Anniversary Food Extravaganza

Yep, it's 1 p.m. and we're just now waking up. Hooray for the long July 4th weekend! We watched The Last Airbender, which was ridiculously bad :(.  Shyamalan should stick to making gimmicky "twist" flicks and quit ruining our favorite animated series!

Tonight we're getting sushi at Tokoyohana for our friend Neil's birthday. And tomorrow we're watching the Wimbledon final at Mani's parents' house and then celebrating our niece's 12th birthday with steaks and poker. We're also really happy that the federal agency Val interned at this summer decided to hire her on for the school year! Three cheers!

Last weekend, we celebrated our 2-year anniversary. We wanted unique dining experiences, so we had dinner at The Melting Pot on Friday and a picnic on Saturday morning at Hermann Park. Then we visited a couple exhibits at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

We highly, highly recommend The Melting Pot! Neither of us had eaten fondue before, so it really was a culinary adventure for us both. The waitstaff was friendly and attentive. They wished us a happy anniversary at least three times during the course of the night, which we really appreciated. :)

The atmosphere at The Melting Pot is both fun and inviting. Its communal nature makes it perfect for a night out with friends. It's interactive enough to keep the kiddos entertained and awesome for a romantic dinner. (Fellas, we guarantee that the ladies will love you). 

Really who doesn't love dipping random items of food into a giant vat of tastiness? If we'd been offered a plate of paperclips, we would have dunked them in cheese and eaten them happily. Word.

We started off with a couple of cocktails that were almost too gorgeous to drink. Val had the Yin & Yang: Godiva White Chocolate Liqueur, Stoli Vanil vodka and ice cream topped with chocolate shavings. Mani had the Pomegranate Mojito.

We opted to sample the four-course "Pacific Islands Big Night Out" summer menu. 

The first course was a Feng Shui Cheese Fondue with white wine, mirin, Gekeikan Traditional Sake, aged Gruyere cheese and horseradish and chive Harvati. It was creamy, earthy and spicy. Bread squares, granny smith apple slices and mixed veggies came as sides to be dipped.

Next up were the lettuce wraps, which were refreshingly clean and tangy: green leaf lettuce, thinly sliced cucumber, sliced carrots, bean sprouts, mint and honey roasted almonds with a mandarin orange-ginger dressing. 

We ordered the mouth-watering "Fondue Fusion" for the third course: rich lobster tail, tender sesame-crusted teriyaki sirloin, tart citrus-infused pork tenderloin, melt-in-your-mouth sushi-grade Ahi tuna, garlic chili chicken breast, citrusy kiwi lime shrimp, spring vegetable dumplings and fresh veggies. 

The Mojo cooking style we chose was a Caribbean-seasoned bouillon with tons of garlic, citrus, cilantro and green onions.  We skewered the our meats and veggies, letting them cook for a couple of minutes in the broth, dipping them in numerous sauces provided for us. The Sriracha aioli was our favorite by far. 

For dessert, we had an adorable platter of cakes, fruits and assorted sweet treats that we dipped in a Passion Fruit Yin & Yang Fondue: dark chocolate swirled with passion fruit-infused white chocolate. 

-Saturday at Hermann Park-

Breakfast-by-the-pound at Whole Foods. The migas were flavorful and the salsa fresh. And the homefries and biscuits were a home run. But the turkey sausage was a on the dry side, as were the pancakes, which crumbled under our forks with each bite.

Mani and Tofu.

Tofu grubbing down on a little breakfast. It was her "birthday" afterall. We he adopted her exactly one year ago last Saturday.

-Museum of Natural Science-

Then we went to the Archaeopteryx and Magic exhibits at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. FYI, the Archaeopteryx was the definitive ancestral link between dinosaurs and birds. And the Magic exhibit displayed legendary magicians' tricks and props. Plus there are free magic shows on the weekends. 

-Crave Cupcakes-

We ended the day at Crave Cupcakes. We attempted to make a pit stop at Sprinkles too, but we drove passed the non-descipt building at least three times looking for it. What's the deal with their teeny-tiny sign in the upper left-hand corner of the building? Seriously? Context clues, i.e. the enormous, snaking line around the building, tipped us off that we had finally found the right building. But by then, we were exasperated and decided to start heading in the direction of Crave instead.

Crave was similarly packed with insufferable uppity types huffing and puffing at the long lines or the fact that they didn't get enough cream in their coffee. The 100-degree heat outside and the elbow-to-elbow cluster-fuck inside Crave wasn't exactly the joyous cupcake experience we'd bargained for. The icing on the cupcake (har har) was the fact that one staff member asked us to put our camera away because photos were "not allowed" indoors. Too bad we had already taken the photos we needed, lady. 

We ask: when did the cupcake cease to be that homemade reminder of your mom's kitchen and become a designer commodity? Ugh.

We ordered the pumpkin, strawberry and coconut-chocolate cupcakes. 

The pumpkin and strawberry cupcakes were divine. The icing was creamy and not too sweet. The cake was perfectly moist. The pumpkin was not overly spicy, and the strawberry tasted of freshly-picked strawberries, rather than that artificial strawberry flavor we expected. 

The coconut was so-so. The icing was overly sweet, so much so that we could feel the grit of sugar grains in our teeth. It would have been a nice touch had they lightly toasted the coconut shavings too.