Taste of Adams Avenue

This is a monster of a pictorial post.  I loved making photographs of our Sunday afternoon and capturing our time there and all the wonderful food we saw and ate.  And I hope I make you hungry.

On Sunday afternoon, Scott, Skylar and I went to the Taste of Adams Avenue

Neighborhood restaurants serve sample-sized portions of something from their menu and festival go’ers walk up and down the street, sampling, tasting, and getting their cards punched at the 30 restaurants or so that were participating.

Needless to say, elastic pants are a good thing.  We ate so.much.food and probably only punched our cards at 10 restaurants, maybe even less.

Some of the portions were like mini-meals, not just “samples”.

Let’s break the day down by ethnic cuisine.

Thai: a spicy vegetable curry, rice, and a fried wonton

Skylar loved the wonton!  Fried dough, cmon.  Good stuff.

Vietnamese: Spicy chicken, black bean & basil tofu, mixed brown rice, and a fried sesame ball

And I taught Skylar how to hold food for the camera.

Hold it still, don’t create shadows on the food, open palm, don’t shake.

Her little 4 year old hand did great, right?

The sesame ball was awesome.

Sweet dough, that’s been fried, and filled with some kind of sweet-ish paste.  <– How could that not be wonderful.

Italian: Margherita pizza with basil

Perhaps my favorite images of the day are these three pizza images.

Shooting directly on top of wood with natural lighting in the restaurant.  Loved it.

I wanted to make pictures of pizza all day!

And perhaps Skylar’s favorite food of the day.

She wanted to eat pieces of pizza all day.

Mexican: Beef tacos with spicy sauce, onions, and lime juice.

Mediterranean: Hummus, a yogurt-ish sauce, naan/pita bread, chicken, and veggies

Skylar’s in heaven with pita bread, naan, hummus. 

Ice Cream is its own category. So much ice cream! 

And there were more places we didn’t even make it to that were serving ice cream!

Ice Cream #1: A Mexican ice cream shop.  Pick two flavors.  

Raspberry + Cookies & Cream.  This was not a “sample”. This was a full-on bowl of ice cream!

We hated it.  Kidding.

Ice Cream #2: Viva Pops.  Some vegan flavors.

It was a key lime sorbet-like treat.

Scott, who I would not desribe as a key lime guy at all, said this was the best thing he ate all day.

Better than pizza, tacos, or anything else.  That’s high praise.

And Skylar loved hers, too.  I cannot eat ice cream and I don’t even like anything ice cream related. It gives me a horrible stomachache so I didn’t try the Viva Pops.

I want to have Vanilla Banana Avocado “Ice Cream” instead!   I know I’m safe with what I make in my own kitchen!

Ice Cream #3: Softserve with vegan options

Ice Cream #4: if you count these ice cream-ish Starbucks drinks

I like that picture.

Skylar liked the actual drink better than I did.

Start ’em young on Starbucks, right?

We had a great day of family fun!

Lovely weather: 75F, sunny, no humidity, no bugs, no big crowds, no parking hassles.

And we enjoyed eating our way up and down Adams Avenue.

 

Skylar’s favorite(s) of the day: pizza and ice cream

My favorite of the day: the sesame ball

Scott’s favorite of the day: the key lime Viva Pop on a stick

We can’t wait to do it again!

Thanks to Marisa at McFarlane Promotions for our tickets.

And I ran into Amanda, who won my Taste of Adams Avenue Giveaway, but neither of us remembered to take photos!  We were clearly in a food coma.

From my last post, Pretty Salt, it sounds like many of you have tried pink Himalayan salt.

And there are some serious salt lovers, too.  Not me, I’ll stick with sweets over salts.

Questions:

1. Have you ever been to a Tasting Festival?

I love these types of events, because for $20 to $30 bucks (sometimes less, sometimes more), you can get more food than you could ever eat.

You get a diverse selection of food from whatever an Italian restaurant chooses to serve to whatever the Mexican restaurant dishes up.  Can you see what incredible diversity in food there is in just a couple city block span here?  Another reason why I love San Diego.

I have done tons of events like this in the past and they are always so much fun.

The last one I went to was the Greek Festival a couple weeks ago.

And I have also done plenty of pub crawls in my former life.  Same concept, but with alcohol.  You can  “sample” and “taste” drinks from many establishments.  And the stories are always epic from pub crawls.

2. Is there diversity in the food in your area or neighborhood?

I grew up in rural Minnesota.  There wasn’t much diversity in the meat, potatoes, and tuna casseroles that were found in the corn fields my “neighborhood”.   Boy, how times have changed and I am happy that Skylar loves trying all types of foods!

She’s 4 and she was a bottomless pit and loved sampling it all!

3. Best thing you ate or did over the weekend?

If you’re just catching up on posts from over the weekend, here are mine since Friday:

• Pretty Salt
• Dark Rum Caramel Sauce (and FoodGawker and Tasteologie liked my pics which was my #2 highlight of the weekend behind the festival.  Photography and improving my own skills means everything to me lately!)
• Cookie Monster
• New Camera Bag
• What I’m:
• KISS + Winner
• Juicy

Have a great week!