Since I was in charge of food, DLS made the reservation and joined their loyalty program as well – Select Guest, which offers immediate perks instead of making you earn higher levels.  Don’t get me wrong – there are higher levels of rewards to earn, but even at its most basic, you’re entitled to some benefits that we immediately enjoyed, like free wifi.  Right there – the program is free, so why WOULDN’T you sign up?! – free wifi is something I really take for granted in hotels, until it’s no longer there… like in Hawaii (gripe gripe).  In any case, one of the other perks is complimentary breakfast beverages – they give you door hangers with choices on it, and you hang them on your door by 2am each night.  You can choose from juices, coffee, tea, etc. – and add on some other items if you choose.  I wished they had hot chocolate, but orange juice and grapefruit juice are so much healthier…  One of the other nice things is not only can you choose what time they show up – you can choose between ‘in room service’ – ie, someone knocks and comes in – or you can have them leave it outside your door if you don’t want to be disturbed.  AWESOME.  Fresh fruit is an addition available on there, but for our two weekend mornings, they just gave us apples, while that Monday we only received the juices.  Not that I’m complaining – I really enjoyed this perk. 

As for the room itself – it was neat, well-kept, and they were extremely nice about everything.  Because… umm, well, let’s just say Keywee is getting older and therefore has been prone to some night time accidents lately… There was a one-time pet fee of $50, regardless of how many nights you stay, but that was fine.  (And honestly, that’s cheaper than putting her in a kennel, plus this way she gets to enjoy my trips too!  Well, I don’t think she enjoyed Montreal, but more on that later.) 

The bathroom was pretty big too – you can see the toilet peeking out in the back on the right, but across from it was a bidet.  Interesting, haven’t seen one of those in a hotel in a long time…

The room itself was pretty big, too.  Oh, and see the black box sticking out on the bottom right of the photo?  Our in-room fridge wasn’t working, though we didn’t really need one (it kept our drinks cold, but it wouldn’t have been the end of the world if we didn’t have that), when I called down to check if I was supposed to turn it on somehow (a lot of places I’ve been to keep them unplugged or off, and you just turn it on if you want to use it), they sent someone up to check it for us.  When it was discovered it didn’t work, the maintenance man insisted on bringing a new, better one up for us, which was great. 

As for Keywee… well, the weekend we went was unseasonably cold.  I mean, it averaged -17 degrees Fahrenheit every day.  That’s NEGATIVE 17!  She had a lot of trouble walking around outside because the ground was frozen and super cold, so I took her to a pet store and bought her booties.  While they worked great, they were a pain in the butt to get on properly – and would sometimes fall off as well!  So one night, we walked her, and then went to dinner… and I foolishly decided to leave the boots on her, even though she hates wearing clothes and shoes apparently are no different.  While we were at dinner, she unfortunately started howling and crying because she hated them so much.  The hotel tried to call us, but service was really weird up there for our phones, so we missed the call and didn’t get the message. 

And here’s where excellent customer service comes into play.  The concierge/front desk took matters into their own hands and entered the room, tried to calm her down, and eventually removed her booties, but brought Keywee – and her food/water dish – downstairs to hang out with them at the front desk until we got back.  Of course it helps that she’s not a giant dog with huge teeth, but they basically played with her and talked to her, calmed her down so she’d stop howling/crying.  I appreciated that a lot – I’ve never seen Keywee accept someone that I didn’t introduce her to, so this was pretty surprising – but I liked that they didn’t freak out but instead just figured a course of action to take, then took it.  Also, when we returned from dinner, they recognized us and called out to us as we passed the front desk – I don’t even know how they recognized us, since aside from checking in, we hadn’t really been to the front desk at all – to tell us that our dog was with them.  Because lord knows I’d have FREAKED out if we went back to the room and she was gone (though I suppose upon noticing her food bowl was gone, I’d have figured out to call the front desk). 

In any case, I really enjoyed our stay at the Omni Montreal.  It wasn’t the newest or fanciest hotel by a long shot, but it was comfortable, clean, and I really felt the customer service went above and beyond to make our stay great.  I’m really big on customer service – there are some things that are simply beyond your control, but they did a fantastic job of working with what they had, and just being friendly and awesome. 

Oh, and valet parking was free, which is doubly awesome.  I’ve been charged as much as an additional $40/day in downtown San Francisco for parking… ridiculous.  I recommend the Omni Hotels to anyone looking to travel with their pet hassle & worry free. 

Please note that though I received a voucher for a free night, I was under no obligation to post about my experience, positive or negative, and received no monetary compensation to do so.

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Post tags: DLS, hotel, keywee, lodging review

Hungry and KC really outdid themselves this year.

Hungry offered up three kinds of cookies: chocochubbies (top), nutter butter (right), and lemon sandwich cookies (left).  While all three were very good, the chocochubbies’ texture was fantastic, and the lemon ones were really nice – a little tang, slightly sweet.  I’m very finicky about peanut butter, so good as the nutter butters were, they didn’t have a shot at making my favorite. 

KC offered up an entire box of goodies – shortbread heart with chocolate, chocolate pretzels, Swedish fish, jujubes, Mexican wedding cookies and jam thumbprint cookies.  I’m super partial to jam thumbprint cookies – the way the center becomes chewy and jammy, just perfect.  LOVED those; the Mexican wedding cookies were also very good – actually, I shared these goodies, and DLS picked those as his favorite.  (Which meant I ate like two and they all disappeared…) 

Another lovely year marked by more lovely cookies!  Thank you to the ladies for the awesome goodies! 

***Yes, I stupidly forgot to photograph my cookies, and I even made FIVE kinds this time, shocking even me.  Thankfully, Hungry didn’t forget… and her post is here! I’m not sure I’ll be sharing my cookie recipes just yet, but know that with the exception of the sandwich cookies, I’ve made the other cookies many times in the past and each time they get better

What kinds of cookies do you like to bring to a cookie swap?

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Post tags: cookies, FBM Cookie Swap

Love the bottles of water they placed on each table with the name of the restaurant on them! 

First up, we were treated to some lovely thin crust pizza that isn’t part of the Feast of the Seven Fishes.  Great start to the night. 

Raviolini di granchio con brodo; crab meat filled pasta served in a seafood broth that bordered on too salty and was overwhelmingly fishy.  Not fishy in a bad-fish way, but the seafood-ness of the broth really slapped you in the face.  A diner at my table remarked that his was cold. 

Insalata di mare; marinated shrimp, calamari, baby octopus, conch, thinly sliced red onion & celery tossed in lemon thyme vinaigrette – easily my favorite dish of the night.  Super light and refreshing, with very fresh seafood, not a wasted bite was left behind.  I really enjoyed this dish. 

Vongole al forno; baked top neck clams stuffed with seasoned bread crumbs & herbs – I was surprised to see such large clams used for baked clams.  I’d have preferred either smaller clams, or to have the clam meat removed and chopped up, mixed into the breading for easier eating.  Maybe that’s personal preference, but these were kind of hard to eat the way they were, and the clams were even a bit overwhelmed by the thick layer of breading.  One of my clams was also pretty fishy… but the flavor of the breadcrumbs was good. 

Linguine con aragosta; pasta tossed with lobster meat, roasted tomato & chilies in white wine, olive oil, garlic & fresh herbs – the pasta was cooked perfectly al dente, and there was plenty of seafood in this dish.  A nice hearty dish after the lighter dishes of earlier. 

Capa santa con cavolini e melagrana; pan-seared sea scallops served with caramelized Brussels sprouts, crispy pancetta & watercress tossed in warm pomegranate vinaigrette – the scallops were cooked perfectly, though served on the cold side – it’s pretty hard to time everything so everyone gets hot food with as large a group as we were.  Another light dish, which was nice to break up the heavier dishes so we wouldn’t feel completely bogged down by all the food! 

Brodetto di pesce; classic Adriatic seafood stew of cod, jumbo prawns, sea scallops, mussels & cockles served in tomato seafood broth – I was pretty full by this point, so barely touched this dish. 

But then it was time for dessert!  Panetone gelati; Milan style holiday cake served with coffee gelato, whipped cream and caramel sauce – the cake was moist and the coffee gelato was really good.  I couldn’t eat too much of this from being so full, but I tried! 

Cannoli con cioccolata; crispy pastry tubes filled with sweetened ricotta, bittersweet chocolate chips served with chocolate sauce.  I couldn’t touch this as I was just way too full by this time, but it looked really pretty and I’m sure was very tasty!

Thanks again to La Bottega for their generosity and hospitality, and to their PR team for inviting me to join them in this lovely meal! 

I attended this meal courtesy of La Bottega’s PR; I received no monetary compensation nor was I obligated to post about it positively or negatively. 

© Feisty Foodie for The Feisty Foodie, 2012. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Feast of the Seven Fishes, press event

First up, sweet potato fries the way Aimee showed me in NC.  In fact, I used the sweet potatoes I bought in NC (yes, they were still good).  Unfortunately I must’ve used a bit more olive oil than she did, since mine were softer… not quite as ‘dry’ either.  On the side for dipping, maple aioli – maple syrup mixed into mayo.  I was going to make my own mayo, but then I got flustered on the day and just finished my jar of Hellmann’s. 

My glorious turkey with roaster borrowed from DLS!  Here’s a couple of confessions: last year, I wrote out a detailed post with all the recipes and instructions for me to follow this year.  However, I managed to completely forget about that, so I went in with just my normal thoughts in my head and failed to use my notes from last year.  Also, I’ve never cooked such a large bird – I aim for 12-16 lbs. every year – and I’m not sure if it was using a different roasting pan or just the larger bird, the longer brining time I wound up with out of necessity… whatever it was, the bird cooked rather unevenly, with slightly overcooked and dry breast meat and slightly undercooked and pink dark meat.  Disappointing since the entire bird is mine to eat and work through all the leftovers… I did, however, take my time and slice all of the white meat up very evenly, so that was at least one win.  And I shared a lot of the white meat with people because I’m nice like that. 

Sides! 

First up: collard mashed potatoes.  I was originally going to make mashed potatoes and creamed collards separately, but I decided I didn’t need that many side dishes.  Because I’m lazy, I just boiled the washed/cleaned but whole collards in the pot with my potatoes, then drained those while I peeled the hot potatoes by hand.  When the potatoes were semi mashed, I used scissors and snipped in chunks of the collards, then mashed them all around together with sour cream, cream, salt, butter, pepper. 

Oh, and this year, I broke my one handed pepper mill.  Last year, I broke my salt cellar spoon (and cried).  This year I broke the pepper mill, cursed, and grabbed the backup pepper mill.  It took me 15 minutes to open the cabinet again and stare, and wonder “Why do I have a backup pepper mill?”  It’s like I KNEW. 

Roasted brussels sprouts with bacon and garlic – I know some people think the brussels sprouts don’t need bacon – and they don’t need it – but I like it.  So I use it.  It’s not like I put bacon on my turkey…   Anyway, I cut the bacon into lardons, render all the fat from it and scoop the lardons out with a slotted spoon, draining on a paper towel.  The bacon fat in the bottom of the pan gets tossed with cleaned/halved brussels sprouts, along with salt/pepper and a handful of cloves of peeled garlic (sometimes a whole head, depends on my mood), then roasted at 350 until they look a bit charred.  So good. 

I could never make a turkey – even when I’m at the top of my game and my turkey is too moist to stand – without making giblet gravy.  I make it extra special – something about that flavor combination just makes me so happy!  Definitely mushrooms, poultry seasoning, and extra salty the way I like it… oh my! 

I also made a big tray of mac&cheese because my family never makes this and I like it.  While I followed a similar method to Hungry’s way, I made one giant misstep and cooked the pasta perfectly al dente… which meant it overcooked when I baked it.  Dammit.  Otherwise, my addition of mustard powder and Sriracha to the cheese sauce (yep! I did!) was really fantastically tasty, just that the pasta became unbearably mushy.  Ugh.  Boo me. 

Last but not least, I’m rather proud of my idea this year.  I love my stuffing almost as much as I love my gravy – maybe more.  One of the things I frequently do is take leftover stuffing and fry it, then top it with a poached or sunny side up egg, or eat it in a sandwich (with gravy, cranberry sauce, turkey, etc.).  To make it easier to slice it for frying, I baked it in a loaf pan.  I AM A GENIUS, that’s how well this worked.  I will forever do this!!!  I used my standard recipe with sausage, onion, bread, crackers, broth, an egg, celery, poultry seasoning, sage, delicious.  SO GOOD. 

Here is my first plate of deliciousness.  Even with the slightly dry turkey breast, it was delicious, lovely, I was one happy girl. 

Then I spent a few weeks eating the leftovers in many iterations.  Sandwiches, gravy bowls, creamy stews, tomato-y stews, salad (with cranberry mustard, apple, mayo and lemon juice), just any which way I could put together.  Thank goodness for friends who help me eat when I cook way too much…

How was your Thanksgiving?

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Post tags: Thanksgiving

You all know I love Robicelli’s cupcakes.  Allison and I went to high school together, but even if we hadn’t, anyone who just eats one cupcake by her will know: these are the best cupcakes in the city. 

On this occasion, I tried the Ebinger (the chocolate one), Pumpkin Pie (the bottom right), and Bourbon Caramel Apple (top).  Hands down I liked the chocolate one the best; though I’m not often a chocolate fan, I find that the Robicellis know what it means to go easy and not slam chocolate in your face, which means the chocolate flavor is fairly subtle – which means I love it!  Moist cake with chocolatey overtones and a lovely topping… just yum!  The other two were tasty as well – I think DLS enjoyed them more than I did, though that’s no surprise as I’m not much of a pumpkin fan and in fact don’t really like fruit desserts. 

Seriously, if you’ve read Feisty Foodie for any amount of time and haven’t yet tried Robicellis but are located in NYC – what’s your friggin’ excuse?

http://robicellis.tumblr.com

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Post tags: cupcakes, DLS