Weekend Foodie Warriors- Take 22!
Hello hello, again, Foodie Friends 🙂 Hope you had a fantastic weekend! In this edition of Foodie Adventures, we took new friends to a late night at Luna Rosa Gelato, went bowling at Stone Pin Company, and took advantage of Greenville’s Restaurant Week with lunch at Arizona Handcrafted Fare & Drink Co.!
We met some new friends who had never been to Greenville after an Italian potluck event at church (see the recipe for my smash hit Stuffed Pepper casserole I brought here – it’s vegan, vegetarian, and dairy free 🙌), and they wanted some ice cream to wash down the great Italian food we had eaten before.
In keeping with the theme, I only knew of one place that we could go to that was the perfect mix of downtown Greenville atmosphere and awesome eats – Luna Rosa Gelato!
I hadn’t been since they moved to their new location but I loved it!
The new place was divided in half, with a restaurant and bar portion in the back, and cute orange bistro chairs in the front near the gelato shop.
There was a long line but it moved pretty quickly, and the flavors were awesome!
I’m a classicist when it comes to gelato flavors though, I love lemon, blood orange, and dark chocolate. They had some other cool ones like Stracciatella (vanilla with dark chocolate shavings), Toasted Almond, and White Chocolate Coffee.
My friends ended up going with the Dark Chocolate Velvet (probably one of the best dark chocolate gelatos I’ve ever tasted) and Black Cherry Vanilla, which was just as yummy 🍦😋
After this, we walked them around downtown a bit more, seeing the twinkling streetlights draped over the trees and the bridge all lit up in Falls Park. We ended with drinks at Pour Taproom, and I gave them one of my tailored Greenville Food Bucket Lists, seeing as they were Vegan/Vegetarian, and pointed them in the right direction to about 8 or so of my favorite restaurants with those options!
Which is really funny because the next day, I got to go bowling with a bunch
of vegans! 🤗 What a coinkidink. I ended up winning two tickets to a free hour of bowling at Stone Pin Co. through a local Greenville website called V.V. Spot (link to their website here).
V. V. Spot (which stands for Vegan & Vegetarian Spot) was started about
a year ago by two friends who worked at the Greenville Health System. Dee, a Health Coach, and Karen, a Registered Dietitian, were frustrated with the lack of resources people in Upstate SC had to easily figure out which restaurants, grocery stores, and areas had vegan and vegetarian options, and the website was born!
Dee and Karen now conduct monthly food tours to shed light on local
restaurants that have vegan options. Some of their recent tours have been in Spartanburg, Easley, and most recently Greenville, checking out some barbecue joints and Southern restaurants as well.
In the future, they’re looking to do more grocery tours and continue to work with restaurants to include more vegan and vegetarian options. They even said I could make some vegan cookies for them sometime, very exciting 😁🍪
Stone Pin was a lot of fun, it had kind of an old time-y saloon vibe, yet seemed somewhere that me and my 20-something friends would go to hang out and unwind after work.
There were really cool lighting fixtures and a bar in the center of the building, which looked like it had originally been some sort of converted shop or mill type area.
I think one of the coolest things was actually the pins themselves, they were on strings like puppets and would bounce back up like Pinocchio after they were reset or knocked over.
With Jack Daniels in the lobby to show us out the door, it was a really fun time bowling (even though I came in third place), meeting new foodie friends, and learning more about the Vegan food scene in Greenville. Will definitely have to take next month’s tour on September 14th!
Greenville Restaurant Week: Lunch @ Arizona Handcrafted Fare & Drink Co.
Simpsonville, SC
I’m not kidding when I tell you I wait for this week all year. This is like my pre-Thanksgiving. My excuse to go and try different restaurants for less than we normally would spend at restaurants we would usually need a special occasion to go visit.
I have some criteria for any Restaurant Week place we visit moving forward this week (there will be plenty, I promise!):
- Must be somewhere we haven’t been before or haven’t gone to in a long time
- Good menu selection (aka variety or a little something for everyone)
- And the best bang for my buck!
We started out with lunch on Saturday, finally settling on Arizona Handcrafted Fare & Drink Co., a steakhouse in Simpsonville not too far from my buddy’s house.
Jonathan decided to go with Zach and I (J had won the first game of bowling so he picked the place), and we definitely felt the Southwest vibe walking in.
There was a bar area in the center of the room, surrounded by a raised horseshoe-shaped area with booths, tables, and an open kitchen in the back.
We started out with appetizers (2 courses for $16), the first was Southwestern Salmon Croquettes – smoked salmon, caramelized onion, carrot, cilantro, chipotle & cracker crunch, served with a cheese-y kind of dipping sauce
Next was the Mexican street corn and Loaded Potato Winders – spiral cheese and bacon fries, both super yummy! Elote corn is one of my faves.
Our main courses included my fried avocado tacos (right) – with hot black bean corn salsa, jalapeno, lettuce, & ranch served on flour tortillas- which were AVO-mazing!
Zach and Jonathan’s “Backyard BBQ Burger” was good too, with about 8 oz of Certified Angus Beef (ground chuck & steak), basted with BBQ sauce, topped with cheddar, jalapeno slaw, fried green tomato, & pickles on brioche”
This was the first of many restaurant week places; look out for one on Wednesday and Thursday this week too! I may not make it out to all of them, with about 30+ restaurants participating, but this restaurant was a good start to the week of foodie adventures 😁
*BONUS* Check out my three new recipes that just went live tonight!
- Dairy Free Fettuccine Alfredo Sauce
- Freezer Prep Breakfast Burritos
- And the Crock Pot Stuffed Pepper Casserole (GF, Dairy Free, V/Vg)
So how was your weekend Foodie Friends? How often do you get to check out new restaurants in your area? Does your town have a restaurant week too? Sound out in the comments below or let me know your suggestions of what dishes or places we should visit next. As always, feel free to like, comment, & share 🤗
