Dinner So Nice It's Twice
Sep. 9th, 2021 09:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerOlympic Peninsula Travelog #13
Port Angeles, WA - Sat, 4 Sep 2021. 9pm.
Whew, it's been a full day today. We hiked Hurricane Ridge to Hurricane Hill and hiked Obstruction Point to Lillian Ridge, logging upwards of 7 miles according to Hawk's step counter. When we drove back down the mountain into town the first thing on our minds was getting dinner.
"Where to go for dinner?" is always a negotiation. Sometimes it hinges on a particular type of cuisine or flavor profile. Sometimes the key issue is speed. Or convenience. Or even, "Someplace casual and quiet because we just want to relax."
Last night we started with Hawk saying, "I really want Mexican food." So cuisine was important... but was so Coronavirus. We're both vaccinated but that doesn't mean we want to go willy-nilly to crowded indoors venues— especially in a part of the country where vaccination rates are low and infection rates are high. (If you don't have time to look up statistics for where you are you can kinda tell by how many "Trump 2020" banners are still hanging in yards.)
Last night we found a casual Mexican restaurant one block from our hotel. It was well rated on Yelp, and it was listed as having outdoor dining.
When we arrived we found that "outdoor dining" meant one wooden picnic table next to the parking lot. 😂 We considered bouncing but decided since the restaurant was basically empty that we could handle eating inside. There's a successful combination I'm not sure we'll find too often— a restaurant with good food that's somehow also unpopular enough to be sparsely patronized.
Tonight our goal wasn't so much a style of food as wanting anything delicious— and still looking to minimize Coronavirus risk. Unfortunately, Port Angeles isn't really an outdoors dining town. Few restaurants list "outdoors dining" as a feature, and those that do often mean they have just a few seats on the sidewalk. We picked several restaurants on Yelp, drove around town, and noped out of each of them because they were too crowded.
Ultimately we wound up back at the taqueria on block from our hotel. Again tonight they were loved on Yelp but unpopular in real life; there was only one other customer seated in the dining room. (To be fair, this restaurant has a drive-thru that was always busy.) I'm not sure what's the deal with the great Yelp reviews and the slow business. Maybe the 10 Yelpers in town like taquerias and the other 1,990 people don't? Just to mix it up I ordered a steak quesadilla tonight instead of the adobado (spicy pork) quesadilla I had last night. And tonight we sprung on chips and salsa. It was all good.
So that's the pattern for how to eat out in risky locales: find a place with good food that's somehow unpopular. 🤣
Port Angeles, WA - Sat, 4 Sep 2021. 9pm.
Whew, it's been a full day today. We hiked Hurricane Ridge to Hurricane Hill and hiked Obstruction Point to Lillian Ridge, logging upwards of 7 miles according to Hawk's step counter. When we drove back down the mountain into town the first thing on our minds was getting dinner.
"Where to go for dinner?" is always a negotiation. Sometimes it hinges on a particular type of cuisine or flavor profile. Sometimes the key issue is speed. Or convenience. Or even, "Someplace casual and quiet because we just want to relax."
Last night we started with Hawk saying, "I really want Mexican food." So cuisine was important... but was so Coronavirus. We're both vaccinated but that doesn't mean we want to go willy-nilly to crowded indoors venues— especially in a part of the country where vaccination rates are low and infection rates are high. (If you don't have time to look up statistics for where you are you can kinda tell by how many "Trump 2020" banners are still hanging in yards.)
Last night we found a casual Mexican restaurant one block from our hotel. It was well rated on Yelp, and it was listed as having outdoor dining.
When we arrived we found that "outdoor dining" meant one wooden picnic table next to the parking lot. 😂 We considered bouncing but decided since the restaurant was basically empty that we could handle eating inside. There's a successful combination I'm not sure we'll find too often— a restaurant with good food that's somehow also unpopular enough to be sparsely patronized.Tonight our goal wasn't so much a style of food as wanting anything delicious— and still looking to minimize Coronavirus risk. Unfortunately, Port Angeles isn't really an outdoors dining town. Few restaurants list "outdoors dining" as a feature, and those that do often mean they have just a few seats on the sidewalk. We picked several restaurants on Yelp, drove around town, and noped out of each of them because they were too crowded.
Ultimately we wound up back at the taqueria on block from our hotel. Again tonight they were loved on Yelp but unpopular in real life; there was only one other customer seated in the dining room. (To be fair, this restaurant has a drive-thru that was always busy.) I'm not sure what's the deal with the great Yelp reviews and the slow business. Maybe the 10 Yelpers in town like taquerias and the other 1,990 people don't? Just to mix it up I ordered a steak quesadilla tonight instead of the adobado (spicy pork) quesadilla I had last night. And tonight we sprung on chips and salsa. It was all good.
So that's the pattern for how to eat out in risky locales: find a place with good food that's somehow unpopular. 🤣
