alabama restaurant week | The Jealous Crumpet

August 8, 2018
by Sarah Bélanger Leave a comment

Tis the season of good eatin’

38769165_500387043756234_7140208985856016384_n copy Foodies rejoice! Once again restaurant week is upon the city of Huntsville. From August 10 until the 19th restaurants across Madison County are offering their fare at promotional prices. Even the breweries are jumping into the fun with new brews. As part of the promotion for Restaurant Week, I got to sample some of the promotional dishes with the Resturant Week Blogger tour. This is my fourth year to participate (I missed last year because was visiting my in-laws in France! Lucky me!!) and I love it! I get to eat good food with lots of talented food bloggers. What’s not to love. Plus it’s nice because food bloggers don’t even notice the weird things I do like stand on a chair to photograph a piece of cheesecake or gush about how adorable that curl of lettuce it in a salad. Normal people just don’t understand, but food bloggers will offer to hold the reflector. Below: Bloggers doing their blog thang!But seriously how pretty is the salad below!!!! This year I got to try the special dishes at two restaurants I’d never tried before: Ruth’s Chris Steak House and Keegan’s Public House.Let’s start with Ruth’s Chris. Great restaurants, but I find the name super confusing. Nine times out of ten I call it “Chris’s Ruth” or “that Ruth Steakplace” or “Ruth Christoper’s Resturant”. I digress. As I said before I’d never been, so I let me GPS lead the way. This was a mistake because it led me straight to the Publix Loading Dock. As I walked to the back of Publix I thought, “this is a weird place for a fancy steakhouse” and I was right because there was nothing but some confused employees and dumpsters back there. I eventually got there. It wasn’t confusing, but GPS was just a jerk.I met an assortment of extremely talented bloggers and got to eating! Please check their blogs out as well. I know I will. www.diningwithdeliajo.com happeninsintheham.com the bitter socialite rocket city eats hvsfoodlifeWe got to try an assortment of dishes but my absolute favorite was the scallops!! I really wanted to try to Lobster Mac and Cheese, but I have an allergy, but dang it looked GOOOOOOD!!!!!Earlier in the day, I tried Keegan’s Public House. I did not get lost, so I was actually on time to this one. The restaurant itself is really fun. It is located in the AL.COM building (shout out to all my journalist besties! You rock!! May the Fourth Estate Be With You!)There were different bloggers at this event and I got to meet Love at First Bite and Ihearthsv.comWe started out with the house chips with blue cheese.I ordered the Shepard’s Pie, which was everything you want comfort food to be: warm, tasty, the vegetables hidden at the bottom. There was also a nice salad

Bloggers taking the shots of the dessert on the left. It’s amazing that it wasn’t melted by the end.

…and most importantly yummy, totally unhealthy, but oh so good dessert. It was Krispy Kreme Bread Pudding with Ice Cream and Whipped Cream on top. Yes, you read that right. It came with 4 spoons to prevent anyone from overeating and slipping into a food coma.

As you go into Restaurant Week make sure you tag all your local food pics on social media with #dinehsv to win prices and if not prices glory. There are also the most adorable gifs from your posts on Instagram. Just search for #dinehsv.

So grab your forks and see y’all out and about from Aug 10th to the 19th!

August 13, 2015
by Sarah Bélanger 7 Comments

Blog Tour Grille 29 #dineHSV

The city of Huntsville has a rich culinary culture combining southern fare with German and other international cuisines.

Despite this, Huntsville used to lack a restaurant culture that other cities enjoy. Sure, we had lots of franchises but if you had a yen from something other than Olive Garden or fast-food, your choices were limited. Luckily, in the last decade or so, Huntsville started having amazing restaurants that showed off its culinary potential.

For the last leg of our Food Tour for Restaurant Week, we visited one of these restaurants, Grille 29, which specializes in fine dining in a causal atmosphere. feature10 Grill 29 is a sophisticated steak and seafood restaurant that was started by the Restaurant Partners, Inc. (RPI). It is located in the lovely Village of Providence Main and has a picturesque outdoor eating area, as well as stylish indoor accommodations. We all assembled with cameras/phones/notebooks in hand, ready to document every aspect of each dish. Food bloggers can be a pretty annoying bunch. If you think that a friend that has to Instagram every morsel that goes into their mouth is frustrating, then try going to lunch with 7 of these people who do it professionally! Make sure you check out the other bloggers’ posts though. Everyone did a great job showing how great each restaurant is.

Clint Cantwell with Grillocracy

Phillip Fryman with Southern FATTY

Stephanie Walker with Rocket City Mom

Constance Smith with Cosmopolitan Cornbread

Katie Wright with Katie Actually

We started the way every meal should begin (in my opinion) with muffins and mimosas. This is part of their brunch special, which is available every Sunday from 10am to 2pm. As an extra treat, we got to sample the super popular Chicken and Waffles, which was the perfect balance of salty and sweet. Then we enjoyed a chilly lump crab gazpacho. I’m a bit of a veggiholic, so I absolutely LOVED this dish.

Next, we had the main course: cheesy grits topped with shrimp and andouille sausage served in a cast-iron skillet. It doesn’t get much more southern than that.Using a great deal of restraint, I only ate half of my meal because I knew there would be lots of desserts. I was very glad I did.

We started with warm sour cream fudge cake. Stunning and delicious!Next was the strawberry cheesecake. Each day there is a different flavor of cheesecake so you’ll never get bored. Is your mouth watering yet?And last, but certainly not least, was the chocolate peanut butter truffle. Yum!!

I should also mention that we all shared the desserts! We did not each eat a full meal and then three desserts in a row…

See? Here we are sharing.

This concludes a wonderful Blog Tour. Thank-you to the Huntsville Visitor’s Center for inviting me to participate, thank-you Jessica Carlton for being awesome (as usual) and making sure that everything ran smoothly, and thank-you to my fellow bloggers for making it a fun, informative and enjoyable experience.

Website:

http://www.grille29.com

Location:

445 Providence Main Street
Huntsville, Alabama 35806

Phone:

(256) 489-9470

Hours:

Sunday Brunch – 10am
Sunday – Thursday – 11am – 9:30pm
Friday & Saturday – 11am – 10:30pm

May 7, 2015
by Sarah Bélanger 1 Comment

Florence Restaurant Week #FRW2015

I was invited to participate in Florence’s Restaurant Week 2015. Wonderful local food (for free), great people, and the chance to spend the weekend in one of my favorite cities. Yes please!

Florence is near and dear to my heart as it is home to my alma mater, UNA. I both studied and taught journalism and photography at the university. I have many wonderful memories of the city, which has great restaurants, fun festivals, and supports an impressive music and arts community.

This year, 14 restaurants are participating in the Florence Main Street sponsored charity event. Each restaurant will offer specials for participants. As part of the event, patrons that eat at one of the restaurants will have the opportunity to vote for one of their five favorite charities. At the end of restaurant week, the charity that has received the most votes will receive $5000, generously donated by McDaniel Window & Door.

On Wednesday, I attended the kickoff for restaurant week at Singin’ River Brewery and got to sample food from all of the restaurants. Everything was delicious and it made me super excited about this weekend. I also got to meet my fellow bloggers: Eve and Roger from Friday Date Night and my blogger BBF Christi Britten Williams (we were photojournalism friends at UNA) from Dirt Plate. Make sure you check out their posts this week as well.

Below are the participating restaurants of the event. Make sure you check my blog next week for lots of photos from the 5 restaurants I’m covering this weekend. I’m seriously regretting making an appointment with a personal trainer on Monday. 😦

Singin’ River Brewing Company

City Hardware and Ricatoni’s Italian Grill

Rivertown Coffee Co.

Odette

Imagine That Bakery

Sperry’s Restaurant

Wildwood Tavern

FloBama Downtown

Bookmarks Coffee Shop

Trowbridge’s

Legends

The Pie Factory

On The Rocks

August 19, 2014
by Sarah Bélanger 3 Comments

Blog Tour: D’Licious Dining #dineHSV

So for this leg of the blog tour I found myself at the delicious restaurant D’Licious Dining and Smokehouse Grill. It is housed in a really quirky building, that for some reason reminds me of the 80’s Cafe from Back the Future 2. I just aged myself there.

Cool looking building!

The inside of the building was also really cool, with lots of fun things to lot at including a pinball machine hanging from the ceiling which I of course forgot to take a photography off.

This time I parked close and remembered my camera and tripod… on the way in. On the way home I would forget my tripod, drive all the way back to my house before realizing it and have to drive back to the restaurant. sigh. I swear if my head wasn’t attached. The bloggers assembled, ready for the Jamaican Restaurant week special. We talked about the lunch from the day before and our high hopes that D’Licous Dining would be as good as Sady’s Bistro. (which it was!) We also discussed unique (for our location) foods that we had eaten. The foodies had eaten everything from jellyfish (this was the most intriguing to me) to kangaroo and alligator to a myriad of insects. No animal is safe from the food blogger!

The staff was very good: quick, nice and attentive without being pushy. As an added benefit there was live music, a talented saxophone player that added to the fun ambiance of the restaurant.
The starter was the Southern staple, fried green tomatoes, which were quite delicious, or I should say d’licious. This was a risky starter since most of the bloggers are southern and know a good fried green tomato from a bad one, but the consensus was D’Licious’ tomatoes were excellent. Not only were these tasty, they were beautiful which warms a photographs heart.

Most people went for the jerk chicken. I looked up why it is called ‘jerk’ chicken, assuming it was not named after idiotic poultry. Jerk is a type of seasoning that is traditionally applied to poultry or pork, though it can be used in numerous other foods. Jamaican Jerk Spice typically made with allspice and the Scotch bonnet pepper. The term ‘jerk’ came from a native South American word ‘ch’arki’ which meant ‘dried meat’. If you don’t believe me here is the Wikipedia article: Jerk Seasoning.All you really need to know is that it is tasty. It came with nicely seasoned red beans and rice and fried plantains. Right before dessert the owner Chef Rae came out to meet us and talked about some of his philosophies on food. We finished the meal with a brownie and ice cream dessert. It was the perfect size, and a nice sweet end to a well-crafted Southern/Jamaican meal.The Restaurant Week Lunch Special was $15 and included an appetizer of fried green tomatoes, and entrée of Jerk Chicken with fried plantains and red beans and rice and a dessert of brownie and ice cream. Well worth the price.

Check out the blogs of my fellow food fanatics and get a different perspective on the experience.

August 19, 2014
by Sarah Bélanger 3 Comments

Blog Tour: Sady’s Bistro #dineHSV

So, recently I was asked to be part of a food blog tour for Alabama’s Restaurant Week. I would travel to three separate restaurants with fellow food bloggers, eat, socialize and write about my experiences. Yes, please! Can we have an Alabama Restaurant Year, because I am all for that?

The first restaurant on the tour was Sady’s Bistro, which specializes in fresh sandwiches, soups, crepes and much more. I’ve been there before, but I got confused about the location, so I parked super far away thinking I was actually quite close. As I exited my car, I did a last-minute re-apply of lipstick, hair check (looking pretty good) and started walking in the humid, Alabama heat to the restaurant. When I realized I was much farther than expected I picked up my speed to make it on time, and as I was entering the building I remembered that I left my camera in the car. I now was sprinting back to the car (why did I wear these freakin’, uncomfortable shoes?) and could feel the sweat dripping down my face and my hair going rogue on me.

On the route back I cut through a small field, tripped in a hole and made it to the restaurant, out of breath, covered in sweat and grass with everyone waiting on me. I’d like to say this not typical of me, but that would just be a lie.

On the right is a Mango Lemonade, which I didn’t try but looked wonderful.

Despite my disheveled state, I was able to get seated and start meeting my fellow bloggers. They are all super talented and super nice and I was kept quite entertained by Bo, Christie, Constance and Paula, who were on my end of the table. We chatted and ate for TWO hours and I realized that this is the only way to do lunch. Food, stories and ideas were all shared around the table and I was both enriched and rejuvenated by it. So often we get into a frantic pace of life and find ourselves eating fast food in the car thinking about our multitude of chores, rather than sitting down to a healthy meal, having a moment of joy and gaining a new perspective on life.

Please check out the blogs posts of my fellow bloggers. As I said, they are all talented and each blog will offer a different perspective of the experience.

Rocket City Mom: http://www.rocketcitymom.com, http://bowilliams.com

Southern Plate: http://www.southernplate.com

Foodie Army Wife: http://thefoodiearmywife.com

AKA Jane Random: http://www.akajanerandom.com

Dining Dragon: http://www.thediningdragon.com

We ordered our food, most of us opting for the restaurant week specials, which was $15 for a fresh soup or salad, a choice of entrée (either crepes or taquitos) AND a dessert. Such a deal. On recommendation of the super wonderful server (whom I’m sorry I don’t remember her name) I got the tomato soup with rosemary bread and then went straight for dessert with Crepes de Yogurt, drizzled with honey, chocolate and granola. It was all wonderful.

I finished off with a giant cup of coffee because I have a pretty bad caffeine addiction. The first step is admitting you have a problem. Step 1 done.

The staff was lovely, the food was tasty and the restaurant was a nice bright location with cheerful decor, so top stars for everything.

I highly recommend giving Sady’s a try, and thank-you to the Huntsville-Madison County Convention & Visitors Bureau for giving me the opportunity to participate in the blog tour.

August 15, 2014
by Sarah Bélanger 2 Comments

Awesome Photo Foodies

So I had a contest this week where fellow foodies submitted me their best food photos. There was some really incredible photographs, and I’ll admit it made me nervous that they’re going to put me out of work.

Here are some of the amazing photographs.