Rio Tacos and Tequila

 

I've been wanting to try Rio Taco and Tequila for a while and this past week when we had no events for work seemed like the perfect opportunity to head downtown and check it out! I love Mexican food, and I love happy hour deals, so let's dive into the good stuff!

One of the best parts about happy hour at Rio is that it lasts until 7pm. By the time you leave work at 5 and head somewhere for happy hour, that extra hour comes in pretty handy to make sure you have maximum deals. During happy hour, the frozen margaritas are $5 and Mexican beers are $3. They also have a selection of $5 appetizers. 

After they brought the chips and salsa to the table, we started with a round of the margaritas and the happy hour sized queso. The queso had a good flavor, which I'm guessing was from the hatch chilis. My friend also ordered a happy hour quac for herself, since I don't like avocados. (I know! Unpopular opinion, but I think avocados are gross.) The margaritas were refreshing since it was pretty humid outside and a little on the strong side. 

Once we had the dips out of the way in the tasting our way through happy hour adventure, it was time to move on to the $5 apps. One thing I will say, is that you do get what you pay for. While the food is pretty good, you're only going to get $5 worth of it. Which is fine, because you can either order a bunch of these to share, like we did, or you can order one (or two...) for yourself and be plenty full from them. I'll go through these appetizers from my least favorite to favorite. I'm not saying that the first one I mention isn't good, it very much is, but it would not be my first choice if you said I could only pick one. 

Chicken Taquitos 

First up, chicken taquitos. Look, I love chicken taquitos, but there wasn't really anything special about these. They taste like your average chicken taquito. My recommendation is to order one of the happy hour quesos to dip them in, because that will help take them to the next level. 

Jalapeno Poppers

I've been scouring the menu trying to figure out what these jalapeno poppers are stuffed with and what exactly is the sauce they come with. I cannot find this item on the menu. I'm hoping that these become more of a staple because they are very close to being my favorite of the happy hour apps. Everything about them is delicious. We ended up ordering a second order because we all wanted more. I know they will probably never read this, but this is my plea to Rio to make these a permanent menu item if they are not already. 

Pork Empanadas

I saw these on the menu and knew that when I went, I was going to get them. I love empanadas, and wish more Mexican places in the city had them on the menu. These lovely little pillows of dough are stuffed with slow cooked shredded pork and shredded cheese, and then drizzled with a jalapeno lime crema. 😊😋 I would just like to buy a bottle of that crema to bring home and drizzle on everything. The empanadas were packed with filling and we ordered multiple rounds of them. I could easily eat these for a meal and leave happy. 

Have you been to Rio for happy hour? What are your favorite happy hours that I need to try? Let me know!

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Reve Coffee Lab & Bistro Byronz

 

My friend Lauren and I were both huge fans of Reve Coffee Lab when it was in White Star Market (RIP...miss that place, but not the limited parking it had) and were both pretty excited that they found a permanent home in Baton Rouge. The kind of sucky part about it, is that they did not too long before Lauren was set to move to Nebraska to start her new life with her soon to be hubby. So we decided that our last outing in Baton Rouge would be to Reve. We also invited the whole crew, after all, we may not have had mules but it was a Monday!

Reve has a really clean and open layout and aesthetic and there's also a cute outdoor seating area as well. Since we had a larger group, we opted to sit outside since we felt we might get a little loud and didn't want to disturb anyone who may be trying to enjoy the relaxing atmosphere of a coffee shop. After debating over some of their seasonal beverages (the Malty Gras Mambo sounded amazing!), I decided to just go with a cafe au lait. I opted out of getting a pastry because I felt the night might take us to one of the restaurants that were within walking distance. For the 21+ crowd, Reve also operates as a bar and has happy hour specials. 

Coffee or Margarita? Why not both?

As we finished our drinks, Lauren settled on Bistro Byronz for the 3 amigos sticking around for dinner. This was my first experience at Bistro Byronz, and will admit that I was a little overwhelmed by the menu. I couldn't really decide what I wanted, as I wasn't overly hungry. (Shocking to anyone who knows me!) I was planning to just get a cup of the seafood and corn bisque but the three cheese chips kept calling my name, so I had to get both. 

   

While the bisque was delicious, and I wished I had ordered a bowl to have some to bring for lunch to work the next day, those three cheese chips are the real star of the evening. Do I know what types of cheeses were on those chips? Nope. Do I need to know? Nope. Just trust me that they are delicious, and FULL of cheese and they may very well be the only thing I ever order from Bistro Byronz for all of eternity. 🤷

What's a restaurant in the area that you think is a staple that I need to try if I haven't? Most of my friends were shocked that I hadn't tried Bistro Byronz, and I'm sure there's plenty more out there that I need to check out! Help me get unstuck from my rut and pass on your suggestions in the comments. 

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Boru Ramen & Sweet Society

 

Hungry Jr LOVES Asian cuisine and has been begging me to take her to Boru Ramen and Sweet Society ever since they opened. It just so happened that Yelp did a community wide perk where anyone could try these restaurants for free, so I decided to take advantage and try these places out with kiddo. 

First on the agenda was a nice perk from Boru Ramen. You could pick between either the Sugoi Fries or a small Chicken Karaage. I went with the fries, but also ordered a large Chicken Karaage for us to split. Since it was a nice day, I decided it would be fun for us to get the food to go and eat at some of the tables outside. 

The face of someone who enjoys the Yelp perks. 

I was not expecting an appetizer of fries to be nearly that large. I pushed my way to finish them because they were so good! They were crispy and had a little bit of heat to them, and I know that they will be a guaranteed order for when we go back. The chicken was flavorful and was in huge chunks. Both of these appetizers were plenty for kiddo and I to share as a meal before heading to Sweet Society for dessert. 

          

Sweet Society was definitely the perfect end to the meal! The woman who greeted us was super friendly and answered all of the questions that kiddo had related to the cats on the wall and her questions about the menu. We ordered the Taiyaki pocket stuffed with Nutella (which was the perk!) for me, and kiddo got a Taiyaki pocket stuffed with Nutella and some ice cream topped with Fruity Pebbles. The woman taking our order also gave kiddo a special treat - a strawberry candy that they had to celebrate the recent strawberry season in Japan. There were two in the packet, so we shared and it was delicious. 

Taiyaki Pocket stuffed with Nutella

They make the Taiyaki pockets, which are kind of similar to waffle cones shaped like a fish as you order them, so it was hot and the Nutella was melty and essentially, I could have eaten about 3 of them. However, I restrained myself from going to buy more and just helped kiddo with her ice cream a little bit. 

  

Clearly, that's the face of someone who enjoys going on these outings and who really enjoys these Yelp perks. I also really enjoyed tonight's outing. I have a list of things I want to try and each of these restaurants now and I really wish we lived closer so I could make those Taiyaki pockets a more common occurrence in my life. 

Have you been to check these places out yet? If so, what's something you've had that I need to try? 

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A Few of My Favorite Eats

 

🎵 Pizza and sushi and some pierogies, these are a few of my favorite things 🎵 This past week, I ate something here in Baton Rouge that clearly could be in the top 5 things I've ever eaten. It got me thinking, what else would be in my top 5? So for your enjoyment, here are the most recent-ish top 5 things I've eaten, in no particular order. 

Surf & Turf Sushi - Memphis Mac's/Soji Collab - Baton Rouge, LA

I missed the last time that Memphis Mac's and Soji did a collab, so I made sure to get my order in this past week! While I wanted to order everything, I settled on the Surf and Turf sushi because it would make a great appetizer to the homemade pho I was having for dinner. The sushi roll had a little bit of everything - Tempura Shrimp, Smoked Brisket, Kani, Avocado, Spicy Tuna, and Hoisin BBQ sauce. I did not expect to love this as much as I did. The flavor of the brisket was smoky and delicious. All of the flavors worked so well together, and I would love to be able to get this permanently at either restaurant. 

Pepperoni Pizza, Juliana's Pizza - Brooklyn, NY

When I went to New York for a conference, while other attendees were going to the 9/11 Memorial, Statue of Liberty or Central Park, I went on a pizza tour. While Juliana's was not on the tour, I got to hear the full history of the Grimaldi's/Juliana's story. Long story short, Juliana's is run by the Grimaldi's and after they sold their restaurant and the quality went down, they opened up Juliana's right next to Grimaldi's in Brooklyn. I love a good rivalry so of course I had to go check it out. I was lucky enough to get to sit at the pizza bar and watch them make the pizzas. I prefer a pan pizza, but this pizza is the best pizza I've ever eaten. I ate an entire 16 inch in one sitting and have no regrets. 🙈🤷

Gainesville & South Carolina Dogs - Greenville, SC

The Bon Secour Wellness Arena did specialty hot dogs for each of the teams in the SEC Women's Basketball tournament and these were the two best, in my opinion. In the back, the Gainesville Dog had lettuce, tomato, fried gator bites and a spicy remoulade sauce. In the front, the South Carolina Dog had peach coleslaw, red peppers, onion strings and chipotle mayo. Both were amazing and they both had things I would NEVER consider putting on a hot dog. I hope they bring these back every year because it was a culinary highlight of my trip, and if I'm making that statement for concession food, you know it was good. 

Street Corn Fritters, Willy Taco - Greenville, SC

These corn fritters were fabulous, and we ended up ordering a second helping because my friend and I wanted more. They came with queso blanco, chipotle ranch, shaved jalapenos, pico and qeuso fresco. The fritters were fried perfectly, crispy on the outside while not being hard on the inside. The corn with the queso, chipotle ranch and the jalapenos had an amazing flavor and I can't wait to get back to Greenville to get another order or two of these. 

Pierogies, Surley Brewing - Minneapolis, MN

Who knew you could get something that looked and tasted so upscale at a brewery? These pierogies were filled with potatoes and gruyere cheese with a horseradish creme fraiche. SO good and it has made me hungry for quality pierogies and I have yet to find any as good as these in the area. If you know where I can find some, please let me know! 

Alright, I have a growing list of local places to share with you, but since I had that amazing surf and turf sushi, I figured I would take y'all down a little delicious memory lane. What are some of the best things you've eaten? Let me know, so I can check them out!

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Lit Pizza & More - Kiddo and Mommy Date

 

I let kiddo pick where she wanted to go for a night out and she surprised me when she said she wanted to go to Lit Pizza. But not just any Lit Pizza, the one on Bluebonnet "so we can then go get cookies after". That's some pretty sound reasoning that I can't argue with. 

Lit is one of kiddo's favorite pizza places. She likes to say that Lit can out-pizza the Hut. I think she likes it because when we go to Lit, she can get her own pizza. Kiddo is a huge fan of lots of veggies that I'm not, while I'm one to go for all the peppers - bell peppers, banana peppers, jalapeno peppers ... that's the extent of the veggies I want on my pizza. I'll also take pineapple on my pizza most days. I know this is touchy subject for everyone, and some of you may never read this blog again, but it's a risk I'm willing to take as I'm not ashamed of my topping preferences. 

Pepperoni, pineapple, all the peppers 

After we finished our pizzas, it was time to walk to get some dessert. I told kiddo that I had a pretty crazy idea while we were eating. Instead of choosing between ice cream or cookies (since this is a Marble Slab/Great American Cookie Company combo), how about we get both? Her eyes lit up, and so did mine. Is there any better combo than cookies and ice cream? Oh yea, just one ... cookie cake and ice cream. 

Dinner dates with kiddo are always a fun time. Sometimes we try new restaurants, and sometimes we go to our beloved favorites and don't put limits on ourselves. My stomach was beyond full when we got home, but I'm already looking forward to the next trip when I just go for it and get ice cream and cookies after a pizza loaded with all my fav toppings. 

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Hive Pizza

 

It may not be 2020 any more, but I'm bringing the graphic back to talk about a place that I was stalking towards the end of my 2020 Pizza Tour (which is why this blog exists!), Hive Pizza! Towards the end of 2020, there were murmurs of a few new pizza places set to open "soon" and I was grateful none of them did since I was dead set on finishing my goal of eating all the pizza in Baton Rouge in 2020. However, earlier this year, Hive Pizza finally opened! I did not dedicate songs to them on my social media like I did for Fat Boys, but I figured one pizza place ignoring my gestures of love was all my ego could handle. But let's get back to talking about Hive Pizza ...

Hive Pizza is a similar concept to what has been popping up a lot lately, what I like to refer to as the Subway of pizzas - create your own, assembly line style pizza that's popped in the oven at a super high heat to get the deliciousness out to the quickly. 

I had been talking this place up to kiddo, but since I do that with any new pizza place, she usually doesn't fall for my attempts to go as soon as one opens. However, she saw a reel on Instagram and HAD to go. 

Hive Pizza really plays up on the bee theme, and all of their specialty pizzas are named after bee related items (The Sting, Pesto Swarm, The Queen, etc.). I opted to go with The Worker (red sauce, mozzarella, pepperoni, meatballs with a hot honey drizzle) while kiddo opted to create her own. I wasn't sure how I would feel about honey on pizza. In my head, it didn't make sense. In my head, the honey would be too overpowering and too sweet. My head was very much wrong. While it did give the pizza a little bit of sweetness, it wasn't overpowering. I think it really added an additional flavor profile that I never realized I needed on a pizza before. 

You've probably noticed the cookie in the upper right hand corner of the picture above. If you hadn't, there's totally a rather large chocolate M&M cookie from Firth Cookies in that pic too! Y'all know I love me some Firth Cookies, so obviously I got one for kiddo and one for myself. However, I didn't realize that the cookies I had seen on their Instagram that were here weren't in the cute little box...but rather separate and you had to ask for it. S'more Cookie!

Yes, you read that correctly. You can get a s'more cookie that they will pop in the oven to get some char and melt on the marshmallow and some melt on the chocolate. Needless to say, I walked myself back up there and ordered us one of those as we were finishing our pizzas. I regret nothing. 

The cookie was better than I could have expected, and I guess my only regret is that I didn't get one for me AND one for kiddo. Something I'll remember for next time. 

Aside from the pizza and cookies, the staff was extremely friendly. Kiddo is autistic and it takes some time for her to process what people are saying, especially if she has a hard time understanding them with their masks on (I also sometimes have a hard time understanding people with their masks on) and they staff was very patient with her as she went through the line creating her pizza. As they were cleaning, the employees would stop and talk for a quick minute and really made us feel welcome. We really look forward to coming back here in the near future. And next time, I'll make sure to load up on cookies. 

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Burger IM - Kiddo & Mommy Date

 

Hello, friends! One thing that Hungry Jr. and I have tried to keep consistent is a monthly kiddo and mommy date night, that most of the time involves us either trying a new restaurant together, a new to kiddo restaurant, or kiddo's idea of the perfect dinner night. Also, if it can involve Pokémon Go in some way, kiddo doubles down and is all in. 

Last month's date revolved around the Pokémon Go Kanto Tour event. For her Valentine's Day present, I purchased both of us passes. Kiddo got to plan the whole day - we would start the first hour just easing into the game while playing at home (translation: someone didn't want to be up and out the door right for the 9am start time on Saturday, and it wasn't me since I'm usually up by 6:30 and ready to roll by 9am on weekends). The first stop outside of our house was LSU's campus for a couple of hours of catching and raiding. The next stop was lunch at Burger IM. 

We are 225 Best Eats deal fanatics in our house (more on this for a later post) and since I had been wanting to try Burger IM out, snatched the deal offer up when it came available. The highlight for kiddo on the Burger IM menu, was the cookie and cream milkshake. Neither of us thought to say "no whipped cream" for her milkshake, so the fact that she drank it like a trooper was a big win! The shakes were a lot larger than I thought would be, based on the pictures online, which is not a complaint when milkshakes are involved. But on to the feature of the restaurant, the burgers. 

The Trio

When I go to a restaurant for the first time, I have a very hard time deciding what to order. Order panic is definitely a real thing, and if you ever eat out with me, I have a tendency to gravitate toward anything with the word "sampler" in it because I want to try all the things. Which makes The Trio (or The Duo if you are not as hungry) the perfect choice! Instead of settling for one large burger, why not try three (or two) smaller burgers? 

Each slider in your order can be completely different. You obviously start with the protein and can choose from beef, lamb, grilled chicken, fried chicken, turkey, and 2 different plant based burgers. You can either get a regular bun, lettuce wrap or a gluten free bun.  Then you can mix and match the toppings to your liking. I went with the Trio for a couple of reasons. (1) Options, duh; and (2) Kiddo and I could share. Yes, she got a kids slider and fries, but one slider wasn't going to fill her up. So we each had 2 sliders and then split each others fries and onion rings. Because what's the point of going to a new place if you don't try as much as possible? 

For my trio I went with one beef slider that had just ketchup (which kiddo ended up eating), one grilled chicken with pepper jack cheese and jalapenos, and one fried chicken with mayo, swiss cheese and jalapenos. I normally don't pick onion rings over fries but wanted to try both and since kiddo was getting fries, it just made sense that I would get the onion rings. Don't let the size of the order deceive you, it may look small but it was still a lot of food. Especially when you're washing it down with a milkshake. 

This fueled us for the completion of our Pokémon Go journey at Forest Park before the milkshakes sent us both into a small food coma, but totally worth it! 

Stay tuned for our next adventure, I think it's going to come pretty soon! 

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Firth Cookies

 

Y'all, the home bakers here in Baton Rouge are legit. One of my new found favorites is Firth Cookies. Cookies are something I don't bake often, but love. Jenny doesn't just bake cookies, she bakes COOKIES. Cookie Monster would be obsessed with these. I ordered a box of 6 as my first order so that I could try every flavor that was offered. (Although I believe she is expanding to more from my Instagram stalking!) 

For reference, this box does not shut when you have 6 cookies. They are HUGE and super thick. Plus, they are loaded down with the chips and M&Ms. Honestly, a normal person would probably eat half a cookie in one sitting. I am not a normal person. I am a Cookie Monster and can eat more than one in a sitting and feel miserable later but with no regrets. 

This guy is probably my current favorite - PB2

I tried to sneakily add a slice of cookie cake to my order, but sadly that was not an option. However, I had the perfect occasion to order a cookie cake for a friend and get to sample it at the same time. One of my work bestie's last days is coming up here soon (like tomorrow) and she is moving away to be with her soon to be husband. She commented on how good the cookies looked, so I knew I needed to snag a cookie cake for her going away dinner! It came out fabulous, and I now want to just order a cookie cake for myself for no reason except to have a delicious and beautifully decorated cookie cake at arms reach. 

You can also get some of these delicious cookies for yourself, and your favorite not professional food blogger as a gift at www.firthcookies.com or stop by Hive Pizza on Siegan, a little bee told me there are some deliveries made there. And invite me, because y'all know this whole blog started out of my obsession for pizza! 

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