Garden Grille, 77 East Ave.,Pawtucket

 

Jane here! Happy fall!  Wanted to let you know about our latest gastronomic discovery.

Apparently, Garden Grille has been open since 1996 and no one told me!  To be fair,  I don't venture into The Big City (which is what many of the locals here in southern RI consider anything north of Coventry) very often in search of sustenance.  But I came across Garden Grille while roaming around Facebook and it has been on my radar for about two years now.

So a couple of weeks ago my bestie and I were prowling around that end of the state, and decided to check it out.  First of all, there are a couple of things about a restaurant that impress me before we even get to the food; the water and the napkins. If you've read some of our other reviews you might have noticed.  The water in some places is just vile, full of chlorine or whatever.  Not here! good water, and they bring you a bottle so you can refill your own.  Napkins: high quality.  There's nothing more aggravating when you're trying to eat a quesadilla or something equally messy and the napkins are flimsy and useless.

Speaking of quesadillas, that's what my friend and I went with that day.  I had the butternut squash quesadilla, and she opted for the mushroom with smoky tofu.  They came with either dairy or vegan cheese; we both opted for dairy.  Both of our meals were fantastic!  Whole wheat tortillas with crispy edges which I never have encountered on a quesadilla, but they were great.  I sampled hers and although it was delicious, I found it quite a bit saltier than mine.  Not a bad thing, unless you're watching your sodium. 

Then today I was finally able to bring Average Joe in for lunch.  I must admit I had the same quesadilla again...it was just that good.  He loved it also, and was impressed that butternut squash lent itself so well to a Mexican dish.  This time I decided to try the vegan cheese.  I have never had any vegan cheese (on the East coast) that was worth eating, but I honestly could not tell the difference. It was delightful.

I also had to try the Island Sweater (I was tempted by the Grille's facebook post), a delicious warm concoction of hot cider, rum, and assorted other delights.  Yum.

I need to mention also that two doors down from Garden Grille is the Wildflour Vegan Bakery Cafe & Juice Bar.  My friend is gluten-free, and we were delighted to find a LOT of gluten-free goodies in there...although we were stuffed with quesadilla so we didn't take full advantage.  That's going to be a separate excursion!

There don't seem to be a lot of vegan/veggie restaurants in Rhode Island but I feel like it's becoming more and more of a thing.  I'll be seeking out other places, just because we're from the other end of the state, but we will definitely be back to Garden Grille when we're in the area because there are a lot of pretty interesting dishes on that menu (like the pizza) that we need to try!

Santo Taco y Cantina, Coventry, RI

WE'RE STILL HERE!!!  Just, you know, trying not to die.  So we've kept our gastronomic adventures to a minimum; frequenting the same places for takeout.  But we're SO looking forward to getting back to our mission to bring you down-to-earth food reviews from every little place we can find!

So today we found ourselves headed to Coventry for lunch and a bike ride.  We haven't found a lot of lunch options available in Coventry, but we happened to remember that a friend of Joe's had told us there was a great new Mexican place in the Center of New England.  We decided to check it out, and without high expectations because we LOVE Mexican food and you never know how it's gonna go.

Well.

Santo Taco is the real deal.  Click here for their website.

Joe had a chicken quesadilla, which although the menu did not specify, came with pico and lettuce in it (some places, just chicken and cheese unless you ask) and he was extremely pleased.  I had the flautas, and they were just delicious!  If I had one comment, I thought they could have come with more salsa verde, but they were done to perfection and had a wonderful flavor.  

Worth mentioning also is the horchata; I don't know what the deal is with horchata, I had suspected that it was made from a mix (kind of like ordering chai and getting Big Train everywhere you go), and it may be, OR maybe these places all have their own recipes.  I suppose I should probably find out.  Anyway, I really loved the horchata here because it had the great flavor but managed to not be gaggingly sweet like some other places I've had it.

The room is spacious and very clean and welcoming, but we are not ready to dine in anywhere yet.  The lovely gentleman who greeted me at the door brought our food out to the car when it was ready.  I really look forward to when we can go back and enjoy the full dine-in experience; If you're someone who is comfortable with that, I think you'll be very pleased.  Check out their online menu, which also includes a full selection of tequila and cocktails (and sangria!  That'll be next time!)

Joe and I both agreed wholeheartedly that we can't wait to go back and try some more of their menu; I know he's got his heart set on some chicken tamales.

This place is set in an area that, unless you're shopping at one of the big box stores in Center of New England, you might not think to venture into for lunch--other than the options presented to you when you first turn in (you know the ones, don't make me say them).  PLEASE go to Santo Taco!  They have only been open since the beginning of this year, and we want to make sure they stay in business for a good long time!!

Black Bean Quinoa Chili

Something I forgot to mention yesterday when listing stuff you should stock up on, was quinoa.  Forget all the times you made fun of "those people" who eat kale and quinoa.  It's a great thing to add to your diet, packed with protein.  It doesn't have much flavor on its own, it just takes on the essence of whatever you put with it.  In this case, it serves to make a nice thick chili.

I make this quite often, and have served it to friends (both veggie and meat eaters) with great results! I don't remember where I got the recipe, somewhere on the interweb. 


1 C uncooked quinoa
2 T olive oil
1 T chili powder
2-1/2 t smoked paprika
2 t cumin
1 t chipotle seasoning

1 medium or large sweet potato, diced small
1 large yellow or white onion
1 large red bell pepper
5 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped (I use 1 clove.  We're not that much into garlic, so use your own            judgment)
3 C water
1 15-oz can pumpkin puree (Pumpkin puree, NOT pumpkin pie filling.  Big difference, but found in              the same place in the store.)
1 6-oz can tomato paste (I use salt-free, but you do you)
1 T maple syrup or agave
2 T lemon juice (about one lemon's worth)
1/4 C red cooking wine (or just red wine.  I have made it without either, and that's ok too.)
2 cans black beans, rinsed and drained (about 3 cups)

Cook the quinoa according to package directions.  Chop the veggies.  Mix the spices together in a small bowl.

Add the olive oil to a large, lidded saucepan and raise the heat to medium low.  Add the spices, let them bloom in the oil 2-3 minutes.  Splash a little water in if they start to scorch.

Raise the heat to medium and add the diced potato.  Saute until it starts to get tender, adding water little by little as necessary to keep it from burning.  The original recipe said to saute 5 minutes, but I've found it takes a lot longer for them not to end up hard as a rock in the finished chili.  How long?  Don't really know.  Just keep poking them with a fork.  Hard sweet potatoes in your chili are unpleasant.

When they start to get tender, add the garlic and another splash of water, saute another 2-3 minutes.  Add the cooked quinoa and saute about 5 more minutes.  Keep stirring to make sure it doesn't burn, add a little water as necessary.

Stir in the 3 cups of water and everything else.  Put the lid on, lower the heat to a simmer and let everything cook through about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.


So this makes a pretty big pot.  It will last a few days in the fridge, and freezes well.  Another way to use it is with spaghetti squash, like so:

Preheat your oven to 350. Cut small spaghetti squash in half lengthwise, scoop out the seeds and slimy junk.  1/2 a small squash should be plenty for a serving.  Rub some olive oil on the cut part, and put them face down on parchment on a baking sheet (or right on the sheet, if you're not lazy like me and don't mind scrubbing).  Bake for maybe 45 minutes (?) until you can easily separate the strands with a fork.  Turn them rightside up, fill with however much chili you think you can handle, sprinkle some grated cheese on the top, and put them back in the oven until the cheese melts.

Stay At Home And Cook With Jane. (what else do you have to do?)

Greetings, Foodies!!  Jane here.  We have not posted in a while, and have not been exploring new places lately for obvious reasons!  We hope you all are safe and well, and enduring this situation as best you can.  We have continued to try and support our favorite local eateries, but that circle is getting smaller and smaller as the crisis gets larger.

So with that in mind, I want to try something a little different here.  With more of you eating in, cooking has become less and less of an optional thing and more of a necessity.  In the coming days/weeks/whatever, I'm going to be sharing some of my favorite recipes with you.  I'm going to try to focus on the ones with inexpensive and/or readily available ingredients, so you can make the most of your limited shopping time and budget.

YES, they will be vegetarian!  "Oh hell no, Jane!"  I can hear you saying. "I can't live on that stuff!  And it's gross!" Well yes, you can, if you do it right.  And no, it's not, if you do it right.  Listen, I'm not trying to make a vegetarian out of anyone.  But meat is expensive, and sometimes lately in short supply.  And you already know how to cook that. My thought was this;  if you have some alternatives to your regular cooking repertoire, you can stretch your meat budget that much further.  Maybe have meat every OTHER night?  Or maybe even serve some veggie food for lunches.  At the very least, it'll be something different!

So I'll be back starting tomorrow with recipes!  First of all, let me list some stuff you can stock up on if you want to join me on this adventure:

Beans - all kinds.  I use mostly black beans, kidneys, lentils (all colors) and chickpeas.  Because I have to watch my sodium, most canned beans are out.  The bagged beans are super easy to use though;  I just cook up a bag at a time, and freeze them in 1-1/2 cup batches, which is about how much is in a can.

Rice - I always use brown rice.  Not as cheap as white, but better for you.  You can get it in Walmart, Price Rite, or wherever.

Veggies - when I go, I just buy a bunch of stuff; zucchini, sweet potatoes, broccoli, peppers, carrots, etc etc etc.  Most stuff can be frozen if you're not going to use it right away.  Some people say buying frozen is better, because it gets frozen immediately after picking, so there's that.

Kale - super cheap and really good for you.  You'll probably have to buy a huge bunch of it, but it freezes well...I just cut off the stems and stuff the leaves in a big freezer bag and pull them out as I need them.

Vegetable stock - I never buy it.  The sodium thing.  Plus, it's really easy to make and freeze.  What I do is take all the leftover trimmings (kale stems, celery tops, carrot peels, pepper stems and seeds, slightly wilted leaves of basically everything) and put them in a gallon freezer bag.  When it's full, I put put it in a big pot of water and boil it.  When cool, I strain it and freeze it in quart bags.  Easy.

Spices/herbs - used most: Cumin, rosemary, smoked paprika, chili powder, basil, oregano, chipotle seasoning, thyme, parsley, dill, sesame seeds, nutritional yeast (don't be afraid, it's not that weird).

Other stuff I use a lot - olive oil, apple cider vinegar, toasted sesame oil, balsamic vinegar, honey, molasses, canned coconut milk, tahini (best place to buy this that I've found is North Side Pockets in North Providence but you can find it in pretty much any grocery store), soy sauce or tamari (I have a recipe for a sodium free substitute I'll share with you at some point)

I'm sure you probably have a lot of this in your cupboard already, and I'm sure there are a lot of things I've left out.  But this is a work in progress!

See you tomorrow!

Pizza King on the Lake

 Average Joe is a pizza connoisseur.  He won't eat pizza just anywhere, he has a few favorites.  And when I met him, he was delighted to introduce me to a place he'd been coming to since the beginning of time, Pizza King in East Killingly, CT.  He said "You're not going to believe this place, the pizza is slammin'! And it's in the middle of the woods, in the middle of NOWHERE!  And it looks just like something out of a Coors silver bullet commercial!"  And he was not lying.  He was not lying about the pizza, either. 

The view from the back deck in the fall

I had heard about this place since I was a teenager.  But growing up in South County, a lot of people get...well, stuck in South County.  There's a weird sort of mentality that precludes you driving more than 10 miles in any direction.  You have to drive all the way out Rt. 6, take a right down a narrow winding road, take a left onto a REALLY narrow road, and up a long dirt driveway to get there. So I'd never been.   The place has apparently been through a lot of changes over the years, but now you can go in anytime Thursday through Sunday and find Buddy holding court and making you feel like you're part of the family.  There's plenty of room for dining; in the winter you can huddle up next to the fireplace if you like (I do), and in the summer you can eat on the deck and marvel at the quiet beauty of the lake in back.

There are loads of options on the menu, but what we usually go with are spinach, feta, tomatoes and mushrooms.  Joe likes chicken on his half.  The pizza is thick and loaded with cheese, they are not shy with their toppings. Absolutely delicious.

Wings are one of the Pizza King specialties.  There are various degrees of hot sauce you can select, and I'm told that if you choose the XXX sauce, it comes with a personal visit to your table from Buddy, who will explain just HOW hot it is and try to talk you out of it.  A full selection of burgers, salads, pasta, grinders and Starlets' famous pies are also available if pizza is not your thing. 

Pizza King seems to be a very popular place for birthday parties.  A lot of the times we've been there on a weekend, there's been a party going on, and Joe says he had his 50th birthday there. 

One of the items on the menu is "a bowl of junk".  In one of my earlier visits, I got a big kick out of this and posted a photo of that menu listing on my facebook page as we were waiting for our pizza.  About 2 minutes later, Buddy came over to our table and explained what a bowl of junk was.  So he clearly pays attention to his facebook page!

So, what's a bowl of junk?  You just have to go to Pizza King and find out for yourself.  It's worth the trip, even from South County.  430 Ledge Road, East Killingly, CT.

Alaina's Ale House

"Pie and Pint Night", someone said to me last summer, "My boyfriend and I go every week, it's great!"  Pie and Pint night?? Never heard of such a thing.  And truly, it shouldn't have taken us so long to go check it out, but we finally made it over to Alaina's Ale House, 343 Kingstown Road in Richmond (at the Beaver River Golf Course).

Alaina's opened up last year, and while my friends raved to me about the food, Joe and I had not managed to work Pie and Pint Night into our schedule until last week.  The forecast had called for snow, but we don't have far to go so we ventured out for a late dinner.  It was coming down pretty hard by the time we got there, so we were the only diners in the place...just a few people at the bar.  Alaina's is not a big place, but it's VERY nice in there, classy like you'd expect at a country club but at the same time, very down-to-earth and the people are very friendly.  We were greeted by the manager, Chris, and the one server on duty (whose name I can't recall and this is why I should write these things right away!)

There were 4 pot pies on the menu, and a limited selection of beers for the deal; Joe chose the chicken pot pie and a pint of Harp.  He said it was the best pot pie he'd ever had, and he's a pot pie fan.  It was a good-sized pie, served in the cast-iron frying pan in which it was cooked, and I could see it was filled with big chunks of white meat and veggies.  I confess I don't care for beer, and as a (mostly) vegetarian I wasn't into the pies, so I went for the sweet potato veggie burger.  I usually stay away from veggie burgers when I eat out, as they tend to be premade/frozen little hockey pucks filled with unidentifiable but colorful chunks.  Not so at Alaina's;  it was a very tasty house-made patty, and a pretty big one at that.  My only suggestion was that it could have come with some sort of hummus or chipotle mayo or something on it; it didn't REALLY need it but I was offered ketchup and while I understand this is not a veggie restaurant, ketchup doesn't really go with a veggie burger in my opinion.  Just my opinion.  But it was really good, and it came with a side.  I wasn't feeling the fries so I went with green beans, which were cooked to perfection, not mushy.

In a rare display of gluttony, we decided to go with dessert.  What got our attention was when our server said "apple crisp with ice cream".  We got one and shared it, which was a good thing (for us) because it was a pretty big serving.  Delicious!

We will be back to Alaina's, there are quite a few things on the menu that we need to try.  They have  live entertainment on the weekends (which in the summer moves out to the back where there is outdoor dining too), as well as karaoke and other fun stuff.  Follow them on Facebook to keep updated!

Zip's Diner

Since our travels today took us up to the wild and uncharted territory known as northeastern Connecticut,  we planned to stop at Zip's Diner, located at Rt. 101 & 12 in Dayville.  We went there once before, but it's not an area we frequent so it's been a while.

 First, let me (Jane) state that we are both big fans of diners in general.  The whole atmosphere is inviting.  And if you are out on a busy day doing lots of errands (which we usually are) and find yourself needing some lunch, you can usually find one within a reasonable distance from wherever you are where you can grab a quick meal that won't break you and is a step up from a fast-food joint.  Having said that, although we love diners, we try to not visit them TOO often because while the food is decent, it's not by any means what you call "healthy". Lots of fried stuff, salty stuff, comfort food. And no matter what you might infer from our reviews, we do eat healthy most of the time.

Anyway, what we've realized is that diner food is pretty much the same everywhere.  Mostly the same stuff on the menu, all pretty good.  You've been to diners, you know the score.  So I'm not going to review the food at Zip's even though it was good (except the frappes, they were exceptional).

What I AM going to review is Zip's itself.  The diner opened in its current location in 1954, and has a long and interesting history.  The place is bright and cheery, and very clean.  It has the added appeal of being open 6AM-9PM every day!  A lot of diners close at 2 or 3 in the afternoon, which is inconvenient because not all of us follow the same schedule.

We were enjoying our frappes and waiting for dinner...it was kind of quiet, a few diners in there...when in walked Paul.  As I said we are not regulars in that area, but apparently Paul is because everyone, from every single employee to several of the patrons, greeted Paul by name as if he was everyone's best friend.  He sat at the counter and was immediately served his coffee just the way he likes it, without even having to ask.  That's the kind of place Zip's is, and it makes you want to be a regular, too.

As far as I'm concerned, though, the real star of the show was Michelle, our server.  She waited on us both times that we've been to Zip's, and she's an absolute ray of sunshine.  I wish everyone who has that job could have her personality.

So yeah, go to Zip's.  It's a fun place and the food won't disappoint.  Ask for Michelle!