Chufi

Day 9 - continued On the way from Torrey to Moab we pass through Green River, whic is apparently famous for its melons, they´re for sale in lots of road side stands.. so we buy a couple. And then Moab. We loved Moab. The first time I ever heard of Moab was when Flocko, aka as Bill Benge, did his eGullet foodblog in 2006. Bill sadly passed away not long after he blogged. It was strange being in Moab: I knew I was partly there because of an eGullet member, and I also know I would have loved to meet him. We went to a couple of the places he visited during his blog (the bookstore/coffeeshop he went to every morning, the Moab brewery). I could completely understand his love for the town and the area. It´s a great town, where we felt very much at home. Moab´s Main Street in the setting sun. We had dinner at the Moab Brewery, where they have excellent beer and good food. the beer menu (sorry - blurry! the oatmeal stout was my favorite) the decor Sausages with sauerkraut More beer (hey, we´re in Utah. Who knows WHEN we´ll see good beer again?) Burger with bacon and barbecue sauce. We´re full now.

Day 9 - Torrey -> Moab We leave Torrey to drive to Moab. Before you know it, you´re in one of the weirdest, most desolate desert landscapes... the kind of landscape that has you freaking out when you see your gas tank is only half full. Like this: When that´s your view from the car, and you suddenly see a little house by the road that has a sign that says Bakery - Coffee, you scream to your husband (who has been looking at nothing but the deserted road) that he has to turn around, because you THINK you saw a bakery, yes you know that sounds inpossible, and maybe it was a fata morgana, but please honey can you turn around so we can make sure? It really was a bakery, and a coffeehouse, and an organic farm, too. Mesa market, Highway 24, at the 102 mile marker. Don´t miss it. Inside this little building is a friendly guy baking bread.. we chat with him and it turns out that he bakes bread for cafe Diablo.. and delivers vegetables to both Cafe Diablo and the Capitol Reef cafe.. we tell him how much we enjoyed those vegetables and then he makes me a cup of coffee, which is the best coffee I had on this entire trip.. he grinds the beans right in front of me, puts them in a coffee filter which he stands on a mug, then pours on water that has just boiled... I say Wow that´s fresh coffee! and he says, Yeah, no point in doing it any other way... I ask him, How did you think of starting a bakery right here in the middle of nowhere? And he says, Well, we needed bread, so we started baking it, and before you know it, you´re running a bakery. Noone else in sight, we sit at the porch drinking coffee and tea and eating one of his cinnamon rolls, not exactly watching the world go by cause there´s nothing passing by... while he, inside, goes on with his bread making, and Stevie Wonder sings on a rusty old radio. I still feel that we may have dreamt this place, but I have pictures so it must be real...

well, to add more confusion to it, I would definitely say that the food at Escobar´s in Kanab, as pictured above, was very different from the food we had in Santa Fe and/or the food we had in Silver City. The Kanab version was by far the blandest (as in, not spicy) of them all. It´s a very interesting subject, and I´m afraid the more I read bout it, and hear about it, the less I understand it.

Day 8 - continued That night we had dinner at the restaurant of our motel The Capitol Reef Inn & Cafe, and an excellent dinner it was. And there was wine! Wine that came with a life lesson: An outstanding salad of lots of fresh vegetables, covered with my favorite dressing, blue cheese: Chicken with chiles and cheese, and roasted pumpkin: Chicken with barbecuesauce, jalapeno beans, fresh corn, and cornbread Blueberry pie and huckleberry pie for dessert.

Day 8 - Capitol Reef National Park (Torrey, Utah) The next day we went hiking in Capitol Reef National Park, which was possibly my favorite of the National Parks we visited. It´s very rugged and remote.. not that many tourists.. easy to find a hiking trail that´s not too crowded. Also, it has the additional charm of the little historic district of Fruita, where early Mormon settlers made their living from fruit orchards in the river valley. The Visitor Center has a great film about the lives of these settlers.. interesting and impressive. After hiking a couple of hours, the leftovers from Cafe Diablo were a very welcome snack.. and in case you were wondering, I´m not doing all of this by myself.. here´s Dennis, my husband, friend, trusted driver, never complaining and never cranky and always good spirited travel companion... On the way back we stopped at one of the historic houses and ofcourse I had to take a picture of the kitchen.. The Fruita orchards are still maintained, now solely for the benefit of the visitors to the park, who can go into the orchards and pick and eat as many fruit as they like, for free. Only if you take some with you, you have to pay a small fee.

Day 7 - continued The day of great eating wasn´t over yet. In the evening we headed on over to the famous cafe Diablo in Torrey, Utah. We were staying in a motel down the road and it was great to be able to walk to the restaurant. We started with cocktails! Cocktails in Utah, hee ha!! Cafe Diablo is an interesting place to find in the middle of the desert. From the dishes that arrive at the table, it is obvious that there is a very creative, innovative and daring chef at work here. I loved the way he uses local ingredients and flavors and combines them into completely sursprising plates of food. I wanted to order everyting on the menu.. but we were not that hungry! We both had 2 small plates instead of one main dish, so we could try more. we had dinner on the patio, with this lovely view: With the cocktails we were presented with the house appetizer, a plate of grilled and marinated vegetables and some crumbly cheese.. this was so good I could have made my dinner out of it... we saw other people just barely touching theirs while we were voraciously scooping it up... the vegetables were just so flavorful and cooked exactly right, the marinade was slightly tangy and herby. And the bread was very good too. My first dish was the rattlesnake cakes with coriander pesto, red cabbage slaw and rosemary aioli. The cakes were nicely seasoned and the aioli was delicious, as was the coriander pesto. I can´t say I now know what snake tastes like though! Dennis had a mushroom and spinach salad with tomatillo salsa. My second dish was Duck mariachi with jicama, peanut dressing, creamy sweet potatoes: The duck was good, the potatoes tasted very strongly of ginger, which I did not like. Dennis had glazed salmon and avocado with pinenuts and dried cranberries. We felt we had room for dessert: carrot cake and brandied pear frangipane tart and their homemade icecream (I think we had butterscotch ice cream). Their icecream did not impress me much but the pear tart... I really love pear frangipane tarts and will always order it when I see it on a manu.. this was one of the best I ever had: we could not finish the cakes though.. so we took them home for the next day.

it´s a deal!

Dennis took that picture of Bryce I´ll be passing on the compliments!

Day 7 - Tropic -> Torrey The drive through the mountains from Tropic to Torrey is one of the most beautiful drives you can imagine. You´re high up on the pass, driving slooooowly because there are all these cows roaming the countryside and often wandering onto the road... the aspen had just changed color and was a beautiful almost fluorescent golden yellow. Not only was this a perfect day of driving, it was also a perfect day of eating (and drinking). I had read about the Kiva Koffeehouse (I don´t remember if it was on eGullet). They´re on scenic Highway 12, just outside of Escalante. As you´re driving, it´s hard to imagine that something as mundane as a coffeehouse will pop up between the rugged rocks and winding curves of the road... but then it does. It´s a beautiful, peaceful, special place. It´s hard to think of a better place to linger over coffee and the newspaper. So that´s what we did.. I think we stayed there for a couple of hours, reading, and just looking at the mountains. But, we had big lunch plans so eventually it was time to move on. I had heard such great things about Hell´s Backbone Grill in Boulder, Utah.. so we arrived with high expectations, around 1pm, to find they were just closing up... due to what Dennis euphemistically called a ' research flaw' I had failed to notice that they´re actually only open for breakfast and dinner! I was so disappointed I could cry! Fortunately Dennis is the much more pragmatic person of the 2 of us, also he had not read all these rave reviews about Hell's Backbone Grill, and it did not matter much to him where we would eat.. so we just went down the road to the Burr Trail Grill. Good thing we did, because this is where I had my Best Burger Ever. Who knows how good the food at the Backbone Grill would have been? Who cares if you´re eating your best burger ever? Good burgers make me really, really happy. They had regular burgers and burgers made with this special meat, which is the ones we had: One with blue cheese and bacon and mine with roasted poblano's and swiss. Oh my.

A word on 'how much do you like this plate of food?' My expectations of the food on this trip weren´t very high (with the exeception of a couple of places). All in all we were pleasantly surprised with the quality of the food. As I´m looking at that pic of the trout and fries and steamed vegetables upthread, I realize that in any other circumstance, that would not be a meal I would consider worthy of an eGullet posting. But I think it belongs in this report. Clarke´s was a fun place to be, we had nice conversations with other people waiting, the waitress was sweet, it was fun to people watch, and it was just (to us) an essential 'small town America' experience. And there´s one other factor contributing to the "how much do you like this" question. We ate cheap. I think on average we spent about 70 dollars a day on food (for the 2 of us). Partly by choice, partly because in many towns, there weren´t more expensive options around. In Amsterdam, that amount of money would get you lunch and a couple of cups of coffee. And yes, that´s how it psychologically works for me: that dinner of trout and fries cost 12 dollars or so, and for that price, it was great value for money. If we had paid 23 dollars, I would have expected more of the food.. and would have been disappointed. Does this make any sense....

Secondly: I was going to ask about the Mexican plates above. They look (disappointingly) a little like standard-issue AmeriMexican...could you taste the chiles? Was the beef ground or not, etc. ← Hmmm.. it wasn´t very spicy. But, as you know, living in Amsterdam yourself, there isn´t much AmeriMexican food here, so even that would be exotic and new to us. It was a good dinner, but nothing really special. The beef wasn´t ground, I think (digging real hard and deep into my memories here) it was a chile colorado enchilada I had, and a chile relleno. The beef in the chile colorado was cubed and (I assume) braised.

Day 6 - Bryce Canyon NP Its hard not to love a landscape like this. it makes it so easy to enjoy a lunch made up from snackfoods from what seemed to be the only store in Bryce NP: btw I LOVED these! We bought lots more of them during the rest of the trip. The evening brought us back to Clarke´s. Chicken and ribs with barbecue sauce, and some very good blueberry pie for dessert:

Day 5 - Kanab -> Zion NP -> Tropic, Utah The next day was pretty much dedicated to visiting Zion NP. Its an awe inspiring place: We managed to get away from the crowds and hike in relative peace until the early afternoon. It was about 2pm when we arrived back at the store/deli, famished and ready to eat anything they had! So we had a slice of pizza, salad, a burger... not fantastic food but not too bad. Our place to stay for the next 2 nights was in Tropic, a hamlet with 1 pizza place and one place, Clarke´s, that doubled (tripled) as general store, gasstation and restaurant. People were lining up for it and at 7pm, there was already a 45 minute wait.. this was apparently the place to be in Tropic! I kept trying to peek inside to see if they were serving any wine and beer... Turns out they did and when we were finally seated, here´s what we had: Nothing wrong with it.. maybe not very exciting or creative, but when we´re eating out every day, we don´t really need creative every day. It was good and basic.. and they had wine!!

no bike, no computer for 3 weeks. Soooo nice to be away from your regular life!

Ha, that came out nice! ofcourse I never said we did not like Santa Fe but more on that later!

Yes, I can tell -- you're positively glowing! Care to share why Big American Supermarkets make you happy? ← Ah yes. The supermarket issue. I love supermarkets in most countries (France, Italy, England, the US) that I´ve visited. To understand my love of them you have to know that the concept of a large, very large supermarket just outside a town, is unknown here. Dutch supermarkets are more like what you would call a convenience store.. they have a little bit of most daily necessities, nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary. So here the supermarket is not ´super´, it´s just a shop to go to for milk and butter and bottled water and fruitjuice and the occasional vegetable, and detergent and toiletpaper etc... but then for good cheese, good pasta, good vegetables, good meat, etc you have to go somewhere else. Most people don´t do that ofcourse. What I love about the really big supermarkets is that, because they have so much space, they can offer you organic meat and regular meat... cheap pasta brands and really good artisinal ones.. so it´s your choice. And for me as a visitor, it gives me a nice view of what´s for sale in a country.

Day 4 - continued From Page, we drove onto Kanab, Utah, a nice little town where the first thing we saw was the Three Bears Icecream Shop. Icecream is just what you need after a hot dusty drive! Kanab´s fine dining establishment, Parry Lodge. That wasn´t really what we were in the mood for though so we went to a Mexican place, Escobar's, instead - it was recommended by another motelguest. Before we went out I asked the friendly motelowner if he could recommend a nice bar in town? he said Sure, just take that road and keep on driving till you´re back in Arizona. lots of nice bars there. We don´t have no bars, and if we did, you would not want to drink there, cause all the beer´s only 3.2 % anyway, you might as well stay home and drink water. Welcome to the liquor laws of Utah. Fortunately, when we approached Escobar's, we saw someone sipping a Corona! They served it in glasses so cold that the foam froze in the glass. Chips and salsa (nice and spicy) Then we had 2 of those Mexican dinners that you really can´t tell what they are anymore when you look at the picture... you think you don't have to take notes, the picture will remind you what you ate, but you don´t realize that all those rolled up-smothered with sauce-things look pretty much the same! Anyway I think Dennis had a pork & green chile combination platter and I had a beef & red chili combination platter. It was good, satisfying comfortfood.

Day 4 - Cameron -> Page, Lake Powell -> Kanab The next day we drove from Cameron to Kanab, stopping along the way in Page and with a short visit to Lake Powell. Near Page, we made the short hike to Horseshoe Bend.. and got a real feeling for the desert as we hiked back up in the midday heat, ofcourse we did not bring water thinking it was ´just a very short hike´. Heat and sun and a little physical exercise really affect you very differently in the desert. Fortunately Page had a Safeways and I got my first taste (on this trip) of the Big American Supermarket. Big American Supermarkets make me happy. Can you tell? We couldn´t really find a nice place to have lunch in Page, so we got picnic supplies at Safeways and drove to the lake. Decent food, with a splendid view.

Day 3 - Flagstaff -> Grand Canyon -> Cameron We had breakfast the next morning at Macy´s in Flagstaff. It´s located just opposite the brewpub, and we had noted the night before that they opened at 6 - which was convenient because we wanted to get an early start for the drive to the Grand Canyon. We had what is basically our favorite breakfast (joghurt, fruit, granola) which was fresh and good, but we saw lots of tasty looking hot breakfasts all around. It´s a vegetarian place, so no bacon though! On to the Grand Canyon. I had considered skipping a visit to the GC. Many people (both on eG and elsewhere) persuaded me not to skip it! In retrospect, I feel ambivalent about it....I´m glad we went, but I feel that the only way to really appreciate the impressiveness and vastness of this place, would be to hike down into the Canyon.. and take a couple of days to do that! I had initially planned to hike down an hour or so and then back up. But I realized as soon as we got there that I could not do it... the heat, the altitude, lack of shade. So we stayed on the rim, although we managed to get away from the crowds and spend an hour or so on a quiet rock just looking out over the Canyon. We had a not bad but not memorable sandwich from the Grand Canyon Village deli. Oh and this sure was a nice place to have a cup of coffee..... We spent the night in Cameron, at the Cameron Trading Post. While the motel is absolutely perfect (just east of the GC, clean, large, nicely decorated, inexpensive rooms) the downside is that when you stay there, you pretty much have to eat there too. Behold the Gravy Crater: I´ll let that speak for itself.

Day 2 - Prescott -> Flagstaff Fortified, we drove to the tiny and utterly charming town of Jerome where we had coffee and cookies at the Sage Post coffeehouse, an interesting combo of coffeehouse, lunchspot, bookstore, and giftshop. From there we drove on to Sedona.. where we were supposed to have lunch, but after walking up and down Main Street a couple of times, we felt that there was really nothing there we wanted to eat.. as beautiful as the landscape surrounding Sedona is, the town itself is completely overtaken by tourbuses and the inevitable giftshops.. so we left without lunch. Fortunately just a couple of miles north of Sedona on the road to Flagstaff, there´s a little convenience store annex deli, where they make great sandwiches to order which you can eat outside on the patio. (as you can tell, the necessity of ´taking pictures of everything we ate´ hasn´t quite sunken in at this point ) Flagstaff: beer! We had dinner (and beers) at the Flagstaff Brewing Company. Beer makes you happy. (And sometimes you just look better in sepia. Trust me.) Burgers make you happy, too. Good burgers do. And these were really good. A word about burgers. When you tell a Dutch person you had really good burgers in the US, they look at you like you´re crazy, and they ask you: "what do you mean? is McDonalds so much better in the US than it is here?". The concept of a good burger is not very well known here. Burgers are really only associated with junkfood. Fortunately we know better know. I think that in its simplicity, the burger & fries dinner is just about perfect. Juicy, medium rare meat on hot bun. Crispy fries. A good pickle. Some tangy ketchup. Cheese, chiles, bacon, whatever, as add ons. Praise the universe for great burgers! I wish I could get a good one here in Amsterdam.. I´ll have to live on pictures for a while. Here´s the outside of the brewpub.

Day 1 - Amsterdam -> Phoenix -> Prescott After flying to Phoenix, we picked up our rental car and drove to Prescott. It´s about a 2 hours drive, but not to be underestimated after you just flew around the world. On arrival in Prescott we had a beer and a salad in a bar, I can´t remember anything about it except resenting the food because even though I was hungry, I wnated to get to bed as soon as possible! The next morning everything looked brighter. Prescott is a nice little town, and the breakfast served at the Hotel St Michael is just what you need when you wake up slightly jetlag-groggy:

We just came back from our 3 week road trip through the American Southwest. It was our 4th vacation in the US (the first - California, the second - New England, the third (extensively documented here) - the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia. Ever since our first trip to California it seemed logical to visit the Southwest as a follow-up destination. But for some reason, I did not want to go to the desert. I was scared of the desert. So we visited lush New England and the green PNW on our next trips. This year, since January or so, the desert started calling me. Who knows why? But that´s the trip i started to plan, the one I asked advice for here. We fell in love with the US all over again. The open road, the landscape, the people, big mugs of weak black coffee, the best burgers in the world, omnipresent bathrooms, small towns, the ease of travel. And this time I also fell in love with the desert, even though it wasn´t an easy love, not love at first sight, and we still have some issues to work out. But love. This is a trip report about food. But it´s more a "we travelled around the Southwest and here´s what we ate" report than a "we went to the Southwest to eat the best food ever and this is what we ate" report. The desert, the red rocks and small town charm were defintely the main characters on this trip. It´s a lot harder to find great food in a tiny town in Utah, where you have your choice of 2 restaurants, than in, say, Seattle. But we had some great food nevertheless: moslty good meals, a couple of excellent ones, a number of just ok ones, and only 1 really bad one. I think that´s a pretty good score for 3 weeks of travelling in rural America! For us, travelling in the US is a way to understand this country better and to learn about all aspects of it. Food is one of the best means to this end... and that´s why the junkfood pizza we had in Zion NP has just as much right to be in this report as the much coveted and swooned over Pizza Rosa at Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix. So here we go!

Sarah: I´ll try to think of some recommendations for your questions later, but when I read you´re staying near the Olympic Stadium I just had to alert you to what many people think is the very best bakery in Amsterdam: le Fournil de Sebastien, Olympiaplein 119. He is a French baker married to a Dutch girl, they put a lot of passion into this business. Their bread is fabulous and their pastries are very very hard to resist even if you only walked in for a baguette.

I'm going on a trip to the other side of the world. If it wasn't for eGullet and some exquisite eGullet foodblogs, it is probable I never would have felt the inclination to go to this particular part of the US. I have the phone numbers of 2 eGullet members, who I've never met or seen or spoken to in real life, in my phone, and plans to meet said eGullet members for food and drink. Over the past 5 years, there hasn't been a single vacation I planned without consulting the forums, getting great advice from eGulleters, and then meeting eGulleters while on the road. eGullet has changed my daily life but at moments like this (ready to go on a plane first thing tomorrow morning) I am very happy that it also changed the way I spend my free time. My vacations have been incredibly rich thanks to eGullet and all its members. My favorite thing about it is that it makes a lot of difference just being an outsider in another country, or getting in touch with people who live their lives there - it gives you a very different perspective!

I´ve done all the reading, planning, day dreaming, and fantasizing. Time to get on that plane and do some travelling! See you in a couple of weeks...