Family Visits
Family visits.
Usually a boring affair where you are stuck listening to time worn tales of walking uphill to school both ways.
That is unless you have my dad visiting. Then, it is all about food. Now you see will see where I get it from. We have lived here in the NW for about the last 4 months, but honestly, we haven’t ventured out to very many restaurants. We have found a few favorites but haven’t gone outside of our comfort zone much. Enter Dad. He is all about the enjoyment of good food and so when he decided to visit, we laid out a plan of all the places he wanted to eat. The list was long, and we only had four days.
I said challenge accepted! Mwahahaha …cough…cough…*awkward sigh*
Here is a list of all the places we tried (not sponsored):
El Ray Burro – This is an unusual place. In my experience, it is always the little hole in the wall places that are best, and this is no exception. It is in a gas station. Let me repeat, there is a full-service restaurant, with booths, inside a gas station. They even have a drive thru. And they have these tacos….om nom nom…drool…We had Carne Asada, Carnitas, and Adobada tacos, with Cilantro, Lime, and Onion. Holy crap are these good. Like slap your mama good. Ok, but don’t do that, cause it is rude. But seriously.
Seoul Korean BBQ And now ladies and gents, we have the mukbang portion of the evening. This is a small space but they sure do their Korean BBQ right! At this place, you can’t help but pig out. Quite literally! Here you can see we had Bulkoki, Dae Ji Bulkoki, Jap Chae, and Yaki Man Du. And banchan. Omg all the food. There is nothing quite like having multiple sizzling platters, stacked high with food, wafting their smells at you. Sizzling meats, spicy chilis, and lots of odd little pickled dishes that make Korean food what it is. Gah, I am drooling just going over it all. But I digress. Our table was completely overrun with food. Yet somehow, between Dad, the Fiance, and myself, we ate it all. Well, almost.
Safura’s Mediterranean Cuisine – We had to break up the Asian food spree by visiting one of my old favorites. This place cooks everything out in the open. They have huge spits where they roast gyro meats, shawarma meats, and all the goodies they pack onto your plates. I have a confession coming here though……it was so good that I ate it before we could take a picture. Sad face.
Emporer’s Palace – Now let me be real a moment. This is not authentic Chinese food. I don’t think anyone in China would look at this food, and say it speaks to them, or reminds them of mom’s cooking. It is sticky, sweet Americanized Chinese food, but sometimes that is just what you need. Apparently we needed multiple entrées too. There was Pungent Chicken, which is like a sweet and sour vinegar based sauce over crispy deep fried chicken. Tom and Dad swoon over the crispy beef. Basically beef jerky with a sweet sticky sauce. It is pretty good, but you have to like chewing to really appreciate this meal. To top it off we enjoyed the Chinese bbq pork with Chinese mustard. If you like horseradish, then you will love this mustard. It was like we staged a contest to see who could sneeze the hardest because they took a little too much mustard lol.
Wagner’s Bakery and Deli – This place is great, you walk in two a huge three-sided display case of confections, everything from Danish, to cookies, to marzipan horns, you name it, they probably have it. Since we obviously don’t do light well (can you feel the sarcasm there?) we each picked two and nibbled at them on the way to Portland one day.
Cheesecake Factory – This is a chain restaurant, yes I know. But hey, they are consistent, and the food is amazing. We decided to go tapas style and really mix it up. We had a few choices, Samosas, Fried Chicken Sliders, Fried Mac and Cheese, and a few other picky items. Man it was good, and we got to try a huge variety. Always a win in my book.
Young’s Teriyaki – This one was strictly for Dad. Finding good Teriyaki in AZ is basically impossible. So obviously we had to take him to our local joint. This place is great, the food is good, and comes out incredibly fast. Love supporting a local family too! And yes, Dad got his beloved chicken teriyaki.
Katy Downs – This was our very last meal, so we wanted to do something a little nicer, and a bit more nostalgic. This is a great pub atmosphere set right down on the water in Tacoma. You get wonderful views of the sounds while enjoying curly fries, a beer, and maybe even a pork sandwich. Yum!
So the moral of the story? We ate too much lol. So much food, but overall we had a great time, and Dad got to see where we landed.
We look forward to his next tasty visit, though next time, a bit less food I think. I couldn’t move for like a week.
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