Food blog tour | 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!

May 13, 2015
by Sarah Bélanger 1 Comment

Odette

On day 2 of the blog tour I found myself at Odette, an elegant restaurant that prides itself in serving elevated American cuisine, created with local and sustainably sourced ingredients. The restaurant is the brainchild of Owner Celeste Pillow, who wanted a place that embodied her love of food and art and would be a location she herself would like to frequent.

Odette, which is named after Celeste’s paternal great-grandmother, definitely combines delicious cuisine with an artistic spirit.Odette is a lovely place that I have been to before and will go to again. The ambience is great, with exposed brick walls and an assortment of eclectic, yet complimentary details. When you first walk in to the restaurant there is a little shop that sells artisan culinary ware.

I become a kid in a candy shop wanting to buy everything that I never knew I absolutely needed. How have I survived this many years without a leather-wrapped cocktail shaker or an adorable pastel bento box?! Alas, my husband is usually able to talk me out of buying anything, but I always look.

My husband and I arrived at the restaurant at 11:00 just as they are opening. UNA had its graduation that morning and I wanted to beat the crowds of elated college students and their families.

As I had not yet had caffeine that morning, I ordered coffee and Olivier ordered an orange juice. My coffee was served in a french press (how European!) and Olivier’s juice was fresh pressed at the bar. We actually watched them do it. Now that is quality!

I wanted to photograph pretty food, so I was being super indecisive about what to order. The server and his manager steered me in the right direction and Olivier got the Sugar Snap Pea Salad and I got the Oil-cured Tuna and Avocado Salad. Oh my goodness, both were gorgeous, which is usually a top priority for me!Olivier patiently waited as I photographed his food first. It can be a giant pain to be married to a food photographer. You’d think it would be all about delicious free food, but really it is about never eating a warm meal (food photography takes time), not getting to order what you want because it’s ‘been done‘ or it’s ‘not colorful enough‘, both things that I’ve said. Thankfully we both got salads which started out cold. Next I photographed my meal and by the time I got finished Olivier was almost done eating his. So I finally got to start eating mine. The food was a delicious as it was beautiful.

Our server, who was immensely patient with my numerous questions about how things were plated and the color composition of dishes, not to mention my photographing of … well everything, highly recommended dessert. He has steered us in the right direction so far so we ordered the Lemon Meringue Pie sprinkled with strawberry powder. It was hands down the best Lemon Meringue Pie I had ever had!Odette is a great restaurant that plays close attention to ever detail and I can’t wait to go back!

Make sure you read about the other restaurants participated in Restaurant Week by visiting: DirtPlate and FridayDateNight.

Disclosure: I was invited to participate in Florence Restaurant Week by Florence Main Street. My hotel was paid for by them to make it easier for me to participate and I received a $20 gift card from Odette. I paid the remaining balance out of my own pocket and all thoughts and opinions about the restaurant are my own.

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.