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.)