Whew. What a whirlwind the past couple of weeks have been. They’ve definitely taken a toll on me physically. This week’s quote comes from film writer Sheilah Graham Westbrook, and I think it pretty accurately sums up my life for the past 3 weeks.
“Food is the most primitive form of comfort.”
–Sheilah Graham
More like Sheilah GLAM Westbrook. Ba dum cha!
So, the Charleston City Paper’s annual “Best of Charleston” is out today! I’m so excited! Obviously the only section I care about is the Best Charleston Food section (especially since I wasn’t voted “Best Local Blog” … way to drop the ball, guys). In honor of this, I’m going to do my own “Best of Charleston: Eating and Drinking Out.” Here it is!
Either you agree with me, or you get the eff out.
Best French Restaurant
Gaulart & Maliclet (Fast & French)
Best Restaurant Theme
Poe’s Tavern
Best Vegetarian Restaurant & Black Bean Hummus
Dell’z Deli
Best Karaoke
Chucktown Tavern
Best Pizza South of Boston
Crust Wood Fired Pizza
Best Hot Dog
Jack’s Cosmic Dog
Best Biscuits and Gravy Ever
Lost Dog Cafe
Best Use of Pancetta
Chicken, Pancetta & Avocado Sandwich at Ted’s Butcher Block
Best Meat & Three
Martha Lou’s Kitchen
Best Italian Restaurant
Wild Olive
Best Chinese
Red Orchid’s China Bistro
Best Sushi
Zen Asian Fusion
Best Indian Buffet
Bombay Bazaar Indian Cuisine
Best Waterfront Dining
Fleet Landing
Best Local Brewery
Westbrook
Best Local Beer
Holy City Pluff Mud Porter
Best Mediterranean Food
Ali Baba Mediterranean Cuisine
Best Barbecue Made By A Canadian
JB’s Smokeshack
My Dad’s Favorite Bar in Avondale
Gene’s Haufbrau
Best Tacos
Taco Boy
Best Taco Shell
Taco Spot
Best Life Changing Mac and Cheese Experience
Graze’s Pulled Pork & Collard Green Mac and Cheese
Best Cupcakes, Iced Coffee, and Cookies
Sugar Bakeshop
Best Food Festival Ever Invented
Charleston Mac Off
Best Snack Ever When You’re Drinking
Tater Tachos at Recovery Room
Cocktail Tastes Like Juice, But Packs a Serious Punch
434 Cocktail at Halls Chophouse
Best Restaurant If You Like Disappointment
The Macintosh
Best Pork Fat Butter
Husk
Best French Fries Smothered in Garlic and Bleu Cheese
Tattooed Moose
Best Curry This Side of Thailand
Fire Street Food
My New Favorite Lunch Spot Now That I’m On A Diet
Verde
Best Bar According To Laura
Cocktail Club
Best Bar According To Sean
Big John’s Tavern
Best Drunk Food After The Bars Close
Giovanni’s Pizza
Hey everybody! My birthday was last week (HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!) and my awesome boyfriend bought me a gorgeous sapphire necklace, a fancy three-course dinner, and a kitten. Jewelry, delicious food, a KITTEN…what else could a girl ask for?
Here’s a picture of Ben holding my new kitten. His name is Weasley, because he’s a ginger. And I love him.
Contrary to popular Reddit belief…. Ben is not mexican. Just FYI.
Fezzik still isn’t sure how he feels about this new furball hanging out around the apartment. He’s been hiding in my closet a lot. But they’ve started playing together more and I think Fezzik is starting to tolerate his new lil buddy.
Kitteh! Come out of teh closet!
Today’s quote is in honor of my super awesome new furry family (Ben is somewhat included in that… not that he would know since he NEVER READS MY BLOG). But, I digress. Enjoy your week! I hope you’re all looking forward to a couple more Boston posts!
“Love me, feed me, never leave me.”
— Garfield
Hopefully they’ll get along better than Garfield and Odie… probably not, though.
Wooo! College Football Season is finally here! GO COCKS! (That’s the University of South Carolina Gamecocks, for those of you who were wondering why my blog got very X-Rated all of a sudden).
This weekend Ben and I went to Columbia to tailgate with Cullen, Taylor, Lauren, and my parents at the USC vs ECU game (USC won, 48-10). We ate delicious burgers and pimento cheese fries at Rockaway Athletic Club on Friday night, and showered my brother with birthday gifts. I can’t believe he’s 20 already… WHY IS EVERYONE GETTING SO FREAKING OLD?!
Saturday we ate delicious Tina food, while sweating buckets in the fierce Columbia heat. Biscuits and gravy, sausage, fruit, couscous salad, grilled chicken, pan-fried chicken, chips and queso, goat cheese-stuffed tomatoes, caprese bites, goat cheese-wrapped asparagus, hot dogs, cupcakes… the list goes on and on. It was almost too hot to be drinking beer, so I stuck to drinking daquiris, mainly for the fact that they’re 90% ice.
Saturday night, we went to Huller’s Black Forest, a German restaurant off Harbison that is delicious. They have a buffet with traditional German fare and a station where they make schnitzel to order. We definitely over ate, but it was awesome. The owner is a really awesome guy who always has a smile on his face. He makes a bunch of different sausages in house, and was happy to let us try some at no extra charge. It was quite delicious and very gluttonous.
Sunday, before heading back down to Charleston, we stopped at Real Mexico Restaurant y Tienda for some delicious and fresh mexican food. I loved that all the food was made fresh to order, and everything seemed homemade. I usually avoid refried beans because they taste like they’ve been scooped out of a can, but here, I could tell that they were made fresh and with some pretty quality ingredients. I also got some killer tamales and empanadas that were quite delicious. I highly recommend stopping here!
This week’s quote comes from Mr. Homer Simspon, and pretty much sums up my feelings about College Football Season and why I love it so much. Have a great week!
“We’re not here for the game. The game is nothing. The game is crap. The game makes me sick. The real reason we Americans put up with sports is for this: Behold, the tailgate party. The pinnacle of human achievement. Since the dawn of parking lots, man has sought to fill his gut with food and alcohol in anticipation of watching others exercise.”
–Homer Simpson
If it wasn’t for tailgating, I wouldn’t even know football was a sport.
So, I’ve been in Cleveland, Ohio since Wednesday night visiting the Italian side of my family to celebrate my cousin Naomi graduating from High School. That’s 3 kids down, 5 to go on my mom’s side in terms of high school graduations. I’ve got a good feeling that the rest of the kids will do just fine.
As it is with any italian family gathering, there’s been food galore. I’ve definitely been overeating (the food’s so good it’s impossible not to). I can already tell I’m going to hate myself this time next week for all the food I’ve eaten, but I’ll worry about that later. You can expect next week’s food quote to be about salad or something lame like that, I’m sure. But for this week, I have the perfect quote. I hope it makes you laugh, because I definitely did.
“The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you’re hungry again.”
–George Miller
After this picture was taken he ate both the penguin and the oscar.
I am exhausted. This post is late because I basically slept all day yesterday once I got back from Atlanta. I could probably sleep another three days and be totally ok.
I left for Auburn on Thursday to visit Ben, because I’m a silly girl who misses her boyfriend. He picked me up in Atlanta and brought me back to Auburn where he made a delicious pork roast in the crock pot. Friday morning I tried to stick to my diet by working out while Ben was in class. After he got out of class, we drove around the backroads around the city. We saw a bunch of cows. Nothing too exciting.
For dinner we went to a place called Cheeburger Cheeburger that looked like an old-fashioned diner like in “Grease.” They had a huge list of ingredients so you could build a custom burger, and an even bigger list of ingredients to build a perfect milkshake. I had a burger with cheddar cheese, onions, guacamole, tomatoes, chopped garlic, and bacon, and stuck with a Dr. Pepper float. Ben got a chocolate milkshake with irish cream that was pretty delicious. We also split a thing of fries and onion rings. It was pretty delicious, but I definitely felt gross afterward.After dinner, a bunch of his friends went to see Prometheus but we didn’t want to go, so we hung out with his roommate and built a blanket fort and played with glow sticks.
On Saturday Ben and I lazed around and spent most of the day watching HBO’s Girls, and other television shows/youtube videos. For dinner we went to this mediocre barbecue restaurant that RAN OUT OF COLLARD GREENS (how do you run out of collard greens?? At a barbecue restaurant?? IN THE SOUTH?!?!). And the night pretty much went down hill from there, culminating in the shooting deaths of three people literally right outside of Ben’s apartment. All in all, not exactly how I pictured spending my time in Auburn.
On Sunday we tried our hand at making homemade crunchwrap supremes. We failed miserably, although it was a fun failure. Ben took me back to Atlanta and we met up with Sean and Christine for dinner for some of the worst pizza I’ve ever eaten.
Although I was pretty disappointed in most of the food I ate over the weekend (Ben’s pork, and Cheeburger excluded) I still love food enough to enjoy the experience of trying new things. There’s a risk you take when eating at a new restaurant. This could either be something great or something awful, but you’ll never know until you try. Which brings us to this week’s quote from Mexican journalist, Alma Guillermoprieto.
“I love food and I love everything involved with food. I love the fun of it. I love restaurants. I love cooking, although I don’t cook very much. I love kitchens.”
–Alma Guillermoprieto
“Do you see the space between my hands? Someone fill it with Cheeseburger ASAP!”
Happy Memorial Day! Sorry this post was so delayed. I’ve been in a food coma for a few weeks, recovering from all the food my mother made for Memorial Day weekend festivities.
Saturday night we went to dinner downtown Greenville at Pomegranate, a Persian restaurant. Who knew Greenville was worldly enough to have a Persian restaurant? I sure didn’t. But it was amazing. I’m sure I’ll be reviewing it at some point, so keep checking back!
Sunday, we celebrated Sean and Ben’s birthdays in the usual fashion: Tina made way more food than any normal human would be able to consume, and we all ate too much and drank too much and stayed up til the wee hours of the night. It was great. My dad smoked a pork butt in his new smoker (insert requisite butt joke here), and grilled hot dogs. Tina made this fruit dip from cool whip, vanilla pudding, and amaretto which was absolutely divine. I didn’t even bother with the fruit, I just kept using a spoon. She also made grape tomatoes stuffed with goat cheese (which I kept stuffing into my face), caprese bites, some kind of veggie dip and a bunch of vegetables, bread-wrapped asparagus with blue cheese, cheese dip and chips from the mexican restaurant, cold cuts, cupcakes, a cotton candy vodka sponge cake, cookies, and other various desserts and foodstuffs. There was also beer galore, and different flavored margaritas being made throughout the night.
Needless to say, I woke up Monday morning feeling like I’d been hit by train. It’s a good thing it was a holiday so I didn’t feel so bad about lounging around in sweatpants for the remainder of the day. For lunch we went to Logan’s Roadhouse (the one where you throw peanuts on the floor) where, for some reason, I thought it was a good idea to order cheese fries, and spent the rest of the day feeling even worse than when I’d woken up. And of course, that was when my mom decided it would be a good idea to go to the mall to look for bathing suits. I bought 3.
This week’s food quote comes from George Bernard Shaw and I think it pretty much sums up my thoughts about this weekend.
“There is no love sincerer than the love of food.”
–George Bernard Shaw
I need someone to remind me how to breathe. My stomach’s so full I seem to have forgotten how.
This weekend was a great weekend. It was at once relaxing and full of adventures. On Thursday, Ben and I went to the Drive-In Movie Theater in Beaufort to catch a double feature of Wrath of the Titans and The Hunger Games (Yes, this is the third time I’ve seen it…. SO GOOD). On Friday, I helped Kathleen situate everything in her apartment and Ben and I watched Sweeney Todd, crossing another movie off of our “Movies Ben Needs To Watch” list.
Saturday I accompanied Ben and Doug while they looked for apartments for next semester and Saturday night was the Glitter and Sparkles party at Kathleen’s for all the April Birthdays. Sunday I drove to Columbia to meet up with Lauren to shop for a dress for A Charleston Affair and had dinner with my baby brudda at Tsunami. It was really fun. So that was my weekend in a nutshell.
I think my brother got me sick. I’m getting a sore throat, and I had the hardest time waking up this morning, even though I got a good amount of sleep last night. Today is my AdWords exam at Blue Ion, so wish me luck!
This week’s food quote I found whilst perusing the internet, and I found it to be humorous. Although I’ve never actually read any Kafka, I think based on this quote, we would have gotten along quite splendidly.
“So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.”
–Franz Kafka
Total Myspace pic.
Because I’m still riding my Hunger Games high, I completely forgot to do a quote this week, so sorry it’s a little late. I’ve already got the next couple of weeks lined up, so it won’t happen again, pinky promise.
SInce I just spent the better part of a week with some of my best friends, eating some of my favorite foods, I found the following quote more than appropriate. It pretty much sums up how I choose my friends (how Lauren “The Salad Eater” slipped in there, I’m still not really sure), but it’s definitely how Sean and Christine became (and stayed) friends. Thanks, Gina Gershon for showing me I’m not the only one!
“Feeding is a very important ritual for me. I don’t trust people who don’t like to eat.”
–Gina Gershon
I NEED A SANDWICH AND I NEED IT NOW.
In honor of the big game, Super Bowl XLVI, this week’s food quote is being published on Sunday. This is partly because it’s a holiday, and I enjoy highlighting holidays in my blog posts, and partly (or mostly) because I know I’m going to be too busy recovering from tonight’s festivities to try and write anything of substance tomorrow. Kathleen and I are throwing a party for the Super Bowl because she’s a die-hard Patriots fan, and I like to eat and drink in the company of friends. I’m in charge of the food (I know, shocker, right?) and she’s in charge of the alcohol. We make a pretty good team, and I’m pretty excited about it. New Year’s Resolutions, Shmoo Years Revolutions. It’s the Super Bowl! America’s holiday! The whole point is to eat and drink and scream at the TV…. although now that I think about it, that pretty much describes every holiday we celebrate in the Gallimore household. So.
“When your Super Bowl guests arrive, they should find a mound of potato chips large enough to conceal a pony sitting in front of the television. For nutritional balance, you should also put out a bowl of carrot sticks. If you have no carrot sticks, you can use pinecones, or used electrical fuses, because nobody will eat them anyway. This is no time for nutritional balance: This is the Super Bowl, for God’s sake.”
–Dave Barry
Americans pretty much use any excuse to eat and drink too much. This is why I'm a patriot.