New Local Eats

So last Friday was the day of finding new eateries in the Bay area. In the afternoon, my new visiting teaching companion, Mary, introduced me to Red Mango in Palo Alto. Red Mango is one in the latest trend of natural frozen yogurt- meaning just unflavored yogurt. I got mine with granola, just in case it was super sour and then the sweetened granola would neutralize it out. However, it actually wasn't very tart at all. It just had a fresh, non-puckering taste to it. I was definitely impressed- and so I'm sure that you will hear me rave more about it in the future (but Cold Stone is still No.1).

That evening, we went with William's longtime friend Ben and his wife Bev to one of their favorite Bay area bbq places- Sam's in San Jose. William and Ben grew up together in Texas and so they definitely love and appreciate good bbq. You know its going to be a good place when they have a toy train running up around the dining room. And, they bring your table your own bottle of their special housemade bbq sauce. And boy was this sauce GREAT! Especially with their fries- these giant steak ones. The other item to rave about is their hushpuppies. AMAZING- with a savory taste to them complimented by the honey butter. That was our appetizer and after having those, I could have just left and gone home happy.

For dessert, they took us to another one of their favorite places- and a frozen yogurt place- called Frozos. It is in Santa Clara and I HIGHLY recommend it. And how can you not love their adorable penguin icon.
This place is a self serve frozen yogurt place where YOU decide what kinds and how much yogurt you want as well as which of the myriad of toppings you can pick from. They had the tart original yogurt (I tried it- not quite as good as Red Mango, but not too tart either) and 4 other kinds- vanilla (with sugar), butterpecan, strawberry, and chocolate. And here's William getting serious with their peanut butter gun- yes, they put their peanut butter topping within a calking gun.
You can't really see behind him the vast array of toppings that they had- pretty much anything you could think of to put on ice cream, they had- fresh fruit, cereal, candy bars, cheesecake, brownies (just to name a few). And then they determine your price by the little weight machine- here are all four of our creations- YUM.
I admit that I am a HUGE fan of this place because they just have so many options that you can custom make and decide for yourself what you want to do. If you want to be "healthy" and get the tart yogurt and fruit, you can do that or you can get the vanilla with 10 different toppings (like Ben did in the upper right corner).

We then headed back to our place for a little Tiger Woods Wii Golf. Ben had just gotten the game and shared it with us. The great thing about the Wii is that it makes you feel like you can play any sport, when in reality, I'm pretty much not super coordinated. I mean, I even had a few holes in one (given that I was on easy mode with the helper trajectory).

All in all, it was a great day when we discovered some new local eats. We have been through a bad spell with some not so great places, but this has definitely restored our confidence.