Richmond Folk Festival - If You Haven't Attended, Go Today!

Great music.

Andes Manta is particularly incredible.

The Richmond Folk Festival is free and runs until 6 PM today.

Italian Festival

Photos from the Itailian Festival held at RIR.

A cloudy and windy day, but the rain held off.

Hazelnut gelato...Yummy!

This lodge always has my favorite Italian dessert, sfogliatelle. It's a pastry filled with orange-flavored ricotta (very cheesecake-like) and surrounded by many layers of pastry dough. It has to take an incredible amount of time and effort to make. I've only been able to find them at the Italian festival. This is what keeps me coming back.

Garlic knots  and penne alla vodka from Gino's.

A light red table wine.

Fried mozzarella, calamari, and meatballs with a basil tomato sauce from Italian Kitchen. The meatballs were very good.

A petting zoo. This little show off was extremely cute.

Very nice limoncello. We were glad we had walked to the festival.

2 Street

Last weekend we thoroughly enjoyed the 2 Street Festival. We had jerk chicken and fries from Tropical Soul Cafe.

and then scarfed up the best rum cake from Rumtastic (this gal will also be at the Folk Festival this weekend!)

We strolled around

and settled down at the Richmond Jazz Society tent to listen to Robbie Cunningham and Joye B Moore.

Here a few more random pics.

What a great day and great music! We look forward to returning next year.

It's Not Too Late to Shop at SOJ

Still another month before the South of the James Market closes for Winter, and the produce is still plentiful.

If you have photos of any of the local markets, post them to the flickr group.

Mai Sushi

Even though Mai Sushi has graced The Village Shopping Center for years, we had never been. Nice set up with the usual list of rolls. Hubby ordered a shrimp tempura roll and a volcano roll with tuna and crab. The volcano was presented complete with flaming carrots.

I had a yellowtail roll (I really like yellowtail tuna - go figure) and a village roll consisting of shrimp tempura and spicy tuna.

What really made this place special was that some of the rolls (including my village roll) included seaweed salad in the roll instead of the ubiquitious cucumber. Loved it! I detest cucumber and I enjoy seaweed salad.

Not much of a wine selection and since it was a bit on the coolish side, we drank hot tea. But they did have sparkling sake...and next time, we will have to try it.

The Cellar Door

On Friday we had lunch at The Cellar Door.

Located at 1600 Monument Avenue, we smiled at the sandwich board quote.

We liked the bright interior.

We marveled that no one was here eating lunch.

For lunch (since it was a gorgeous day and we both were not at work) we ordered a botlle of 2007 Claar Cellars Cabernet-Merlot from the Columbia Valley in Washington State.

Our waitress related that she had not opened a bottle of vino in quite some time, but she handled the task in fine fashion. And the wine was yummy, yummy! And only $27.

To eat we ordered a 1/4 Peruvian chicken with jicama "fries"

Manchester chicken sandwich with regular fries and and order of corn salad

Everything was tasty. The chicken was a bit smaller than expected. The 1/4 was a leg and part of the back. The spicy dipping sauce, however, was awesome. The jicama "fries" sounded intriguing and I asked our waitress about them. Her description of the jicama having a bit of an apple consistency was spot on and she also told us they were sliced to look like fries. But even though I was acquainted with jicama, she did not say that the "fries" were served cold (or raw) and when I picked up the first one, I did a double-take. I should have known, but our waitress could have been more explicit, too. They were good, but I was shaken up a bit.

The chicken in the Manchester was sliced very thin. The tomato was bigger (hubby raved about the how good the tomato was). He really liked the bread - very crunchy on the outside, but almost cloud-like on the inside. Very impressive. The corn salad had corn cut right off the cob. Very nice.

We had mixed feelings eating here. We liked it and it if were in our neighborhood, we would visit occasionally. We weren't sure if our friends would like it (partly due to the smallish portions). We took the place to be more of a local hangout where you can enjoy the $1 PBR specials and the $3 Powers Whiskey and Guinness hour. One more note - if you are a vegetarian, consider trying this place. There were a number of vegetarian options on the menu.