Starling Travel

Every time we go to San Diego, we make sure we set aside time to visit Leucadia Sushi Bar. The best feature of the place is the conveyor belt and constant stream of sushi. I filmed a little clip of it back in 2007:

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You pay based on plate prices. There is a price for each plate, you choose a plate from the conveyor belt and stack up the plates you eat. When it comes time to pay, they count up your plates and charge you for each one. Different colored plates indicate different prices.

At the end, I always spend less on sushi here than I do at any other sushi bar, even though I eat so much!

We LOVE Leucadia Sushi Bar and have a pet name for it: Sushi-Go-Round! I can’t wait to go back to California to eat there again!

Where: 996 N.Coast Hwy 101, Encinitas, CA 92024
Phone Number: (760)635-9312

Business Hours:
Closed on Monday Lunch: 11:30a.m.- 2:00p.m. (tue - fri)
Dinner:: 5:00p.m.- 9:00p.m. (tue - thu, sun) 5:00p.m. - 9:30p.m. (fri & sat)

Megan Wallent and her family recently went to Disney World in Florida and has come back with recommendations for eating there.

• Disney Food Experience « M( )

Yes, you can find reasonable food in the Disney parks (Reasonable: not all fried, some greens or at least fruit, not ultra fatty). Our usual “Don’t eat bad food” rule has to get suspended a bit (note, bad doesn’t mean expensive – it just means to make food part of the experience – trying to eat as local, or at least as well as possible given the locale).

One of the places where they were able to get rotisserie chicken and green beans was Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Cafe. Here is a video of the entertainment at that Cafe in Tomorrowland:

Head on over to Megan’s blog to read about which places in Disney World she considered good food and which were bad.

Megan Wallent visited Paris, France last month and shared her experience with us all:

• Paris - Getting Here « M( )

• A Day in Paris, but no Good Food? (Almost!) « M( )

• Paris Day 2 or “Look, That Kid Has No Head!” « M( )

• Paris Travel Summary (Details to Follow!) « M( )

My favorite entry, A Day in Paris, but no Good Food? (Almost!) talked about how exhausting traveling and getting fed can be:

At this point, Anh and I, in our tiredness, broke one of our rules – always eat good food. We settled for a crappy café, and while edible, was not great. Oh well.

I don’t have a rule like that: “Always eat good food.” Most of the time, I am so absorbed in what I am experiencing when I’m traveling that I delay eating until I’m starving. Then I will eat anything that is nearby. Sometimes, we end up finding wonderfully delicious food from a street vendor, other times… well, you know.

I know the food of a place is just as important as the architecture, museums or amusements, but sometimes I let it fall by the wayside.

Looks like Megan and Anh had a wonderful visit to France and I wish them much happiness.

Shabu shabu is a Japanese broth fondue. You dip thinly sliced beef into the hot broth and it cooks very quickly. Our visit to Kazumi Sushi Bar with friends was a perfect ending to our San Diego trip this year.

They started our night off with a salad and teriyaki chicken skewers.

The highlight of the meal, however, was the shabu shabu. We dipped the frozen meat slices into the hot water and with a swish, swish, we cooked our own dinner to whatever level of rareness we wanted.

Most importantly, the hot pot is a great way to enjoy an evening with friends. You have plenty of time to talk and laugh while you eat.

After dining at some casino restaurants in Billings, Montana, I had given up on finding any food in an enjoyable atmosphere. Then we found Grains of Montana and were pleasantly surprised.

• Grains of Montana

The most endearing part of the restaurant for me was a small touch that might not even be noticed by most people. The “number” that they gave us to put on our table while we waited for our food wasn’t a number at all. It was a little card telling me something about a town in Montana. In this case, it was Pendroy.

It gave the restaurant such a local flavor that I immediately loved eating my egg salad sandwich on sourdough bread with kettle chips. It was a simple meal, but it felt like incredibly good food that I couldn’t get anywhere else.

Mike had the chicken pesto pizza. I had no idea that Billings had heard of “pesto” until we saw it on their menu.

Unlike so many of the trendy bakery restaurants that have infiltrated Salt Lake City, Grains of Montana had an EASY ordering process. We were able to tell ONE person ONCE what we wanted and paid her. At Paradise Bakery, for example, we end up having to tell four separate people our order before we are allowed to pay for it. Grains of Montana made the process so much smoother.

There were desserts aplenty. We tried the cinnamon roll and its delicious cream cheese frosting was perfect: not too sweet and fresh. There were so many desserts to try that we wanted to return, but our time in Billings was short. If you get a chance to try their brownies, please comment here and tell me what I missed out on.

Best of all, there was free wi-fi available. We had looked all over Billings and finding free wi-fi is difficult, to say the least. Grains of Montana announced it loudly with this sign on their door. It had been days since we had partaken of free wi-fi, so it made that little cafe feel like a piece of home.

In the end, the visit to Billings was made better just by visiting Grains of Montana. It’s amazing how healing an egg salad sandwich and free wi-fi can be where neither are easily accessible.

Where:

Grains of Montana Bakery
926 Grand Ave.
Billings, Montana 59102
Phone (406) 259-7142
Fax (406) 259-7152
Email: grainsofmontana@qwest.net

STORE HOURS
Mon. – Fri. 7:00 am – 9:00 pm
Sat. 8:00 am – 9:00 pm
Sun. 8:00 am – 8:00 pm

Missbhavens created a series of videos a couple of months ago featuring cheap eats in New York. I linked to one of her entries, but there was a whole week’s worth of good food for cheap. Now, she has put all of those restaurants on a map so you can easily find them:

• the miscellaneous mischievous misadventures of missbhavens - Cheap Eats Map

You are the expert in your town. Leave a comment here telling me where the best cheap eats are in your neck of the woods with full addresses and we’ll make a collection of the best eats EVERYWHERE!

Couldn’t finish it. Probably shouldn’t have started it. We had the Brew Cheese for an appetizer and frankly, it could have been my meal. The steak was too good to pass up, though.

Mike says their Nitro-Stout is a pretty good imitation of Guiness. Looks like a rootbeer float to me. You get a bad surprise if you taste it. That’s not a rootbeer float AT ALL.

Hopper’s Pub and Brewery: 890 East Fort Union Boulevard, Midvale, UT
Google Map
Phone: (801) 566-0424

Betsy the Devine eats, reminisces and delights us all:

Agawam Diner–hot dogs, baked beans, warm cherry pie:

Love this place–in Rowley, MA, at the intersection of Rte 1 with Rte 133. Or maybe I should say, at the intersection of the 1950s with your memories of childhood comfort food.

She gave us a link to the review on RoadFood:

• Agawam Diner - Rowley, MA

Here is a review on Chowhound:

• Chowhound - I dream of the Fried Chicken at the Agawam Diner in Rowley

You can enjoy their food here:

Agawam Diner: Routes 1 & 133, Rowley, MA
Google Map
Phone: 978-948-7780

Two years ago, my sister was looking at the display of Huckleberry products in the gift shop in West Yellowstone. She had a few bottles of huckleberry jam in her hands. Mike and I looked at her, but I was the one to break the news, “You probably don’t want to get that for your friends at work.” She shrugged, “Why not?” Mike shook his head, “Because huckleberries are everywhere. Laura and I took Cory to a gift shop in Utah and there was the exact same brand of huckleberry stuff there.” Stacey looked at her bottles of jam, “I can get these in Utah?” We nodded. “Why would I buy them here?”

Truth is, I’ve seen huckleberry products in Utah, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and California. Huckleberries grow in all of those states, but if you’re visiting Oregon from Utah, what’s the point of bringing back huckleberry jam? Are huckleberry gummy bears any different when I buy them in Utah?

Are huckleberries even real or are they just a cutsey name for blueberries? According to the Wikipedia entry on huckleberries, they are related to blueberries, but they are actually their own plant:

Huckleberry is a name used in North America for several plants in two closely related genera in the family Ericaceae: Gaylussacia and Vaccinium. While some Vaccinium species, such as the Red Huckleberry, are always called huckleberries, are closely related to blueberries but are not the same. Similar Vaccinium species in Europe are called bilberries.

You mean to tell me they even have huckleberries in Europe, but they just call them a different name? Which tourists are going to buy all this huckleberry crap? Why is it being marketed as a special at all?

The answer might lie with these folks:

• The Huckleberry Association

This is an excerpt from their Mission Statement:

The mission of the Western Huckleberry and Bilberry Association is to create a vital, thriving industry built around huckleberries and bilberries through information, education, and networking. The Association will achieve this mission by:

• Providing educational programs to members
• Supporting basic and applied research
• Encouraging sustainable huckleberry culture techniques
• Promoting improved production and marketing of huckleberries
• Serving as an advocate and voice for the huckleberry industry

Why do huckleberries need an advocate and voice? It looks to me like huckleberries are just a product that are stuck in all these gift shops across the western United States to just take advantage of tourist money. Next time you’re tempted to buy a bag of chocolate-covered huckleberries, remember you can probably buy the same bag at home and it will be just as stale.

With a recommendation like this, I don’t know why everyone doesn’t go to New York for tacos?

• the miscellaneous mischievous misadventures of missbhavens - TacoTacoTaco!

Missbhavens takes us to Viva El Mariachi restaurant in Astoria, New York.

It’s like porn you can swallow.

Where: Viva El Mariachi 3311 Broadway Long Island City, NY 11106 Google Map Phone: (718) 545-4039