Category Archives: Food

An Awesome Pizza Experience At Slice Out Hunger- NYC

Screen Shot 2013-10-06 at 11.46.39 PMA couple of days ago I wrote about an event that Kim, Lucas and I would be attending- Slice Out Hunger, NYC’s biggest pizza party for a good cause. 100% of the proceeds go to the Food Bank of New York City. Find out how one $1 slice of pizza become 12.5 meals in my previous post here.

Slice Out Hunger was created by Scott Wiener and is now in its fifth year. Scott is best known for his popular Pizza Tours around NYC. I took his pizza bus tour back in May and highly recommend taking one on a visit to NY or even if you live here.

SliceOut
L-Scott Wiener, R- M.W. Travels

The event was held last night and we had a great time & ate a lot of pizza! I hope to be able to attend every year as long as it continues to take place.

We arrived early so that we would get inside quickly once the doors opened. The event was scheduled to start at 6:00 so we arrived around 4:30. We figured that it was better to wait before the event rather than while it was going on, possibly missing out on the pizza.

IMG_8083 Continue reading An Awesome Pizza Experience At Slice Out Hunger- NYC

Zagat: 50 States, 50 Sandwiches

a hand holding a burgerBack in late August, Zagat had an article about regional sandwiches around the U.S. When I saw the article’s title “50 States, 50 Sandwiches”, only a few sandwiches came to mind. I thought of New Orleans (Louisiana) for the Po’ Boy & Muffeletta and Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) for the Philly Cheesesteak.

The article got me wondering about what other regional sandwiches existed around the country. I also wondered if I’ve heard of some of the others. I’d assume there would be some that just didn’t come to mind initially.

Continue reading Zagat: 50 States, 50 Sandwiches

Slice Out Hunger- NYC’s Biggest Pizza Party For A Good Cause

Screen Shot 2013-10-06 at 11.46.39 PMHow would you like to eat pizza from some great pizzerias around NYC for $1 per slice with all proceeds going to a great cause?

Here is some info:

Included in my ticket to the NY Trav Fest (back in April) was a spot on Scott’s Pizza Tours. The tour was a blast and we got to eat a lot of pizza at some great places and also learned quite a bit from Scott, our pizza obsessed guide.

During the tour Scott mentioned a charity event that he started a few years back called Slice Out Hunger. I kept the event in mind and hoped that we would be home when it came up.

Continue reading Slice Out Hunger- NYC’s Biggest Pizza Party For A Good Cause

Shake Shack’s 8th Annual Shacktoberfest: October 4-13

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Kim, Lucas and I had an amazing experience in Germany. (Check back for posts soon.) The main purpose for our visit was to finally get to experience Oktoberfest.

Last year we couldn’t get to Munich for the big event so we attended an event inspired by it- Shacktoberfest! Check out my post about it here.

Shacktoberfest is back at Shake Shack from today- October 4 through October 13 with a special Oktoberfest menu. It will be the 8th annual event.

Continue reading Shake Shack’s 8th Annual Shacktoberfest: October 4-13

USA Today- Most Delicious Dessert Trucks in America

IMG_1154USA Today has an article listing what they say are the most delicious dessert trucks in America.

While I can’t judge most of the trucks on this list, I have tried desserts from a bunch of them. I’ve tried some of the goods from 4 of the top 5, and 6 out of 20 metioned. Based on what I’ve sampled I’d definitely be interesting in trying out more of the trucks from this list.

Kim and I have been big fans of food trucks for quite some time and love attending a local food truck event close to home called the Prospect Park Food Truck Rally. The rally gets 15-16 food trucks together in one spot.

The event features a wide variety of food and dessert options. You’re bound to find something for everyone if you go with a group!

Now back to the article…  Continue reading USA Today- Most Delicious Dessert Trucks in America

Sign Up For United MileagePlus Dining, Earn 3,000 Miles

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Here is a way to earn 3,000 bonus miles with United in a very easy way.

For a limited time MileagePlus Dining is offering a very generous bonus for dining out to new members or existing members without a dining profile.

Sign up for Mileageplus Dining and you can earn 3,000 bonus miles. This is 2-3 times better than the usual sign-up bonus.

Here is how it works:

Continue reading Sign Up For United MileagePlus Dining, Earn 3,000 Miles

Balkans Trip: Some Local Menu Items At McDonald’s In Serbia

IMG_4481At home, Kim and I rarely visit McDonald’s but when traveling sometimes it’s nice to eat something that reminds you of home. We also like to stop by for the free WiFi! However, the best part of visiting McDonald’s in a foreign country is to check out what locally-inspired menu items are offered.

During our current trip to the Balkans, I had to visit McDonald’s in Serbia. We had checked in advance and found out that McDonald’s didn’t have stores in the other countries we would be visiting.

In Serbia we saw quite a few McDonald’s and most of them were located in beautiful, old buildings. The one shown in the photo above was the first location to open in the country.

IMG_4421We found a few items on the menu that are not available in the U.S.:

USA Today: America’s Strangest Food Competitions

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USA Today Travel recently had an article about America’s Strangest Food Competitions. 

When I think of food competitions, competitive eating comes to mind. And when it comes to competitive eating one contest is king, the Nathan’s Famous Hot-Dog Eating Contest. 

The Nathan’s contest takes place every fourth of July and is just a 15 minute drive from where I live. I’m rarely home but have attended the event a couple of times. The first time I missed the actual contest but caught the ending and got to see the winner was being crowned. The second time we arrived early and got to see the action. The event draws a huge crowd and is a fun (somewhat disgusting) time. If you happen to be in NYC on July 4, I highly recommend going.  Continue reading USA Today: America’s Strangest Food Competitions

An Incredible Breakfast: Pancake Pantry- Nashville

a sign on a brick wall
During our trip to Nashville we read about a place for breakfast that we had to try.
The Pancake Pantry sounded pretty amazing due to offering 23 varieties of pancakes. A couple of the options are pretty typical but the bulk of the options are really interesting and somewhat odd. All I know is that once we looked over the menu, it was not easy to make a decision on what to order. Oh the problems we face at times…
a group of people standing outside a building

We made two attempts to eat at the Pancake Pantry and ended up eating there on day 4 of our trip. We drove by the previous morning but didn’t bother to wait due to the ridiculously long line.
However, we were determined to eat there so we arrived a bit earlier the following day and still waited on line about a half hour.

The wait didn’t end up being too bad since everyone on line seemed to be in a good mood and patiently waited to get inside. We spoke to various group of locals and the consensus was that the pancakes were well worth the wait.

a menu of a pancake pantry

Besides pancakes, the menu was full of all of the regular breakfast items like eggs, waffles, french toast and hash browns. Many of these items sounded great but I couldn’t go to a place called Pancake Pantry and not order pancakes!

We looked over the menu for a while and had some hard decisions to make. A few options caught our attention. We both usually like chocolate chip pancakes but at the Pancake Pantry we both had to go with options that were a bit more unique.

To help with our decision we decided to check out what Adam Richman had while visiting P.P. for his show Man vs. Food. It just so happened that the pancakes Kim planned to order were one of the varieties that Adam had during his visit.

So what did we order?

a plate of food with sauce and condiments
Santa Fe Cornmeal Pancakes

I went with the Santa Fe Cornmeal Pancakes aka the Village Smithy. The order of pancakes are made up of three stone-ground cornmeal pancakes with chunks of bacon, cheddar cheese and roasted green chilies cooked inside. It’s served with hot maple syrup, hot picante salsa and sour cream.

The pancakes were really odd but also really good. The dish seemed like a great Tex-Mex creation subbing out a taco shell or tortilla with pancakes. All of the flavors seemed to work really well together. The pancakes and syrup were sweet, while the chilies and salsa added just a bit of heat. I’d definitely recommend this dish to anyone planning a visit to Nashville.

a plate of pancakes with icing sugar and whipped cream

Kim decided to order the Sweet Potato Pancakes. They are made with real sweet potatoes in a fluffy batter, sprinkled with powdered sugar and cinnamon. Cinnamon cream syrup and butter was also added.

Once Kim tasted her pancakes she knew that she made the right choice. She loved the pancakes due to the fluffy texture and the sweet (but not overly sweet) flavor. A favorite part of the dish was the cinnamon cream syrup which added a lot of flavor.

I’d definitely recommend a visit to Pancake Pantry if you plan to visit Nashville. Just remember to show up early and expect a bit of a wait.

Find out more about Pancake Pantry by visiting their website here.

Lucas’ Favorite Part of Minnesota- Ice Cream

a man and child holding food
Lucas double fisting at Izzy’s

Lucas started eating ice cream a few months ago but took a real liking to it in Japan. Just about any shop in Japan that sells ice cream has a humongous, fake ice cream outside.

Lucas had ice cream radar throughout the trip and his vocabulary started to change. For a while he was calling ice cream “ice” but then it started to become what it is today, “icekeem”!

While looking into things to do in Minnesota I found out that there was really good ice cream around the Twin Cities. I wanted to make sure that Lucas enjoyed the trip so I made a short list of five places to consider visiting (although the odds of visiting all of them in two days was not likely).

In our short visit we ended up visiting 4/5 places or 80%. I’d say Lucas would call that a successful visit to Minnesota! Lucas kept asking for ice cream so we had to give the boy what he asked for. To be honest, we should’ve really visited three places but one of the shops happened to be a few doors down from a toy train store we were stopping in for Lucas so how could we not try it out. Continue reading Lucas’ Favorite Part of Minnesota- Ice Cream