Brunch and Lotsa Perty Flowers

As it is with any Sunday when my wife and I travel, the first order of business was brunch. Our destination was Canteen which I’d read serves the best French toast in the city.

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DuClaw's 4th Annual Real Ale Festival

Overall, my experience at the 2011 Real Ale Fest was not good. Actually, scratch that, I did have a good time at the fest--it was just mostly spent bashing the disappointing beers with my equally beer-savvy brother Ryan.

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Commis

Commis only serves one menu for a flat rate of $68 per person. You’re served five courses with a few bonus courses thrown in for good measure. It’s an extremely good deal considering the quality of food served.

I called and specifically reserved counter seating so we could watch the chefs perform their magic.

Sorry, no web or fireball spells… Well, not unless you count the web I cast in my pants when I tasted the second course.

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Labor Day Weekend 2011

Saturday I smoked some butts for a little get together at my mom's place on Sunday.

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The SF Street Food Fest and Drinking in Oakland

As you may already know, my wife and I spent a week in the San Francisco bay area for our second anniversary. Honestly, this is the first trip I've planned where the non-food-related stuff outweighed the eatings. That's not to say some of the food wasn't great, it was, but we did so much other super cool stuff that for the first time my fondest memories don't involve stuffing my face. Our flight arrived mid-morning Saturday the 20th and after checking into our hotel and checking out the view we rushed out the door to stop our stomachs from further digesting themselves.

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A Journey to Philly

Two tickets to see Journey/Foreigner/Night Ranger at Susquehanna Bank Center provided me the perfect opportunity to reaffirm (or disaffirm) my favorite sandwich on the planet: Tony Luke’s roast pork Italian with broccoli rabe. The show started at 7pm, so after packing up the cooler with a few pre-gaming goodies, we were on the road by 2pm.

The traffic heading north on 95 was pretty brutal. What should’ve taken 1.5 hours took over 2, so it was about 4:15pm when we snagged a great parking spot (in the middle of the street) and were presented with this disheartening sight:

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The Most Epic Day Ever III

This past Friday was supposed to be spent eating and bar hopping our way through NYC, but due to some excessive celebrating the previous night, one member of our party (Chris) was ridiculously hungover the next morning so we ended up cancelling the trip.  After getting a couple more hours sleep, we decided to make the most of the day by getting breakfast and then smoking some ribs.  It ended up being a damn fine day all things considered.

Aside from the horribly slow service, our breakfast at Open Door Cafe was quite good.  We chose to dine al fresco and after our hostess seated us, she mentioned she was the barista and that they had a fully functioning espresso bar so I ordered my usual decaf soy latte.

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