Morikami Japanese Gardens | Tag Sale Tastes

Last month I was able to get away for two weekend trips in a row, a rarity for me. The first trip was to visit my dad, sister, and nephew in Boca Raton. I generally don’t look forward to travel to Florida — for me, it’s just going from one hot, humid place to another. But just as you can’t pick your relatives, you also can’t pick where they live, so off to Boca Raton we headed for an overdue family visit.

Most of the visit consisted of eating with my family. In between meals we had a little time to kill, and spent an hour or so strolling the grounds at the Morikami Japanese Gardens in nearby Delray Beach. The gardens were a nice respite:

Fat and happy

Purple leaf shooting star plant

Tillandsia

Saturday night my sister invited us to the club at her community for its “Seafood Extravaganza,” a buffet the likes of which we’d never seen. Extravaganza was an understatement — we were overwhelmed by the seafood selections — giant boiled shrimp, clams and oysters on the half shell, gigantic stone crab claws, sushi, smoked fish, and the star of the buffet . . . 2-lb. lobsters:

Driving around downtown Boca Raton, we passed a tree growing in the middle of a parking lot that was covered in pink flowers and was so pretty I thought it was fake:
I made my husband stop for a closer look, and found that not only was the tree real, it was spectacular:

Cassia javanica

Before we left we met up for brunch at Bagel City South. Here, I discovered “flagels” — flat bagels. The bagel dough is shaped, rolled flat, boiled, and then baked, resulting in a flagel roughly the size of a 45 rpm record, with lots of surface area for schmears:

The whitefish salad platter, which I can’t ever seem to pass up, was fresh and tasty, and a nice ending to my weekend in Boca Raton:

Where’s my flagel?

I spent the following weekend in San Antonio with my daughter. San Antonio is an easy getaway from Houston, and I love visiting there. Tired after a long week at work, we went quick, casual, and tasty for dinner at Demo’s, 2501 N. St. Mary’s St. (there are three locations), which has been serving excellent Greek food for 41 years:

The generous chicken and gyro plate came with Greek salad, stuffed grape leaf, pita, onions, and tzatziki:

Pro tip: pick up a container of tzatziki with pita to enjoy at home.

Before heading out for some shopping the next day, we stopped at Bird Bakery for coffee and a perfectly crumbly chocolate chip scone.

I love this charming shop — it’s the kind of place I used to dream about owning:

We spent a few hours shopping at The Shops at La Cantera, which was really nice on this pretty day, but I think might be brutal in the summer:

We had a wonderful dinner at Clementine, 2195 NW Military Highway. The bright and congenial restaurant has one of the most open kitchens I’ve seen, and the owners/chefs John and Elise Russ are highly visible:

We started with the hush puppies with herb laden labneh, honey, and sumac, which were very good but filling, and if there are less than four in your party, I might suggest skipping these and saving room for dessert:

A side order of sweet potatoes with black garlic was a different and delicious twist:We flipped over the Ricotta Cavatelli with broccoli-top pesto, Sichuan peppercorns, toasted pecans, Parmesan — seriously, don’t skip this:

For our main course we chose the Brick Chicken, chamomile brined with chimichurri. Chef John came by and told us that he knows it can be hard to get excited about chicken in a restaurant, but that their chicken was brined for 4 hours and then cooked under a weight so that the skin got crispy, and he promised it was delicious. Say no more — he was right:

I really really wanted to order the Pink Peppercorn Donuts with pineapple and pink peppercorn ice cream that the party next to us was having, but it was just too much for the two of us. We were happy to learn, though, that we could order just a small scoop of the pink peppercorn ice cream, which was perfect. We plan to return to Clementine with a bigger group and trust Chef John to create a tasting menu for the table.

Sunday morning we went to the farmers market at the Pearl Brewery, one of my favorite places in San Antonio. In addition to shops, restaurants, and the beautiful Hotel Emma, there’s also a large grassy area where children and dogs scamper about. It’s a fun, happy place: