The Travel Monkeys

Springdale is a lovely, clean little town with lots of lodges and gift shops. It has at least one excellent restaurant – the Bit & Spur.  The food here is very fresh and creative with a Mexican theme. I had a roasted poblano pepper stuffed with mushrooms, polenta, and goat cheese. It came with a huge fresh field green salad. John had a burrito. He wasn’t thrilled with the sauce (very smokey) but the burritos are huge and also one of the more affordable choices on the menu.  The restaurant is a fairly pricey for Utah (a meat entree will cost you nearly $30) but Springdale seems to be a more upscale vacation town. The wine list here includes the reliable, excellent, and affordable Jaboulet Cotes du Rhone Parallel 45. This is a wine we discovered on our honeymoon because it was the only thing we could afford in the restaurant at our hotel.  We were delighted to stumble upon this fantastic wine again, and it turned out to be a great pairing with our spicey and bold fare.

We stayed two nights in Kansas because it is indeed “as big as you think” and it takes a long time to drive across it. We stopped in Wichita at a comfy Hilton and even got to do our laundry – yay! The next night we headed out to Dodge City, an old wild-west town that has seen better days.

Even the downtown area has mostly abandoned strips of retail space. It’s hard to tell when this town was at it’s prime, but it certainly wasn’t in the last 30 years. It does have this great bull in the town center.

Dodge city is surrounded by cow pastures and feed lots. So of course the local steakhouse, Casey’s Cowtown Club, serves up the local beef. The cows are raised outside of town, brought down the road to the feed lot to fatten up, taken across the street to be “dispatched”, and the meat is then cut and aged for 30 days on site at the restaurant.

We shared a T-bone and a rib-eye. The steak here really is incredible. Although the animals aren’t pasture finished, the meat is so fresh it has a really robust flavor. The vegetables (over-cooked green beans and various forms of potato) aren’t anything worth blogging about, but the steak is almost worth the several-hundred-mile drive to get here.

One of the best things about Eureka Springs is the amazing collection of great restaurants. They actually eat vegetables in this town!

Our first night we ate at DeVito’s, a tiny Italian restaurant in the heart of the town. The pasta was delicious, and we shared a bottle of 2006 Centine Banfi Sangiovese/Cab. Sauv./Merlot blend from Italy. The bold scent of this affordable wine greets you with fruit and anise. Its medium-bodied flavor is tart, zesty, and fruity with a long finish.

The other highly-praised Italian restaurant in town is Ermilio’s. We ate here our last night and the food was fantastic. The filet mignon really does melt in your mouth like butter. I had the “Italian flag” pasta where they pour on three sauces – pesto, alfredo, and tomato-basil. Near the end you can mix them up for a real treat. We paired this with the always-reliable and very drinkable J. Lohr Cabernet.

Breakfast was a dream. The Mud Street Cafe serves Veggie Grits and Veggie Hash Browns. They load them up with broccoli, squash, tomatoes, cauliflower, olives, sprouts, carrots, garlic, and salsa and melted cheddar cheese. You are nicely stuffed for most of the day and you’ve had your veg too! I am definitely making this at home.

More great spots include Local Flavor (lots of great sandwiches for lunch) and New Dehli Cafe. We had Avocado sandwiches from New Dehli one evening – they are served on a warm and super-soft toasted croissant. Both restaurants have affordable menus with lots of great vegetarian options. (This was a relief after being in Tennessee and Mississippi for several days, where vegetables barely make an appearance on restaurant menus.)

Our hotel suite in Nashville was so nice that we ended up leaving for dinner way overdressed for the neighborhood we were in (typical of  Quantum Leap).  We walked around downtown and seriously considered ducking into a shop and buying some cowboy boots and a Johnny Cash t-shirt in an effort to blend in. The main streets downtown are lined with loud karaoke bars filled with drunken riff-raff. There was a biker convention going on, and the surrounding streets are completely deserted. Some down-trodden-looking folks loitering outside of a Hooters asked me for bus fare.

We stumbled upon The Melting Pot, and we were delighted to seek refuge in its dimly-lit and peaceful atmosphere. I’ve never been to a Melting Pot before, but this was exactly what we were in the mood for. We shared the Swiss cheese fondue which the server makes directly at your table. The good thing about this is that it inspired me to make fondue at home., because it is super easy as long as you have a little warm pot in front of you. Our server was fantastic – she was pleasant, attentive, and had a great smile.

We dipped veggies, apple, and bread into our cheesy little pot and shared a bottle of 2006 14 Hands Cabernet Sauvignon from Columbia Valley, Washington. The wine was lighter and simpler than I expect from a west coast Cab. It was fruity and easy to drink but very average. It did perk-up and pair much better with the chocolate fondue. We had the Yin-Yang, a ridiculously delicious blend of dark and white chocolate served with fresh strawberries, marshmallows, cakes and brownie for dipping.

On our way out of the Great Smokeys down to Pigeon Forge we saw the loveliest farmer’s market. They had these great little critters carved out of wood and the biggest assortment of squash I have ever seen.

That evening we ate at Little Tokyo – yes, a Japanese restaurant in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. I know it doesn’t seem like proper local eating, but this place has excellent reviews and is considered to be the best food in town. We realized we’re pretty far from Cambridge when John ordered a beer and the waitress didn’t think his Mass driver’s license was a USA ID. We found ourselves having to politely explain to her that Massachusetts is a state, and it is north of New York. She was nice about it and believed us. We shared an order of hibachi rib-eye steak and a caterpillar roll. The entrees are huge and the food was very fresh and delicious.

Saratoga Springs is a rich little town, so it is not surprising that the dining is fairly expensive. Maestro’s menu offered a good variety (although I think they might have been lying when they offered “grilled local asparagus” in August in New York!) We had the flat iron steak (very tender and flavorful) and the wild mushroom polenta cake (crispy, cheesy and delicious). One thing that we both noticed is that the chef here must have a serious salt tolerance. Like most people, we do love our salt, but both our meals crossed the threshold where the salt stops enhancing the flavor and starts to overpower it.

TIP: If I were to eat here again, I would certainly request that they go lighter on the salt in my dish.

Few people know about the lunch special at the Buddhist Society in Cambridge near Harvard Square. This is probably a good thing, because it is always nice and quiet in the cafe, and you can get a table the moment you walk in. They serve a lunch special that is absolutely delicious. For $6.95 you get a bowl of soup and a plate of two vegetable dishes and two tofu dishes with a nice little mound of brown rice in the center. The fun part is that they change the dishes daily, so you get to be surprised each time you order.

Some of the gems include bean curd filled with Chinese mushrooms and cilantro, and a diakon radish dish that has a wonderful smoky flavor that comes from simmering in soy sauce and sugar for a long time.

Tip: eat the tofu dishes first because they get cold quick.

Lunch is served Tues-Sun, 11:30 to 6pm.

Greater Boston Buddhist Cultural Center
950 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA