Sunday Night Grilling

The Portobello's were marinated in some balsamic, rosemary, thyme, garlic, pepper, oregano, and basil. They were then grilled up and loaded with crumbled blue cheese, which then was melted to perfection. The chicken was just some more of Nellie & Joe's Mojo marinated chicken. I am addicted to the Nellie & Joe's product line. You can sometimes find it in Publix or Fresh Market, but here is their website: http://www.keylimejuice.com/ Everything was then washed down with plenty of Bell's Brewery Oberon Ale.

Polka Dot Pig Gastro Pub in Augusta

This is a new restaurant in Augusta that has been open for a month. We decided to give it a shot and it was pretty good. We started off with a White Pizza and an order of Duck Empanadas as our apps. The white pizza is fire cooked with 5 different cheeses, fresh basil, and a garlic pesto. The empanadas were filled with duck, roasted black cherries, and crumbles of goat cheese. Both apps were very good and I would gladly eat them both again. For my main course I got the Chipotle Braised Beef Short Ribs with Jalapeno Mac-n-Cheese and Roasted Corn with Green Chilies. The short ribs were perfect. The mac-n-cheese was different and was on fire with every bite. Not really my cup of tea, but it wasn't horrible. Still, I would have been much happier with the old standard mac-n-cheese. All in all, they have a lot of different tastes on the menu and I would gladly go back. Hopefully though they will have things flowing better and get kinks worked out while shaking off the new restaurant rust. They only had 1 high chair for the entire restaurant (not good with as many tables as they have). Also, our apps came out within 10 min of ordering. We didn't get out main dishes for another 45 min. It was worth the wait, but it shouldn't have taken that long.

Lunch at Magnolia's in Charleston

Charleston SC is full of great food, but when you are wanting some great food in a causal uptown environment you go to Magnolia's. We started off with the massive plate of Housemade Potato Chips. These chips are covered with warm and gooey crumbled blue cheese and scallions. For my main course I got the Parmesan Crusted Flounder. This was served over Carolina rice and creek shrimp purloo with sweet corn, tomato and asparagus salad, lump crab and a lemon beurre blanc. It was a nice treat to find the rice and shrimp under the corn salad. I highly recommend this restaurant or one of their other 2 sister restaurants on your next trip to Charleston.

http://www.magnolias-blossom-cypress.com/