) ice cream.
“Yes, there are many of us here,” the man answered, and told us how one of the fastest growing demographics in Alaska is the Philippine community.
“At home, we are so poor,” he explained. We are lucky to have a one room shack for a family, and for water we have to walk a long way for running water. It is very bad.” He looked serious.
“How do you like it here?” AdventureMan asked, and the man grinned. “Life is good!” he said, with enthusiasm. He also mentioned the Mexican population in Alaska is growing almost as fast as the Philippine population. Who knew?
Normally, I don’t eat ice cream, but I have been craving something with either blueberries or rhubarb, two fruits that grew in Alaska when I was a kid, fruits we ate, jellied, froze, stored for later use. I had seen neither. Some might argue that huckleberries and blueberries are not the same. I don’t care. It is close enough for me. I also love that the cones are so extraordinary, artistic even, with their Alaskan Haida-esque sculptural quality:
And here is the proud cone-maker, also from the Philippines, who has a view to die for, the same view as from The Hanger on the Wharf, as she makes her specialty cones:
They insisted on giving us a 10% discount when they spotted my husband’s retired military ID card as he pulled out his wallet. They also shook his hand and thanked him for his service, a sweet and unexpected kindness in faraway Alaska.
Paradise Cafe Near the Juneau Airport
AdventureMan spotted this gem, near the airport, and said “I want to eat there!” We went inside, and what a surprise – it is eccentric, and quirky, and full of local people eating lunch. We noticed that thanks to the gorgeous display of sweet desserts and pastries, everyone also left with a box for ‘later on’ like coffee break.
They had a selection of ‘grillers’, no menu, everything is listed on the board or on display. It is so hard to focus on lunch when you are looking at flaky pastry confections . . .
I had the tomato pesto sandwich, and AdventureMan had a ham and cheese griller – both rich and filling. We sat at one of the tables, each table different, sometimes people share tables. On each table is a carafe of water, but we also saw a lot of people ordering specialty coffees and teas.
The Paradise Cafe is not a well-kept secret. You and I, as tourists, may not recognize it is there, but all the local helicopter pilots and airport workers know it is there 🙂 It is a well loved and busy place!
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