Eat Bake Love goes to America Part 2
My experience with American breakfasts was pretty much the same as all of my other culinary experiences in the US- amazing!
I guess the typical American Breakfast would be the diner breakfast which you can find on pretty much any street corner of a major US city. Our first american diner breakfast was at a place called Tad's steak house in San Francisco. I got the french toast with a side of scrambled eggs and sausage (seemed a little weird to this kiwi girl but it worked) and James got eggs, bacon, toast and breakfast potatoes. We had heard from locals that depending on the diner you go to it can mean a fantastic meal or a terrible one. Luckily ours was a good diner experience! What I loved about the diners was that you got to have as many coffee top ups as you liked and the meals were real value for money. Plus your table always had lots of condiments on it like syrup, jelly, peanut butter etc so you could put whatever you liked on your breakfast for no extra charge which is cool.
The next breakfast experience I had was in Philadelphia where I got to try huckleberry jam on my french toast and wow! What a treat! They were from a really cool cafe/restaurant inside our hotel called Red Owl Tavern. I'm now looking into huckleberries and the possibility of growing them in NZ after this breakfast, yep it was just that good!
Cupcakes
Cupcakes in America weren't everything I'd hoped :-( They sell them everywhere which is the first thing I noticed but while they had a lot and most were very pretty not every cupcake was created equal. In fact the first one I tried was from a cupcake store at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco and I was pretty disappointed. I think my own ones were actually a lot better! But then I tried one from whole foods in NY and that one was pretty good and then I tried the best of the best which I bought from a place called Georgetown Cupcake in D.C.
Georgetown Cupcake is my totally my new favourite bakery and cupcake place! They had such incredible flavours and all of them were just as beautiful as you see in cupcake recipe books. We had caught a bus out to Georgetown especially to go to this cupcake store so I'm pretty glad they lived up to the hype.
Burgers
We had some really, really good burgers too. One of the best I tried was this one below from Five Guys in Washington D.C. The Burger bun was the highlight (which sounds weird because I don't know that much about bread) It's just so good, really light and fluffy bread but a little sweet too plus their cheese is really different to ours I don't know how they do it I just know it was one of the best cheeseburgers I've tasted. They also had every type of Coke, Fanta and Mello Yellow you could think of there and to be perfectly honest they had so many flavours I hadn't heard of most of them.
Coffee
As most of you know my husband is a HUGE coffee enthusiast (I guess that's what you'd call him anyway?) He really know's his coffee and we were a bit worried that we would struggle to find a good coffee in the US but rest assured we had no problems at all. I think on the whole we had really good coffee, even the filter coffee you get at most diners was pretty reasonable. We discovered Blue bottle which is a really big deal in San Fran and both my friend from California and James's friend had told us to try it out. Verdict? Really, really good coffee!
I really liked their marketing too- so cute! Plus they do awesome waffles there too so of course I tried one of those as well!
In New York we went to a really cool coffee place with our friends called Joe coffee. The closet thing you can get to a flat white is something they call a cortado. Which is basically a small coffee with warmed milk. It too was really, really good!
Other incredible food moments we had included this key lime pie from Wholefoods, incredible BBQ from Percy Street BBQ in Philadelphia, this chocolate below (also from Whole foods), ice cream sandwiches, and pepperoni pizza to name a few!
I guess the typical American Breakfast would be the diner breakfast which you can find on pretty much any street corner of a major US city. Our first american diner breakfast was at a place called Tad's steak house in San Francisco. I got the french toast with a side of scrambled eggs and sausage (seemed a little weird to this kiwi girl but it worked) and James got eggs, bacon, toast and breakfast potatoes. We had heard from locals that depending on the diner you go to it can mean a fantastic meal or a terrible one. Luckily ours was a good diner experience! What I loved about the diners was that you got to have as many coffee top ups as you liked and the meals were real value for money. Plus your table always had lots of condiments on it like syrup, jelly, peanut butter etc so you could put whatever you liked on your breakfast for no extra charge which is cool.
The next breakfast experience I had was in Philadelphia where I got to try huckleberry jam on my french toast and wow! What a treat! They were from a really cool cafe/restaurant inside our hotel called Red Owl Tavern. I'm now looking into huckleberries and the possibility of growing them in NZ after this breakfast, yep it was just that good!
Cupcakes
Cupcakes in America weren't everything I'd hoped :-( They sell them everywhere which is the first thing I noticed but while they had a lot and most were very pretty not every cupcake was created equal. In fact the first one I tried was from a cupcake store at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco and I was pretty disappointed. I think my own ones were actually a lot better! But then I tried one from whole foods in NY and that one was pretty good and then I tried the best of the best which I bought from a place called Georgetown Cupcake in D.C.
A close up of their banana split cupcake I bought
Burgers
We had some really, really good burgers too. One of the best I tried was this one below from Five Guys in Washington D.C. The Burger bun was the highlight (which sounds weird because I don't know that much about bread) It's just so good, really light and fluffy bread but a little sweet too plus their cheese is really different to ours I don't know how they do it I just know it was one of the best cheeseburgers I've tasted. They also had every type of Coke, Fanta and Mello Yellow you could think of there and to be perfectly honest they had so many flavours I hadn't heard of most of them.
Coffee
As most of you know my husband is a HUGE coffee enthusiast (I guess that's what you'd call him anyway?) He really know's his coffee and we were a bit worried that we would struggle to find a good coffee in the US but rest assured we had no problems at all. I think on the whole we had really good coffee, even the filter coffee you get at most diners was pretty reasonable. We discovered Blue bottle which is a really big deal in San Fran and both my friend from California and James's friend had told us to try it out. Verdict? Really, really good coffee!
I really liked their marketing too- so cute! Plus they do awesome waffles there too so of course I tried one of those as well!
In New York we went to a really cool coffee place with our friends called Joe coffee. The closet thing you can get to a flat white is something they call a cortado. Which is basically a small coffee with warmed milk. It too was really, really good!
Other incredible food moments we had included this key lime pie from Wholefoods, incredible BBQ from Percy Street BBQ in Philadelphia, this chocolate below (also from Whole foods), ice cream sandwiches, and pepperoni pizza to name a few!
Comments