I love me some Kanella, but hadn’t been there in awhile. Well, it was time to change all that. Here’s their houmous with pita. Damn y’all, this is so good. The houmous is smooth and creamy and zippy with just enough bite. The pita slices are warm and toasty and I love the fresh veggies that come with it. And it’s a nice healthy portion of it.
Here is the grilled halloumi and lounza sandwich. The halloumi is the cheese and lounza is ham. So it’s a cypriot style ham and cheese sandwich. It was filled with some veggies and served on this amazing grainy bread with all kinds of seeds all over it. I’m usually turned off by really healthy and grainy breads with visible nuts and seeds, but this was great.
The same bread came as toast with my Shaksouka. It is two poached eggs and a cumin scented tomato and pepper stew. Oh this thing is so amazing! It’s an amazing meal, any time of the day. The place was pretty crowded even though we were only seated a little before they technically closed for lunch. The service was friendly, but nothing comes out very fast. But that’s ok. This place is totally worth the wait!

I had to go on a client visit to some people who make little hard shelled candy chocolates, so I ended up in Hackettstown, NJ. Yep, Hackettstown. Downtown Hackettstown actually has a few restaurants, so after some research, I decided to check out Stella G’s.
I started with the cream of potato soup. It was good. There wasn’t anything special about this, but it was solid. There were hunks of bacon in it and delicious bits of chive. The little piece of bread was also good.
I had spied this sandwich that intrigued me, so I was excited to get it. Unfortunately, it just didn’t work for me at all. This was the Stella G’s chicken sandwich with granny smith apples and avocados on moe’s apple bread crowned with provolone and caramel cider sauce. So there was thinly sliced chicken breast which was rather bland. Then the cooked apples were also bland. And the avocados weren’t very ripe, so they were just not buttery and bland. The sauce was interesting and the best part was the bread, but there was only one piece of it. So in all, not my thing at all. But the wafflecut chips were good and so was the random slightly asian-y slaw that came as a side. I think if everything hadn’t been so disappointingly bland, it could have been a good sandwich. Just shows how important good ingredients are!

After many thwarted attempts, I finally got a chance to brunch at Cafe La Maude in Northern Liberties. It’s down a few steps from the ever popular Honey’s, but it’s a completely different experience. It’s cute on the outside, and it’s probably even cuter when it’s warm and the front windows are open and there are tables outside.  But omg, the inside is just so sickeningly cute and awesome. I mean, seriously. It’s so amazing and well-done and beautifully designed it makes me want to cry. If I could dream of a kitchen and dining room, it would look like Cafe La Maude. I would also be filthy rich in order to be able to afford it.
It’s totally european chic and cool on the inside. Grey subway tiles! I love it! It’s a cafe so the menu is fairly small, consisting of some breakfast items, sandwiches, and salads. There’s also pastries and coffees. The fare is french-lebanese, so you’ll see a nice mix of middle-eastern and french favorites. Really though, can I just say again how attractive this place is?
Here is the Saumon Fume. It is an open-faced sandwich with smoked salmon, cream cheese, tomatoes, red onions, green olives, and an overflow of arugula. This sandwich was enjoyed quite a bit, until J bit into an olive pit and almost broke a tooth. That kind of put a downer on it. Also, he asked for an egg to be added on but there was no such egg! Oops. But otherwise, a good sandwich.
I got the Halloumi Press. It was a grilled halloumi cheese sandwich on baguette with roasted tomatoes, green olives, mesclun greens and an arugula basil aioli. I fell in love with halloumi cheese ever since having it at Kanella so I really enjoyed this sandwich. This halloumi was actually quite salty though, so don’t expect anything bland. We also tried an oj/lemonade mix drink that had a slightly odd taste to it. Not odd bad, just odd. I felt like it was flowery, like a honeysuckle taste? In any case, we liked it! The service was ok. We had to wait quite awhile for the food, and people that were seated after us got their food before us, which wasn’t that cool. But the atmosphere is too great to let that bother you. It’s definitely a place to just hang out and linger with friends. I’ll wait for my sandwich if I can just soak in how lovely this place is. If only I could go home and my home was this lovely!