sörenberg bahnen

So our family loves Captiva Island, Florida.   I never thought I would be a person who repeats places several times, but we all love Captiva and have been going there ever since we first moved back to Indy nearly 6 years ago now.   I have to say the one downside of the place is the food on the island isn’t that great, although we keep managing to find certain things and certain places we like.   It is frustrating how many restaurants in Florida are actually not using fresh seafood though. Anyway, every trip I have said I wanted to go out to Cabbage Key to try the restaurant just because the idea of a somewhat remote island with just a couple of buildings on it, including the restaurant, just seemed intriguing.   Supposedly, this is the restaurant that inspired the song “Cheeseburger in Paradise” by Jimmy Buffet.   Not that I am much of a Jimmy Buffet fan, but any restaurant that has a song written about it always interests me.   And they do have a picture on him on the wall, and a doll

Ok, so I finally went to Shapiro’s. Well I had been as a child, and maybe even a teenager, but that was, *ahem*, awhile ago so really it was like a first visit.   And I am just going to preface this whole post by saying, honestly, this isn’t my favorite kind of food—I know a lot of people live for the whole New York style deli sandwiches, but I am not one of them (sorry).   But everyone said to get corned beef in some fashion, so I let hubby order that while I focused on some other things (based pretty exclusively on twitter recommendations). So I had the meatloaf meal ($10.25) with macaroni and cheese and bread.   Several people had recommended the meatloaf and I can understand why even though it isn’t something I eat a lot.   The ground beef was about as juicy as meat in a loaf can be—very tender.   Of course it was drenched in a tomato sauce which probably helped keep it that way, but even when you cut into it, the middle was very tender.   I am not so sure about the tomato paste ba

So a lot of you seem to really like Bru burger and a friend of mine reminded me of it the other day when I was trying to find a quick place to eat lunch after a meeting downtown.   Honestly, I have heard some mixed things from other people though, so I was a little wary.   Having not been in the place at all yet, the first thing I noticed was how confusing it was to find the front door (is it just me?).   I first went in where the old Elements door was (which was never ideal either), then went to the patio area which is under the giant “Bru Burger” sign and would appear to be the front door—I went in there to find that in fact there is an even further door that is the appropriate door and I could tell by the servers sort of shaking their head at me that this annoys them when people come in the wrong way.   Oh well.   So I went in and surprised the hostesses by coming up behind them.   I got seated and looked over the menu while my teeth chattered in the intense cold.   I know I say thi

Our final dinner on our recent trip to Chicago was at Tavernita.   I was excited because I love a new place—and it was also small plates (Spanish in style).   The place is really big, and the first thing I noticed was how loud it was, even when it wasn’t still that full.   It didn’t help that there was a group of St. Patrick’s Day partiers that had obviously been drinking for a long time sitting right next to us.   Also, I asked if we could be moved to a table on the end of our row (which was set for 3) and they said no, that they were fully booked.   I was totally fine with this, but then about halfway through our meal they sat a party of two there which I found rather annoying. Anyway, the first course we got that evening turned out to be one of the best of the evening.   It was the pan con burrata with tomato marmalade on crostini ($9)   It was simple, but the bread was perfectly grilled—nice grill marks but still a little chewy in the center. The tomato spread also flavored the bre

I find myself on the eastside about once a week, and I am trying to take advantage of it to eat at a few new places.   La Escollera was a place I have wanted to try for awhile, and I finally got over there.   It is funny—it sort of reminds me of La Parada in a way.   It is an older looking building cheerfully painted and with two long thin rows of booths down the front.   There was a Mexican talk show blaring on two tvs, which completely set the mood. My server was really nice and brought me a basket of warm chips and salsa right away.   I liked that the chips were clearly made in house—there were bubbles in the layers of tortillas and they were really nice a crunchy.   The salsa was also quite tasty—it didn’t taste very hot, but after you ate a few chips with it, it built up a bit—not so much that your tongue was on fire, but just enough that your mouth started to feel warm. For my lunch, I wanted to order ceviche, because supposedly this place sort of specializes is seafood, and I wa

The City Market just keeps getting better and better if you ask me.   I love what it is turning into, and I love that you can go even on a Saturday and have lots of great lunch options.   My daughter and I spend many Saturday lunches there and often when I have something going on downtown during the week, I just stop in myself and grab something.   The last couple of times I have been there, I had the opportunity to try one of the newer vendors—Brad Gates Catering.   I am very happy to have an outlet to get his food other than having him make it at my house (which is good too, but this way is much more economical).   He also has a great cheese selection if you are looking for stuff more interesting than what you can get at the grocery. His menus change daily and some things are in the rotation frequently and others less so. (I regularly check his daily menus on facebook.)   The first time I went in, I was intrigued by the linguine with asparagus and Laughing Bird shrimp scampi ($12).

So on our recent trip to Chicago (did I mention it was St. Patrick’s weekend? Oy, what a weekend to be in Chicago. Beware of the puke), I dragged my poor, still under-the-weather hubby to Slurping Turtle for lunch.   He managed to revive himself a bit though after a pint of beer, and once he dug into the food. I loved this place from the moment I looked at the menu—it reminded me a lot of the Raku restaurant I had recently eaten at in Vegas, and I was happy to get to share it with hubby.   The interior was very different (very white and modern and clean), but the menu similar.   Slurping Turtle specializes in their noodle dishes, but also has a nice sampling of small plates to go alongside.   They also do the grilled items on a bincho (or charcoal) grill. (Check out the chef/owner discussing the bincho and some of their other food here .) There are a ton of good things to try on the bincho menu, but we wanted to get a little something off of all the parts of the menu, so we just had t

After hearing about it from several of you, I met my friend wibia (us bloggers have to stick together after all) for lunch at Ale Emporium so that I could finally try their pizza (apparently I am on a pizza quest now). They have some nice lunch specials with a slice of pizza and a salad, but I really wanted to try the deep dish pizza (that’s what you guys keep telling me anyway) so we ordered a pizza to share (you can’t get the deep dish with the lunch special). Ale Emporium is an interesting place—much bigger inside than I thought looking at it and extremely casual—it is essentially a bar (don’t bring the kids) with lots of high bar tables. Thankfully they have made one large side of the room non-smoking. I can’t talk about too much because really, all we had was the pizza (well, and a couple of beers, I mean it is called Ale Emporium right?)—it takes awhile to make a whole deep dish pizza, but I was expecting that—and actually it didn’t take as long as what I would have thought.  

In my family Sunday morning is donut day (a hubby/kid tradition) and since Taylor’s is closed on Sundays, they became frequent visitors to the Donut Shop.   I had never gone with them to buy donuts and always forgot that it was actually a restaurant too.   Always looking for another good low brow breakfast spot, one recent Sunday we decided to give it a shot, and have some donuts for dessert. First off, it was pretty busy.   We got the last table in the place and a slightly frenzied server took our order—I had my standard—2 eggs over easy with bacon and hash browns and toast (4.75).   Hubby had a variation that included pancakes instead of toast ($6.99).   My daughter had her classic French toast (half order $1.65) and my son, scrambled eggs and bacon. Honestly, it basically served its purpose as a low brow diner type of breakfast.   The service was fast, and the eggs were cooked exactly right.   The bacon was really thin and crispy—no high falutin’ bacon here at all.   The flavor of i