One of the best parts about vacations is all the yummy foods to be eaten. So of course we'll get some pictures to share.
The night we arrived we went to La Fogata, which translates as "The Fire". It's a Mexican place. Is there a name for these face-hole picture boards? Whatever they are called, they don't seem to work very good for me.
We all joked about this like it's the new automatic checkout at the store. Now they are making you pour your own salsa into the bowl? Why not just start with the salsa IN the bowl? Why the extra step? Is there something we don't know about? It's been a while since I've been to a non-Taco Bell fancy Mexican restaurant, maybe there's something going on that we don't know about.
Yawn. Boring just tacos. To be fair, they were amazingly good tacos. The simple classics are classic for a reason. Don't worry we took a bite out of that one before we got the picture.
Next day for lunch was a favorite of ours, Trio. It used to be more of a wine store, but the restaurant part grew once they had to remove the wine tasting stations, for Covid reasons.
There's still a wine store in here, so we got some pictures of some fun wine bottles. Check out Snoop Dogg's signature! Do you think he really signs them, or is that stamped by a machine or something?
Holy Hand Grenade. Thou shall pulleth the pin and count to three. Does everybody remember that bit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail?
Most places had Pepsi rather than Coke. I'm one of those people that "doesn't care" but I know there are warriors on both sides of this conflict that might. Pepsi has the obvious advantage in the OBX.
French Dip. Of the Gods. This was sooooooo delicious. I know we are going to eat out a lot while we are here, but honestly I could have just had this every day, it was that good.
We got a kick out of the "Regular Beer Float" option on the desert menu. Who needs Root Beer?
I don't drink alcohol at all, but still, the collector in me likes the cool beer tap handles. That one on the end says "Lord Hobo" which is plain funny sounding.
Yeah we got the chocolate ice cream. Oh, excuse me... "Gelato". Really, nobody knows the difference, except the few people that scream "UM.... GELATTO!" when you call it ice cream.
There was a live band, um,... two people, singing and playing the guitar, the entire time. It was pleasant enough, except the volume was SOOOO LOUD. When they would pause for a moment, I could hear my ears sigh in relief. Don't get me wrong, the music was nice, just REALLY LOUD!
Outback for dinner on our friend's birthday. She really wanted the Lobster Tail. There was a bit of a wait, but I convinced everyone that by the time we found someplace else,... and waited there... well we'd just be better off having gone to the place we wanted to in the first place. So we all talked and did "phone stuff" in the car for forty minutes.
Outback fails again to make a well done steak that isn't burnt. This one was both burnt AND not well done! Eh, it was good enough to not make a big deal out of it. Not too burnt and almost done well enough. The one good thing was that they gave me plenty of butter for the potato.
I skipped pictures of the Wendy's fast food lunch I guess, we were out of options and time and just needed something quick so we could make this earlier dinner at this fancy seafood place. There's several seafood places around here next to water with crazy gazebo things.
Sugar Creek, is there going to be candy inside? I think seafood is the polar opposite of candy.
Any place with it's own gift shop has got to be good, right? Is it just me, or does it seem like every restaurant should have a gift shop? Eh, I do like shopping, so maybe it's just me.
We sat next to the window in the back, but my back was to this window, so I enjoyed a nice view of a wall instead.
This was a "crazy expensive" seafood place, the non-seafood options were limited. This bowl of chicken tenders was supposed to be an appetizer for only $10, and these things were huge! It was basically all-you-can-eat chicken, we couldn't finish it. We wound up getting a deal! I will oddly credit the amazing-ness of the seafood chef, because the chicken did not have the slightest hint of seafood flavor. Which to "me" makes it a great seafood place. Does that make any sense?
Rings in the gift shop. Which one of these casts Magic Missile? maybe I can get one with some Healing spells in it? We were going on a walking ghost tour that night.
Uh oh... it started raining! Turned out it was one of those super-pouring-but-brief storms and was over by the time we paid and made our way outside.
More pictures in the gift shop. Those fish slippers give you a fail-proof excuse on why your feet smell bad. Hey, I'm wearing fish!
Who needs expensive gem stones when rocks look just as cool? Does wearing these make you look like some kind of primitive cave person?
Huh huh. That's a robot... Watch Dog.
Another robot, that one sold it's watch already. You think they'd put another one on it? Or can I buy just that cool robot instead?
Do you think Mermaids eat a lot of seafood, or like... no seafood at all? Y'know, because fish is their friends and all. Mermaids could probably wish on stars, too, they can see them from the water. Is wishing on starfish a thing?
I was one slice into my McDonald's Hotcakes before I thought, oh... should I get a picture of this? I know you can get these all day now, but I tend to only get them as a morning "treat" if I'm awake in time.
Saw this great big black wasp on the ground and later Google identified it as.. a Great Black Wasp. It looked like it should have had a cooler name. You maybe can't tell by this picture, but it was at least two inches long, maybe three.
Capt'n Franks! Another OBX favorite of ours. They do hot dogs. The best hot dogs. We all joked about getting kids meals so we could get the free Frisbees, but none of us went through with it. Maybe next time.
They were limiting the crowd inside the place, as the line is usually packed tight in there. Mask policies around the OBX were slack, nobody was "forced" to wear one but it was highly encouraged in a few places and they were still taking steps to avoid crowding when they could.
Lucked out and got a table inside with the nice air conditioning. The tabletops have ads on 'em, what an odd thing to advertise "pranks" as a thing you sell. Come on, be a jerk to somebody! Buy a prank!
Johnny Cash! What's his picture doing on this table? Where's the burning Ring of Fire around here? He must've like great hot dogs, too. When he visited, do you think he paid with... cash?
Bacon cheese dog and cheese fries. If I could have gotten cheese in my soda... wait.... CAN I get cheese in the soda? Mmmmmmaybe not. I thought that sounded good for a second there.
Later that night there was crazy recipe time. When my friend offered to make Chicken Sandwiches that matched the now-unavailable Cheetos thing from KFC, I didn't have any idea that he had not done the recipe before, so the whole endeavor wound up to be a fun experiment.
Step one was blending up Cheetos into a powder that would be used for batter and also mixed into a sauce. I don't know where he got the recipe from, is it cool to just say "the Internet"?
There was a lot of trips to the grocery store to buy ingredients, fresh chicken breasts included. Without prior experience, the process went a little slow, but Minty is full of patience.
I'm skipping a few steps so you might have to look up a recipe yourself, but there's some flour and buttermilk along with the blended Cheetos dust for the batter. This was taking a lot of time so the least I could do was get a bunch of pictures.
Eventually we got some oil in a cast iron skillet, a skillet that we had to purchase along with the ingredients, and began to fry these things. At first the temperature was WAY TOO HOT and they burnt the outsides while leaving the chicken no-so-cooked on the insides... oops! So there's some learning going on here, too. Which is okay.
With the power dropped and longer fry time, they started looking professional. Those ones weren't too burnt even though this picture might make them look that way.
I skipped a bunch of steps when they were making the cheese sauce, which was also carefully boiled and blended from several ingredients. While it did seem like a very intense usage of time, money, and... time, the end result was amazing. Not exactly like the KFC Cheetos sandwich, but I barely remember what that was like and this one was so full of Cheetos-ness, it was great all on it's own.
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