Tuesday at the Table

If you visit a city that offers an Epicurean Walking Tour, for goodness sake, Take It!

We did, and it was a great deal of fun. In this odd little post, I'm going to recall every place we stopped on the tour, if nothing else, so I don't forget anytime soon. Walk with me? {photo-heavy warning}

Cacao. As in cacaodrinkchocolate.com. Really now, do I need to say more? First stop on our walking tour, and we were drinking chocolate. Oh yum. And yes, that bar there came home with us.

Stepping into Elephants Deli, we sipped soup and tried to guess the 'secret' ingredient. We tasted tomato, basil . . . and orange. And lucky, lucky us, the recipe is online.

Food carts are a growing phenonemon. "Set up in parking lots, sidewalks, and even parks (sometimes in large groups and sometimes solo)" they offer a vast array of ethnic food choices caught on the run. At The Gaufre Gourmet, we grabbed liege-style waffles accented with pearl sugar. We all walked away smacking our lips and brushing powdered sugar from our shirts. Oh yeah.

We were treated to carefully crafted macchiatos at Courier Coffee Roasters, who roasts small batches of beans as needed, delivering much of their stock by bicycle around the city. Freshness counts for everything, buying their beans only in season, wherever that might be at any given time.

Having worked in a bakery in my past life, visiting the Pearl Bakery was a highlight for me. As our tour guide silently pulled aside the baker's rack behind the counter to let us into the production area, well it almost felt like home. Everything we sampled - and it was an awesome variety - was just really delightful. Silly me, as I read their Mission and Values, I almost got misty.

Next stop was the Ecotrust building, which housed Hotlips Pizza, claiming to be the first gourmet pizza shop in the city. In more recent years, they've added fresh and seasonal house-made fruit soda to their menu - what a unique combo.

Tea-drinker that he is, hubby really enjoyed The Tea Zone and the variety of teas we sampled. Neither of us had seen or heard of tea bricks before, so it was interesting to hear how it was a common method to produce and use tea in ancient times.

We were certainly intrigued when it came time for olive oil and balsamic vinegar tastings at Benessere. whoa. My personal fav? The Persian Lime extra-virgin olive oil. Can't wait to try using some in my very own kitchen.

So are you tired yet? Well, we're at the last stop. And that would be TartBerry, serving up self-serve frozen yogurt with THE largest topping bars I've ever seen. Talk about choices. And tasty.

One of the best parts of the tour, besides the great tastes of course, was hearing from the vendors and sharing in their passion for their products. Very personal and a decidedly special treat.

For obvious reasons, we skipped lunch . . .

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