little ms foodie

Which Saigon Deli do you go to? Is it the one on 12th or the one around the corner and halfway down the block on Jackson? Have you compared them? They seem to have different offerings at different prices. Have you tried Seattle Deli across the street on 12th? I have heard people say that they have the best bahn mi in town, but i haven't tried them yet. ← right in the shopping center on the corner of 12th and Jackson, I haven't been to Seattle Deli yet... my friends have said it isn't as good. only way to find out for sure may be a side by side, right on!!! I have been to Saigon Deli a few more times recently and honestly find their chicken bahn mi to be addictive. is the correct way to say it ga bahn mi or bahn mi ga????

In Venice everything closes down at midnight.....except for the Edy Bar across from our hotel where the locals go for grapa and sambuca! right on we are living across from our very own "late night bar" we come every night and they know us and talk about when we come back to venice they will see us at the Edy Bar. Cute!

LOL!! I just looked at my own picture and the place we were in was Do Mori or something as it is on the wine casks!!! SMRT!!

we did ours with bechamel and parm and ragu also! next time I will add more ragu and a bit less bechamel but it was deslish!! do you buy droghe or just make it up yourself??? I put nutmeg in my ragu but would love to do this nexttime!! thanks for the tip

that night we decided to find a cechetti (sp?) bar! I can't remember the name of this one but it was great! old of course and had a bit older clientel. closed straight away at 8:30 to send you on your way to dinner! their wines.... interior (maybe someone will recognize the place and tell me the name! it was across the rialto bridge from san marco area close to the big market area ) we went looking for dinner and had some drinks at Osteria Barababar which had really weird 'devilish' pictures on the walls! but we just weren't hungry after the cechetti so we finally settled at Florian in Piazza San Marco and had a bottle of wine and some dessert and music! don't you love it when they give you chips with dessert??

on to venice!!! after some very maddening train situations (what was it about Italy that had us at a loss for transportation without mishaps??) we arrived, found the hotel, and were off in search of a drink.... aren't we always?? Harry's Bar- you gotta do it. but no belini's for us! 2 martini cocktails..... I will let TDOW comment on these!! Dinner at Osteria Enoteca San Marco which we stumbled upon walking around. fantastic wine bar and great food! this amazing wine! Dentice (sea bream) with arugula tagliatelli ragu gratin, spaghetti with clams and mussels, chocolate molten cake..... we got a bit drunk and didn't take any more pictures!! haha! the next morning we walked around romantic gondola rides we had an very nice lunch at Al Theatro next to La Fenice carpacio spinach linguini with shrimp tagliatteli with porchini

Dinner our last night in Parma was at the Ristorante Oriental. We started with ricotta stuffed tortellini TallDrinkOfWater ordered this very nice wine on the advice of our waiter- delicious!! steak in balsamic (how decadent is this!!!) gorgeous veal parm with 100 year old balsamic!!! then it was on to Venice!!

Ferraris!! the factory is in Marnella then we drove back to Modena and had a really fantastic lunch at Ristorante Da Danilo. No pictures but we had prosciutto e melon, papperdelle with lepre, roast baby goat, caprese, wine and so far our best espresso of the trip A question, we ordered caprese salad quite often and almost always the tomatoes were very firm, not ripe and really hard. is this normal?? After buying some very nice 30 year old balsamic from a great little shop and wondering around Modena a bit more we stopped for camparis and aperols and then headed out. Modena is very charming!

^ Sea Breeze is also at Ballard on Sundays and they have raw milk, cream and stocks too! that sauce looks amazing shal!!

Divinia this is just a fantastic blog!! and as we read it we are actually making lasagna bolanese that I hope will look like your from lunch. We are serving it with a chianti from Badia Coltibuono that I found in my local market! We went to Fontodi while in Chianti and actually purchased quite a bit of wine from them, it is fantastic!! I wish I knew before about your friend and her jewlery, it looks gorgous

oh also I wanted to tell you that to make that fabulous "king of all cheeses" only takes 45 minutes! and then it just sits and ages..... and we really loved that the cows, cheese and pigs were all kind of bound together!

thanks guys you are all very sweet!! doc slaughter we have a very nice and small cannon powershot sd550 7.1 mp that we use all the time- it's the same camera we use for our Dinner shots. We don't have any kind of allowance, we just do what we want. depending on where we were gelato would cost anywhere from 2 euro to 5 euro! We do not speak Italian but of course we tried and we really like these small little menu guides that we have purchased for france, spain and italy. in fact when people gave us menus in english (which was rare as we try to go to places that are italian only) we would ask for them to give us at least one in italian so we could learn more. language has really never been a problem for us in any country- even russia!! we just take our time and try to communicate best we can, it's all part of the fun of travelling!!!

and then you go to the CATHEDRAL OF CHEESE!!!! and there is one robot that grabs every cheese and turns it, cleans it and cleans the shelf. And it's just plugged in on the back wall after the tour we sat around and ate huge chucks of parmesan! and then we bough A LOT! As doc said if you go to the area you really shouldn't miss this. Yes you have to get up early which I am not a fan of but it is truely a very fun and interesting experience. It was really one of my favorite days! After the factory tour we took off to go the the Ferrari factory outside of Modena passing the Barilla factory on the way!

thanks doc!! here they've cut the curds into two big balls and have caught them with cheesecloth after they seperate the curds from the whey they put it in the round molds and write on them this is the template that is used to mark the factory's number- ours was 2322 then they float in a salt water bath, this is the only salt the cheeses get! they are floating and they are flipped by being pushed on with a stick so both sides are salted

We ended up staying right in the center of Parma at a funny little place called Hotel Button ("cute as a button"....) Dinner was right next door at Gallo d'Oro salumi misto + gnocco frito- now this is what I'm talkin' about!!! we also had risotto with parmesan, rabbit with olives, pork cheek with balsamic sauce and this utterly amazing panna cotta with berries! finished off with sambuca con mosca! The next morning we were up early for our tour of the parmesan cheese factory!!! I'm just going to apologize right now for the number of pictures coming your way. We just LOVED this!!! very excited and goofy!! once they are done with the whey they put it in containers and feed it to the pigs!! and they also use it to help ment broken bones and ailments! this guy was here on dr's orders!

I loved the pork cracklings and did not need to be educated on what they were! I was like a kid in the candy store. Doc I think that we were just in the mood for something central in a town since we were doing some much driving around during the days! We had a nice breakfast there before leaving and there were very gracious!

Really Daniel?? I thought everyone knew!! haha! In Bologna we decided to have lunch at Tamburini which is a 100s of years old salumeria and cafeteria. On the way we passed more nice windows!! Then we hit the cafeteria! Like no other cafeteria food we have had! It was fun and very busy, definately a locals place. We had a hard time stopping ourselves from ordering way too much! fontina and proscuitto heated together in the microwave as your ordered it! We also had a few types of pasta and more salumi and a quartino (?) of Lambrussca - we ordered that by accident, not to our liking but at least we experienced it! this is the Tamburini truck! I would love to see it in my neighborhood! more salumi shopping after lunch. Each time we would buy some the counter guys would let us take some of these!!!! YUMMMMMMMMMM. Dayne's favorite moment...gelato by the breast squirting fountain!! Then the day turned a bit shakey as there was a slight scooter and rental car occurance.... after some time with the local police we went off to do our much needed laundry and had a few beers at this spot while waiting some postcard writing, beer and cheesypoufs- I'm addicted to these and buy them in every country we go to. I could do a whole blog just on cheesypoufs and their subtle differences- in Italy they make them with the parm that doesn't pass muster for being sold by the consortium!

Thank you!! sounds great and I was definately looking for an "Italian way" vs a recipe!!

Thanks DG, so glad you are enjoying!!! We spent an entire day in Bologna which is just marvelous for food!! First off we wandered around the markets then we went shopping for salumi!! do you see the prices??? oh my! now this is what I call a deli! we bought some of this salami stagionato

Another place we really liked in Firenze was Enoteca Ponte Veccio. the woman who ownes it with her daughter is a gem! and they carry Amedei chocolate for those of us in the hunt (Ling if your reading this, this is where we picked your up- but they have big bars too one of which Dayne ate while I got ready for dinner one night!). The first night in ER region we drove into Modena and stumbled upon Caffe Concerto and had dinner! started with house cocktails (non alcoholic with compliments) and aperitivos of nigroni and aperol with soda. then shared the salumi misti. Tortellini di zucca medaglioni fillet then there was this Cone Dessert that looked like a witches hat and dayne was in love! cafe and wine with dinner and in the Piazza Grande it was just what we needed!! this was our view during dinner this is the restaurant from the square This area is very industrial until you find the center of each city, park and walk inside where they don't allow cars- and then it is heaven!!!

It wasn't Villa Gaidello by any chance, was it? ← yes it was, they were very nice about letting us out of our intended 3 night stay

yes I think I recognize those cloudberries!!! great post, have fun in Paris!

damn looks like a great weekend!! and I love those little jars that they Joe Beef is serving stuff in, very cute!!

Yum!!! I brought back a few bags of amaretti cookies and want to do something like this, recipe please??

I'm just getting to start you blog divina, fabulous and of course brings back lots of nice memories from our recent trip! thank you!