Recently, I photographed cocktails for Huntsville Event Magazine at The Bottle. This cocktail, which is equal parts delicious, fresh, beautiful, was created but the talented chef Ryan Stone. Go to The Bottle and check out all of their other cocktails.
Lily, My Love
Recipe by Ryan Stone
1oz Lillet Blanc
1oz Hendrick’s Gin
0.5oz Real Grenadine
0.5oz Fresh Lemon Juice
1 coarsely chopped Strawberry
1 bar spoon Lavender Tincture
In a mixing tin, add the strawberry, grenadine, and lemon juice. Muddle gently for 10 seconds. Add Lillet Blanc and Hendrick’s Gin to the mixing tin and add ice to the 3/4’s full line. Shake vigorously. Strain the cocktail twice into a coupe glass. Layer the lavender tincture on top of the drink. Garnish with a thin strawberry slice and mint sprig.
Our second stop of the Food Tour for Restaurant Week brought me and my fellow bloggers to Hildegard’s Biergarten. This was the one restaurant I hadn’t yet visited so I was especially excited to dine here.
Hildegard’s was voted the Best International Restaurant in the Valley, the Best German Restaurant in The Valley AND the Best German Restaurant in Alabama, so I went into the restaurant with high expectations and I’m happy to report that I wasn’t disappointed.
Hildegard’s has two locations: one on Whitesburg Drive and the other on Heathland Drive, which is across the street from the Madison Square Mall. We visited Hildegard’s on Heathland and it was a little bit difficult to find, so I used my GPS to get there. Once you know where it is, it is easy.
The restaurant is large, which makes it ideal for big parties, but I saw plenty of couples there as well. The decor is cute with, appropriately enough, lots of garden (or should I say “garten”) paraphilia. As you walk into the restaurant, you are greeted by bundles of flowers, gardening accessories and even a bird bath. They have very comfortable patio and picnic tables, and booths decorated with floral themes. Though the decor is lovely, the star of the restaurant is definitely the food. We met the owners Sabina and her husband Jeff, and they were happy to talk to us about the restaurant’s history and cuisine.Then Sabina brought out dish after dish for us to try. In fact, there were so many different things that I started to lose track and didn’t even photograph the pork schnitzel, which was to die for! Everything we ate was perfectly cooked, amazingly seasoned, and most importantly delicious (even the stuffed cabbage, which I was never a fan of before now). Being a biergarten, they also had an extensive selection of beer (my kind of place!) and I had an Amber Ale with my meal.When we were so full we doubted we would be able to walk out of the restaurant without assistance, Sabina brought the desserts. I actually lost count of how many I tasted, but my favorites were the Black Forest Cake and the Blueberry Cheesecake. Her mother makes all the desserts in-house and she is a culinary artist. Everything was wonderful.As an added bonus, I made my first TasteMade Video about Hildegard’s Biergarten. Check it out at the link below. Note: Be kind, this is my first video! Also, I don’t know why it is so hard to say “Hildegard’s Biergarten”.
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.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.
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.
I have been a bad blogger and not posted in over a month. I know, I know I’m breaking the first rule of blogging, post consistently, but I swear I have a good excuse! My husband and I spent the last three weeks in Japan and we have been far too busy site seeing, eating new foods, getting lost, struggling to communicate, and changing our world views to bother with blogging.
The trip was an amazing adventure, especially ordering food with a VERY limited understanding of Japanese and only pictures or plastic displays of fake food to guide us. Despite our limitations, we loved (almost) everything we ate. Of course I was a total tourist and took photos of most of my dishes.
Most of the time we had no idea what we were eating. This was the ‘light’ vegetarian lunch on our excursion to Mt. Fuji. They brought us a tray covered with tiny bites of food we did not recognize. Our lunch conversation went something like this:
Olivier: What do you think this is?
Me: … eggplant … maybe.
Olivier: Do you think it is a mushroom or something?
Me: Well just try it and see.
Olivier: You try it.
Me: You try it first.
Olivier puts the unidentified object in his mouth and slowly chews.
Me: Well?
Olivier: I still have no idea.
Me: What do you think this sauce goes with?
Olivier: Maybe the pepper?
Me: Which thing is the pepper!?
It was fun though!
When in doubt go with noodles! I really tried to make a point to eat lots of different foods while in Japan, but the noodles were so delicious that I kept on ordering them!
There were numerous varieties and each time I ordered a noodle dish it was a different experience. I even got pretty proficient eating them with chopsticks.
The gyoza or pan fried dumplings were heavenly. They were much lighter and tastier than American version, pot-stickers. I’ve been craving them since I’ve been back. Guess I’ll have to learn how to make them. Sushi from a sushi-go-round!! The sushi was delicious, but I especially love the process of looking at all the little plates of fish float by you on a conveyor belt and deciding what you want. There was the added element of suspense when you saw something you wanted on the opposite end of the restaurant and you had to wonder if you would get it or another patron would snatch it up before it made it to you.
The color of the plate determines the price of the sushi. So smart!
As you can see we tried lots of different things! This was for 4 people though, not just me.
We did eat a ‘western breakfast’ several times, which were delicious. But we never really got the hang of eating eggs with chopsticks.
If you get really desperate for a hot meal on the go there are vending machines that dispense fried food. We never got this desperate.
Every dish we ate was well prepared and presented. Even the little mom and pop shops, fast food restaurants and the 7/11 the food was pretty good food.
When you eat at the participating restaurants of Florence Restaurant Week make sure you ask for a ballot and vote for your favorite charity. The winner will receive $5000 from McDaniel Window and Door Co. Go Vote Today!
You can check out the charities with the links below.
Several month’s ago I photographed hot dogs for the menu board of a new hot dog restaurant, Hot Dogin’. This week I was invited to Hot Dogin’s grand opening. I finally got to eat their fare and see my photographs on the menu board! Yay! It is always fun to see your work come to fruition. The restaurant is really cool and appropriately decorated in ketchup red and mustard yellow. There are lots of fun details such as: red and yellow marbled tables, cute hotdog festooned napkin dispensers, and brightly colored retro seating. Even the employees match the red/yellow theme. I brought my husband with me to the opening and he was happy to be able to sample some of the food he’d seen my photographs off. He rarely gets to sample what I photograph.
I’m a traditionalist, so I went with the Classic Dog, mustard, ketchup and relish. Simple, yet delicious. Olivier went with the Nasty Dog, mustard, chili, cheese and sauerkraut. Both of us enjoyed our dogs throughly.
Hot Dogin is located in Madison right next to Publix on 72. Go check it out and be sure to notice my photos on the menu board!
I know I’ve posted this before, but here is a gif from the shoot. It is all the steps that go into styling just the Classic Dog. Don’t even get me started on how many steps the Shonuff Dog had!
Yesterday I saw a long line of people waiting for pizza at Pieology. I would have jumped in line with the excited patrons (who can pass up free pizza!) if I wasn’t already planning on going on Wednesday for lunch. Where the magic happens! I’ll let you all know how it is on Thursday.
Grill 29 is a sophisticated steak and seafood restaurant that was started by the 
