Cheese Fest

Our weekend began with a quick trip south of the river for Mexican food. We actually had our sights set on Frida 602, but there appeared to be some kind of festival going on in the area, so we didn't want to deal with parking. We backtracked over to Newport on the Levee for Redondo Taqueria, and I'm so glad we did.  We had visited here once before, but we weren't overly impressed. This second visit was definitely much more impressive. OK, I'm sure it helped a ton that we were there during Happy Hour [Monday - Friday, 4PM - 7 PM], so margaritas and sangria were $4 [I had one of each]. My cheese Quesadilla was really tasty, and Francisco enjoyed his Three Cheese Enchiladas.

Our Saturday morning Target run included a delicious Salted Caramel Mocha Frappucinno.

We had had a fairly light breakfast, just munching on Indian sweets that one of my co-workers had brought in for me to try.

We were trying to save as much room as possible for The Cheese Fest! I had won two general admission tickets from the Food Hussy. This was actually a fantastic win as tickets were sold for $35 in advance/$45 at the door.  General admission included unlimited samples of artisan cheeses and products, 1 drink ticket, and samples of grilled cheese and mac and cheese as part of the Meltdown and Macdown competition. You could also purchase VIP tickets for $75.00 each.  

There were dozens of cheese tasting stations - we hardly knew where to begin.

But we were to excited to get started and just hopped around from cheese to cheese.

We stopped at one of the bar tents to use our free drink tickets, which you could use on anything from soda to mixed drinks. If you wanted to purchase a drink, they ranged in price from $2 - $7. I kept it simple and just went with white wine; Francisco kept it super simple and got a Coke.

I was probably most excited to check out the Meltdown and Macdown section. None of the grilled cheese sandwiches appeared to be vegetarian-friendly, but we did sample three macaroni and cheese selections. Pictured below, I think Bite was the first one we tried - my second favorite. Crave was my hands-down favorite, and I definitely gave them a vote. Their creamy mac and cheese was topped with sauteed onions and a delicious smoked bourbon salt. Lastly was Keystone, which I've had many times.

Bite; Crave; Keystone

We stopped for some delicious ice cream creations.

We took a few minutes to sit on the swings by the river before we drug our cheesy selves home.