Brownie Points

Imagine my surprise to open up the Eugene Weekly and find that I got second place in the category of Eugene’s best blog.

Really, its an honor to be nominated- I’ll bake y’all a cake as soon as I get a chance! This pictured one is a Sweet Life cake made for the cover shot that displays cute little bits of Eugene. If you look closely, you can spot a tie dyed t-shirt on the bottom tier.

Now- on to the tasties: the Forkin’ Good category:

BEST ASIAN

• 1. Ring of Fire
• 2. Chao Pra Ya Thai Cuisine
• 3. Sweet Basil Thai Cuisine

BEST THAI

• 1. Sweet Basil Thai Cuisine
• 2. Tie: Chao Pra Ya Thai Cuisine & Ring of Fire
• 3. Ta Ra Rin Thai Cuisine

BEST BAKERY/SWEETS

• 1. Sweet Life Pâtisserie (lifetime achievement award too!)
• 2. Eugene City Bakery
• 3. Metropol Bakery
• I expect to see Hideaway Bakery giving numbers 2 and 3 a run for their money in next years placings.

BEST BAR FOOD

• 1. The Horsehead
• 2. Rennie’s Landing
• 3. Sam Bond’s Garage
• You can get crappy bar food anywhere in the world, except perhaps at Eugene’s Horsehead. Offering collard greens, cole slaw, catfish, cornbread and all the other staples of Southern cookin’, this joint rocks with lots of organic ingredients, a full line of hard liqs and pool tables. “It’s food you don’t usually find anywhere else,” bartender Tiffany Cortez says. “It fills your stomach up and helps maintain you throughout your day.” Or night, as the case may be.

BEST BBQ

• 1. Papa’s Soul Food Kitchen & Blues Joint
• 2. Hole in the Wall Barbecue
• 3. BBQ King

BEST BURRITOS

• 1. Burrito Boy
• 2. Burrito Amigos
• 3. Laughing Planet Café

BEST CAFÉ/COFFEEHOUSE

• 1. Allann Bros. Beanery
• 2. Full City Coffee Roasters
• 3. Espresso Roma
• Go to Allann Bros. 5th Avenue Beanery enough, and you’ll start to notice a few things. Like the regulars. There’s the bespectacled guy with his books, and the fellow with the long ponytail who’s been going there for at least a decade. (How do we know? ‘Cause we’ve been doing the same thing, of course.) You could make up stories for them, if you wanted — or you could just focus on yourself and your delicious coffee, quiche, bagel or sandwich. The Beanery has variety in spades, from the drinks to the clientele to the lunch options. There’s always a table, they don’t care if you sit for hours, they have wireless internet and you can almost always find the right section of whichever paper you like the best in the bin by the door.

BEST DOWNTOWN LUNCH

• 1. Café Zenon
• 2. The Broadway
• 3. Café Lucky Noodle
• A 25-year-old café in downtown Eugene! That’s called staying power. Credit the fine service that has always come in a white shirt and tie. Credit the exotic menu — Thai tiger’s tears salad, hirino souvlaki pork loin, izgara tavuk Turkish style chicken breast — with a fond nod to the old lunch favorite, Zenon chicken salad. Maybe most importantly, credit location, location, location and smart design. The café is freshly painted, a five-stool bar added and new lighting installed. The place is still noisy, but that might be calculated. Sit there in the middle of the traffic and chatter and enjoy the illusion that you’re in the center of a really big city.

BEST FOOD CART

• 1. Cart de Frisco
• 2. Alexander’s Great Falafel
• 3. One Bad Dawg
• Magically appearing at the plaza on Willamette and Broadway during lunch hour, Cart de Frisco is a godsend to the downtown hungry hordes. The vendor – known simply as the “Sandwich Man” – works from a cart no bigger than a small closet, dishing up three grilled chicken entrees: Frisco stick, Frisco sandwich and Frisco salad. All three feature a “special Frisco sauce” and friendly banter (which recently consisted of locating the whereabouts of the “Saw-playing Girl”). Saw Girl, if you’re reading this, call your parents. Or at least let the Sandwich Man know you’re OK. He worries.

BEST INTERNATIONAL/CONTINENTAL

• 1. Marché
• 2. Café Zenon
• 3. Tie: Adam’s Place & Café Lucky Noodle & Café Soriah

BEST MEXICAN/LATIN AMERICAN/CARIBBEAN

• 1. Red Agave
• 2. Chapala Mexican Restaurant
• 3. El Jarro Azul

BEST MEAL UNDER $7

• 1. Laughing Planet Café
• 2. Café Yumm!
• 3. Burrito Boy

BEST ITALIAN/GREEK/MIDDLE EASTERN

• 1. Beppe & Gianni’s Trattoria
• 2. Poppi’s Anatolia
• 3. Café Soriah

BEST NEW RESTAURANT

• 1. The Vintage
• 2. El Vaquero
• 3. Papa’s Soul Food Kitchen & Blues Joint
• Cheese fondue with apples. Dark chocolate fondue with strawberries and Rice Krispies squares for dipping. Funky signature cocktails like the lava rocks, with coconut rum and Pop Rocks on the rim instead of sugar. Savory crepes. Sweet crepes. Delicious appetizers, pastas and salads. Pizza with a twist. Beautiful vine-draped outdoor courtyard. Friendly service. ‘Nuff said.

BEST PIZZA

• 1. Pizza Research Institute
• 2. Pegasus Pizza
• 3. Mezza Luna Pizzeria
• We’ll never forget our first PRI slice. We just didn’t know what we were in for. Spinach, feta, kalamata olives, artichoke hearts … It’s like the pizza wizards at PRI manage to make every ingredient — even the ones we’d never seen on pizza before, like peaches — somehow taste even better than usual. And where else is a slice of pizza a whole meal in itself? We made the mistake, that first trip, of ordering a slice of cheese to split with our dining companion. Just in case we were still hungry. We weren’t.

BEST SERVER

• 1. Quinn O’Dell, Ring of Fire
• 2. Dawn Merrill, LaVelle Wine Bar & Bistro
• 3. Rayney Meisel, The Vintage
• Serving at Ring of Fire was Quinn O’Dell’s first restaurant job, one he has held for seven years. He’d like to run his own establishment someday, and he definitely prefers customer interaction to whisking sauces and scrubbing pots. “It’s excellent!” O’Dell said, after learning he was a finalist for best server. So after getting this glorious recognition, O’Dell must think he’s hot stuff, right? Naw, he’s much too modest for that. “It’s more like a confidence thing, just getting really confident in finding out what people want,” he said. “You can always learn better ways to take care of people.

BEST SPECIAL OCCASION/FINE DINING

• 1. Café Soriah
• 2. Marché
• 3. Adam’s Place

BEST VEGETARIAN OPTIONS

• 1. Laughing Planet Café
• 2. Lotus Garden
• 3. Café Yumm

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