In the four years that Craig and I have been absent from Provo, the thing I have missed the most has been the food. This surprised me, because I never felt that Provo was exactly a mecca for good food, but I've been slightly disappointed by what Manassas has had to offer. (Maybe I'm just not trying the right places-- any suggestions from my fellow Manassians?) If you want really good food around here, you usually have to head somewhere a bit ritzier, like Tyson's Corner.
My favorite places in Provo, in no particular order, were:
Cafe Rio: Pork Salad. 'Nuff said. The only restaurant I've ever been in where waiting in a half-hour long, twisting amusement park-style long was totally worth. Unequivocally.
Burgers Supreme: Great burger, wonderful chocolate-y milkshakes, really good fries and the BEST fry sauce ever. Not to mention the place where Craig and I had our first date and many subsequent dates as well. One of my requirements for heaven.
La Vecchia Roma: great Italian food and the nicest owner ever. This one closed before I left Provo, and it always made me sad. Curse you, Olive Garden!
Ottavio's: Another good Italian place. What they lacked in atmosphere, they made up for by having an accordion player. How can you not enjoy some good accordion music? Sadly, my sister informs me that this place has also gone out of business. Curse you, Olive Garden!
Buona Vita: of all the Italian places, my absolute favorite. They had the lousiest service every time we went, but wow, that food. Their pink sauce alone made up for the time we asked for more bread and watched as our waiter brought more bread for the table next to us, realized his mistake, and then snatched the bread away from those people and put it on our table. Classic. But oh, their four-cheese ravioli in a tomato and cream sauce! Oh! And this one also went out of business. Am I just bad luck, or can I keep blaming the Olive Garden? No, I'll definitely blame the Olive Garden.
Bombay House: still the best Indian food I've ever had. Still. And the palette cleanser stuff they'd give you at the end of your meal? I don't know what was in it and I suspect if I did know that I'd hate half the ingredients, but it was always the perfect end to a wonderful meal.
And an honorable mention: the trixy sticks at Pizza Pipeline (complete with cream cheese dipping sauce). It's a wonder I didn't leave BYU weighing 200 lbs! (Oh, wait-- I left when I was 8 months pregnant. I think I did weigh 200 lbs!)
So, yes, occasionally I miss the food. Fortunately between the kids and being poor, Craig and I don't eat out that often anyway. So it's not something I miss all the time. But occasionally, I get to dreaming...
But this week, which is after all, the Week of Dreams (the rec room will have carpet tomorrow! Tomorrow! Tomorrow!), I decided to do something about this. I finally looked closely at a recipe in our ward cookbook for Cafe Rio's pork and realized that it didn't look very difficult. I could get over my fear of cooking any meat other than chicken or beef to try to recreate Cafe Rio's pork. And then when I discovered, in the same cookbook, a recipe for their cilantro-rice, I figured that since I'm very adept at using my rice cooker, I could probably swing this recipe, too.
And then I began looking on-line, where I found recipes for Cafe Rio's house dressing. And their pico de gallo. And their black beans. And suddenly I had no good reason why I couldn't enjoy a little Cafe Rio right here in Virginia.
So I did. And I'm pretty darn pleased with it all, if I may say so myself.
There are oodles of slightly different recipes you can try out there. But I'm going to give you the ones I used. For all you also missing your pork salad, be sad no longer! If I can do this, I'm sure you can, too!
Pork Barbacoa (thanks to Delilas for this)(I halved this, but if you plan to have company...)
6 lbs. pork
16-oz. bottle of salsa
1 can Coke
2 cups brown sugar
Place pork in crock pot and fill it half way up with water. Cook on high for five hours. Drain off water. Cut pork in thirds. Mix together sauce ingredients and pour on top of pork. Cook an additional 3 hours on high. Shred pork with forks, leave on low until read to serve.
Lime-Cilantro Rice (also thanks to Delilas)
2 1/4 cups rice
1 bunch of cilantro
Juice from 2 limes
4 cloves of garlic
Chop garlic and cilantro. Heat 2 tbs of oil in a skillet. Add rice and all chopped ingredients. Saute for 3-5 minutes, stirring frequently. Put 4 cups of water and lime juice in a rice cooker. Add rice mixture and cook according to rice cooker's directions. (This one turned out a touch watery, but I think that's because I used Japanese rice instead of regular long-grained rice. Next time I'll just put less water in...)
House Dressing (thanks to Erica!)
1 packet Ranch Dressing (traditional kind, not the buttermilk kind)
1 cup mayonnaise
1 cup buttermilk
2 tomatillos, remove husk, dice (no, I had to google these to know what they were)
1/2 bunch fresh cilantro, chopped
1 garlic clove
juice from 1 lime
Blend in a blender. (This recipe also called for a jalapeno pepper, but I left it out. In hindsight, I think I would only use half a lime... But it was really easy and really good!)
Pico de Gallo (thanks to Heidi!)
3 tomatoes, diced
1/2 bunch of cilantro, minced
1/2 sweet onion, minced
1 section of green pepper, minced
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
about 1/3-1/2 cup vinegar (use your best judgement)
salt and pepper
Mix it up really well and refrigerate.
Um, I LOVE pico de gallo. I never knew it was so easy to make. This could be the beginning of something wonderful...
I also made these black beans, although I have to admit that they didn't thrill me as much as everything else did. But they were still good and went great with the salad.
Black Beans (also from Erica)
2 tbs olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp cumin
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 1/3 cup tomato juice
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tbs fresh chopped cilantro
And for kicks, she recommended adding some drained, canned corn and a dash of cumin and chili powder, which I did.
Cook garlic and cumin in olive oil over medium heat until you can smell it. Add beans, tomato juice, and salt. Continually stir until heated through. Just before serving, stir in the cilantro.
Put all this stuff into a heated tortilla, along with lettuce, cheese, sour cream, and maybe some chips just for good measure and you've got yourself a night back in Provo, but minus all those other BYU students making the line so long! A day in the kitchen WELL SPENT. The only thing that could have made it better would have been if I'd painted our chairs to all be mismatched and colorful. But I don't think I would have had the energy for that, too, today...
Itadakemasu! (<-- That's sort of the Japanese equivalent of bon appetit. I may be proud of my blossoming cooking abilities, but I'm certainly not ready to try channeling Julia Child just yet!)
5 comments:
It's only 8:30 and now I'm hungry for some lunch!! We're Cafe Rio addicts around here and make this pork/rice/dressing all the time. I thought you might like this...http://www.restaurantnews.com/cafe-rio-mexican-grill-continues-to-expand-opening-3-more-locations-in-so-california-with-virginia-and-boise-to-follow/
My favorite Italian place in Provo was la Dolce Vita. Yum!
Oh, and I need some Japanese food recommendations. Rob and I are going to Tokyo and Kyoto next month!
Woo hoo!!! I had no idea Cafe Rio would EVER come here! (Although Craig and I did occasionally speculate on how expensive it might be to open our own franchise here...) This makes my life.
I recommend eating katsudon whenever you can! Breaded pork served with egg and sweet teriyaki sauce. And sukiyaki beef (which is pronounced like ski-yaki) is heavenly. I've never really been a huge sushi fan (sad, huh?) but onegiri with tuna inside them are pretty good as a snack, too. That's just rice and tuna and sesame seeds wrapped in seaweed. I don't know why, with all my anti-seafood-ness I can love those, but I do.
And all the snacky foods you can find in a 7-11-- yogurt drinks, pocky (men's pocky is the best, I don't know why it's "men's"), choco-pan... I'm starting to drool just typing this...
Wow. Can I come with you guys for this trip AND the trip to Disneyworld???
I've discovered that it's the food that I miss from everywhere I've lived (next to family and friends, of course). We have totally different Provo lists though. Interesting. I made the Cafe Rio recipe stuff all the time but have never actually eaten there. It was just starting to be big when I graduated and left.
I'll shock everyone by admitting that I never did like Cafe Rio. Horrible atmosphere and the food always did weird things to my digestive system.
But I'll agree that Ottavio's was pretty good (only ate there once, so going on vague memories) and Bombay House was superb.
For pizza in Manassas we always went to Tony's New York Pizza. We had it when we first got there and, after having lived in pizza desert (aka Utah) for a few years, it was heaven.
There's also Carmello's down on Center Street in Old Town. It's Italian/Portuguese. Rather pricey (we only went there for our anniversaries), expect to pay $100 for two people, though if you skip appetizers and dessert you could get by on less. We LOVED the atmosphere and the waiters were always really good. There when you needed them, but didn't feel intrusive.
There are a few other nice-looking restaurants down in that same area, though we never tried any of them. Oh, and there's a churrascaria up at the mall in Fairfax. Expensive, but sooooo worth it! (We've never tried that one, but I've never had churrascaria food that isn't delicious.)
Ottavio's went out of business because they started selling their sauces and that part of the business made more money and needed more attention so they decided to close the restaurant. You can buy their sauce at Costco over there.
And Bombay House- MY FAVORITE- serves fennel seeds and licorice candy at the end of the meal. We have an Indian place we like here, but it isn't as good at Bombay.
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