Friday, November 9, 2018

FMM - Vacation Eats

I'm still working on my big post about the reunion, but I couldn't fit all of the fun food adventures we had into that one, so here's the eats.

On Wednesday evening as we were wandering around, we passed by a Mexican restaurant, so when we were ready for dinner, we made our way back there.  California Mexican food is much different than Tex-Mex, so I always try to eat at a Mexican restaurant whenever I'm in California.  We ate at Rita's and I had a couple of street tacos.  One was with carnitas that tasted soooo good; I wished I had ordered both of the tacos with carnitas.

On Thursday, we looked for a breakfast place online and settled on Los Bagels.  But on our walk there, we came across Don's Donuts, which is where we had many a late-night donut after a night of imbibing alcohol (did I mention I wasn't of legal drinking age the entire time I spent in Arcata?).  So naturally we had to stop in and have first breakfast:
As good as we remembered...but then, how can you go wrong with a donut?

Then we headed out to Los Bagels for second breakfast:
 This wasn't here back in Jeff's day, but it was charming and fit right in with the area.
We happened to be there on November 1st, which is Day of the Dead, so they had special pastries in their case.  We didn't get one, probably because we had a donut right beforehand.
We both got bagels - this was a jalapeno bagel with cream cheese.  Interestingly, we both noted that the bagels were normal-sized...pretty much all bagels in Texas are much larger (as is everything there).  All the food we had over the weekend was in much more normal portions than we see in Texas.

Because we wanted to fit in ALL THE FOOD during this visit, we had a late lunch/early dinner at Cafe Brio:
We split a yummy burger and fries because we had plans for dessert.  Also, this burger was a normal size.  Seeing how much smaller portions are here versus in Texas makes me glad that Jeff and I split a lot of meals!
Dessert was ice cream from Arcata Scoop!
This place was so cute - they had a couple of rides from an old merry-go-round - the giraffe benches actually swayed back and forth.  That is where we sat and also where I started to get a little motion sick:
It's fun having my equilibrium.  The ice cream was delicious.  I had the coffee flavor, because if that is one of the offerings, I will almost always get it.  

That was it for Thursday - after band practice we went to a brewery for a band gig - there were food trucks around but we weren't hungry.

On Friday, everyone who was in town had plans to meet up at The Alibi for breakfast.  This was on the band's Facebook page, and when I read it out loud to Jeff, we both had the same reaction:  The Alibi serves food??  We knew it only as a bar:
See?  Would you have thought this place serves actual meals?
Well they do, and here's the proof.
The Marching Lumberjacks filled the entire restaurant - it became even more crowded shortly after I took this picture!  There was only one waitress working when we arrived, even though someone from the reunion committee had called ahead of time to warn them of impending large crowd, but I guess they didn't believe that so many MLJs would show up that early in the morning.  They called in reinforcements and we all were taken care of - food was good and coffee and conversations were flowing so it was perfect.

After breakfast we wandered around and met up with more MLJs on campus.  We shopped at the bookstore and walked all over, even hanging around waiting for a parking meter to expire because it was just that kind of leisurely day:
 
Doug and Jeff.  Fun fact, Doug was a DJ on the local public radio station back in the day and when I spent my first weekend in Arcata, he welcomed me on air.  I felt like a celebrity!

We finally got hungry and decided to get a late lunch at Hey Juan Burritos - we heard that they were giving the band a discount, and it was Mexican food, so that was all the convincing we needed!  Somehow I only managed to take a picture of one of the menu pages:
And yes, this made us laugh!

That was it for the eats on our own - the rest of the weekend was spent doing official reunion events and they provided all of the food, which was really good.

Speaking of weekends, have a good one!

11 comments:

  1. Mmmm. That food looks delicious!!!!!!

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  2. College towns have the best food! I love all the quirky restaurants. Looks like a fun time!

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  3. Fun to see all the good food. And interesting about the portions being smaller than in Texas. I was going to ask you if you had eaten at Mike's burgers. They were there when I was a kid, and they were still there when I went back as an adult. Yummy french fries!

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    1. I didn't see a Mike's but that doesn't mean it wasn't there...

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  4. "First breakfast" Love it! Now, that's the way to do vacation eating. I will say I learned something new: oysters scrambled into eggs is a California classic. Huh.

    Seems like this was just a wonderful, fun, relaxing time - even with all the walking and activities.

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    1. FWIW, I have never heard of that California classic - oysters scrambled into eggs sounds pretty disgusting to me!

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  5. Sounds like a great trip. Those colored bagels, though - not sure about that LOL

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    1. I wonder if the colored bagels were sweet? Now I'm regretting not getting one!

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  6. How fun to be welcomed to town on air!!!

    Those day of the dead pastries are so cool! And that is interesting about the smaller portion sizes there. I will have to watch for the big ones the next time I am in TX (next month)!

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  7. Yes, Alibi served breakfast back in the day -- I think at least back to 1985. But most of us couldn't afford it. My son (the current Axe Major) works at Hey Juan and I still won't eat there :) (found you looking for news of the 50th reunion. Say hi to Jeff for me -- he kept me from getting kicked out of college and I'll always owe him :))

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    1. Were you one of the Humboldt Six? That was crazy. I read your comment to Jeff - he said he was glad to have helped you guys.

      Perhaps that was it - Don's Donuts were more along our college student budget, LOL. And Hey Juan was good! You should let Zane cook for you. He was so much fun to watch, BTW.

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