What’s For Dinner: Utah Eating Tour

I promise that I totally had intended to cook this week but my family had other ideas. My mom wanted to make me birthday noodles, my husband babysat his grandma so we just took her out since she’s a weird eater, and my husband’s gift to me was a birthday eating tour. We’ve been to lots of yummy places in the last few days.We’ve been trying some newbies not our standard favorites so it’s been fun.

Here’s what we’ve had so far:

• The Habit Burger: I have sought high and low for a burger comparable to my favorite burger from The Hat, a Ca classic chain, and the off-menu Santa Barbara style burger at The Habit Burger is pretty darn close. There hasn’t been a single burger even in the ballpark out of everything I tried in Ut. It’s a chain but the fries are just as yummy as the burger and the ranch is mighty tasty.
• Beyond Glaze Donuts: I’ve been wanting to try these “gourmet donuts” and usually I like donuts but think the fancy ones are overprices and and take or leave them but I REALLY liked these. I’ll definitely be going back. I had the Peanut Butter Swirl and Daniel got the Blueberry Torte. Besides being gorgeous they were both yummy and I’m excited to try more
• Birthday Noodles at my Mom’s always delicious!
• Pipa: This is an Asian fusion tapas place that came HIGHLY recommended. I liked it but it didn’t blow me away. And as I think back on if I was going to eat out and spend that money again I’d probably pick one of my favorite places. We ordered the Asparagus (my favorite dish but probably easy to replicate), Calamari (I try calamari every time it’s on a menu, this was overcooked and Daniel loved the wasabi cucumber sauce (I don’t like horseradish), I didn’t like that the marinara was cold but the flavor was good, and I dipped it in the garlic aioli from the asparagus), Soup Dumplings (good dim sum type, I’ve had something like this before and this was a yummy version of it), and the Lobster Stuffed Mushrooms (you could see the lobster and not taste it, it was pretty much an artichoke cheese stuffed mushroom with a bit of an expensive ingredient).  We both decided we might give the restaurant another shot but order different things.
• Salt Lake Roasting Co: I had my favorite Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Cake and daniel had a cookie, which he didn’t love. I love the drinks and the chocolate cake here. It’s actually THE BEST CAKE I’VE EVER HAD IN MY LIFE. But unfortunately all the other pastry stuff we’ve tried have not been our style, but we haven’t tried any of the other cakes besides their “cheesecake” which is slightly savory and not your traditional cheesecake and not finished. But go get the Chocolate Cake. Some day I might try one of the other cakes but really this one is SO SO good I don’t think I’d have the guts.
• Rodizio Grill: Usually this is so yummy but today was very underwhelming. The cheesey popover bread and fried polenta was delicious as normal but the meats were not very flavorful, the servers kept skipping us, and our waited totally seemed put out to be serving us. Bummer. It’s not a good sign to go to a Brazilian BBQ and have the highlights be the sides. We usually go here a few times a year but I’m thinking it will be a while until we return.
• Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory: We got an Apple Pie Apple to split. But I may have finished the last third just now while I was typing this up, shhh don’t tell.

We’re wanting to get down to Provo to either Black Sheep or Communal but not sure when and then my family still wants to do birthday dim sum. Yes it has been a delicious week with no dishes!

What’s for dinner this week…