Krik's Picks

On vacation, you really should have a personal chef. I offer that advice after having experienced the pleasure of professionally prepared meals in the comfort of a vacation rental in Palm Springs. As I noted in my post about our family vacation , my son-in-law is a chef. When we arrived at our Airbnb in Thousand Palms, near Palm Springs, he offered to do the meal preparations. I had expected that he might want a break. But, he explained, preparing exciting meals for family is different from running a catering kitchen. Besides, he was eager to use the fantastic backyard grill and outdoor kitchen.  My wife and I only have limited experience with vacation rentals. And when we have stayed at an Airbnb, we haven't done any creative cooking. We use the kitchen to heat up leftovers from restaurant meals, or to make coffee while lounging in the morning before embarking on vacation activities.  Grilled steak and asparagus, baked potato For this family trip, it was pretty much a forego...

 My wife and I have offered our son and daughter to take their families on a trip. It's basically an open invitation. We'll negotiate the specifics of when and where. But we want to take them where they want to go.  Our daughter was the first to take us up. So for Presidents Day weekend this year, we flew to Palm Springs for a long weekend. The plan was to get away from the Minnesota cold and do a bunch of hiking. My wife and I are in our 70s. Our daughter and her husband are in their 40s, and the grandchildren are teenagers.  For lodging, we opted for an Air Bnb . In case you don't know, vacation rentals in Palm Springs can be tricky, and short term rentals present a challenge. (As you might expect, a lot of vacation rentals in the area are aimed at snowbirds who want to stay for several weeks.) We ended up picking a house in Thousand Palms. It was well maintained, not large but roomy enough for our family. It had 3 bedrooms; my wife and I claimed the master suite....

One of the things my wife and I like about travel is tasting (discovering) new foods and food combinations. (Well, new to us anyway.) And it's always gratifying to be able to recreate those items in our kitchen when we return home. The back-story for this recipes starts in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. Earlier in June we were in the City for a few days. (More about our trip later.) One of our favorite things to do in SF is to walk through Haight-Ashbury. Sometimes we shop; sometimes we just enjoy people-watching. (Side note: Now that marijuana is legal in California, I half expected the Haight to be engulfed in a permanent haze of smoke. It wasn't. In fact, I think I smelled more marijuana on the streets before it was legal.) This time, we were there around lunch. So we kept an eye out for a nice place to eat. That's how we happened to wander in to the Sparrow Bar & Kitchen . It was friendly and clean. It had an attractive patio in back, and the...

This post is more than just a restaurant review. It's also about how a restaurant can try really hard and still make a customer frustrated. First the review ... My wife and I loved our dinner at Rosaline ! We ended up there in sort of a happenstance way. I serve on the board of an anti-hunger advocacy organization - Mazon . We have a board meeting in Los Angeles every year. My wife comes along, and we usually make a short vacation of it, a brief respite from the cold and snow in Minnesota in February. We made reservations in advance at several restaurants, either favorites from past visits or new ones that we wanted to try. When we got a phone call from one of those restaurants, seeking to confirm our plans, we discovered that there would be a private party in the main dining room. We would get a table in the bar. That didn't sound too good to us. We liked the ambiance of the main dining room, and we didn't particularly like the ambiance in the bar. So we cancelled that...

My wife and I just can't stay away from San Francisco. We first visited 40+ years ago for our honeymoon. We liked it so much, we moved there for a year. Though we didn't stay, we have made many return visits over the years. It's the city we travel to most often for leisure. So we know it pretty well. Our October trip was technically a business trip. We did have a meeting on one day. But we extended our stay so that we'd have time to take in our favorite activities and visit some favorite restaurants. One little glitch - it rained. Quite a lot, actually. But we still made our way around the city and visited familiar locales. Some of the others who were involved in the meeting used the opportunity to go to museums. The city has great museums. But on this trip, we didn't join them. Another couple had a break of good luck and went on a harbor cruise - no rain, lucky them. We've been on the harbor cruise before. It's fun. Lodging: The meeting planner made arr...

I read somewhere that in the fall of 2016, Northern California had an unusually large number of rainy days. Too bad for us, that's when we were there. While the rainy weather put a damper on some of our planned activities, we still were able to enjoy wine tasting, good restaurants, some live music, and a cozy, comfortable inn. And it didn't rain the whole time. We did have one day of beautiful weather. Hotel: Our base for this visit was the Inn at Sonoma .  This was a return visit for my wife and me. The location is ideal. It's a short walk to the Sonoma Plaza which is the bustling heart of this little wine town. And it's easy to get in and out of town from here for wine tasting and other adventures.   The amenities are very nice. There's a reception every evening with wine and light appetizers. It's a fun way to meet other people and learn about their wine country experiences. Breakfast every morning is delicious and hearty - a great way to begin the day. Th...

My wife and I have enjoyed California's wine country for many years. We've frequently been wine-tasting in Napa and Sonoma, as well as other areas of the state. Over the years, our preference for Sonoma has grown. I think in general, the wines produced there suit our tastes better. We also like that Sonoma still has many small family wineries, and we've enjoyed visiting many of them. Napa has many small wineries as well. But it seems like the Sonoma Valley is a little more laid back and less touristy than Napa.  While we've visited many wineries in California over the years, one experience we never had was a food and wine tasting at a winery. In retrospect, that seems like a foolish oversight.  It's a truism that having wine with food enhances the experience of both. Yet, at most wineries, the experience usually is all wine, no food (except for sometimes crackers or breadsticks to help clear the palate.) So on our October trip to the Sonoma Valley with my wife...

After four nights in LA, during our March trip to southern California, we'd become kind of desensitized the high restaurant prices we encountered. So after we left LA for a two-night stay in Dana Point, we were delighted to find that at Luciana's , we got excellent Italian food in a charming, comfortable setting with friendly service ... all for a very reasonable price. The restaurant was suggested to us by the staff at our hotel in Dana Point, the Blue Lantern . Luciana's is a very short walk from the hotel. We made a reservation, though on a Wednesday night in March it turned out we didn't really need one. Inside, the restaurant is very warm and inviting. The tables are not crowded together, yet the dining room feels cozy. The decor is rustic. The tables sport white tablecloths. The menu at Luciana's is quite extensive. We came intending to try the fresh pasta. But the menu includes a tempting list of Italian entrees featuring fish, poultry, or meat. There...

The best meal we had during our March trip to southern California was at The Little Door in Santa Monica. The restaurant was on a list of recommendations from the daughter of some friends of ours. We hadn't tried it on any of our previous trips to LA. This time, we decided to make a reservation. Wow! We'll definitely be back. Really. We liked everything about it, starting with the ambiance and decor. Inside, the restaurant is warm, inviting, cozy but without being crowded. It seems to be authentically French. Many of the other patrons were speaking French, and the host (perhaps owner?) and servers seemed to be answering fluently. The dinner made us excited to plan a trip to Paris. I started the evening with a cocktail, a Vieux Carre, which has recently become my new obsession. (Here's the recipe I've been using to make the cocktail at home: Click Here .) To start, my wife and I split a salad. It consisted of shaved Brussels sprouts with farro , bacon, and Parme...

I suppose we should have read the reviews more closely. We knew that Malibu Seafood was a fish market that also sold meals. But we thought it was a sit down restaurant. So when we arrived for a late lunch and saw a line out the door, we wondered if we'd ever get seated.  I dropped off my wife to get in line while I parked the car. When I got back to her, she had discovered that in fact, it is not a sit down restaurant. Rather, you place your order at a counter and receive a pager which notifies you when the food is ready. Then you pick up your tray, find a picnic table and eat.  So, other than that unexpected discovery, we had a very enjoyable lunch. As I noted already, we were surprised by the long line when we arrived at about 1:30 for lunch. Turns out that a film crew was shooting a commercial nearby, and they had arrived just before us for their lunch break. Still, reading other online reviews, apparently it's fairly typical to wait in line at Malibu Seafood. B...

I doubt that headline will cause anyone at Hertz HQ to do cartwheels. I only end up renting a car once or twice a year. But after another great experience with the company in March, I decided to write a blog post about it. National used to be my preferred car rental agency. Before I retired, Land O'Lakes had a corporate agreement with National. I had an Emerald Club loyalty card through the company, and it was convenient to also use it for personal travel. I still have an Emerald Club membership. I just haven't used it since retiring in 2013. My first experience with Hertz came in 2014 as my wife and I planned a trip to Italy. For some reason (I can't really remember why) I was dissatisfied with the choices available from National. So I decided to look around. Hertz had the best options available to me at the time, so I decided to book through them. We had a great experience renting the car in Italy. In order to facilitate the rental, I installed the Hertz iPhone app....

When my wife and I planned our California vacation in March, we considered how to break up the drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco. I suppose we could have done it in one day. But there was no need to hurry (it was a vacation after all) and there are plenty of things to see and do in the nearly 400 miles between the two cities. I’d always been curious about the Paso Robles wine region. We have friends who recommended it as did some of my former associates at Land O’Lakes . Our hotel was the Paso Robles Inn, located right on the town square and easy walking distance to several restaurants. A friend had recommended Il Cortile for excellent Italian cooking. But when we called for a reservation, we learned that Il Cortile is closed on Tuesdays. However, they recommended La Cosecha , also right on the town square and owned by the same chef. We enjoy good Spanish and Latin food, so it was an easy decision to give it a try. I’m glad we did. It was delicious, relaxing, and very enjoy...

In March, my wife and I spent 8 days in California. It was kind of an ambitious trip. We covered a lot of ground, starting in Los Angeles, then to the Paso Robles wine country, ending in San Francisco. It was a busy trip. But probably because we’ve traveled to California many times in our married life, we had things pretty well planned out. At least part of it was the weather. California’s climactic misfortune – an extended drought – meant that we had generally gorgeous weather the whole time. I’ll post more details about some of the restaurants we visited. But here’s an overview of the trip. Los Angeles: Like our trip last year , we started in Los Angeles where I had a board meeting for Mazon, the anti-hunger advocacy organization that I serve on. We stayed again at the Hotel Palomar near the UCLA campus. I’ve said it before, I’m a big fan of Kimpton Hotels. But after this second stay, I’m tempted to say that the Palomar is my favorite of all. It certainly is an ideal location. I...