May 1, 2012 - Even though it has been cold out, I still made time to venture into Boston, with my lovely amiga Nicole, for some girl time. One of our many must-do’s when we are in town is stopping by Mike’s Pastry to get some cannoli, but this time we decided to try somewhere new. We wandered into Quincy Market and found this quaint pastry shop almost at the end of the building that had a wide variety of pastries to pick from. I ended up going with a chocolate chip muffin, while Nicole went with a cannoli.

The muffin was tasty, yet dry. The chocolate in it had a nice flavor, but the breading of the muffin was way too dry, I couldn’t enjoy it without something to drink. Nicole said her cannoli was alright, not as good as Mike’s. Right after we took these pictures, Nicole had a hot chocolate that was spilled everywhere, so the focus on eating the pastries was skewed for a few minutes.

All in all, I’d say I wouldn’t visit again, I’d stick with my favorite of Mike’s Pastry. 

March 12, 2012- Nicole and I were sitting at her house bored and hungry, so we took a trip to this place called the Meadow Brook Restaurant. She had heard some good things about it from her mother, and was thinking about employment there, so we went to check it out. We are so glad that we did, because this has been one of my favorite places to eat so far in my travels as the Hungry Cupcake. Read on my friends…

We arrived at the restaurant, and from the outside, it looked like it was closed. We opened the door, walked down a small winding hallway, and were greeted by two hostesses. One sat us promptly, and we started looking over the menu. 

We chose to start with onion rings, which I am not usually a fan of, but thought I’d eat the crunchy batter off of them while we waited for our food. To our surprise, they were huge, and there were lots of them! We had so many of these onion rings, we did not get to finish them before our food came. We took about half the basket home for consumption later in the evening, which is always a good thing! While we waited on our food, we noticed that there were not that many people in the restaurant, and that it was huge in size, that they might do functions, or we wondered if their dinnertime was a big rush.

Our food finally showed up, just as good looking as the appetizer. Nicole ordered a crab cake sandwich, seen below,and I ordered a turkey salad wrap, sans tomatoes.The wrap had great flavor, with a cranberry mayo, lettuce, cheese, and of course the turkey. Both sandwiches came with steak fries and coleslaw, and both of us only ate about half of our meals. 

Overall, the restaurant was clean, the staff was friendly (a more older woman staff), and the food was great. The prices were cheap, and I didn’t end up using the bathroom, but I would definitely recommend this place to anyone in the area. 

Meadow Brook is located at 1486 Main Street in Hanson, MA. You can view their website here before you go if you’d like to see their menu. http://meadowbrookrestaurant.com/

If music be the food of love, play on.
William Shakespeare

March 5, 2012 - I was out with my mother for a drive and we passed by Joe’s Diner, and wondered what it was since we hadn’t seen it before. I have friends in Taunton and was surprised that I had never heard about it from them. There are reasons that I now know that I have not gone there before. Read along and find out.

We walked in and looked around, but staring at me was this old gentleman sitting at the counter. I know he meant well, but it scared me nonetheless. We walked toward a table to sit down and found the red seats were covered in red duct tape, plus the table was cramped anyway. We sat at another table in the sun, but the table had a little crumbs on it. The waitress came over and greeted us, and was about to set down our red crumpled paper place mats, and my mother asked her to wipe the table down. Her response? “Well, you could have sat at another table”…Excuse me??? We brushed that off and gave her our drink orders. Mind you, we didn’t have a menu at that point; when she came back, she asked if we needed a lunch menu, when we had already specified that we wanted lunch, and we had never been there before. 

We paroused the menu, and my mother knew what she wanted, but I was stuck between the Marinated chicken sandwich, and the Chicken fingers dinner plate. When I asked the waitress her recommendation, she stated “Well, if you want fried food, go with the chicken fingers, but if you want a sandwich, go with the marinated chicken sandwich”, to which I stated that she didn’t help me at all in my decision. I finally thought for a minute more and decided on the sandwich, and off she went to put our orders in.

The time we had to wait for our food wasn’t long, but just long enough for us to be able to observe the restaurant, and we are wishing now that we hadn’t. The floors were dirty, the lights are all uncovered, the ceiling fan and window blinds are covered in dust, the tables are falling apart, there are old dusty signs all over the place; I could keep going, but it would be redundant. To top it off, while we had just received our food, the waitress was cleaning tables with 409 and making us semi-choke on our food. This is apparently only a breakfast and lunch place, because it was just after 2:30, and they had closed for the day.

We were surprisingly ecstatic when our food arrived, because not only was it a small portion (trying to cut back), but it was great quality! My sandwich was small, cut in half, and whole white meat chicken, with a generous amount of lettuce, and a small amount of mayo, just how I like it (and I didn’t ask for it to be this way either!). My mother’s plate was just how she wanted it, so we embarked on our food journey.

After we finished our plates, we wanted to try some of their dessert pies. They offered chocolate creme, banana creme, and coconut creme pie slices. We waited for our waitress to stop her conversation with the manager/owner of the diner about her drinking habits, but the other waitress had to point out that we were ready for her. Instead of coming to our table, she yelled from across the car if we were all set, and we said yes. She finally came over and offered us dessert, in which we ordered our slices of pie. It wasn’t long and she was back with our dessert, which was also just as good as our lunches. While we were having our pies, she started sweeping under the tables near us, and we were turned off by that as well. 

By the time we were done with our desserts, there were only a few more patrons, and when I came out of the bathroom (which was surprisingly the cleanest part of the whole visit), there was no one left inside. We paid our tab and left, and got a quick goodbye, while she was vacuuming the floors, so we could barely hear her anyway. 

All in all, I don’t recommend this place until they clean up the interior of the restaurant, but the food is worth it, which honestly you could probably make at home.

Joe’s Diner is located near the center of Taunton, on Broadway, just a couple buildings away from the Taunton Trial Court.

Life is an onion and one cries while peeling it.  ~French Proverb

Feb. 23, 2012 - I was out in the Garden City area of Cranston, and as always I was hungry, so I decided to stop by Papa Razzi’s Italian Restaurant. Let me tell you, I will never go back. Let me explain…

I walked in and took a look at the menu, and I was taken aback right away by the prices. Looking around at the decor, I realized the prices matched the atmosphere, plus being in Garden City, it felt alright. I was seated and I picked lemonade for my drink. To my surprise, it was freshly squeezed, and brought to me in a wine glass with a glass of water to accompany it. 

Their signature bread sticks they start your meal off with.

So the lemonade and bread sticks is where the meal stops being so great. I get my pizza, and although I ordered their Piccante pizza (pepperoni, Italian sausage, tomato), they did not listen when I specified one side pepperoni ONLY. I was splitting the pizza with my partner, and he hates sausage. The size of the pizza was abysmal as well, I paid $12 and it was the size of a dinner plate.

Call me stingy, but I like having a large pizza for that amount of money. Regardless, the taste of the pizza was wonderful, but the meal was not filling, and it was around $20.

All in all, the waiter was not personable, the food was a lot smaller than I thought, especially being at other authentic Italian restaurants, and the other staff were acting very strange the majority of the time we were there. I do not forsee myself going back to Papa Razzi.

February 9, 2012 - I had always wanted to try this corner shop in downtown Attleboro, and I was finally brought to it by my friend Mark, whom said he knew someone who worked there. When we stopped outside of the shop, I was shocked. Like aforementioned, I had always wanted to try the place, so in we went.

I stared hungrily at the blue and white diner style board wondering what I was to eat for lunch. Mark had told me about getting a buy-one-get-one half off dinner deal, so I grazed the dinner menu. I eventually went with the lasagna, which came in a tomato sauce with a side of garlic bread. Take a look: 

The lasagna, as you can see, is layer upon layer of noodle with cheese in between and cheese on top. The bread was a wonderful touch on the side for when I was ready to soak up the sweet tomato sauce.

The shop just has a small storefront, and is on the corner of Park street, hence the name of the restaurant, just down the street from the center of Attleboro, one building over from the Attleboro arts museum. There is parking on the street across and on the left side of the establishment. After 3pm on weekdays, they do the buy one get one deal for dinners only, so pop in and get yourself a quick and tasty dinner!

*On a side note, thank you to those who answered me back in some of my messages. I am writing about visits I have previously visited. Until I can work magic with my camera, I only have a couple more left to get through, so bear with me. I will attempt to blow your mind with epic food pictures soon enough. Thank you for your contributions!

While on an adventurous trip to Boston with one of my best friends, we pondered for about an hour over where we would end up for breakfast after spending a fabulous night on the town. We woke up and searched online and eventually decided upon The Friendly Toast. Excited about the new place we were about to discover, we packed our bags, left the hotel, and set out on our excursion to find our newest conquest. What we found, needless to say, left us speechless, and here’s why:

When you walk into The Friendly Toast, you are thrown back into a simpler time. The restaurant has this vintage feel of sixties and seventies signs, memorabilia, tables, dishware, and even the waitresses and bus boys are dressed for the occasion. We were sat at our table only a foot or so away from the next table, which made me feel a little cramped. Some of the restaurant is wide open, other areas of the place the tables were really close together.

The menu was brought to us and was front to back. It boasted items ranging from pancakes and toast to salads and sandwiches. My friend and I had decided on breakfast, so we stuck with breakfast items. I chose the breakfast burrito, which has eggs (which I substituted for rice), salsa, black beans, cheddar cheese, an avocado lime sauce, and some cilantro sprinkled in, seen here with home fries on the side: The burrito was huge and with the home fries, was super filling. I am not a huge fan of tomato and onion, so I regret not asking to get rid of the salsa because it was saturated in the burrito, I could barely enjoy it. This is not the restaurants problem, but mine for being a little absent minded. Anyway, my friend ordered the Eggs Benedict with home fries on the side, and neither of us could finish our food, the portions were so huge. Here’s her plate: My friend also ordered hot tea with her food; it was so lovely in its own little pot with an adorable homestyle coffee cup. The tea was not in a bag, it was its own mix of herbs sitting in a strainer over the hot water.

The waitress was attentive, but when we needed to pay and leave she was nowhere to be found. She finally came and was quick to give us the check and clean the table, which was refreshing. The bathroom door was right next to us, but what was nice was that it was in the basement of the building itself, although it meant we had to walk into a cold hallway and down some stairs to get to it. 

All in all, the location is great, it sits in the corner of Kendall Square across from Tommy Doyle’s and the Cambridge Brewing Company, but also at the end of a long corporate building walkway, so they have a prime spot for breakfast and lunch for those on their way to work. The Friendly Toast is at 1 Hampshire Street, Cambridge MA. I highly recommend you stop there for breakfast, no matter what time of day, if you are in the Kendall Square/MIT area of Cambridge!

I just wanted to take the time to thank the people who are still following me, even though I have had tons going on in my life to post. I want you to all know that I am currently working on having my own website to be able to post on, as well as taking this journal to the next level of making this a paying job for me, something for me to do with my life instead of working for the man for the rest of forever. I really appreciate all the support from my tumblr and facebook friends! Bear with me, I have plenty of time today so I might update a lot, from my travels in the New England area, to my recent trip to California. 

Love you lots, and stay tuned!

<3 The Hungry Cupcake

November 30, 2011 - Headed down to Providence to do some holiday shopping, and made a pit stop at Dave & Buster’s for some good grub. Upon walking into the place, there are a few separate rooms for adult enjoyment. We sat in the main dining room, but there is also a billiards room, a bar, and an arcade with another bar off to the side. 

The main dining room has a spattering of tables, a checkerboard floor, palm trees, and ceiling fans running on belt power. Anyway, the menu is full of different types of food, including the Southwestern Salad with grilled chicken that I ended up having. Feast your eyes on this:This is romaine lettuce, tortilla strips, chicken, and a honey chipotle dressing (also came with pico de gallo and onions which I tossed aside). My friend, who made the shopping easier,  ended up with a slider plate, that I had a picture of and ended up deleting by mistake!

The service was great, the restaurant was not busy, so we were able to get our food right away, and have the service we deserved. The prices at D&B can be a little steep, but the food is worth it. They do offer a combo where you get a ten dollar gaming card and food for $15.99, which is awesome, you basically pay $5.99 for your food!

D&B stays open late for movie and mall goers, and with the arcade, the location, and the bars, how can you go wrong?

D&B is located at the Providence Place Mall, in downtown Providence, in the back right corner of the food court on the third floor.

November 15, 2011 - I went on a “dinner and a movie” date with a great friend of mine to Newport avenue in Rumford, Rhode Island last Tuesday and I found this small chain restaurant. The night started great with the hostess opening the door for us and seating us in a quiet part of the restaurant. The waitress was very nice, friendly and informative of the menu and the daily specials. I was in the mood for a sandwich, otherwise I would have had their half chicken special, which comes with a free dessert at the same menu price it always is.

I ended up having the Maui chicken sandwich on a torpedo roll with curly fries, seen below:The sandwich is a grilled chicken breast fillet with barbecue sauce, cheese, bacon, grilled pineapple, and pickles all in one! I’m excited because most of those foods are my favorites, so to have them all in one place, I was definitely thrilled. My date had a bacon cheeseburger, seen below:As you can see, he had steak fries with it as well. 

The food was great, however the restaurant is going through their mid-life identity crisis. The interior and exterior make you believe you are in a fancy Italian restaurant, but the menu is your run-of-the-mill “mom’s home cooking”. I was not too impressed with the wait time for our food either, we knew what we wanted and it took more than a half an hour to get anything; we were starting to wonder if they forgot about us. I also had a good laugh at their rewards program, let me explain: In order to recieve any reward, you have to spend $200! The reward after spending that much? A $5 gift card. Yes, you read right, $5 towards the next food purchase. 

Going to see a cheap movie was good, but spending around $30 for food that was good and an experience that was not so much is something I’m still not happy about. Chelos has nine restaurants located throughout Rhode Island. Overall, I was not impressed by this restaurant.

Don’t dig your grave with your own knife and fork.  ~English Proverb