Happy Birthday Anna!

Last night, I went out with Anna, Meredith, Audrey, and Anna's sister Alison. We headed uptown again (every time I go, I sing "Uptown Girl" in my head) to Dandelion Market. Anna's b-day was Tuesday so this was her b-day dinner. Dandelion Market has a menu similar to some others I've seen on the list comprised of "small plates". Anna and I experienced this at Rooster's as well. The menu is made up of a bunch of little entrees, not your typical entree + side items, etc. We chose several entrees for the table and then waited to see if we wanted more, as instructed by our waitress who, to me, resembled Kristin Bell (maybe watching TOO much Veronica Mars).

Anyway, we chose the prosciutto crostini (from my Top 100 list), macaroni and cheese, aged cheddar fondue, baked potato croquettes, and the calamari to start. I didn't take pictures of all the dishes because they disappeared quickly, but here's a pic of mine:

We ended up getting seconds on the calamari and the mac and cheese. Let's go dish by dish - the calamari was lightly fried and served with a lemon aioli. It was FABULOUS. That was probably my favorite dish. The macaroni and cheese was very warm and hearty and quite good. However, I'm still partial to the mac and cheese at Rooster's. The potato croquettes were a little bland - nothing special. The fondue was quite good. The crostini? Definitely a Top 100 dish. The only bad thing about it was that there were only 4 on the plate. The crostini bread was warm and not too crispy. It's spread with fig preserves, then topped with goat cheese and prosciutto. You get that sweetness of the preserves, the creamy cheese, and then that salty prosciutto - wonderful!! I think everyone was impressed. I guess there were caramelized onions on the top, which I was a little worried about, but you didn't really taste them. Everything blended together nicely.

We did order the mozzerella flatbread and the roasted red pepper and artichoke dip as well. The mozzerella flatbread was nothing really special, but the dip was really good. As with the fondue, you get some little herbed bread squares, but the dip also came with crispy bread triangles - now, THOSE were good!

All in all, a delicious and exciting meal at the Dandelion Market. The only really disappointing thing was that they only had 3 choices for dessert and they weren't too spectacular-sounding. Maybe plan on stopping somewhere else for dessert if you go there for dinner if you're in a larger group. If it's just 2, you could probably just share one of them.

Onto the next!

Grazie Mama Ricotta!

Tonight was dinner at Mama Ricotta's with Shelly and Anna and we are FULL now! We had a delicious dinner and dessert and have leftovers for tomorrow. The top 100 dish is the penne alla vodka. They have so many great things on the menu that we decided to get a couple of choices "family style" and have calamari as our appetizer. Their calamari is battered so lightly that it doesn't sit too heavy to make you not want to eat your entree. It comes with 2 dipping sauces, both of which were perfect additions. For the entrees, we got the penne and the pasta primavera.



Man, I have GOT to start taking better pictures!

 The penne is tossed with sauteed (always a good cooking technique) pancetta in a pepper vodka, spicy tomato cream sauce. The pasta primavera was angel hair pasta tossed with seasonal veggies and a cream sauce. We also had grilled chicken added. So obviously we're counting our calories, right? I think we were all a little worried that the penne would be spicy, but it really wasn't. The noodles were cooked perfectly and the sauce was so rich and hearty and creamy. The pancetta was a nice touch. The primavera was delicious as well. This is Anna's go-to dish and I fully agree with her choice. When we were in Atlanta for Lena's engagement weekend, I had chicken marsala with angel hair pasta. I could have eaten 5 servings of that stuff. Usually pasta is really heavy, but angel hair is so light that it lets the other ingredients shine through. The vegetables were very fresh and the chicken was seasoned well.

We honestly could've gotten regular sized portions because we ended up taking home our own boxes of each dish. However, we WERE saving room for dessert! Anna chose the nutella pie and Shelly and I both went with the tiramisu. I got a cup of coffee with mine because I think it's basically sacrilege to eat tiramisu without it (are you listening Shelly??). Both desserts were HUGE. We were completely unprepared for the hugeness:



Monstrous wonderful tiramisu



Delicious enormous nutella pie

Needless to say, we added dessert our box to be eaten with our leftovers tomorrow....although I'm thinking I MAY nibble a bit more now....Bravissimo Mama Ricotta!

Eat at Dish

Another day, another dish. I went down to Dish on Thomas Avenue today for the chicken and dumplings. I've been hitting up a lot of these restaurants in center-ish Charlotte, which results in some fun GPS time for me. Dish has a really nice Southern cooking menu with some good choices that made it slightly hard for me to focus on the chicken and dumplings (salmon cakes? yum) but they did not disappoint. I got the squash casserole as my side. Every entree comes with a biscuit and a deviled egg.

Notice the spoon? That's because it was hard to sop up all that goodness with a fork. I love thick doughy dumplings and nice white meat chicken and this dish was perfect. It was well-seasoned and, although I was kind of getting full, I tried to eat the whole thing. The squash casserole had a lot of onions in it, which I removed, but was delicious anyway. The biscuit was a bit confusing because there was no jam (they probably had some if I had asked) but it had a honey butter on top of it that made it perfect. I saved the deviled egg for the end because I'm a huge deviled egg fan.

After lunch, I head out to Tasty-Yo to FINALLY try the blueberry acai yogurt from the list.

My favorite yogurt from TCBY is the blueberry cheesecake but this makes it hard to pick. I really love their peach mango...who am I kidding? I've loved all the flavors....but the peach mango MAY be a little higher on my list than the blueberry. It was super good though. Also, I'm pretty sure that the owner was there when I was there (I remembered him from their website).

Great food day today!!

Food Fit for a King

Today I visited The King's Kitchen and Elizabeth Creamery in uptown Charlotte. Until another article in the Charlotte magazine that gave me the Top 100 dishes told me that Charlottians call downtown "uptown", I was very confused. Now that's no longer an issue but uptown still scares the bejeebies out of me. Parking garages, buses, stores and restaurants as far as the eye can see? Sure, it's easy if you live there, but for a little Rock Hill hick like me, it's no fun. However, my trusty Ipod in hand, I experienced some deliciuous food today.

My first stop was The King's Kitchen, which is a not-for-profit restaurant. You heard me - not for profit. Jim Noble, the owner, is an ordained minister and "starter" of Restoration World Ministries with his wife. The profits of this restaurant go back to the community, the nation, and the world. They also work with area ministries to employ local people who want a new start (this is paraphrased from their website - check it out!)

I had the pan-fried chicken in the "meat and three". This restaurant is all about Southern tradition and the menu is a dream. I really want to go back and try some more (meat loaf, pork chop, you name it). I had the macaroni and cheese, creamed potatoes and gravy, and coleslaw. I wanted some green beans but it said they were fried, so I felt guilty ordering them.

Oh yeah, it was as good as it looks. First off, it was FAST. I went during lunch, so they probably keep this stuff frying for the crowd. The mac and cheese was delicious and the potatoes? Fuggadaboudit - wonderful! I liked the cole slaw too, but I'm so used to eating it with BBQ that it was kind of weird on it's own. The chicken wasn't too greasy and was nice and moist. The skin was good enough to eat and I never eat fried chicken skin. I do have to say that Paula Deen's fried chicken at Lady and Sons is better but HER restaurant isn't nonprofit AND she probably uses tons of butter in it (just sayin).

After lunch, I went for an adventure. I will give you the bullet points (not in bullet point form) - I walked to the transit station, hopped a bus going away from city center with the Creamery in mind, got off way too early, and had to walk in the 80 degree weather quite a bit to eat some really good ice cream. This ice cream needed to be FANTASTIC to make up for my walk and it was. It was the dark chocolate ice cream at Elizabeth Creamery.

I overestimated my hunger b/c I was honestly full from The King's Kitchen but I ate that ice cream because, darn it, it's ice cream! It was so creamy and rich and had great chocolate flavor - wonderful!! I still dream of Tasty-yo, but this is good old fashioned ice cream, so there's no competition. Even better? The bus I got on to go back to my car was FREE and I saw a few other places on the list so I won't get AS lost next time. Great day!