Best of 2009 – Best Restaurant Experience

This post is part of Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge, and is actually answering the prompt from yesterday, December 2.  Since I likely ate more than I read this year, I decided to answer December 2nd’s question:

December 2 Restaurant moment. Share the best restaurant experience you had this year. Who was there? What made it amazing? What taste stands out in your mind?

Instead of December 3rd’s:

December 3 Article. What’s an article that you read that blew you away? That you shared with all your friends. That you Delicious’d and reference throughout the year.

What?  Gwen said we could be flexible on the details.  Though, I am really looking forward to scouring all of the articles people point me to with that last prompt!

Anyway.

WHEW, this one was a tough one.  I made it a priority to eat well this year, particularly throughout all of my fun travels to both coasts and to some culinary hotspots that included Las Vegas, NV, Chicago, IL, and Huntsville, AL.  You don’t believe Huntsville, AL is a culinary hotspot?  YOU, my friend, have never been to Little Rosie’s Cantina.

I digress.  I ate some good meals this year:

Enoteca San Marco, The Venetian, Las Vegas – Cheese Plate and Margherita Pizza
The Med, Pearl Street, Boulder, CO – Mussels, Smoked Salmon, GREAT wine (Malbec)
Bar Baresco, Chelsea, NYC, New York – Cheese Plate, Pesto Linguine
Cafe Maude, Armatage, Minneapolis, MN – Cheese Plate, Mac and Cheese
The Gage, Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL – Lemon Ricotta French Toast
Zen Noodles and Sushi, Bucktown, Chicago, IL – Fried Tofu, Aloha Maki Roll

That’s just the tip of the iceberg folks.  My best restaurant experience was actually one that didn’t quite happen in a restaurant, but in the middle of the street in LA late this summer.

Taco Truck

I scribbled a few notes about originally over here on the Travel/Food blog, but it’s worth repeating how awesome this was.  Nico schooled me in the Taco Truck tradition in Los Angeles, literally these TRUCKS that park along the streets in the wee hours of the night/morning and serve up hot and fresh Mexican food to late-night city-goers.  The locals know where the good ones are, and I was fortunate enough to be in good local company.

I’d only been in LA for a few hours when we decided to leave the bar and head out to find a taco truck – I got a chicken taco and cheese quesadillas and we walked out to the median on Eagle Rock Blvd, and ate our tacos picnic-style in the middle of a beautiful LA August night.

I know there were no cheese plates, but you tell me a time when you picnicked on a median at 2 in the morning after having bought your quesadillas from a street vendor taco truck?  That’s a memory I will never forget.

Tagged as: #best09, Los Angeles, nicopolitan, Taco Truck