Beulah’s Kitchen for Breakfast
There was no breakfast included at the spa, which was fine, we got up and hit the road, knowing we would come across something. As we leave Calistoga, we are in the thick of wine country; it is Spring and the vines are still just waking up, but the world is lush and green and beautiful. We are on a small winding road, through hills and vineyards, inching towards Interstate 5 when we come across Middleton and Beulah’s Kitchen.
Beulah’s Kitchen is the exact kind of place we hope to find when we want to have breakfast. It isn’t a chain, real people are cooking real food, and it is not cookie cutter food, either.
This is AdventureMan’s Biscuits and Gravy – so much food! He did his manly best and finished some of it!
I had the breakfast burrito – again, a lot of food, and I was able to eat about half, but I enjoyed every bite. The coffee at Beulah’s Kitchen was exceptionally good.
This food was so filling that we were fine until about 2 in the afternoon, when we finally had lunch.
Ft. Bragg; Our Old Friend, Cucina Verona
We have such great memories of Cucina Verona. We had a wonderful meal there the last time we were here, we couldn’t wait to eat here again. Some meals are just memorable; we wanted another meal that memorable, that good.
We started with a broccoli soup which was rich and thick and tasty. We were hungry; I didn’t even think to pull out my camera.
But once the soup was finished, I remembered 🙂
I had Pasta Puttanesca, again, rich, delicious, and full of taste.
AdventureMan had Salade Nicoise, or Salad Nicosia, as it appeared on the menu. It was all wonderful, so wonderful that when we couldn’t eat it all, and there was so much left, we had them pack it all up and shared salad and pasta again for dinner that night back in our wonderful hotel room.
Cannot wait to get back to Cucina Verona!
Ft. Bragg, California; Where we Dined at Mayan Fusion
AdventureMan had a bug; he had found a place on Yelp called Mayan Fusion, and here we are in California, he wants Mexican-Mayan. So we head to Mayan Fusion, which is full of our demographic (retired, still physically active, travelers, etc) and the smells are delicious.
Mayan Fusion Ginger Berry Sangria
Here is where everything starts to get fuzzy for me. One of the specials of the day was this Ginger Berry Sangria. I’ve made Sangria – you know, fruit and a light wine, and this sounds interesting. The first sip had a wallop. I could have stopped drinking then, I probably should have, but oh, I do love ginger, and this “sangria” was delicious and refreshing.
Well, one sip and I lost a lot of my higher thinking functions.
I think this was my husband’s dinner. I can’t remember what it was called.
Or maybe this was my dinner, but I think it might have been my husband’s.
Here was the special dip; it tasted a lot like bean dip made with several different beans; I think we started with this.
“What was in that Sangria?” I asked the elderly waitress as we were waiting for the bill and she was clearing.
“Oh, we start with a big shot of vodka . . . ” she started.
I don’t know when I last had hard alcohol, not at all in the last seven or eight years, rarely for maybe 15 years, since we left Germany.
We went straight back to the hotel and I fell sound asleep.
Kyllos in Lincoln City
En route to Bandon, we were driving through Lincoln City when AdventureMan suddenly said “It isn’t going to get any better than this!” and pulled suddenly into a park next to the Pacific Ocean. Across a big creek from the park was a restaurant, Kyllos, and all we had to do was to figure out how to get there on foot, which we did.
We got there just in time, and had a booth just overlooking where the river joined the sea.
The interior of Kyllos was warm and welcoming. There were many customers, but the buzz of conversation was low and muted.
The waiter appeared promptly with a menu full of really tempting items. I ordered the Dungeness Crab Louis, and AdventureMan ordered the Hazelnut Bleu Salmon Salad.
We had a lot of great meals on this trip, and we believe this was one of the best.
Back to Bandon, Oregon
We forget just how big this great United States is. We look at a map, and we think, “Oregon, piece of cake.”
Not so much.
This day we are bound for Bandon, Oregon. It’s been years since we have passed through, I don’t even know for sure how many years. The last time I can clearly remember is forty one years ago, our son was a baby, we travelled in a Volkswagon van turned into a camper. We had a little travel crib for our son, we slept in the way back with the seat folded down, and we had our famous cat, Big Nick.
When we got to Bandon, lo those many years ago, we bought a Dungeness Crab, had it cleaned, a loaf of French bread and a bottle of white wine. We found a motel, settled in, got our baby to bed and feasted on that crab. It is one of our most fun memories.
The route to Bandon is along the coast, but we are not always in sight of the ocean. There are some times we are, and those times are spectacular.
And my favorite of all, pouring rain and streaming sunshine and roaring waves all at once 🙂
We arrive in Bandon; I’ve reserved at a place we haven’t stayed and it is hard to tell from the online photos how this works. Our reception is less than warm. We walk in and the sole receptionist takes three phone calls before she acknowledges us and registers us. It’s annoying.
Our annoyance totally disappears when we get to our cabin. We discover it is easily accessible (not all are) and we can even take our bags in with some ease. Once in the door – oh Wow.
The cabin is old-timey, but squeaky clean, and with a view to die for. There is a part of me that could stay in this cabin forever.
This is the view from the balcony when we arrived.
AdventureMan walked the beach, came back, we stretched, walked around, napped a little, and then went to Tony’s Crab Shack for dinner. It doesn’t look familiar, but this may be where we bought our crab forty one years ago.
Tony’s Crab Shack is not a large place, like some counter seating, a booth and a couple small tables. The menu is surprisingly varied, and all up on the wall, with lots of beverages.
We ate something, I can’t even remember what, I probably had crab 🙂 and then we walked around Brandon downtown, which was almost entirely closed up except for a couple bars.
But I wanted to be back in our room for sunset.
The beach at Bandon is beautiful.
Bandon is one of my happy places.
Baked Alaska, A Highlight in Astoria, Oregon
“I see a place I want to eat!” I cried out as we were looking for a lunch place. “Baked Alaska!”
“You want to eat Baked Alaska for lunch?” AdventureMan asked me, thoroughly confused.
“No, the name of the restaurant is Baked Alaska. It’s underneath the Raymond James office and it’s right on the waterfront. I’ll bet it’s good,” I speculated.
One time when my niece, Professor Little Diamond was visiting, I told her how AdventureMan often accused me of speculating.
“Join the family!” she exclaimed. “It’s fun! We all just speculate our asses off!”
You can see why we loved it when she would come to stay for a while. She and I would go to the bookstores and tote out volumes and sets of Islamic books on scriptures, history, and the precedence of scholarly attributions, and all kinds of books about customs. Some I would mail to her, many she would manage to take back with her in her suitcases, leaving behind clothing rather than sacrificing room for a book.
We decided to go to Baked Alaska for dinner, and it was a lovely, memorable meal.
We had this amazing view of all the ships making their way up the Columbia river. We also saw seals playing in the wakes.
AdventureMan ordered a dry Chardonnay, and the waitress brought a glass of the house Chardonnay, bottled especially for Baked Alaska, which she described as “crisp.” We both heartily agreed, and think it was one of the best wines we tasted on our trip.
We both had the arugula salad with roasted cauliflower to start. You can’t see it, but it’s there, along with roasted garlic. This salad was fabulous.
It also came with tasty bread:
AdventureMan ordered clams, this time in a creamy sauce:
He said they were very delicious, and very rich. The next day, he said he thought maybe he’d give up on clams for a while, that he loves them, but sometimes a rich treatment is too rich, and keeps him awake at night. Aren’t they beautiful, these lovely fat clams in their cauldron?
I had the seafood small plate, with Pacific shrimp, sous vide smoked salmon, and Dungeness crab. I couldn’t decide which I loved the most, the salmon or the crab, but . . . Dungeness crab trumps almost everything anytime.
They had some tempting dessert offerings, including, ahem, Baked Alaska, but we are trying to both eat delicious foods, and keep our waistlines, so tonight we skipped dessert.
Even without dessert, this was one of the best meals we ate. Well, there were a lot of best meals . . .
We fell asleep to the sound of barking sea lions.
Kalaloch Lodge and Creekside Restaurant
OK, I am going to risk boring you. I have a think about lodges and historic hotels. I love the old architecture, the high ceilings, the spacious rooms. I love the restorations and renovations that include gracious private bathrooms (!) and I love the vision that created these lodges in the first place. So I am going to show you lots of photos, because I can’t help myself. Honestly, I have shown restraint, but you may not think so.
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This is the exterior of Kalaloch Lodge
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These are some of the cabins. Many of them have cabins with kitchens, and people bring their own food for the week.
This is the wedding pagoda; the signs posted say that the pagoda is reserved from like 1 – 4 for a private event 🙂
The registration area and gift shop
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Upstairs area
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Our room looking out over the beach
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Our view – oh WOW. I just wish you could hear the waves.
Sunset at Kalaloch
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We ate dinner that night in the Creekside restaurant at the lodge, thanks to being urged to make reservations when we arrived. There is no place anywhere near Kalaloch you can eat without 30 minute drive. Fortunately, the Creekside Restaurant had delicious food, and some great choices for wine and beer.
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Restaurant is on lower floor; above it is one of the suites.
We don’t often end up ordering exactly the same thing, but this night we did. A great arugula salad and a big bowl full of clams, and some really good sourdough French bread. AdventureMan had a local beer, and I had a dry red wine. Life can’t get much sweeter 🙂 I am very proud that for once, I remembered to take a photo before we started eating.
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He restoreth my soul.
O’Yeah, Tasty; First Meal in Seattle
A month ago I was in Seattle when my 94 year old mother suddenly came down with influenza and was hospitalized for 13 days, drifting into pneumonia twice, and suffering several small strokes. It was a difficult time, and as I was running errands for her one day, I passed a new Chinese restaurant near the hospital, O’Yeah Tasty, Szechuan cooking.
Szechuan. Near Edmonds Community College. Hope springs eternal, maybe I can get some really good Chinese food in the midst of all this emotional chaos!
(When we were moving to Pensacola several years ago, our son sat us down, looked at us very seriously and told us he had something to tell us we weren’t going to like. With a long face he stated “You need to know that there is not a GOOD Chinese restaurant in Pensacola.” We searched. We tried them all. Most were sort of Americanized Chinese, none had the good strong flavors we had become used to overseas. Longing for GOOD Chinese food is something we have grown used to experiencing.)
I had something called Mongolian Delights, recommended from the Chef’s specials by the cashier/order taker. It was fabulous, and the Hot and Sour soup I had with it was really HOT. When I told my sister on the phone where I was, she said Mom wanted some Hot and Sour soup, so I took some to her, and she ate it, claiming it was delicious. It was just about the only thing she ate that day. Â A day or two later, I ordered an old favorite, Chong Qing Spicy Chicken, and I almost cried when it arrived, it was so totally TASTY, so close to what I remembered from the Taiwan Tourismo in Amman, Jordan back in the day.
So when AdventureMan and I arrived in Seattle, at lunch time (our delicious breakfast from The Courtyard had finally worn off) we headed straight for O’Yeah Tasty.
We ordered fried egg rolls, and AdventureMan ordered the Seafood Three Delights, and I ordered my all time favorite Chong Qing Spicy Chicken.
And the dish that makes me cry, Chong Qing Spicy Chicken:
As we ate, the restaurant filled with Chinese students from the nearby college. We got to see what they were eating, even as we enjoyed our own food. There was so much food, we packed it up and took it with us to put in our hotel room refrigerator and have later for dinner.
This is how much I love this food: when we were talking with my mother who, by the grace of God is greatly improved, and improving more every day, she said she was able to go out for dinner this very night. A part of me ALMOST said “how about tomorrow night?” because I love that Chong Qing Spicy Chicken so much, but fortunately I love my mother more and the thought was just for an instant; we quickly made plans to take my mother to an Italian restaurant she loves this night and to have our treasured left-overs for dinner tomorrow.
If you are ever in Edmonds looking for spirited and authentic Szechuan cooking, hurry to O’Yeah, Tasty.
Dinner and Breakfast in The Courtyard
Sometimes you just take the easy way. We had a great lunch at Gojo, and we had a long day. We knew there were so many great places in Portland, and we were tired. We decided to grab something quick at The Courtyard.
When we walked the short walk down the hall from our room to the restaurant, we discovered it was packed!
We were happily surprised to be quickly seated, and were doubly happy when we saw the menu and some non-pubby kinds of food. We ordered the Curry Butternut Soup and the entree Heirloom Tomato Salad. The soup was a little sweet to our taste, but some like sweet more than others. The Heirloom Salad was fabulous, full of a lovely variety of tomatoes, really good and tasty greens, prosciutto, and a very tasty variety of olives.
We were very pleased. It was tasty, it was healthy and it was original in creation and presentation. We were so delighted that we decided to have breakfast in The Courtyard again the next morning. As we got there, one of the servers was loading the wood burning stove.
The menu had more surprises for breakfast, we found. AdventureMan ordered Biscuits and Gravy, but not your Southern biscuits and gravy. The biscuits are home-made and baked fresh, and the gravy was a gorgeous mushroom and rosemary combination that satisfied without coating his blood vessels. I had the smoked salmon benedict, which was served on rye bread and had lots of avocado and herbed cream cheese in addition to the salmon and poached eggs.
The day was cloudy and rainy but the warmth of the meal and service kept us cozy and happy and content all the way on the rainy drive from Portland to Seattle.
Thank goodness for Google Maps, which gets us in and out of cities in the most efficient, least trafficked way, and which has a voice that will tell AdventureMan in advance what is coming, and which lane he needs to be in and which way he will need to turn. We occasionally get into trouble, but rarely, and can quickly orient ourselves to where we need to be.
Gojo Ethiopian Food on Alberta Street in Portland
As if the easy access and the great hotel weren’t enough, within four minutes of our hotel is a delightful little Ethiopian restaurant, and we can’t get Ethiopian food in Pensacola. There were two or three groups already eating, and the smells drove us wild.
We ordered quickly, a vegetable combination plate and Doro Wat, a spicy chicken that always comes with a thick, hot sauce and a hard boiled egg. Actually, I don’t care that much about the chicken or the egg, it’s that thick hot spicy sauce I love. We also loved the smokey green beans and the vinegary greens, the pickled cabbage, the beet colored potatoes and the red and green lentils – it was all good, and not dumbed down.
Our meal:
Extra injera:
There are so many good possibilities for good food in Portland, but we are so stuffed we think we will never eat again!
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