PTR-Cheating on Mickey w/Harry!...OMG! Only a month to go!

[Leshaface]

Yay for itineraries!!!

I can't believe how quick your DC trip is coming up!! Craziness!!

 

[franandaj]

Yea for points showing up and plans falling into place!

I know, I don't like it when I'm waiting on someone else...in this case it was Disney!

Nice plans for both trips! We're hoping for a Nov 1 MNSSHP too.

I've got just about everything set now for these two trips, the only thing left is ADRs and F&W events...and actually submitting my order to Garden Grocer otherwise, I'm pretty good!

Great news about your two trips! Your itinerary seems fantastic for both of them.

Roll on May! (After the Capital visit first, of course).

I know the next 5 weeks are going to fly by and next thing you know I will be in DC and then boom, boom, boom, concert, WDW and hopefully DLR with Firefly, we'll see.

I am happy that everything is falling into place for you. The itineraries look great, you are going to have such a great time .

It's been a year and two months since I was at WDW last so I can't wait to be back again even if it will just be a short time. I will be busy with Disney stuff in June, August and September so that will keep me sane while I wait for the big trip!

Yay for itineraries!!!

I can't believe how quick your DC trip is coming up!! Craziness!!

We finally booked our rental car for the 2nd half of the trip...did you know that almost every Downtown hotel charges $30+ per day for Valet Parking of cars? Since we're heading to the 'burbs Saturday after checkout we wanted to have the car Friday night. Yikes!

There are so many unknowns for this trip, it's not like going to WDW. However I just found on Google maps that less than 1/2 a mile from our hotel is a Whole Foods! Not that it would be my choice of groceries, but the fact that we can actually get some real food on the first night (hopefully) is a blessing! I thought that we were going to have to pack Spam (I've never actually tried it) and other things. I'm hoping that our neighborhood is good enough that we can walk up there and get some food and be OK!

 

[Leshaface]

We finally booked our rental car for the 2nd half of the trip...did you know that almost every Downtown hotel charges $30+ per day for Valet Parking of cars? Since we're heading to the 'burbs Saturday after checkout we wanted to have the car Friday night. Yikes!

There are so many unknowns for this trip, it's not like going to WDW. However I just found on Google maps that less than 1/2 a mile from our hotel is a Whole Foods! Not that it would be my choice of groceries, but the fact that we can actually get some real food on the first night (hopefully) is a blessing! I thought that we were going to have to pack Spam (I've never actually tried it) and other things. I'm hoping that our neighborhood is good enough that we can walk up there and get some food and be OK!

That's EXACTLY how the hotels are in San Francisco and ticks me off everytime! But after our second visit yeeeeaaars ago, I wised up and realized that the city is filled with public parking garages (the majority of them safe and cheap) so now we'll just walk about a half block or so to our hotel and pay up to half off for parking!

LOVE Whole Foods! Wish there was one next to me..the closest one is in Fresno about 45 mins North

I've never had spam either, but a lot of people love the stuff!

 

[franandaj]

So all of you out there out there who are starving for food porn, I will have some for you next weekend. Thursday night we are going to the Napa Rose,so I'll have some great pictures for you all. I don't really think my coffee shop breakfast this morning will be all that porn worthy.

 

[Leshaface]

So all of you out there out there who are starving for food porn, I will have some for you next weekend. Thursday night we are going to the Napa Rose,so I'll have some great pictures for you all. I don't really think my coffee shop breakfast this morning will be all that porn worthy.

Yay!!!! LOVE Napa Rose!!

 

[franandaj]

We always sit at the Chef's Counter so we get to see all the prep stuff too!

 

[PrincessInOz]

We always sit at the Chef's Counter so we get to see all the prep stuff too!

I wanna go to Napa Rose with you!

 

[franandaj]

I wanna go to Napa Rose with you!

OK, next trip to CA, we'll go to Napa Rose and then head up the coast and go to Chinatown in the City!

 

[Hawleys]

Came to drool over Napa Rose pics but I am a day early. Drat. Back tomorrow night.

 

[franandaj]

Came to drool over Napa Rose pics but I am a day early. Drat. Back tomorrow night.

And give me a day or two...we will be there late tomorrow night, and then I have the chiropractor at 11 and our cleaning lady is coming over for the door project. Have I explained that here or just on the Old Fogies thread? I probably need to explain it here....let me know...

 

[PrincessInOz]

OK, next trip to CA, we'll go to Napa Rose and then head up the coast and go to Chinatown in the City!

Sounds like a great plan. We just need to ditch the boys and it'll be me and you two, Thelma and Louise!

 

[Leshaface]

Yay for Napa Rose tonight!!! Excited to read and see what you ate!

Why the heck are you on the Old Fogies thread???

 

[franandaj]

Yay for Napa Rose tonight!!! Excited to read and see what you ate!

Why the heck are you on the Old Fogies thread???

I'm really looking forward to NR tonight. It was going to be last night, but we rescheduled for tonight because there was a mixer for the LB LGBT Chamber of Commerce, leave it to the gays to make business fun with cocktails & dinner!

The Old Fogies thread is a lot of fun! It's open to anyone over 30 or FEELS over30! We talk about our aches and pains, one lady keeps losing her teeth. The Tag Fairy even visited us last week and gave several members shiny new tags. And there is always plenty of bacon and early bird specials!

 

[PrincessInOz]

Another 24 hours and still no food porn? Really ? And you use those "c" words for excuses?.........




...chiro and cleaning?

 

[franandaj]

Last night I uploaded the pics to photobucket and started writing my word document. However by 2AM I was tired and had to go to bed. After my 8 hrs beauty sleep, yes I need to go to the chiropractor. Then the cleaning lady is coming to help us pack up for the door project which commences a week from Monday.

 

[Hawleys]

And give me a day or two...we will be there late tomorrow night, and then I have the chiropractor at 11 and our cleaning lady is coming over for the door project. Have I explained that here or just on the Old Fogies thread? I probably need to explain it here....let me know...

Hey Alison,
I hope you are feeling ok after the chiropractor. Is it one of those treatments where you feel better right away or do you have a day or two of being uncomfortable before things settle down?

You haven't mentioned the door project (or I have forgotten) so explain away.

--Sarah

 

[Hawleys]

I'm really looking forward to NR tonight. It was going to be last night, but we rescheduled for tonight because there was a mixer for the LB LGBT Chamber of Commerce, leave it to the gays to make business fun with cocktails & dinner!

The Old Fogies thread is a lot of fun! It's open to anyone over 30 or FEELS over30! We talk about our aches and pains, one lady keeps losing her teeth. The Tag Fairy even visited us last week and gave several members shiny new tags. And there is always plenty of bacon and early bird specials!

Over 30!! Well gosh darn it I qualify. I've even got aches and pains to gripe about. Heck I'd pretend to be older for bacon. Yum.

My wife made bacon infused bourbon last week. Topped with maple and Kahlua egg foam. She called it the All Night Breakfast. I called it delicious with a side of waffles.

 

[franandaj]

Food Porn – Napa Rose on St. Patrick’s Day

So not that I thought there would be any sort of special menu for St. Paddy’s Day, but I did joke about it on the DLR food porn thread, but it was not meant to be. Fine, I can get corned beef and cabbage at Polly’s until the end of the month for cheap and it will be excellent!

So we arrived at the Grand Californian about an hour in advance of our reservation because traffic was good and the stop we wished to make on the way was closed. I stood in awe of the lobby of the hotel, I just LOVE this place! So I took a few pictures….

So I’m thinking about this purse, I would use it at WDW, not as a daily purse (too small), but since I have finally graduated from WalMart purses from day to day I was thinking I could get me a Dooney & Burke for use at WDW. It would have to be the DLR purse cause I love to flaunt DLR at WDW. So many people think it is the ONLY place and really it’s the secondary park/resort. It’s just bigger because Walt was able to fix what he didn’t calculate at the first park!

Our reservation was for 8:30PM (the Chef’s table is open at either 5:30 or 8:30PM, so as to get two seatings in) and we arrived at about 7:45, ready to hang out in the lounge until our table was ready. It turns out that they were able to seat us immediately when we showed up. When you sit at the Chef’s Counter there are any possibilities open to you for dining. You can order the Vintner’s Table, you can pick a variety of items off the menu or you can ask the chef to cook an entire or partial meal for you.

Most of the time we’ve dined there we ate off the Vintner’s Table so we have hardly experienced any of the regular menu items. Since we weren’t feeling all that adventurous tonight, we decided to pick our meal from items on the menu. It was hard to select and I actually had to start making a list of everything we picked in my phone to make sure it wasn’t too much food. It still was but only by about ½ my entrée.

OK a little tangent here, so at last year’s F&W festival, we dined at Steakhouse 55 for the first time (outside of the special winemaker dinners). The night before my Napa Rose Cooking School we made a reservation to eat off of their regular menu. We had a very odd experience in that the manager of the restaurant seemed to know “a little more about us than he should have”. He was talking nonchalantly with us about dining experiences at “another restaurant”, and we had never met the guy before. After that night it made me seriously wonder if Disney kept a “dossier” on certain guests. Perhaps those who patronize the upper end restaurants to perhaps offer a more welcoming dining experience.

So….how this ties in with tonight’s dinner. Chef Sutton always recognizes us, even outside the restaurant we have run into him while Valet parking at the Grand when he is on his way to work. He always greets us with a smile. And our waiter, he has always worked the Napa Rose Cooking School so I can see why he would recognize us, and perhaps the Sous Chef as he cooked for us in September and he is always at the Cooking School. This is where it starts to get weird, even the chef working the counter where they send out the entrees, said it was a while since they had seen us and how were we doing. I was totally convinced about the dossier when the restaurant manager came up to us. I don’t think we ever talked to him, he asked about Fran and how she was doing since she didn’t have her scooter! Fran thinks we’re just unusual, as she put it “two fat d*kes” , but I don’t know…people in the service industry are supposed to know their guests, but it just seems that some of these people know a lot more about us!

OK, enough of that, on to the food! We started off with the standard bread basket. I always eat the parmesan crusted flat bread, it is the best!

Our amuse bouche was a Kumomoto Oyster with Rockefeller treatment. I think the oyster may have been cooked, but only lightly if so. I love tiny oysters and the buttery sauce was not at all overpowering as to mask the flavor of the oyster. It was a perfect bite!

So as I mentioned, you can order anything off the menu or just have the chef cook for you, but after reading the Napa Rose Chef’s Counter thread and seeing so many of the standard menu items that I had never tried, I was really keen to have some of them. Of course we began with the starters.

I had seen pictures of the Ahi Carpaccio and being a HUGE fan of tuna sushi, I knew that this would be good. When they first set it down in front of me I wanted to taste each component separately, the tuna first. It was sprinkled with some sort of sea salt that you could taste all on it’s own, and one little morsel popped when I bit down on it. The gelatin squares gave it a really interesting texture.

Then I took a bite of the crab salad. This was full of flavor and the dressing did not mask the crab flavor whatsoever, it totally complimented it, then the lentils were very light. The chef came by and suggested that I get a bit of everything in my bite (which was my next plan), it was good, but I liked eating the tuna separately for the flavor, but the crab and lentils made a nice combination together.

Halfway through this dish I traded with Fran for the Sauteed Portabello Mushrooms and Fried Sweet Potato Brie Cheese Dumplings. The mushrooms were very smoky with a rich sauce and the dumplings were just little pockets of ooie gooey goodness.

Next up was the salad course. I had seen many people with the Smiling Tiger Salad and it sounded intriguing.

Let me tell you, this was AH-mazing! The tempura lobster chunks were warm and luscious, not at all greasy, crispy and succulent at the same time. Even though I don’t like “weeds” in my salad or coconut, the dressing made them taste sweet and not at all bitter. Underneath it all were little morsels of Teriyaki style beef, soooo tasty!

Halfway through we switched and I got the Green and White Asapargus Salad, Belgian Endive, Organic Prosciutto and Tangerine Marco Vinaigrette. This was very tasty, light and fresh but after the previous salad, it was hard to impress me!

The soup of the day was a Charred Tomato broth with Shrimp, Pancetta and Grilled onions. It was very tasty, the shrimp were cooked just right, and the other veggies in there were the perfect complement.

[Due to too many images continued in the next post]

 

[franandaj]

[Continued Food Porn from St. Paddy's Day at Napa Rose]

We didn’t ask them to split it which I think was a strategic move on Fran’s part. The chef offered her a mug of the mushroom cappuccino since she didn’t have a plate in front of her.

It’s so much fun to sit there because you can ask everyone what they are making, comment on the nice kitchen utensils and all sorts of other dorky foodie stuff. For the next night he was making an asparagus sorbet and he prepared it right in front of us. Though it wasn’t frozen yet, he gave us a little taste of the base.

None of the mains on the regular menu really appealed to us so we went for the main on the Vintner’s menu. Now I could have sworn that we said we only wanted one entrée, and we were only charged for one entrée, however, I’m pretty sure that the portions that we were served were equivalent to the couple next to us who ordered the complete Vintner’s dinner.

The venison was cooked absolutely perfectly rare to medium rare, it had such a great flavor with the strawberry rub on the outside. I had to make a decision, though and it was that I would not finish the main in sacrifice of the dessert! I had them pack up about half of the venison, spaetzle, and Mac-n-cheese to go.

We also got the side of Mac and Cheese. This was some serious creamy goodness although the cheesyness was not pronounced.

I was lured into my dessert choice by being slightly mislead by the menu. It read Milk Chocolate Souffle Oreo cookie tart Popcorn Sauce and Caramel Popcorn Ice Cream. I LOVE Souffles and will always order one if it is on the menu. I should have known that Napa Rose would not do a real Souffle, but got sucked into this one because it said Souffle. I might have ordered a different dessert given the choice, but this one was still REALLY good! And we thought we only ordered one, but both of us received a plate full of goodness, the best thing was that we were not charged for either on the bill. :

However, this was not the end of our blissful journey. After the check was signed (which was only $195 and change, we left a $50 tip) so I’d say we got quite a bargain for what we ate vs. what we paid for! However, we received these lovely little truffle boxes that we enjoyed a couple hours after our dinner while I was uploading photos and working on this dining report.

As a side note, I enjoyed my leftover Venison and Mac-n-cheese for breakfast this morning. I must have been still full from last nights dinner because even though it was only half of the main, and we ate far more than that last night, I was stuffed halfway through the meal. Luckily our cats Sunny and Alto were more than happy to finish off what I couldn’t!


For those interested in the by the glass wine list, here they are

 

[usnuzuloose]

Geez! All these treads talk about bacon and eggs.Now I am starving. I have alot aches Not sure where they begin and end. Neither does my chiroprator