I got to attend the second FoodBuzz Blogger Festival this year, once again in San Francisco. For the opening night festivities, we headed out to Fort Mason for a Welcome Reception and Street Food Fair. They had these adorable mini cupcakes arranged to form a FoodBuzz sign.
They tasted awesome too. I’m not sure what flavors they were, but I’m guessing pumpkin or spice or something. They were definitely fall flavors.
There were also beautiful arrangements on the tables of some fruits, cheeses, breads, and crackers.
Roli Roti was there again this year, with their crazy porchetta sandwiches. There’s nothing like pork skin to make a sandwich taste better. And these fingerling potatoes were awesome, and you could totally tell they were cooked in pork fat.
Mind Your Tongue had some viking gumbo. They call it this because the chef is of viking heritage. But this is not gumbo, nor is it an old viking recipe. But it’s not bad.
They also had vegan paella. This wasn’t really paella either, but this was better than their “gumbo”.
Tacolicious provided a bunch of tacos. Honestly, I wasn’t very impressed with this at all. It was mostly blah.
French street food? Why yes! This is the truck version of Chez Spencer.
Here is the new england lobster cappuccino soup and the braised lamb chunks sandwich. Good stuff.
But my favorite thing of the evening was Namu’s korean tacos. They were ssam style tacos made with kalbi short ribs, seasoned rice, pickled daikon and kimchee salsa, kimchee remoulade, and a drizzle of housemade teriyaki sauce, folded into japanese and korean toasted seaweed. This is my type of taco! What a fun night!

After being home for practically a second, I was on a plane again. This time I headed to cincinnati. No, it wasn’t by choice. I was staying downtown so the dining selections were a bit limited. But I did find some great eats. The Bistro is a french joint where I had a lovely dinner on a Sunday night. Downtown is pretty dead at night. And on a weekend, it’s particularly dead. This place is pretty adorable, but there weren’t too many people dining. The weather was definitely turning into fall, so I had a southern tier pumpking beer, which was just right.
I started with the french onion soup because the bartender told me it was a must eat. And well, when in a french restaurant, you might as well do it. I personally love french onion soup, so I was a big fan of this. But I suppose if you’re not into it, then you won’t like it! Onions, bread, and cheese. What’s not to like? And it was super duper hot, ripe for burning the roof of your mouth.
And I also got the Neltner Farm heirloom tomato salad with house pulled mozzarella and opal basil vinaigrette. It was perfect. The mozzarella is amazingly mild and melt-in-your-mouth. I only got appetizers but if I could have eaten more, I would have loved to have tried the main entrees. Cincinnati, you’re lucky to have such a nice dining option in your otherwise quiet downtown.

I was in a random town about an hour outside of Detroit, where the food choices are between Arby’s, McDonald’s, or Coney Island. I wasn’t feeling that, so I took a short drive to Ann Arbor to check out one of America’s finest college towns. It’s adorable and so studious. Roaming around, I ended up at Mercy’s. It’s brand new, and part of a hotel. It’s a french restaurant, with burmese and other asian influences. Sounds interesting, huh? Ok, so I have to start with this bread. It was like simply amazing. It was just thin slices of some sourdough bread. Super crusty on the outside, super dense and lovely on the inside. They get it from Chicago. Where is this bread from? Because I could eat this all day. Looks like every day ordinary bread, tastes like nirvana.

I started with the Mercy’s Steamed Dumplings. They’re made with ground dumplings, which makes them a bit more healthy. When they come out, they bring out the bamboo steamer and then put them on a plate for you. They’re served with ginger soy and spicy chili dipping sauces. This means they put some dumpling sauce in a bowl and squeeze some sriracha in another bowl. These were pretty good, but the innards also had pieces of water chestnuts in them, which made the insides sometimes crunchy. I actually do not like water chestnuts at all, especially their texture, so that part of the dumplings, I did not care for.

I also added the Asian Slaw as a side to my entree. It was a blend of Napa cabbage, red pepper, green onion, and corn in a sesame ginger vinaigrette. I absolutely loved this. I’m a huge sucker for super crunchy cabbage based salads. I can’t get enough! I could have eaten a giant bowl of this as my main course. They’re really fancy about presentation too. It was served in a little fried wonton skin basket.

My entree was the Coriander Dusted Sea Scallops. Large scallops are served with jasmine confetti rice cake, citrus ginger beurre blanc, orange curry coconut glacé, balsamic paint, and green beans. That’s a lot of fancy words. The scallops were great, but I wasn’t necessarily crazy about the citrus ginger buerre blanc they slathered on top of them. But they were cooked well, seared on the outside, pretty raw in the middle. The rice was not very good. It was heavy on coconut milk and fairly flavorless. The balsamic paint was a dramatic touch to the dish itself, and I loved the green beans.

The service was ok. The food took forever to come out. And there weren’t very many people there, so I don’t know what was up. Maybe they’re just still trying to figure it out, as they’ve only been open for a little while. Or maybe they’re just slow. This place is a fancier and more expensive alternative, in an otherwise college dining scene, where your only options are sandwiches, wings, or burgers.