Fine Dining

The Traveling Jeans have safely made it to the Texas Hill Country. After arriving in Bastrop on Sunday evening, we had reservations for dinner at the Hyatt Lost Pines Resort & Spa in the fancy restaurant -- Stories Fine Dining Establishment. Exquisite! Very expensive, too, but worth it for a truly memorable experience.

Dinner began with a tiny fresh tuna appetizer and followed with wonderful green salad and amazing breads. We had European style butter topped with cayenne pepper & olive oil and also a delicious 1015 onion relish with the bread. I ordered iced tea and got a tiny pitcher of warm simple syrup to sweeten my tea. I had the duck which came with a fig conserve and asparagus and sweet potato hash. Wow. Who knew I like duck? The entree was white duck meat and included in the hash was dark duck meat. CT had the lobster with corn chutney, bacon, and avocado. FD and JH had the duck like I did. Dessert was a work of art. I had chocolate mousse with blood orange sorbet. JH had the same while FD had cabernet and dried cherry homemade ice cream. CT tried the mango torte with pomegranate sorbet. That was kind of like mango cobbler.

The Jeans never miss a meal --- but we usually don't dine in such fancy establishments. It makes a wonderful memory to do something special every now and then though. There were four chefs in the open kitchen that we could watch. You would have thought we were watching the Food Network live! One of the chefs came out to talk to us about our dinner. Yum just doesn't describe how good that meal was.

Somehow even though we stuffed ourselves last night, a new day dawned and we were hungry again! As we traveled from Bastrop to Fredericksburg, we stopped in the quaint town of Wimberley which is similar to Salado. Lots of little shops, art galleries, etc. We had some of the best sweet potato fries EVER at the Wimberley Cafe. They were served with chipotle ranch dipping sauce. We all shared an order --- but wished we had each just gotten our own basket of fries and not ordered anything else. OINK.

The week promises many more culinary experiences. After all, there is Cracker Barrel not too far away!