The last two weeks of January was a mixture of relaxation and some busy nights. It was snowy and cold in Cleveland which makes it hard to motivate myself to do anything but snuggle on the couch.
There were a couple times I forced myself to leave. One of them was try Azteca Mexican Restaurant and Margarita Bar on Heisley Road in Mentor, Ohio. The restaurant looks so different from the Ruby Tuesdays that was in there before. I will be honest the food was a little bland to me. I have not eaten a lot of authentic Mexican but it seemed to me that there food was missing some spice. All of the flavor comes from the food itself and it’s freshness, which I was really impressed with. If you like Mexican I think it is a place you should check out and see what you think of it. We tried a couple margaritas and a couple food items. The real disappointment for all 4 of us was the salsa. It tasted more like tomato sauce and I was a little confused. Otherwise our drinks and food tasted fresh.
We spent our Saturday that weekend exploring Ohio. We traveled down to Middlefield for breakfast at Mary Yoder’s where their all you can eat Buffett is a must. I love the breakfast casserole, biscuit and gravy, and they always have crispy bacon. They had tons of pies and cookies at the shop and it took lots of control to not bring some home with us. We go down there pretty often so maybe next time some pie and cheese will be a must. We have purchased furniture from Countryside Furnishings before and stopped in there to look at some tables for one of our living rooms. It’s nice because they can customize pretty much anything they have and pretty much everything we have purchased we have had to customize at least a piece or two.
We headed up to Mentor Brewing on Heisley Road in Mentor to visit a couple of our friends. Mentor Brewing is a brewery plus a story to purchase everything to brew your own beer and make you own wine. I enjoy their beer and tried their winter beer, the Snowflake. It was a 10% beer but it was light with some good flavors. We also tried their Beelicious, which had some honey notes and was another light beer. From what I understand they have already tapped new beers and are out of both. For me this is something I like and something that keeps me coming back. Is that I never know what they are going to have and love stopping in to check out the new brews.
We had a date night that next week with some of our family. Juicy in Warrensville Heights kept popping up on our Facebook pages so we were like it looks good and different let’s give that a try. I will say it was a pretty cool concept and I now understand why people love seafood shacks. My husband’s cousin and I both got one of the smaller meals which came in a bag and they actual shook it at the table with all of the spices. You get to pick the spices and can either do one of their preselected meals or you can do things al carte. The husbands went with the bigger meals which come out in a pan and all the seafood and sides are just soaking in the spices. Everything was flavorful from the seafood to the corn. I would say just be aware of the meal you pick. The husbands meals had some better choices of seafood like the king crab legs so they got more crab meat than we did and I was a little sad, but it was still way more food than I could ever eat. Also, it was a little messy do not wear white when you go and opt to where the bib. We all did and I was glad I did.
Saturday we had a Cavs game downtown so we headed down with some friends to grab dinner from Southern Tier Brewing. They are out of New York but have a location here that serves all of their beer options and their liquor, as they make both. They don’t have a huge food menu here but what they do have they do really well. I have tried most of the items off the menu at one point or the other. If your a pizza person their pizza is pretty good, they also have some sandwich options, burgers and chicken sandwiches, some appetizers and some entrees. They have some beers that are always on their menu but then they also have seasonal ones. One of the seasonals that is a favorite of mine is the Cinnamon Roll Imperial Ale. You would think it would be super sweet but it has a good balance of sweet and tart.
To end the night we stopped at Colossal Cupcakes for some cupcakes and hot chocolate. They were out of hot chocolate but we did grab some cupcakes for dessert on Sunday. We tried the Vanilla Caramel and the Blue Velvet. I like the Vanilla Caramel the best with the caramel in the center of the cupcake. The cupcake was fluffy and the caramel in the middle just added flavor with the vanilla cupcake. The frosting on this one also didn’t seem as sweet. The Blue velvet had icing down the middle and I’m not much of an icing fan so it was just a tad too sweet for me. Their hot chocolate is one of my favorites if your downtown early enough and can grab some I highly recommend it. I also feel like they have so many cupcake options there is something for everyone.
We finished off the weekend relaxing and spending time cuddling with the fur babies.
