Indiana: Michigan City – El Cantarito

El Cantarito: Michigan City

336 Dunes Plaza, Michigan City, IN 46360

An unassuming store front in a strip mall conceals our favorite Mexican restaurant, El Cantarito. We have a date night every Tuesday and this is one of our go-to spots for our date night meal. The atmosphere includes fin murals on the walls with a nice mix of booths and tables. We almost always request a booth and have never had to wait for one, even when the restaurant is busy.

Tonight I ordered my favorite, Carne Asada, cooked as rare as possible. One of the problems I often have with this dish is that it often tastes as if it’s been seasoned with beef bullion. This NOT the case at El Cantarito. Their Carne Asada has the most amazing, fresh flavor I’ve ever had and I have trouble remembering that I should take half of it home for the next day. There is a lot of food included with the meal and it makes great leftovers. Tonight the flavor was just slightly lacking its usual intensity and I found it a bit easier to save half for later. My fiancé also enjoys the Carne Asada (although he didn’t have it tonight) because there is no dairy included on the plate, so he doesn’t have to mention his allergy when ordering. The other thing I appreciate about the Carne Asada here is that when I order it rare, it actually arrives rare, which is not easy to do with such a thin cut of meat. I also appreciate the accompaniment of real beans instead of the typical refried beans. The texture of whole beans pairs a little better with the other ingredients when building the tortilla.

Tonight my fiancé ordered a favorite, the Chicken Fajitas. While the fajitas here don’t normally come with cheese or sour cream, he does still have to mention “no dairy” because they do come with refried beans, which are typically topped with a sprinkling of queso blanco, white cheese.  He must have been very hungry tonight because he usually has some leftovers to bring home too, but tonight he finished the whole dish. He said the flavor was really good and everything tasted fresh. He didn’t want to ruin it with reheating.

We have long loved El Cantarito and this visit didn’t change that one bit. We will likely be back again at least once within the month. Perhaps I’ll use that opportunity to review one of my other favorite dishes.

 

 

Indiana: Michigan City – Hokkaido

HOKKAIDO: MICHIGAN CITY

725 Franklin St, Michigan City, Indiana

It was the first Friday of September for this visit and first Fridays in downtown Michigan City are busy. Tonight was no exception and Hokkaido was very busy as well. We waited quite a while for everything from being seated, to getting our food, to getting the check. Since we weren’t in a hurry, this pace was fine for us. We ordered teriyaki chicken as an entrée, miso soup, and three sushi rolls to start… ice mountain, tara, and tempura shrimp. Our teriyaki chicken came out well before our sushi. The sushi chefs were very busy, so it was understandable, but usually we prefer to eat the sushi first.

• The miso soup arrived first and my fiancé found it to be a bit saltier than usual.
• The teriyaki chicken (above) was well prepared, appropriately sauced, and served on a sizzling hot platter that continued to caramelize the bed of onions as we dug in. It was very good.
• The sushi arrived. just as we were finishing the chicken. These were 3 rolls we had not tried before and we looked forward to the new flavors.
  • The tara roll (left) contains tempura shrimp and is topped with rare beef and caviar. It is very spicy, but the surf and turf combination in sushi gives a unique, smoky, savory taste and we really enjoyed the new flavors.
  • The ice mountain roll (middle) was a request by my fiancé and I have to confess I didn’t pay much attention to what was in it. It was covered in a jalapeño sauce and looked to be topped with a piece of white fish. I tried one piece and although it was not as spicy as the tara roll, I didn’t particularly enjoy the flavor of jalapeño on my sushi. My fiancé was quite happy to have the rest of the roll to himself.
  • The shrimp tempura roll (right) is one of the basic rolls and includes shrimp and cucumber. It was a nice cooling roll after the spicy tara roll and I really like the tempura crunch.

Hokkaido is within walking distance for us and one of our go-to spots for a quick and tasty Japanese meal. Tonight may not have been as quick as we are used to, but the food was still delicious and we had a good evening.

2019 Road Trip – Day 9: Cleveland

We started our last day on the road with a great complimentary breakfast at our hotel. The Residence Inn by Marriot in Mentor, OH was a fantastic place to stay and we would have liked to spend more time there.

CUYAHOGA VALLEY NATIONAL PARK

Our first excursion in the Cleveland area was to visit Ohio’s only National Park, Cuyahoga Valley National Park, which is about a 30 minute drive south of the city. This National Park offers free admission, so it was right in our budget. We only wanted to spend a couple hours there, so we headed to the Boston Store Visitors Center to ask what we absolutely shouldn’t miss. I recommend doing this first because there are 125 miles of trails and you could easily spend a week or two seeing it all. Our guide told us to focus our energy on the Ledges trail and it was the perfect morning hike for us.

First we went to see the Ledges Overlook. The rock formations were beautiful and the view over the Ohio countryside was fantastic.

Next we doubled back through the parking lot and headed down the trail towards the Ice Box Cave. The cave itself was closed to protect the bats, but the trail took us through an amazing labyrinth of moss covered rock formations that glowed like the Emerald City in Oz when the sun hit them just right. This was an easy hike, but does have quite a few stairs at the end, so be prepared. My knees managed to hold up ok.

WEST SIDE MARKET

By the time we found our way back to the parking lot, we were ready for lunch. In the Cleveland area, one of the coolest places to go for lunch is the West Side Market. We had a great time walking around the market and picking up small bites from various vendors for lunch. I stuck to a Parisian themed lunch of savory crepe and macaroons and enjoyed every bite. We took our epicurean treasures outside to an area of tables across the street. Note that you can park in the market parking lot free for 90 minutes, but after that it is $1/hour. Our market adventure cost us $1 + food.

We left the market stuffed and satisfied and started making our was home. We made a quick stop in Angola, IN for dinner at Applebees along the way, but otherwise drove straight through. It was getting late in the day and we wanted to get home before midnight. We arrived home at 9:30 and were unpacked and in bed by 10:30 after a thoroughly enjoyable vacation.

Our final stats for the 2019 Road Trip:

• Elapsed time: 9 days, 8 nights
• States visited: 6 (Connecticut, Indiana, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania)
• Major Cities visited: 2 (Cleveland, Buffalo, Salem, Boston, New York, Allentown, Pittsburgh)
• Miles driven: 2,590
• Steps taken: 85,536 (I had good step days and then days we were mostly in the car where I only got around 4,000. The overall average was 9,504 steps/day… not bad.)
• Attractions/Sites visited: over 20+
• National Park Sites Visited: 7
• State Parks Sites Visited: 5
• Hard Rock Shot Glasses added to collection: 4 (Boston, Connecticut, Bronx NYC, Pittsburgh – we also visited Niagara Falls HRC but we already have a glass from there)
• Budget: $2200 ($2199.47 actually spent)

2019 Road Trip – Day 1: Harrison Lake State Park, Presque Isle State Park, Niagara Falls State Park

It’s that time of year again when we hit the road on a new adventure. This year, we’re road tripping to Massachusetts. We’ll take two days to get there and three days to get back, leaving us with 4 full days in the Boston area.

HARRISON LAKE STATE PARK

We hit the road in Michigan City, IN early this morning, despite a short night sleep and needed a little extra caffeine boost to get us going. If you’ve followed my other road trips, you know that I prefer stretching my legs at points of interest rather than at roadside rest stops. Our first leg stretch of a long travel day was at Harrison Lake State Park, just off the turnpike in Ohio. All state parks in Ohio (and many throughout the US) are free to enter, so they make a great place to get out and take in some natural views while stretching those leg muscles. Harrison Lake SP was a perfect place for just that. We took a little walk, looked at the lake, and got back on the road within 30 minutes.

PRESQUE ISLE STATE PARK

By the time we hit our next leg stretch spot, we were out of Ohio and into Pennsylvania. Presque Isle State Park is it’s own island off the coast of Erie, PA and was an opportunity for us to get up close and personal with Lake Erie. During our 2018 Road Trip, we visited three of the five Great Lakes and we’ll get to the other two on this trip, starting today. Presque Isle SP is also free to enter, but would be quite a lovely place to rent a bike for an afternoon. It was a blustery and chilly day for August, so we drove around the whole park, but didn’t spend a lot of time actually on the beach. Just as well, because we only had 1/2 hour scheduled before we needed to get back on the road in order to stick to our schedule.

NIAGARA FALLS STATE PARK

Our final destination of the evening was Niagara Falls State Park in New York. This has been something I’ve always wanted to see, but my fiancé already saw it 20+ years ago, so I didn’t think it would make it on our agenda. Fortunately, it is almost exactly halfway between our home and Boston, so it was a logical place to spend our first night. We decided to make it just an hour visit this trip and come back for a more extended visit on the Canadian side at another time. The Falls are beautiful and we arrived about an hour before sunset, so the sky had that lovely afternoon glow… perfect for pictures! An hour was enough time to visit both falls and take, according to my fiancé, “a million pictures” at each. Make sure to accompany that previous sentence with an overly emphasized eye roll for the proper effect. Obviously we both enjoy different aspects of our journeys together and that is ok.

HARD ROCK CAFE NIAGARA FALLS

My fiancé collects Hard Rock shot glasses, as you may remember from an earlier post. He already has one from his last visit to Niagara Falls, but we visited the Hard Rock Cafe in Niagara Falls anyway because we were starving and he wasn’t in the mood for Indian food, which is in abundance around the Falls.

We finished off the night by finding a cheap Budget Inn outside Buffalo to crash at for the evening. It was cheap, clean and the staff was nice. It wasn’t somewhere I’d make a point to revisit, but it suited it’s purpose and I wouldn’t be sad to find myself spending a night there again on a future road trip.  They also had really strong coffee in the morning, which I greatly appreciate.

 

Indiana: Michigan City – Sake Asian Fusion

Sake Asian Fusion: Michigan City

4057 s Franklin St, Michigan City, IN 46360

There is a new restaurant in Michigan City, so of course we have to give it a try. I really enjoy Asian foods: sushi, Japanese, Thai and Chinese. As promised by their name, Sake Asian Fusion has a nice mix of various Asian cuisine. My fiancé’s favorite Asian food is egg drop soup, but he rarely finds places that make it really well, so whenever there is a new Asian restaurant, that is what he’s most anxious to try. Our visit to Sake Asian Fusion was on the second day they were open. The staff was still a little nervous, but extremely friendly. The décor was great… hard to tell that it had recently been a Mexican restaurant. Cloth napkins and a finer dinging atmosphere make this place seem fancier than your bill will reflect.

My fiancé started with the Egg Drop Soup, which he said was fantastic. It had a good thickness and was not too salty; something he says is a common problem.

I’m not a big fan of egg drop soup myself, so I waited for our sushi to arrive to begin my meal. We usually order three sushi rolls. Tonight we combined a couple favorites with a roll we hadn’t tried before. The presentation was lovely and the naturally colored ginger was a nice touch.

• Alaskan Roll (left) – we often add an Alaska roll to our sushi order because it’s a cheap but tasty roll. The fresh salmon and avocado combination is one of favorites. This was a good an Alaskan roll as anywhere we’ve had.
• Dragon Roll (center) – I usually like to add at least one special roll to our order and tonight it was the Dragon Roll: shrimp tempura and cucumber, topped with eel, avocado and eel sauce.  The proportions of everything were spot on in this roll so that no one flavor or texture overpowered the others.
• Eel Avocado Roll (right) – Tonight I chose our third roll from the less-expensive classic section. I’ve not ordered an Eel Avocado roll yet with my fiance. One of the reasons I chose it was because he enjoys the eel sauce and I’d hoped it would have that on top… it did! This little roll packed a nice punch for the price.

Our entrée for the evening was a childhood favorite that I have also never ordered for my fiance before, Mongolian Beef. I thought he might like to try something a little different for a change and I was craving the sweetness of the dish. The Mongolian beef came on a bed of rice noodles and also a side of rice. The dish has good, but not overpowering flavor and the ratio of sauce to the rest of the dish was excellent. There was still enough sauce to combine when it was put over rice, but nor so much that it was dripping all over the place. My fiancé was surprised at how sweet Mongolian Beef is, but he also enjoyed the flavors and was happy to have tried something new.

Our overall impression of Sake Asian Fusion was great. We enjoyed everything about our dining experience from start to finish and will definitely be back. In fact, my fiance is already plotting his next order of egg drop soup.